@@Fracture.Gaming Instant Sub from us as well - appreciate the shout out! It is a fun little strategy that I really hope goes away in the first patch. As you said, we haven't found anything else that comes close.
Yeah this is disgusting. I was already doing something similar in order to get the Eternal One skill from the Tier 5 Shadow tome, but I was just finding the nearby vassal and declaring war on them. I had never thought of doing to you my own cities. A salute to you for a truly disgusting strat!
The mirror spell let's you duplicate your wizard king and they can use spur to action and the one extra spel per turn, then you can use the extra spell to clone him again and keep going. The only thing you have to be careful with is that copied units keep cooldowns and used abilities, so don't use them before cloning your lord
If you think this is overpowered, wait until you see how Breaking the Stream does it. Link in my video's description! After I came up with this exploit it was fun to see how somebody else had done it in an even MORE broken way... I'd by lying if I said I wasn't bummed he beat me to it though 😅
Way more of an exploit than a strategy. ;) A simple fix would be blocking the possibility of declaring war on a city you've made vassal for about 3 to 5 or more turns. Wouldn't stop it entirely but it's a start.
Haha yeah this needs to get fixed. Yeah I was thinking a decent starter fix would be having the vassal city spawn in with walls so you have to siege it down first.
@@Fracture.Gaming That is also a good idea as besieging "absorbs" your hero for a few turns (especially early game) so it may discourage such behavior. :)
I saw somebody else comment something similar, what build were you running? Any custom settings in play? I wonder what could cause such a drastic difference in army strength.
I can' help but feel that this is kind of intended. Maybe not to that extreme, but being a jerk to your vassals is a very shadow thing to do. I mean one of the shadow affinity skills lets you steal tribute from other factions vassals so it makes more sense to use your whispering stones on other factions vassals. Shadow is the only culture that has all cities benefit from prisons and crypts. Still it gives me some ideas to try the next time I play shadow.
@@Fracture.Gaming That or seriously bump up the strength of the vassal army. The catch is Dark culture is probably one of the weaker ones starting out and if they do too much to nerf this into the ground its going to seriously cripple dark culture. You might be able to get away with increasing the turns to vassalize or adding some kind of cost to declaring war on a vassal. I think the best way to go about it is to delay the strategy from happening rather than outright remove it. It does work with other cultures too just not as effective and the chaos affinity skills send it over the top. Getting Gold on top of souls, food, mana and research would be a bit crazy. Still it is highly exploitable by other players. Just not the AI. Barbarian culture has a much stronger army rush and if scouted could stop it before it gets too out of hand. You can also add on the 20 gold per destroyed city skill coupled with using souls to revive the city exploit to it as well.
I cant help but think that they fixed this, I tried it, and after the 1st round of killing releasing etc. the repopulated army was stacked with tier 3s.
Still working, the likely cause is that the vassal city had a larger population. The strength of the spawned army is directly related to the population of the city (I think, it might be provinces claimed which is not necessarily the same), so my guess is that you either let the vassal city grow or let it claim territory. Raze the city and re-populate down to population 1-3 and it should be a weak army stack.
@@Fracture.Gaming I used the exact build you had here. Although I was doing it on the 3rd story map, not sure if something in the map settings can make a difference.
Fantastic! I've got to do this before it gets nerfed! AOW4 loves good characters--law and life. They make you think playing evil is good because you don't worry about moral. *WRONG!* That is nothing compared to the benefits of high moral. But YOU found a way to make evil fun, and I salute you!
Haha yeah I went all in on evil. My idea initially was to use declaring war to rapidly commit evil acts to boost imperium gain quickly because that society trait gives +5 per level of evil. What I got was so much better!
Add Astral Reflection to your equation to create clones of the main character and you could do all fights solo, even there are ways to multiply the damage of spells you do 100+ AOE combat spells and 200+ hero's aoe abilities with proper setup. Don't forget that Flameburst Weapon and others work with those abilities.
I wanted to know your input on how the incoming patch (Today's Dev Diary 17) will impact this. For one side I saw they change the Knowledge given to +150 per hero level (supposedly aimed to mid-late game), which was shocked to see. But I think your exploit could be done because an existing bug, it should be 5 days before able to declare war as it says here "Fixed an issue where the 5 turns delay for declaring war on a Free City would not be applied when vassalizing a city / having a vassal city." Maybe the hero will go far away in those 5 turns or maybe its still OP due to triple amount of knowledge, but gold will be affected I guess... Also they mentioned the Empire Development tree will change, most likely changing placement, and Emporium cost, as well as some Affinity requirements, aiming to be more invested in 1 or 2 Affinities, (maybe Multi Affinity)?
5 turns probably would make this exploit into a legitimate and possibly fair strategy. The city would probably create a 2nd army by the time you can declare war, maybe gain population and get stronger forces. But if you made like 5 cities near your starter city and farmed one each turn, probably with manual combat because the armies are stronger, then you could still gain levels, items, remains, the increased knowledge would keep you ahead of others possibly? I'm interested to see how it turns out
@@Fracture.Gaming most importantly: it's memorable. The stuff that is most out of balance sticks out the most. And it's great to have lots of experiences that stick out.
Tried this... but while it was working, it wasn't sustainable. Each time I went through a cycle, the next set of defenders were more powerful (4th time they were all tier III units for example). It was never in my favor enough even before that where I could just let it manual fight. That said... I learned a lot, got better at fighting... had fun! So it was a win.
I just got them from world events. I think one of them was in a cage and the other was from a free city event? I could go back and check the recording if you want to know exactly though
This game has online multiplayer so they do need to fix it. People like winning, and this is the equivalent of aim bot in fortnite. People will use it.
okay this must have already been patched, cause I just did it and they got a level 3 hero, a level 3 shock unit 3 level 2 pikemen and 2 level 1 units for 665 combat prowess, which was higher then my starting army by far.
I just checked and it is working exactly the same for me. I declared war on turn 10, their city had a population of 1, their army had 365 strength against my 676 from using spare gold & souls to produce units.
@@Fracture.Gaming atleast on my own testing they have been heavily inconsistant in their strength, but ive found their armies are sitting at 900 for me more then not. i mean its still working with 3 strong armies bouncing between them, but they are still sitting at a much higher combat rating then in your video. im just using nymphs and reapers now as summons to decimate them every turn still.
@@charlesmwolf How strange, this is a weird one for sure. Do you know if you city had 1 population when you gave it to them? Maybe map settings play into it?
@@Fracture.Gaming its possible, im going to try to do it again to see how quickly i can repeat my results, with a different map layout as far as i remember in that setup they never got past 1 pop but they quickly started coming back with 3-4 of the mounted tier 3 units. it did not make it impossible, but made me do a bit of extra setup in the beginning to really get it going.
I also found this exploit, but by beating and releasing the hero over and over from prison, idk how the capture/kill mechanics works , but i did this 5+ times in the same turn. that way you only get knowledge, no other ressources thou.
Idk what it is about my game that is different but if a vassal is released it starts with a level 7 hero and either six Awakeners or Spellbreakers at champion rank, it suuuuuuuuucks. Part of the reason I stopped playing. Even city states start with level 7 heroes and top tier units, which lead to my "favorite" loss in this game when turn four a hero and a single unit almost wiped my starting army off the map, the second army did though on turn six. 😅
It is not an expolit , just another way to level, the downside is that it is a boring way to level. Lost count of the number of youtubers who claim that their build or way they level needs to be nerfed as OP.
![[Brutal] Legendary archers are INSANELY strong - Age of Wonders 4 High Evil- Ep.2](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0Mez1eo2tLA/mqdefault.jpg)
![[Brutal] Legendary archers are INSANELY strong - Age of Wonders 4 High Evil- Ep.2](/img/tr.png)
This has been fixed, there's a 5 turn lockout from declaring war on vassal cities now.
It can still work, you just need more armies and more vassal cites- you get 5 of each you’re golden, just explode one/turn
So much cheese ofc you have to play ratkin
I'm glad somebody noticed, lmao
The fact that you gave credit to Breaking the Stream earned an instant sub from me.
Thanks so much! It seemed like the right thing to do, especially considering how much more optimized their version of it was than mine!
@@Fracture.Gaming Instant Sub from us as well - appreciate the shout out! It is a fun little strategy that I really hope goes away in the first patch. As you said, we haven't found anything else that comes close.
Yeah this is disgusting. I was already doing something similar in order to get the Eternal One skill from the Tier 5 Shadow tome, but I was just finding the nearby vassal and declaring war on them. I had never thought of doing to you my own cities. A salute to you for a truly disgusting strat!
haha thanks I was super excited when I figured it out :)
The mirror spell let's you duplicate your wizard king and they can use spur to action and the one extra spel per turn, then you can use the extra spell to clone him again and keep going. The only thing you have to be careful with is that copied units keep cooldowns and used abilities, so don't use them before cloning your lord
most underrated spell in the game btw
If you think this is overpowered, wait until you see how Breaking the Stream does it. Link in my video's description!
After I came up with this exploit it was fun to see how somebody else had done it in an even MORE broken way... I'd by lying if I said I wasn't bummed he beat me to it though 😅
Thanks for the shout out! I like the production quality of the video. Keep up the good work!
Way more of an exploit than a strategy. ;)
A simple fix would be blocking the possibility of declaring war on a city you've made vassal for about 3 to 5 or more turns. Wouldn't stop it entirely but it's a start.
Haha yeah this needs to get fixed. Yeah I was thinking a decent starter fix would be having the vassal city spawn in with walls so you have to siege it down first.
@@Fracture.Gaming That is also a good idea as besieging "absorbs" your hero for a few turns (especially early game) so it may discourage such behavior. :)
I don't get how your vassals start with a weak, exploitable army, they have a full stack of T3 units when i create a vassal
I saw somebody else comment something similar, what build were you running? Any custom settings in play? I wonder what could cause such a drastic difference in army strength.
I can' help but feel that this is kind of intended. Maybe not to that extreme, but being a jerk to your vassals is a very shadow thing to do. I mean one of the shadow affinity skills lets you steal tribute from other factions vassals so it makes more sense to use your whispering stones on other factions vassals. Shadow is the only culture that has all cities benefit from prisons and crypts. Still it gives me some ideas to try the next time I play shadow.
I think for it to be balanced they'd have to AT LEAST give the cities a wall so you have to siege it for 2-3 turns so it delays the knowledge gains
@@Fracture.Gaming That or seriously bump up the strength of the vassal army. The catch is Dark culture is probably one of the weaker ones starting out and if they do too much to nerf this into the ground its going to seriously cripple dark culture. You might be able to get away with increasing the turns to vassalize or adding some kind of cost to declaring war on a vassal. I think the best way to go about it is to delay the strategy from happening rather than outright remove it. It does work with other cultures too just not as effective and the chaos affinity skills send it over the top. Getting Gold on top of souls, food, mana and research would be a bit crazy. Still it is highly exploitable by other players. Just not the AI. Barbarian culture has a much stronger army rush and if scouted could stop it before it gets too out of hand. You can also add on the 20 gold per destroyed city skill coupled with using souls to revive the city exploit to it as well.
I cant help but think that they fixed this, I tried it, and after the 1st round of killing releasing etc. the repopulated army was stacked with tier 3s.
Still working, the likely cause is that the vassal city had a larger population. The strength of the spawned army is directly related to the population of the city (I think, it might be provinces claimed which is not necessarily the same), so my guess is that you either let the vassal city grow or let it claim territory. Raze the city and re-populate down to population 1-3 and it should be a weak army stack.
When I tried this the vassal garrison is much stronger. Over 600 combat power, a Tier 3 unit, two tier 2s, and three tier 1 units.
Oh weird, was anything different about your build that could have caused it?
@@Fracture.Gaming I used the exact build you had here. Although I was doing it on the 3rd story map, not sure if something in the map settings can make a difference.
@@Mykandera What difficulty are you playing on? Normally the higher the difficulty the bigger buffs the AI gets
they fixed it, you need to wait 5 turn to declare war with newly found vassal city
Thank goodness, this strat was broken as hell
Seems like oversight by the devs.
Big time, it needs a fix for sure.
Fantastic! I've got to do this before it gets nerfed! AOW4 loves good characters--law and life. They make you think playing evil is good because you don't worry about moral. *WRONG!* That is nothing compared to the benefits of high moral. But YOU found a way to make evil fun, and I salute you!
Haha yeah I went all in on evil. My idea initially was to use declaring war to rapidly commit evil acts to boost imperium gain quickly because that society trait gives +5 per level of evil. What I got was so much better!
you can have 70% of the benefit morale gives with enchants + spells. No need to have 100% imo. But that's a drawback for sure
Add Astral Reflection to your equation to create clones of the main character and you could do all fights solo, even there are ways to multiply the damage of spells you do 100+ AOE combat spells and 200+ hero's aoe abilities with proper setup. Don't forget that Flameburst Weapon and others work with those abilities.
Triumph needs to add walls, timers to vassalize and declare war on vassals, and stronger defensive armies on release.
As fun as this is to simulate being an OP Dark Lord, god I hope they patch this otherwise I am never playing this game multiplayer.
They only need to fix it for multi-player if you are playing solo who gives a fuck. You ha e to jump through some teidous hoop anyways.
Wut…omg I was already planning undead necro play style next…Jesus christ
Rats are the only real race to play as
Ratkin for the win
Not balanced yet... Why does it need to be balanced?
Well it does have online multiplayer. At the very least this exploit has gotta go, lol
Okau, were u able to win story realm 5? With this strategy??
Wow, this channel deserves so much more attention. It has slowly become one of my favorite channels, and I always look forward to videos like this🌟🌟
I'm so glad you like my videos!! Maybe some day I'll be able to make this my real job 😄
Fracture, you've got such an evil gamer mind. Thank you for all the laughs
Glad you enjoyed it!!
I wanted to know your input on how the incoming patch (Today's Dev Diary 17) will impact this.
For one side I saw they change the Knowledge given to +150 per hero level (supposedly aimed to mid-late game), which was shocked to see. But I think your exploit could be done because an existing bug, it should be 5 days before able to declare war as it says here
"Fixed an issue where the 5 turns delay for declaring war on a Free City would not be applied when vassalizing a city / having a vassal city."
Maybe the hero will go far away in those 5 turns or maybe its still OP due to triple amount of knowledge, but gold will be affected I guess...
Also they mentioned the Empire Development tree will change, most likely changing placement, and Emporium cost, as well as some Affinity requirements, aiming to be more invested in 1 or 2 Affinities, (maybe Multi Affinity)?
5 turns probably would make this exploit into a legitimate and possibly fair strategy. The city would probably create a 2nd army by the time you can declare war, maybe gain population and get stronger forces. But if you made like 5 cities near your starter city and farmed one each turn, probably with manual combat because the armies are stronger, then you could still gain levels, items, remains, the increased knowledge would keep you ahead of others possibly? I'm interested to see how it turns out
@@Fracture.Gaming Would take 1000 imperium for that.
Ugh,... that skill tree requires some rethink.
Well done, thanks
Here's how I'd want them to balance this: Teach the A.I. to use it too!
It would be so cool if AI got strong enough to start exploiting the game. Kinda scary too though...
@@Fracture.Gaming most importantly: it's memorable. The stuff that is most out of balance sticks out the most. And it's great to have lots of experiences that stick out.
Tried this... but while it was working, it wasn't sustainable. Each time I went through a cycle, the next set of defenders were more powerful (4th time they were all tier III units for example). It was never in my favor enough even before that where I could just let it manual fight.
That said... I learned a lot, got better at fighting... had fun! So it was a win.
Just farming the vassals, strong strategy
Too strong... fun to do though :)
Undead slave city farming. Exactly as the devs planned the shadows to be played
Wow this is so broken
Amazing. Subbed
Thanks :)
this is terrible! I hope the developers will fix this mess!
They have plans to fix it, or maybe already have. I haven't been paying attention to Age of Wonders 4 the last week or so
How tf did you manage to have a skald and a nymph at turn 11 (Skald turn 9)?
I just got them from world events. I think one of them was in a cage and the other was from a free city event? I could go back and check the recording if you want to know exactly though
@@Fracture.Gaming No need, I'm just geniuinly impressed. It's not on all map you can get 2 T3 unit so early. XD
Adding the dragon ruler to this could get even crazier.
I mean they don't need to fix this bc this is not fun to do over and over. What is the point of beating a game of it's not fun
This game has online multiplayer so they do need to fix it. People like winning, and this is the equivalent of aim bot in fortnite. People will use it.
@@Fracture.Gaming and those people are not your friends lol
okay this must have already been patched, cause I just did it and they got a level 3 hero, a level 3 shock unit 3 level 2 pikemen and 2 level 1 units for 665 combat prowess, which was higher then my starting army by far.
I just checked and it is working exactly the same for me. I declared war on turn 10, their city had a population of 1, their army had 365 strength against my 676 from using spare gold & souls to produce units.
@@Fracture.Gaming atleast on my own testing they have been heavily inconsistant in their strength, but ive found their armies are sitting at 900 for me more then not. i mean its still working with 3 strong armies bouncing between them, but they are still sitting at a much higher combat rating then in your video.
im just using nymphs and reapers now as summons to decimate them every turn still.
@@charlesmwolf How strange, this is a weird one for sure. Do you know if you city had 1 population when you gave it to them? Maybe map settings play into it?
@@Fracture.Gaming its possible, im going to try to do it again to see how quickly i can repeat my results, with a different map layout
as far as i remember in that setup they never got past 1 pop but they quickly started coming back with 3-4 of the mounted tier 3 units. it did not make it impossible, but made me do a bit of extra setup in the beginning to really get it going.
Have you made a post on the forum about this?
I have not. Idk if it is patched yet but they definitely have changes planned to prevent this
So evil.
congratulations, you found something that was very well intended to be strong by the devs.
Still no turn 1 civ vi victory. 😜
baa haa haa, to funny call spiffing britt such an exploit
This video guide has drawbacks - you didn't show us race perks and Culture perks.
0:37
@@Fracture.Gamingah sorry then. I didn't notice it.
@@TheMrYadrian No problem :)
I also found this exploit, but by beating and releasing the hero over and over from prison, idk how the capture/kill mechanics works , but i did this 5+ times in the same turn. that way you only get knowledge, no other ressources thou.
Idk what it is about my game that is different but if a vassal is released it starts with a level 7 hero and either six Awakeners or Spellbreakers at champion rank, it suuuuuuuuucks. Part of the reason I stopped playing. Even city states start with level 7 heroes and top tier units, which lead to my "favorite" loss in this game when turn four a hero and a single unit almost wiped my starting army off the map, the second army did though on turn six. 😅
wdym balanced, bruh, the shit doesnt ever run, its not age of wonders 4, its age of desync 4 in mp
rip
It is not an expolit , just another way to level, the downside is that it is a boring way to level. Lost count of the number of youtubers who claim that their build or way they level needs to be nerfed as OP.
Yeah well this one actually got nerfed/fixed so you can keep me off your list :)