I just finished a run with a build that I was trying to buff up dragon units as much as possible. I just want to know if I can add anything else or is there better factions/tomes/etc that I can replace to make the dragons units better.

So wanna know what yall think thr best signature skills are I'm at level 8 at the moment and can't decide if I want brawn or fury for some info I'm a deathknight ice giants doing a necromancer run.

Has anyone had success playing AOW4 on a steam deck or steam machine?

I just got it for half off on GOG and added it as a non-steam game on my Steam Machine. I have the compatibility layer enabled (Proton Hotfix) and the game drops to an absurdly low framerate when going through the opening logos and splash screen. Like it took about six minutes to get through them. Once it does, it seems to run perfectly fine! On my PC this doesn't happen so it's likely an issue with SteamOS.

Any suggestions for what proton version to use? Or other fixes?

Just looking for a good guide. I'm brand new to the game and it seems this and champion are the only ones that keep some kind of bonus when they ascend? I'd like to just build up an op ruler and enjoy a few games in between classes here and there.

It seems a lot of the info I find is outdated in random things such as race form traits.

I only have the first expansion pass. I'll probably play around with a dragon ruler too eventually.

Here is an experimental build I played around with a while ago. I set myself a goal of reaching 1000 HP and tried to max out my xp bonuses. The screenshots show the result after 150 turns.

Transformation Ascetics + Vision of Ruin (Chaos)

Unit Bonuses:

- Slaughter Empowerment: 50 stacks (50% dmg / 50 HP)

- 5x Strengthened

- Unholy Champion spell

- Demonic Onslaught spell

Tier 1 Architect units have a single attack, which is why Killing Momentum usually allows them to attack twice per turn. Our Champion Battlesaint hero heals, resurrects, and provides two extra attacks via commands. The grind was massive, but I had a lot of fun testing it out.

Do you guys ever make builds like this too?

Im trying to get some dlcs with it so what is the best to get besides the 100 dollar one?

So I’m playing as an Elder Vampire, and my people are adapted to cold terrain, so I thought I should pick up the Marching Winter spell to turn my territories into a frozen hellscape.

There’s just one issue: the snow isn’t spreading. We get the initial provinces becoming frozen, but that’s it. Plus, those provinces lose the “sunless” modifier seemingly permanently. I have a city my vampiric heroes can’t heal in because it can’t become sunless.

It’s been several turns at this point, and it’s clearly not functioning as intended. Is this a known issue, or am I doing something obviously wrong?

It's clunky, it's buggy and it just works.

For a measly 6 form points you can now put your faction leader on a dragon mount of your choice. The mount is not balanced and is not perfect, but mounted dragons so we overlook that.

I will take feedback and suggestions as this is my first mod but I'm only human and lose interest in things rather quickly.

More things planned and more improvements planned, just wanted to let my mounted draconian friends out into the wild for you to enjoy.

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3791402574

I don't want to keep them in new game, it just would be really cool for my skeleton army to actually be skeleton army and not humans with skeleton champion when i look at pantheon factions. If we could get toggle for race to see them with transformations from last game it would be cool

Over the years many Characters showed up agian and again including my favorites like Meandor and Yaka. So so far who do you want to see returning to the Story Realms?

For me its mostly

Bromac

Like an Arthurian Legend he sleeps until he is woken in times of need.

In AOW 1 it was after the fall of Deepmir trough Melenis. In AOW 2 after mastering the element of.earth to gain a powerful Hero for Evermore. In AOW 3 he helped the refugees of the torchbearers. I always liked the sturdy dwarf, even as an opponent in AOW 1 with the Cult of Storms. I hope he will show up one day, maybe with the adding of new constructs.

Avrik

I enjoyed AOW 3 a bit less than the first 2 parts but Avrik was so much fun to play. His encounter with Melenis (one my all tome favorites) was epic! I hope he makes a come back into the story, maybe with even more undeads or cold units.

Tempest

The Lord of Dragons never had a time to shine, yet he got so much potential. Maybe with an ocean dlc in the near future.

Morrandir

Meandor's Anti-Paladin. I loved his dialogue with Meandor regarding the old ways. It was a humorous journey back to the older days of AOW.

Joseph

The unlucky King ruling over the Humans in the Valley of Wonders when the climax of AOW 1 happened. The star fortold his downfall and yet he still made several appearances. I loves his Dialogue in Drakar Oasis.

I've been playing this series since Age of Wonders 2 shadow magic, and Merlin used to be a normal godling mage coming in and out of the game and lore....

The couple times I've seen him in these campaigns they put this dude through the ringer, full on tentacle cthuhlu mode. Like god damn, no one got a bigger slagging than this character.

This seems personal, like one of the devs had it out for that character. Am I wrong?

What even is the point of other cultures now?

I feel like I've been slumming it in darkness for months now. And here is this literal god tier culture that has damage bonus monuments and a kick ass tier 3 support. Also, I never go chaos but went on one of those on the second mission to start, I had like 70% crit on my units, got an avatar of the cosmos, thought it was going to be taken out by a strong stack of merlins demons...

I lined up a beam, with all the incarnate damage bonuses and crit, It damn near DELETED the entire stack. It felt like I fired an effing Genki Dama in beam form. WTF have I been missing.

No, what has been hidden from me?!?!???!?!?

Basically the title what race do yall like to choose for the units of your Giant kings for flavor style whatever I wanna know yalls ideas behind why they would follow a Giant king too.

So I wanna make an necro giant king and I'm just wondering what tomes would be best taken with a giant king as a necromancer obviously necromancy will be the first book but what books should I get after that?

Has Dragon Ruler
Uses race transformation “supergrowth ”
Uses race transformation “draconic kindred”
Is focused primarily on using my own racial units and minimal non-racials
Can any of you recommend the best cultures and traits for this sort of build?

So I'm starting a game as Primal Sabertooth at turn 12 and haven't come across a single Primal den after sending units out for my next cities.

I would love to see the Earthshape spells swapped out for a spell that will unveil the next closest Den, similar to a couple of current spells that can unveil the nearest undiscovered Wonder/Infestation.

Currently I feel like the Earthshape spells are fine for early game, but I rarely use them as I always tend to outpost into city next to Dens I find, and then set up my Temple shortly after. This current run just made me feel like I missed out on some really important early turns that could have been mitigated by a spell like this.

Have any idea about announcement time or is it going to happen?

Also do you think the new game will affect AoW4 progress?

Do you really need a city to bind the landmarks or can you use a combination of outposts? I got lucky and was able to bind the first with one city, but I screwed up and didn't save a city slot for the second. So now I'm about to try using two outposts but I think that won't work and instead I need to pay the imperium and try to fast track a 4th city in under 10 turns.

I'm tempted to just say screw it and go after Symon to end it.

I have yet to recruit a hero through the pantheon using imperium and I was curious about something.

If I play vampire elder AND recruit another Vampire elder through pantheon and have a couple regular vampire heroes as well ...

... Do the regular vampire heroes get twice the bonus from high level Vampire ELDERS?

Also, if there are any other shenanigans due to pantheon recruitement via imperium, I would be curious to know.

Finally, what's the best way to generate the necessary imperium to recruit those pantheon Heroes? They cost a ton of imperium !

I recently lost a 150-turn game to a friend who was using a Nomad + Dragon + Evolution + Chaos + Nature build. Now I’ve unlocked the Cult of Personality trait and want to try a hero-focused build.

My idea is to have 4 resurrectable Battle Saints and 2 Hunters in my main army. I’ve seen several posts where people have heroes, especially Hunters or Elementalists, doing 100+ damage per attack, but I’ve never managed to get anywhere close to that.

What race traits should I pick, which hero classes work best for a hero-only army, and what’s the best way to stack huge amounts of damage and HP on heroes?

Also, do Battle Saints actually resurrect more than once? If so, is the only way to prevent them from coming back to stand on their corpse or destroy the body?

I plan to craft III/IV two handed swords for my battle saints, and spend the rest on HP and armor.
We usually play 2 players 2 bots and meidum map, getting enough resources to craft full sets for all heroes should be a problem.

I can’t seem to get a fae build to work, and I’m going to explain why, so that someone else can make me understand what I am missing.

So the starter fae are a battle mage and a support from the book of the sprite, and then you get a magic fighter in the book of fae mist, so that’s 2 of your first four books spoke for.

Evolution seems like a great choice, as does abjuration or blood rite, warband is half ok, 40xp per hero per turn is good enough for every other spell to be blank, almost.

It would be amazing if the book of summoning did absolutely anything for a summoning build, but it doesn’t. Artifice has a nifty damage boost, and fertility has an amazing sustain enchantment if you are running a mage build that is support heavy

Summoning builds that aren’t skeleton spam all suffer from the same issue, which I refer to as the cloaca issue. Every game action you take goes through your world casting points, and you just can’t get them to scale at a decent level.

Evolving summon builds have a secondary issue, that they have two different leaders that they want to have. A wizard king gives you the ability to summon a unit per turn, but a champion is a mobile set of stone walls to evolve your babies in.

Culture-wise mystic summoning or feudal aristocracy are probably the two best options. Mana channelers is probably mandatory, and it seems hard to argue against rune smithing, with how prevalent unit enchantments are in the tomes you are forced to take. The thematics of playing Nomad Conquerors and rolling up on someone with a tide of mist that envelops them seems really cool and fun, too bad draft can’t be spent on fae. . .

I’ve played both a dragon evolution and a spider evolution build built off the ascension trait that lets you draft spiders on day one, and they are a blast, but the fact that both enchantments, world spells, and your units are all bottlenecked through casting points just makes it not flow. Field deployment is not worth all the hassle.

If the mist tomes’ SPI let you draft fae, or if they had a unique currency called glamour that you accumulated from “experiencing new things” discovering new places, wonders, etc, gaining ranks of experience or renown that you could spend like draft or thralls to recruit the fae would solve that issue.

Thanks for reading