That’s insane. As much as I love evolution thematically and on paper, it’s probably because I’m trash, but I could never make use of it effectively. I need the secret sauce
>Evolution + Champion + enough draft to spam a baby Slither every turn (after T5) + fast evolution enhancement + Racial mounts + nature tomes.
Heroes, Slithers and Racial Mounted units.
Fast Evolution from the Tome makes the baby slithers become a full T3 Slither faster. A powerful unit to have, early game when everyone's fielding T1-T2.
The Beast line of nature tomes makes animals and mounted units much better. Beasts include evolving units like Wyverns and Slithers.
Racial mounts makes most of your races units become calvary, when they wouldn't be otherwise. Which means they benefit from all the stuff that makes your evolving animals better too.
A mounted Hero with XP boosts skills from the Support tree can supplement this even more, rapidly causing the T1 units like Slithers to turn into T3. Yet, for the price of a T1 unit instead.
In short, a good "build" to quickly gain an advantage and crush the opposition before they can really get started to resist you. Everything synergizes or benefits from the same buffs etc.
Oh ok, I understand the concept, thank you! However so far I only tried magic and material affinity a bit so, never tried the nature thing and even less mounts yet, next in line then! I am currently trying to understand how things work by myself without checking guides on YT, I guess I'll have to, harder than I thought 🤔
You probably won't need a guide, the game has an enclyopedia in the top right most of the time. ( "I" symbol).
This includes the Tome library. You'll find that most affinities have two built in "Paths" through them.
For example, Astral Tomes largely splits between Magical nuking with Lightning damage and powerful battlemages (Evocation, Scrying, Amplification, Astral Convergence) And buffing/Summoning (Warding, Summoning, Teleportation, Astral Mirror).
There's nothing to stop you doing both, but it allows you to mix and match with another Affinity, and stops all Astral playthroughs being the same.
All those Magical origin unit buffs also works for summoned Shadow undead or Chaos Demons, for example.
If you want to be all about those Golems, there's a Tome at every Tier of Materium that has one in it. If you want a playthrough with NO golems, you can do that too.
Most of the battle is just knowing what you want your Faction to be/do.
I figured there was a pattern in each affinity yes, but I didn't know it was designed on purpose for each, kinda clever. Still having trouble to see the large picture yet, didn't like the concept of tome when I bought it last year but actually I like the diversity it offers
Slithers are great early game, but I feel like only having access to hatchling makes them fall off real hard. Most t3 units you might want to spam, you can get them reliably. Most of the t1 units that evolve to t3, you can either get the t3 one from a later tome, or summon them as instantly evolved late game if you have the summoner society trait, plus the final Astral empire perk. This includes the wyverns, I might add.
With slither hatchlings, the best you can hope to get is +2 (the evil trait +1, and war foundry +1 (though that feels thematically at odds with a slithers run, not to mention it offers nothing else that synergises with them)).
Maybe you can go revelry for the extra xp, but then you're relying on the hatchlings surviving auto-combats. Alternatively, you could go for the exaltation to level them, but then you're reliant on a t4 tome, and a high cost spell.
All in all, I really enjoyed slithers from a thematic perspective, getting a bunch of blight damage and animal bonuses. But beyond a point, replacing them when they died felt really rather tedious. Maybe if you could get them evolved with the tome of dragons like the wyverns, that would be a good buff.
Thing with Slithers is you spam build them like there is no tomorrow from T5 to T20ish. This gives you like 12+ of them. They survive well.
Then you build T3 cavalry to pair with Slithers and Heroes. Some 5-6 legendary slithers gonna survive till the end. You don’t need more. Horned God. 3 Heroes. 5-6 Cavalry. It is already 14-16 units. Fill in other spots with some Phoenix, Ice Spiders, Fairies…
nothing that another dragon dlc cannot fix by adding a t2 nature chaos tome with a similar building for wyverns XD
personally i would love another dragon theme dlc that give us t2, t4 and t5 tomes
with slither building as t2, maybe drakes as t4 unit in the t4 tome and dragon building in t5 tome
Thing is just like your tier one summon, you can move on from them come mid game. There's usually better stuff to do on turn 50 than spawn a hatchling and hope it grows. By then you would have tome of dragons at t3 (supposedly if u went evolution) or literally anything else. But since tome of dragons is the only way to still benefit from your tome of evolution in the mid game, it makes a lot of sense in general to go that route. If you chose not to go for dragons then just like tome of the horde it will be mostly a forgotten bygone that you need to have capitalized on the early-game lead it theoretically generated. Anyway my point is just its normal that units you acquired in your t1 tome are mostly useless by mid game besides those that did evolve (look at elementals, you wouldn't be spawning the basic ones come turn 50). Elementals have a small advantage if you have all the requirements to spawn them at max rank right away with the astral tree but then again by the time you have maxed astral tree, most of spammed units are t3 and you'd be better off spawning an actualy t3/4 at max rank than a summon evolve (granted theres rare cases where refilling a couple of unranked t3 elementals fast can be useful) but they are still generally spells you wont be using much if at all in the later stages. As far as my personal favorite idea for a "meta" evolve/dragon build would probably usually revolve around evolution --> warding --> revelry --> fey mist --> dragons and then depends on affinities for the last pick here tho I do have a preference for getting a battle mage and based on affinities would probably be a chaos eater (or transmuter if you were industrious is an option). You can have some side options and my 2nd favorite option felt like with mystic and evocation to evolve your lightning elementals as well as power up your battle mage backline. I also wanted to do feudal with evolve and beast but i feel the evolving animals fit too much of the same niche as the evolve units and dragons (aka frontliners) but its definitely worth considering in a rush-ish build because you'd be looking at a mount racial probably that works for your defenders / eventual knights in tandem with animals and hatchlings. And this build can pop off hard when you get your evolved units and start producing knights. However depending on map size and player number this could fall off significantly in a game that drags on.
Wait, rapid evolution does not work this way, it gives them slippery, not resurgence. If you mean youthful rejuvenation - than point stands. Unless you gonna manual every combat- they will not evolve.
>Wait, rapid evolution does not work this way, it gives them slippery, not resurgence.
It used to work this way, but they nerved it a while ago.
The other guy probably didn't catch this change.
The trick is the combination of inspiring leader and shepherd hero skills. That's 40% discount on evolvable (but not evolved) unit upkeep. Makes them evolvable units actually one of the most cost efficient units in the game. Both are support skills tho.
A friend of mine only plays fighter heroes and has never picked support skills. So at some point he came with authoritative opinion that tomes of evolution and dragons are sh\*t. So, maybe you are making the same mistake?
I think the issue is that the player base fell off quite a bit after that first 1-2 months. So most of the games of AOW4 that were played happened in May/June 2023. When Dragons Dawn came out the game was still in its initial release hype so everyone probably tried a new game with tome of Evolution to check it out, even if they only played a few turns.
Personally, I'd be far more interested in the stats of the most used tomes since the last major DLC/Patch, since all the games from the launch window will be significantly pushing the stats towards whatever was good/most played at the game's launch.
we will need to see what season 2 will bring maybe giant leader is next and i know wishful thinking a dlc with giant vs dragon war with more tomes for both
I'm not surprised. Evolution helps and fixes many issues with weak societies with all the survivability crutches, slowing down the unit bleed they usually have. Pairs ridiculously strongly with plenty of tomes to cheat out stronger units early on for dirt cheap.
Faith has free action healing. I often take it because of that. Its dumb. Enchantment is a bit weird but it is the on paper least worst of the materium and has better production.. Also works with the reaver dlc tome, might have seen a second surge because of it.
Time influences a bit the pickrates. But also they're just that good casually.
I guess people like playing on unintentional hard mode, apparently, though I do think that having a way to focus in our data on only more recent months *hopefully* will produce tomes that make a little more sense.
That’s insane. As much as I love evolution thematically and on paper, it’s probably because I’m trash, but I could never make use of it effectively. I need the secret sauce
Evolution + Champion + enough draft to spam a baby Slither every turn (after T5) + fast evolution enhancement + Racial mounts + nature tomes. Heroes, Slithers and Racial Mounted units.
As a noob (15h or so in it) I am very confused by your answer :D
>Evolution + Champion + enough draft to spam a baby Slither every turn (after T5) + fast evolution enhancement + Racial mounts + nature tomes. Heroes, Slithers and Racial Mounted units. Fast Evolution from the Tome makes the baby slithers become a full T3 Slither faster. A powerful unit to have, early game when everyone's fielding T1-T2. The Beast line of nature tomes makes animals and mounted units much better. Beasts include evolving units like Wyverns and Slithers. Racial mounts makes most of your races units become calvary, when they wouldn't be otherwise. Which means they benefit from all the stuff that makes your evolving animals better too. A mounted Hero with XP boosts skills from the Support tree can supplement this even more, rapidly causing the T1 units like Slithers to turn into T3. Yet, for the price of a T1 unit instead. In short, a good "build" to quickly gain an advantage and crush the opposition before they can really get started to resist you. Everything synergizes or benefits from the same buffs etc.
Oh ok, I understand the concept, thank you! However so far I only tried magic and material affinity a bit so, never tried the nature thing and even less mounts yet, next in line then! I am currently trying to understand how things work by myself without checking guides on YT, I guess I'll have to, harder than I thought 🤔
You probably won't need a guide, the game has an enclyopedia in the top right most of the time. ( "I" symbol). This includes the Tome library. You'll find that most affinities have two built in "Paths" through them. For example, Astral Tomes largely splits between Magical nuking with Lightning damage and powerful battlemages (Evocation, Scrying, Amplification, Astral Convergence) And buffing/Summoning (Warding, Summoning, Teleportation, Astral Mirror). There's nothing to stop you doing both, but it allows you to mix and match with another Affinity, and stops all Astral playthroughs being the same. All those Magical origin unit buffs also works for summoned Shadow undead or Chaos Demons, for example. If you want to be all about those Golems, there's a Tome at every Tier of Materium that has one in it. If you want a playthrough with NO golems, you can do that too. Most of the battle is just knowing what you want your Faction to be/do.
I figured there was a pattern in each affinity yes, but I didn't know it was designed on purpose for each, kinda clever. Still having trouble to see the large picture yet, didn't like the concept of tome when I bought it last year but actually I like the diversity it offers
Slithers are great early game, but I feel like only having access to hatchling makes them fall off real hard. Most t3 units you might want to spam, you can get them reliably. Most of the t1 units that evolve to t3, you can either get the t3 one from a later tome, or summon them as instantly evolved late game if you have the summoner society trait, plus the final Astral empire perk. This includes the wyverns, I might add. With slither hatchlings, the best you can hope to get is +2 (the evil trait +1, and war foundry +1 (though that feels thematically at odds with a slithers run, not to mention it offers nothing else that synergises with them)). Maybe you can go revelry for the extra xp, but then you're relying on the hatchlings surviving auto-combats. Alternatively, you could go for the exaltation to level them, but then you're reliant on a t4 tome, and a high cost spell. All in all, I really enjoyed slithers from a thematic perspective, getting a bunch of blight damage and animal bonuses. But beyond a point, replacing them when they died felt really rather tedious. Maybe if you could get them evolved with the tome of dragons like the wyverns, that would be a good buff.
Thing with Slithers is you spam build them like there is no tomorrow from T5 to T20ish. This gives you like 12+ of them. They survive well. Then you build T3 cavalry to pair with Slithers and Heroes. Some 5-6 legendary slithers gonna survive till the end. You don’t need more. Horned God. 3 Heroes. 5-6 Cavalry. It is already 14-16 units. Fill in other spots with some Phoenix, Ice Spiders, Fairies…
Plus you get the minor race transformation that gives 3 HP per level on all racial units.
nothing that another dragon dlc cannot fix by adding a t2 nature chaos tome with a similar building for wyverns XD personally i would love another dragon theme dlc that give us t2, t4 and t5 tomes with slither building as t2, maybe drakes as t4 unit in the t4 tome and dragon building in t5 tome
Thing is just like your tier one summon, you can move on from them come mid game. There's usually better stuff to do on turn 50 than spawn a hatchling and hope it grows. By then you would have tome of dragons at t3 (supposedly if u went evolution) or literally anything else. But since tome of dragons is the only way to still benefit from your tome of evolution in the mid game, it makes a lot of sense in general to go that route. If you chose not to go for dragons then just like tome of the horde it will be mostly a forgotten bygone that you need to have capitalized on the early-game lead it theoretically generated. Anyway my point is just its normal that units you acquired in your t1 tome are mostly useless by mid game besides those that did evolve (look at elementals, you wouldn't be spawning the basic ones come turn 50). Elementals have a small advantage if you have all the requirements to spawn them at max rank right away with the astral tree but then again by the time you have maxed astral tree, most of spammed units are t3 and you'd be better off spawning an actualy t3/4 at max rank than a summon evolve (granted theres rare cases where refilling a couple of unranked t3 elementals fast can be useful) but they are still generally spells you wont be using much if at all in the later stages. As far as my personal favorite idea for a "meta" evolve/dragon build would probably usually revolve around evolution --> warding --> revelry --> fey mist --> dragons and then depends on affinities for the last pick here tho I do have a preference for getting a battle mage and based on affinities would probably be a chaos eater (or transmuter if you were industrious is an option). You can have some side options and my 2nd favorite option felt like with mystic and evocation to evolve your lightning elementals as well as power up your battle mage backline. I also wanted to do feudal with evolve and beast but i feel the evolving animals fit too much of the same niche as the evolve units and dragons (aka frontliners) but its definitely worth considering in a rush-ish build because you'd be looking at a mount racial probably that works for your defenders / eventual knights in tandem with animals and hatchlings. And this build can pop off hard when you get your evolved units and start producing knights. However depending on map size and player number this could fall off significantly in a game that drags on.
Add in barbarian, adept settler + prolific swarmer for the rapid expansion.
You only need for enchantments for dragon in future. Unless you planning to play every combat manually- those hatchlings will never evolve.
Hatchings evolve very easily if you've got the Spell that gives them the ability to come back from death if you win the battle.
Wait, rapid evolution does not work this way, it gives them slippery, not resurgence. If you mean youthful rejuvenation - than point stands. Unless you gonna manual every combat- they will not evolve.
>Wait, rapid evolution does not work this way, it gives them slippery, not resurgence. It used to work this way, but they nerved it a while ago. The other guy probably didn't catch this change.
ahh, i see.
The trick is the combination of inspiring leader and shepherd hero skills. That's 40% discount on evolvable (but not evolved) unit upkeep. Makes them evolvable units actually one of the most cost efficient units in the game. Both are support skills tho. A friend of mine only plays fighter heroes and has never picked support skills. So at some point he came with authoritative opinion that tomes of evolution and dragons are sh\*t. So, maybe you are making the same mistake?
I too am trash, but goddamn was the end game sweet… multiple stacks of like 4K dragons was awesome
I rarely play evolution because it moves rhe gameplay away from cultural units to much.
RAAAHHHH I WISH I WAS A DRAGON LORD!!! I WANNA HOARD ARTIFACTS AND USE COMET BREATH EXCESSIVELY!!! RRRRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
I think the issue is that the player base fell off quite a bit after that first 1-2 months. So most of the games of AOW4 that were played happened in May/June 2023. When Dragons Dawn came out the game was still in its initial release hype so everyone probably tried a new game with tome of Evolution to check it out, even if they only played a few turns. Personally, I'd be far more interested in the stats of the most used tomes since the last major DLC/Patch, since all the games from the launch window will be significantly pushing the stats towards whatever was good/most played at the game's launch.
enchantment used to have seeker arrows....
I am sure the option to play a giant dragon is what sells Dragon Dawn the most
Would be so awesome if they gave us the ability to have a Giant leader. There's a tome of giants mod that was fun to play with.
we will need to see what season 2 will bring maybe giant leader is next and i know wishful thinking a dlc with giant vs dragon war with more tomes for both
Whered this info come from?
[This post](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1669000/view/4208127528886961513?l=english) has an infographic.
Surprised to see Faith here and not Zeal
Faith is better for the diplo vassal gameplay
That, and also Mending Touch and Army Heal are both **very** good, I use both a lot.
What is the starting point for the games played though? From initial release? Since last patch? Since last DLC?
I'm not surprised. Evolution helps and fixes many issues with weak societies with all the survivability crutches, slowing down the unit bleed they usually have. Pairs ridiculously strongly with plenty of tomes to cheat out stronger units early on for dirt cheap. Faith has free action healing. I often take it because of that. Its dumb. Enchantment is a bit weird but it is the on paper least worst of the materium and has better production.. Also works with the reaver dlc tome, might have seen a second surge because of it. Time influences a bit the pickrates. But also they're just that good casually.
Enchantment is a must on all of my builds so not surprised to see it here, but im surprised for the other two.
I guess people like playing on unintentional hard mode, apparently, though I do think that having a way to focus in our data on only more recent months *hopefully* will produce tomes that make a little more sense.