Age of Wonders 4 tips: how to gain Pantheon XP quickly and what to pick
Age of Wonders 4 is finally out and as we’ve stated in our review of the game, it’s a gateway to living out your power fantasies with unlimited possibilities. If you want to feel really powerful and clever (and have a good chuckle at the absurdity of it all along the way), you’re probably looking for ways to cheese a little bit and gain some advantages – be it against the AI or your friends in multiplayer mode.
In that case, we have just the thing for you – some devious Age of Wonders 4 tips and cheeses that will help you gain Pantheon XP quickly to unlock some faction traits that are ridiculously powerful.
Age of Wonders 4: how to gain Pantheon XP quickly
In case you’re not caught up: The Pantheon is Age of Wonders 4’s progression system. You get XP for it while playing the game and can unlock additional cosmetic items, faction traits, gear for heroes, and more as you level up. The developers intend for this system to keep you entertained for a while as you unlock and discover new ways to play the game, but it’s only natural that you’ll want to have access to all those goodies as soon as possible, right?
Deeds like killing heroes or conquering cities will give you Pantheon XP – something like 5 to 10 XP. While that mounts up relatively quickly during long games, it’s not the quickest way possible to progress through the Pantheon and get to the juicy rewards.
To gain as much XP as possible as quickly as possible you need to play 1v1 against the AI on the smallest map you can generate – make it an easy AI if you want to be super quick about it. Then pick (or create) an offensively-minded faction with the Tome of Zeal, allowing you to bring summoned trash units into the game very early on to simply flood the opponent with to win the game. The Spawnkin Minor Race Transformation in the Tome of the Horde is another great option for this.
A victory, no matter if it’s won against a human player or an AI of any difficulty level, nets to 500 XP. Since you can easily win several matches under the conditions mentioned above in the span it would take to close out a regular match, this is a very simple way to quickly gain Pantheon Points and unlock additional content.
Age of Wonders 4: what to pick from the Pantheon
The Pantheon offers some really cool options for you to pick, but for some truly unique (and, to be honest, ridiculous) playthroughs, we recommend going down the third starting branch and then the third of the four main branches, which eventually leads you to the culture trait Chosen Destroyers.
Chosen Destroyers can only ever have one city, but gain permanent resource income in this city when razing other cities. Also, everyone will hate you, which saves you the hassle of having to declare wars on everyone. If you just want to go around the map plundering and sacking cities left and right as a warring horde, this is the trait for you.
Triumph Studios / Paradox Interactive
Branching off from this path on the right side is the Silver-Tongued trait, another hilarious option for a unique experience. Silver-Tongued will make your faction absolutely overpowered at trade and diplomacy. You can literally just get free trade deals with Free Cities, generating resources for you without having to invest anything. This trait makes vassalizing Free Cities quicker as well, as you’ll have an additional Whispering Stone right from the start.
Triumph Studios / Paradox Interactive
Pair this with another trait found in the Pantheon, Bannerlords, to get a really fun party going. Bannerlord makes the Rally of the Lieges happen twice as fast, allowing you to recruit armies from your allies and ancient wonders in your capital or send them to your vassals. With this playstyle, you don’t even have to lift your hands against your enemies – you can just drown them in the armies of your vassals.
Triumph Studios / Paradox Interactive
Age of Wonders 4: Mother Nature provides
Building an empire in tune with Mother Nature and punishing those who would violate her can make for a fun role-playing experience – and you can enhance your Nature playthrough with some very natural cheese. For this to work, you need to pick a Tome of Magic or a culture trait with Nature Affinity, as you need access to the Nature Empire Development branch.
There is a nice little technology in there, which allows you to obtain animal units whenever a city gains a new province. Now, usually that’s just a nice added benefit, as it occasionally grants you units to reinforce your armies with. However, if you place two cities close to each other, you can exploit this tech to produce a large amount of units in a short amount of time.
All you need to do is click on one of the two cities and check out the provinces bordering your other city. You can actually swap territories between cities, so do exactly that and switch out as many provinces as possible. Each of these provinces, despite not technically being new, will count as new territory for the city they’ve been swapped to, triggering the aforementioned tech and netting you a bunch of free animal units in the next turn. Since the Nature tech tree is all about buffing these units, they are not to trifle with by any means. This one might be a candidate to be patched out in the future, so enjoy it while it lasts.
Age of Wonders 4: overwhelming firepower
Want some really good ranged units at your disposal? Start by making a custom faction with the Keen-Sighted and Overwhelm Tactics traits, which will give your ranged attacks more accuracy as well as a higher chance of critical damage when units with Overwhelm Tactics stand next to each other.
Triumph Studios / Paradox Interactive
Next, get the Tome of Enchantment for Seeker Arrows, adding additional range to your attacks, and the Tome of Winds to unlock Zephyr Archers, a powerful Tier IV ranged unit. You can look into other Tomes of Magic after that, adding useful damage types to your ranged units depending on which enemies you’re facing.
You’ll still want melee units to block enemies from reaching your ranged troops, as they are pretty helpless in close combat, but this foundation will make your archers and even your combat mages into a lethal force that can pick opponents off from afar.
