From the world of Magehaven, the Godir, a functionally immortal group of wizards, explore other worlds and recruit new heroes: unique units that are required to found cities, start sieges, and explore the wonders on the map. The real magic of 4X games lies in watching shit happenĪs in previous Age of Wonder games, there’s a good/evil alignment agenda system that affects the nature of random events, public perception, and socioeconomic and combat benefits (cannibalistic factions are always evil). There’s a wonderful kind of emergent storytelling that rises up in these games, and in theory, Age of Wonders 4 should provide fertile ground for snippets of fantasy sagas to take root. It’s in sinking hours into an esoteric victory condition and getting backstabbed by a bunch of primitive hermits. It’s in moments in multiplayer when staid friends turn into rabid enemies (and vice versa). The real magic of 4X games lies in watching shit happen: an opposing civilization’s capricious reaction, or the reveal of a fatal weakness that nobody saw coming.

Once things started to click, I wholeheartedly embraced the 4X school of justification that leads an otherwise serene and unbothered person to ruin - if not their own, then most certainly someone else’s. It’s my first time playing any Age of Wonders game, but playing within the 4X genre is largely learning how to apply the same titular principles: explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. Like its predecessors, Age of Wonders 4 has a story-focused single-player campaign, tactical turn-based combat, and a global spellcasting system. This is the first Age of Wonders game since 2019’s Planetfall, and a return to the series’ original high-fantasy theme after nearly a decade. Unfortunately, there is great hubris in getting too creative before learning a game’s systems and synergies, and as a result, the proud mole-folk of Holemind paid a dear price. I could have just as easily made a race of feudal toadkin or poisonous halflings, but as a selective isolationist when it comes to 4X strategy games, the idea of building my empire underground and popping up like a horde of gophers sounded irresistible. Immediately after starting Age of Wonders 4, I decided to make a custom race of molekin for the tutorial realm - a swarming, mana-channeling people ruled by High Matriarch Enam’ru Onimole.

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