What's your most fun AOW4 build?

[RoadJack]

Looking to see other players strategies and to tryout fun builds. Not considering Mods, but can share them.

[Poldon]

I don't know anything about meta builds and don't want to, because I enjoy playing for flavor, but one of my builds that I've enjoyed the most focuses on insanely strong Phantasm Warriors, since they're actually racial units.

It's Astral/Order/Nature. Order for the tomes of Beacon and Sanctuary, giving the Phantasms extra status resist (they are tier 1s after all), the ability to survive lethal damage for a turn and bonus spirit damage that scales against bigger targets. Throw in Gaia's Chosen for even more resist, HP and the ability to resurrect them with Mass Rejuvenation, and you can have some very silly cheap summons.

Alternatively you can focus more on astral instead of nature, getting Astral Mirror, Naga Transformation for some tasty shock resist and slip away (while still having Keeper's Mark!), and eventually Cosmic Overdrive. It's fun either way.

My race also has poisonous, so I can get Tome of Roots and have Blight Blades without needing ranged units to poison enemies first.

I've made over a dozen detailed leaders, though, there's so many fun things to try.

[Rimzell]

I'm terrible at building a balanced army but stacking umbral mistress with a couple support units and giving half the enemy army insanity is the most fun I've had yet

[Astasia]

I made a frost primal darter spam build that was fun in theory and manual battles, but atrocious in autobattles to the point I had to change builds by end game to finish the map with the rest of my hair.

Likewise had a dragoon spam build, with Quick Reflexes, Nightmare mounts, and Knightly Orders, buffed with Mark of Misfortune. Giving me an army of Dragoons that were basically impossible to be hit by any ranged attacks and would morale/misfortune bomb anyone that got in melee for constant fumbles. Brutally effective in combat, also did pretty terrible in autobattles. I had to move 7 stacks of Dragoons in to deal with the last enemy because the AI would somehow always loose multiple of these basically immortal units in every autoresolve fight.

My favorite and most overall fun build, was fairly generic in mechanics, but I enjoyed the theme a lot. It was just an astral heavy necromancer build, with mystic summoner. Basic, easy, got the job done. I liked it because I went with the doggo form with black fur, and heavily channeled Anubis. The way they looked with Wightborn was pretty perfect TBH. That is my favorite ascended leader.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Nothing real fancy. Beast & Vigor. Cryomancy & Cold Dark if I'm going icy, which I probably would. Fey Mists and Glades in tier 2 will add healing to the Wildspeakers and give my Gladerunner archers. This way, if I go Feudal with Eagle Mounts and Pack Tactics, I can have a whole flying tier 3 army. Probably do Paradise, Stormborne, and Nature Goddess to round it out.

[Cindeerella]

Dragon ruler with High culture and Awakeners to fill the stack. Love the magic intensive build.

[RoadJack]

I've been trying the the mystic summoning, with choosen destroyers & mana channelers. It is really fun leveling the summons and beefing up the phatasm warriors with magical wards, supper growth, feytouched and naga transformation, combined with summon greater animals. Having racial healers and summoners which beef up the summons and with spells like roots keep pumping up the summons and mowing down the enemy. As main hero i got it to work with Eldritch giving support and summoning even more, plus because the eldritch is considered magical, it pumps with every combat spell. I call it nature's wrath

[Hebereke]

I'm a literal newb, only played 2 games.
I messed around with beasts and beast buffs and I liked it, gotta find a cool build around this.
The only issue is that some of the beasts had evolutions and some of them never achieved their next form.
Iirc there is something somewhere that speeds up leveling for creatures with evolution?

[BigRockWall]

Originally posted by RoadJack:

I've been trying the the mystic summoning, with choosen destroyers & mana channelers. It is really fun leveling the summons and beefing up the phatasm warriors with magical wards, supper growth, feytouched and naga transformation, combined with summon greater animals. Having racial healers and summoners which beef up the summons and with spells like roots keep pumping up the summons and mowing down the enemy. As main hero i got it to work with Eldritch giving support and summoning even more, plus because the eldritch is considered magical, it pumps with every combat spell. I call it nature's wrath

I found the strongest army for mystic summoners is hero +5 summoners. Those things are silly.

[CaoLex]

Originally posted by Hebereke:

I'm a literal newb, only played 2 games.
I messed around with beasts and beast buffs and I liked it, gotta find a cool build around this.
The only issue is that some of the beasts had evolutions and some of them never achieved their next form.
Iirc there is something somewhere that speeds up leveling for creatures with evolution?

Yes, tome from Dragon related DLC, Imperium perk that gives +20% extra xp for non-hero units, and a bath in the city you use to recruit animals from if you are getting them throught hero with related perk and not some other means.

[KellyR]

Mystic Culture, start with the Tome of the Tentacle, do whatever else you want.

Summon Tentacle + the ability to ignore casting points limits is insane. I end up using that spell all the way into the endgame. Constricting Focus and Retaliating Growths just make locking down the enemy army that much easier. And the Tentacle Labyrinth is icing on the cake.

Heck, even the Constrictor unit unlock is pretty good. If you're not going for an all mounted army, you can use them as your frontline and have more chances to apply Constricted without blowing casting opportunities on Retaliating Growths.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Currently experimenting.
So far:
Mystic mana channelers, gifted casters, wizard king.
Mostly because it allows me to summon armies on the move and in battle.
While not as good as assencion sorceror(aka 2 spells every turn) having 1 extra spell helps deal with the early battle.

Reavers, Chosen unifiers, Keeper of knowledge, tome of the tentacle.
If give's me 1 in almost every affinity.
And rewards vassal spamm which is something i tent to do anyway.

[Fņŏŕď]

Reavers and necromancy is just obnoxious good fun. Have fun with waves of disposable skeletons while I shoot you lol.

[Isseus]

Couldn't say. The game becomes unplayable because of the stupidly long AI turns when I've barely reached t3 research.

[MrLuckless]

I've been having a lot of fun and success with a Dark build built around debuffs starting with Tome of Cryomancy being the lynch-pin for it all. The racial that lets you settle on and expand snowy terrain just synergizes so well with so many later tomes that sometimes it feels like cheating.

[Toddasaurus Rex]

Halflings with white wolf mounts and pack tactics. High culture, go order/nature major transform should be the gaian. Absolutely hilariously strong cavalry, Backing up tyrant knights with the mounted t3 high battlemage is insane and very efficient. Champion Ruler.

Dragon ruler undead focus, high culture. Fun tidbit, evil high cultures start fights all awakened, which applies to your undead units. Its a crazy fun goofy build. Gonna wanna run Shadow/nature/material affinities, shoutout to arcane for more necromancy. Lichbourne major.

Lizardfolk reavers, water adaptation + seafarers, go for the naga transformation. Harriers and riflemen become really awesome. Cool aesthetic.

Industrious humans, Arctic adaptation with seafarers, go for frostling transformation with supersize and some holy. industrous units dont do much damage up front, but arbalests are great for getting on hit effects, and the units are MEATY as hell in a brawl. rolling slowing effects and some mighty meek makes your t1 brawlers stand up against serious threats. frostling+joy siphoners+arctic adaptation+eternal winter (whatever its called, the spell that causes snow to spread from your land) is insane, you're getting crazy high morale just about everywhere when you get the terraforming spell online and your units can brawl for days, when you start throwing crits and slows all day you've a large strategic advantage.

Barbarian frogs, water adaptation, seafarers, spider mounts. an homage to the spiders that work with frogs in nature, you're going full blight profiles and eco terrorism.

Next im gonna play around with a mystic desert insect people, and cat primalists with the sabretooth totem.