Min/max faction builds

[Seswatha]

Thread to discuss faction builds designed to be OP at something. Doesn't have to be the most OP build in existence, something that takes a certain aspect of the game and tries to min/max it e.g. the best build for vassal spam, or the most powerful spearmen build is alright.

Feel free to post yours and I'll start with posting some of mine:

1. Archers of Doom

Concept: OP archers destroying enemy units from 7-9 range.

Culture: High. Awaken grants archers +4 flat damage, +1 range and +20% accuracy and will be an important part of our combo. You also get tier 1 archers you're going to spam.

Body trait: Quick Reflexes, if someone manages to shoot back at us. Keen sighted is irrelevant for this build, I'll explain why later.

Mind trait: Overwhelm tactics. To start on that crit stacking.

Ruler: Champion. WK works too and may be still better, but specifically here Champion enables part of our economy combo with his +20 stability bonus.

Trait1: Imperialists. Gold is useful and +20 Stability enables our economy combo.

Trait2: Ritual cannibals. To start out with neutral agenda, enabling our prod and food bonus. Alternatively you can try to start the game doing some evil actions ASAP in which case Runesmiths or Prolific Swarmers might be a better choice.

Having +40 stability in your capital and connected cities allows you to start with +20 food and prod from Neutral High culture agenda and +20 gold from Imperialists. Later with Tome of Faith you will be able to build Convents for +20 mana and research. This gives you a powerful headstart in terms of economy as long as you connect your new cities to the capital.

The downside of this trait combo is that you get no extra starting units or recruit ranks, so the start will be a bit slow in terms of clearing.

Tome path:
You don't really aim for magic victory with this build, so you don't need to rush t5 and you benefit a lot from grabbing a bunch of t1 & t2 tomes that boost archers, there are quite a few. t3, t4, t5 don't interest you as much, please also note that higher tier tomes require more research per spell so by sticking to lower tiers you can progress your affinity trees faster.

Tome 1: Horde. Gets you going more on the red affinity, which you need to get for -30% t1 unit upkeep, since you'll spam a lot of t1 archers. You also get Houndmasters, Spawnkin and +20% t1 unit damage from a hero skill. Other good tomes are Pyro, Roots and Faith, Cryo but we can come back for them later.

Tome 1: Enchantment. Mostly picked for +1 range enhancement, but awakened tools can be ok if you have too much stability (which can happen) and you might need to summon some copper golems to help early clear.

Tome 3: Amplification. Gives you Astral Blood that allows you to stack up to +50% crit, although as Champion this stacking will be slower. And Amplified Arrows, which is the other reason you go here, because bouncing arrows are great.

Tome 4; Artificing: Mostly you want +30% crit for your archers from Artisan Armaments.

instead of going t3, we're going to grab more t1 & t2 tomes here, which are also cheaper tech wise.

Tome 5: Tome of Faith, to build Convents and get mana & research boost.

Tome 6: Wind, for Zephyr Archers, which you should start building.

If you want to go full meme, you can continue by grabbing Pyromancy, Cryomancy, Roots, Inquisition and Beacon to get every possible arrow enchantment (or some of them).

t3 tomes don't matter as much, and we already have enough Materium Affinity, which is the one we want to have for t4 so we can really pick whatever.

Tome 7 - Terramancy, for aoe slow with no chance to resist and other good attack spells.

Tome 8 - Teleportation for strategic map mobility or Sanctuary which is also a great choice for Keeper's mark on your inquisitors.

Tome 9 - Crucible for meteoric arrows. This is kind of your capstone tome, take whatever afterwards.

What we have as the result:

t1 archers with +11 (4 Awaken, 2 Amplified, 5 Meteoric) damage arrows (more if you went into extra tomes), +40% damage boost from Spawnkin & Hero Skill, 6 to 7 range (4 base + 1 awaken + 1 enchantment + 1 max exp). 5 damage per shot is done in AoE around the target.

Also up to 100% crit (0-20% morale + 0-50% astral blood + 20% overwhelm tactics + 30% artificing). Planetfall had the fix where max crit chance was equal to your max hit chance, this seems to be not the case here. Meaning that at 100% crit you're going to hit every shot. That's why Keen Sighted was mentioned as somewhat redundant and neither do we need Tome of Scrying/Guided Projectiles.

Zephyr Archers with the same, but their Zephyr Shot has up to 9(!) range.

These units are quite expensive enchantment wise (the minimum you want to run in lategame is seeker arrows + amplified arrows + artisan armaments + meteoric arrows) but they destroy everything from extreme long range and hit a couple of tiers above their paygrade so it's still a great deal, especially with upkeep discounts. This build is heavy on materium affinity so you may be able to get the capstone, which makes upkeep issues trivial.

[D]

Unfortunately, the "Archers of Doom" don't work as intended anymore. Artisan armaments no longer work on Ranged Units and the maximum stacks of Fortune were reduced to 3, which means the maximum crit rate they can get is 70% with the morale bonus.

Also not sure if it was a typo in the tome path or a change by devs, but Tome of Amplifications is Tier 3.

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by sukenus:

Unfortunately, the "Archers of Doom" don't work as intended anymore. Artisan armaments no longer work on Ranged Units and the maximum stacks of Fortune were reduced to 3, which means the maximum crit rate they can get is 70% with the morale bonus.

Also not sure if it was a typo in the tome path or a change by devs, but Tome of Amplifications is Tier 3.

This thread is super old, most of the builds were made like half a year ago. Amplification used to be tier 2 indeed.

[Alexander]

Here's a really fun build:

Dread Cult

Racial traits: Hardy, Tough, Resistant.
We want units that do not die easily, even when surrounded by enemies.

Culture: Dark
This build heavily relies on debuffs, especially on weakening, and doesn't use healers, so Cull the week trait is very handy.

Additional cultural traits:
Merciless slavers - profits a lot from our build: if our strategy works as intended (and if our economy is good) we'll get instant reinforcements after each big battle.
Mana addicts - just for extra healing on the battlefield.

Ruler equipment: Tyrant knight sword and shield.
We want intimidating aura, and we'll need at least two of the first three signature skills of our ruler to be Chaos aspected, and Chaos skills are best suitable for melee heroes.


The core idea of the build is to ruin the morale of your adversaries and to rout their troops. However, there is a twist: this build utilizes debuffs and statuses to demoralize enemies faster and to prevent them from doing too much damage to our troops. With that in mind let's pick our tomes:

Tier 1:
- Alchemy
I recommend to pick it as the starting tome, because it gives us one of the main units for our build: the Afflictor archer. Afflictors disperse miasma that wakens units that pass through it (Cull the weak combo) and also makes units that stand in it get statuses while getting damage. For our purposes Afflictors are slightly better than Warlocks.
- Zeal
Weird, I know
The main thing we want here is Legion of zeal. It makes our units to do some extra spirit damage, and if they do it to a unit that stands in miasma, that unit will get Condemned, and condemned units are even more vulnerable to statuses!

Tier 2:
- The Doomherald
Negative statuses we inflict already reduce morale of the enemy. Let's scare them even more! Notable topics to research are Joy siphoners and Cruel weaponry.
- The inquisition
Here we want mostly Inquisitor's mark to make our Afflictors to dish out statuses even to units outside of miasma.

Tier 3:
- Subjugation
The central piece of our build: Tyrant knights with Intimidating aura. They will invade the ranks of the enemies and scare them out of their wits.

And here's a trick. At this point we don't have enough Chaos affinity to pick tier 3 Chaos tomes. We could pick the tome of Pyromancy to make our troops cause fire damage (miasma will turn it into a Burning status). Alternatively we can make sure our leader has two Chaos signature skills when we pick our 6th tome. Anyways, the second tier 3 tome we really want is

- Pandemonium
By turning our race into Vessels of Chaos we utilize all the statuses we dish out to deal more damage (after all, the best way to decrease enemy morale is to kill some of them), and also attacks of our troops have a chance to inflict even more negative statuses! Chaos eaters also play quite nicely into our build with their random magic attacks (miasma!) and ability to turn statuses into damage and self-heal.


That's it! The core of the build is complete. Given the diversity of the aspects this build has, it can be developed further into Order, Chaos, or Shadow, depending on your tastes, but at this point the goal is achieved: enemy army folds really fast after a couple of turns of tyrant knights' horrifying onslaught with various plagues eating them from inside. And after the battle you can by the routed units to your side as insta-reinforcements right in the middle of the enemy territory.

[velasquezt43]

Originally posted by Seswatha:

Originally posted by sukenus:

Unfortunately, the "Archers of Doom" don't work as intended anymore. Artisan armaments no longer work on Ranged Units and the maximum stacks of Fortune were reduced to 3, which means the maximum crit rate they can get is 70% with the morale bonus.

Also not sure if it was a typo in the tome path or a change by devs, but Tome of Amplifications is Tier 3.

This thread is super old, most of the builds were made like half a year ago. Amplification used to be tier 2 indeed.

Yeah, that's the downside to any thread like this trying to offer up "best builds." These strategy games like AoW4 and others I've played like Hearts of Iron get tweaked and changed by the developers over time so that old plans don't work anymore. Its one of the downsides to these games, if you want to call it that.

It used to suck in the olden days of printed strat guides you could buy. Those were always for the 1.0 release of the game and were usually woefully outdated by the time you bought one.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Alexander:

Additional cultural traits:
Merciless slavers - profits a lot from our build: if our strategy works as intended (and if our economy is good) we'll get instant reinforcements after each big battle.
Mana addicts - just for extra healing on the battlefield.

unfortunately those 2 are among the worst social traits picks you can have in the game.

Merciless Slavers would be cool, if the units you could get wouldn't cost a fortune. its cheaper to summon units to the front line and its also more reliable.

I don't know how its justified to pay so much more for slaves than normal summoned or drafted units? Same with Nymphs and their seduce.

So, unless Merciless Slavers is not reworked, i wouldn't touch it at all.

Mana Addicts isn't nearly as bad, but competes vs much better traits.

[Alexander]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Originally posted by Alexander:

Additional cultural traits:
Merciless slavers - profits a lot from our build: if our strategy works as intended (and if our economy is good) we'll get instant reinforcements after each big battle.
Mana addicts - just for extra healing on the battlefield.

unfortunately those 2 are among the worst social traits picks you can have in the game.

Merciless Slavers would be cool, if the units you could get wouldn't cost a fortune. its cheaper to summon units to the front line and its also more reliable.

I don't know how its justified to pay so much more for slaves than normal summoned or drafted units? Same with Nymphs and their seduce.

So, unless Merciless Slavers is not reworked, i wouldn't touch it at all.

Mana Addicts isn't nearly as bad, but competes vs much better traits.

This build is aimed for the late game anyways, and if you don't have lots of money at that point, you are doing something wrong, IMHO. At the late game the real bottleneck is the army production speed and movement speed, so paying a little extra to immediately get reinforcements on the enemy territory is great.

As for Mana addicts, this build suffers from lack of ways to heal units in battle and it is really fragile until you get proper tanks, so lifesteal helps with that. Any better suggestions how to achieve a similar result with a different trait?

I tested this build on the Brutal difficulty, and the benefits of this build I have described are the actual results I got.

I admit, I got lucky because I spawned surrounded by two fellow villains and we became fast friends, so I had time to research the Doomherald tome before I got into the first war.

In my second run with this build I also chose Brutal difficulty and Disdain for Evil map modifier. As a result I got annihilated by Blint the Underdelver before I could cast Joy Siphoners on my doom toads. Well, Materium with their elemental/artificial units and walking bastions is the worst matchup for this build even in the late game, because they either outbuff my debuffs or completely ignore them (although I still managed to annihilate them in my first run), so no surprise here.

I'm going to try another test run with a better start, perhaps, to see if I was just lucky with neighbors the first time.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Utoneru:

I found this discussion and the builds inside interesting. After the latest updates, and changes to ranged units and critical hits (crit chance no higher than hit chance) plus others like astral reflections (no heroes and mythical anymore), I'd like to showcase my preferred range crit build:

Culture

High (dormant seeking arrows buffs plus you can start combat awakened as pure evil for +3 spirit dmg and +1 range)

Society

Any you prefer. I had more than enough mana using a champion, gold was more of a problem:
Runesmiths (materium affinity plus helps with enchantments and you'll have plenty)
Scions of Evil (shadow affinity plus helps you get to pure evil and gives draft and imperium)

Ruler

Whatever you prefer (Champ gives gold and unit exp (which you need) while WK has more casting points (good later as he levels up) and double casting)

Traits

Body: Unicorn (phase cavalry glade runner archers)
Mind: Overwhelm Tactics (+20% crit chance when next to a similar unit)

Tomes

Some options are stronger for this build than others

1: Enchantment (strong | T1 | materium) for +1 range seeker arrows mainly, though everything could be useful
2: Cryomancy (strong | T1 | shadow) for frost arrows with 60% slow chance and blizzard army spell with -3 status resist mainly, though blades and ice coffin are ok too

3: Glades (mandatory | T2 | nature) for glade runner mounted archer and the dmg, resists, stealth walk forest buffs (warden hero support, leafskin minor and forest terra) mainly, though Sacred Meadow is ok too
4: Beasts (mandatory | T1 | nature) for the +20% crit chance, flanker, +10% dmg of pack leader and animal kinship mainly, though call of the wild all cavalry/animal buff, priority target mark prey and Wildlife Sanctuary are ok too

5: Amplification (mandatory | T2 | arcane) for Astral Blood's +0-30% crit chance and the chaining dmg of Amplified Arrows
6: Scrying (mandatory | T2 | arcane) for the accuracy of Guided Projectiles mainly, though and Mental Mark's AOE evasion and resistance debuffs are ok too

7: Vigor (mid | T3 | nature) for affinity, some defence (mind control, resists, life, smaller formations) and utility (buffed but still slow moving animal summons) though this is the weakest tome in this build and could be replaced - if you don't need more nature affinity - with Terramancy (siege, AOE dmg and slow, mountain destruction terra) or Teleportation (better no-imperium teleporter, trade relay, mass recall) or whatever else you prefer since there are many decent options
8: Paradise (super strong - mandatory | T4 | nature) for Gaia's Chosen life, status res and plant major transformation and Exhilarating Pollen's mass morale buffs / life heal and mass 90% distracted / weakened debuffs

9: Goddess of Nature (mandatory | T5 | nature) for everything really, but mainly Force of Nature's cavalry/plant/animal +20% crit chance and +4 blight dmg and Mass Rejuvenation's all healing / plant resurrect

The order of the tomes might be changed a little, Amplification could come before Glades for faster arcane affinity. Heroes with extra affinity are pretty nice.

Other nice tomes are:

• Cycles with expensive Projectiles of Decay enchant and slow moving Druids of the Cycle
  
• Terramancy with siege, AOE dmg and slow, mountain destruction terra
  
• Teleportation with better no-imperium teleporter, trade relay, mass recall
  
• Nature's Wrath is pretty good with a one time huge AOE +5 strengthen bonus with no reset if you don't go part battlemage, and Awaken Instincts heal & AP reset with the handicap a 2 turn berserk (which you can't resist unless you go celestial major)
  
• Revelry for better morale through Exhilarating Pollen (15 * 1.5 > 20 morale which means +20% crit chance)
  
• Horde gives +20% to your T3 archers, but used early will make your T1 archers much stronger overall with its T1 buffs, which would mean postponing Glades to some degree
  
• Mayhem has relatively little use (even followed by Pandemonium) bc even though it gives a nice debuff and a decent siege project your Glade Runners can already debuff mid range foes for
  
• Pandemonium alone with Vessels of Chaos gives a wooping bonus of up to 30% dmg
  
• Transmutation gives some defensive minor, a defensive enchant which can work with the huge life your runners get and an offensive AOE damage + armor debuff

Of some mostly minor use we have:

• offensively: Crucible is ok, Zeal is cheap, then Pyromancy and Roots have some uses
  
• defensively: Rock
  
• siege: Artificing
  
• etc

You can get a max of 110% crit chance, which is limited by math and ranged accuracy. By the time you finish with your main 9 tomes you should have:

1. 20% crit with Force of Nature expensive enchant (costly and can be disabled by Disruption Wave in Arch Mage)
   
2. 10% crit with Pack Leader hero skill (needs a living leading hero with the skill)
   
3. 20% crit with Overwhelm Tactics (needs to be next to a unit with the same mind trait)
   
4. 10% crit with Animal Kinship (mostly the same as above)
   
5. 0-30% crit with Astral Blood (3 spells casted already and positive buff not removed)
   
6. 0-20% crit from high morale gained throughout the fight, by using a simple Exhilarating Pollen cast to gain 15 morale or using it on a race with Reveler's Heart race minor to jump to beyond 20 at once (can get demoralized as well on top of the whole process of getting high morale going)

Your base damage should be good enough using:

1. 14 phys
   
2. 3 spirit awakaned
   
3. 2 cold, -1 phys
   
4. 2 lightning, -1 phys
   
5. 4 blight

Life of between 95 and 175 should be adequate:

1. 90 starting
   
2. 5 cavalry
   
3. optional 10 Supergrowth
   
4. 20 Gaia's Chosen
   
5. 10 Endurance hero support skill
   
6. 40 max from leveling

With this build you should be cruising the game. The issue, if any, is that it does need some things to lift off. The lovely Charging Phase Beasts build might hard counter it. Double casting buffed Tectonic Shatter on a weakened army might as well. Gilded magic crits might work too. Drowning it in waves of units might do the same. A stronger economy might too. Etc, etc.

Is this after or before all the supposed archer builds? That is, is it still relevant?

[Lampros]

Originally posted by sukenus:

Unfortunately, the "Archers of Doom" don't work as intended anymore. Artisan armaments no longer work on Ranged Units and the maximum stacks of Fortune were reduced to 3, which means the maximum crit rate they can get is 70% with the morale bonus.

Also not sure if it was a typo in the tome path or a change by devs, but Tome of Amplifications is Tier 3.

What Artisan Armaments do not work on ranged? WTF!

[Utoneru]

Originally posted by Lampros:

...

Is this after or before all the supposed archer builds? That is, is it still relevant?

It's a couple of months old. Still viable, but there have been some changes that affect it in the meantime:

a) animal kinship minor racial - has been nerfed: your racials need to be adjacent to an animal to have it kick in (for both the racial and animal unit); you can activate this using:
- unreliable units (through summoning or wild expansion)
- reliable units (wildlife sanctuary: low maintenance fast wargs or slow web using hunter spiders; they maybe get your culture enchants if any, plus: early sundering and frost blades, mid empowered beast and late force of nature + any hero supports and can get a max total of 60% crit chance: morale, hero and racial plus morale)

b) amplification tome comes after the scrying one now as it is a level 3 tome now; also you need a +1 to astral somehow (culture or ruler signature skill which I always get as all 3 are nice)

c) vigor tome is abit better bc of animal kinship requiring an animal; a bit too micro and sometimes random (summoning), so not mandatory by any means

d) your glade runners start with 5 less health (85)

e) phase (on your unicorn mounts) requires all 3 action points (no movement) and leaves you with one; it can be used when an enemy is near you stopping your mounted archers from attacking but if you leave your fights on auto the AI will use it stupidly; you could use another mount like spider

f) also, your racial mounts only have 40 speed (down from 48)

If you use animals, you can more easily use another culture, like feudal (adjacent bonus), barbarian (+2 phys building), mystic (best with WK ruler). You won't need to awaken your units for the early-mid game, but your archers will be a little weaker.

[Seswatha]

In general, I'd say range hasn't been the meta for a while now, especially in pvp, and you should focus on a strong frontline. The best affinities are Astral, Shadow and Materium. t1-t2 units outlive their usefulness pretty fast so things that evolve into t3 or t4 are amazing.

While most of the builds in the thread are still doable, they are no longer optimised. I'd suggest to just start a new one and stop necroing this, lol.

[Utoneru]

My second latest favorite build I like to call Ratta Aviata - a race of inquisitive batmen / bat bois with a dash of eagle bois.

Note: This build is exciting (skirmishers), fast (40+ speed), mobile (flying, but needs flying hero mounts), and has great debuffing, buffing, supporting abilities.

Caution: It struggles in one area: getting enough affinity points. Using only your hero signature skills, you need all 4 (lvls 4, 8, 12, 16) on your ruler to manage, or you need to use your first free respec to manage. You need a + 2 on both order and chaos, therefore any upgrade on any of these (culture, society, etc) is extremely useful.

Form

Anything really, purely cosmetic as always, does't matter in the slightest.
1) Rats (bats)
2) Orcs (offensive f*ckers)
3) Humans (look best)
4) Anything else (hairy feet halflings can be funny and I can see myself really like the concept, goblins could work too I guess)
z) Moles (not my favorite, buuut can be somewhat funny to have underground ghei/jolly midget round furries with wings)
zz) Lizards & Avians (funny cold blooded "reptiles" with mammal like wings riding giant eagles)

Culture

Feudal
- order (very useful) & nature (0 in the build) aff
- +20% dmg for adj racials
- lv1 pike to lv2 shield units
Barbarian
- chaos (very useful) & nature (0 in the build) aff
- alpha strike plus +2 dmg building
- lv1 skirmisher, lv1 stun shield, lv2 "furries" units
Mystic
- 2 arcane (you won't have the means to get it following the build) aff
- good elemental dmg spread
- lv2 stun shielders

Ruler

Probably WK over champion, but both should be fine (Champ gives gold and unit exp (which you need) while WK has more casting points (good later as he levels up) and double casting).

Society

Whatever you like, good ones are good, bad ones are bad. Otherwise we have (ordered by order, chaos, others):
Order
Not a fan of them, however if I had to pick:
- Chosen Uniters especially useful if Feudal
- Relentless Crusaders (maybe nice, didn't test it)
Chaos
These are pretty good, probably:
- Prolific Swarmers especially if Feudal or Barbarian
- Ritual Cannibals
Others
- Runesmiths (materium affinity plus helps with enchantments and you'll have plenty)
- Fabled Hunters (nature plus ranged/skirmishers & some resources)
- Scions of Evil (shadow plus shield and some draft/imperium and eventually all units rank)
- Adept Settlers (nature + economy)
- Talented Collectors (nature + economy)
- Experienced Seafarers (nature + economy) useful on water maps
- Wonder Architects (materium + economy)

Traits

The way these work has changed, we no longer have body and mind, though I've still kept it for historical purposes. Now we get 5 points to split how we like (with some exceptions). You mainly need survivability here since you get your offensive power elsewhere.
Body: 2p Tough (die less option: wins battles & doesn't burden your economy)
Mind: 2p Resistant (idem)
Extra: 1p Cold Blooded or Elusive (idem).
- First time I used elusive, but cold blooded should be preferable I think since your main weakness should be demoralizing shielders and this helps. Both are pretty good though, one addresses a bigger weakness, the other provides a smaller more general buff.

Tomes

Both the tomes and the order are 100% fixed. The first four are a-ok, the next 2 (5&6) need a +1 order/chaos, the following next too (7&8) need a further +1 chaos/order, while the last one needs you to keep your +2 to order (if you got them through ruler sign skills no respec yet if you plan on doing it).

1: Enchantment (T1 | materium) amazing T1 tome, everything can be useful: shield, blades, arrows, tools, summon
2: Cryomancy (T1 | shadow) amazing T1 tome, everything can be useful, but mainly for frost arrows&blades (60% slow chance & +20% dmg), blizzard army spell (-3 status resist)

3: INQUISITION (T2 | order) for your main unit & inqui mark though others are good too (burden, tribunal) and, towards the end game order amplifying lens, a pretty nice dispelling mass condemnation!
4: Mayhem (T2 | chaos) defensively: mark, curse | offensive (pandemonium/vessel enabler) | new siege option | infectious insanity option

5: Sanctuary (T3 | order) mainly sanctuary, keeper's mark (economy & survivability) and anointed people though everything is good (great tome!)
6: Pandemonium (T3 | chaoes) for vessels of chaos offensive powah! and little else except maybe mass hysteria, though you might find the rest to work too (depends on personal taste)
- if you really, really want to, you might lose the +30% vessels dmg (helped by the 3*15% luck destroying -50% dmg fumble) and go for a different tome, though I don't recommend it; options are: pyro (fire weapons), revelry (blood weapons) or devastation (flame weapons and major siege option); revelry and devastation work well together, but for this build mayhem and pandemonium are preferable offering both defensive and offensive in a debuff/buff, non crit build

7: DEMON GATE (T4 | chaos) for the amazing/bonkers demonkin! (best major racial transformation, truly something desirable) & better no-imperium teleporter; the rest is not needed but they are at least better than the Pandemonium ones with demon access (no racials though)
8: SUPREMACY (T4 | order) for eagle bois!, anthem!, anthem!, anthem! and monument; the rest are so-so, but it's good you don't rake your brains on what to get, you have clear choices like in some of the previous tomes
- I said this is not a crit build ... well, anthem and order bolstering matrix somewhat changes that

9: GOD EMPEROR (T5 | order) for dome of protection!!! uber hero support ability (you build support heroes for this as well) plus mass revive (weaker than mass rejuvenation though it has its upside too) & divine protection, with the rest being somewhat useful

You should have almost everything: fast flying armies, great transformations & enchantments, good-to-great support & combat spells plus some limited siege options. Also, when you get to uber knightly orders, on an uber legendary skirmisher inquisitor you get ... the 50% evasion of the order of the windborne. Sweet, sweet, new game plus! ;)

I calculated some time ago all the percent dmg buffs you get (20% frost weapons, max 30% vessels, max 50% frenzy, maybe feudal, max 10% medal, max 10% hero, did I miss any?) and counted all the 6 debuffs some guaranteed like misfortune, some with 90% change, others with 60% and some with 30% you get following this build suggestion ... and I was happy. Try it out! :)

One of the biggest issues this build has is the unrealistic mass golden golems. I guess anything you can't debuff is also somewhat "bad". Otherwise, in the realistic and dangerous corner we'd have demoralizing shielders. I'm sure others work as well.

PS: This is an older build of mine, I imagine I'm not the first one to think of something similar. A couple of months after I first played it, after some very bad no-no thing happened somewhere else in the world, I realized this build features a rat race, chosen religious people, demonic misfortune bringing vessels of chaos, riding atop previous rat eating eagles, with a dome like uber. :X Computer says no!

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Utoneru:

It's a couple of months old. Still viable, but there have been some changes that affect it in the meantime:

a) animal kinship minor racial - has been nerfed: your racials need to be adjacent to an animal to have it kick in (for both the racial and animal unit); you can activate this using:
- unreliable units (through summoning or wild expansion)
- reliable units (wildlife sanctuary: low maintenance fast wargs or slow web using hunter spiders; they maybe get your culture enchants if any, plus: early sundering and frost blades, mid empowered beast and late force of nature + any hero supports and can get a max total of 60% crit chance: morale, hero and racial plus morale)

b) amplification tome comes after the scrying one now as it is a level 3 tome now; also you need a +1 to astral somehow (culture or ruler signature skill which I always get as all 3 are nice)

c) vigor tome is abit better bc of animal kinship requiring an animal; a bit too micro and sometimes random (summoning), so not mandatory by any means

d) your glade runners start with 5 less health (85)

e) phase (on your unicorn mounts) requires all 3 action points (no movement) and leaves you with one; it can be used when an enemy is near you stopping your mounted archers from attacking but if you leave your fights on auto the AI will use it stupidly; you could use another mount like spider

f) also, your racial mounts only have 40 speed (down from 48)

If you use animals, you can more easily use another culture, like feudal (adjacent bonus), barbarian (+2 phys building), mystic (best with WK ruler). You won't need to awaken your units for the early-mid game, but your archers will be a little weaker.

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation!

Originally posted by Seswatha:

In general, I'd say range hasn't been the meta for a while now, especially in pvp, and you should focus on a strong frontline. The best affinities are Astral, Shadow and Materium. t1-t2 units outlive their usefulness pretty fast so things that evolve into t3 or t4 are amazing.

While most of the builds in the thread are still doable, they are no longer optimised. I'd suggest to just start a new one and stop necroing this, lol.

Could you point out the key tomes and spells for the front-line builds?

[Revelation_777]

I really liked the idea or the phase beast build. I tried it out on the last story map for the main game. It takes a bit to get going, but then again, my economic/research skills aren’t close to optimal. Lesser storm spirits and animal summons were my go to till things got rolling.

Playing the first Empires and Ashes map with a modified approach. I am trying to make a better early game so I can try it out in MP.

The modification is throwing in some Evolution support to grow Lesser Storms, the random animals summoned that have evolve (wilderness sanctuary too), and on a whim, took the tome that lets you summon Wyverns…

I also took Industrious culture to have a better economy to get research going faster, and I really love the early Materium empire upgrades. I don’t miss Berzerkers, but I do miss Sunderers and Defenders at times.

It’s all kind of clunky, but I am bit of a clunky player to begin with, lol.

I’d love some feedback on how to do the phase beast build with a stronger early game and research boosting tips!

[♫Kryonicꜛ™]

Bumping the thread up, maybe someone got some build to share for inspiration?

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by ♫Kryonicꜛ™:

Bumping the thread up, maybe someone got some build to share for inspiration?

I don't know ♥♥♥♥.