2:15 Unit upkeep cannot drop below 50%. I don't know if it's rounded up or down, but IIRC most things in AOW4 are rounded in the player's favor. Testing needed. AFAIK unit upkeep applies to enchantment upkeep as well. 3:01 I see you didn't get around to making the chart of cost of recruiting vs rally. Can't blame you, that's a lot of charting. 3:08 Vassals also contribute to the rally of lieges, and are how you get culture units of your race. Found/Migrate to a city, then release as vassal. 3:27 It took me way too long to realize how powerful outpost spam is. With perks, it's 1 turn and 38 gold to found an outpost. Assuming a gold node with an adjacent iron mine, that pays for itself within 8 turns. At max astral affinity (and teleportation tome?), you can spam +15 mana teleporters for mobility and profit. If I already have nearby teleporters, the best use of outposts is research posts built atop rare resources, and mana nodes. Ancient wonders are also incredible, but outposts can capture those with a FREE pop slot if you have the Wonder Architects culture trait - the strongest trait in the game by far IMO. (In the beta, outposts and city ruins can both be destroyed by non-hero units, which is nice as outposts/cities can't be built adjacent to eachother.) 4:35 There's a materium IV tome building that makes rushing cheaper and lets you rush draft AND buildings twice a turn. 5:16 You left out using Gold for diplomacy. The AI is usually a tad braindead in the current state of the game - even on the beta - but if the AI were scarier, bribery is often more cost effective than pyrhic victories. Also, trading with friendly AI is the ONLY reliable way to get high tier hero equipment (and get rid of useless equipment clogging up the inventory!) 7:49 Imperium: Fighting unjust wars lowers imperium income, I've seen it as bad as -80% income. It's the reason you'd need to fabricate grievances. 12:34 Food buildings are still useful early in a cities development for boosting buildings and getting to tier III quicker, but otherwise you gave all the relevant info. Once a city hit's tier V, sometimes sooner, I swap all the farms for research/gold/quarries/forests, in that order. Great guide! I have nitpicks, but most of them are due to the inherent complexity of the game + the shortness of the guide. I certainly learned quite a bit.

@RussiesStuff

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for the feedback!! I think all of those points are valid. Honestly this video was somewhat made around the time when I understood the game less... I prob should look into making another video about the new things I have learned about combat and econ in the future I don't think those are nitpicks and I really appreciate that you offered your thoughts on things that I have missed in that video. While I may have already known some of them by now, I do find myself occasionally learning a lot by going through the comment section. I pinned this comment so it is easier for people to see the missed out information through the comment section

I haven't watched the video, but I'll leave a comment (that's how bad I am!). The economy in this game is very simple: you provide yourself with shadow affinity to take the ability that gives knowledge for killing enemy heroes. Establish a city as fast as you can and turn it into a vassal. Immediately declare war on this vassal city and capture it, killing the hero and gaining knowledge. If you also take cannibals, then for killing enemies (and you will kill a lot of them in such a strategy), you will receive mana. Over time, you will upgrade the shadow affinity to get even more mana and knowledge for capturing cities. You can also pump it into the order affinity: there is an ability there that reduces the vassalization time by 1 turn. So, if your vassal's city has less than 4 population, then it will initially be vassalized in 1 move. 1-1=0. This in turn means that you will be able to capture the same city an infinite number of times per turn (the restriction occurs only on movement points), gaining a lot of knowledge and mana. Rush into the 5th tome, build 3 magic structures and win on... Now the record on KZread is on the 40th move for a magical victory. Enjoy it!

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

cool strat thanks 4 bringing it up

Very comprehensive. Since I rarely know what I’m doing when annexing new provinces this really helped me out.

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

glad to be of help

great analysis

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

thanks

Hope music wasnt too loud this time

On the subject of upkeep reduction, there's a hard cap at 50% reduction.

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

i was actually unaware of that, i will try it out and include that in my written guide... regardless 50% upkeep reduction allowing u to host army twice the size is pretty oppressive

@Swordphobic

Жыл бұрын

@@RussiesStuff Indeed it is, the note for the cap is under some very fine print, so its understandably hard to find.

Very useful guide!

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

thanks

I will be making a less formal comprehensive guide/tier list for improvements tomorrow so stay tuned Edited: Didnt manage to make it in today so ill post it on friday

I agree with this, and in particular it feels like food hardly matters and needs a greater purpose (maybe it should be part of upkeep for some units, or it should contribute to city stability). Mana is an important resource but its plentiful enough for all empire types as long as you can get a couple conduits up, using outposts if needed. So gold becomes the primary resource that matters in every match I've played through so far. I might rank draft a little higher since the ability to refill army losses quickly often contributes to me winning against normal AI.

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

i agree and i mostly played and won with a good econ civ in magic victory so far and in there i found draft to be least useful, but i think it is definitely more important if you are pursuing military victory i tried out the other day and 3 stack of 6 t1-3 units with 2 hero and it already ate up like about 180+ gold upkeep since i didnt have any gold reduction, but had another game where i can host 5 stacks of t1-2 units with about 100g upkeep when i stacked 2 upkeep reduction. Draft was def way more important there since to make that stack, cities had to keep chunning out units but i didnt really spec my cities into draft and 3 cities i had was about to chun out units without issues since draft turns into 1/4 food in rest period, you really dont ever want your cities to rest after they finish the units you need too fast and stops making units cus upkeep says no, ofc that wont happen if you trade units losses with an enemy alot

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

i would rank it A or high B for high loss warring civ and if u have alot of losses or if they ever buff it and it gets converted into something more than just 1/4th food when u have too much of it but otherwise 1/4 conversion rate to food feels just really tiny

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

in the end its really dependant on build too, u have vs ai games where most of the game u are well liked and u finish with building seed root heart of order and they still wont send their army after u after they declared war on u or maybe u have evil alignment set out for world domination and they come after u everyday and you dont always get to set urself for good oppressing trades to minimize ur losses

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

but in the end, my opinion is that losing unit is generally a negative thing and should be avoided since it cost upfront gold and draft, those resource used for draft and unit development might be more helpful in the long run if used to grow econ if you have the luxury to do so, and a good empire build is to make yourself that luxury to get ahead, unless the town you net is really worth it or you are making a build to rush everyone down

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

sry for long comment, theres always so much to elaborate and say but when a 15 minute video takes over 18 hrs to just edit, you kind of want to just take a break from editing and go to bed after a while... plus if the vid too long and not as many people have attention span to watch

I already want to create a mod that makes a fixed amount per +1 population (in addition to buildings for food, make +10/+15/+20 instead of the current +10/+20/+30 and you can also try to increase food consumption from 3 to 4), when the recruitment queue is empty, receive gold instead of food and other changes at the expense of conversion from 25% to 50% can also think

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

i agree, imo 4x devs needs to either need to make pop growth a linear thing, or they need to be like stellaris and civ and make production be extremely reliant on pop related mechanics. food would have been alot more important if all the infrastructures do was amplify province gain rather than outputting most of resources by themselves

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

humankind would be another example where districts hard carries the citys output, making food in that game irrelevant past the first era at the end of the day, quadratic or exponential cost of food is unrealistic anyways... its not like a family of 10 eats 30 times a family of 2 irl

Mic quality could be much more improved by the investment of forty USD into a headset with a mic.

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

We got a new mic recently so hopefully things goes well from there on... sorry about the bad voice qualities

Anyone else noticed that your audio is almost entirely on the left channel?

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

thanks for bringing that up... i mostly edit the video on a computer with speaker so i did not realize that... i will look into that. i applogize for the issue

@Swordphobic

Жыл бұрын

@@RussiesStuff No need to apologize, I'm just trying to help.

your guides are great ! however is it just me or is russies voice not clear enough to understand properly? like small disconnects ?

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

Uh Russie is me who is the editor Era is the voice Our mic isnt that great and hence the inconsistency and we also record slides of audio at a time so there are some cuts between sentences and sections We are a brand new channel but we will look forward to tackling the mic issue once channel becomes bigger and more popular

@deanfarmer784

Жыл бұрын

@@RussiesStuff I have just subscribed and look forward to more videos from you. Please look at getting the Mic fixed as it is annoying and could certainly hold back your channel in terms of subs. This would be a shame as your actual content is fantastic.

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

@@deanfarmer784 Thanks I am flattered and a new mc is in order coming on Wednesday ;a; Sadly I dont want to do nothing until Wednesday so I will prob try to make another vid and look to see how I can improve the sound through audacity on that one

I disagree about mana. Yes, it's better to use it, but there are literally no downsides to having a huge stockpile of mana. It's useful for all kinds of things, including resolving random events. And if you're going for a magic victory, a stockpile is almost 100% necessary.

@RussiesStuff

Жыл бұрын

TLDR: - Just want to clarify that 1k is not a large stockpile mid - late game in case if thats where misunderstanding comes from. - Snowballing is an important mechanic in this game and advantages leads to more gains. Stockpiling implies you have resources that aren't converted into advantages. Those resources could have been spent to gain advantages consistently, or production for that resource could have been used elsewhere for advantages and gains, to encourage more snowballing. - Not all build goes for magic victory and game often ends militarily before everyone reaches T5 depending on map size. - Some builds have odd perks and synergize with stockpile, but I cant fit every outlier in the video Long Version: I think I should have clarified that by large stockpile of mana, that would most likely be saving over 1k. In the late game, you could be spending 200-300 mana per big battle depending on your casting points and the spells you are casting. I don't think having a stockpile of say 500-1k is anything bad. Regardless, you will probably get more out of what you have if you have 1500 gold and 1k mana versus just 3k mana sitting there. Moreover, the sum cost for all buildings for a magic victory is about 900 mana. I definitely agree that if you are playing with other players and would like to surprise them, saving over 1k mana to plot down seed root heart at the same time is good idea. But of course not all builds emphasizes magic victory. Often times, depending on the size of the game, one faction will militarily dominate the map before anyone could even get to T5 tomes at turn 40-50. Plotting down seed root heart is also meaningless if you cant defend yourself, as everyone who isn't an AI will try to invade you while you still have to deal with natural spawned stacks of T3-5 every 5 turns or so. Regardless, one of the basics of RTS is that it is a negative thing to stockpiling any kind of resource that you cant materialize into advantages quickly. The downside of stockpiling has nothing to do with the fact that you have a lot, but the fact that it implies have available resources/advantages frozen, and unable to employ them to snowball your advantages. Should u be able to put those resources into work, you will gain more advantages, which leads to winning more, producing more, and snowballing even more. While 4x games are not the same as RTS, snowballing in AOW4 is a common phenomenon, just like in many other 4x games. It is to note that seed root heart grants you sizable advantages anyways, and you are penalizing yourself for trying to build them all at once unless you are trying to surprise your adversaries. As a result, a over-stockpilage of a resource that you cant expend quickly implies that you could either spend it more consistently in the past turn to gain consistent advantages overtime and snowball, or you could have dedicated your resource production elsewhere for greater advantages over others. These advantages sometimes dictates the fate of large decisive battles, and can lead to more gain with victory, or more losses with defeat. After all, depending on your build, the difference between a single enchantment or two can be night and day. Of course, the situation changes if you have perks that synergizes with mana/resource stockpilage. Regardless, there are many outliers and it is difficult to fit in a single video.