Age of Wonders 4 Tier List - Race Transformations

Faction creation and customization is a huge part of Age of Wonders 4, but the fun doesn't stop once a game has started. Inside AOW4's tech tree are 20 research options that unlock race transformation spells! In this video I'm ranking the minor and major race transformation spells, and breaking down what each one offers as quickly as I can. Thanks for watching this Age of Wonders 4 factions tier list looking at the awesome race transformations! #ageofwonders4 #strategy #gaming

Contents:
0:00 - Race Transformations in Age of Wonders 4
1:15 - [MINORS] Animal Kinship
3:05 - Glades
4:34 - Supergrowth
5:55 - Annointed People
7:05 - Magical Wards
8:07 - Astral Blood
9:25 - Spawnkin
11:12 - Revelry Heart
12:08 - Vessels of Chaos
13:42 - Scion of Flame
15:45 - Earthkin
17:00 - Steel Skin
18:02 - Golden Touched
19:30 - Joy Siphoners
20:30 - Frostling Transformation
21:53 - [MAJORS] Gaia's Chosen
24:20 - Angelize
25:46 - Astral Convergence
27:55 - Demonkin
29:51 - Wightborn
32:00 - Conclusions
32:38 - Concessions

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[cameronmanchester]

I think Gaias chosen also makes your units count as plants so you get any buffs your plants would have

[LYFE]

Re: Angelized - noticed that if you pair it up with the Tome of Nature's Wrath's Awaken Instincts spell - your entire army effectively get to take your turn again. Awaken Instincts refills your AP (along with some other stuff), and normally causes Berserk, but when you are Angelized the Berzerk doesn't affect you so you just regain AP at full control :D.

[CornBredCrusader]

Gaias chosen makes all of your units count as plants, which buffs them from all of the other nature books that you might have picked up during the game. And then once you go for tier 5 nature, you can revive all plants, so all your units get a mass revive.

If you are heavy into nature, then Gaia is S tier (imo all of these are situational depending on map, faction, and game development, some are just more generalist than others)

[ELIASFA]

SuperGrowth + Giant of the earth + Angelize will always be S tier in my heart purely because they make your heroes look gigantic in the world map and at the victory screen you're only going to see your leader's boots.

[Swordphobic]

You don't seem to value status resistance, quite often in endgame, resisting a conversion, a seduction or an outright kill spell is quite major.

[omologo]

Gaia's Chosen is imo by far the best major race change. The hidden bonus of turning your people into plants give the race change access to some heavy, heavy bonuses (and some drawbacks). The other race changes are good as well, as they should be, but Wighborn for instance is just so so so expensive to get going (200 souls isn't exactly easy to get at times) that it sometimes feel like you don't have the time to get it going. And if you really want the lifesteal bonus, you could also consider going Mana Addicts society trait which is arguably the best trait anyways. The Astral race change is kind of terrible though. Getting ~30 mana and knowledge extra a turn at that point in the game is very marginal. Uhh, I got a bit off track; my point being that Gaia's is the best. Wightborn still has the undead synergies, but... It really is so so expensive.

[iondragonx]

3:12 Leafskin was buffed. It now give +1 Resistance as well.

[JB-xljc]

Love me a good racial tier list. Uh... I mean... wait, not like that!

[notalefty]

I think Astral Attunement is the worst major by some margin if you want to use racial units in combat. Its clearly intended for a summon focussed game where racial units see little use. +1 knowledge and mana per pop size is never going to be a massive economic benefit (a large city will have hundreds of each), but its better than nothing if you are using non racial units in combat.

Frenzy is very powerful for units that attack 3 times rather than once, as it stacks very quickly. I would say Demonkin is therefore the strongest major transformation when adding in flying.

I dont rate Wightborn very highly. Undead traits overall are quite bad. I tend to find its rather easy to get benefits from high morale in large fights in particular (on harder difficulty settings, you really need to trade efficiently, so if you aren't killing more than the enemy, you are screwed and if you are, you will nearly always have positive morale). The resistances suck as your net loss is substantial and poison isnt enough to offset it. Undead immunities are significantly fewer than in other titles. It doesn't prevent enemies life stealing for example and doesnt offer blanket mind immunities.

As for life steal, its certainly useful, but you rate this much higher than Gaia's chosen. +20 health is generally better. You will need two full attack actions AFTER taking damage to equal Gaia's chosen and honestly, this isnt all that common a situation. If you are getting hit with a lot of AOE, its pretty good and if you are turning up to the fight half dead its good, but overall, I would sooner take a large boost to status resistance rather than some nasty penalties and a significant bump to my max health as this is going to stop being disabled or killed outright from focus fire in a way lifesteal wont. If you are disabled, you cannot lifesteal. If you dont survive being attacked for more than 2 rounds, which frankly wont happen if you are focussed, lifesteal is worse than Gaia's chosen. The entire stack having lifesteal is a lot less useful when only 1 or two units are taking damage at a time. More max health always makes any unit tankier, and not getting hit by debuffs can be massive.

Although not listed, it turns you into a plant type also, which is better overall for nature affinity, though does also come with some nasty negative resistances, but unlike wightborn, you do get the universal status resistance to mitigate this.

[TymberJ]

And for a note on Angelize -- Faithful reduces your unit upkeep by 10%, but there are buffs/benefits in the Order tree that synergize with it, including spells/units that scale their damage based on friendly Faithful units in battle, and Tier V tome spell Mass Revive resurrects *all* Faithful units. If you're going for the Tier V Order tome, that Faithful buff does work.

[Demedich]

I personally really value Earthskin. +1 defense early on is something that is game changing when reducing damage in early fights and it’s snowballed me through a lot of games where I otherwise would have struggled.

[badtiming]

I love the comments section because they often point out some OP strat or cool interaction I've never heard of or even considered.

[Swordphobic]

Gaia's chosen is easily an S tier if you combo it with the 5th tier tome spell that ressurrects all plants.

[ddenozor]

Gaia's chosen is at least S tier. No ifs, no buts. Plant synergy is crazy in end game. Also very important thing about spawnkin is that your heroes get the %20 dmg bonus without losing any models, so it's pretty huge aswell. Even without counting that it's S. Status resistance should be weighted higher, as pretty much every tactic either requires some sort of negative effect on enemy to be effective, and also you don't want enemy debuffs to easily negate your own buffs. It's pretty important.

[DenverZenn]

One thing not mentioned in Gaia's Chosen is that it also turns your race into the plant type. This synergizes so well with the other nature books (like the fifth tier one that heals/revives all plants in your army) I can't see why anyone would put it lower than an S tier. Personally, it's my go-to major transformation if I'm not picking up Angelize.

On a more subjective note, Steel Skin is one of the only transformations (the only other one being Rock Skin) that grants the universally applicable Defense increase (at a moderate +2 as well). Most enemies do some sort of physical damage, so anything that increases defense gives your units a much increased survival rate. I would've placed it at least a B personally. You're giving your entire race the Tough trait, or doubling it if you already have that. It's as if you permanently had the bonus from Defense Mode on (except for the immunity to flanking).

[SourceOfViews]

7:33 resistance doesn't reduce the damage by the amount of resistance, but by 10% multiplicatively. So this reduces damage by 19%, not by 2. That's nothing to sniff at imo.

[TymberJ]

I'd double check how elemental resistances work. Resistance isn't a one for one reduction in points of damage taken -- a one point increase in a resist is ~10% less effective damage taken of that type. 1 = 10%, 2 = 19%, 3 = 27%, etc. So, for example, a Finger of Death that does 45 Frost base, at 1 Frost Resist is 40 damage, at 3 Frost Resist is 34. So +3 Resistance is a 30% increase in effective health against that type of damage.

[vRANDv]

>spending 1800 research to unlock astral attunement, by his own admission, which will only get him 50-60 knowledge per turn, for 30+ turns just to pay itself off

>"S-tier"

mans wildin

[pidgy]

I'm a big Supergrowth advocate, simply because I just really like leaning hard into nature tomes

[thedarkmaster]

It should be noted that wightborn completely removes morale mechanics from your units, both good and bad. This soft limits what tomes and transformations you can combine with it. For example, revelry, doom herald, and cold dark tomes become a lot worse when combined with it since your units can no longer benefit from positive morale effects.

With the frostling transformation, the tome of cold dark includes the ability to rapidly terraform large amounts of territory around your cities into arctic terrain at a pretty low price. So you'll almost always get to benefit from the arctic bonuses on the defense.