Your arcane research will always present you with three things to choose from a pool of possibilities, some specific to a Tome that you possess, others specific to your culture and more that are generic.

There are 54 Tomes of Magic in the game that break up the tech tree and can present themselves in different orders.

Magic is naturally a bit part of the fantasy setting, and that manifests itself as part of the progression through a campaign. On the other hand, the Wizard Kings come as invaders that have an innate ability to be better spell casters. As a Champion you come from the native peoples, gaining a bonus for the city and for other local races as someone of this world.

The last piece of the puzzle is then to choose your ruler. Being evil in Age of Wonders 4 comes with certain benefits, such as being able to perform bad acts, but comes with the consequence of other races hating you and general bad karma where there’s a greater chance that more negative things happen to you. You’ll need to lean into it to get the best out of the game, as well. Each trait has a natural affinity to a particular alignment, and you can’t mix society traits between alignments – there’s no such thing as a good cannibal – so you might as well lean in to being evil or good and really role play as a race. From there, you can choose to play as either an invading Wizard King or as a hero of a race looking to defend their home.įrom the physical and character traits, you can then build up a civilisation’s culture and societal traits. You can customise the shape and climate of the world, as well as some elements of who lives there and apply modifiers like the natives having a disdain for evil. There’s a string of defined narrative campaign missions, such as the more gentle Fields of Rebirth that provides a beginners scenario, but from that point onward, it’s up to you to define where you’re heading. Setting out from the Mage Haven that acts as the hub between worlds and the backdrop to the game’s main menu, you can step into any number of customised and randomised realms. That’s not to say that they’re resting on their laurels, though, as they take the ending of Age of Wonders 3 and run with it into a multiverse of possibilities as the Wizard Kings break down the walls between worlds in search of new realms to conquer. After a dalliance with science fiction, Triumph Studios is returning to more typical fantasy fodder for Age of Wonders 4.

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