Video Game / Age of Wonders 4

"A power older than time has returned. Freed from their imprisonment, the ancient Wizard Kings come, seeking lost magics and new realms to conquer. Turning all whom they encounter, by choice or by force.
Through strife, champions arise. New unities are founded, and powerful arcane knowledge unlocked. As gods and mortals clash, the forces unleashed will shape a new age of wonders."

— Alfred Elderstone, Age of Wonders 4: Story Trailer

The fourth primary installment and fifth game overall in the Age of Wonders series, Age of Wonders 4 is a turn-based strategy game developed by Triumph Studios and released by Paradox Interactive on May 2, 2023.

During the second age of wonders, the Wizard's Circle of Evermore dominated the world of Athla, until schisms and demonic invasions devastated the realm. Many of the wizards were annihilated, while others were banished into the Astral Sea, or became stranded there while exploring other worlds. Finally, the Wizard's Circle itself was unmade, stripping the last wizards of their power and marking the End of an Age. However, a conspiracy coveted the power of the lost Wizard Kings and vowed to bring them home. At the end of the third age, they succeeded.

The veil separating Athla from the Astral Sea has now been broken, and the ancient Wizard Kings return from their exile, ushering in the fourth age of wonders. As a rising champion of your own people or a Wizard King returning from beyond, forge a pantheon of fellow demigods and stake your claim to one of the endless realms of The Multiverse!

AoW4 mixes together many aspects of prior instalments. While the meat of the game is familiar to players of Age of Wonders 3, it also brings back the classic elemental system of magic from the earlier titles, and splits the world map into a smattering of regions and provinces as Age of Wonders: Planetfall did. Another idea returning from Planetfall is an integrated career mode, the Pantheon, which allows the player to accrue experience points towards unlocking content such as new cosmetics and faction society traits, and build a roster of their favourite characters across multiple games.

The Character Class System of 3 and Planetfall has been abolished, as the tech tree is now split into six distinct "affinities", further split into dozens of themed "tomes"; these tomes and affinities may be researched in any order and combination, allowing the player to tailor their playstyle. Taking a cue from Paradox's library of games, the player's faction may also be greatly customized, taking any combination of appearance, culture and traits at faction creation, as well as choosing whether their leader is a native Champion or a Wizard King invading from beyond. The player can then modify their people further through magical means, as a slew of transformation enchantments can be applied to races inhabiting your empire, permanently changing their appearances and abilities.

The game received a number of expansions post-launch. Dragon Dawn, released in June 2023, adds Dragon Lords as a playable class in addition to Champions and Wizard Kings alongside the Lizardfolk racial form, the Tomes of Evolution and Dragons, and the Ashen War realm. Empires & Ashes, released in November 2023, adds the Avian form, the Reaver Culture, the Seals of Power victory condition, and a variety of new tomes, units, and story missions. Primal Fury, released in February 2024, adds the Lupine and Goatkin forms, the Primal culture, the Stormwreathed Isles realm, and various other gameplay elements.

A list of reoccurring characters and their tropes can be found at the main series' character sheet.

---

Age of Wonders 4 contains examples of the following tropes:

• Abstract Eater: The Chaos Eater unit is a fiend that can "consume chaos" as a secondary attack, cleansing adjacent enemies of negative status effects and dealing damage of a random element for each one removed.
• Actually Four Mooks: An army is composed of one to six creatures, with the strongest creature in the stack (or the most senior Hero Unit if present) representing the whole group on the strategic map.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • The Vine Prison spell from the tier I Tome of Roots scatters living vine units across a two-hex radius, which live for a single turn, can't move, and can't even deal damage beyond inflicting an entangling debuff that stops movement. However, dropping this spell in the midst of an enemy formation can make the AI waste time sending units to chop down all the fragile vines, since they're still units and the AI prioritizes easy battle kills. Using vines as a distraction can open up flanks from carelessly-moved units, force the AI to run the clock on status buffs, or give the player more time to get into a stronger position; and sometimes the vines might even inflict the entanglement debuff they're supposed to.
• All Trolls Are Different: A far cry from the dumb brutes of the previous games who were purely melee monsters, the Trolls in this game come in two different varieties: River Trolls who are melee/ranged hybrid skirmishers who can ensnare enemies in an Inescapable Net, and Swamp Trolls who are battle mage-type units with a powerful poison bolt attack and the ability to infect groups of enemies at a distance by launching plague spores at them. Both Trolls retain their Healing Factor, but only the Swamp Troll keeps the weakness to fire.
• Always Accurate Attack: Averted with regular ranged attacks, which once again have chances to hit, graze and miss like in Planetfall, with hit chances going lower if a target is farther away, obscured by other units or cover/obstacles, or standing in concealing terrain such as tall grass. Played straight with melee attacks (except against certain sources of evasion until the Watcher patch fixed that), and played fully straight for certain ranged Herd Hitting Attacks, usually from the secondary abilities of most Battle Mage units.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: A few pre-made rulers are said to have attained godir powers in response to the depredations of the Shad'rai, with Otto the Discarded in particular being afraid of what those powers might eventually do to him. A few Champion-exclusive random events call attention to the fact that, as their power grows, the distinction between them and the Wizard Kings becomes increasingly blurred.
• Angelic Abomination: The Lightbringer and Shrine of Smiting, Celestial creatures the player can learn to summon using tomes from the Order affinity, are terrifying creatures with skulls for faces. One could be forgiven for thinking of them as demons at first sight, though their use of light-based attacks will quickly give them away.
• Angelic Transformation: Angelize is a major transformation that gives your chosen race the features of angels, including golden armor, glowing skin and eyes, and large feathered wings. Besides giving them flying movement, units from angelized races have "faithful" (reducing their upkeep by 10%) and the "celestial" tag (modifying their resistances and making them Immune to Mind Control).
• Animal Motifs: The Primal culture's central gimmick is the selection of an animal totem for their people to worship, which provides a slew of thematic benefits; including their second affinity point, an ethereal animal summon, a designated favorable terrain with added resource bonuses, and variants on the "Rising Fury" mechanic of Primal units. The appearance and secondary damage type of some Primal culture units will change slightly depending on the faction's chosen patron, including support staves carved in the animal's likeness, and shields padded in the hide of the animal. The available spirit animals are the Mire Crocodile (swamp), Storm Crow (grassland), Glacial Mammoth (snow), Ash Sabertooth (ashlands), Dune Serpent (sand), Tunneling Spider (mushroom forest), and Sylvian Wolf (forest).
• Anti-Magic: The Spell Jammer province improvement that can be built in the territory of a city with a level 3 Town Hall, which protects the domain from hostile world spells, and doubles the casting point cost of hostile combat spells during battles. Also the Mage Bane, an Astral unit exclusive to independent marauder guards and/or infestations, which completely prohibits all combat spellcasting as long as it remains alive.
• Anti-Regeneration: The "decaying" status effect found in the Nature and Shadow affinities is a Damage Over Time toxin that prevents all healing for its duration.
• A Protagonist Shall Lead Them: Champion rulers are newly-minted godir who ascend from the ranks of their own culture to become their foremost representative, using their powers and charisma to build a mighty empire. Several pre-written champions ascended as a result of adversity befalling their people, most often the depredations of the returning wizard kings.
• The Archmage: The gimmick of Wizard King leaders, being ancient wizards with centuries to refine their powers, is their superior spellcasting ability. Wizard Kings have +10% mana income in all of their cities, allowing them to fund more spells and summons, gain +5 max spellcasting points on both the world map and during combat every two levels, which the first level also counts towards, and can use "overchannel" once per battle to cast one more spell in a combat round. At level 20, a Wizard King will have 50 more casting points than a Champion or Dragon Lord.
• Army Scout: Every culture has a dedicated Scout unit, typically consisting of a female Horse Archer riding on their race's mount of choice, with the exceptions of the Mystic culture's Astral Projection and the Reaver culture's Surveillance Drone. Scouts, as the game takes pains to point out to you, are not designed for combat: They have inferior stats compared to other units, and while they can move quickly and nip at flanks in a pinch, they aren't affected by the majority of unit enchantments, placing a hard cap on their usefulness. Instead, a Scout's job is to explore the overworld to collect resources and watch for enemy troop movements, and their only valid enchantments improve their movement and vision radius. Each culture's scout also gets a unique ability of some kind, such as the Barbarian Pathfinder's ability to create outposts (which normally only Hero Units can do) at double cost, or the Industrious Pioneer's Prospector ability that allows them to gather resources and occasionally magic items in regions with mountains, cavern walls and stalagmites.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Hero crossbow items at T2 and above tend to share the passive trait of being able to ignore up to 5 points of defence, and Magelock weapons in the Empires & Ashes expansion ignore half of an enemy's defence.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • The awakening to godirhood is consistently described as "ascension". At the end of "Rise of the Godir: Valley of Wonders", the player's champion ruler leaves the world behind and ascends to the astral sea for the first time, buoyed up by the fervor of their victorious followers.
  • The Magic Victory condition. By using special nodes retrieved from the magical tomes of their respective affinity, the ruler channels a massive spell that takes fifteen turns to complete, ultimately becoming a true master of their associated magical element and reshaping the entire world in their image.
• Barbarian Hero: A Champion ruler from a Barbarian culture, as well as regular heroes from that culture type. Despite hailing from a primitive and under-developed society, a Barbarian Champion has risen to be the forefront representative of their people and one of the most powerful wizards of their realm.
• Barbarian Tribe: The Barbarian culture is primitive and warlike (giving their leader mixed Nature and Chaos affinity), with their units and heroes clad in ramshackle Pelts of the Barbarian. Their mechanics emphasize speed, aggression and rapid expansion, allowing Barbarian empires to proliferate across the world map and snatch up resources.
• Beast Man: Several forms are anthropomorphic animals instead of Standard Fantasy Races. The base game provides Feline, Ratkin, Toadkin and Molekin, while Downloadable Content adds Lizardfolk, Avian, Lupine and Goatkin.
• The Beastmaster:
  • The Tome of Beasts is all about animal units. You can summon tier I-II animals, buff animals and cavalry, and transform your race so units gain bonuses when standing adjacent to animals. The tome also unlocks the Wildspeaker support unit, which buffs animals and can summon them once per battle, and enables the construction of Wildlife Sanctuary province improvements, which allow animals to be recruited at host cities, in your empire.
    "It is the beasts that shall inherit the world. Their paws will tread on our graves long after their fangs have ground our bones to dust. Call upon their might, if you dare. Command their ferocity and nourish it, so that you may reap the benefits of this primal power."
  • The Tome of Vigor at tier 3, which provides even more buffs for animals and cavalry (including an enchantment to give animals 'demolisher'), a spell that plants a totem which auto-summons basic animals for several turns, and a spell to summon tier III animals.
    "The unbridled power of the herd thundering over the plain, the sheer strength of the mighty bear as it closes in upon its prey. Hear the primal music that beats in the sinews and bones of beasts! Then you will be able to harness it and strengthen your pack with the force of nature itself."
  • The Houndmaster, an unlockable unit from the Tome of the Horde, can summon a War Hound in the tactical map, giving the army an additional body in the middle of a battle.
  • One Nature-aligned signature skill heroes can roll is "summon animal", allowing them to spawn a temporary tier III animal unit once per battle.
  • The Crowmaster's Bow starter equipment from the Pantheon grants your ruler a passive ability to start every battle with a free Grimbeak Crow unit.
• The Berserker: The Berserker is the Tier III Barbarian unit that has the Frenzy (their attacks grant them a stack of Strengthened, becoming stronger with each swing) and Berserker's Rage (become temporarily unkillable but also uncontrollable for 1 turn upon reaching 33% health or less) abilities. Barbarian factions can also pick up the combat spell song of the reckless, which causes a friendly unit to go berserk with three stacks of 'strengthened'.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: In "Rise of the Godir: The Eternal Court", you can complete the level by destroying Meandor's faction through military conquest, rather than go through the process of breaking the Lotus-Eater Machine he's caught in. Doing so nets you an achievement titled "Snap Out Of It!"
• Beneath the Earth: The underground layer returns to the series after being absent in Planetfall. Accessed through cave entrances, the provinces of the underground are separated by walls of dirt and rock — Rock walls are impassable, but dirt walls can be excavated to reveal buried provinces and open new paths, at risk of spawning stacks of marauders.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: A player with a high standing on the Karma Meter is necessarily this. Even Wizard King rulers can be played as benevolent if the player wishes to, despite their delusions of godhood and sneering dialogue.
• Bird People: First introduced in the series, the Avian form, added in the Empires & Ashes expansion that comes alongside the "Golem Update" that reworks the form trait system (among other things). Their default traits are: Light-Footed (can move through friendly units), Sharp Eyes (not to be confused with Keen-Sighted, increases world map vision and detection radius), Elusive (increases defense and resistance against retaliations and opportunity attacks), and Adaptable (increases XP gain for non-hero units).
• Blow Gun: Primal Fury adds blowguns as hero equipment, and on the unit side they're fielded by the tier 1 Primal Darter archer. They have lower range than other physical ranged units, but ignore the Obscured penalty, and the Darter unit itself has a secondary attack that lets them shoot a point blank shot and disengage from nearby enemy melee units simultaneously.
• Born Under the Sail: The "experienced seafarers" society trait, which improves the income of all coastal provinces and boosts the damage and experience gain of embarked units. Its turn-1 bonus is pre-unlocking the "basic seafaring" empire skill, enabling your units to traverse the ocean immediately.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Charm, dominate and convert are unit abilities that cause enemies to switch sides during battle and attack their friends. Fortunately, killing the controlling unit (helpfully marked by a line connecting them to their thrall) will return the mind-controlled unit to you. Mind-controlled units that remain such when the battle ends are "captured" and can be permenantly recruited for a cost of gold or mana in the aftermath.
  • The "insanity" status effect causes afflicted units to ignore all orders and attack anyone near them.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After being stuck in the Shadow Realm for a millennium, the wizards from Age of Wonders 2 return to reclaim Athla and conquer other realms as the Godir.
  • After being absent in Age of Wonders III, the Karagh return as an independent monster, instead of being a monster tamed by the Goblins.
  • The Dragon Dawn DLC reintroduces the Lizard Folk, who disappeared from the series since the first game, as a racial form. In addition, the Slither, which were originally a Draconian unit in 2, returns as a tome unit from the Tome of Evolution, while the Draconians themselves have been turned into a Transformation that can be applied to any race, similar to the base game's Frostlings.
• Carnivorous Healing Factor: The "Ritual Cannibals" society trait grants all racial units the ability to consume corpses on the battlefield for a health boost, as a free action. Various other units can perform "consume corpse" naturally, including wargs and zombies. Also of note is the "terrifying gorging" ability, which allows some especially large and monstrous creatures to devour other units whole for a health boost.
• Cat Folk: The Feline form, recognizable from previous games as the Tigrans, which in this game, have the Athletics (upgrades racial units with regular movement to fast movement), Elusive and Desert Adaptation traits by default. Originally having the Resolute (reduced duration of status effects, now folded into Resilient) trait prior to the rework.
• Chain Lightning: The special ability of the Evoker Battle Mage unit from the Tome of Evocation, as well as a damage spell cast on the tactical map from the Tome of Amplification; a similar effect can be applied to the shooting attacks of physical ranged and skirmisher units alongside some bonus lightning damage through the Amplified Arrows enchantment from the Tome of Amplification.
• Chaos Is Evil: Not inherently, perhaps, but the general gist of the Chaos affinity revolves around destruction wrought with war and pyromancy, no scruples required. Many Chaos skills in the empire development tree encourage raiding and razing. Three out of the four Chaos society traits (Ruthless Raiders, Ritual Cannibals and the Pantheon-unlocked Chosen Destroyers) push you towards evil on the Karma Meter and as you progress through the tomes, you start learning tricks to summon The Legions of Hell and transform entire races within your borders into demon-like creatures.
• Circus of Fear: The darkly festive Tome of Revelry in the Chaos affinity is themed on debauchery and The Power of Blood. Besides providing a demonic harlequin, the Skald, as a support unit, owning the tome also unlocks a province type called the Carnival of Flesh, the portrait of which depicts a man strapped to a wheel for a knife-throwing act.
• Color-Coded Elements:
  • The affinities: Chaos is red, Order is yellow, Materium is orange, Astral is blue, Nature is green and Shadow is purple. Units and spells associated with each affinity almost always have appropriate color schemes to match.
  • The damage types, slightly modified from the previous games: Physical is red, Fire is orange, Frost is purple, Shock is blue, Spirit is yellow, and Blight is green.
• Combat Exclusive Healing: Inverted. While healing during combat is possible like in earlier entries in the series, it has been changed to only grant "temporary" health that vanishes after the battle. Permanent healing is gained on the world map, through idle recovery or certain spells.
• Complete Immortality: Like previous Age of Wonders titles, rulers are immortal and will retreat to the void to recuperate after suffering critical damage, eventually reappearing in their throne city. In fact, rulers are even more explicitly immortal this time around: They're no longer implied to die when their throne is destroyed while they're recovering. Instead, defeated godir are stranded in the void and forced to make their way back to Magehaven the hard way. However, this means a long, painful journey through a Psychological Torment Zone, and not all of them complete the trip.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted. Lava tiles cannot be crossed by any means, even with flying units, presumably due to the lethal heat. Meanwhile, the smaller lava chasms in the desolate biome will give your cities a happiness penalty if annexed.
• Critical Existence Failure: Averted for multi-model units this time around. Unlike in the previous two games, such units now become weaker and deal less damage as they take casualties, giving single-model units such as Heroes/Rulers and high-tier monsters a distinct advantage. Luckily, healing still restores/replaces fallen models, and the severity of the damage penalty from losing models can be reduced by taking the Tenacious mind trait for your starting race.
• Critical Status Buff: Barbarian Berserkers and units with the Keeper's Mark enchantment gain Steadfast when they reach near-death, making them unkillable for a turn, though they are still susceptible to status effects, and units or spells that can dispel enemy buffs, such as the Mystic Spellbreaker, can get rid of Steadfast to allow their side to kill these units early.
• Crystal Ball: The primary means of interacting with free cities is to give them "whispering stones", a thinly-veiled Expy of the palantíri, which will gradually improve their alliegance value over time. If you have any idle stones, you can assign them to your own cities instead for a gradual stability boost. Various empire skills and society traits will provide you with extra whispering stones, with equally varied ways to improve how much alliegance they generate per turn. The Shadow affinity in particular has skills to grant bonus knowledge income per assigned stone, gain vision over assigned cities and their surroundings, and even leech income from the vassals of other empires.
• Crystal Landscape: Mana node battlemaps are centered on a grove of large masses of blue Power Crystals. One type of ancient wonder is a forest of crystal trees with roots woven through the earth, guarded by creatures tied to the Astral affinity. Units that stand adjacent to the crystals gain a contextual shock damage buff as they become charged with magical energy.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • The Flow Serpent has the passive ability "astral refuge", which causes it to phase out and become stunned but invulnerable until the start of its next turn whenever it takes any amount of damage. This can make flow serpents a pest to fight with most units that have weak repeating attacks... unless you have a unit of spears. Spear units have "first strike", letting them perform their Counter-Attack before the attacking flow serpent can strike, which causes it to astral refuge and abort its attack. If the serpent tries to disengage without support, it'll suffer an attack of opportunity and be astral refuged; and their otherwise-useful blink-strike power cannot be used within an enemy zone of control. An unsupported flow serpent can effectively be stun-locked by a basic spear unit and suffer a slow, humiliating death.
• Dark Is Evil: Downplayed. The Dark Culture gets +10 points towards evil, and much of their gameplay and themes involve cruelty (Cull the Weak) and tyranny (ignoring income penalties from having negative stability in cities), but nothing is stopping a Dark player from picking good-aligned traits such as Chosen Uniters, aiming to maintain a neutral or good alignment and peacefully integrating rather than conquering free cities, though unlike High Culture, they do not get special bonuses for having a neutral, pure good or even pure evil alignment.
• Dash Attack: "Shock" units (usually in the form of cavalry, large monsters, or units with heavy weapons) have single-hit charge attacks that gain a +20% scaling damage bonus for each hex they cross, to a maximum of +60% (or three hexes). Their attacks also disable the defence mode and retaliation of a target that lacks sufficient charge resistance, opening them up to further attacks from nearby allies. Hero Units can serve as shock units by equipping two-handed melee weapons like great-hammers and Jousting Lances.
• Deadly Gas: Part of the Tome of Alchemy in Empires & Ashes, with its principle combat application being clouds of a noxious "miasma" that weakens units and causes them to suffer Damage Over Time effects based on the element of the next attack that hits them (i.e. shock damage leaves them electrified). You also get a siege project, "fumigation", that causes the city defenders to start the battle poisoned.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: The Balor, a demonic T5 Chaos-aligned unit, has an innate death explosion. The Flameburst Weapons enchantment from the Chaos Tome of Devastation can also cause enemies killed by units that have it to explode into flames, while the Supreme Magic enchantment from Tome of Supremacy causes the enchanted units' kills to detonate in a burst of spirit energy.
• Dem Bones: A natural staple of Undead armies throughout the entire series. In this game, they come in the form of:
  • Bog-standard Skeleton spearmen, which now have racial variants (complete with bespoke anatomy for Non-Human Undead) and benefit from form and society traits. The "Wolf" patch later expanded skeletons to have shield, shock, archer, support and battle mage variants, along with the ability for users of the Tome of Necromancy to recruit each of them from post-battle casualties of the same unit type.
  • Bone Horrors, a retread of the Bone Collector from the third game, is a Walking Ossuary in the shape of a Giant Enemy Crab that uses its bulk to serve as a shock unit. With the Tome of Souls, it can be reanimated from the remains of non-racial T3 or T4 units, and at half health, spawns a unit of Decaying Zombies nearby.
  • Also returning from the previous games: Bone Wyverns and Bone Dragons, which are normally exclusive to marauder guards and infestations, but the former can be occasionally acquired from certain map pickups, and the latter can be gained from certain gold-level Ancient Wonders or, with the Tome of the Great Transformation, reanimating the remains of non-racial T5 units.
• Dishing Out Dirt:
  • The Tome of Rock, a tier I Materium tome. It has a Rock Blast spell to smack a target with 30 physical damage, but for the most part the tome is defence-oriented. Stone Skin allows units to hunker down with extra defence and resistance, at the cost of becoming more vulnerable to spirit damage. The Earthkin minor transformation provides Rock Walking and Rock Camouflage, adapting your race to rocky terrain by mutating stone growths on their bodies. The tome also provides recruitable Gargoyles and summoned Lesser Stone Spirits, who serve as Heavily Armored Mooks.
    "Earth! Rock! The very foundation of the world beneath our feet. Embrace it. Harness it. Use its solidity for both protection and pain. Call forth minions of stone, and turn your own skin into the hardest rock!"
  • The T3 Materium Tome of Terramancy expands further upon a Godir's earth-based powers, allowing its user to summon fully-fledged Stone Spirits, cause earthquakes, break down mountains into more habitable provinces, and crush enemies with the earth so hard that it either instantly kills them or stuns and deals massive damage to them.
    "Ignore the middling mages who seek to raise the dead or harness lightning and fire to hurl at you. These fools know not the power resting beneath their own feet! But they will... in the final moments of their insignificant existences, when you bury them beneath a mountain and rend the land beneath their cities."
  • The earth (and elemental in general) powers in Materium reach their peak with the T5 Tome of the Creator, which allows them to unleash the Earth Titan, a powerful combat-only summon that acts like a super version of the Stone Spirits, grant the Undying Earth enchantment to Elemental units that allows them to self-resurrect once per battle, construct powerful "Earthshatter Engines", and unleash an even more powerful earthquake spell.
    "Those who master Materium stand above the world, razing and toppling lands at a whim, and harnessing the primordial forces of creation. The titans themselves shall walk with you, while the very essences of element and mineral take a knee. You are the Creator, a shaper of worlds."
• Ditto Fighter: The Mirror Mimic, a T4 Astral unit from the aptly-named Tome of the Astral Mirror, is capable of shapeshifting into a copy of an enemy unit. Unlike the weak Shakarn Infiltrator from Planetfall that was incapable of getting any modules whatsoever, the Mirror Mimic will inherit any compatible enchantments from its owner's side for the unit type it is copying, and will actually turn into a stronger version of that unit with its stats adjusted to better match the Mimic's original tier, though if copying a T5 unit, its stats will be scaled down instead.
• Dragon Hoard: A mechanic unique to Elder Dragon rulers in Dragon Dawn. Dragons can't equip the majority of hero equipment (since they're gargantuan, non-humanoid monsters), but every unused item in their inventory contributes a bit of gold income based on its tier, encouraging the player to amass treasure and only share it sparingly with lesser Hero Units.
• Dragon Variety Pack: True dragons (available in fire, frost, gold, and obsidian varieties, as well as undead "bone" dragons) are mythic creatures responsible for shaping the primordial realms alongside their rivals, the giants. Wyverns are the stunted descendants of the old dragons, lacking forelimbs and breath attacks. The Dragon Dawn expansion adds Dragon Lord rulers, who are powerful casters and leaders of nations, just like Champions and Wizard Kings, and are split into six types themed after the affinities of magic (Order, Materium, etc.). There's also the "slither" in Dragon Dawn, a malformed draconic creature of unclear origin, but implied to be an even further degraded descendant of the wyverns.
• Dug Too Deep: Like previous games, excavating dirt walls in the underground layer opens new paths and reveals buried provinces and resources, but can also expose you to infestations and rival empires. In addition, excavations have a chance to spawn marauder stacks in the new province, making it unwise to go digging with lone scouts.
• Eagle Squadron: The Rally of the Lieges mechanic gives a periodic opportunity to recruit units drawn from your vassal cities (as well as cities you directly own if governed by a Hero with the right trait) and Ancient Wonders in your territory at the cost of gold. Depending on what's within your empire's sphere of influence recruits can range from units of different cultures and races to NPC units like Ogres, Fey, and certain Astral monsters that are otherwise either combat-only summons or just not available in Astral Tomes. The Order Affinity works particularly well with the Rally mechanic, as it has a plethora of empire skills, Tome researches, and a society trait (known as Bannerlords, unlockable from the Pantheon progression system) that give various boosts to it, such as shortening the turn timer between Rallies, giving extra ranks or the faithful attribute (reduces upkeep and lets the unit interact with mechanics that involve the faithful tag) to units recruited from Rallies, reducing the gold cost for recruiting Rally units, and more.
• Eldritch Abomination: Many Astral-themed monsters could easily fit this description; special mention goes to the Mage Bane, which resembles the Sorcerer's Eldritch Horror from the previous mainline game.
• Elemental Embodiment: Returning from the previous games, but this time called "Spirits" instead of Elementals. Much like in 3, they have a lesser and regular/fully-grown form. Unlike the Elementals of 3, which were always a melee/ranged hybrid skirmisher in their lesser form and melee specialists in their full form, each elemental Spirit follows a different archetype that is consistent in both of their respective forms, the elemental Spirits that currently exist in-game are: Magma (fire-based battle mage-type unit, focused on magical ranged attacks), Snow (skirmisher, a melee/ranged hybrid), Storm (a shock troop-type, focused on devastating melee charges at the cost of staying power), and Stone (A general-purpose fighter, but with more defense than usual). There's also a watery Tide Spirit that is effectively similar to the Stone ones, but trades extra defense for resistance and has a different set of special elemental resistances/weaknesses, and is currently not available in any Tome, being obtainable only if you manage to get one from certain events, world map pickups and site-clearing rewards that grant free units. Another elemental-type unit is the Wind Rager summon from the Materium Tome of Winds, which does not have a lesser form, and is in between a lesser and fully-grown elemental Spirit in tier and relative power. Also classed as a general fighter-type unit, it is more offense-oriented than the Stone and Tide Spirits, having the Frenzy trait that gives it increased damage the more it attacks, and can damage and displace enemies in an area by briefly turning into a whirlwind.
  • Gargoyles are also tagged as elementals, allowing them to benefit from effects that specifically target elemental-type units.
• Elemental Powers: Common throughout the Tomes, but the Mystic Culture's units are notable for most of their attacks using fire, frost and shock all at once. They can also gain additional cumulative point of fire, frost or shock damage for all of their Cultural units (and Tome/Rally units they acquire, given the right enchantment) in battle thanks to the Attunement: Star Blades passive, which triggers each time any side casts a spell in battle, even their enemy's.
• Emotion Eater: Races that have been given the Joy Siphoners minor transformation, from the Tome of the Doomherald, drain the morale of enemies with each attack and raise their own.
• Enemy Exchange Program: As ever, mind control-capable units also make their presence in this game. Some notable examples include the returning Nymph unit from the Nature Tome of Fertility, who can now seduce enemy units from a distance, and the Lightbringer unit from the Order Tome of the Beacon, resembling a strange, floating fish-like creature with a human skull-looking face and the ability to convert enemy units to its cause.
  • Some spells are also capable of stealing enemy units. The Arcane Bond spell from the Astral Tome of Summoning allows its user to attempt to take control of an enemy unit of magical origin, dealing damage to said unit if the attempt fails. Meanwhile, the Order Tome of Subjugation has the Final Ultimatum spell that can be cast on a routing enemy unit that either instantly kills the unit if it fails, or permanently takes control of it if successful. Much like in Planetfall, most mind control effects are temporary and get rid of the controlled enemy units after the battle is over, Final Ultimatum is the exception to that rule, until the "Golem Patch" added a feature where mana, gold or war spoils can be spent to permanently keep a mind-controlled or subdued enemy unit after combat.
  • Just like in the previous games, it is possible to absorb an enemy city as-is, instead of purging the population and migrating your race in, granting access to that race or culture's units. And of course, vassalized free cities can either contribute to the Rally of the Lieges mechanic, or be fully integrated and put under your direct control to let you just draft the former vassal's units yourself.
• Entropy and Chaos Magic: Naturally, some Chaos Tomes are themed around this, notably the Tomes of Mayhem and Pandemonium. The former features plenty of ways of cursing enemies with Misfortune to increase their Fumble chance and a spell that applies Insanity to a single enemy unit that has a chance of spreading to its friends when it attacks them. The latter has a plethora of methods of inflicting random status effects on enemies and exploiting said status effects, as well as the Chaos Eater monster unit that can consume each negative status effect on an enemy in exchange for healing itself and dealing a moderate amount of damage of a random type to the enemy for each status effect consumed.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Frost magic is the element of the Shadow affinity, which is also linked to darkness and death. While Dark Is Not Evil can be a thing, the kind of people who gravitate to ice magic are generally not the nicest.
• Evil Overlord: With a helping of Sorcerous Overlord. Any faction ruler can be this with a low enough position on the Karma Meter, but special mention should go to the Shad'rai, an alliance of villainous Godir who are essentially a magical Legion of Doom.
• Evolution Power-Up:
  • Units with the "evolve" tag will morph into a more advanced unit upon reaching champion rank. Often this means a weak 'child' creature will morph into its adult self, such as most spider hatchling units evolving into their adult form, and from there to an even stronger spider matriarch. This isn't limited to creatures maturing biologically, either, as mundane units like a Feudal Pikeman can be promoted into a Defender or elementals summoned by magic promoting into a bigger version.
  • The Dragon Dawn expansion adds the Tome of Evolution, which supports this mechanic as a gimmick. The tome comes packaged with a hero skill, "Shepherd", which reduces the upkeep of evolving units and slightly boosts their defences. Rapid Evolution boosts the experience gain of evolving units, and gives lower-tier evolving units "Slip Away", granting them a second life in combat which gives them a chance to escape and be healed. Draconic Vitality is a transformation that provides the target race with extra Hit Points (to a maximum of 15) every time they level up. Youthful Rejuvenation is a healing and buff spell that has bonus effects on evolving units. Finally, the tome also offers two summoned units, the slither hatchling and wyvern fledgeling, which both evolve.
• Evolving Title Screen: The first five characters that join your pantheon and are marked to potentially show up as recruitable heroes (which they are by default) will be gathered before the giant portal in the background of the main menu. The foreground, meanwhile, shows the ruler from your most recently played save game, sporting all the magical transformations they've accrued during the match.
• Experience Booster: Building a bathhouse grants not only +40 city stability, but also grants all produced units in that city the "Bathhouse: XP Boost" trait, which increases experience gain by 10%.
• Extreme Omni-Goat: The goatkin form (introduced in Primal Fury) has the "herbivore" trait by default, which allows racial units to consume flora-based battlefield obstacles (ranging from bushes and wheat crops to entire trees) for a health boost and random positive status effect. There's an achievement for eating ten flora objects in a single battle, the icon of which depicts a goat munching on some grass.
• Extreme Omnivore: Races with the Ritual Cannibals Society Trait gain mana for their spellcasting reserves and food for their nearest city after killing enemy units of non-magical origin, and gain the ability to eat the corpses of friend and foe alike on the field as a free action that restores their health. Despite the name, the ability provided by this trait works perfectly fine on races of a different form and even very unlikely sources of food such as ethereal monsters from the Astral Sea, despite the latter being of magical origin and thus, not counting towards the bonus food and mana after battle.
• Fantasy Gun Control: The first in the series to play this straight, until the Empires & Ashes expansion changed it back to an aversion with the introduction of the Reaver culture and the Tome of the Dreadnought, the latter being an obvious nod to its namesake class in the previous mainline title in the series.
• Fearless Undead: Undead units innately have the "heartless" trait, which halves all morale loss. They'll still break if you terrorize them enough, but they'll stay in the fight much longer than equivalent living troops.
• Field of Blades: Arcanium deposits resemble glowing swords embedded in the ground. It's also a major ouchie for anything not flying or floating off the ground, as battles in arcanium deposits have a field spell that damages everyone every few turns.
• Flavor Text: Flavor text of the "in-universe quote" variety can be found when examining magical materials and tomes. Pop-ups and random events sometimes have embedded flavor text to describe the meaning of certain words and phrases. Each pre-made race also has a biography, describing the backstory of their ruler and a bit about the race itself in two paragraphs. Randomly generated races, such as those seen among the Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps, instead get an automatically-generated boilerplate description based on their racial/cultural/society traits. The player may opt to write their own biography for custom factions, or leave it as the default boilerplate.
• Flying Seafood Special: The ethereal natives of the astral sea loosely resemble aquatic creatures that "swim" through the air. These include astral siphoners and astral keepers (jellyfish), astral serpents and flow serpents (large fish or eels), and mage banes (a cephelopod). The lightbringer, while not directly associated with the others, shares the animations of the serpents and is this trope by way of Angelic Abomination, resembling a metallic dolphin with a mane of white feathers and a Skull for a Head. On the non-unit side, the astral sea is also home to reclusive mer-people called "maers".
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: Prelude of Doom, a world spell in the Tome of the Doomherald that inflicts a morale debuff to all units in a targeted enemy stack, depicts a ringing church bell in its icon.
• Frog Men: First introduced in the series, the Toadkin form, which has the Resilient (reducing the chance of getting afflicted by status effects as well as their duration), Hardy and Water Adaptation traits by default.
• Full-Boar Action: The Goretusk Piglet and its older stage, Goretusk Matriarch, are boars that are found in the wilderness. Both boars can charge at foes for massive damage, while the Matriarch can devour corpses for health and run through non-Fortified obstacles without slowing down. The Matriarch also has Maternal Rage, which grants them a stack of Strengthened when an allied unit dies.
• Fungus Humongous: Mushroom forests are a common sight in the Underground layer, and they're also what underground farmers raise as crops.
• Giant Mook:
  • The Supergrowth transformation from the Nature-aligned Tome of Vigor basically turns your people into this, increasing their size and reducing the model count for each of their multi-model units, allowing them to take more damage before losing a model at the cost of losing more damage per casualty, while also giving them increased health and the ability to perform an additional retaliation.
  • The Troll and Ogre units that can be unlocked from certain Ancient Wonders/Landmarks or the right Hero trait for the Rally of the Lieges mechanic naturally count towards this trope too, as well as the Warbreed unit from the Chaos Tome of Devastation.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Granted, the storyline conflict between the Covenant and the Shad'rai is closer to Black-and-White Morality, but a major part of the game's fully customisable races and factions is that every race, especially the procedurally-generated ones, is only as noble or corrupt as the player or the Random Number God sees fit, each of the six affinities is not inherently good or evil (meaning you can channel the dark and destructive powers of Chaos and Shadow for the good, or wield the beneficient powers of Order and Nature in the service of evil) and each pre-made lord can be played straight or against type depending on how the player wants to use them. So long as the factions chosen are random, no two games will play quite the same.
• Golem: A staple line of Construct-type units from the crafting/artificer-themed family of Materium Tomes, ranging from the relatively cheap and dependable Copper Golem to the mighty Golden Golem, who can turn enemies it kills into gold for your empire's coffers. Each of the Materium Golems shares the trait of being highly resistant to physical ranged attacks, immunity to mind control and berserk/insanity, and halved morale penalties at the cost of a substantial lightning weakness. Unlike the Golems from 3, they are not piloted Steampunk/Magitek mecha but are much closer to the traditional depictions of Golems, or to an Animated Armor or Living Statue.
• Green Hill Zone: Fey-blessed Fields, a tier I preset realm available from the start. It has the traits "Endless Fields" (making the primary biome temperate plains with plentiful food), "Peaceful Lands" (making animal, plant and fey units common) and "Disdain for Evil" (causing all players to gain grievances against players with an evil alignment).
• Green Thumb: The bulk of the Nature affinity concerns plant life and the natural world, with a bit of The Beastmaster on the side.
• Gunboat Diplomacy: Being gigantic, terrifying monsters, dragon rulers can perform a "primal" skill check based on their level to resolve some events through intimidation. In particular, this can be used to intimidate newly-encountered hostile free cities into becoming non-hostile; implicitly by giving an extravagant show of their power. If a primal check fails, however, the dragon suffers a debuff to armor and resistance for a few turns, having exhausted themselves for nothing.
• Hate Plague:
  • The Insanity status effect from some Chaos Tomes and one late-game Shadow Tome, which causes afflicted units to go out of control and attempt to attack the first unit (friend or foe) within their reach. The standout example is the spell Infectious Insanity from the Tome of Mayhem, which adds a base 50% chance for the insane unit to spread the status effect to any other unit they attack.
  • With the Domain of Mayhem realm modifier, all units must resist a status check every three turns, or spend the next turn Berserk. Forunately, Berserk prioritizes attacking enemy units instead of your own.
  • In-universe, this is a fixture of Obbadoth, the demon homeworld, and a story mission set there has the unique quirk of compelling all rulers and free cities to be at permanent war with one another.
• Heavily Armored Mook: A speciality of the Industrious culture, whose units boast higher-than-average physical defense and can gain the cumulative Bolstered Defense/Resistance buff from taking enemy hits and certain abilities from their T2 Support and T3 Shield units. They can also convert Bolstered stacks into healing and/or damage boosts using certain spells and unit abilities unique to their culture. All this comes at a cost of lower base damage and initial magical resistance than usual for their Shield units, however.
• Hellgate:
  • The Demon Gate special province improvement, an upgraded Teleporter that provides its host city with the ability to recruit a handful of fiend units — namely the Inferno Hound, Inferno Puppy, Gremlin and Chaos Eater.
  • The Astral Rift infestation is a tear in the fabric of reality that allows betentacled horrors from the astral sea to invade the physical realm.
• Hell Is War: The demon homeworld of Obbadoth features a Hate Plague that inflames passions and compels people to fight each-other for any reason they can think of. The third story realm, set on Obbadoth, has the gimmicks of every ruler and free city being permanently at war with one-another, and all units in combat having a chance every three turns to go berserk and act without orders.
• Hero Unit: As usual for the series, rulers and recruited heroes take to the field as powerful and customizable single-entity units, unlocking new abilities as they level up and collect equipment. Every five levels also unlocks a slot for special affinity-themed skills, which each grant their empire a corresponding affinity point. The ruler is the player's personal avatar, with the ability to respawn after falling in battle, and a faction is eliminated if their Mage Tower is captured while the ruler is recuperating.
• Hidden Elf Village: The unlockable "Hermit Kingdom" society trait makes your race into this trope. Their cities gain knowledge, food, production and happiness bonuses as long as their borders never touch those of another city. Relatedly, they get doubled grievances when other empires encroach on their claimed provinces without permission, incentivizing wars to drive away outsiders.
  They seek only to be left alone to their studies, and will aggressively protect their studious isolation from any disturbances.
• High Fantasy: In deliberate contrast to Age of Wonders 3, which showed a Low Fantasy world gripped by industrial revolution in the wake of true magic becoming lost, Age of Wonders 4 returns the series to high fantasy. The protagonists are once again immortal demigod wizards with nigh-unlimited power to shape creation; there's a multiverse of worlds to explore; the civilizations involved lean towards the medieval era in their aesthetics and tech level; and every unit and character is designed to look as fantastical and eye-catching as possible.
• Hobbits: The Halfling form, which has the Quick Reflexes (increases evasion against ranged attacks), Light-Footed and Elusive traits by default.
• Home Field Advantage: Unlike the near-alien Wizard Kings, Champions are natives of their own world and rose from the ranks of their own people. Their familiarity with the inhabitants of their realm gives them +10% gold income and +20 stability in all cities, a +20% experience bonus for all non-hero units, and +100 relations with Free Cities.
• Hope Bringer: The Blessed Soul has the ability "Beacon of Hope", which provides 20 morale points to a targeted ally that has less than neutral morale.
• Hope Crusher:
  • The Tome of the Doomherald in the Shadow affinity is all about inflicting morale damage to terrorize enemy units, causing them to fumble attacks and eventually flee the field. Appropriately, its associated unit is a banshee.
    "The darkness that creeps from shadow to shadow not only brings disquiet, but also carries the promise of your arrival. Dim the light of your enemies' spirits. Shroud them in despair, so that their weapons clatter onto the ground and spells do not issue from their lips."
  • The Corrupt Soul from the Tome of Souls has two special abilities: "Hopelessness", which increases the Corrupt Soul's defense and resistance for every level below 'neutral' morale any attacker has; and "Crushing Anguish", a magic attack that has a chance to instantly kill a unit that has low morale.
• Horny Vikings: Though there's a Scandinavian flavor in the setting in general, the most standout examples would be the occasionally generated coastal Free Cities with Barbarian aesthetics, a Norse name, and a fleet.
• Horse Archer: With the exception of the Mystic Scout, all Scout units ride on mounts and are equipped with bows. Furies, the Barbarian ranged unit, can ride on mounts if their race has a specialized mount as their body trait.
• Horse of a Different Color: A family of form traits available at faction creation replaces the basic mounts of your race with special ones that provide extra Hit Points and unique abilities, as well as granting "optional mounts" to certain units that are otherwise on foot. These include Nightmare Mounts (grants Intimidating Aura), Spider Mounts (grants a Web attack), Unicorn Mounts (grants Phase) and White Wolf Mounts (grants Enfeebling Howl and Pack Hunter). As for the vanilla mounts, you can set your race to have ponies, wolves, wargs, or boars instead of horses.
  • The Empires & Ashes expansion adds dire bears (grants a bit more health than other exotic mounts and the Overwhelm passive that increases damage against enemies in defense mode) as an additional exotic mount trait, with brown bears and polar bears as regular mount options.
  • The Primal Fury expansion adds elephants, mammoths (more health and the juggernaut ability) and giant eagles (flying movement) as special mounts, with crocodiles and sabertoothed cats as basic mounts.
  • The free Wolf update alongside Primal Fury also adds tigers, lions, panthers, zebra, dogs and stags as basic mounts, which can be unlocked as cosmetic rewards in the Pantheon menu.
• Hostile Terraforming: Several late-game world map spells shift the climate of a targeted province, dealing damage to any enemy armies in the region due to aggressive plant growth, volcanic eruptions, blizzards or earthquakes.
• Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance: Zig-zagged. There's no limit to the number of "minor" transformations a race can have, since they're typically mild stat mods, so if you can spare the time to research them you can create some fairly chaotic hybrids, and all the visual effects will display so long as they don't conflict with each-other (in which case the most recent transformation visual is shown on each body part). However, you can only apply a single "major" transformation, which grants units a type tag that changes how various abilities interact with them (like Wightborn applying the undead tag).
• An Ice Person: Ice magic is part of the Shadow affinity, through the Tome of Cryomancy and Tome of the Cold Dark. Ice magic can be used to summon frost elementals, immobilize or slow down enemies, terraform the land into a snowscape, and infuse your troops and their weapons with ice. The Dark culture's mage unit and many magical Shadow affinity units also make heavy use of frost damage in their attacks, particularly the White Witch unit.
• Immortal Ruler: While heroes are mortal and can be killed off at any time, rulers are immortal wizards who, in-story, can live comfortably for centuries and even millennia. When seriously injured, they retreat to the astral void to recuperate for a few strategic turns, though this comes at the cost of various penalties, like the interruption of all research and spellcasting. The closest a wizard can experience to "death" is to be stranded in the void by the destruction of the throne they use as a respawn point, and they can still find their way back to Magehaven if they're determined enough.
• In Harmony with Nature: The Primal culture's whole premise, being a tribal society that worships animal spirits, with hardly any metalworking or heavy industry to be seen without interference from tomes. Even their axe-wielding shock unit wields a battleaxe hewn entirely from a slab of oak, with a sharpened wooden blade.
• Injured Vulnerability: Units with the ability Cull the Weak (associated with the Dark culture) deal additional damage to enemies suffering the "weaken" debuff (widespread in the Dark culture) and gain temporary regeneration when they hit said enemies. Meanwhile, units in the Empires & Ashes expansion that have the Focused Aggression ability deal additional damage to enemies for each stack of "marked" that said enemy has.
• In Their Own Image: In the Magic Victory, your ruler performs a massive ritual spell that makes them into a living embodiment of one of the six affinities, reshaping the world to their whims with every step they take.
• Item Crafting: The item forge menu, unlocked by building a special wizard tower upgrade, allows you to craft custom hero equipment using a special 'binding essence' resource (gained primarily by melting down unwanted items in the forge). The traits that can be applied to custom items are determined by the magical materials your empire has access to, each material unlocking a group of traits.
• Jousting Lance: The weapon of choice for the T4 Tyrant Knight from the Order Tome of Subjugation. The respective T3 Knights of the Feudal and Dark cultures also use lances, but they bear a much closer resemblance to the less-advanced cavalry spears of the classical and early medieval eras.
• Land of One City:
  • The "Megacities" rule modifier removes the ability for players to found and absorb new cities, but allows existing cities to cover much more territory to compensate. The hero cap is increased through a special building chain.
  • The "Chosen Destroyers" society trait functions similarly to the above. Instead of making your capital larger, though, you get a stacking bonus to all resource income every time you raze a city to the ground.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Steadfast is a status effect that temporarily prevents a unit from dying, leaving them at 1 HP for a turn when they receive damage that could have been fatal.
• Lava Pot Volcano: The "caldera" realm simulates this by placing a sea of lava at the center of the map while rounding out the map's edges with mountain ranges, creating a roughly circular layout.
• Life/Death Juxtaposition:
  • The Nature affinity is about life, fertility and the natural world, with its tomes granting power over plants and animals. Its opposite, Shadow, is about death, decay and stasis, and its tomes concern Necromancy and ice magic. Factions that specialize into Nature or Shadow suffer diplomatic penalties with each-other.
  • The Nature-elemental Druid of the Cycle embodies both life and death. It has a powerful heal or resurrection ability, Restart the Cycle, which can only be used after the Druid kills another unit.
• Life Drain: In addition to rendering racial units immune to morale and giving them the typical undead resistances and weaknesses, the Wightborn major transformation also provides this ability to the affected units. Unlike in previous games, where life stealing was almost always for melee attacks only, Wightborn are fully capable of leeching life through ranged attacks.
  • Races with the Mana Addicts Society trait also benefit from life stealing whenever any side in battle casts a spell, at the cost of suffering morale damage when a turn in combat passes where no spells are cast.
• Light Is Not Good: Downplayed. The High culture is very outwardly noble, with its Bling of War, use of the spirit element, talk of harmony and awakening the true potential of their followers, and association with the Order affinity. You even get +10 initial points towards good alignment just for starting the game with them. However, nothing stops the player from using the High culture as the powerbase for an evil ruler, and their "alignment agenda" trait provides distinct bonuses for being evil, neutral, and good. Also, see Order Is Not Good below.
• The Lost Woods: Overgrown Realm, a pre-set tier II realm. A single landmass dominated by forest regions, with deserts and tundras vanishingly rare. With "megafauna", animal units are common and they all have the empowered beasts enchantment, making them tougher than normal. With "regenerating infestations", fresh monster lairs appear in unsettled regions every ten turns, ensuring your empire will be constantly harassed by the wildlife, but also offering plenty of opportunities for treasure hunting.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Shield units all share a passive bonus of +3 physical defence against any non-flanking attacks. Their Defense Mode ability is also upgraded to "Defense Mode: Shield Wall", which confers a defense bonus to all adjacent allies. There are some Magic Enhancement spells that improve the aforementioned Shield Wall ability, such as Spell Tempered Shields from the Tome of Artifice, which gives an extra magic resistance bonus to units within the effect radius of Shield Wall. Hero Units can equip shields as well, and they tend to come with unique bonuses of their own.
• Mage Tower: A concept returning from Age of Wonders 2, the capital city of a faction houses a massive Wizard's Tower, which provides a special path of city upgrades. The Wizard's Tower is your main source of imperium income, and comes with a collection of special upgrades to buy. It also provides the city with increased vision range at each level, with the ultimate upgrade giving the city True Sight. If you change your capital city, the Wizard Tower is (somehow) packed up and moved to your new capital.
• Magikarp Power: Some Tier 1 and 2 Wildlife units, such as spider hatchlings and lesser elementals, start out fairly weak beyond the endgame, but if they hang in there long enough and gain enough ranks, they will evolve into Tier 3 or 4 units which have much more powerful stats.
• Magitek: An element of the Materium affinity, which features construct units and advanced industrial technology. Empires & Ashes later adds the Reaver culture, which makes use of Surveillance Drones and "magelock" firearms, as well as tomes that further emphasize blending magic and technology.
• Magma Man: The Tome of the Crucible in the Materium affinity, which allows the player to harness destructive spells relating to volcanic activity and meteor strikes.
  "Is not magma a glorious spectacle to behold? A union of fire and earth streaming inexorably toward your enemies, swallowing them, bringing fiery death! The landscape itself is reshaped when it flows, with beautiful scars traced over the realm."
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Hero units are the only ones who can found new outposts, and therefore new cities (aside from the Barbarian scout unit, but it costs double and takes longer). Heroes are the only ones who can initiate sieges on enemy cities, so basic conquest is impossible without them. You also need a hero leading an army to explore and clear Ancient Wonders.
• The Maker: Many of the pre-made Wizard Kings and Dragon Rulers are said in Flavor Text to have created the races they command, resulting in fanatical loyalty.
• Mana Meter: Casting points, which serve as a currency for magic alongside crystal mana. Taking a page from Age of Wonders: Planetfall, casting points are split into "world map" and "combat" points, used for spells in the overworld and on the battlefield, respectively. Casting points replenish to their soft cap at the start of every strategic turn, and world map spells that cost more points than you have available are built up over multiple turns until the needed amount is reached. Every tome you unlock in the Tech Tree increases your soft cap of casting points, and certain modifiers (such as the Powerful Evokers and Gifted Casters society traits, and the Wizard King origin's bonus of +5 casting points for every level-up) can increase the amount further.
• Mass Transformation: A selection of permanent transformation spells can be applied to your empire's primary race, as well as any additional races you become the "keeper" of. Transformations alter the appearance and stats of a race, such as angelize bestowing an Angelic Transformation and the ability to fly. While a race can only have a single "major" transformation, the more common "minor" transformations can be applied without limit and in any combination, apart from Supergrowth and Spawnkin being mutually exclusive, as making your race bigger and smaller at the same time will just result in them going back to being normal-sized.
• Medieval European Fantasy: The Feudal culture has this aesthetic, with a noticeably Scandinavian flavor. Their forces make use of kite shields, gjermundbu-esque visored helmets, peasant levies armed with pitchforks, and Jousting Lances wielded by knights and lords.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Meteor Shower from the Tome of the Crucible, which causes meteors to strike the earth next to two random enemy units for three turns, dealing 15 fire and 15 physical damage to everything caught in the blast.
• Mole Men: First introduced in the series, the Molekin form, which has the Bulwark (increases the bonus defense and resistance gained from entering defensive mode), Tenacious (halves damage penalty from losing models) and Underground Adaptation traits by default.
• Monster Allies: Wildlife units, consisting of animals and monsters, can be recruited to the player's side through special province improvements like the Animal Sanctuary, {[Summon Magic}} spells and the Rally of the Lieges mechanic, which summons specific units from Ancient Wonders the player has annexed, e.g. Corrupt Souls from Lost Tombs, Fire Giants from Magma Forges etc. The Order affinity tree has several special perks which make this easier and enhance the units when summoned.
• Monster Clown: The Skald unit from the Tome of Revelry is a mix of this trope and The Bard. A demonic (or what the game classifies as Fiend) unit resembling a hellish jester with red skin and a spaded tail that acts as a support unit capable of boosting allies with two different ranged AoE abilities, themed on songs: One which increases their damage and critical hit chance, and another which increases their morale and provides health regeneration. The Skald's attack is a bolt of fire that has a chance to inflict Insanity, causing enemy units to go berserk and potentially attack their own allies.
• Morale Mechanic: While present in previous games, determining the likelihood of Critical Hits and Fumbles, 4 puts more weight and dynamism on the morale system. Unit losses can now affect morale by default ^*(The previous mainline title only had this feature for Warlord-led stacks with the "Warrior's Honor" skill, which boosted morale for their side with each loss from the said stack), reducing that of other units on their owner's side, and increasing the morale of units on the killer's side. Units that have been sufficiently demoralized may end up routing and fleeing the battle, ignoring orders as they attempt to reach the edges of the map (reappearing a few turns later at a friendly city, if successful). If all surviving units on one side are routing, the battle is concluded, though the victorious side is allowed to keep playing and run down the stragglers. Some unit types, such as Undead and Constructs, have the "Heartless" trait that halves their morale loss and gain.
• The Multiverse: Alluded to since the original Age of Wonders, the multiverse of worlds beyond the Astral Sea is the setting of Age of Wonders 4, and serves as the in-universe justification for player-created factions and custom games. Every world has the same origin of being cultivated by the dragons, giants and archons as part of their inscrutible cosmic designs, but diverge from there to be home to many different races and characters.
• Mysterious Mist: Primal Fury's Tome of Fey Mists, the gimmick of which is spreading clouds of magical mist that obscure vision. Units in mist clouds or affected by the residual "clinging mist" become harder to hit with ranged attacks, while overworld provinces blanketed in mist reduce vision range and provide universal camouflage to armies. Fey units and racial units with the "Fey-touched" transformation are immune to the negative effects of mist, and instead gain bonuses whenever they end their turn obscured.
  "The mist conceals all. It obscures vision and confuses the senses as it claims fields and forests. Envelop yourself in this mystery, breathe in its damp, cold air and cloak yourself in the fog of the Fey-folk. Let it swallow your enemies and have them discover that there is no hiding in the haze from you."
• Near-Death Experience: The "Sleep of Oblivion" tactical spell instantly kills any non-hero unit, only for them to return 2 turns later at 75% health, but insane. Being forced into and out of the afterlife is not a fun experience, it seems.
• Necromancer: The bulk of the Shadow affinity, which concerns magic relating to death and decay. After acquiring any necromancy-related tome, the player can utilize a unique "souls" resource to recruit undead units, resurrect dead heroes stored in their palace crypt as wights, animate dead units as skeletons or temporary zombies, and restore razed cities by reanimating the populace. You can also acquire necromancer support units, who can heal undead and raise zombies on their own.
• Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: The world map is populated by free cities (city state-like factions who can be interacted with diplomatically, ranging in strength from basic free cities, to high-tier ones that can potentially field T4-5 units and add special recruits to your Rally of Lieges if allied with), marauder guards (who sit around guarding treasure piles and resource nodes, or lie in waiting within Ancient Wonders) and infestations (which spawn roaming warbands to attack anything near their zone of influence).
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Dragon Dawn adds Lizard Folk who can be set to have crocodilian heads, and one of the pre-made rulers is Logarr the Shipscourge and the Crocodile Corsairs. Primal Fury later adds actual crocodile units and mounts, and the Primal culture can dedicate itself to the Mire Crocodile totem (associated with swamps, disease and blight damage).
• Night of the Living Mooks: The necromancy side of the Shadow affinity allows you to recruit and summon undead units using a special souls resource, perform Animate Dead on defeated enemy units to create short-lived decaying zombies, and eventually perform a Mass Transformation to turn entire races under your control into sapient undead. The "Wolf" patch later reworked and expanded necromancy to allow post-battle casualties to be reanimated as equivalent skeleton units for a cost in souls, allowing necromancers on the march to pad out their armies with undead cannon fodder.
• North Is Cold, South Is Hot: In standard map generation (without any Single-Biome Planet modifiers involved), you'll find arctic and highlands terrain in the far north, desert and desolate terrain to the far south, and temperate terrain everywhere in-between. If your race has a climate adaptation trait for one of the extreme types, their first city will be situated much further to the north or south than other players.
• No Experience Points for Medic: Averted once again in a manner similar to Planetfall's, where experience is shared between all of a winner's surviving units after a battle.
• Noob Cave: Fields of Rebirth/Initiation Realm, a tiny preset map locked to the easiest difficulty with two AI rulers, allowing a new player to get to grips with the game and experiment. It has a unique trait, "Harmonious Lands", that prevents the appearance of high-level infestations and ancient wonders.
• No-Sell: Downplayed much like in Planetfall, units can have high damage resistances and immunities to status effects, but full damage immunity like it was in 3 is practically nonexistent outside of extremely rare and temporary circumstances, such as the Flow Serpent, a unit that otherwise errs towards Fragile Speedster, becoming invulnerable to all damage for the rest of their attacker's turn after taking a hit, or the Mark of Invulnerability spell from Tome of Warding, which renders a unit immune to all damage for one turn, but cannot be cast on the same unit more than once per battle.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The unlockable "Chosen Destroyers" society trait locks your faction to a single city and makes it impossible to found or capture new ones; provides stacking gold, mana and knowledge income for every city you raze to the ground; and gives you a -300 diplomacy malus with every player and free city. In earlier builds, the trait outright forced Hard-Coded Hostility with everyone else on the map, starting automatic, permenant wars upon first contact.
  They are warmongers and destroyers, choosing violence over diplomacy any time they can.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: The Defender unit for the Feudal Culture (and Champions/Heroes with said Culture's starting sword and shield) appear to be wielding thick swords with oddly-long handles and parrying hooks that suggest they are intended mainly for two-handed use, though the blade is relatively short and more fitting of a hand-and-a-half sword, and the crossguards are rather short/narrow as well.
• Order Is Not Good: On a meta level, nothing stops the player from playing a High culture with mostly Order affinity as an evil warmonger. In-game Tomes aligned with Order affinity are split into two flavours: healing and protecting your subjects through the power of faith and tyrannical domination and conquest with army of zealous fanatics. Downplayed by Society Traits, where Order Affinity is represented by Chosen Uniters (Good), Devotees of Good (ditto), Imperialists (technically neutral, but morally ambiguous) and the Pantheon unlockable trait of Bannerlords (true neutral).
• Order Versus Chaos: Order and Chaos are opposed affinities, giving players and Free Cities who focus on them a negative opinion modifier with each-other.
• Our Angels Are Different: "Celestial" creatures have a slight resistance to Spirit damage, a weakness to Blight and Frost damage and immunity to loss of control (or in other words, mind control). The Major Transformation Angelize turns the target race into angel-looking creatures with golden glowing skin and large bird-like wings, as well as granting the "Faithful" tag that reduces their upkeep by 10%. There are relatively few Celestials besides, with Blessed Souls being the closest to the popular depiction of angels, while the Lightbringer and Shrine of Smiting are out-and-out Angelic Abominations.
• Our Demons Are Different: The "Fiend" unit tag is mostly associated with the Chaos affinity. It grants units increased fire resistance, immunity to burning, and faster movement in volcanic and desolate terrain, along with a weakness to frost and spirit. Natural fiend creatures include Inferno Hounds, Gremlins, Nightmares, Skalds and the mighty Balors. The Demonkin major transformation infuses your race with demonic energy, causing them to sprout horns and bat-wings, gaining frenzy, flying movement and immunity to burning, but for some reason, likely due to a bug, they do not currently grant the Fiend tag, unlike Angelize or Gaia's Chosen which do grant their respective Celestial/Plant tags.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The base game saw the return of Frost, Fire and Bone Dragons, with the Golden and Obsidian Dragons temporarily absent. The Dragon Dawn content pack, meanwhile, enables factions to be led by customizable Dragon Lord rulers themed after the six elemental affinities, while also introducing a couple of Tomes that allow rulers to summon/draft the dragon-related Wyverns and Slithers, respectively, as well as draft young Fire/Frost Dragons or, depending on their alignment, the returning Golden or Obsidian Dragons, that will evolve into their respective adult forms upon reaching the fourth medal. Dragons and their relatives all have the "Draconic Rage" passive that grants them a damage buff at 60% or less health, and player races can also be given this trait alongside burning immunity and a Healing Factor through the Draconian Transformation.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The Dwarfkin form, which has the Tough (increasing base defense), Hardy (renamed from Hearty, increases health) and Defensive Tactics (gaining a bit more defense, evasion and resistance when next to a fellow Dwarf) traits by default. The cultural aspects of dwarfdom (greedy smiths and miners) are moved to the Industrious culture.
• Our Elves Are Different: The Elfkin form, which has the Sharp Eyes, Keen-Sighted (increases ranged accuracy) and Arcane Focus (increases magical damage) traits by default.
• Our Fairies Are Different: The Fey once again return as independent units that can potentially be unlocked as special recruits or site-clearing rewards. This time, the mainline Fey come in seasonal themes, such as the Spring Fairy, who is a support unit with a single-shot poison attack and an ability that temporarily makes friendly units deal more damage and never miss with ranged attacks. Interestingly, the returning Wisps are no longer tagged as Fey, but the Horned Giant is.
• Our Giants Are Different: Giants make their return, and their lore of being shapers of worlds is alluded to by the "Lingering Creators" Realm Trait that makes them more common in marauder guard armies. The Rock and Fire Giant make a comeback, but the Frost Giant has been replaced with the Storm Giant.
• Our Goblins Are Different: The Goblinoid form, which has the Hideous Stench (reduces status and non-physical damage resistance of adjacent enemies that do not also have this trait) and Sneaky (increases damage dealt when flanking an enemy) traits by default.
• Our Humans Are Different: The Human form has Defensive Tactics, Fast Recuperation and Adaptable traits by default.
• Our Monsters Are Different: While each form comes with pre-set colors and body/mind traits to fit stock fantasy stereotypes, the player may freely swap them all out, alongside selecting any culture and any combination of society traits, and the resulting race can be given a name. So, you can make your own special snowflake flavors of dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs and even humans, before you dip into permanent transformation enchantments during the game to make them even stranger.
• Ouroboros: The symbol of the snake eating its own tail is used to represent the steadfast status effect.
• Our Ogres Are Hungrier: Ogres make a return from 3, and now come in two forms: Butcher Ogres who have a special ability that has a chance to instantly kill an enemy unit depending on how low its remaining health is, and yeti-like Brewer Ogres who can drink from their barrels of cold booze to temporarily gain increased damage and an icy breath attack.
• Our Orcs Are Different:
  • The Orcoid form, which has the Strong (increases physical damage, naturally), Hardy and Ferocious (increases damage when retaliating or making attacks of opportunity) traits by default.
  • Among the pre-made orc characters, Asgera Spinesplitter and her Bloodfang Orcs, along with the Enthralled Orcs who serve Karissa the Red, are fairly standard Tolkienesque "Durr hurr, smash humies, durr hurr!" orcs, but Noctus the Librarian and his Erudite Orcs are a Mystic society of spellcasters and scholars, while Turiel Tolarim, a benevolent orc Wizard King, is followed by the Onmar, a High culture race of orcs who are essentially paladins who were appointed by the Archons to guard Grexolis and are the main opponent the Shad'rai face in the base game's fifth and last Story Realm.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: Returning alongside their older and larger dragon relatives are Frost Wyverns, Fire Wyverns and Bone Wyverns, which can be gained as standalone animal units and flying mounts for heroes. Dragon Dawn adds Gold and Obsidian Wyverns with their respective dragon counterparts, as well as summoned Wyvern Fledgelings that evolve into a random wyvern type.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Wizard Kings hail from the Astral Sea and are usually arriving on alien worlds to subjugate the natives. Unlike Champions, Wizard Kings have a slider at character creation to change their form independent of their minions, and choose their personal starting weapon from a consistent set of "Godir weapons" (alongside a Spirit Staff or Lightning Orb), rather than taking weapons determined by their followers' Culture, though mechanically they still share their faction's chosen traits.
• Plant Person: The Nature Tome of the Glades and Tome of Paradise grant the Leafskin and Gaia's Chosen transformations respectively. The former gives a race green skin with a very leafy texture and gives them better mobility and the ability to camouflage in forests, while the latter makes them look as if they are part-tree, with actual leaves and branches growing on them, and grants them the Plant tag and its according damage resistances and weaknesses, the ability negate the bonuses of non-heavy charge strikes, and a hefty boost to health and status resistance.
• Playing with Fire:
  • The Tome of Pyromancy, a tier I Chaos tome, provides spells that deal fire damage and place fire hazards, provides units that deal ranged fire damage, has enchantments that make your other units deal fire damage, and provides lots of bonus damage when attacking units that've been set on fire through the Burning affliction.
    "Fire is sacred. It is the beginning and the end, it is passion and destruction, it is life and death. Harness the essence of the flame, watch it bring your enemies to smoldering ruin, behold the beauty in the ashes. As the inferno burns the land, so does it give soil vitality, bringing life from destruction wherever it spreads."
  • Fire is the favorite damage type of the Chaos affinity, as most non-physical or mixed-damage Chaos units deal fire damage. Later enchantments, such as Flameburst weapons from the Tome of Devastation, allow you to do things such as cause enemy units to explode into flames upon death, and the T4 Tome of Chaos Channeling provides the Scion of Flame minor transformation that gives the transformed race a hefty fire resistance, a flame retaliation aura, the ability to ignite flammable terrain that they walk through, and an immunity to burning (Chaos' major transformation, Demonkin, also grants the last one).
  • Materium dabbles in a bit of fire as well with the T4 Tome of the Crucible, which allows its user to cast lava bursts, pyroclastic eruptions and meteor drops to harm their enemies.
• Poisoned Weapons: Blight damage and related Damage Over Time debuffs appear fairly commonly in Nature Tomes, with the Tome of Roots in particular giving the Poisoned Arrow and Blade enchantments early on. Ironically, plant units themselves are weak to blight damage, though they are immune to the poison status effect.
• Pretext for War: Returning from Age of Wonders: Planetfall is the casus belli system, here known as "grievances" which determines how justified a war with another player is. Common grievances include tresspassing in territory, stealing prospective free city vassals or ancient wonders, expanding into regions claimed by nearby cities, and similar slights. Declaring a war for little-to-no reason inflicts penalties on your empire, impacts your Karma Meter, and gives other players a grievance against you for being a warmonger. Inversely, having lots of grievances to justify war provides bonuses to happiness and imperium income. Declaring rivalries or friendships will influence how quickly you gain grievances whenever that player slights you, outstanding grievances can be paid off or forgiven in the diplomacy menu to smooth over relations, and you can spend resources to fabricate a grievance to further justify a planned war.
• Production Throwback: The default description for goblinoid races mentions a curious fascination with sheep. Winning the game as Dark goblinoids with the tier-V chaos tome nets you an achivement titled "Master of Evilness".
• Proud Scholar Race:
  • Any Dark race is this, with a tendency toward being Mad Scientists. They have dungeons specifically designed for experimenting on sentient beings and several other methods of boosting Knowledge without restraints like "morality." They also have a link to the Shadow affinity, which is associated with Knowledge.
  • High races are harmonious and advanced civilizations built around religious faith and sun worship. Their Sunshrines provide a significant boost to knowledge, and the race's stability bonus synergizes well with the Tome of Faith and the Convent structure (which gives mana and knowledge to stable cities).
  • Also according to the tooltip, Mystic races are scholars dedicated to exploring the Astral Sea. They're not notably better at research than anyone else^note their Mystic Abbey province improvement is a version of the Sunshrine that produces less knowledge and more mana, though an Astral racial trait (Ancient Wise Ones) does give a significant - albeit random - bonus to research, and the Astral affinity (which they're associated with) has more Knowledge bonuses than any other affinity except Shadow.
  • The Astral-aligned society traits imply this trope for any faction. "Ancient Wise Ones" claims that your people "have been around since the start of history, honing their minds in pursuit of arcane knowledge", which translates to a discount for a random research item in each new tome. "Hermit Kingdom" instead presents your people as Hidden Elf Villagers who "seek only to be left alone to their studies", gaining knowledge and other resource bonuses as long as their borders never touch anyone else's.
• Psychological Torment Zone: The "Torment of Shadows" is a phenomena that attacks the minds of wizards who've become stranded in the Void Between the Worlds (i.e. defeated with no Wizard Tower to respawn from) The Torment takes the form of visions and whispers, tailor-made to prey on the wizard's insecurities, criticize their actions and undermine their beliefs. Godir who can't keep their sanity and return to Magehaven are doomed to drift aimlessly in the void and mutate into Lost Wizards.
• Purple Is Powerful: Wizard King outfits feature purple tints and details (often glowing) on areas whose colors cannot be customized normally. The Wizard's Tower that looms over a faction's capital city also glows from within with purple light, indicating its importance.
• Putting the Band Back Together: The "Returning Circle" achievement is gained by adding the wizards of Evermore from Age of Wonders 2 to your Pantheon — chiefly Yaka, Nimue, Arachna, Fangir, Artica and Karissa, who are available in the base game.
• Rat Men: First introduced in the series, the Ratkin form, which has the Adaptable, Quick Reflexes and Overwhelm Tactics (grants bonus crit chance when next to a fellow Ratkin) traits by default.
• Recycled Animation: A number of units in Age of Wonders 4 reuse animations or are straight-up modified models of units from Planetfall, most noticably the Goretusk Piglet (modified Rabid Piglet), Chaos Eater (modified Kir'Ko Ravenous), Phase Beast (modified Misfortune) and Caustic Worm (modified Quartzite Lava/Crystal Worm). The Slither and Slither Hatchling from Dragon Dawn reuse the Mega Beetle animations.
• Rules of the Game: Various map traits will change the way core mechanics work for that match. "Megacities" for example forces every empire to be a Land of One City, removing the ability to found or absorb new settlements, but making capital cities able to grow much larger than normal.
• Sea of Sand: A rather literal version of the trope is the "Barren Oceans" geography trait in realm creation. Rather than watery oceans, the continents of the realm are divided by vast, uninhabitable deserts wracked by Deadly Dust Storms.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: Depicted in the icon for Cruel Weaponry, a unit enchantment from the Tome of the Doomherald that increases melee damage against targets suffering from low morale.
• Single-Biome Planet: Several "clime traits" in realm creation make certain biomes extremely common, while removing or reducing any contrasting climates and terrain features. These include Desert Realm, Frozen Realm, Overgrown Realm, Scorched Climate and Endless Fields.
• Sinister Deer Skull: An available headgear for the Primal culture is a deer skull mask with glowing eye-sockets and sweeping antlers.
• Situational Damage Attack:
  • The Spellbreaker's "astral purge" doubles its damage against creatures of magical origin (fey, undead, astral sea monsters, etc.)
  • Dark culture melee units have "cull the weak", which increases their attack damage against targets suffering from the "weakened" debuff and provides a stack of regeneration.
  • The Dark Knight's "dark surge" deals double damage against any target that has negative status effects.
  • Reaver culture units (as well as tome/rally/off-culture units with the appropriate enchantmment) have "focused aggression" which increases the damage they deal for each stack of "marked" on a target, in addition to the universal benefit of marked, which is making the target easier to hit with shooting attacks.
  • The Chaos Eater's "consume chaos" secondary attack cures all negative status effects from adjacent enemies, and deals twelve damage of a random element for each one removed.
• Shifting Sand Land: Astral Deserts, a pre-set tier I realm. Not only is it a Single-Biome Planet, but the barely-habitable desert regions are seperated into "continents" by a desolate Sea of Sand. However, the realm is rich in crystal mana, and the wildlife is primarily of the "magic origin" category.
• Shock and Awe: The Tome of Evocation, a tier I Astral tome, specializes in shock damage. It allows you to bombard armies and units with lightning bolts, enchant your own units to have electrical attacks, summon Lesser Storm Spirits, and recruit Evoker battle mages who wield Chain Lightning.
  • Lightning damage is the main forte of the Astral affinity in general, but ironically, many of their units are also weak to it due to the Ethereal trait, which unlike in previous games, no longer boosts physical protection, but instead makes units that have it a bit more resistant to spirit damage but much weaker to lightning.
• Shout-Out:
  • To The Lord of the Rings:
    • One secret achivement, "The Grey Wizard", requires you to win a game as halflings led by a human wizard king.
    • The achivement "A Very Special Ring" requires you to craft a ring accessory with at least three traits, one of which must be 'universal camouflage'.
  • One of the Loading Screen gags is "Imagining Dragons".
  • The description of the "Lightless" map trait claims that "The nights are dark and full of terrors."
  • The icon◊ for the Compounding Defense enchantment from Tome of the Construct resembles the "epic handshake" between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers in Predator.
• Sneaky Spy Species: The "Devious Watchers" (originally called "Shadow Walkers" at launch) society trait provides that race's Army Scout unit with "universal camouflage" — becoming invisible on the world map unless another unit has True Sight or stands adjacent to them, allowing scouts to infiltrate foreign domains without risking a diplomatic incident — and the movement-boosting "Wayfinder Enchantment" for no cost. Their cities and provinces also gain +2 vision range, and their outposts spawn with the watchtower add-on already built.
  They are talented spies, sneaking past enemy lines to gain precious information.
• Snowy Sabertooths: Introduced in Primal Fury, muscular sabertooths (sporting an exaggerated "smile") are present as animals and mounts. Interestingly, the trope of sabertooths living in frigid climates is inverted — while the Primal culture can adopt the magical Ash Sabertooth as their animal totem, it's associated with volcanic ashlands.
• Sorcerous Overlord:
  • Every Godir uses magic extensively, but an evil Wizard King is this trope, as they're encouraged to rely on spells and summoned monsters slightly more than conventional armies.
  • The story trailer shows off a Wizard Queen (named Lithyl Nightweaver in-game) who sets out to conquer the world she arrives on, amassing an army of orcs (who she augments to have demonic features) and other Obviously Evil creatures, and ruling from an Evil Tower of Ominousness. At the end, her lair is besieged by an alliance of nations led by the heroic King Alfred Elderstone, a man whose parents were among her first victims.
• Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: Pre-set realms (and their associated traits) are unlocked as you accrue Patheon experience, and are sorted into tiers based on how threatening the geography is and how complicated the rules are. At tier I you'll find Fey-blessed Fields and Astral Deserts, while the final realm unlocked is the volcanic, demon-ruled Desolate Realm at tier V.
• Spell Book: The game's Tech Tree is divided into dozens of "tomes", which are themed packages of spells and units for your empire to research.
• Standard Fantasy Races: The various forms for custom races include Humanoid, Elfkin, Dwarfkin, Halfling, Orcoid and Goblinoid, alongside multiple flavors of Beast Man. Of course, depending on how you design them, and later transform them, they can become anything but standard.
• Stereotype Flip: Heavily encouraged. With racial form being purely cosmetic, and racial and cultural traits being free to pick and change as you see fit, there's nothing stopping you from making a race of barbaric and savage elves or noble and scholarly orcs, thick-witted forest-dwelling dwarves or sophisticated and mystical goblins. In fact, it's outright encouraged!
• Straight for the Commander: A staple of the series. Factions are eliminated from the game if their Mage Tower (located in their capital city) is captured while their ruler is waiting to respawn from falling in battle, causing all remaining units and cities to flip neutral.
• Summon Magic: Numerous tomes provide spells that conjure units to be placed within your domain or near a Hero Unit. Summoned units have the "magical origin" tag, which gives them mana upkeep instead of gold and makes them uniquely subject to certain effects like Banishing Rituals. There are also "combat summoning" spells and unit/hero abilities that spawn friendly units directly onto the battlefield, lasting only for a short time or until the battle concludes.
• Swallowed Whole: One of the attack skills that Dragon Lords can learn is the "Terrifying Gorging" ability, where your lord either instantly removes a unit from battle by swallowing them whole and alive and drastically harming the morale of any nearby unit that witnesses it, or just takes a massive bite out of them for huge chunk of HP and lifesteal. The swallowed unit can be rescued if the dragon is killed before the end of combat, but since they're the army's lord, this is easier said than done.
• Team Spirit: One of the central gimmicks of the Feudal culture is the "Stand Together" ability, which provides a damage buff when two units with the ability stand adjacent to each-other. Non-Feudal units can gain this ability through the culture's special unit enchantment, Singet of Knighthood, while heroes can pick it up as a skill. Paired with a support caster that deals in area-of-effect buffs and healing, a Feudal ruler is encouraged to use tight formations, keeping units close together at all times to optimize their performance.
• Tech Tree: Age of Wonders 4 has a non-linear tech tree split into five tiers and dozens of tomes, which are themed packages of units, spells and other upgrades to research one by one. You begin the game with three tomes — A basic tome of enchantments for your scouts, another basic tome unique to your faction's starting culture, and a proper tome of your choice from the first tier. Completing half of all available research allows you to grab a new tome to expand your options. Each tome is associated with an elemental affinity, providing you points towards that affinity when you acquire them. Researching any two tomes of a tier unlocks the next, but tomes of the third tier upwards also require a certain threshold of points in their affinity before they can be unlocked, and you can only choose a single tier-V tome per playthrough. Every tome you open also increases your maximum Mana Meter, provides a special province improvement, and adds new a skill for your Hero Units to learn.
• Terraform: Some world spells, such as "Restore the Land", allow you to do this, turning less productive provinces into useful ones or creating favorable terrain for battle. Some offensive world spells take the form of Hostile Terraforming instead, damaging local armies with volcanic eruptions or mountain-shattering force. Choosing a climate adaptation trait for your race grants a free terraforming spell to spread your race's preferred terrain. The Primal culture of Primal Fury has a central gimmick of terraforming city provinces to match the preferred climate of their spirit animal totem, granting their units and economy various bonuses.
• Time Stands Still: The "Time Stop" combat spell from the ultimate Astral tome Tome of the Arch Mage inflicts Stun, Distract (making all attacks against the afflicted a flanking attack), and 5 stacks of the Marked debuff (which makes them more likely to be hit by ranged attacks) to enemies within a 1-hex radius.
• Title Drop: The introduction to the first story realm discusses the beginning of the "Fourth Age of Wonders".
• A Thicket of Spears: Like in Age of Wonders 3, polearm units have the "first strike" ability that allows them to perform their retaliation attack before the attacker hits them. They also have charge resistance (negating the Dash Attack effect of shock units, unless they have a heavy charge strike) and a 40% damage bonus against units with the "cavalry" or "large target" tags.
• Transhuman Abomination: Lost Wizards are former godir who, after being defeated and banished to the Void Between the Worlds, succumbed to the sanity-eroding Torment of Shadows and mutated into eldritch monsters. They're among the few units that are exclusive to marauder guards/infestations, with no way to acquire them through research or the rally of lieges.
• Tunnel King: Races with the "Underground Adaptation" trait are adapted to live Beneath the Earth, gaining easier movement on underground tiles, the ability to build farm provinces underground, and the innate ability to excavate dirt walls without unlocking the relevant empire skill first.
• Underwater Ruins: The sunken ruins terrain, added by the "Golem" update's renovations to the ocean. Claiming it with a province enables you to build a research post (to study the ruins) or quarry (presumably to harvest the ancient stone for your own use).
• Unlockable Content:
  • The pantheon system contains a tree of unlockable costume parts, faction emblems, starting weapons with alternate initial skills, and society traits. The "Golem" update adds a seperate tree of cosmetic unlockables for the Item Crafting system. Each item costs one point, earned by gaining XP and leveling up after a completed game. At level thresholds, you also unlock new pre-made scenario maps, as well as the special traits of those realms for custom maps.
  • Completing story realms adds new characters to the list of pre-made rulers and your pantheon, which includes a few characters (Sundren, Yaka, Nimue, etc.) with unique designs.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • Declaring war without sufficient grievances to justify it causes your empire to take a hit to happiness and imperium income, and gives all other players a grievance to use against you for being an unpredictable warmonger.
  • A low standing on the Karma Meter adds a stacking chance (30% at 'pure evil') for random events to be be negative in nature, and causes all rulers and free cities of neutral or good alignment to dislike you.
  • The "Disdain for Evil" map modifier causes all participants to gain grievances against rulers with an evil alignment.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: The heroic Covenant spends the "Rise of the Godir" story reacting to whatever their Shad'rai rivals are doing. The visit to Auldweald to find Meandor in Chapter 4 is entirely because the Shad'rai have already found the MacGuffin and set off to invade Grexolis, and the Covenant have no idea where they went, what they're after, or how to follow them — and its not until the player and Sundren arrive that they learn the Shad'rai have taken the preacutionary step of trapping Meandor in a Lotus-Eater Machine, to prevent the Covenant from getting his help.
• Villain Shoes: In "Rise of the Godir", you play as a member of the villainous Shad'rai faction in the base game's third and fifth story realms. The third realm, Crimson Caldera, reveals how the Shad'rai acquired the story's MacGuffin. In the fifth and final story realm, Grexolis, you and a number of fellow Godir work to conquer the world said MacGuffin leads to so that you may use it to achieve your goals.
• Winged Humanoid: The Angelize and Demonkin major transformations cause your race to sprout large wings (feathered and bat-like, respectively), giving them flying movement. The Dragonkin major transformation also has wings, but these are more vestigial and don't provide flight.
• Wizards' War: After being absent in the Low Fantasy-leaning third game, the Wizard Kings return, waging petty wars for control over the realms of a cosmic multiverse. This time, Mass Transformation magic is added to the mix, as the wizards physically alter their followers to gain an edge.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: The magic affinities form three opposing pairs (Order-Chaos, Materium-Astral, and Nature-Shadow). However, the opposition is mostly seen in diplomacy and it is fully possible to research and use tomes and empire skills from two opposing affinities with no penalty.
• You Dirty Rat!: Ratkin races don't have to be this, as their traits are as customizable as any other. That said, the first available pre-made faction of rats — Kruul Blightlord and the "Fiendish Rodents" — definitely fits the bill.
• You Have Researched Breathing: While it's possible to get flying or floating units early, they can't traverse sea hexes until you acquire the 'basic seafaring' empire skill, unlike in previous games. Fortunately, basic seafaring is the first neutral empire skill available.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: "Souls" is a resource used by necromancers to create undead units and cast certain spells, which is acquired by defeating enemies or selecting certain choices during events.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: "Imperium" is the immaterial abstraction of your empire-ness, a sort of composite of Planetfall's "influence" and "cosmite." You need it to unlock new empire skills on your affinity chart, to found new cities, and as upkeep for extremely high-tier units. You can't mine it, but you can get more per turn by improving your wizard's tower or adding Ancient Wonders to your cities. In other words, doing or claiming impressive things gets you more of the prestige you need to have an empire.
• Yellow Earth, Green Earth: A variant. The Materium affinity, which features tomes themed on earth, metal and magma, is associated with the yellow-adjacent orange, since true yellow and green are already used for Order and Nature.
• Zebras Are Just Striped Horses: Added in the Wolf update, domesticated zebra mounts for custom empires can be unlocked in the pantheon menu.
• Zerg Rush:
  • The Tome of the Horde specializes in buffing tier I units and making them easier to recruit through discounts and Summon Magic.
  • The "Skeleton Reanimation" upgrade from the Tome of Necromancy allows the player to spend souls and convert post-battle casualties into basic skeleton units (in shield, spear, archer and battle mage variants), padding their armies out with undead cannon fodder.
• Zombify the Living: The Wightborn major transformation permanently transforms your primary race into Fearless Undead, with leathery grey-black skin and facial features decayed to show the bone underneath. Wightborn races are fully sapient, however, and can be absorbed into living empires without difficulty.

---