@@SmokeDrake Read the persuer's basic attack: "Shoot Bow Fires ranged projectiles at target enemy unit Weakened: Base 90% chance of inflicting weakened for 3 turns." Or find out like I did, by using them and seeing 'Weakened!' pop up with every shot.
my first playthrough was with dark and I loved it. although I wasnt evil. I would like to add the importance of city boost spells. most of these have a negative stability penalty that you can simply ignore.
I’m going through my first proper game that i’m committed to finish as a dark faction i’m kinda going from evil to neutral to good and back to evil all the time, i’m guessing i’m not aggressive enough to be evil all the time
@@pvt.prinny759 dark doesnt have to be evil though. my dark game I was mostly good. the big advantage is you have a lockdown on your population so you dont care if they hate you lol
current playing a campaign with Dark culture going full chaos while running the chaotic destroyer and scions of evil trait. I LOVE the playstle of just going tall with one City and razing like a mad man and declaring unjustified wars on everyone. Skalds and Houndmasters have easily become my favorite units of the game short of my number 1 favorite, the Golden Golem (because its a BEAST)
@Eagle Force houndmaster is a unit tied to the tome of the horde which is a tier 1 starting tome, just choose it. Scald is a yier 2 tome I believe and it's called tome of Revelry
Healing can be partly go around early game by taking that cannibal culture trait, works well if you combine it with zealots, send zealot unit or two to soften enemy up and maybe die, so your shock melee troops can eat their bodies later...
Thanks for this guide! I took an early interest in the shadow culture and this helped to answer a few of my lingering questions. With respect to city stability, is it the T2 town hall upgrade that prevents provinces from leaving your city, or does that bonus come from something else? The T2 town hall mentions that it prevents economic penalties from poor city stability, but it doesn't mention provinces as far as I know.
Just to be clear, that don't work with AI, they detect you eithier way, or there is some hidden true sight mechanic i'm not privy to that make them abble to pin oint them every time, I tested by loading a save for almost an hour, and every time my scout was in range of an army, even if he was concealed for the last to turns, they bee-line to my posistion and kill him and that even outside of any domaine, even if I din't think that a domaine give true-sight in the first place without the right upgrades
I tried to make a Nature/Dark affinity race akin to something like Necromatic Druids, going for a Longevity sort of playstyle for my armies to outlast my opponents rather than kill them as fast as possible but unfortunately it seems theres a lot of things in the nature tomes that just dont really work with dark tome units
I mostly play as Dark. Very good video but for alle that I experienced be it growth or draft everything is bottleknecked by gold income. Yes I can create a Dark knight in 2 turns in all my cities. But I would need so much gold per turn to be able to do it. So then I would invest into mines but then my draft is reduced a lot. Atm I am trying a chaos comb for the extra income while at war. I like the mystic path for casting but I feel that gold is more important overall.
That's one of the main reasons why I prefer champion over wizard king. My favorite affinity combination and setup right now is also a dark culture - materium hybrid. I always start with Dark culture, if megacities world trait is selected, I play Runesmiths + perfectionist artisans. If not, I choose Runesmith and either Silver Tongued or Shadow walkers. I start with Tome of Enchantment and then usually take a Shadow Tome and go back and forth between Materium and Shadow. Silver Tongued allows for an amazing semi-diplomatic playstyle where you can slowly but increasingly rob others of their resources, while pumping out massive amounts of buffed units via cheap enchantments. Couple this with the strong defensive nature of materium and all the siege power, and you become easily unstoppable even on brutal.
You have to select one or the other, *but* you can select the Dark culture for the unit roster, and then pick up Astral society traits and tomes. I want to try that out with a spellcasting and debuff build.
An important thing to note about tip 1: early game it's really easy to invest a lot of imperium into growing your cities much faster than anyone else. I easily had double the population of my neighbor's throne city. Since you can negate the penalties from stability, this doesn't come with the usual issues of having to balance growth with stability. It's a really easy way to snowball your economy and get to tier 3 units fast with the boost to town hall 3.
Oh that's a very smart thing to point out! Thanks a lot for sharing and I hope you don't mind me adding this into the upcoming advanced tips & tricks for each Culture I'm already working on! =)
@@Ic0nGaming Certainly. I forget where I read it, but I gave it a try and it worked out great. Another one to look into for late game economy is the buildings that improve income from your crypt and prison. I haven't made it that far in a dark game yet, but if you can collect a lot of bodies it could become a large source of mana income. Something to test.
@@justalesbianmage9811 very true on the last point. In my Dark run I got an extra 260-ish mana by the late game just from stockpiling bodies. Negative part is that it's kind of hard to get a ton of artifacts for your heroes this way, but that's another scale to balance.
Hey there! I've been having some trouble running Age of Wonders 4 on my computer. It seems to be struggling with performance issues and lag. I'm a big fan of your channel and was wondering if you could do a video showcasing how the game performs on Boosteroid. It would be really helpful to see if Boosteroid can provide a smoother and more enjoyable experience for this game. Thanks a lot, and keep up the great work!
About tip 1: you don’t actually “have to be entirely dark”, right? I mean as long as you can build that tier 2 town hall with the “dread spire” trait you are fine even if you are not 100% dark in your affinities
Thanks for the video but one thing i don´t understand. You say that with the Tier 2 Townhall you remove the economic penalties but for not losing regions you also need to be more "dark" than any other tree branch and have 2 Dark Tomes or it´s not neccessary? Thanks in advance :)
Every city which has a different culture won't have access to the ability to ignore negative stability. Only if they all have dark culture you can build the proper T2 town hall everywhere. Hope this makes it clearer =)
@@Ic0nGaming Yeah im sure. Im just impatient, me and my bro been wanting to play a full game without d/cs and end turn bug. But single player is just so fun as well. This is my fav 4x game by far!! This actually got me into 4x's. So i ended up buying civ 6 lol. (great game as well btw!)
@@bytron2007 Haha I hear you! Can't wait to play this with other people too. Feel like this could have been the best game since Civ 6 actually in the 4X sector. It has a heavier emphasis on RPG elements and such, but that just makes it stand out individually a lot more. Can't wait for the fixes and mods and DLC's!
tip 1 do i underst good i need to have pure eval to not have - forlm - city stabiluity or i can play neutral or good drak culture and have 2nd city hall and still not care about negative city stability?
@@Ic0nGaming cool, i also wsas thinkthat dark alimebt was opposite by order but chos may fit better is tru . i just nature i want to compbine with dar culture ; may if thay add nature focus culture layter
If you want to lean into dark knights, then tome of beasts and other nature tomes can be really good. For warlocks, Astral tomes like amplification, scrying, and teleportation all have bonuses for battlemages.
tome of the great transformation allows you to put weakening aura on your melee units, gets you lifesteal on your race and lets you use undead support stuff (like necromancers) on units of your race.
Great video. I really want to try the Dark Unit roster for the debuff playstyle, but I don't like playing evil lol. Want to try Dark with astral traits and tomes for a Debuff/spellcasting playstyle.
Correction: Persuers, the ranged unit, applies weakness with its ranged arrow attacks as well, so you have two units that apply weakness.
Oh thanks, that slipped past me whoopsie
I was waiting for him to mention the wolf mount ability to do so too
Where does it say that?
@@SmokeDrake Read the persuer's basic attack:
"Shoot Bow
Fires ranged projectiles at target enemy unit
Weakened: Base 90% chance of inflicting weakened for 3 turns."
Or find out like I did, by using them and seeing 'Weakened!' pop up with every shot.
Yeah literally made an archer enchanting build that is super cheap and all around busted considering what you can kill with it.
my first playthrough was with dark and I loved it. although I wasnt evil. I would like to add the importance of city boost spells. most of these have a negative stability penalty that you can simply ignore.
Very good point on those city spells! All that stuff that usually cuts you is just not phasing the Dark Culture at all and it's quite massive.
What do you mean with 'playthrough'? The games been out like 7 days, you've done all the story realms?
@@vaettra1589 no. playthrough, like one game. You can change your race and leader each game.
I’m going through my first proper game that i’m committed to finish as a dark faction i’m kinda going from evil to neutral to good and back to evil all the time, i’m guessing i’m not aggressive enough to be evil all the time
@@pvt.prinny759 dark doesnt have to be evil though. my dark game I was mostly good. the big advantage is you have a lockdown on your population so you dont care if they hate you lol
This was very informative. Thank you for the information, especially about the scouts and stability.
current playing a campaign with Dark culture going full chaos while running the chaotic destroyer and scions of evil trait. I LOVE the playstle of just going tall with one City and razing like a mad man and declaring unjustified wars on everyone. Skalds and Houndmasters have easily become my favorite units of the game short of my number 1 favorite, the Golden Golem (because its a BEAST)
There are no campaigns in this game. Do you mean a story realm?
How to you get these units? Lol im new at the game
@Eagle Force houndmaster is a unit tied to the tome of the horde which is a tier 1 starting tome, just choose it. Scald is a yier 2 tome I believe and it's called tome of Revelry
Healing can be partly go around early game by taking that cannibal culture trait, works well if you combine it with zealots, send zealot unit or two to soften enemy up and maybe die, so your shock melee troops can eat their bodies later...
Thanks for this guide! I took an early interest in the shadow culture and this helped to answer a few of my lingering questions.
With respect to city stability, is it the T2 town hall upgrade that prevents provinces from leaving your city, or does that bonus come from something else? The T2 town hall mentions that it prevents economic penalties from poor city stability, but it doesn't mention provinces as far as I know.
T3 town hall unlocks a building called overlord's tower which prevents provinces from leaving
@@justalesbianmage9811 gotcha, thanks!
That tip on stealthy scouts is amazing! Totally overlooked that and now I want to make a sneaky, pillaging faction to try this out!!
Yeah that "Medal System" for some unit characteristics is really too small for such important traits. Way too easy to overlook.
Just to be clear, that don't work with AI, they detect you eithier way, or there is some hidden true sight mechanic i'm not privy to that make them abble to pin oint them every time, I tested by loading a save for almost an hour, and every time my scout was in range of an army, even if he was concealed for the last to turns, they bee-line to my posistion and kill him and that even outside of any domaine, even if I din't think that a domaine give true-sight in the first place without the right upgrades
I tried to make a Nature/Dark affinity race akin to something like Necromatic Druids, going for a Longevity sort of playstyle for my armies to outlast my opponents rather than kill them as fast as possible but unfortunately it seems theres a lot of things in the nature tomes that just dont really work with dark tome units
What the eff did I just read.
I mostly play as Dark. Very good video but for alle that I experienced be it growth or draft everything is bottleknecked by gold income.
Yes I can create a Dark knight in 2 turns in all my cities. But I would need so much gold per turn to be able to do it.
So then I would invest into mines but then my draft is reduced a lot.
Atm I am trying a chaos comb for the extra income while at war. I like the mystic path for casting but I feel that gold is more important overall.
That's one of the main reasons why I prefer champion over wizard king. My favorite affinity combination and setup right now is also a dark culture - materium hybrid.
I always start with Dark culture, if megacities world trait is selected, I play Runesmiths + perfectionist artisans. If not, I choose Runesmith and either Silver Tongued or Shadow walkers.
I start with Tome of Enchantment and then usually take a Shadow Tome and go back and forth between Materium and Shadow.
Silver Tongued allows for an amazing semi-diplomatic playstyle where you can slowly but increasingly rob others of their resources, while pumping out massive amounts of buffed units via cheap enchantments.
Couple this with the strong defensive nature of materium and all the siege power, and you become easily unstoppable even on brutal.
great video, are you planning to make full gameplay video?
Do I have to be pure dark or can I be dark and mystic
You have to select one or the other, *but* you can select the Dark culture for the unit roster, and then pick up Astral society traits and tomes. I want to try that out with a spellcasting and debuff build.
An important thing to note about tip 1: early game it's really easy to invest a lot of imperium into growing your cities much faster than anyone else. I easily had double the population of my neighbor's throne city. Since you can negate the penalties from stability, this doesn't come with the usual issues of having to balance growth with stability. It's a really easy way to snowball your economy and get to tier 3 units fast with the boost to town hall 3.
Oh that's a very smart thing to point out! Thanks a lot for sharing and I hope you don't mind me adding this into the upcoming advanced tips & tricks for each Culture I'm already working on! =)
@@Ic0nGaming Certainly. I forget where I read it, but I gave it a try and it worked out great. Another one to look into for late game economy is the buildings that improve income from your crypt and prison. I haven't made it that far in a dark game yet, but if you can collect a lot of bodies it could become a large source of mana income. Something to test.
@@justalesbianmage9811 very true on the last point. In my Dark run I got an extra 260-ish mana by the late game just from stockpiling bodies.
Negative part is that it's kind of hard to get a ton of artifacts for your heroes this way, but that's another scale to balance.
good point.
Hey there! I've been having some trouble running Age of Wonders 4 on my computer. It seems to be struggling with performance issues and lag. I'm a big fan of your channel and was wondering if you could do a video showcasing how the game performs on Boosteroid. It would be really helpful to see if Boosteroid can provide a smoother and more enjoyable experience for this game. Thanks a lot, and keep up the great work!
the archer applies weakness. Another Good Combo is the Wolf mount. in terms of books I think Nature is a good synergy.
I don't think the Wolf Mount is good without access to Cavalry, which Dark Culture only has on Scouts.
@@Ic0nGaming tier 3 unit is mounted cavalry.
@@expandeux Ah ofc, it's early here, forgive me lol, I slipped into the wrong roster.
Rust rolled a new dark kingdom this week. Very insightful vid.
About dark knights. While wolves are great with them, nightmares are great alternative. There are a lot of options for great leadership suppression.
Go necromany for healing magic and units
Yes! Add in some T1 Faith Tome from Order and you are so darn healing heavy it's amazing :D
Dark's polearm unit also debuffs units around them with sunder and iirc the only faction that does. Its end of turn tho
Very interesting, so much more insightful than any other guides I've seen.
I believe that going for Shadow Tomes are worst idea with Dark Culture
About tip 1: you don’t actually “have to be entirely dark”, right? I mean as long as you can build that tier 2 town hall with the “dread spire” trait you are fine even if you are not 100% dark in your affinities
Exactly, you don't need Pure Evil.
That was super helpful, I jumped into a shadow affinity play but I think I need to see this to really understand the basics of them.
Thanks for the video but one thing i don´t understand. You say that with the Tier 2 Townhall you remove the economic penalties but for not losing regions you also need to be more "dark" than any other tree branch and have 2 Dark Tomes or it´s not neccessary? Thanks in advance :)
Afaik the T2 town hall suffices
you convinced me to join the dark side ;)
Just what I was looking for. Great guide 👍
The archers apply weakness too
Actually, tier 1 Pursuers (crossbow units) cause Weakness too.
Yeah, I missed that detail
what do you mean by - you need to be entirely dark to be not affected by negative stability?
Every city which has a different culture won't have access to the ability to ignore negative stability. Only if they all have dark culture you can build the proper T2 town hall everywhere. Hope this makes it clearer =)
Does a super-low city stability still cause provinces to fall off?
Only if you don't have the T2 Town Hall built up
Nice tips! I love the dark race! This game is amazing!! Just wish they would fix multiplayer lol
Give it some time, the game is relatively new, I bet it won't take them too long. Love AoW 4 a lot myself too, game has amazing depth.
@@Ic0nGaming Yeah im sure. Im just impatient, me and my bro been wanting to play a full game without d/cs and end turn bug. But single player is just so fun as well. This is my fav 4x game by far!! This actually got me into 4x's. So i ended up buying civ 6 lol. (great game as well btw!)
@@bytron2007 Haha I hear you! Can't wait to play this with other people too. Feel like this could have been the best game since Civ 6 actually in the 4X sector. It has a heavier emphasis on RPG elements and such, but that just makes it stand out individually a lot more. Can't wait for the fixes and mods and DLC's!
@@Ic0nGaming Yeah i know right! Ive already got like 31 hours in this game LOL
tip 1 do i underst good i need to have pure eval to not have - forlm - city stabiluity or i can play neutral or good drak culture and have 2nd city hall and still not care about negative city stability?
Just the T2 city hall needed, alignment doesn't matter =)
@@Ic0nGaming cool, i also wsas thinkthat dark alimebt was opposite by order but chos may fit better is tru . i just nature i want to compbine with dar culture ; may if thay add nature focus culture layter
Which tomes have useful synergies for dark culture troop types?
If you want to lean into dark knights, then tome of beasts and other nature tomes can be really good. For warlocks, Astral tomes like amplification, scrying, and teleportation all have bonuses for battlemages.
tome of the great transformation allows you to put weakening aura on your melee units, gets you lifesteal on your race and lets you use undead support stuff (like necromancers) on units of your race.
Kiitos!
Great video. I really want to try the Dark Unit roster for the debuff playstyle, but I don't like playing evil lol. Want to try Dark with astral traits and tomes for a Debuff/spellcasting playstyle.
A very good guide to an underplayed faction!