The way to compensate for their economy is to raze settlement and plunder enemy provinces. You run some stack of cheap tier one and put one stack to the siege, the rest can split into many single units and goes around that settlement and plunder every provinces. Its only takes one turn and does +100g with the inproveme traits

OK change my mind about the following build for barbarians: -Spider gobbos, i.e. Sneaky and Spider mounts, which turn barbs into bombs with the Tome of Beast synergies. -Ruthless Raiders, to pick up gold for killing people. -Shadow Walkers, a free scout unit, and waywalker buff for free from game start, all outposts come with a free watchtower, and all cities have increased vision range, so you always know what's going on on the map, plus best of all, universal camouflage for your scouts. You can cross neutral borders without causing grievances, and in war, you can pillage all of their provinces right under the nose of their armies, so they can't recover their losses, and you get a big pile of extra cash right at the start of the war. I think, this is the ultimate early map control build in the game.

@Ic0nGaming

Жыл бұрын

I totally meant to play something similar on my own, especially the Shadow Walkers one. I think the Spider Mounts should be massive for this build too, cause you get them for your Archers as well. So you got Spider Mounted Scouts AND Archers. And those spider mounts are quite sick imho. AoE Damage with CC - feelsgoodman.

@stefanb6539

Жыл бұрын

@@Ic0nGaming Your take on the Dark culture peaked my interest in the camouflage skills. But I felt Universal Camouflage to be a bit wasted on scouts, that already have camouflage for some very common terrains (unless you start in a weird realm), so I checked for the best scouts without that, and ended up with Barbarians. I love their map control.

Barb and Mythic feels very strong atm. They have a nice curve in terms of power projection and a few options how to handle things. Flexible but distinct. Nice video.

I feel like spider mounts body trait on barbarians kinda need their own section. Beast tome buffs combined with web spamming ranged cav pretty much break the game. They're also the only culture that I feel can really take full advantage of the shadow walkers trait, invisible buffed scouts planting forward bases pretty much trivialize focusing down specific factions, especially when you can drop a transporter in your outposts.

@EpicAsshole

Жыл бұрын

The shadow walkers culture trait also works really well with the chaos empire improvement that reduces pillage time and increases the reward for it. You can send a few scouts to an enemy city and sabotage their improvements far faster than they can repair them and making good coin while doing so and being harder than herpes to get rid of.

Really appreciate your unit analysis. Not many videos go into detail about the units specifically, and how they are different between factions. Thank you.

@hellagrant

Жыл бұрын

Best KZreadr for AOW4, detailed, honest when he doesn't know something, mature.

Its nice to know too, the Furies not only are crazy strong archers, they also become mounted archers if you pick the mount trait

@GerritTV187

Жыл бұрын

Lol i hope the game would be communicating that better because i thought the mount traits were bad for barbarians because of their lack of mounted units.

@notalefty999

Жыл бұрын

@@GerritTV187 3 factions have no native mounts outside of scouts and benefit from getting a mount on one of their units if they take this racial trait. Barbarians get furies, high and mystic culture get their tier 3 battlemages mounted. Keen sight is generally a much better pick as the mounts are rather melee centric. However, the wolf mount does add a large damage bonus if you stack them together. This probably works best with high culture using awakened range bonuses as it makes it easier to cluster them and still be in range.

@notalefty999

Жыл бұрын

Actually, for a full tier higher, they are totally underwhelming. They have no features at all and are clearly inferior to high culture archers. Feudal archers do the same damage with stand together also, which is a very easy condition to satisfy with ranged and dark units apply a debuff. When you factor in that there are quite a few tier one specific bonuses, this is really bad.

@user-ju8uk5kv2j

Жыл бұрын

​@@notalefty999 wait wolf buff works for ranged? Where is logic in that? I still like unicorns more tho 😊

@jand.4737

Жыл бұрын

Wolf buff does not work for ranged. But it provides a melee AoE attack if you get surrounded. Unicorn is awesome for barbarians and (dark) Knights to get in and out of combat. Spider is awesome due to web, likely one of the best choices for Barbarian's mounted archers, due to the CC.

Great tips. I didn't realize there was such a difference between cultures. They are not very well explained in game. Keep the vids coming.

@ChuaPotato

Жыл бұрын

They're basically the races of aow4.

A useful series of guides for a game I happen to be playing right now? Ic0n strikes again!

If you pick a Mount for your Physical Racial Trait, you will add that mount to your Fury. This is really powerful with unicorns and spiders, but even wolves and nightmares add some spice to an already spicy unit. I like to make an elite unit of 4 furys and 2 heroes specialized in tanking, and because they all have mounts they can really get a lot of movement. I feel like it's easy to overlook mounts and environment adaptations, but in my experience so far, these are BY FAR the most powerful traits. except the swamp one, that's kinda trash - but Underground is a god tier trait, it lets you have a city inside your city, essentially double-stacking your territory and letting you create a very large empire inside a very small space. The Mounts also synergize with 'tome of beasts' and the 'pack hunter' trait (u get that trait for free if you pick the white wolves). Cavalry units are included in a lot of nature spells for animals. When you go for the mounts your kinda incentive to make all mounted units too, and mounted range units are pretty OP. Thats my fav strat for both BARB and MYSTIC culture. If you have the 'tome of scrying' enchant 'guided missiles' then you can just shoot through your own units, and you can go pure ranged at that point - especially if u picked unicorns.

@InfiltratorSF

Жыл бұрын

I think Pack Hunter is not exactly the same as Pack leader you get from the beast trait, so these two can stack, making wolves a really strong choice.

Really good series! thanks for the analysis.

Thank you very much for the culture breakdown! I really appreciate your guides.

Thoughts and ideas about barbarian strategic options, especially their scouts and the use of outposts -The alacrity highway is a neat idea, but a pipe dream. Problem is, units usually have 32, 40 or 48 movement points. Even on a road, travelling one hex costs at least 5 movement, so even very fast units can't go more than 10 hexes, regular footsloggers on a road only get 7 hexes. You can chose the province the outpost is in, but the game choses the exact hex. So, even if you would spend an insane amount of gold and time to build an unbroken pearl line of outposts on every province in a row, it wouldn't even be guaranteed to not have gaps if provinces are oddly formed. Also, alacrity has a 3 turn cooldown, so in a best case scenario you would waste an insane amount of gold for building an upkeep to every now and then zoom one single army along a prepared path. Nope. the core boon of rite of alacrity is clearly the healing effect. Restoring movement points barely refunds part of the time you lose on the detour to get there. On the other hand, you save the usually far longer detour back to your nearest city or vassal domain to heal up. -The main boon of an outpost is joining the province to your domain, and making distant claims on all provinces in a 2 turn radius. The most immediate benefit is the ability to gather magical ressources that way. Ancient wonders that are annexed via an outpost also should add their special summons to the liege roster. -The second benefit is the ability to fabricate grievances against you with well placed outposts. a) you can spread your domain to strategic chokepoints: putting up a waystation on narrow mountain passes and convenient roads through heavy terrain can either block of a route completely, or force a very inconvenient detour to avoid trespassing. Unfortunately choking off underground entrances is usually quite hard, as it is apparently legal to enter an entrance from a neighboring province or leave straight towards a neighboring province without trespassing. Depending on where the entrance is located it could take up to 3 expanded outposts to really seal the mole hill, a lot of investment for an occasional grievance earned. b) if you know the location of a neutral city, that you want to get grievances on, you can leftclick the surrounding provinces to find the exact provinces where the distant claims from the city borders end. If you build an outpost right into the first unclaimed province, your own distant claims will extend right until the outskirts, and the city can no longer grow in that direction without causing grievances. With the way the provinces are drawn, that can be 2 to 4 potential provinces barred from extension. In theory a full surround of a small city is possible with 4 or 5 well placed outposts, sometimes fewer in special circumstances. This would mean, that every further city growth adds more casuus belli, but it's expensive and won't work near coasts, as you can't build swimming outposts. It's more economic to try to find the most advantageous provinces for the opponent to grow into and block them off. Also, with a watchtower (comes free with the Shadow walker trait) you can get a good view on military activities, due to rite of alacrity you have a conveniently placed healing post, that coulld be even defended with a pallisade. Just for the remote opportunity that some bad person would come and start trouble in the neighborhood ofc. -the third tier benefit is the ability to have a constant view on the map with a watchtower. It's actually more a convenience thing, though. Regular marauder guards don't move around, and in theory you could just memorize which ones you still want to grind for xp and loot. If you are interested in the whereabouts of a specific hero or army, it's a lot cheaper to shadow them with a pathfinder. This one is way more beneficial against other players than against the AI. Worst thing an AI usually does it let a stray from an active infestation wander in. Keeping tabs on actual human players is way more important. Basic rule of thumb: As claims and vision extend 2 provinces, building outposts closer than 4 provinces to each other -unless there is a spedific important reason- is a bit wasteful. If you only want the vision, well an outpost costs 10 upkeep, a scout only 6, or even 4 with Chaos affinity.

Outposts cost 10 gold per turn, a single tier 2 unit costs 12 gold per turn, so that doesn't break the bank. Having to pay 50 gold more to build it with a scout is a bit more painful early on, but it's still absolutely worth it.

@neetfreek9921

Жыл бұрын

When you build outposts put them next to gold mines whenever possible and mine them for positive gold income.

@stefanb6539

Жыл бұрын

@@neetfreek9921 That depends highly on why I build the outpost: Alacrity highway, farming grievances, getting my hands on magic ressources or ancient wonders, looking to actually build a city there... There are only so many gold mines on the map and so many many more good spots for outposts.

Question: So should the different cultures in AOW4 be basically viewed as factions like in Planet fall and the tomes are sort of the tech tree?

Very good guide

on point 9, you get a lot of gold just raiding enemy provinces. it's crazy how much money you get in a short time :D After beating an enemies main army, I even go out of my way to split up my army in 1 units to spread out faster an raid everything there is to raid! >:D

Barbarian is next on my list of factions to play. Going to make kind of a wood elves or druids faction starting with tome of roots. But I haven't worked out the other details yet.

It's important to note that building outposts with the scouts costs 100g instead of 50g.

@ticker0157

Жыл бұрын

If you go industry you don't have to worry about that

@detrimidexta

Жыл бұрын

And it takes 1 turn longer

I started with barbarian culture and now I'm afraid I'll never try any of the others!

7:58 that is a tier 2 archer, not tier 1

Waiting for advanced barbarian culture ! :D

The Barbarian archers are quite bad. The only reason for the extra damage is that they are a tier higher, which comes with the drawback of higher cost and upkeep, additional building requirements and not benefiting from several tier 1 specific abilities in the chaos tree (further upkeep reduction and the tome of the horde hero ability). Also, compared to awakened tier 1 High Culture archers, its not even close. Their only notable upside is they get mounts if you select that as a racial feature.

@cedrebleu7181

Жыл бұрын

100%, Barb have bad T2 archers, also T1 awakened order archer has +1 more range, +20% hit chance, 14 dam...

@dawn4383

Жыл бұрын

They're great on unicorns, though if you're massing archers. That, combined with cavalry buffs being army wide and very powerful (15 mana for 3 bolstered defense and 1 strengthen army wide is great) and things like pack leader and animal kin minor transformation making them buff eachother with adjacency.

build outpost to take magic ressources and deny expansion of your allies :D (not funny in multiplayer already lost friends tho) but outpost + teleport book... broken af

Broke? Just spec into so many things that cheapen units and the raider culture trait is so good! But yeah magic damage really hurts bad^^ i was thinking about trying the resistance bodytrait instead of going for strong.

The fact you can build outposts anywhere using scouts is kinda broken I think, especially for early game when you can only have one hero. I feel like one of the affinities should be able to give scouts this ability as well for other factions--maybe order?

@Ic0nGaming

Жыл бұрын

Every Culture can have access to this skill. All you need is a Barbarian Culture Scout. It is still a massive bonus for the Barbarian Culture to be able to mass produce them, but you can get them from Free Cities/Rally Of The Lieges when playing as another Faction.

Question is "Tenacious" good for making up for their weakness to debuffs?

@Ic0nGaming

Жыл бұрын

Yes, absolutely. Cause it cuts down the damage of many things as well and Barbarian culture really needs some defensive upgrades. They got the damage, stuff like that is a nice backup.

@Cyberbro665

Жыл бұрын

@@Ic0nGaming I've made a custom barbarian/nature Empire but Idk if I should keep looking for workout arounds for the vanilla or just wait for the DLC to come out. I heard DLC is going to introduce more new tomes. Maybe then they'll be something better for them?

At 13:40, what are you talking about? Barbarians have markets, mints and even merchant guilds, just like any other culture. All you need is a city with up to 4 farms to get the building boosts, and more important, all the mines the merchant guild can boost. They are still broke all the time, as they spend a lot on outposts and upkeep for their massive armies, but they have no specific weakness in getting gold. Ruthless Raiders, pillaging and the imperium perks from the chaos branch give them even more gold to burn through quickly.

@Ic0nGaming

Жыл бұрын

Yes, but no extra income like other cultures. Most other cultures have income boosting buildings on top of these so in a summary barbarians end up with the lowest raw income of gold if you'd compare the cultures directly just gold income wise. Not saying they are terrible, just that most cultures fare better income wise, even if only slightly.

waggght ???

I like your videos but please for the love of god stop saying *in a nutshell" I beg you!

@Ic0nGaming

Жыл бұрын

I've had a lot of talk about below the vids, if you follow the comments I even made some jokes about it, I got it by now.