Important: This guide will be outdated as of the Throne of Blood update on November 11, 2025 which will include a complete rework of the Dark Culture. An introduction to the Dark Culture with tips for using them effectively and a sample build. This guide is mostly for those who are new to playing Dark Culture or would like a better understanding of how their units, structures and abilities work together. This guide is based on the most current version of the game as of July 1, 2025 with all DLC and Pantheon unlocks. Culture Overview A dictatorial civilization where the strong and ruthless dominate the weak. They use forbidden magics to maintain control and weaken their enemies. Their unique buildings increase Knowledge income and allow you to ignore the consequences of low City Stability. Dark culture gains extra income from keeping enemy heroes in their prisons and crypts and cultural units specialize in inflicting negative status effects and exploiting them with Cull the Weak. They also start with a slight negative alignment making them inclined towards evil game play but you can easily overcome this if you prefer to play a good aligned Dark Culture. Dark culture is all about preying on the weak, capturing or killing enemy heroes and gaining knowledge through any means. Necromancy is not inherently part of the Dark Culture but they do work well with necromancy tomes and raising undead if you choose to pursue that line of research. Cull the WeakThe defining characteristic of Dark culture. Ranged and Magic attacks from your cultural units have a high chance of inflicting the Weakened debuff to their targets. Your melee culture units do more damage to units that have been weakened and will trigger a small self heal. Tip: In combat, you ideally want to start by weakening your opponent’s units either through your ranged attacks or spells like Baneful Curse. Then attack with your melee units for the damage bonus and self heal. Weakened units will also do less damage to your units. AffinityDark culture begins with two points of Shadow Affinity which helps you advance along the Shadow path of the Empire Skills. Tip: The Shadow path provides perks that increase knowledge gain, provide new uses for Whispering Stones, reduce upkeep for magic origin units (including undead), level up your heroes faster and even allow your units to regenerate hit points while in hostile domain. Alignment Dark culture starts with a slight negative alignment making them lean slightly towards evil. Tip: This can easily be overcome if you want to play a good aligned dark culture by making good choices during game events or by selecting a positive alignment Society Trait such as Keepers of Knowledge. Dark Culture TomeThis tome is available to rulers with the Dark culture from the start of the game. The spells specialize in negative status effects: Baneful Curse - This applies weakened which can set up Cull the Weak Ice Shackles - Frost damage and inflicts Slowed (reduces retaliations) Brand of Wrath - By default only your cultural units have the Cull the Weak ability. This spell gives Cull the Weak to all units in your empire.Tip: Baneful Curse will make sure your enemy is both Weakened and less resistant to your unit's attacks, a great way to start any battle. Ice Shackles can provide some extra damage and inflict slowed so your enemy will not be able to retaliate when your melee units attack them. Band of Wrath will be very important later on if you decide to use Undead units or any units unlocked by tomes that are not members of your race. Special Province Improvement (SPI)Dark Forge (Mine) Provides Draft and Gold income and additional Draft per adjacent Quarry or Mine Unit Deployment Location Requires Town Hall 2 Tip: Special Province Improvements can be placed on any owned province regardless of what improvement is currently there. For example, the Dark Forge does not necessarily have to be placed on an existing Mine, it can replace any improvement. Culture Units Outrider (Scout) - The Dark culture scout gains the Infiltrate ability which increases their vision range in hostile territory. They also can not be detected in forest, mountain and swamp terrain. Pursuer (Ranged) - Can inflict Weakened through the Cull the Weak ability and have the option of becoming mounted cavalry if you select the Mount Masters form trait or a unique mount type. Dark Warrior (Shock) - Charge Strike does bonus damage if you move before attacking in addition to canceling the unit's defense mode and removing its ability to retaliate. They gain even more bonus damage if you attack a weakened unit due to Cull the Weak. Warlock (Battle Mage) - Sundering Curse can not miss and will always inflict Weakened and Sundered Defense & Resistance but requires a full action. Weakening Bolts is a base magic attack that has a high chance to inflict Weakened for when your Curse is on cool down. Both attacks do Frost damage. Night Guard (Polearm) - At the end of this unit’s turn all adjacent enemies have a high chance of receiving Sundered Defense & Resistance. Also benefits from Cull the Weak. Dark Knight (Shock) - Just like with the Dark Warrior, Charge Strike does bonus damage if you move before attacking in addition to canceling the unit's defense mode and removing its ability to retaliate. They gain even more bonus damage if you attack a weakened unit due to Cull the Weak. They also have the Dark Surge ability which can not miss and does Frost damage in a cone, doing double damage to units with any negative status effect (including Weakened). Tip: Ideally you want to use your Night Guard to Sunder Defense & Resistance, use your Pursuer and Warlock to inflict Weakened on as many targets as possible so they do less damage to your units, and use your Dark Warriors and Knights charge attack to cancel enemy Defensive Mode and Retaliation, while gaining temporary hit points and doing extra damage from Cull the Weak against those already Weakened targets. City Structures The unique city structures available to Dark culture increase Knowledge income compared to the basic structure they replace and in some cases increase the knowledge gained from heroes in your prison and the mana gained from heroes in your crypt in addition to what the base Prison and Crypt structures provide. Experimentation Chambers - Dark culture version of the Vendor, adds knowledge income in addition to gold. Underground Laboratory - Dark culture version of the Market, adds knowledge income in addition to gold. Interrogation Dungeon - Dark culture version of the Tavern, adds knowledge income and increases knowledge generated per hero in the prison. Ritual Mausoleum - Dark culture version of the Bathhouse, adds mana income and increases mana generated per hero in the crypt. Dread Spire (Town Hall 2) - Prevents income penalty from low stability. Overlord’s Tower - Prevents provinces from breaking away due to low stability.Tip: As you can see, many of these buildings add extra Knowledge compared to the buildings they replace as well as some extra mana to pay for enchantments or upkeep on magic origin units which includes undead. It's important to remember that the Underground Laboratory and Interrogation Dungeon can be built in each of your cities which means that leaving heroes in your prison and crypt can generate lots of knowledge and mana which increases further each time you build more of these structures in your cities. Of course the trade off is not getting the gold and items you would get from selling the remains or granting freedom but that is a small price to pay. Dark culture also has two buildings that negate the consequences of having low stability - your people may be unhappy but you don't have to worry about it so let your cities grow as large as you can especially if you're going for Expansion victory! Sample Dark Culture Build One of the best things about AoW4 is that there are so many different ways to build great empires. This is just a sample to give you an idea of a good build with some synergy but always make your own choices and pick whatever sounds most fun to you! The focus of our strategy will be Gain as many vassals as possible and collect lots of resources from them Weaken and lower the morale of our enemies Gain lots of Knowledge and lead armies of powerful undead Form TraitsOgrekin (pick anything you like) Arctic Adaptation - Many of the Shadow tomes and SPI gain benefits from snow and ice so starting in and being able to terraform to Arctic terrain works very well for Dark culture. Nightmare Mounts - All of our cavalry units (and our ruler) will have some extra HP but more importantly, Intimidation Aura and Vicious Killer traits which will help our plan to lower enemy morale. Adaptable - I use this trait on most of my builds because all units get stronger as they level up and gaining those levels faster makes our armies stronger. Society Traits Keepers of Knowledge - Unlocking new research and tomes improves our standing with Free Cities and Empires and increases our knowledge for having open borders with them while giving us vision and even more Knowledge from every Vassal with one of our Whispering Stones! Silver Tongued - Allows us to make completely one sided deals with our vassals where we get more resources from them without having to pay anything for them! It also gives us an extra scout to explore the map and find those potential vassals faster. As if that's not enough, we also get an extra Whispering Stone which we need to make those Free Cities into our Vassals and the ability to use our Whispering Stones to get tribute from other empire's vassals. Tip: With this setup we will start the game with two Shadow tree perks already unlocked. This is nice because we can use the Imperium that we would have spent on these perks for other things like founding cities. Imperium is a very important resource and hard to come by so getting two perks for free is great. Tome Research

在这个构筑中，我们将从【冰系魔法之书】开始。这本书能让我们解锁冰系魔法学派，这是一个强大的专精，可为每个相邻的雪地或冰原省份提供知识和 mana。这与我们的极地适应开局配合得非常好！ 黑暗文化的核心在于施加负面状态，而这本书为我们的技能库增添了另一种负面状态——冻结！【霜冻箭】、【白女巫】和【冰棺】都是冻结敌方单位的绝佳选择，记住，你的黑暗骑士的【黑暗涌动】技能对任何带有负面状态的单位都能造成额外伤害，而不仅仅是虚弱状态。 小贴士：你不必只局限于使用暗影系魔法书。你可以通过混合其他亲和来创建各种强大的构筑，这也能解锁那些帝国技能树中的专长，但为简单起见，本构筑将全力投入暗影亲和。 统治者：泰拉·虚空使者 冠军职业 - 死亡骑士 - 暴君之剑与盾牌 冠军职业有助于我们获取附庸的计划，也是统治者获得【剔除弱者】文化特性的唯一途径，因为其他所有统治者类型都不属于我们的文化。我们还可以使用【果断指挥】技能来施展一些不错的战术技巧，例如让术士移动、恢复行动点，然后在同一回合内使用他们的完整行动【诅咒】，或者让黑暗骑士移动后仍能使用【黑暗涌动】。我们还希望施加虚弱状态并降低敌人的士气。死亡骑士可以通过他们的诅咒施加虚弱，暴君之盾能为我们提供恐吓光环，同时仍允许我们使用特殊的梦魇坐骑。你可能会在游戏初期就用更好的装备替换暴君之盾，但这没关系，因为你仍能从梦魇坐骑获得恐吓光环。如果你喜欢，长枪也是另一个不错的选择。 野心方面，【恐惧散播者】可能是主题上最契合的选择。【收藏家】有不错的奖励，而且相当容易达成。 AI性格方面，【阴险间谍】（选择任何你喜欢的）。这一点只有当你计划将这个帝国作为AI对手进行游戏时才重要。游戏计划 《自由城市》- 尽快派出两名初始斥候进行探索，以寻找黄金奇观并与自由城市建立联系，然后开始分发【低语石】。一旦某个自由城市达到附庸等级，就将该【低语石】传递给新的自由城市。你要在其他帝国抢先之前，尽可能将更多自由城市转化为附庸。不要忘记，你可以在通用帝国技能树中额外获得一块【低语石】（总共3块），并且你也可以将【低语石】给予其他帝国的附庸，以从他们那里收取贡金！最重要的是，务必查看每个自由城市的合作界面！【巧舌如簧】特性使我们能与每个附庸达成免费协议，别忘了使用它！另外，请记住，虽然我们很想获得附庸以利用巧舌如簧特性，但如果你最终与自由城市开战也并非坏事，因为他们会定期派遣战团攻击你，这让你有机会将更多英雄关进监狱或墓穴！ 战斗方面——始终尝试通过你的文化单位、法术或死亡骑士诅咒尽可能多地传播虚弱状态。此外，我们要通过法术、梦魇坐骑或恐吓光环等特性尽可能降低敌人的士气。这会使敌人更容易攻击失误，并可能溃败（逃跑）。末日使者之书能提供大量 buff，并且对攻击低士气单位有额外加成。亡灵法术——尽管亡灵法术并非黑暗文化的固有组成部分，但《亡灵法术之书》将是继《冰霜法术之书》之后的第二本法术书，其核心围绕召唤或复活越来越强大的亡灵。你可以轻松集结庞大的亡灵军团，向敌人发起冲击！ 胜利——我们的黑暗文化流派非常擅长获取知识，尤其是当我们从暗影帝国技能树中选择各种专长时。我们可以通过击杀英雄获取知识，将他们关押在监狱或地穴中获取知识，与自由城市达成免费合作协议获取知识，开放边境获取知识，建造独特的城市建筑和特殊项目（如冰霜法术学院）获取知识……诸如此类，不胜枚举。所有这些都能帮助你快速研究魔法书，解锁越来越强大的亡灵单位，以及解锁达成魔法胜利所需的【绑定黄金奇迹】和【暗影时代】法术。当然，你还需要清理一些黄金奇迹。如果无法获得足够的黄金奇迹，扩张胜利也是一个选择，因为我们不必处理城市稳定性惩罚，而且我们始终可以用亡灵军团征服世界，达成军事胜利！