Age of Wonders 4 Regular Province Improvement Guide

Welcome to Age of Wonders 4 Improvement Tier list. Age of Wonders is a 4x game that shares many similarities with games like Civ, Might and magic, and master of magic. The macro can be overwhelming. So today, we will be talking about the pros and cons of the province improvements in this game.

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First, lets list out the basic types of improvements
We have:

• Mine – makes gold
• Research Post – makes books
• Conduit – makes the infamous glass grade skyblues
• Quarry – makes bricks
• Forester- makes bricks and apples
• Farm – makes apples
• Fishery – makes swimming apples
• Hut – makes mini apples

This tier list is going to be based on:

• What resource the improvement and their guild produces
• How often they boost or is required for what building infrastructure
• How many special province building and perks synergize well with them
• How spamable are they to help with guild and special province synergy

Note that boost only give you 30% of the building’s production
(which is free two hundred and fifty production at most if you apply it on the one guild you can build per town that makes you go out of your way to make the boost. You’ll usually only get like one hundred fifty to seventy five productions out of it… which sometimes might not be worth it to go out of your way to get it… Since six turns of switching three quarries back and forth for the boost is like ninety to two hundred and seventy production got trashed or turn into food or something depending on your set up)

Pros:

• Makes gold dust
• Makes more gold dust with merchant’s guild
• Have Some but few special province and perks synergy
• Some special province labeled as mine available to help with the uncommon issue

Con:

• Kind of uncommon, they are basically like the shiny pokemons of the quarry world
• Hard to group together for special province buff because they are all shiny pokemons, hard to make full use out of unless you choose tomes for it
• Boost nothing but only caltrop stash, which is basically lego bricks you put in the battle field floor to share with your enemy some pain you felt this morning so you all can have a common topic to netflix and chill and hash it out after the sword exercise
• Very unethical, Probably employs slave labor (even the guild is owned by the merchants)

Put it in A Tier, would be S tier if spammable and have more early synergetic building, and would have been A+ if the materium empire development perk gives something else other than +10 draft

Like Steven He’s dad says, A stands for average

Pros:

• Basically a gold mine but it makes books, pretty important
• Makes more books with bookworm guild
• Many special provinces synergize with it
• Alot of special province is label as research to help with the shiny pokemon issue
• Kind of need it to build the academy, or the university of this world for your townsman so you can sell them student loans with interests.
• Good Holiday vacation spot with your family, just make sure your 3 year old kid didn’t wander off and fall into a pond that’s covered up by duckweed cus your kid thought it was a patch of grass
  • I know it sounds specific but it totally didn’t happen to me by the way, totally wasn’t an anecdote

Con:

• Hard to spam
• Hard to group because hard to spam

Definitely A Tier

Pros:

• Honestly same pros as research posts
• Need to at least build one for the big mana mama greek faced statue building

Con:

• Honestly same cons as research posts
• Probably looks like a 4G tower and I bet some people thinks they cause cancer

Put in A Tier because mana is pretty power and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t cause cancer

Pros:

• Makes bricks with hammers and pickaxes, pretty poggers
• Makes even more bricks with worker guild, just make sure you stop them from doing labor strikes
• Many synergies with perks and special province but mostly in materium section
• Very spammable, You can build a town with only quarries on a good day. WIth some quarry buffing special province, you can send your brick piles to the moon without needing rockets
• Extra bricks donated to mana buildings to boost and make them cheaper, and apparently you need bricks to make brick buildings that makes bricks

Con:

• Honestly, brick isn’t gold, I would rather have a golden brick made out of gold dust than bricks… You also can’t spend it outside the town because apparently other towns don’t accept bricks that are made and stamped outside of their city.

Put in S Tier cus I’m a brick fan but really it’s because its very spamable, and have good synergy with multipliers, and production is a very solid resource

Honestly, forester is really just a lesser version of Quarry, makes 3 bricks and 2 apples

Pros:

• A lot of buildings gets boosted by it & a few buildings needs it
• Spammable and pyre building is easy access early which makes it poggers
• Apparently if you throw the wood into a ritual pyre, it turns into these skyblue crystals that are normally made in a secret lab underneath a 4G tower.

Con:

• Smith’s guild is very lame, gives you apples and sword, big downgrade from Worker Guild (They really need to buff draft for non war people, at least make it 1-1 food conversion rate or change the conv to gold)
• It loses 2/5th of its production to make apples? Not very nice unless you build it around the pyre to get some blue crystal out of it

Solid B Tier IMO, only pyre and barbarian’s forest of dead trees synergize with it
Smith guild is just worse than bookworm or mage guild but at least Forester is more spammable and pyre is early access. Forest of stakes is cool but +7 draft is only useful if you stack upkeep reduction and wage a lot of wars… But still need shiny brick to pay for those units

I know it’s tempting to do it for the events and the boost but Don’t listen to nike, don’t do it…

Pro:

• Lot of useful buildings gets boosted by it, like merc and work guild, along with gold and production building, also required by some food buildings that you don’t need but is nice to have
• Gotta say it looks nice
• Some family may tell their kids that farms are where they are going if they dont get good grades and get into good college but…. I say sometimes making apples pays more than working for minimum wage……
• Easy to spam, group, and set up but it makes apples and only apples even with special province building. It keeps the doctors away, and you need doctors

Con:

• It makes apples and only apples, abby is the only special prov that makes it make something that is consistently not apple
• If that isn’t enough reason, let me emphasize that the 100-300 production a turn that you trade in from not building quarry, which will let you get ahead in infrastructure and fund at least 3 more outposts late game, isn’t worth enough for maybe 2-3 more provinces in the late game

Straight up C Tier no cap, C stands for I’m concerning for the future of farms and it needs buffing

UHhhhhhhh Maybe on a watery map u have more chances to build it?

Pro:

• Reasonably solid guild, draft and food is kind of lame but at least the overall output of the guild gives you 2 more resources than regular guilds
• Honestly that’s mostly it

Con:

• Arguably worse version of farm what you do with it………. Because no boost no synergy
• It Makes apples…. Automatically a lame province improvement… At least these apples are more interesting since they have fins and moves
• Can’t spam it on non watery maps

Can’t really say they are better than Farms……………………….
C- Tier

Pro:

• Lmao what pro?
• UHHHH build one to unlock the forger’s market…Don’t need but nice to have…… Probably wanna switch it out after that

Con:

• 2 apples with no synergy? Like…… Is it even a province building or a landmark to tell people you own the place

F Tier

Just as Steven He’s dad once said, F for failure… Wait no, I think he said C for failure. By his standard, pretty much farms, fisheries, and huts are all failures.

Tier list is right here, you can see it, just scroll up if you forgot why.
It is to note that 4G tower in cities with transmute resource is boosted to S tier due to how well transmute resource synergize with mana.

Just spam quarry if you aren’t sure what to spam, fits any build imo
Prioritizing spamming mines or conduct or research post if you pick the right book with special province buildings for it and sets it up right, use quarry to filler if need to

Do farm and forester if you really want to, or just really want to RP
Do fishery if you can’t build anything else but huts
Spam hut if you want to RP even harder and give yourself the caveman penalty
Make sure you at least build 1 conduit and 1 research post if you arent focusing on those when your town is around 5 pops. You want to be able to build the academy and greek faced statue for books and skyblues