Age of Wonders 4: Mystic Necromancers Build

This race can be of any Physical form as mages and necromancers come from various sizes and forms. In death we are all equals.

For our Body and Mind traits we want to go for options that can give us resistances and magic damage. The ideia here is that we as mages even death ones will be using a lot of status effects specially frozen and morale shippons. So the options are:

• Resistant. Give us +2 resistance to magical effect allowing us to win over other magical races
• Resilient. Give us +3 Status effect resistance make in us basically immune to status effect in early game.
• Resolute. Gives us -1 turn for status effect.
• Spider mount. This one is for flavor give our units a spider mount. As we will be using mystic culture we will have access to 2 battle mage units right from the gate that can use this mount. It also gives us web that allow us to snare enemy foes witch gives our battle mage units more time to move and be in range without being run down.

• Arcane focus. This one is the most recommended as in this build we will run a lot of battle mages in our formations, so a 15% damage boost is perfect.
• Arctic Adaptation. Our build will be using dark cold and marching winter as terrain modifier so bonus move speed and being able to build farms in snow is also desirable.

Example as follow:

The mystic culture is the only culture that starts the game with battle mages available and have a battle mage unit as a tier 3 as well. Giving us a tier 1 battle mage, a tier 2 support and a tier 3 battle mage.

Apart from that this culture provide us with the star blade passive skill for all units( exception supports) giving all basic attacks after a spell is casted (and we will be casting spells) to deal +1 of a random element as bonus damage.

Last but not least the Mystic culture give us buildings the provide mana income, which will be essential for our mana economy.

For our society traits we have 3 options of traits.

• Mana addicts. The possibility of Gaining life steal on your mages is simply incredible and give us more durability, specially if we consider that battle mages cant take much damage in the first place. Also the free battle mage unit at the start of the game give us a early advantage for war and collecting treasures.
  
• Powerful Evokers. Gaining more ranking in all of our battle mages and supports will be another advantage considering that 80% of our units will fit into those 2 categories, also another battle mage unit for free give us early game advantage for war and collecting treasures.
  
• Adept Settlers. Is a great option for those who favor rapid expansion, making cheaper to settle and giving us more city capacity. Also the +1 population at start of the game give us a push for fast growth.
  
• Mana Channelers. Mana channelers is great as we will be summoning a lot of units to aid our armies and increase they size with easy.
  

The most optional combination is Mana addicts with Powerful Evokers. This one will give us + 2 battle mages or supports at the start of the game, giving us a medium size army on turn 1. The bonus casting points and the possibility to gain lifesteal with each cast will make our units battle ready from turn 1.

Mana channelers can replace Mana addicts if we want our army to have less battle mages and more summoned units as this will reduce the cost. The advantage of this strategy is to create armies faster and cheaper. With the option to summon units one or two per turn we can double our armies size faster than any other faction.

Adept settles is a option in case you are having trouble with food, the mystic culture don’t have unique buildings for food production making then really hard at growth, this trait will allow us to start with a additional population to mediate this weakness and will allow us to use the nature line that give us access to food production buffs. If you want you can use some tomes as well considering that nature give us a lot of summon creatures and support units making use of our other buffs.

We will be using tome of souls as our first tome, this is a really weak tome with no powerful spell or summon. The bone Golem is a good chock unit but we wont be able to use it right away. The reason we are stating with this tome is so we can start collecting souls from turn 1. Souls are a resource that takes time to gather even if you fight a lot. So its very important that we start getting it from the start. There are only 3 useful researches in this tome:

• Bone Golem. A good starting and our only shock unit during the early game.
  
• Soul Fire. A damge spell that give a decent area damage but her primary use will be to activate our passives.
  
• Soulbinders. Is here just to give us more souls.
  

Always go with wizard king for the extra 10% mana income and the combat spell points.

There is a lot of useful tomes in this build that we can make use of and the build can be played in different ways depending on the match.

• Tome of Souls

  . This tome is here so we can start at turn 1 collecting souls. There is few spells that really have any impact in our gameplay and this tome don’t give us a special province or building.
  

  Important research:

  • Bone golem: Our only shock unit for most of the game.
    
  • Soulbinders:
    
  • Soul fire: Early spell that give us good area damage and proc our passives.
    
• Tome of Cryomancy

  : This one is our first good tome, it give us more spell capacity, a battle mage unit, a summon unit, a really good combat spell that allow us to control the map and a special province that will make our late game incredible. Is worth noting that we don’t need weapon buffs as we don’t really use archers or pike units.
  

  Important research:

  • White witch: A good early battle mage with a map control and status effect application.
    
  • Ice Coffin: A good map control spell that can be used during the whole game.
    
  • Summon Lesser Snow Spirit: Cheapest Early game summon, a very good low maitanace summon for early game, serves well as a target for enemies.
    
  • Blizzard: A cheap enemy army spell that drains enemy resistances and allow our battle mages to shine. Specially good against tank compositions.
    
• Tome of Scrying

  This tome is incredible for us, it gives us our first tier 3 battle mage unit, a new defensive building and a excellent unit enchantment.
  

  Important research:

  • Summon Watcher:My favorite Battle Mage unit, it has good shock damage with long range, a stun skill and demolisher that allows this unit to destroy fortifications. Making it perfect for sieges. AND its a floating EYE.
    
  • Guided Projectiles: Allow us to ignore terrain accuracy penalties. Considering that most of our units are ranged this is a MUST.
    
  • Tower of True Sight:This is a simple but effective anti camouflage units building.
    
• Tome of Necromancy

  : This tome is another excellent tome for this build, our first tier 3 support THE NECROMANCER, a good enchantment that denies healing for enemy units, the ability to summon zombies during combat and the only building in the game that give us souls per turn.
  

  Important research:

  • Necromancer: One of the best supports in the game that give us resistance, deal poison damage, immunity to flank and can reanimate units. Its the core unity of this build.
    
  • Raise Zombie: Allow us to raise all dead units in a hex from the battlefield, combined with the necromancer we can simply never loose units and keep the fight for prolonged periods of time.
    
  • Necrotic Magic: A strong unit enchantment ta allow our units to appy a simple debuff cuting enemy healing capabilities.
    
  • Soulwell: This is automatically enabled when we select the tome and give us a special province that give us 3 souls per turn and counts as research post with all benefits from it.
    
• Cold Dark

  : This tome is how we modify the terrain to give our units advantage. Giving us another special province, a stronger summon, a minor race modification and our terrain modification.
  

  Important research:

  • Frostspire: Special province is automatically unlock when you select the tome, this province give us knowledge base on the number of arctic provinces, combining this with marching winter give us enough knowledge for the rest of the game. And give our units a temporary buff every time they pass trough this province.
    
  • Marching Winter: This will modify our cities and provinces terrain transforming then into arctic provinces, also give us +2 food and +production for each frozen terrain AND it extents outside of our domain when there no more provinces left to chance inside our borders giving us advantage when attacking neighbors.
    
  • Frostling Transformation: Minor race transformation that is extremely necessary after Marching winter, this will give our units moral on arctic terrain and frost resistance.
    
  • Summon Snow Spirit: Our next summon unit, good front line with ranged attack.
    
• Tome of the Great Transformation

  : Its the best shadow tome, give us the ability to transform all of our units in undead, making our previous undead spells stronger, give us a city spell that gives stability and damage to our units, and last a defensive structure for our city making this the best defensive tome of our list. This gives us first seed for magic victory.
  

  Important research:

  • Wightborn: Our core race transformation, transform all of our units to the undead type, all of our necromantic spell are now stronger and work with all units. This is the core spell of the build.
    
  • Domain of death: Give us stability and damge inside our cities.
    
  • Necrotic Spires: Defensive structure that heal alied undead, after wightborn all our units will be undead which makes this a must defensive structure.
    

These are the tomes needed for late game unit maintenance and combos, also important to notice that if you are not planning the magic victory I don’t recommend researching the Eternal lord tome as this don’t give much value outside this victory.

• Doomhead

  : This tome give us access to another tier 3 fighter unit that shippons morals.This tome can be researched after great transformation. at the end of early/mid game.
  

  Important Research

  • Banshee: Powerful early game Battle Mage that can be used until late game.
    
  • Joy Siphoners: Our units will be stealing moral for enemy making then miss attacks simple and efficient.
    
• Tome of Oblivion

  : This tome is the core of our battle spells in late game, giving army stun, area damage and a strong fighter unit for front line.
  

  Important research:

  • Summon Living Fog: Powerful fighter unit with low cost, that has demolish and can apply insanity. Best fight unit of our build for late game.
    
  • Devouring Fog: Great combat spell that deal physical damage in a incising area, ideal for long battles.
    
  • Ritual of Somnia: Stuns whole enemy army for 2 turn, SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE.
    
• Tome of Nature Cycles

  : This tome is a excelent support tome for longer games. Give us the ability to heal for each unit that dies, considering our ability to revive units this tome becomes extremely strong.
  

  Important research:

  • Druid of the Cycles: Our late game support unit that can heal and revive itself and allies. Basically a stronger necromancer that don’t require souls but extremely expensive.
    
  • Projectiles of Decay: This unit enchantment give our ranged magic units attacks blight damage, giving us another type of damage.
    
  • Parting gifts: This spell allow our units to heal every time a unit dies. Giving us infinity heal.
    
• Tome of Astral Convergence

  : This tome is needed so we can unlock tier V tomes. Also it gives us the ability to summon astral being in battle and to destroy enemy provinces. Remember to always build spell jammer late game to avoid the enemy to use this tome on you.
  

  Important research:

  • Arcane Maelstrom : Extremely strong siege project that deals damage to units and destroys all towers fortifications.
    
  • Explosive Manifestation: Combat spell that allow us to summon astral units in combat whiel dealing damage.
    
  • Astral Shattering : Destroys a enemy province and its improvements while summoning astral creatures. This will be our strongest spell to initiate a war with siege.
    
• Tome fo the Eternal Lord

  : This is the last tome needed for magical victory, there is only one spell really important here.
  

  Important research:

  • Battlefield Reanimation: This spell allow us to revive all undead units, and for us everything is undead.
    

Tome of Souls(Shadow) + Cryomancy(Shadow) [nivel 1] » Scrying(Astra) + Necromancy(Shadow) [nivel 2] » Cold Dark(Shadow) + Great Transformation(Shadow) + Doomhead(Shadow)[nivel3}» Oblivion(Shadow) + Cycles(Nature) + Astral Convergence[nivel4] » Ethernal Lord(Shadow)[nivel 5]

This tomes are good matches or replacements for the tomes we are already using in our build, they can complement something that is lacking or additional buffs for diferent scenarios.

• Tome fo Beasts

  : This tome allow us to summon a variety of creatures and give us another support unit that can also summon creatures, making this a interesting tome for early game in maps that we don’t plan to go Arctics. The problem here is that it slows the tome cycle if we plan to go with cyromancer and tome of souls.
  

  Important Research

  • Wildspeaker: Great support unit that can summon wild animals during fight.
    
  • Summon Wild Animal: This Allow us to summon animals in the map, the animal is random and can be very useful if the right animal is summoned.
    
• Tome of nature Wrath

  : This tome is cool but only give us the HORNED GOD, shadow mytic unit is the reaper that is extremely expensive and not so efficient. So its a good alternative.
  

  HORNED GOD
  

coming soon…

Our army formations depend and relly on the use of battle mages and support units, those are the units we are buffing during our tome choices so we need to keep on then. During the whole game there will be not a lot of variance in the formula.

• Magic ranged Hero
• 2 Battle Mages
• 1 Summoned Unit
• 2 Supports

This formula allow us to keep damage with our hero and Battle mages, while the summoned unit takes the damage. All of our support can units summon another unit and we have summoning spell so instead of 6 units in this formation we have practically 8 to 10.Our support units can also deal tremendous amounts of status effects making our battle mages more efficient.

Thanks to Torack for his great guide, all credit to his effort. you can also read the original guide from Steam Community. enjoy the game.