Reavers weak?

[Dreepa]

3 games with reavers, 3 games where I was playing "meh".
Playing with other cultures I usually am doing pretty good on hard AI difficulty.

What's the secret to be strong with reavers?
War spoil income just seems too low in the early game to do anything meaningful with it, even when attacking the next free city I can find.

[Cindeerella]

Reavers are among weakest cultures. Your best plan to play reavers - ignore cultural units at all. So relay omly on tome units (Inquisitors, Zephyr Archers, Glade Runners etc) and have free siege slot and nice siege project reminding you about your culture.

Build specific build and utilize Dragoons, but prepare to manual a lot as Dragoons are underwhelming.

Play perfectionist Artisan with Tome of Horde and rush enemy at turn 5.

[TheSleepingLibrary]

My couple runs with reavers feels like they need to be played on maps with lots of free cities to attack, or respawning infestations so they can capture units. I love the design of them, but locking one of the best units behind going to war makes it hard to argue for them. Magelocks are good units with a decent frontline and proper target support. The dudes with nets are a fun concept, but if you're not manual fighting most of the fights you won't see much use.
Reavers aren't great, but you end up having to fight the world to feel like you're being a 'Reaver'. Part of the reason I shifted back to being industrial if I wanted to go Dreadnaught.

[Fendelphi]

I personally find them quite strong. Their cultural units have good control, mobility and range.
Their tier 1s are, in my opinion, among the best in the game, which opens up a lot of options for builds. Similarly, their tier 3 Skirmisher is pretty good with its "move-shoot-move".
Their cultural boon(damage based on number of Marks on enemies) goes very well with certain tomes, and if you have an Ascended Artillerist Ruler, it just gets silly.

Maybe, if you almost always auto-resolve, it gets problematic, but that is true for a lot of builds.

Silver Tongued Society trait can be a lot of fun with them as well.

What is important is to not get tunnelvision with the various mechanics they use.

[Aurumworks]

Magelocks need something to hide behind, be it a wall or an iron golem. Then they become quite effective. Cannons can be supplied through the rally, so fostering a few vassals in your backwaters and/or underground should do the trick.

[Dreepa]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

I personally find them quite strong. Their cultural units have good control, mobility and range.
Their tier 1s are, in my opinion, among the best in the game, which opens up a lot of options for builds. Similarly, their tier 3 Skirmisher is pretty good with its "move-shoot-move".
Their cultural boon(damage based on number of Marks on enemies) goes very well with certain tomes, and if you have an Ascended Artillerist Ruler, it just gets silly.

Maybe, if you almost always auto-resolve, it gets problematic, but that is true for a lot of builds.

Silver Tongued Society trait can be a lot of fun with them as well.

What is important is to not get tunnelvision with the various mechanics they use.

That's all pretty generic.

How exactly do you make them work?
I need so much more war spoils then I can produce to make use of that mechanic properly, even with attacking every possible free city nearby.

And in the later game stages their reliance on ranged just gets overrun, as enemies are high level and stopping them from reaching you in melee is near impossible, so even run-shoot-run is kind of meh and I would rather trade it for straight up more surivability.
It's nice in theory, but the general agility of units in combat in late game makes it more of a gimmick.

And since you have to focus on draft and gold in the early game to get your war machine rolling and keep it going, you do not really boom in late game like others do.

I think they should also generate war-spoils by fighting marauders.
There is no real long war going on against city states. They do not spawn many units and when you take over the city, your income of war-spoils is forfeit.

E.g. dark affinity generates souls by killing and harvesting ANYthing.
War spoils seems to be too restricted and not well balanced, and to heavily depending on getting lucky to find and have many city states, or straight out declaring war to the next best guy you see, with all the punishing that declaring unjustified war pertains.

Giving war spoils for marauders would be something...

[Macitar]

Originally posted by Dreepa:

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

I personally find them quite strong. Their cultural units have good control, mobility and range.
Their tier 1s are, in my opinion, among the best in the game, which opens up a lot of options for builds. Similarly, their tier 3 Skirmisher is pretty good with its "move-shoot-move".
Their cultural boon(damage based on number of Marks on enemies) goes very well with certain tomes, and if you have an Ascended Artillerist Ruler, it just gets silly.

Maybe, if you almost always auto-resolve, it gets problematic, but that is true for a lot of builds.

Silver Tongued Society trait can be a lot of fun with them as well.

What is important is to not get tunnelvision with the various mechanics they use.

That's all pretty generic.

How exactly do you make them work?
I need so much more war spoils then I can produce to make use of that mechanic properly, even with attacking every possible free city nearby.

And in the later game stages their reliance on ranged just gets overrun, as enemies are high level and stopping them from reaching you in melee is near impossible, so even run-shoot-run is kind of meh and I would rather trade it for straight up more surivability.
It's nice in theory, but the general agility of units in combat in late game makes it more of a gimmick.

And since you have to focus on draft and gold in the early game to get your war machine rolling and keep it going, you do not really boom in late game like others do.

I think they should also generate war-spoils by fighting marauders.
There is no real long war going on against city states. They do not spawn many units and when you take over the city, your income of war-spoils is forfeit.

E.g. dark affinity generates souls by killing and harvesting ANYthing.
War spoils seems to be too restricted and not well balanced, and to heavily depending on getting lucky to find and have many city states, or straight out declaring war to the next best guy you see, with all the punishing that declaring unjustified war pertains.

Giving war spoils for marauders would be something...

You are right about souls vs war spoils but you don't really need war spoils that badly. You use them for diplomacy and building cannons. What else? You should be fine. Kill all the enemy units and raze all their stuff. You'll have plenty.

[GreyHuntr]

I find that taking a society trait that comes with a whispering stone helps a lot. Getting cannons from rally is easier than with war spoils

[~ Fabulous ~]

Be hyper aggressive, everyone is your enemy and everything are your loot, the more people you fight the more cannon you will have and the more cannon you have the easier for you to just crush everyone, I usually play reaver as hyper industrialize goblins that practice necromancer, the leader are usually a champion, so that I can make an even numerous army, basically an order+shadow build, because the backbone for my army are trash undead as body to be thrown at the enemy and to loot their stuff like a plague, while cannon+mercenary as my core, you don't really need anything fancy, just be a horde. I literally just snowball as a reaver.

[Dreepa]

Originally posted by Macitar:

You are right about souls vs war spoils but you don't really need war spoils that badly. You use them for diplomacy and building cannons. What else? You should be fine. Kill all the enemy units and raze all their stuff. You'll have plenty.

Well, I thought the whole point is to capture units with war spoils to grow your army faster.
It seems like they are designed to instantly use "subdue" on immobilized units and then, after combat, spend warspoils to take over the unit permanently.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Dreepa:

Originally posted by Macitar:

You are right about souls vs war spoils but you don't really need war spoils that badly. You use them for diplomacy and building cannons. What else? You should be fine. Kill all the enemy units and raze all their stuff. You'll have plenty.

Well, I thought the whole point is to capture units with war spoils to grow your army faster.
It seems like they are designed to instantly use "subdue" on immobilized units and then, after combat, spend warspoils to take over the unit permanently.

That is what I meant about tunnelvision.
Warspoils can be used for a lot of things, depending on your current need and overall playstyle.
You can use it to gain some key units to improve your armies, to gain free cities vassals faster, and to put pressure on others through diplomacy. It is an extra resource that allows you to do things noone else can "for free"(cost no gold, mana or Imperium). Indeed, somewhat similar to Souls, but much broader in application.
You have to balance its usage with what would be the most impactful at the moment.
And if you want to use it a lot, there are ways for you to "cheese" the game to allow for a lot of Warspoils.

In a similar vein, the tunnelvision of "relying on ranged". Who said that they have to do that? In fact, they have a lot of skirmishers, which are good at both melee and ranged. They have what is essentially a "tier 1.5" polearm unit. They have some inherent synergies with Constructs(Magelock Cannons), meaning Golems and the Tomes connected for defensive or aggressive melee lines. Use ranged units against key targets rather than against "every" target.
Their cultural damage buff(Focused Aggression) through Marks works for both melee and ranged damage. You can research the Tome of Pandemonium minor transformation to get up to +30% extra damage when attacking a target with debuffs.
So instead of seeing it as a "Marks makes ranged units better", it should be "Marks makes every unit better, and ranged attacks more reliable".
How heavily you lean into it, is up to you.

[Dreepa]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Originally posted by Dreepa:

Well, I thought the whole point is to capture units with war spoils to grow your army faster.
It seems like they are designed to instantly use "subdue" on immobilized units and then, after combat, spend warspoils to take over the unit permanently.

That is what I meant about tunnelvision.
Warspoils can be used for a lot of things, depending on your current need and overall playstyle.
You can use it to gain some key units to improve your armies, to gain free cities vassals faster, and to put pressure on others through diplomacy. It is an extra resource that allows you to do things noone else can "for free"(cost no gold, mana or Imperium). Indeed, somewhat similar to Souls, but much broader in application.
You have to balance its usage with what would be the most impactful at the moment.
And if you want to use it a lot, there are ways for you to "cheese" the game to allow for a lot of Warspoils.

In a similar vein, the tunnelvision of "relying on ranged". Who said that they have to do that? In fact, they have a lot of skirmishers, which are good at both melee and ranged. They have what is essentially a "tier 1.5" polearm unit. They have some inherent synergies with Constructs(Magelock Cannons), meaning Golems and the Tomes connected for defensive or aggressive melee lines. Use ranged units against key targets rather than against "every" target.
Their cultural damage buff(Focused Aggression) through Marks works for both melee and ranged damage. You can research the Tome of Pandemonium minor transformation to get up to +30% extra damage when attacking a target with debuffs.
So instead of seeing it as a "Marks makes ranged units better", it should be "Marks makes every unit better, and ranged attacks more reliable".
How heavily you lean into it, is up to you.

Yeah, after 4 games I know them pretty inside out, thanks for the heads-up though.
For me it boils down to the main question: How do you max the warspoils gain?
Basically just intimidating one free city already means no warspoils for anything else, usually.
You mentioned cheesing them. How?
What's the best way to gain them?

[Scalapher The Artificer]

Are they ever going to get buffed?

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Here is how i use reavers:

The strenght of reavers lies in there crowd control and ability to declare war without penalty.
How you play reaver depend heavly on what culture traits you take.

For example: Reaver, chosen unifier, adapt settlers, tome of the tentical is a powerful combo.
Reavers can declare war without penalty, chosen unifers give you a wishper stone and 30% extra vassal income, adapt settlers reduce building a new city to 150 imperium and gets you an extra pop when settling. Tome of the tentical give you a tier 1 happiness building and 2 extra ways to constrict people.
The tentical summon and the unit enchantment.

Using this build i punch well above my weight class.

Here is how i play:
First few battle i fight manual. Using the harrier net, summon tentical, etc.
To allow my overseer to subjugate.
Subjugate is your best early game ability.
It takes an enemy out of the fight.
This means you can win without having to kill everything.
My armies are build entirely around this one ability.
The more enemies i can take out of the fight the less they can hurt me.
My standerd army is 2 overseers, 2 megelocks and 2 melee shields.
The overseers with the tome of the tencial buff and other spells i use to constrict my enemies will take out 2 key targets in a fight.
The mage lock will deal the damage and the melee exist to take the beating.
The army changes as i react to the war ofcourse but a good rule of tumb is to ask yourself:
How many overseers can i safely bring to remove enemies from the fight without being unable to defend them if something goes wrong.
Summoning magic also works well with this build as you can summon distractions.
Early to mid game your goal as reaver is to exploit your starting overseer for all its worth and reduce that 3 man infestation to a 2 man infestation.

On the strategic map:
My goal is to place as many cities as i can and release those above the city cap as vassals.
This entire build is build around the idea of ploping down as many cities as i can and releasing them as vassals.
This will slow down your game as you will be adding 20 to 50 extra free cities depending on the map size.
But you will have the numbers to swarm everyone.
Ofcourse the downside of this build is that you are weak to early game rush.

With the recent changes to rulers i am not sure how good this build still is.
As it relied heavly on the champion extra income and bonuses to vassal relationships.


Age of wonders 4 has many builds.
Few of them are good.
Mystic summoning or portantional are in my opinion the strongest option in the game.
Summoning because your summons heal and get a buff everytime you cast a spell and wizard kings(and accended sorcerors) get to cast two spells per turn(every other turn for wizard king) meaning 2 healers and 2 buff's to the vast majority of your army every turn and your summons get a happiness bonus from your culture troops increasing there crit chance.
Portantional is a bit harder for me.
But powerfull evokers and portantional makes your damage spells accauly hurt.
I have seen people swear by it but the damage done with this build is in my opinion not worth it.
Sure it does more damage then any other combo but the damage is still too low for how limiting even accended sorceror casting is.
Ow i can do 30 damage's on a single unit twice per turn.
I can do they with normal troops who dont cost casting points, mana, rely on my accended sorceror to be their and dont have there cost double by magic blockers.
I swear the spells in age of wonders 4 even after being buffed are still not cost effective.
Too little damage for suchs a limited resource.
At least in age of wonders 2 the low damage was an accepted trade of for the area of effect range of the spells.
But here.
Here the spells are just a tickel use to finesh off near dead enemies unless you go portantional powerfull evokers. Then there a single units worth of damage twice per turn for an accended sorceror.
Aka you need to sacrifce 2 things to make the spells not suck.
Not be good.
Just not suck.

Anyway rant over.
Reavers wargoal is a mid to late game resource.
Early game you dont use it.
Until your first war you just dont have enough of wargoals.
Speaking of war.
As a reaver you want to embrace your inner colonizer and wage war early and often.
Your not the: Lets all be friends faction.
You are the i will uplift you savages by force faction.
Free cities?
More like free real estate.

Playing reaver means playing agressive.
it makes picking fight not befriending people.
You are here to expand your realm and will only stop when forced.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Scalapher The Artificer:

Are they ever going to get buffed?

They got some buffs. The Dragoon no longer has a cooldown on its pistol, and the magelock was buffed to have a low-accuracy 1-AP attack and then a leave-1-AP aim action, so they can still spend all 3 AP to make a very accurate shot, but now they have the option to move and shoot a less accurate shot as well.

[Cindeerella]

Originally posted by Scalapher The Artificer:

Are they ever going to get buffed?

Really you necroed half of the year old thread AFTER reavers actually got buffed and became actually fine culture? Try play the game first.