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.

[Bob]

Immortal Mistlings. Best with Mystic Summoner culture. Basically try to go for Order tomes, Astral Tomes, and Tome of Fey mists. Tome of Summoning is great as well as Tome of Amplification and Tome of Scrying (Scrying is good on the defensive with the Feywater Pond, you get the Tower of True Sight so you can still see enemy armies in your misty domain, and it also gives Guiding Projectiles). You want Order affinity for that final Order tree upgrade, this will give 50% evasion to all Skirmisher units at legend level. Basically, Mistlings at legend level (which can level up reasonably quickly with the Mystic Summoner culture) get 50% bonus evasion on top of all their mist dodging. Mist bonuses will often give them Regeneration as well and with Keeper's Mark they become nigh on unkillable. If you do get overwhelmed, Arcane Restoration is amazing. Salvation also works well for getting a single one back in the game once Keeper's Mark triggers. You can basically make your entire army nothing but Mistlings and it just slaughters stuff.

Storm potential Mystic Potential culture with a focus on lighting damage, particularly Tomes of Evocation and Stormborne. If you get the Empire upgrade that allows you to cast spells on the opening round, you can use the Lightning Storm spell immediately on combat start. It will be Overcharged and its Overcharge bonus is that you can immediately cast another spell in that same round, so you can follow it up with a powerful electric damage spell like Chain Lightning or Fulmination, which will also be Overcharged. Particularly effective if you cast Lightning Storm on the enemy before the battle and with an Astral Amplifier Lens. Once you've weakened the enemy lines, come in with your lightning units like Shock Elementals, Watchers, Evokers, etc for massive damage.

[Aurumworks]

Slither Breeders: Dark culture just raising Slithers. With the new Brand of Wrath their spit inflicts weakness, while their bite exploits weakness. Then Tome of Roots to make their spit more poisonous and their bit exploit poisoned even more. That's +60% damage a nibble. Add a Pack Leader hero and you get another +25% damage on flanking attacks, which already get a damage bonus. Suddenly those Slithers turn into really nasty units. OmnNomNomNom.

[Nanoswimz]

I dont know any strategy except hero+five archers with all enchants on brutal difficulty.

[titanopteryx]

A dragon with artifact hoarders on a map with regenerating infestations

[Joey Sleigh]

For all of you talking about summons - I AGREE! I love summoning cool animals! Mystic-Summoning culture with mana channelers but then pretty much everything else focused around time of beasts and time of vigor (and whichever t2 nature tome you want).

As for your other T1 tome and other T2 tome, I don’t have a strong opinion. I kind of like materium (started with Tome of Rock) personally, but I’ll bet Order might work better.

[Joey Sleigh]

My personal favorite so far - and I highly recommend - is playing as a Duergar on an underground start islands map.

Here’s how:
Pick dwarves but change their “Hardy” trait to Underground Adaptation.
Pick industrial, then “Devious Watchers” and “Keepers of Knowledge”.
Finally, make your starting Tome of the Rock.
It’s the Duergar from DnD! Make sure to change their skin color!

Then, my favorite way to play them:
Islands map
Underground start
Massive underground

That’s it. It’s wonderful. You start off by digging around a tiny bit in your underground city and then go up to the main level which is beautiful islands! And since everyone started underground, the islands are all there for you to explore… except there are lots of free cities just waiting to become your friends. I sit in my corner, mostly underground, just like a Duergar. I build up my army of Bastions and Zephyr archers, and then I take the fight to the surrounding islands!

The “Devious Watchers” society trait also has wicked synergy with the industrial culture… with the extra scout and the scouts being invisible and able to move very fast, which helps you excavate and prospect to your hearts content!

[AnemoneMeer]

Thread necromancied from last year. Please don't do that.

[Bomjus]

evolution/summoning/animal spam.

wyvern fledgling spam until i can add summoner supports to my army. then late game tome of prosperity with force of nature for giga damage.

i just find there's SO MANY insane buffs for things that evolve, tier 1 units, and animals.

and the "druid" ambition for heroes is by far the best one i've seen. all animals/elementals in the army huge boosts. and you can use the signature nature skill at level 4 for even more buffs to animals in your army.

my tier 1, zero rank, wyvern fledglings in my leader's army have like 120-130 hp. and the tome of evolution makes early game exploration a breeze because wyvern fledglings are summonable, decent fighters, and get slip away from the tome of evolution.

then combine this with the support summoners from mystic culture being optional cavalry. so i take a flying cavalry racial trait for my race and now my entire army (if leader has a flying mount) is flying. 2 summoners 1 prosperity dragon and then 3 wyverns/wyvern fledglings is a mean army. it's just so many free combat summons combined with incredible healing. later in the game,


since you can't directly summon T3 wyverns, when i'm in the late late game and i don't want tier 1 fledglings in my armies anymore, i usually go for watcher's from the tome of scrying or stone spirits from terrormancy. watcher's add to the great artillery the prosperity dragon and summoner's have. stone spirits are a tanky frontline and the ley line building from the tome gives more casting points. other units might be better, but i want floating/flying units to go with the dragons/summoners.

[Janthis]

Originally posted by 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.

It's funny because I just had the opposite experience, I had an industrious materium/order build that was pretty tanky but struggled in a particular fight where the enemy had some overpowered heroes, so I reloaded and clicked auto-resolve and it somehow won with no losses. :p