Age of Wonders 4 News

Hello there, my name is Simon, gameplay programmer at Triumph. Today I’ll tell you about one of the areas I worked on: the heroes!

Throughout the AoW series Heroes have been your trusted lieutenants, the commanders of your armies. They are super-units with detailed upgrade trees and inventory slots resembling those of RPG characters.

In Age of Wonders 4, we set out to deepen the impact Heroes have in the game, by giving them new roles, and a strong attachment to the realm they come from. They develop personal stories and are more persistent, they can continue to play a role even after they perish on the battlefield. Read on!

First let’s give a summary of the functions Heroes have in your empire in AoW4:

• Army Leaders: Heroes are still the super units people love from the previous games. In many battles they are the strongest characters in the field, carefully tailored with skill upgrades, magical items, and mounts. Many Heroes have army-buffing abilities, like skills that increase the morale of units. If you put multiple heroes in a single army, the highest tier hero is deemed the army leader and only this hero’s army bonuses are applied.
  
• Magical Item Wielders: Only heroes can be equipped with the magical items you find in the world. Match items with your heroes’ unique skills for the best results. Heroes can also ride a variety of mounts.
  
• City Governors: Cities in AoW4 have a hero as governor. Heroes have Affinities which translate to bonuses to your city’s economy. Note that independent Free cities also have governors. These lords and ladies are the cities’ faces during negotiations. When you diplomatically integrate a free city these characters join you as governors. Note that heroes don’t need to stay inside their cities to apply their bonuses, they are free to go on expeditions.
  
• Ancient Wonder Explorers: Heroes are the bravest characters in your armies and only under their command Ancient Wonders can be explored. Often the associated stories are centered on the hero leading the expedition. Read the DD on Ancient Wonders here.
  
• Besiegers: Sieges can only be started under the command of a Hero. In Age of Wonders 4 sieges are started on the world map. We’ll dedicate a separate development diary on this topic.
  
• Outpost Founders: Heroes found new outposts, pushing the frontiers of your empire outward. Outposts can later be turned into cities; Read the DD on cities here.
  

That is a lot of responsibilities for heroes! Luckily your empire will quickly field multiple heroes and your ruler avatar can do everything a hero can. Typically the number of heroes under your direct control follows the number of cities you have. The gameplay systems encourage heroes to be spread out instead of clumping them together. In any of these roles emergent story events may appear that give a new dimension to the characters and actions.



[h2]Different ways to acquire Heroes [/h2]
In Age of Wonders 4 there are multiple ways to recruit these powerful heroes into your ranks. The first of which is to go looking for offers yourself. Once your empire gains the ability to command more heroes you’ll get notified that certain heroes have offered you their services.

When you decide to look into the offers you’ll be presented with a carousel that gives you a quick overview of your options. From here you can decide to further inspect a hero before determining who is worthy of your supreme guidance.



Apart from going looking on your own, you might also run into heroes that offer their services during your adventures. This might be a hero that you encounter on the world map, a free city lord that feels their unfavored child could use some more experience; or maybe there is someone in your prison that has seen the error of their ways and decides that you are the rightful ruler after all. There’s heaps of unique situations like these that will make sure you can fill your ranks with cool companions. Who knows, maybe your pantheon rulers feel like dropping by and crushing some skulls together.



Naturally if your empire cannot accommodate a hero’s offer when encountered, there’s always the option to recruit this hero later. In which case you can on your own accord find these heroes' services on offer through the hero carousel, maybe even for free or at a reduced cost depending on your history with them.

[h2]Hero Archetypes[/h2]
Over the course of your adventures the heroes in the world who are not under your command will gain experience and level up on their own. These heroes are procedurally themed towards certain combat roles, their skillset and equipment making them formidable casters, mounted knights or caretaking shamans for example!

As you can see here when we inspect Ergot Warbuck at the start of the game. He is only level three and has access to a low tier weapon, mount and a basic skill.



Now let’s fast forward a bit and see what this hero looks like a little later in the game at the moment of recruitment.



As you can see Ergot has gained a more powerful orb, selected multiple skills that fit with a damage dealing battlemage and even gained some signature skills that fit with this role. You might note the cost for recruiting him has also risen accordingly.

Now let’s have a look at an endgame comparison. This is Nanoc Warbuck, belonging to the same free city as Ergot, Nanoc was tasked with guarding the city. Here’s Nanoc at the start of the game.



And here’s a look at Nanoc in the endgame. He’s gained a lot of equipment and skills as well as seemingly having tamed a spider and infused a lance with its poison. He even became the leader of the army he is in. The army itself seems to have earned its stripes as well.



[h3]Starting traits[/h3]
Next to assigning an archetype this same system also picks a starting trait for the hero. This is a very impactful bonus that gives the hero an extra combat ability, passive bonus or something to add to a city when this hero is a governor (more about that later). Some very special heroes might even get multiple of these, but we’ll leave those up to you to find.



[h2]Link to free cities[/h2]
During your time in Age of Wonders 4 you can encounter two types of heroes: Heroes belonging to a free city and heroes rising up from the ranks of your chosen race.

[h3]Free city heroes[/h3]
Heroes belonging to free cities are generally a higher level as they’ve been well trained. This naturally makes them more expensive as well. However since these heroes have the backing of a free city that opens up a lot of opportunities. Having them under your control will improve your standing with the city as well as create new lines of communication, opening up more quests and story events relating to the city. All of this can help you define the fate or role of such a city within your realm and/or empire.

Next to the relationship benefits, free cities can have access to powerful upgrades that can impact the hero. These range from transformations and enchantments to special traits that give additional affinity points for example.



[h3]Unaffiliated heroes [/h3]
Heroes rising up from the ranks of your own race do not have any connection to a free city. Generally they are cheaper to recruit and are lower in level. Just like free city heroes, these also unlock their own storylines found in quests and events. Though they don’t have a free city that gives them transformations and special upgrades, these heroes do of course benefit from any magic you’ve cast upon your own race. These heroes are your solution for a purist playthrough. Who has time for all the drama of free cities when you could also bring them to their knees with heroes risen from your supreme race … right?

[h2]Hero cap[/h2]
Your empire can get legitimate access to new heroes as soon as it consists of multiple cities. For every city you control in your empire you can command one hero. However for the more power hungry rulers there are ways of circumventing that little rule. It’ll just cost you some resources.




Should you dislike anything about the presentation of your hero or feel that they would look a lot cooler with a specific visual item, you can always jump into the hero editor during gameplay. This lets you edit your hero to your liking, from visuals to names, titles and even appearance- and grammar gender. All your changes can be easily reverted by clicking the reset button if you don’t like where you ended up. On top of that, using this editor is permanently free from any resource costs. So nothing’s stopping you from unleashing your full creativity and going wild making cool heroes that perfectly fit your empire!




As your heroes travel the realm going on all sorts of adventures, they get experience points for doing all kinds of actions. Once those points lead to a level up, your hero gains a skill point. These can then be spent to gain powerful abilities and passive bonuses.

[h2]Regular skills[/h2]
These make up the meat of your hero’s skills and are divided into three categories:

• Warfare
  
• Battle Magic
  
• Support
  

As you might expect these play into the different combat roles found in Age of Wonders 4. Warfare skills are aimed at roles that employ physical damage using swords, lances, giant battle axes and more. Specializing in getting damage and defense numbers up while triggering bonuses upon killing your enemies on the field of battle.

Battle magic is the kind of magic that hurts when you’re on the receiving end. Generally found on powerful mages wielding magical orbs. These skills specialize in using elemental magic, optimizing spell usage and increasing (status) resistance.

Last but not least we have support skills. These revolve around being the leader of an army and giving bonuses to all the units in that army. Ranging from gaining experience faster or increasing accuracy of units to fully restoring the action points of a unit. There are a lot of useful bonuses here that can make even seemingly low tier armies very difficult to deal with.

All of these categories have a default set that each hero has access to, which can then be expanded upon by your chosen culture and tomes.



[h2]Signature skills[/h2]
Once every five levels your hero unlocks one out of four signature skill slots. These allow you to pick a skill that’s a lot more impactful than your regular skills. Not only do these provide abilities that can turn the tide of any battle, these skills also provide your hero with an affinity point. In turn those affinity points will help you get new tomes of magic and provide bonus income to governed cities.

[h2]Re-specialization[/h2]
Should you be unhappy with any skills on your hero, you can opt to respecialize the hero. This will reset all regular skills and signature skills. Be wary of your decision though, your hero might accept your request to change once but if you persist on changing multiple times it might just take some Imperium to convince your hero.




Throughout exploration and conquests you’ll come across powerful artifacts you can equip on your heroes. The central Arsenal that we introduced in Planetfall returns. All unequipped items go to the Arsenal, reducing micromanagement. Heroes have the following slots:

• Primary: Weapon associated with your Hero’s default attack. Both primary Melee and Ranged Weapons go here. Note that some weapon types also take up the secondary slots (Bows, Staffs, Double Handed Swords)
  
• Secondary: Used for Shields. Blocked when ]double handed weapons are equipped in the primary slot.
  
• Head: Armor, magical defenses, and Vision enhancement
  
• Torso: Armor, magical defenses
  
• Legs: Armor, magical defenses, sometimes movement enhancement.
  
• Ring: Grant passive properties/abilities.
  
• Misc (3x): A Wide range of Items. Some give new active abilities (Magical Wands go here) and special buffs.
  
• Mount: Your mount of choice. Ranging from horses to spiders, great birds and wyverns. Affects movement and some mounts give special abilities. Staves, Polearms and Heavy Two-Handed Weapons that aren't Lances disable this slot.
  

Here are are some example items for you to check out:




As mentioned above heroes have an important role to fill as Governors of your cities. As governors heroes can approach you with requests for their city opening up unique story events and quests. Which hero you select to be looking over your city for you can also yield hefty bonuses. As their affinity points are linked to income bonuses, increasing your income of a specific resource per affinity point. This is where synergising with signature skills and free cities giving affinity point upgrades can become quite rewarding.

Next to the affinities coming into play, heroes also have traits that can have a huge impact when they are chosen as governor. There are traits that give a city more fortification health to fend off besieging armies, or allow for the recruitment of special units such as trolls and ogres. Some even give the hero more affinity points that are shared with the rest of the empire. Such a perk might just allow you to unlock that one powerful tome of magic you otherwise could not get to.




The role heroes play doesn’t necessarily end when they are defeated on the battlefield. Their dead or unconscious body (this is based on chance) gets transferred to the crypt or prison of the victorious player.

Basic actions involve setting them free or returning their remains. By expanding the Wizards Tower with a special crypt and prison rooms more options are available.


Wizards Tower Prison

• Convert - Starts a process of re-educating the hero so they can come and serve under your command
  
• Execute - kills the hero and moves the hero’s items to your arsenal and the body to the crypt. If you have a hero belonging to a Free City or player faction your relation will be negatively impacted.
  
• You get knowledge per turn for each hero in your prison.
  

Wizards Tower Crypt

• Resurrect - resurrects the fallen hero under your command.
  
• You get mana income per turn for each hero in your crypt.
  

Players taking the Shadow Path of Necromancy can Animate fallen heroes for the cost of Souls and gold. This of course turns the hero into one of the undead.


We’ve already done an extensive DD on narrative events but for the completion of this week’s topic its good to highlight that Heroes (Living or dead) are the most common actors in events. Heroes represent free cities or come to you in their function as governor of your own cities. Also heroes in the field may come with special requests. Keeping your heroes happy has many beneficial effects for your empire. Here are a couple of examples of hero-based events.




In Age of Wonders 4, heroes have made their way into more game systems than ever before. Not only are they the awesome champions of the battlefield, they also prepare sieges, provide boons to cities as governors, have relations/origins to factions in the world and take center stage in the narrative events. Furthermore, you can recruit rulers that have ascended to the Pantheon to aid you.

Choose your Heroes wisely Ruler!

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The next developer stream will be happening tomorrow, 23 March, at 2pm CET!

The stream will last about 2 hours and will feature the second place winners from the previous community poll. It will star Mystic Elves with an Evocation starting tome and a Champion origin.

Catch the Stream here:

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What time is the stream for me?

• 9am ET (US East)
  
• 8am CT (US Central)
  
• 7am MT (US Mountain Time)
  
• 6am PT (US Pacific Time)
  
  
• 1pm UTC (UK)
  
• 6.30pm UTC+5:30 (India)
  
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• 12am UTC +11 (Sydney, Melbourne)
  

Want to speculate about the stream?

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Greetings future Rulers, welcome to another Development Journal! I’m Bas, a game designer at Triumph Studios. I’d like to give you some glimpses into the grand structures called Ancient Wonders that can be found in the realms you conquer.

Each Ancient Wonder is a monument from the great ages of the past, with several ties to the old Age of Wonders lore. They make the lands more coherent and mysterious as you encounter an ancient Mother Tree guarded by vengeful Entwined, a Secret Temple desecrated by evil cultists summoning a demon or a Lost Tower of ancient wizard horribly transformed by the Astral Sea.



Ancient Wonders are, next to being monumental landmarks in the world map, also filled with adventures and the promise of loot. They are the evolved versions of Treasure Sites in Age of Wonders 3 and Landmarks from Age of Wonders: Planetfall.


Discovering an Ancient Wonder

When you first uncover an Ancient Wonder on the World map, you already get a glimpse of what’s to come through:

• The name, which hints at the adventure that awaits inside.
  
• The tier, which indicates the difficulty but also the value of the Ancient Wonder and its rewards!
  
• The background lore, indicating what the Ancient Wonder’s original purpose was and what might still lurk inside
  

Beware though, that trying to enter and capture Ancient Wonders, while a dangerous ordeal in itself, also have diplomatic repercussions, other players gain grievances if you try to explore Ancient Wonders that are close to them. No one likes nosy neighbors stealing the loot.

To take you on an adventure, we’re following Wizard King Cinren Toliath of the Ashborn Hedonists.



As we’ve explored and settled a second city, we’ve encountered an Ancient Wonder called the Lover’s Spring, sounds rather inviting for our Hedonists? Let’s have a look..

Entering the Ancient Wonder

Whenever your hero/ruler with their army enters an Ancient Wonder, they’ll stumble upon an intro event that will foretell a special combat encounter. Such as a Lost Mage hungrily seeking for knowledge, or 2 dragons guarding a hoard of gold, or a bunch of demi-giants discussing what’s for dinner.

Sometimes these events also link to existing elements in the world, such as a House or a Hero. This means that the reward is also tied in with the story. Such as being able to recruit a new Hero mentioned in the intro, or gaining favor of a particular house.



Cinren and his hedonists have been invited to bathe by some suspicious nymphs, we don’t fall that easily for such a trick. But the foreshadowing of facing Nymphs is no small threat. Nymphs have the ability to Seduce units, mind controlling them until the Nymph dies.



Luckily, there is an option for us to “avert our eyes”. A painful but necessary alternative to have our troops become blinded but also immune to being seduced.. Cinren knows his people tend to give in to temptation too well, so we give the order to look away and go into the fight..


Fighting in the Ancient Wonder

Now, let’s get into the battle!

Each Ancient Wonder is guarded by a powerful army of monsters and baddies. These enemy units are themed towards the Ancient Wonder and its event. They’re connected to the entire adventure and mentioned in the intro events.

Ancient Wonders have some of the coolest looking combat maps we’ve made so far. With a big focus on selling the idea of being inside the structure and the function of the structure before it fell into disarray.

A big shoutout to Sara and the rest of the Art team, who’ve done an amazing job in making these maps look absolutely stunning.



We’ve retained a big part of the design philosophy that we used in some of Planetfall’s combat maps, where we compliment the units you’ll be fighting against with the level’s layout. Making these units truly shine. This works well for Ancient Wonders who have both bespoke maps and bespoke units you can encounter in them.

When making the Golden Ziggurat for example, we know there were going to be Dragons here as one of the main adventures. So we’ve made a nice open center battleground for your troops to walk down to with some side paths. Baiting players into piling their troops into the main room, just to let the Dragons pull off some impressive breath attacks! Some would consider us level designers cruel...



Combats in Ancient Wonders are paired with Combat Enchantments that spice up the encounter. They are made to tie in with the event and the enemies you face. Such a Lost Tower adventure where reality shifts, making your troops suddenly appear somewhere else every 2 turns! Making a tight formation relying on auras harder.



But, if the player has made some of the alternative choices in the introduction event, they get their own beneficial combat enchantment that helps even out the odds in combat. Some of these benefits do require some extra consideration when fighting manually to get the best result!

One of these benefits is the Cooling Vents in the Magma Forge Ancient Wonder while facing an army of splitting Fire Elementals. By spending some production or passing a Materium check, several locations in the battlefield now apply Wet to your units which increases Fire Resistance and dispels Burning!



For Cinren and his now blind hedonists, the combat is going to be hard fought in the soothing waters of the Wellspring. The Arcanists in particular have trouble pulling off their lightning bolts while being blinded. But luckily we have enough melee troops and Cinren himself with a Godir Greataxe, to reach and vanquish the Nymphs and their Thralls.



Resolving the adventure

After a victorious battle (I hope), you’re greeted with a celebratory resolution event. Here a new dilemma is presented: your reward!

Rewards are different per adventure and often grant a great chunk of resources. But more than that, you can get unique rewards by choosing one of the event options.

Some of the unique reward options are even locked behind specific conditions, such as affinity or alignment. Making the event in a different playthrough offers you different rewards!



As a fixed reward, our troops get to actually enjoy the spring and fight harder in the coming battles! But Cinren gets to make an extra choice for a special reward. Of course we’re going to get our very own Nymph unit! The power to seduce units belongs to the Hedonists!


Annexing the Ancient Wonder
Once you have cleared the Ancient Wonder, you’re granted ownership over it. While owned, you can annex it as a province into one of your cities’ domain. Doing so grants multiple bonuses:

• Resources
  
• Imperium
  
• Rally of the Lieges unique units
  
• Other unique bonuses
  

These are very strong, and way better than regular nodes. Especially Imperium is rare to get in the world map.

The Rally of the Lieges units are wildlife units that fit thematically with the Ancient Wonder itself and can not be acquired anywhere else. They wonderfully complement your lineup, such as being able to recruit Bone Dragons from the Lost Tower while playing as a master Necromancer ruling over an undead race!

Some other unique bonuses are granted such as making unit summons a lot cheaper or increasing the income of Province Improvements in your domain. They always count as a specific improvement type themselves, and therefore work with other bonuses and city upgrade requirements.



Cinren order’s the annexation of the Lover’s Spring into his second city, the Lover’s Spring grants us happiness and heals our troops quickly within the domain. Acting as a beacon of growth and joy.

But not only that, we also get to recruit some very rare Fairy units as the spring attracts the local Fey! These are a collection of flying Tier 3 battlemages and Support units, and they will complement our army well as we make our race of tricksters and pleasure seekers. Playing as mystic also means that they benefit well from our unit enchantments such as Scrolls of Power, increasing damage on all our Battlemages and Support units!


Adventures
Each unique Ancient Wonder has one of a selection of Adventures inside of them. Each with their own events, combat encounter and Combat Enchantment(s). This means that entering locations that look the same in a playthrough actually result in completely different encounters!

An Adventure is a series of events and a special combat encounter with special combat enchantment(s) that is put inside the Ancient Wonder, these events have special requirements for certain options, be it in the intro or resolution event, so encountering an adventure you’ve had before can lead to different results!

For the modders out there, this means you can easily add extra adventures to existing Ancient Wonders!




While on Cinren’s Journey to become a Godir, we come across multiple Castle Ruins ancient wonders. Each with their own adventure, foes to fight, challenges to face and rewards to gain!


Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed as we explored the Ancient Wonders together! On their own they're a real step up from the Treasure Sites of Age of Wonders 3 as we’ve added more content, more complex maps and combat challenges, events, lore and greater rewards.

But it’s with your journey where they’ll really shine, from creating an eternal war machine by capturing a Magma Forge as Demonic Industrialists, to fielding Blessed Souls from a Secret Temple heralding the return of a race that call themselves the new Archons, to saving an Ancient Mother Tree as a fearless Druid restoring the lands. It’s the connection between their story and yours that makes them truly wondrous!

You asked, we delivered. The next Dev stream will be happening tomorrow, 16 March, at 2pm CET!

Plus, vote for what Form, Culture, Starting Tome and Origin will be used on our Discord server here.

Catch the Stream here:
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The following are the options available for voting:

Form:

• Human
  
• Elfkin
  
• Orcoid
  
• Dwarfkin
  
• Halfling
  
• Goblinoid
  
• Feline
  
• Ratkin
  
• Toadkin
  
• Molekin
  

Culture:

• Feudal
  
• High
  
• Dark
  
• Mystic
  

Starting Tome

• Zeal
  
• Faith
  
• Pyromancy
  
• Horde
  
• Beast
  
• Roots
  
• Souls
  
• Rock
  
• Evocation
  
• Warding
  

Origin

• Champion
  
• Wizard King
  

Hello everyone!

My name is Sam Minh Ly, a designer at Triumph in charge of the economy of Age of Wonders 4. In this dev diary I would like to talk about the economy and city development. Shoutouts to Glenn and Lennart who did a lot of work to design the systems of the economy in Age of Wonders 4.

Spoiler: There is a small teaser in the end of this Dev Diary, so make sure to read it till the very end!

Cities are at the core of your empire. They will use the surrounding land to provide you with the resources to raise armies, research Tomes of Magic and provide the mana to fuel your spells. They will also prove to be a good way to exert your control over the world. Cities lay claim to the surrounding area, making it difficult for enemies to come close without diplomatic penalties. And during war, cities are bastions that require a serious effort to breach.

[h2]City Income[/h2]



Let’s start off by explaining all the resources that cities produce.

• Food is required to make a city grow in population.
  
• Production is used to build city structures, which in turn provide resources or other benefits.
  
• Draft is used to recruit units for your armies.
  
• Gold is mainly used to build city structures and recruit units, but it can also be used in other manners, such as diplomacy.
  
• Mana is used to cast spells and summon magical units.
  
• Knowledge is used to research new skills from your tomes, which unlock new spells, units and more.
  
• Imperium is used to further your empire as a whole. Its main use is for unlocking Empire Skills and acquiring new cities, but it can also be used to grow cities and in diplomacy.
  

Food, Production and Draft are all used in the same city that produced that resource, while Gold, Mana, Knowledge and Imperium are added to your global resource pool and can be used anywhere.

[h2]City Structures[/h2]

The primary way to gain more resources is by building city structures. There are four buildings for every resource and a well planned city can build all of these in a single city except for the Tier 4 structures, which are mutually exclusive. All structures have a gold and production cost, the latter of which determines how long it takes for your city to build that structure. You will see that all these structures have a boost requirement. We will cover that a little further in this dev diary.



In this diagram you can see a few different types of city structures. The Town Halls unlock new structures and special province improvements, which will also be covered later in this dev diary. A city always starts with the 1st Town Hall, providing a bit of a background income to get you started.

To the right of the town halls are the fortification structures. They provide Fortification Health, which determines how long it takes for enemies to siege the city before they can attack it. Many of them also provide an additional benefit during the actual battle, giving the defender an advantage in the fight.

On the left you can see the city stability structures. A city’s stability goes down as the town grows in size. You want to avoid your city to have a negative city stability.



Finally we have the Wizard Tower. Which is exclusively built in your capital, the Throne City. It provides empire wide benefits for your Godir. It is also the main way you can increase your Imperium income.

[h2]Building Queues[/h2]



Much like in previous Age of Wonder games, your cities can construct buildings which provide passive income each turn. Unlike previous games, the queue to build structures and units has been split in two, allowing you to construct structures and recruit units at the same time. This is paired with the new Draft resource, which is exclusively used for recruiting units. We made this decision so players could more easily bounce back after losing units in battle without destroying their city development progress.

When a queue is empty, it automatically starts to produce resources at a conversion % instead. Production is converted into Gold and Draft into Food.

[h2]City Domain[/h2]


Cities project a sphere of influence around the city called their domain. This domain extracts resources and ensures rival players can’t just enter it without consequences (more about diplomacy in a future dev diary!)

In Age of Wonders 3 and prior, this domain was a hexagon-shape that grew equally in all directions out from the city. This allowed it to exploit the natural resources of nearby resource nodes but gave the player no control. In Age of Wonders: Planetfall this was changed to a sector system, which resulted in player control over growth and more natural shapes that follow the environment. But these choice moments were few and far between and it was hard for many players to comprehend the impact of these choices.

Age of Wonders 4 uses a new province and expansion system. Provinces also follow the natural features of the world. They are smaller than sectors and unlike Planetfall you will gain a new province every time you gain a new population. Cities can easily get up to 15 population and 15 provinces, making your cities grow more organically in byte-sized chunks. This allows you to “steer” their expansion towards high value resources or to cut-off bottlenecks with your territory.

[h2]Province Improvements[/h2]


Whenever you annex a new province you can immediately choose what type of province improvement will be built here.
The choice of improvements depends on what features that province has.

Farms can be built on grasslands and provide 5 Food.
Quarries can be built on rocky terrain and cliffs and provide 5 Production.
Foresters can be built in forests and provide 2 Food and 3 Production.
Mines can be built on provinces with Iron Deposits or a Gold Vein and provide 5 gold.
Conduits and Research Posts can be built on provinces with a Mana Node or Magic Material. The Conduit provides 5 mana and the Research Post 5 Knowledge.
Fisheries can be built on coastal provinces or in underground lakes and provide 5 Food.
Huts can be built when trying to settle in inhospitable regions, such as a frozen tundra or a scorching desert. They provide 3 Food and do not count as farms, which is important for other economic systems that we will cover further down. Choosing an adaptation allows you to build farms in those regions instead.

[h2]City Structure Boosts[/h2]


For those that want to optimize their city development, we have the Boosting system which ties building city structures in your city to choosing new province improvements in your domain. Almost every structure has a boosting requirement in the form of specific province improvements. For example, the Library requires 1 Forester in a City’s domain to become boosted. If it is, the structure will require 30% less Gold and Production to build, making the boosts worthwhile to chase after and plan for when developing your cities and choosing province improvements. Of course higher tier structures require multiple Province improvements to be present.



Building structures often unlocks more structures that are more expensive, but also provide more resources. Higher tier structures also require specific province improvements to be present in your domain. So you will need to make sure that the environment around your city can support a variety of province improvements and think about which improvements to build

[h2]Special Province Improvements[/h2]

As you progress through the game and unlock Tomes, you will acquire Special Province Improvements. These use the city construction queue, are often quite expensive and need to be built on top of any existing province improvement. But they provide more income than the basic province improvements, especially because they come with extra bonus income that is dependent on the type of adjacent province improvements, adding another dimension to planning your city.

Here are a few examples of what effects these Special Improvements can have:

The Mob Camp is an early game Special Province Improvement from the Tome of the Horde and fits with the Tome being about amassing an army of cheap units. It also allows you to set a province as a Unit deployment location, allowing your units to be recruited at the edge of your domain.


The Frostspire is acquired from the Tome of the Cold Dark. It benefits from the terraforming effects you get from the Tome and provides friendly visiting armies a buff for their next combat.


The Sanctuary specializes in another angle and instead provides defensive bonuses to your domain. Preventing enemies from pillaging and casting spells in the domain.


Capstone City Structures: Guilds
At the peak of your city's development are the Guilds, which are capstone buildings that provide a huge amount of income based on the number of province improvements of a certain type. For example the Mages Guild, the final mana structure that unlocks if you built all three mana structures before it. It provides 10 mana per Conduit in the domain! But only a single guild can be built per city. So you will have to choose what you want the city to specialize in. Of course this is dependent on the environment, so keep an eye out to the surroundings of your cities.

Faction Differentiation
There are 6 cultures in Age of Wonders 4. Each with their own specializations in combat and in their economy. Each culture has multiple global bonuses that are unique to them which change how you play. For example, the Dark culture disables the negative effects from low City Stability, the High culture gains global bonuses based on whether you have a good, neutral or evil alignment. Aside from that, every culture gets unique units, Hero Skills, unique city structures and a unique Special province Improvement.

Let’s have a look at what the Industrious culture gets that other cultures don’t. Their unique structure after building a Tier 3 Town Hall is the Bastion’s Barricade. Which exemplifies Industrious’ aspect of fortification perfectly. It provides 20 Fortification Health other cultures can never get and the two Bastions are the strongest units the Industrious culture has, Tier 3 Shield units with immensely high physical defense.


The Tier 1 and Tier 2 Food structures of the Industrious culture are replaced. Instead they gain the Workers Farmstead and the Grand Mill. Which provide less food than their normal counterparts but they also provide Production, which they normally don’t.



Their Special Province Improvement is the Builder’s Quarters. Which is a quarry that provides more production for each adjacent quarry. As you can see these bonuses can get really high if you get the right spot for them.


Now with all that extra production you can either continue to build high tier structures or you can use the Produce Merchandise option every city has. It normally converts 25% of a city's unused production into Gold. And while that is already good for the Industrious culture as their Production can become really high, they go even further. If you build their Tier 4 Town Hall, it not only provides the bonuses any Tier 4 Town Hall provides, but it also increases your Produce Merchandise conversion rate from 25% to 35%!



To wrap up this example I will give you an idea of what kind of synergies you can use to optimize your economy. As you might have seen in the Builder’s Quarters screenshot, there is a +2 gold bonus coming from something called Great Builders. This is one of the Society Traits you can choose when creating your faction. It itself combo’s really well with the Empire Skill Specialist Districts. Now your Special Province Improvements cost less Production to build and provide gold. The Materium tomes have many Special Province Improvements, some of which count as quarries, which will maximize the benefits from all these synergies.


[h2]City Cap and Automation [/h2]
Growing your empire by acquiring new cities is vital to growing your economy, but you cannot spam new cities indefinitely. If you over extend, you reach your City Cap. If you do so, every city in your empire will suffer a hefty -25% income penalty. This cap is meant to pace city acquisition and to stop rampant expansion. This will force you to either increase this cap via the Empire Skill Tree, or invest in your established Empire.

Another way to reduce micromanagement is the City Automation system. It allows you to set a focus (if any) and let the city grow on its own without having to choose every single province you can acquire.



For those that do want to micromanage and control their Empire in every detail, you need not worry. You can invest your Imperium into extra City Cap indefinitely, but it will cost you more Imperium each time.

[h2]Vassalization System[/h2]

And for both players we also have another way to exert your control over the world, namely the vassalization system. There are many Free Cities in the world that you can vassalize. If you do so, they will provide a portion of their income to you, depending on how strong your bond with them is. Moreover, you can decide to vassalize any city you conquer. These vassals do not count towards your city cap but they do provide you with income and a safe place to return to and recover between your campaigns. You can also integrate them later if you decide you want a particular city. Or you can vassalize your own cities directly to free up a city cap slot. Via vassals you can spread your rule over the entire world without limit.

[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
There are many layers to the development of your city, which unlock as you progress through the game. The core loop of growth and immediate province exploitation is direct and meaningful. You can choose to engage with this in a casual manner but also choose to highly optimize your economy which is a necessity in the higher difficulty levels.

While there are other factors that influence your economy, such as the Society Traits and the Empire Skill Tree, this will do it for this dev diary. So, what do you think you will do? Plan the development of your city meticulously, go with the flow, or automate? or will you simply take cities by force? It is up to you to decide what path to follow.

While the next diary will be dedicated to the Ancient Wonders, there is also a new stream coming up!
We will let community pick the faction, form and tomes for our Developers to start with, so keep an eye on the forum as we will let you vote next Wednesday!

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