Culture units are lacking late game

[Cindeerella]

I haven’t played much this game (but I played a lot of other title games), but I’m playing Brutal difficulty and noticed that only cultures where I continue using cultural units are Mystic and High(haven’t played Reavers and Industial enough to judge tbh) because their apex cultural unit is “mage” and mage are the only unit class that has major problems in tomes (watchers are ok but overall not exciting, chaos eater is just garbage unit if you not making build around them with debuffs which isn’t bad thing but it’s bad option otherwise) and so they stay relevant late game. All those knights-berserkers became obsolete when you get to Warbreeds and Tyrant Knights, even Inquisitors might outperform Dragoons.

In my recent playthrough with Dark culture maxing Chaos and Shadow affinity Warbreeds just outclassed my Dark Knights completely, don’t get me wromg they’re good units, but very bad in autocombat, 3v3 battles especially with my poor GPU gets redius at turn 80+, Warbreeds slower but much more reliable option for auto, since they’re racial units they benefit from all transformations.
Despite my bad position (0 knowledge nodes around me at all) for 100 turns I was able to research everything I needed, and so in my best triple stack only cultural unit was Warlock( their debuff pretty neat) at turn 108 (when I finished game). Ofc leftovers of cultural units were left clearing infestations around city (regenerating infestations map trait).

What do you think about it?

We have 4 tiers of city upgrade but only tier 3 units maximum, imo cultures must have at least one 4 tier unit to make cultures more impactful mid-late game.

[DYNIA]

if you use spam tier 4 units you will get 0 imperium and they are just a bit better than unit 3

i can beat anything with berserkers spam that are unit tier 3 without losting any imperium and use it to get new citys

berserkers are better than tier 4 shock units cause have berserking so no, there are nit good strategy to spam mystic or tier 4 units, you need to find balace cause imperium cost will make you lost every game, you can get imperium only from ancient wonders, mage tower and 20 from war and maybe 15 from magic materials

[Moo]

I have restarted playing recently as well, and I am also playing on brutal. I am at around turn 100, and I haven't used any units higher than tier 3. Tier 4+ units require imperium and I feel like I am better off using a hero unit instead. I am playing on the largest map with the slowest settings, so I am probably not as late game as you.

[Pyro Penguin]

agreed cultures really need more higher tier units, feels like tomes are all that matters in late game

[DYNIA]

Originally posted by Pyro Penguin:

agreed cultures really need more higher tier units, feels like tomes are all that matters in late game

culture tier 3 are powerfull enough some units even tier 2 are good\

for example mystic tier 3 and tier 2 are excelent combo with some units from tomes

[aclyte]

Very late game yes, tome units outtier cultural ones - probably as they should.
Still, T2/T3 cultural still good for support.

You can check some mods in workshop - they add some more cultural units of higher tiers. This one is very popular:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973966349

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Bratty Doe:

3v3 battles especially with my poor GPU gets redius at turn 80+, Warbreeds slower but much more reliable option for auto, since they’re racial units they benefit from all transformations.

Yeah, but Warbreeds are not the best option in auto. The irony is, T3 Feudal Knights are your best option in auto-combat and they are the top feudal culture unit and easily the most efficient unit in the game, when it comes to upkeep=autocombat efficiency, alternates to that are usually much slower or cost imperium and don't give better results, check out how well stand together and giant slayer passives work in auto, as its hard to find T4 and T5 units that are not large size, which basicly results in 60% more dmg overall before modifiers are applied.

If AoW4 wouldn't be as much based around Tomes as it is, all the T4 units that require draft, could be distributed to the cultures and unlocked by Town Hall IV.

No idea, why 80% of the game needs to be hardlocked in tomes. Tomes would be still very important even without any units to unlock as could be seen in AoW2 the spiritual predecessor to 4.

[Cindeerella]

Originally posted by DYNIA:

if you use spam tier 4 units you will get 0 imperium and they are just a bit better than unit 3

i can beat anything with berserkers spam that are unit tier 3 without losting any imperium and use it to get new citys

berserkers are better than tier 4 shock units cause have berserking so no, there are nit good strategy to spam mystic or tier 4 units, you need to find balace cause imperium cost will make you lost every game, you can get imperium only from ancient wonders, mage tower and 20 from war and maybe 15 from magic materials

Well that’s not late game if you care about Imperium. Late game you only need Imperium for new cities, unless you just want to pick every single node. With 0 Wonders, 0 wars and 0 vassals you have bland 50 imperium income, for 10 t4 units you’ll spend 30 imperium per turn, and imo that’s already a lot of units. You need only 3 doomstacks anyway, it’s 15 units + 3 heroes and rest 5 units can be some kind of utility/support, and you also have 20 imperium per turn. Rest of your army to guard your cities can be anything cheap.

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Originally posted by Bratty Doe:

3v3 battles especially with my poor GPU gets redius at turn 80+, Warbreeds slower but much more reliable option for auto, since they’re racial units they benefit from all transformations.

Yeah, but Warbreeds are not the best option in auto. The irony is, T3 Feudal Knights are your best option in auto-combat and they are the top feudal culture unit and easily the most efficient unit in the game, when it comes to upkeep=autocombat efficiency, alternates to that are usually much slower or cost imperium and don't give better results, check out how well stand together and giant slayer passives work in auto, as its hard to find T4 and T5 units that are not large size, which basicly results in 60% more dmg overall before modifiers are applied.

If AoW4 wouldn't be as much based around Tomes as it is, all the T4 units that require draft, could be distributed to the cultures and unlocked by Town Hall IV.

No idea, why 80% of the game needs to be hardlocked in tomes. Tomes would be still very important even without any units to unlock as could be seen in AoW2 the spiritual predecessor to 4.

Very interesting. Will test Feudals more, just in my experience Dark knights were dying every autobattle so I got tired of replaying every joke battle.

Originally posted by jeem1972:

I have restarted playing recently as well, and I am also playing on brutal. I am at around turn 100, and I haven't used any units higher than tier 3. Tier 4+ units require imperium and I feel like I am better off using a hero unit instead. I am playing on the largest map with the slowest settings, so I am probably not as late game as you.

Oh slow game is completely different thing, I don’t even sure how long it will take you to get tier 4 tome. At this point you’ll probably already kill someone lol. On slow setting culture is beneficial over tomes, that’s for sure.

[DYNIA]

Originally posted by Bratty Doe:

Originally posted by DYNIA:

if you use spam tier 4 units you will get 0 imperium and they are just a bit better than unit 3

i can beat anything with berserkers spam that are unit tier 3 without losting any imperium and use it to get new citys

berserkers are better than tier 4 shock units cause have berserking so no, there are nit good strategy to spam mystic or tier 4 units, you need to find balace cause imperium cost will make you lost every game, you can get imperium only from ancient wonders, mage tower and 20 from war and maybe 15 from magic materials

Well that’s not late game if you care about Imperium. Late game you only need Imperium for new cities, unless you just want to pick every single node. With 0 Wonders, 0 wars and 0 vassals you have bland 50 imperium income, for 10 t4 units you’ll spend 30 imperium per turn, and imo that’s already a lot of units. You need only 3 doomstacks anyway, it’s 15 units + 3 heroes and rest 5 units can be some kind of utility/support, and you also have 20 imperium per turn. Rest of your army to guard your cities can be anything cheap.

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Yeah, but Warbreeds are not the best option in auto. The irony is, T3 Feudal Knights are your best option in auto-combat and they are the top feudal culture unit and easily the most efficient unit in the game, when it comes to upkeep=autocombat efficiency, alternates to that are usually much slower or cost imperium and don't give better results, check out how well stand together and giant slayer passives work in auto, as its hard to find T4 and T5 units that are not large size, which basicly results in 60% more dmg overall before modifiers are applied.

If AoW4 wouldn't be as much based around Tomes as it is, all the T4 units that require draft, could be distributed to the cultures and unlocked by Town Hall IV.

No idea, why 80% of the game needs to be hardlocked in tomes. Tomes would be still very important even without any units to unlock as could be seen in AoW2 the spiritual predecessor to 4.

Very interesting. Will test Feudals more, just in my experience Dark knights were dying every autobattle so I got tired of replaying every joke battle.

Originally posted by jeem1972:

I have restarted playing recently as well, and I am also playing on brutal. I am at around turn 100, and I haven't used any units higher than tier 3. Tier 4+ units require imperium and I feel like I am better off using a hero unit instead. I am playing on the largest map with the slowest settings, so I am probably not as late game as you.

Oh slow game is completely different thing, I don’t even sure how long it will take you to get tier 4 tome. At this point you’ll probably already kill someone lol. On slow setting culture is beneficial over tomes, that’s for sure.

yeah make full army of gold golems 7 imperium each and come back tell your story how it went