Hi. I started the game a few days ago and it has been quite the enjoyable experience thus far (I didn't know it would be that similar to the total war games).

I got myself 2 DLCs to make myself a faction that I would like: primal + giant kings. I wasn't disappointed (at least in term of aesthetic). I completely missed the whole "season pass" aspect and took them one by one... but anyway, while I'm doing that fire giant playthrough, I wanted to ask:

What DLCs and cultures do you guys enjoy? I'm aware that this question is often asked, but the "meta" (of what's strong, but also of what's considered to be a fun/worth-to-buy culture) seems to shift quite often, so I'm asking again.

Based on earlier discussions I tried to put commonly mentioned culture ideas in the options. Let's see what the community is looking forward the most.

View Poll

I love AOW4. I’m only 50 hours in, so I still have a lot to discover. I’m thinking about buying Heroes: Olden Era after all the praise it’s been getting, but I haven’t played any of the older Heroes games. I’m not a fan of the graphics, it looks like a mobile gacha game to me. Also, having only six factions and no customization seems a bit underwhelming.

Have you guys played it? How does it feel compared to AOW4? Is it worth buying, or would it be better to save my money for Expansion Pass 4?

I'm not interested in multiplayer, I only play single player games.

I cant find the spell and dont know what it does. I've seen npcs use it. Anybody know which spell it is?

There are multiple reasons why I like this game, but there's one thing that I've (so far) only seen implemented in one or two other games.
And of those, AoW4 did it better, and I want to give it a shout-out.

Which is; Random events that make me change my early game build order.
In so many other 4x Turn-Based Strategy games, I've noticed there's a 'optimal build order' in the first rounds. I'm not as much playing the game, as I'm following a set formula.

Sure, I could ignore it. But then I'm just giving myself a handicap out of... pointless petty defiance against myself? Inset the: "Players will optimise the fun out of a game." quote here.

But AoW4 has random events, and some of these happen early and offer rewards that make me want to break from the predetermined plan. And I find myself much more engaged from the start than I'm usually am, and hope it's a thing other 4x games will eventually add.

Thank you for making me excited to play the first rounds again :)

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:

1. 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.)

• 2. 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.
• 3. 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.
• 4. 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?
• 5. 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.)
• 7. 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.

Im really enjoying this game man, yet i want even more customization and it just so happens i see it has quite a bit of DLC. 150 usd for all of it seems like a big investment early on for me though :/ What DLC is recommended to get me even more into this game? So far what peaks my interest is the thrones of blood, giants and dragons dlcs. Everyone seems to hype the eldritch one as well so where do i start and what offers the most bang for your buck content wise? Expansion pass 1 looks like the right choice but if anyone can offer insight It’d help a ton

1.Is inner radiance effectivs on Grexolis map?

2. As a barbarian should i invade Turiel early or wait late game

I am considering getting Giant Kings for the new worldgen stuff, but wanted to ask if people think it is worth it for that. Any thoughts?

Just wanting to do a collection of evil dragon lordsb& was curious about some builds both in a build sense & rp sense that could be fun & interesting, im still new & want to try simple fun evil stuff before getting involved in learning a top down games political system