First, we're going to figure out where 'AoW.exe' is. Or at least where the Age of Wonders folder containing that file is.

If you've picked up Age of Wonders from Steam, then the easiest way to do this is to right click on the game in your games list, go down to 'manage', and select 'browse local files'. This should take you to the correct folder. It should be something like C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Wonders, with differences depending on where you installed Steam to originally.

If you didn't get it from Steam, then the executable and folder are probably wherever you installed the game to.

Either copy everything after 'C:\' to a text file for a later step, or just remember how you got here to copy it later. Or you could try to remember that whole line of folders so you can later perfectly type them in from memory, like a crazy person. Note: we used to have to do that all the time when running things on DOS.

In the lower left corner of your windows desktop, there's a magnifying glass symbol that opens the search bar when you click on it. Assuming microsoft hasn't changed anything recently. For the whatever millionth time.

Open that, and type in 'cmd'. The list that comes up as soon as your computer is finished thinking about that should have 'Command Prompt' at the top. It'll probably say 'system' right underneath that title. This is what you're looking for.

Clicking on it should open up a black window with some white text on it. It probably says something like 'C:\Users\name>' with name replaced with whatever name you told this windows machine was yours when you were first setting it up.

Now we're going to change the text in our command prompt from whatever it currently is to something like 'C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Wonders>', or whatever path we figured out in step one.

You can do this by first typing in 'cd ..' without the quote marks, and hitting enter. Then doing that again until we're down to just 'C:\>'.

Second, you type in 'cd (whatever the install path is from Step 1)', which should look something like 'cd Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Wonders', and hit enter.

(You could also have done each folder individually, by typing in 'cd Steam', hitting enter, typing 'cd steamapps', hitting enter, and so on. But we're not doing that in this guide because I don't feel like it.)

Hopefully we didn't mess anything up and the command line looks like it should now.

Now type in 'aow.exe beatrix' and hit enter. If we've done everything right, the game should start.

To test if the console is active, either load a game or start a new campaign, maybe wait for any units to stop moving around, and then press CTRL+SHIFT+C. All three keys at once.

You should hear a chime noise. Unless your computer is currently muted. Try not to have it muted for this test, by the way.

You can now type in any of the following words to get the listed effect:

gold -------- 1,000 Gold
mana ------ 1,000 Mana
lose -------- Lose Current Level
freemove -- Move Anywhere
spells ------ Receive All Spells
research --- Research All Spells
explore ---- Reveal Map
fog -------- Toggle Fog
towns ----- Town Independance
win -------- Win Current Level

The console is effectively invisible, so you won't see anything as you type. This is fine.

You also don't have to hit enter when done typing them in. They'll just kind of happen as soon as you're done if you didn't make a typo.

Hitting CTRL+SHIFT+C again will allow you to type in a new command, or to reset if you did mistype.