This is neither RTS nor historical strategery. But SimHQ does not have a fantasy 4X turn based tactical subforum now does it?

Age of Wonders 4 is a new release, coming out two weeks ago. I noticed it on Steam and checked it out. I liked what I saw, seemed a neat combination of some of my favorite games. I had never played any of its predecessors. If I could sum it up it would be like TW: Warhammer and Civ 6 had a one night stand.

In many respects the game plays like Civ, with the standard 4X mechanics. Start with one city, explore the map, recruit units, build improvements, put down new cities and expand. But it also throws in a few twists to the formula we are used to. Combat is turn based tactical. You recruit armies, which are stacks of six units, Total War style. Nearby stacks reinforce the battles, with a max of three stacks per side. It's very much like Civ 6 warfare, but units are far more varied and have many special abilities. So if you liked it in Civ 5/6, but wished it were more fleshed out, this game has got it.

City building is very familiar, All sorts of buildings and improvements can be queued up, with the production output of your city determining how quickly it gets built, exactly like Civ. But at least on the settings I am using for my first campaign, this all gets done much faster. Just like Civ, you have a number of currencies like production, food, mana, imperium and so on that you raise throughout the run and use to improve your realm and forces. All standard stuff.

Magic is central to the play. Spells are learned and can be deployed on the campaign map and in tactical battles.

Diplomacy looks OK, and, since most of these games suck at diplomacy, OK is good enough.

Everything is highly customizable, from your race and traits, to the maps you'll play on. There's a ton of replayability here if you dig the gameplay. I'm just 5 hours or so in to this first run and having fun with it. it's a fresh take on a tried and true formula, and reminds me of two of my favorites, combining elements from both Warhammer and Civ. Warhammer more thematically, and Civ mechanically. Hard to go wrong with that mix.

I didn't know that Sports Illustrated does reviews of fantasy PC games, but they do indeed

SI AoW4 Review

Very Positive on Steam

Age of Wonders 4 on Steam

This is a Paradox game. That seems worth mentioning. Some will see this as a positive and some less so.

Anyone who likes Civ will like this game I think. Or just 4X games in general. The combat is better than Civ. Battles take place on a tactical map, not the strat map like Civ. It's rather like most turn-based RPGs. Units have hitpoints, ranged and melee attacks, spells and healing abilities. One unit per tile. Definitely more tactical than Civ, and more interesting too since there are so many possible attack options. But in a broad sense the two games are quite similar in terms of combat. You can fight the battle manually or auto-resolve, but will do much better fighting the battles yourself.

Units gain experience, and you can cast buff magic over them prior to the battle to impart certain bonuses. I tend to lose units at a decent clip so it's rare I get any to high veterancy. Recruitment is standard 4X stuff, build them in a queue in each city. But you can also recruit units by casting certain spells, or levy them from free cities. Or sometimes you can press-gang defeated enemies.

One of the most divergent aspects of Age of Wonders 4 from games like Civ is how malleable your faction's race is. Everything is customizable, from their appearance to the specific traits and bonuses they have. For my first run I'm playing a preset scenario as a human race, so this stuff was already chosen. For the second run I will dive in and create something. And that's just the starting state. Through the run you can gain race transformations, magic spells that grant certain alterations, some minor (like increased resistances) some major (I just transformed my faction to Angelic, which grants flight to all of my units, increasing mobility). The scope here is far beyond games like Civ, and the ability to customize your people (or creatures) is very high.I imagine this shares some ideas with the approach taken in Humankind, but I have yet to try that game.

It's a familiar game on a macro level, but the minor stuff is different enough from other games to make it stand out. For players who really like 4X games it's a worthy addition to your library. But at the same time it's probably not different enough for players who just occasionally dip their toes in this genre.

Good stuff as usual DB! Keep it coming. I'm not super interested in Age of Wonders 4, but I do have Age of Wonders Planetfall in my Steam library. It never grabbed me, but I probably never gave it a fair go either. Maybe when things settle down I'll reinvestigate it, but until
then I'll enjoy following your progress!

Yeah, I recall you didn't get on well with Civ 6 either right? And if that's the case Age of Wonders won't move that needle all that much. It's a fresh take in many ways, but at the core is still the same sort of game. I'm having fun with it, it scratches the 4X itch.

Theoretically I have liked the Civ series, V was quite good IMHO, but something about 6 just never grabbed me. I don't know why.

I can dig it. I like 6 a lot, aside from the absence of a suitable military/warfare side from the AI. The rest of it is really good.

I finished my first AoW4 campaign. It was just the first preset scenario, and rather simple. Won a magic victory, which means researching a tier 5 tome, building three special improvements and then defending those improvements for 15 turns. No trouble on normal difficulty. It was all rather easy and afterwards I could see the rankings and my faction was far and away the strongest. About 1/3 of the way through the run the other two factions on the map went to war. I was allied with one of them and answered the call, but never actually became involved and later I negotiated peace, while they fought until the end of the game. So that served to hold both back as they beat each other up and allowed my realm to easily outpace them.

It's a good take on this sort of game. As I bump up the scenario complexity and add more factions things should ramp up a bit. That first go was rather simple. I fought plenty of battles against bandits and other armies the game spawns around the map. But war against other factions is something I need to mix in and see how that goes. The battles are better than Civ, but it's all rather the same. More unit variety, more spells, attacks and other options like buffs, defense and healing. The AI does a fair job, no complaints there. The player of course is more agile, I can usually maneuver my stacks to outnumber the enemy and that gives me the edge.

I've started another preset scenario, this time as halflings.

#%&*$# you DB, you are making me reinstall Planetfall and give it a go!

That one has a good rep and anyway is essentially the same sort of game but in a sci-fi setting instead of magical fantasy setting right?

One of the things I like about games like Civ is the unique traits and bonuses each faction gets. Dissimilarity is essential for replayability. But in Civ you really only get a few things that are dissimilar. A unique unit, a unique building and a couple more. In Age of Wonders this runs much deeper, not least because its more than just humans. You have rats, and cats, and elves and orcs, and on and on. The more diverse each one is helps to keep me engaged and playing multiple runs to try them out. This was the hook in TW Warhammer, the factionality as I came to call it. AoW4 is good in this respect.

Yes, sci-fi rather than fantasy. More my jam anyway. As I recall from the brief time I gave it, it had a rather XCom feel to it, at least in terms of combat.
I wonder if the diversity of factions is as deep in Planetfall as it seems to be in AoW4. I agree, the vast differences in TW Warhammer make it almost like playing a new game every time you load a new faction.

I finished my second run in AoW4. The first one lasted about 120 turns as I poked it t see how it would react. Plus I didn't know what I was doing, wondering how to reach victory conditions, which I worked out eventually. The second run went 42 turns. Over in a blink. This was another of the preset story realms. I allied one of the factions, and marched on the other, crushing them in short order and that was that. Interestingly I received no achievement for win type. I'd have guessed I won a military victory here, but the game didn't seem to agree.

These scenarios I've played have been small. One thing I wish I had more of was early game isolation, where I can plant three or four cities in a contiguous realm, essentially establishing one border around all I own. In these two runs it has all been quite jumbled as the neighbors are so close that we are fighting over the same provinces to expand our early borders. I reckon I might achieve this in a custom setup. These story realms are set up to get the action going straight off.

Started a third run in a story realm, but it's just too close and messy. I want some room to expand, put down a city or two, clear the countryside of rebels and bandits and foul creatures before we come in to conflict with other factions.

But that's not really a thing here. To find that out, I started a new run as a custom faction on a custom map. Rather like Civ, you can set many parameters, terrain type, resources, free cities, and crucially, distance from other leaders. So I created a campaign with distance set to max and four factions. I was bumping up against another inside 30 turns. I'll experiment with other settings and see what's possible here. I'd like to have room and time for everyone to plant three or four cities and then the international intrigue takes over. That's how Civ is paced and it works well. Or I should say I like it that way. In this game, the maps are more compact, so the politics kicks off straight away. Border conflicts are quick to rise. Everything about this game is faster paced than Civ. Three or four cities is about what you'll have, unless you are aggressively expansionist and taking over everyone's cities.

For the faction I made a race of imperialist, industrious humans I called Kniggits. So if you do doubt your courage, come no further, because death awaits ye all with big, nasty, pointy teeth!





Pretty clean interface, nicely thought-out mechanics, both on the strat map and in the tactical battles. You can see the Warhammer/Civ blend in that shot. I'd prefer to slow it all down a touch if I'm honest, spread it out, and I think there are optional game speeds to try. For a new release it's in good shape. No bugs I've noticed nor stability issues. Being a Paradox game they'll certainly be rolling out an avalanche of DLC, but not sure I'd be chasing that down the line.

Maybe fewer factions would give you more early game breathing space?
Iv'e taken the first step and installed AoW Planetfall, but I've somehow or another fallen into Dyson Sphere Program again, so that's the current obsession.

Finished another run, this one the custom Kniggits run shown above. Managed an expansion victory on turn 120. This requires the player to acquire 108 provinces, build three special beacon buildings, light those beacons and then defend them against waves of enemies for 15 turns. As long as you've been building and upgrading your armies this isn't much trouble. I was well-prepared to meet this and the end game passed without any trouble. As I get used to the systems and mechanics I can play more optimally. I know what to focus on, and what is fluff or ineffective. Overall I'm having fun with this one. Empire-building is very Civ-like and the combat is a notch above.

The "Army of Tim" as in "Tim The Enchanter."
Did you do that or is it in the game?

Yep, that was my handiwork