Age of Wonders 4 – Manual Combat Strategy Tips

Strat Tips for Manual Combat

Army composition and strategy matter, a lot. Don’t just throw in a bunch of random high tier units and expect to win manual battles. Have a strategy, build your army to use that strategy, then in manual combat stick to the strategy as much as the encounter allows.

One example is my brick wall strategy I like to use. Three shieldy guys with high defense/res/health, regeneration, keepers creed so they respawn on death. Then two druids who can revive them and can put out some heals. Said druids can also inflict death on foes. Then a hero with all support abilities to keep up the healing and revives.

The shieldy guys in the front, the brick wall, just don’t die. Leaving the druids and hero free to keep casting instant death on enemies and to chip away at the ones who resist death.

So manual combat for that is almost exclusively defensive. (That character goes for unity victory) I just find a nice spot to bunker, and stay there. Enemies have to come to me and if the terrain allows I can completely block off the druids/heroes so they HAVE to break the brick wall to hit them.

Strategy needs to adjust against fliers or teleporting units.

But that plays drastically differently from my barbarian build which focuses on a deadly alpha strike and rushing down the enemy with heavy hitting units. Focused on eliminating units as fast as possible.

And both play different to my undead build. Which is focused on wiping morale. Where I send 4 bonecrabs and 2 necromancers. Sometimes replacing a bonecrab for a druid. But armed with morale draining buffs, extra damage to low morale units, keepers creed so they resist death. Then a **** ton of revival spells/abilities. So the undead army just doesn’t stay dead. No matter how many times the AI kills them they just get back up. And the enemy army will eventually lose all morale and flee.

You gotta have a gameplan from turn 1 of manual combat. That gameplan will dictate how you play out manual combat.

That is the one thing that sets autobattle and the player apart. Autobattle can’t use a strategy. It just makes a n okay move for the current situation. But strategy might dictate that another move would be a great move.

In my brick wall strategy, the AI doesn’t understand the strategy. It leaves massive gaps in the wall, as it charges the shieldy units forward. And if the enemy gets past the wall, they win. So the AI loses fights that would have been very easy wins if they just bunkered and focused on defense.