Age of Wonders 4 | 3rd Year Anniversary & 6 Changes I Would like to See!

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:01]Hi, my name is Windsa and welcome to my video celebrating the third anniversary for Age of Wonders 4. The devs put out this post not too long ago and one of the things they encouraged people to do is to share their feedback about the game. I shared my general thoughts here and I wanted to go over them in this video. Basically, I I do love the game a lot. I really love it. Obviously, I've been playing it for 3 years and I still get a lot of enjoyment out of the game, but I wanted to spend some time focusing on some things that I would like to see changed in this video. So, we will get to those things pretty soon here, but I wanted to go over this post in detail before we dive into the things that I would like to see changed. So, at the top of this post, they talk about how they have a dev diary that has a lot of details about the game after 3 years.

[00:01:01]They also talked about how there is a trading card system they're introducing into Steam. Um, there is this community contest which has grids that people made talking about what aspects of the game they enjoy the most. And then they also mentioned that there would be a developer stream, which I saw another YouTuber cover in detail. So, I'm not going to dive into all the different, you know, quote unquote leaks that were covered in that stream, but if you want to um have that information, I believe it was Fableheim who covered it in detail. You can find if you just go into YouTube, type in Age of Wonders for 3rd anniversary devstream. Um, but yeah, as I said, I'm not going to really dive into that here. So, um, what we'll focus on next is the dev diary. So, the special anniversary dev diary has a retrospect where they look back at a lot of the um, stuff over the past year as well as just some general stats. I think the stats are here. Here we go. Um, so the numbers from 2025 are saying things like the human form is very popular, the elf form is very popular. The ogre form is very popular. And the feudal culture is very popular. The dark culture, which got reworked recently, is incredibly popular. That's really interesting because I know a lot of people weren't playing the dark culture until that rework announced. It's very powerful.

[00:02:40]It's very strong in general. And then Mystic is the next most popular culture.

[00:02:45]What I find interesting about Mystic making it into the top three is I I never enjoyed playing Mystics. And I guess some people out there real really really enjoy playing Mystics, but this is just I think um cultures and forms that people started a map with. It's not necessarily things that people played the whole way through. And somebody pointed out on I think Discord that human and feudal and the tome of the faith are part of Alfred Elder Stones starting a loadout. So that might be why those forms those cultures and that tome are as popular as they are. But I think if we go back to the one-year anniversary, there was a tome that was very popular that um has kind of fallen off. The tome of evolution was really really popular right after the game first came out and then to of evolution was the second most popular followed by tome of enchantment. And these are the top three starting to consider the top three toms using game. Tome of enchantment was number one. Artifificing was number two and Tome of Evolution was number three. That's pretty different than what we have here for for this year in general. I think they did talk about the tomes somewhere in here.

[00:04:10]Uh but I'm not seeing it right now.

[00:04:12]Yeah. Okay. Sacred Origins three top three starting to that's faith followed by evocation followed by pyromancy. So things have shifted a little bit over the years. Um we have a lot more different ruler types that you can choose between, but a lot of people are still playing mortal champion and wizard king, which is probably in large part due to the fact that they're part of the base game. Dragon Lord is something that we've had for a while. So that might be a big reason why it's it's in the top three, but also people, I think, really enjoy role playing as dragons. I think that's really really fun for people to do. We also have some numbers about the total play time here. That's 39 million hours of play time. Uh 4 million cities founded, almost 200 million turns played. That's really interesting. That's a lot of turns. I guess a lot of people have longer matches. And then um games that ended in just military victory where they conquered all the other rulers is the highest number of games here. Uh the 500,000. Then we have 287,000 where they had an allied military victory. That means the only people remaining were your allies and you just got the victory screen because you know they're your allies. You don't have to conquer them. Expansion victory is not nearly as common. it's a lot harder to accomplish. So, that makes sense to me why that would is the lowest number out of the victory conditions that they listed off here. I think magic victory didn't make it into the top three, so they just didn't talk about it.

[00:05:51]Over 100 million spells cast is a lot of spells. I like this number of times moles have conquered the world too few.

[00:06:02]Huh, that's funny. I think they also talked about and in the devstream they talked about how the um moles have a very limited number of faces that you can choose between. So it's something where once you've played it, you've seen a lot of the cosmetic side of that that form and so people generally don't go back to it too much. Borders re drawn meaning total provinces annexed is 39 million. That's quite a lot. Wararmonger is total wars declared by the player.

[00:06:33]That's two and a half million.

[00:06:37]It's interesting to think about that that many wars have been declared by the players that people decide to attack other factions or other rulers that many times. Um but it really what's interesting is comparing these numbers to what we have above. If you think about the number of cities founded, 5 million and the annex provinces here, 40 million. That's like eight provinces per city founded, which is not what I would expect. I'd expect more provinces annexed than that, but I guess people maybe don't finish all the games that they start. And that means they have more cities being founded um because of the early game being more about uh setting up cities and actually getting them to be as big as they possibly can be.

[00:07:26]This is another little joke. Average dev stream stability 0%, arcane energy 100%.

[00:07:33]Uh yeah. Okay, funny. Seems like a good idea. The time to declare war number times players surrendered is a million.

[00:07:41]I've definitely done that. Um, just to to get out of a multiplayer game. I'm interested to know if that number reflects surrendering in multiplayer or if that's just from single player. And yeah, that's all the numbers that we have for this past year, 2020 2025.

[00:08:00]Oh my gosh, my brain. And um like we talked about earlier, the tomes have have shifted in popularity. The top society traits was not something they talked about in this new infographic.

[00:08:17]Mullein being the least popular is I think still the case. 70% of the factions created were human were were nonhuman, meaning 30% were human. That doesn't surprise me.

[00:08:31]Barbarian used to be a lot more popular.

[00:08:33]Now it's not nearly as popular. High used to be a popular culture. Now it's not nearly as popular. And I'm I really hope they rework high soon because that was always one of my favorite cultures to play with. We once again have mortal champions, wizard kings, and dragon lords as the most popular origins or ruler origins.

[00:08:54]I want to say back then we may not have had access to other cultures, but I'm not really sure.

[00:09:01]um after the one-year anniversary, what other options would have been available.

[00:09:05]We may have had like Eldrich Sovereigns around that time, but I think it took a little bit more than a year for them to get to Eldrich Realms.

[00:09:14]The next thing we're going to take a closer look at is the Steam database and the player numbers over time. If we look here, back in March when the last DLC came out, we had about 6,300 concurrent players. And that is almost half what we saw back in November with the DLC that came out before Rise of Ruins. The one that came out in November was the vampire one, Thrones of Blood, but it also had this free weekend, which I think inflated those numbers. If we look at the two highest peaks since the game came out, they coincided with the DLC that had a free weekend. But over time, these numbers were generally going up. And it's really interesting to see that the back in March, we didn't see more people playing Age of Wonders 4.

[00:10:03]And I think that has a lot in part to do with the fact that other turnbased things were coming out around that time.

[00:10:11]I know I was playing a lot of Slay the Spire 2 and I know that the new game from the creators of Binding of Isaac, I think it's called Mugenics that came out around that time. So, a lot of people that I know weren't playing Age of Wonders 4 as much as they would have, and I think less people were um thinking about Age of Wonders 4 because they were playing other games. Now, I think we're ready to dive into my about me grid.

[00:10:42]Then, we'll go over the things that I would like to see changed in Age of Wonders 4. So the first thing I have over here is the first ruler I created.

[00:10:52]That is I think Gary Webwaver. And every time I look at that ruler in my pantheon, I think of how I had a D&D centaur who adopted a a goblin called Gary. And this was also my very first ruler that I streamed a game with. So I just have a lot of fond memories of Gary. My favorite faction I've ever played was a primal silven wolf that gave a lot of benefits to the animist unit. This was back when you could continuously summon in the primal animals, which was very powerful because they could just walk over walls and tank a lot of damage, making it so that your animists were safe and just able to constantly make more of these units. um very strong, very overpowered, but a fun little interaction that I I enjoyed uncovering and showcasing. It's now very different, and I feel like that's in part because of me showing off that that is a very strong thing that Animus used to be able to do. My favorite affinity is order. I think I am a a bit of a goodie to shoes when it comes to this game. I don't like attacking free cities and I like having um good alignment because I I don't know. I just I've always been a player who enjoys not being evil in video games. Um but also I think the interactions in Age of Wonders 4 actually give good benefits to people who are having good alignment. The magic material that represents me is focus crystals because it allows you to get more experience on your units and that's a really really strong interaction. My ambition that I like using the most right now is actually Delver. It used to be one that I thought was not very powerful, but I found that if you spawn underground, you can get to renown level four actually relatively quickly using the Delver ambition because you just go around, you excavate the map, and then all of a sudden you have those really nice economic bonuses on your cities. My favorite form is the goblinoid because they have the best sound effects of out of all the forms. I love the way they laugh and they they make those noises when they run across the map. They're just they're fun little guys to play around with. Favorite culture, as you may have guessed, um by my favorite faction is Primal. Um I just think that the their different subcultures was really really interesting and dynamic.

[00:13:33]It allowed you to play factions that were pretty similar and yet had favored terrain. And I've always enjoyed um having a specific terrain that factions benefit from. I think that it really rewards people who are paying attention to the map and terraforming the map as they try to conquer their enemy. My favorite society trait is imperialist.

[00:13:57]I'm pretty sure this is imperialist.

[00:13:58]really like the economic bonuses you get from extra stability and from just having gold on hand to build more buildings in any stage of the game. I also think imperialist benefits cities that are near your throne city so you can get a lot of stability very early in the game if you use this society trait.

[00:14:18]And then my favorite tome is I want to say this is to of faith. It's an order tome. I I think that's the one I picked because it's become one of my more favorite ones um recently because it gives you extra knowledge using the SPI as well as it has just generally good units in it like the light spirit. The light spirit heals units allowing your other guys to stay alive longer. Sure, the light spirits might die in combat, especially in auto combat, but um the nice thing about some is you can just bring in more. My favorite hero class right now is the warlock for um the hexact and the claim soul ability. I think it's really neat and strong, which we'll talk more about soon. Favorite mount is the severed golem. I think that this is a really cool one that uh you can get dropped by enemies when you're clearing the map and it allows your your heroes and your ruler to have a very powerful interaction off of the mount slot, which is not always going to be the case, but when you get it, it feels like you you kind of you you got very lucky. Favorite transformation is the I think it's Earthkin from Tome of Rock. I I just I like the symbol here and I like that tome. I haven't used it a lot recently, but I think it's really good having extra armor because it makes your units tankier and more likely to survive enemy attacks. Favorite DLC is Primal Fury because well, we got the Primal Culture and as I talked about earlier, I really liked how there was a lot of options for that culture. I think that it um brought a lot of variety to the game and um it's been my favorite DLC since it came out.

[00:16:00]My favorite unit is the Ironclad. I think it's really cool having tanks that can shoot across the battlefield and take a dice roll with their barrage. It might do what you want it to do. It might accidentally hit your own units, but if you uh target the right hex, even when the shot scatters, it can still do good things for you. I don't like playing against balor. They're too strong. They're too scary. And um they used to be very common because of how easy they were to get access to. I think they are still relatively easy to get access to, but the interactions with fiends has changed over the development of the game and um we don't see them nearly as much as we used to see when the game first came out. My favorite spell is infectious insanity. It's really cool making enemies attack their own units. And I like that it's not just guaranteed infectious insanity, that it can't just trigger insanity for one turn because that means that you might not get all of the benefit out of that spell that you might otherwise get. Spells I hate fighting against or the spell I hate finding the most against is battle divination. Being able to give precognition to all friendly units is incredibly powerful and also has other effects that it triggers on other turns.

[00:17:15]When it comes to favorite story realm, favorite story god earier and hated story god earier, I just kind of picked um ones a little bit randomly because I haven't enjoyed a lot of the previous story realms. I don't enjoy playing against the AI that much in Age of Wonders 4. When I first started playing the game, it was fine, but now I I don't really find it to be too interesting or challenging. Even on the harder difficulties, I find that the AI struggles a lot with clearing the map.

[00:17:43]And in a lot of ways, it can make the game easier or just kind of tedious when you're trying to conquer a um AI ruler.

[00:17:52]Um which is a big part of why I love playing multiplayer.

[00:17:57]So, the first thing that I would like to see changed or taken out of the game is killing momentum. When I first started playing Age of Wonders Planetfall, I really liked Killing Momentum in the singleplayer context, but as soon as I started playing multiplayer, I saw how much this ability or interaction can be leveraged to allow a player to just kill off a lot of enemy units in one turn.

[00:18:27]And I didn't like how that kind of imbalance between players would um create unfair situations for people who know less about the game. It just seems like a skill that can be leveraged too much to create an unfair advantage. And I think in this combat right here, you're about to see how the warrior is even better at using it than um other classes would be because we can charge in here, deal a lot of damage, kill a unit, get the ability to attack another unit, not just with these other abilities, but also if we use second wind, we can allow this guy to move again and do another big attack to deal a lot of damage. And that's just something that I don't enjoy playing against. Similar to killing momentum, I really do not like how taunt can be used to make it so an enemy will move towards their opponent and end their turn without making an attack or even going into defense mode. If we just pass a turn here, we'll see that because this guy cannot path towards the target that has taunted it. It's just going to move forward and not take any attacks and um not go into defense mode. I think that that leaves the unit a bit too vulnerable for my liking and that it's pretty abusable in multiplayer. In single player, like sure, you can use it against your opponents, but your opponents won't be using taunt like that to you. not not too frequently at the very least. Um, but yeah, the other part of this is that defenders get access to taunt on their first pick at level two.

[00:20:23]So, it's something that people can get access to very very early into the game.

[00:20:28]And I I wish it worked differently. I wish that if a unit cannot reach the enemy that taunted it that it just lost taunt and it was able to take its turn normally. I think even if you dispel taunt after it's moved forward, it's ended its turn without going into defense mode. So there's no way for you to get those actions back or any actions or even defense mode back on a unit that has been taunted.

[00:20:59]The next thing that I kind of wish wasn't in Age of Wonders 4 is Keeper Mark and Steadfast. I think that having this available to rulers specifically makes it feel almost necessary to take on your ruler and most of your heroes.

[00:21:19]Sometimes there are other things that you want more and the new vampire rulers do not have access to keeper mark and I think that by having it available to rulers and allowing you to keep them alive an extra turn that allows you to get access to more spell casts than you otherwise would have. And I think having vulnerable rulers makes them a little bit more interesting and it makes the strategy side of Age of Wonders 4 more interesting. Another aspect of this is that giant king rulers do not need to meet the affinity requirement to get access to keeper Mark. As you can see here, we can pick any of the signature skills at level eight here. and one of them has keeper mark. The order one here has keeper mark. But if we compare that to our hero, we will see that this guy, he has affinity requirements that he needs to meet in order to unlock the adept level of these signature skills.

[00:22:28]So if we go here to adapt of order, you'll see it's unlocked by having four order. I think that that is a healthier place to have things like keeper marks so that not everybody has access to them in every game because well if you do you're probably going to want to take that. It almost feels mandatory or necessary and I think that kind of choice or rather lack of choice is something that um I don't enjoy seeing in the game.

[00:23:03]The next thing we're going to talk about here is raiding party, which in theory is one of my favorite new additions to the siege projects and the way sieges work in Age of Wonders 4, but unfortunately it's something that can be abused to get a kind of ridiculous amount of gold. If you besiege a city and break down the wall walls, you get 50 gold per tier of the besieged city.

[00:23:30]This is a tier three city and we will see that they think they can fight me here. So, we're just going to let the AI take care of them. We're going to get a bunch of gold and we are going to just pass a turn to let them get their walls back up and then siege them again. I believe it will take a little bit of time for them to get their walls back up, but um shouldn't take too long. I believe it's literally just a turn and then their walls are Yeah, they're they're rebuilt.

[00:24:07]So, we just come back in here, siege again, and that is unfortunately something that some people will abuse more than other people. And I know in the evolved mod they just disabled raiding party which I think is pretty unfortunate. I think this is a very interesting interaction as I I mentioned earlier. But yeah, it's it's just unfortunately in a place where people will use this to farm free gold.

[00:24:35]Part of me really doesn't want to complain about Hex of Broken Spirit because I love using it, but I think having it be an ability that can be used at eight range is a little bit too strong. At the lower levels, you don't get as many benefits out of Hex of the Broken Spirit, but it's still strong enough that I take it in most games so that I can soften up my enemies and make it so that they are able to deal less damage to me. Misfortune will make it so that they potentially deal less damage and they potentially deal damage to themselves. When a unit fumbles, grazes become um the a regular attack will become a graze, dealing half damage, and grazes will just become a miss. So, that really shuts down certain enemies as well as you get these other benefits.

[00:25:30]You get to reduce their morale, making it so that they're more likely to fumble, and you can make it so that they can take more damage from, I believe it is, magic attacks and combat spells. So, as we can see here, having it be something that you can use at range eight means that this guy can move here, use a free action to put hex of the broken spirit. And while this guy could come forward here and hit this unit because it's a free action at range eight, we can actually just move him back and keep him safe. Now, every turn that passes, this unit will get weaker.

[00:26:11]And um if we keep this guy alive, that means that eventually this unit just becomes something that the enemy cannot use. So yeah, I really love this ability, but I think it needs to change.

[00:26:23]I don't want it removed from the game. I just think something about it needs to change. Either it's range needs to be reduced or the fact that it is a free action needs to be changed to a single action or maybe a leave one action to um make it so it's not nearly as good as it it feels in the current version of the game.

[00:26:47]One of my favorite newer additions to Age of Wonders 4 is this culture filtering button because it is nice to say, "Hey, we don't want to see anybody pick the dark culture here and have somebody accidentally pick it or pick up a free city that has those really powerful interactions as well as um having that choice with other cultures."

[00:27:12]And I do wish there was a little bit more to these types of things that you can toggle. For example, it'd be nice to ban specific society traits like chosen destroyers or um the promise uh traits that can be kind of overpowered in certain players hands. and having that just be something people can't accidentally pick cuz they weren't paying attention when people were discussing the rules would be a nice thing to have in the game. I also think that having that ability for specific item effects like wind barrier could make the game a little bit more enjoyable because you can't control what people pick up on the map. And if they pick up something with wind barrier and the people in the game don't want that player using it, they get denied a powerful item that could have otherwise had a different effect and that they could have otherwise used. So I think having more access to things that you can toggle on and off would be really nice. I love that you can toggle shops off for example. And I think we heard in the dev stream that they're going to make it so that you can toggle the lost soul um that came with the thrones of of blood DLC. you can toggle those Lost Soul quest chains off. And I think that that's going to make the game a lot more fun to play with or will make it so that you can have access to certain things from a DLC without turning off the whole DLC or you can block certain interactions without turning off the whole DLC.

[00:28:51]And yeah, that's pretty much everything that I wanted to talk about in this video. Thanks for joining me and I hope you have a good rest of your day.