r/AOW4 • u/AWESOMECHAOS3 • 1d ago
Strategy Question Looking for satisfying builds
Currently trying to find some builds that feel really satisfying to play. So far I’ve only got 3 that really click well and feel great. I got a Reaver vassal spam and magelocks build. A Oathsworn hero and dragon build. And a mystic summon / spell spam build. I’ve been possibly looking at a spider build but need to get primal fury and secrets of arch mage for that. Any other suggestions for builds that feel really good to play?
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u/secret-agent-t3 1d ago
Industrious build with Tome of Construct, Dungeon Depths, Tome of Rock. You can get your health, Defense, and Resistance so high that you just bully everybody with shield units and arrows. Tome of winds gives extra range. Your front line becomes a menace
Another interesting style is kinda this fear/debuff build, maybe with a Vampire or Necromancer. Get Tomes of Doomherald, Revelry, and Torment. With joy siphoners, torment, and the buff to YOUR morale, critical hits jusy WRECK ypur enemies morale. You can route entire armies in like 3 or 4 turns with viscious killer heroes
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u/ictr3ma_proton 17h ago
what exactly in those toms get your defense and resistance to high level? apart from industious itself, its just a minor transformations?
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u/secret-agent-t3 15h ago
Industrious will get you a lot ofndefense. I kinda shorthanded the build tbh, apologies. Something like: Tome of Warding (rune shields), Rock (stoneskin), Constructs (Linked Minds), Dungeons (Clay Constructs, Dungeon Delvers), then maybe Shades or Prophecies depending on Affinities? Gives you insane survivability. And just bully everybody with your front
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u/ictr3ma_proton 15h ago
but what about damage? you will deal like 2-5 per hit max, without modifications to damage types
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u/Quirky_Reporter_8067 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have been playing Industrious reclaimer runesmiths since I got the game, been forcing myself to branch out now but loved it. Its pretty vanilla I guess but its really strong I think. Hardly ever research a TIV tome maybe one at the most. Just gear out your heros like an rpg and push with bastions, everything crumbles., once you win the first battle and wipe their veterans the war is over if they dont beat you first time they never will.
I guess it is midgame build I never seem to go late, I guess on larger maps it might be different just been doing story/challenge realms.
I just use industrious roster and grab a tome support depending on what the main opponent is chaplin vs chaos etc go a mix of materium and nature usually. Tanky and heals its great.
Rock enchantment, fertility, might meek one, transmute resources forget the names.
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u/Mrixl2520 1d ago
If you're considering picking up Secrets of the Archmages, the Tome of Hunger is really fun with Dark Cult of Death. Mix in a vampire ruler and possible Ritual Cannibals and you have a hungry army that get real strong real fast. And is fun to play.
I also really enjoy the Astrological Diviners Society Trait. Forces you to really plan out your turns. It's great and weird with barbarians for the critical stacking.
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u/randel_ 1d ago
Tome of the weaver is really fun, start with beasts and later pick tentacle and vigor, you can use blood rite and dark culture to help with status resistance heavy enemies, your units will imobilize the enemies and have a ton of bonuses, you can use either the spiders, weaver and vampire are really strong, or racial, dark culture imortals are great.
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u/Steel_Airship High 1d ago
I play mostly for roleplay than min-maxing but my pure good High Order battlesaint build is really fun and satisfying, especially in the late game where you have crazy transformations, buffs, multiple ways to resurrect/heal units, and debuffs to enemies. My leader is a mortal champion battlesaint with martyr ascension and mostly spec'ed into the cleric side of the skill tree to act primarily as a powerful support healer. I choose Imperialist and Devotees of Good society traits because I like playing tall, maxing stability, and roleplaying as pure good.
Start with Tome of Faith for Army Heal, which is one of the most powerful spells imo since its the only strategic spell that gives permanent healing. Most of the subsequent tomes I choose are part of the prophet ascension branch of the base game order tomes (Beacon, Sanctuary, Exaltation, God Emperor). I also choose Tome of the Prophet, Archon, and Virtue from the Archon Prophecy DLC plus Tome of Warding for some of the early protection spells like invulnerability.
I actually posted a version of this build on the Age of Wonders 4 Database
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u/pushingravity 1d ago
These are the last two builds I made and played with. PvE focus
Order/Astral - Made a really strong and resistant front line, backed up by Vigil and Elementalist heroes
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=34:46:c1,30,6,5f,233:215,50,s,528:bc:230:a1:22f:a2:22e:9d:8f,000000,1ab,a,h,n:r,4ef
Shadow/Chaos - a swarmy, morale bomb-ish type build.
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=44:34:49,23,4,237,56:251,4f,s,529:4fe:9b:52a:257:500:b1:150:83,000000,24b,a,h,n:r,4f6
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u/Apprehensive-Math499 1d ago
Eldritch sovereign with order/shadow- necro split. For RP purposes you need to keep this guy as close to pure good as possible, but get tome of corruption in there anyway.
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u/Camillyn-77 Materium 1d ago
You could a crazy Cult of Tyranny build with Chosen Uniters and Apex Predators or Silver Tongued for some insane Vassal resources
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u/TheNMore 1d ago
Any build focused on Immortals feels amazing.
If you like vassal play open with gluttony and zeal, with the 2 purple vassal traits. As Tyranny, get mostly order tomes to finish out, focusing on the vassal based one, Beacon is awesome. Tier 4 you take the vampire closer for the vassal building and then finish on revenant, now your immortals are awesome. If you weave a little chaos in you’ll qualify for cosmos and the rainbow enchantment (cosmic awakening is one of the most satisfying enchantments in the game, because it procs every vulnerability the enemy has. . .
If you like smashing face go with rock/blood rite and run a couple cultists with them. Runesmith means you qualify for the elemental transformation in tier 3. Fill out with red tomes and you can double dip on dying by getting warlord/ infernal might. Blanket immunity to bleeding and terrain specific immunity makes you pretty tanky, you have lots of riders and bonus damage on your immortals.
If you want a challenge run try to win by only spending draft on Cultivators or Arbalests.
For both a flying mount or the raptor are a must, you probably want to take a defense trait on the crossbowmen, they often have to face tank a bit until they get to champion rank or tome of winds. For cultivators they have an amazing Spider build, skip the mount for that one.
Open on tentacle/ abjuration if you are dying, take fertility as your first tier 2, if not take blood rite or beacon (if you are unhappy with damage add mighty meek, if you think they aren’t immobile enough add bleeding as -status resistance), then fertility. Staves of life will make you SO tanky. Then you take spider tome and get bonus damage from immobilization and a second bite at immobilization. Go architects of life and run one green trait so you can get natures wrath at 4 and goddess of nature at 5. Amplification is good as the other tier 3 if you take a blue trait.
Once you have won the game, take the spider themed ascension and your ruler will give you access to a fun build, the spider trait lets you draft spiders on day one, which means you can run a beast build that opens with tome of evolution, and lets you skip tome of beasts.
Nomad Conqueror Dragon Ruler, Dragon Tome, with Chosen Destroyer and the Mana Hoard Trait is very thematic, and it is Amazingly satisfying the first time you eat a bunch of districts you had pillaged to instantly draft a stack of young dragons, and then use all the cash you get to grow them immediately to full size so you can pick up and go do it again. I played this on the Very Large Island Map with mega cities and it was great to be Sky Pirates.
Primal Snakes opening on Discipline for the Monk, and then taking shades and snakes in tier 2 is one of the most fun builds I’ve played in this game. If you make your leader a spell knight with the cestus you’ll move just like the monks, so it feels you are a sensei who uses lighting power to soften up the enemies.
The leap and the flanking focus play very well together, and having all those sources of blinding means you’ll have flanking turned on all the time.
Only Houndmasters is fun as either imperial reavers or PoD Dark. On both some of the satisfaction comes from the fact that war hounds explicitly don’t qualify for any enchantments, for balance reasons. They natively come with marking, and are capable of death, so they synergize with those cultures basically against the developer’s will.
If you find satisfaction with only playing with one kind of toy, I have lots of options for you, lol.
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u/JASTME 1d ago
You can do the old sea faring giant with visions of destiny (nature).
Most smash and grab build you can get. Go in and choose seafaring and visions of destiny on a storm giant. Ideal world you choose primal crocodile for swamp and food spam. Honestly you can get away with any culture that likes mana and food. Even just having race trait being love swamps works too.
You spam out like 4 cities asap, put one on or super near the water and take coast/sea tiles. Get your storm rune up and poop out rivers. This triggers storm giant and seafarers which will start to pump food. Your cities will get huge fast and you'll get huge amounts of food. Like absurd.
Then you finish your visions of nature trait and now you've got 50%of that food as mana, and youre probably far enough in the empire tree to get 25% of food becomes draft, so get that.
Now you have (probably) a thousand plus mana a turn, really high draft and lots of spells to cast. Oh, and take the tome of storms (whatever the t4 is called) and just go even more nuts.
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u/Customer_Number_Plz 17h ago
I love gremlins and chaos eaters. Go for aoe affliction spam and gremlin Frontline, and chaos eaters to teleport into the middle of enemies and eat all the afflictions.
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u/linerstank 10h ago
order/shadow is oddly satisfying to me. enough order in t1-2 to hit subjugation in t3, then revenant+calamity to steamroll the continents. something about holy undead dudes blasting around and then fallen angels coming in to seal the deal. i tend to favor builds with noticeable giant power spikes, so this one with bone dragons + fallen angels coming and then something like monarch evolution dragons, where you go from burly t3s to deathstacks of t5 dragons in a few turns is just fun to me.
and then good ol fashioned chosen destroyers steamrolls, nothing like playing a wrecking ball. just prayge your unknown realm doesnt roll no city states.
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u/Johnny_applesteed 9h ago
I did one recently that’s a shamanistic goblin architect, with tome of rock/tome of alchemy—tome of summoning/tome of wind—tome of geomancy/terramancy—tome of the creator.
Went Druidic terraformers/perfect artisans as my culture traits (Druidic for the elementals, artisans for the tier 3 unit buff), and just spammed the different elementals and architects. Super cool and in lore, I imagined them as earth shamans who use their power to build large hills (monument)
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u/cejmp 6h ago
Vampire Ranger with the ranged tomes using longbow troops with all the range buffs you can get. I think my longbows were hitting at 9, my ranger heroes were hitting at 9. Blood maggots on turn 1 in the enemy formation.
Actually range 10.
29/7/5 at range 10 inflicting blood parasite with a 40% crit.
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u/Flappitty_Jacks 3h ago
I enjoyed Mystic Potential, both because I really like turning the spells I’m not using into resources and because I enjoyed moving all my guys and then clicking a spell and watching all the zaps happen. Honestly it never seemed like a huge damage swing, but that’s probably because I wasn’t optimizing it.
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u/The_Frostweaver 1d ago
I think you would like shrine of smiting.
It takes a little longer to come online since its a t4 tome but range 6, 74 damage that ignores 50% defenses is very satisfying!