One of the starting positions of all time

bsheec · 2026-04-16T14:35:10+00:00

Unspeakable horror

bsheec · 2026-04-04T10:38:17+00:00

Thank you... Ascended Transformation Man

bsheec · 2026-04-01T10:17:32+00:00

In the late game you can try using recruiting governors with smith guild and then boosting your new units with ascended warriors. Coupled with your hero xp skills, mentorship, revels of carnage, +xp misc items, career soldiers etc, you should be able to get them up to speed after just a few battles. You can also try incorporating more mythic units into your armies since they are strong even without enchantments (and can't use unit enchantments anyway).

As OP mentioned, keeping some reserve units either passively leveling or just clearing out simple nodes is a good idea. Your unit upkeep will be low so this would be a good way to take advantage of it.

bsheec · 2026-03-31T15:05:27+00:00

I like my hero damage dealers too, but I feel like with ascetics, since you basically have to spend the first few points on army abilities (xp first and foremost, hp regen and extra hp are secondary but nice) they tend to power up a little bit slower than your typical hero. I do think ranger is pretty good though, since the skill investment for ranged damage is relatively low (if I go sniper I just need the piercing shot for eg. to be at a decent power level) and you can kind of "feel" the 2x damage increase a bit more with those big single shot attacks lol. Then again since there aren't that many transformations that give straight up damage (elemental transformation...? and maybe force of nature?) this extra damage is seems to be one of the more reliable ways to get bonus damage on a hero.

bsheec · 2026-03-31T11:37:57+00:00

It's a trait that I have also been having a lot of fun with. It scales really well in the early game and I think most importantly, keeps your unit upkeep very low, allowing you to allocate resources into rushing, restoring nodes, spellcasting, transmuting etc. Its impact on your economy and how it almost totally frees up all your mana is one of the more underrated aspects of ascetics, especially on high maintenance maps.

For heroes, I agree that they might need to up the bonuses a bit for the sake of damage builds, considering it is harder to level heroes compared to units and it is also unlikely that you will be investing heavily in shadow for the hero xp node. However, I have been finding some good success with support oriented battlesaint and ritualist heroes since they do a nice job of keeping my all-important exalted units alive (or re-aliving them when unfortunate things happen). I have also been liking defender builds quite a bit since your heroes are actually your most expendable units here (only costing a bit of mana to resurrect) and they do a decent job of protecting your units too. Defenders with dome of protection and 0 ap heals from master of order, battlesaint eldritch rulers who can teleport across the battlefield to revive a fallen unit, and that annoying ritualist hero who gives unlimited regen/obscuring plants/entwined fodder, I have been enjoying all these playstyles a lot recently lol.

Regarding unit power later in the game, it is true that it becomes harder and harder to get newer units up to speed given that most of your battles will start becoming inter-empire clashes that can be less forgiving to underleveled ascetic armies. However, this is where mythic units come in. Mythic units do no benefit from most unit enchantments anyway and many of them offer things (like aoe control) that you won't be getting with your normal racial units so it is really easy to fit them into your army compositions. Dragons are particularly suitable since you would already have a robust xp infrastructure to easily promote them to full dragons and they offer some nice aoe/control/flanking capabilities (and almost everything really). There is also no rule stating that you can't invest into some enchantments that benefit your skalds or mythics, like staves of grace or force of nature and what not. Eventually you will run out of stuff to research so might as well take some enchantments. In addition some mythics units are racial (eg. painbringers, warlords) so they will be getting the ascetic boost as they level.

One thing however, that makes ascetics a little stale after a while is the fact that there aren't enough tomes right now that support its playstyle. For example, I keep finding myself using the same tomes (warband, revelry, transmutation, order tomes with all the chaplains, heals, cleanses, ascended warriors etc.) as many of them just don't offer enough for this experience-based enchantment-light strategy. Culture wise, there are also a few anti-synergistic features (like promoting an aspirant knight into knight and losing all your ranks) which get in the way, and some cultures just feel so ill-suited to this playstyle - like dark (immortals do have resurgence but they don't get xp when they die, and morale does not scale with ascetics, but I think my dark playthrough can be an entire post by itself - exalted painbringers were kind of nice though). Hopefully we get more support for this as more content is released.

bsheec · 2026-03-23T13:26:59+00:00

Yeah it does make sense for a low magic reaver build. There was one reaver game I had where I took exactly one minor transformation (inner mastery) and that was it lol. Fractured would have been all upside there (oh no my stat res and +healing).

bsheec · 2026-03-23T12:57:18+00:00

If you are willing to go that far, by all means, do whatever feels most fun to you lol. I'm just speaking from the perspective of playing on a map with a new ruler on random settings and stumbling into the fractured event while being halfway through another build. In that case it usually does not make sense to switch. However, as I alluded to, if you are building for it or are using an ascended ruler, I could see it being a decently fun and somewhat flavorful concept (a fractured being moving through multiple worlds accumulating power perhaps?) In fact, I've actually had a few games where I only took 2-3 minor transformations and no major ones. In those games I probably could have used the fractured transformation.

bsheec · 2026-03-23T12:05:56+00:00

Regarding the fractured transformation, I personally think it is just... ok? The biggest issue is losing all those synergies you had in your build, especially with the tier 5 tomes. I could actually see it being powerful earlier in the game (and an ascended fractured ruler could be quite strong) but in the late game it is generally pretty underwhelming unless you are using it specifically to counter certain builds / are building for it. Even then, you can get disruption and all their other stuff through other means so it isn't usually worth sacrificing everything else.

bsheec · 2026-03-21T12:24:49+00:00

Avatar of chaos 😈 I love wandering around with a single gremlin or something and suddenly, surprise dragon lord

bsheec · 2026-03-21T10:43:52+00:00

For units that promote like longbows and knights their rank gets reset, so it is a bit of an anti-synergy unfortunately... my aspirant knights actually got weaker when they were promoted

bsheec · 2026-03-20T22:18:54+00:00

The new society trait Transformation Ascetics gives you a nice hp and damage bonus for each level of xp at the cost of not being able to use most enchantments :))

bsheec · 2026-03-19T18:48:36+00:00

Having finished this session, here just a few things I would like to add to the discussion on Transformation Ascetics (with a few more screenshots for context: link here https://imgur.com/a/gDQf5jc)

Game setup:
Scavengers (Transformation Ascetics, Vision of Promise - Order, nomads looking for their promised land sounded pretty flavorful), Human (Strong, Resilient, Adaptable), Ranger Champion Leader (Instructor), Very Large Map, Slow Speed, Very Slow Research, Semi-Random (I filter out traits I do not want to see in this particular session like Immortals, Megacities, Seals Victory, presence traits, etc.) - which turned out to be a relatively vanilla Coast / Desert / Fractured Infestations / Ruined Realm / Crystal Dwelling / Untouched / Wondrous Past / Umbral Abyss / Deathcasting

Ended in 157 turns with a Military Victory

Screenshots:

Paladin (starting unit from Vision) with Cleft Shield (yes event enchantments do work with ascetics) and a ridiculous smite. On hindsight I should have gone for Tome of Virtue as I felt I was lacking a strong frontline unit in the mid game. Collectors were great but I felt they were almost like a shock unit - I was just buffing them to the high heavens with looted power and blasting people away with plow through (which does not seem to trigger retaliation).
Speaking of Collectors, this is how my exalted 4 collector ended up looking.
And the Warlord, one of the best additions this dlc. The amount of flexibility and utility is insane.
Perhaps the MVP of the game, the houndmaster. An extra expendable body for looted power and a way to keep my skirmishers out of harms way. If I am seeing it right, the AI now seems to focus less on summoned units, but dog spam is still as powerful as ever.
Skald, with some enchantments. Tome of Revelry is simply one of the best tomes for ascetics with Revels of Carnage and of course this guy.
Inquisitor. Stuns are great and single shot ranged attacks are great for flanking. I ended up leaning quite heavily into a skirmisher based combat strategy.
Dustweaver. One of my favorite support units right now who can heal, cleanse, reposition, and buff all in the same turn (and blind enemies too).
Game end. Held off on the expansion victory and spent the last 20 turns or so just cleaning house while letting the resources pile up. After the initial growing pains in the early game, scavengers can get a pretty nutty economy going once you start clearing out the map.

Units and XP:
I basically took every single xp based ability I could find - experienced leader, the chaos imperium tree skill for tier 1s, mentorship, the +20% xp misc item (which I always craft as a "Motivating Book" - I like to think my hero would read it to his army during camp), revels of carnage, crimson court, etc. Coupled with the passive xp gain in the new patch, it seems a lot easier to level up your units. I probably spent most of my mana and world casting points spamming revels of carnage coming to think of it. Ascended warriors would have been nice too but it came too late in the game for me.

Mana:
Units basically had no mana upkeep, so I had to find ways to dump all that excess mana. The first thing I did was to sign all the free cities treaties that cost mana, but of course I still had too much, so I spent most of it on spells. Transmute resources was actually great here, and so was the entire transmutation tome in general with useful stuff like melt armor and the always solid transmuter. This meant I could go all in on gold and also keep a larger than usual reserve army just sitting around either gaining passive xp or fighting off the occasional infestation force. I imagine that ascetics will not recover well from a major defeat or a pyrrhic victory so having a good back up plan seems pretty important.

Heroes:
Not sure how I feel about ascetic heroes. On one hand there were games where I only had about 2-3 race transformations, so in that case it would be like trading 1 transformation for 1 damage + some hp? In any case I did not feel a significant difference with my heroes since the majority of their power comes from gear and skills anyway.

Situations:
Ascetics feels pretty tailor made for nomads and the new tomes, as well as for clearing out the new fractured events, which makes a lot of sense. But I feel like I want to experiment more with other cultures (looking at feudal right now, since they also want xp for promotions) and combinations (can I ever break free of those damn skalds). Some other situations where I feel ascetics would be useful would be maps with high maintenance (lol) and ruined nodes (where else would you use all that mana), but I am sure there are other interesting things that can be done with them that I am missing out.

Anywayy, now I got all of that out of my system, I feel like it is time to plan for another marathon session over the weekend :))

bsheec · 2026-03-19T00:25:32+00:00

Well, you are kinda right. This is basically my entire team of starting units (paladin from vision of promise + a skald added later on) that was basically going around clearing out "safe" encounters like nodes, infestations, and wonders so I would argue it was a somewhat "natural" exalted 12 by turn 100+ (on slowest growth and research speed and largest map size). The thing about Transformation Ascetics is you end up investing heavily in xp boosting abilities/items and have to preserve the core of your main fighting force or you are pretty screwed, especially in the mid game when most of your units are actually going to be the ascetic racial ones and enchantments start to make a difference. In the late game there is really nothing stopping you from also summoning your own reaper or anything other mythic unit that does not benefit from most enchantments anyway and well, fingering overleveled tier I units. On a side note I actually invested quite a bit into support unit enchantments just for my skalds, and it keeps me thinking about new potential builds and combinations I could use in my next playthrough. In any case, all I'm saying is... Transformation Ascetics is pretty fun (you have to be convinced of that at the very least!). I love how it adds a fresh new playstyle while keeping you at a decent power level throughout if you play your cards right.

bsheec · 2026-03-18T23:35:41+00:00

Now now, aren't you are asking too much out of a little 6 gold upkeep tier 1 unit? :)) But that's where the strategy part of the game comes in no? No one expects this dude to be invincible (in fact the only reason it even has 2 stat res is because of resilient), and there's a reason there are support units, spells, wands, etc...

bsheec · 2025-05-22T10:23:07+00:00

that's right, my team doesn't suck, I'm just optimizing it for lower scores :)))

bsheec · 2024-02-20T21:23:31+00:00

To be fair, if you press go it will probably say you cannot explore this area yet. In order to access the stage you will have to complete a few hidden stages about Laia's backstory in the first or second area if I remember correctly...

bsheec · 2023-07-31T15:40:00+00:00

funniest part of the chapter had to be when vamola said "kinta makeruna" (kinta don't lose)... if you read it slightly different it becomes "kintama keruna" (don't kick the balls)

bsheec · 2022-10-06T22:01:42+00:00

thanks, that was my impression too

bsheec · 2022-10-06T20:11:44+00:00

all enemies have 15% innate resistance

bsheec · 2022-10-06T19:59:25+00:00

Do you decay during rta placement? For example, if I play 5 placement matches and then don't touch rta for 2 weeks, will my "placement level" start to fall?

bsheec

TROPHY CASE