Horrifically frustrating game. It could be a 10/10, but there are some design questions within this game that are seriously, seriously questionable and on top of this, there is a lacking of customization options and QoL options that are absolutely standard in every other single 4x game or 4x lite game that exists out there on the market.

The auto generation/RNG in this game is almost non-existent, and pretty much the worst I've ever seen in any game ever. Map generation is terrible, and you truly have no control over the map that is generated for you to play. They give the illusion of options and control when setting up a game, but when the auto generation takes over, everything goes out the window and 99/100 times you are left with an absolutely terrible map set forth before you.

There is almost no sense of actual randomness, or almost any meaningful changes to the game worlds that you create. I've created 10 maps in a row, and 9/10 times the "auto generation" placed the exact same factions in essentially the exact same places within 10 tiles of my starting city. Each and every single time. I'm not talking about the Free Cities here. I'm talking AI factions.

Auto generation is totally broken. Map creation is totally broken. Spawn placement is totally broken, and you have almost no control or influence over these things when creating a map.

What makes matters even worse, while the game does save some of the settings when you create a world, it doesn't save them all. There is also no option to just restart a map, and get a new "seed", even though I don't believe for a second this game actually has any sort of meaningful auto generation or RNG what so over, or it's just completely bugged and broken. So when you inevitably get a terrible map in front of you, with the worst spawn imaginable, with AI factions surrounding you and within 10 tiles of your starting city, regardless of what map settings you input, you can't even simply restart without wasting minutes of your life endlessly re-entering the same settings over, and over, and over, and over.

Further examples of how broken the auto generation and RNG in this game is, whenever you create a game and set it to auto generate AI rulers, without fail, the game will every single time create an entire roster of AI rulers in your game that ALL have the underground adaptation trait. I have done this 10 game creations in a row, and EVERY SINGLE TIME, the auto generated rulers for the AI all have the underground adaptation trait. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. EVERY. SINGLE. AI.

This game truly could be one of the best 4x games that ever existed, and that's why these issues that exist compound are so absolutely frustrating. Some of the design choices, lack of QoL, and lack of features that are staples in other 4x games are just all completely baffling. They could have greatness here, yet completely ruin it and hamstring it with all of these issues, and a lack of customization and player agency when it comes to influencing how the game world you play in is created.

They also seriously, seriously need to rethink this choice that ties how large the maps are to how many players exist in the game. One of the just dumbest, and most handicapping decisions I've ever seen in a game like this. They also need to double space between player and AI spawns, and they need to remove the AI omniscience so that they don't beeline straight for your capital and surround with outposts within 15 turns. The devs also might want to consider going the Total War route, and not let units detach from the stack unless it's a general. Watching the AI move hundreds of units one by one across the map is the most agonizing thing you could possibly imagine, and it also serves the awesome double function of making turn times exponentially longer the further you go into a game. It's like I'm being transported back to 2010 with this kinda nonsense.

I'll be shelving this game until, if and maybe, they provide further updates that addresses any of these issues. Until then, this game just is not worth the time and the frustration.

I've been an Age of Wonders fan since II, but III was the game that made me really fall in love with the franchise. I held off on playing 4 until way after it came out because of a lack of free time, but good lord, it was worth the wait and is now consuming my life.

I LOVE the new direction Age of Wonders 4 took. Age of Wonders III was really cool because you could create your own leader, then synergize with different classes and races in a crazy amount of ways. It was very fun for me to examine how all those interactions worked and what benefits and detriments they had, although I sometimes found myself frustrated by the lack of combos in builds I wanted to make. Age of Wonders 4 fixed that problem entirely.

In Age of Wonders III, all the customization was front loaded: I would comb through the wiki, read about how promotions interacted with classes and races, use unique wonders to further synergize with my build, and so on. I was worried when I started playing 4, because that familiar formula isn't there. But what replaced it is SO much better in my book!

Instead of everything being preset and front-loaded, you can now build everything from the ground up, and there are no limitations based on race! And there are very few limitations based on class, too! It's AWESOME! The classes are way more flexible, the tome system works way better, and I absolutely love the customization of the races! It's also so much fun to see the randomly generated races that come into play. In my first game, my two best buddies were free cities populated by giant molemen guardians of nature, and demonic lizardfolk who were guardians of the destructive side of nature--but rest assured this was a coincidence and the variety is insane, I just ran into cannibalistic but benevolent angels for example. The free cities of giant moles and demon lizards provided me unique benefits and units that I will likely never see in another game again--but also benefits I can recreate on my own if I want to.

The Rally of the Lieges mechanic adds a lot of fun flavor, and the interactions with Free Cities are just SO much better than Age of Wonders III. I also really, really love the Imperium system, which can provide you permanent unlocks for your empire such as more heroes, faster travel on roads, mana or gold when you kill enemies, quicker allegiance gain with Free Cities, and so on. The Pantheon system is also great, as it encourages you to finish games by providing even more customization as a reward for completion. You also get to ascend you leader, which gives you a variety of benefits and allows them to up as a recruitable hero in a future game, which is a brilliant system in my opinion!

My only real complaints are that a lot of the weird flavor of Age of Wonders III had to be removed because of the incredible level of customization. Triumph can't individually model how weird and disgusting a goblin succubus is or how weirdly cool dwarven angels look, with this new system because there are literally infinite combinations. The racial transformation system is awesome, but my other complaint is that there isn't an optional transformation in game. But hey, that leads me to another major selling point: this game is very mod friendly! The first mods I downloaded fixed all those problems for me. :)

Keeps crashing all the time