Some are to be used by your heroes when you’re already engaged in combat.Īs you progress you’ll be asked to choose new Tomes, each one offering vastly different spells. These spells could be to heal your armies or summon units to add to your armies perhaps they can be cast to reveal the map, or strengthen your soldiers with elemental damage. You will select a Tome of Magic to begin with from a surprisingly huge list, which determines which spells you can research. There’s a lot to deal with here, from resource management to hero management, from governing your city to diplomacy, from expanding your empire to exploring the land for treasure and secrets. What Age of Wonders 4 is good at though, is making you understand its intricacies. Of course, a custom ruler feels more personal, so when you overreach or make a tactical error that causes your budding empire to collapse faster than a house made of paper on a windy day it’s slightly heartbreaking. The gameplay itself doesn’t change greatly from ruler to ruler, even if you create your own, but there are enough differences that multiple playthroughs will occasionally throw out surprises. You determine what their army looks like, what they worship, and what kind of people they are, whether industrious, spiritual, or just busting for a fight all the time. You not only forge your unique leader, including their appearance, name, and backstory, but can generate the race that follows them, too. While there’s around a dozen pre-made leaders and fantasy races, you can also make your own from scratch. I loved Planetfall, mostly because it allowed me to create my own leader and faction rather than having to command some real-world historical nation. Instead, we’re commanding armies of orcs and mages and monsters across a variety of otherworldly terrain. ![]() No space ships, laser guns or macking on hot aliens now. After the last one, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, was an exceptional sci-fi romp that let us live out our fantasies of galactic conquest and being a dashing intergalactic general, AoW4 heads back to grass roots fantasy. ![]() Age of Wonders 4 is a return to the fantastical side of the series. And struggle I should, probably, because these games aren’t really designed for the kind of mindless brute force that usually carries me through any game. I’m always caught up following the tool tips and pissing money away on foot soldiers when the enemy nation next door comes through my green and verdant lands like a bus-load of Man City fans through a kebab shop.Īnd so I struggle. Why bother building up diplomatic relations, questing for some magical Mcguffin, or attempting to reach the peak of civilisation when you can just mash the next country over into the ground and jog on? Unfortunately it never seems to work out that way. Age of Wonders 4 has done nothing to dull my clumsy bloodlust, either.Ĭonquest is always a victory path in the Age of… series, and it always seems like it’ll be the easiest one. I only have two modes: I’m either so indecisive I can’t decide what to have for breakfast, or I’m blitzing the neighbouring country before my Coco Pops have even turned the milk brown. Having played my fair share of RTS and 4X strategy games, I’ve decided I probably wouldn’t make a very good ruler.
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