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Dev Diary #45 - Archon Prophecy: Tomes (Part 1)

Hello! My name is Luis, I am a senior designer here at Triumph Studios and I will be telling you about the tomes for the Archon Prophecy expansion, coming out on the 12th of August. In this first Dev Diary, I will be going over the Tome of Virtue and the Tome of Prophecies.

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Tome of Virtue​

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The Tome of Virtue is a Tier 2 pure Order tome that is all about fighting back in the toughest of moments and being able to pull through.
There will be two units to help you in your fights, the Paladin and the Vigil:

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The Paladin is a Tier 3 racial shield unit with support capabilities. Their Lay on Hands ability lets them or another unit keep pushing in combat, healing them and giving status protection against future attempts to place debuffs on them. While their smite is an excellent first strike ability, a single action attack that does good damage and places the Paladin in defense mode.

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The Vigil is the first new angel type unit you will gain access to in the Archon Prophecy expansion. They are summoned in the World Map and help support your other units with their radiant attacks. The Purifying Blast ability hits a main target and all adjacent units to it, removing all positive effects from the main target and two from all adjacent.

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Virtuous Spirit is a Minor Transformation that enhances the units of your culture to be stronger and sturdier. They gain Spirit Resistance and when dropping below 60% of their health they gain Defense and Resistance as well as ignoring part of their Casualties which would otherwise reduce their damage.

Other Spells and Unlocks:
The spell Heroic Stand is a Tactical Combat support spell that removes negative status effects from a friendly unit, gives them Steadfast so they cannot go under 1 Hit Point for a turn and removes all their Casualty penalties so they fight at full strength no matter how many losses they suffered.

House of Charity is a part of the Virtuous spirit of the tome. This city structure shows that charity can have its benefits as it turns 10% of the gold income in that city into double that amount in Food and Production. So if your city produces 100 Gold they lose 10 but it then gains 20 Food and 20 Production in return!

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Tome of Prophecies​

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The Tome of Prophecies is a Tier 3 Order and Astral affinity tome. Its spells manipulate probability and apply a new status effect, Precognition - a non-stacking buff that allows a unit to foresee the next direct attack against them and completely evade it. And one of the ways to apply it is through this tome’s new unit, the Oracle:

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The Oracle is a Tier 4 support unit that has two support abilities. Healing Portent heals all friendly units in an area for a 40 Hit Points and gives them Precognition. Striking Portent manipulates their offensive capabilities and in an area gives all friendly units True Strike so that they cannot miss on their attacks, and Fortune which increases their critical hit chance.

For the gameplay curious, True Strike bypasses Precognition, as Precognition makes you see the attack coming and thus making it easy to dodge but True Strike makes the attack unable to miss so there’s no dodging that.

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There’s two unit enchantments on this tome. The first one is Fated Projectiles giving ranged units an increased Critical Chance and Faithful reducing their Upkeep. And probably the coolest arrow enchantment particle effect in the game right now.

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Not to be outshined by the arrows on how cool it looks, the second enchantment of this tome is Prescient Circlets. This enchantment applies to all Melee type units and gives them a reliable way to gain Precognition, granting it to units whenever they enter Defense Mod.

Other Spells and Unlocks:
Battle Divination is a combat spell that has three phases - when cast it grants all units a 25% chance to evade ranged attacks. On the following turn it gives all your units Precognition. When it ends on the next turn, it gives all your units a 20% damage increase until the turn ends.

The siege project Foresee Downfall gives your units Precognition and a critical chance increase for the duration of the battle. It also gives all your enemies in that siege a chance to Fumble until the battle ends.

Temple of the Prophet is a simple Special Province Improvement for your cities - a Conduit that grants mana and gains additional Knowledge for each adjacent Conduit to it.

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That’s all for now! Hope you are looking forward to the release of Archon Prophecy on the 12th of August and in the meanwhile I will see you next week when we go over the Tome of the Archon and the Tome of the Revenant.

You could rely on prophecies to get your news...or you could just follow us:
 
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Not to be outshined by the arrows on how cool it looks, the second enchantment of this tome is Prescient Circlets. This enchantment applies to all Melee type units and gives them a reliable way to gain Precognition, granting it to units whenever they enter Defense Mod.

Like others have already mentioned this one looks ridiculous right now. Any T1 melee unit will be able to beat any shock troop with retaliation attacks. I am already seeing some militia slapping a Karagh into submission.
 
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Like others have already mentioned this one looks ridiculous right now. Any T1 melee unit will be able to beat any shock troop with retaliation attacks. I am already seeing some militia slapping a Karagh into submission.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you think retaliation is op, tome of tentacles has a buff.

I'm not sure that scaling t1 units is the most.... valid complain?
 
Scaling t1 units is a decent strategy. But it shouldn't* be the only one, and we need t2 to t3 cultural units to fill in the gaps.

Players should make decisions to buff their t1s OR all of their units, or specific types of units like shields, polearms, range, or battlemages. It would be nice to see seige units too. By offering more strategies to strengthen different units, the game only increases its replayability.
 
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I always think from a roleplay-perspective. The tome of prophecies is a real strange one like severing and tentacle and in some way alchemy. I will give it to some weirdo-wizzards sitting in their chambers and planning strange things. It doesn't really fill a gap in the tome lines, it's a bit outstanding for itself. I like it.
Tome of virtue is an excellent addition to the two existing order tomes of its tier. Variety is good for my order-pantheon-crew.
I'm really excited to see the two other tomes.
Great DLC again!
 
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The tome of prophecies is a real strange one like severing and tentacle and in some way alchemy.
A Dreadnought faction with Tome of Alchemy aiming to use Tome of Severing tech to counter wizards is possibly the most straightforward AOW thing I can think of. Though not quite matching the Materium theme, Tome of the Inquisition would otherwise easily match Severing's theme and still have enough affinity to take it.
 
A Dreadnought faction with Tome of Alchemy aiming to use Tome of Severing tech to counter wizards is possibly the most straightforward AOW thing I can think of. Though not quite matching the Materium theme, Tome of the Inquisition would otherwise easily match Severing's theme and still have enough affinity to take it.
Yes, you're completely right, it matches perfectely the materium theme. As I said, I have adopted a very specifical and subjective role-playing perspective. (My only mole faction led by a dwarfen wizard has a quite similar tome path to what you described.)
 
Awesome stuff, now AoW has its own Sororitas.

I do have to ask why Virtuous Spirit visuals is so toasty, like for real lol what with all that smoke. xD
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I wasn't expecting paladin as a tome unit, but it looks pretty good.

I just wish it had more armor and was male...there should be a gender transformation spell next season.
We kinda do have male ones with Templars tho, new Paladin is basically this but AoW edition
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Like others have already mentioned this one looks ridiculous right now. Any T1 melee unit will be able to beat any shock troop with retaliation attacks. I am already seeing some militia slapping a Karagh into submission.
That enchant is tier agnostic. So if it will be mildly annoying on T1s think how OP it would be on T4s. Talking about more OP things Healing Portent also looks extremely strong, especially if compared to T3 supports that we have now.
 
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The paladin unit doesn't look anything like the adepta sororitas. It looks like a t1 fighter. No details, nothing particulary special or cool looking.

If this was diablo the adeptas sororitas looks like she's a level 100 paladin. The aow4 paladin looks like he's level 1.
Heck even the aow2 paladin looked better and that guy had like 10 pixels. It just looks like some random person in an armor with a sword. It doesn't have a paladin vibe about him. I don't know if it's the colours or the lack of details on his gear or the lack of feathers in his helmet but it's just bland.


Edit: Look at the oracle for the complete opposite. That one looks very good.
 
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I don't know, different folks different strokes I guess. She looks quite in line with other units that we have now, take aforementioned Templar or Tyrant Knight, she looks a lot cooler than Tyrant Knight with his bummy duster for example imo. (the only thing I find a bit strange is the sword)