Different ways to create a knowledge build
Greetings,
I asked about knowledge builds a little while ago and I still enjoy focusing on knowledge not just because it's useful and strong in games like AOW4, but also from a roleplaying perspective.
My 'problem' is that there are many different ways to do such a build. And it should be easy to quantify the results of each knowledge build and compare them, but in practice that takes a lot of playing time, that I unfortunately do not have. So, I'm curious, what approach do all of you have, when it comes to knowledge-heavy builds?
As of now I tried the following kinds of knowledge builds:
- variants of High culture (Having the Sun Shrine especially in combination with the Abbey from the Tome of Faith makes for a strong early game knowledge gain, but less of clear vision on how to gain knowledge later. So there has to be some kind of extra thought to be invested, if we're thinking about a dedicated knowledge build.)
- variants of Arctic Adaptation (The Tome of Cold Dark with its SPI is awesome, because every culture with 3 Shadow affinity could use it and it can fit into many different builds as long as they fulfill that requirement. But this kind of knowledge generation only starts to kick in as soon as tier III tomes are accessible, so we need an early game knowledge acquisition method.)
- 1.+2. From this follows that High culture with Arctic Adaptation would make a good synergy, since High culture bridges creates a good early game knowledge generation, which in turn makes tier III tomes accessible earlier. In the games I played, this was one of the better knowledge builds.
- Underground Adaptation + Hermit Kingdom (Underground Adaptation makes the drawbacks of Hermit Kingdom easier to handle. It's way easier to control your borders inside a cave. Hermit Kingdom gives a percentage increase on knowledge gain, so it's stronger the more knowledge you have. In my games the strongest kinds of this build were Underground Hermit High culture and Primal Spider Hermits, since the latter have Underground Adaptation built in and also generate their own knowledge via mushroom forests.
- Umbral Disciples (These generate their own Gloom and gain knowledge through controlling Gloom provinces. Unfortunately it doesn't stack with Primal Spider, since Gloom replaces mushroom forests with regular forests. If they stacked, the winner would be clear: Primal Spider + Umbral Disciples + Hermit Kingdom. An interesting thing is, that Gloom doesn't replace forests and grassland, so there is an Umbral Disciples synergy with Primal Wolf and Primal crow, since they can gain two different bonuses from their terrain. But from a knowledge point of view those two are as good as any other culture with Umbral Disciples. Snow doesn't stack with Gloom either, so 2. + 4. doesn't work. 1. + 4. does though. But I don't have a lot of experience with High Culture + Umbral Disciples.
- High + Umbral Disciples + Hermit Kingdom should be potentially strong though. Any experiences someone would like to share?
- Nomads + Arctic + Talented Collectors (Since Arctic Adaptation comes with better Magic Materials for knowledge gain and Nomads can harvest materials over and over if they restore them via mana, Nomads have a good potential here. It comes with a caveat though: Nomads need lots of mana to reliably restore a larger number of magic materials over and over, especially if they hasten their exploitation via imperium. So Nomads need to build conduits which means that they can't build a research post in the same province. If you planned to build a Researcher Guild, you should take that into consideration. I have never done the math here, so I can't say, if it's worth it. Talented Collectors seems like a no-brainer for this build, since it adds to our knowledge and partially pays for the restoration of the nodes.)
- If you feel up for it you can also combine 5. with Hermit Kingdom, since Nomads can kinda manage the Hermit thing on the surface, since they can move away from encroaching cities. I found this to be working relatively well in PVE, but I imagine that in PVP players will easily destroy this part of your plan by prioritizing to settle along your borders.
- EDIT: 6. There are also 'gimmicky' builds (Astrological Diviners lets you acquire 100 knowledge for each building you finish during a turn that is an increment of 10. So what yyou're going to do is to cue the building cue in such a way that several buildings are nearly finished are can be finished in a single turn, when the time is ready. I managed to consistently finish 3-4 buildings per city in round 10/20/30 etc., which if calculated as per turn income would equal +30/40 knowledge per city, which is quite good. Unfortunately this playstyle comes with many difficulties: It is exhausting to calculate. If you by accident gain a larger production increase (through a story interaction or clearing an infestation or picking up a random production stack) your cue will be produced too early. Since you deliberately slow your production or rather produce in 'bursts', your economy is a bit slower than usual. Another gimmicky knowledge build would be to play Potential Mystics and use Transfomation Ascetics to more consistently produce Arcane Inspiration by keeping your spell book carefully curated with spells that you often cast. This is a bit more inconsistent when it comes to knowledge generation since knowledge gain is just one possible effect of Arcane Inspiration.)
- Diplomacy (Chosen Uniters + Court of Shadows (+ possibly Keepers of Knowledge) can generate very good and consistent vassal income, which while not focused solely on knowledge should find mention here.)
EDIT 2: Regardless of the specific build an Eldritch Sovereign with the Tome of Necromancy is a good addition since he can transform souls into thralls and thralls into knowledge. Thanks to u/Celis78429 for reminding me of one of my favourite things in this game, that I totally forgot.
tl;dr:
The knowledge builds I had the most success with were in no particular order:
- Arctic High culture,
- Underground Hermit Kingdom High culture,
- Primal Spider Hermit Kingdom,
- Arctic Nomad Hermit Talented Collectors
I figure that under certain circumstances Dark - Cult of Death should have the potential for a large generation of knowledge, especially since it is compatible with 2., 3. and 4.
Does anyone have any experience with playing Cult of Death with Umbral Disciples, Arctic or Hermit Kingdom?
Which knowledge builds have you tried and how would you rank them in regards of speed and reliability of knowledge generation? Do you have a favourite?
Have you tried any of the playstyles I listed above and did you crunch the numbers enough to rank them against each other?
I'm really interested in players' experience with knowledge builds.