Age of Wonders

aka: AoW, World of Wonders
Moby ID: 634
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Description official descriptions

Age of Wonders is a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy scenario. The campaign can be played on two sides and tells a tale how the humans come to a new land and destabilized the peace between the races, throwing the land into war. The game also features several stand-alone scenarios. There is an extensive diplomatic matrix which structures the relationships between the 12 races and their respective leaders. There are global-spells which can be cast on the strategic map, outside of tactical combat.

Creatures can move around without being led by a hero, so the map eventually crawls with all sorts of strange beings. Neutral forces are not always static, most of them move around and sometimes attack the 12 races. The automatic tactical-combat mode shows a somewhat detailed overview of the combat simulation: it is a worthwhile substitute for impatient gamers, especially in multiplayer encounters.

As in Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia and Master of Magic, heroes are very important. They reach new levels of skill and power with experience and can be equipped with artifacts. But they do have limitations that usually do not allow a solitary hero to overrun a city-garrison all by himself.

Pre-game customization allows the following choices: 5 levels of AI skill (with the 1.2 patch), 5 AI personalities (from very violent to defensive), "classic" turn-based moves or simultaneous turns, incarnation of the player as the main hero (if he dies, it's game over for that side), selection of the main hero's name, face, and bonus sword-and-sorcery attributes, etc.

The map editor allows the gamer to create new maps, which can have up to 3 geological levels (one or two can be placed underground, with a cramped and dark tunnel-design).

Spellings

  • 奇迹时代 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

56 People (52 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

CEO
President
VP of Marketing
CFO
Corporate Development
Director of Media
Sales
Operations
Administrative
Online Support
  • Tempest Digital
Concrete Support
Authorship
Design and Printing
  • Mars Publishing
Mars Publishing - Publisher
Mars Publishing - Managing Coordinator
Mars Publishing - Graphic Artist
Mars Publishing - Project Editor
Design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 41 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 59 ratings with 6 reviews)

Not only does it match HoMM and MoM, it surpasses them.

The Good
This is my absolute favourite turn-based strategy game. With a balance that makes the races equal, even though you have to play them differently, it ultimately comes down to who's the better strategist. The units are easy to learn and you'll pretty fast start noticing different combinations that works better than others. But it takes a lot of playing to learn all the good combinations. Furthermore, the different races have different relations to the other races which adds a strategic element where you can combine armies across the races.

The Bad
The computer AI is at times a little to easy, some spells are somewhat unbalanced. Also it's at times a little to easy to only use your heroes.

The Bottom Line
Heroes of Might and Magic, add Master of Magic then work out a few original things and remove any annoying things, voila that's a game pretty close to perfection.

Windows · by atrahasis (68) · 2005

AoW sets the standard for future fantasy TBS-games.

The Good
Well, this is my favorite game of all time, and here I will try to explain why... First time I played the game I was not that impressed, and put it on the shelf for a month. I tried it again later, and was hooked. The cartoon-like graphics which I found boring at first, after a while showed to add to the feeling of the game. And the large amount of units makes this game never boring, you never know what kind of ugly creatures youll find in a dungeon, and one battle is never like the other.

Also the music is the best music I ever heard in a game (it's made by Michiel van den Bos).

One fun aspect is also the play by E-mail feature. It's more fun than it sounds.

Also the support from the developers is great. They frequently visits the gamers forum and reflect on game suggestions.

The Bad
The AI could be better, and the map editor could have more story-telling features (even if the developers added some features after gamers suggestions).

The Bottom Line
A turn based fantasy game, taking place in a beautiful world with a lot of different creatures.

Windows · by Grov (657) · 2002

Age of Wonders is a good concept for a game, but aside from some good elements, it is a bad implementation of those ideas.

The Good
The game can be a lot of fun, especially building up your heroes. I like the fact that you don't have micromanage your cities as much as you do in Heroes of Might and Magic or in Master of Magic. Tactical combat, although time consuming, really gives you a lot of tactical options if you have a good mix of units, especially if you are fighting with two or more stacks of units. Finally, the graphics and sound are well done.

The Bad
The single player game is very repetitive since the objective never vary between missions from the basic "Conquer the map" quest. Most of the maps can be won fairly easily by just maintaining a stack with your heroes and a few other fast, powerful units since the computer AI is very defensive. Basically, the computer just usually hangs around his biggest castle with his leader hero and stacks up a ton of defensive units. All you have to do to win is to move your power stack over and assassinate his leader hero and watch ALL of his armies turn into neutral armies.

This gameplay flaw is even worse in multiplayer, because many of your hero's powers are useless (especially combat spells) if you just play defense with your hero. Of course, if you put him on the offensive, you risk even more, but this is necessary to take over enough cities to win the game, so winning is more due to good luck than good tactics.

Another major problem with multiplayer is that there is no middle ground between smart tactical combat and dumb quick combat. Quick combat is a good idea, except that the game gives you no tuneable options such as turning off the use of magic, or being able to set how aggressive heroes are in their attacks. A lot of the time your hero casts way too many expensive spells (like Terror) or charges into combat and gets himself killed while in quick combat and this is frustrating because you know that in tactical combat you would have won with a few minor losses.

Tactical combat is flawed especially in the defense of cities. Walls give you a huge advantage in that only certain troops can break through or fly over them, but they also give you a huge disadvantage vs. the attacker since your archers often cannot fire over the wall at the attackers while they are trying to break in and your troops are almost always very spread out compared to the attacker. Why doesn't the defender get to place his archers on top of walls so they can shoot unhindered at the attackers? Why can the defender run away and give up the city if he faces overwhelming odds? Why can't the defender place his stacks where he wants within his city before the attacker gets to move?

Overall, Age of Wonders has a lot of good ideas, but a mixed implementation of those ideas. Even though I was disappointed with the game in the end, it is still a fun game and if its problems are fixed in Age of Wonders 2 then it will be a great game.

The Bottom Line
Age of Wonders tries to take the best elements of Master of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Warlords, but many of the gameplay elements they chose don't combine to make a game with lasting replay value.

Windows · by Droog (460) · 2001

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

Extras

The UK edition of the game is said to include a novel by David Eddings 'worth 6.99£'. Either most people didn't like it and threw it away or it never was there; anyway it's definitely pretty hard to find.

Getting off a boat

Most people playing the game for the first time faces the same problem: How do you get units out off a boat? This is not covered in the manual, and the words "How do I get off the boat?" is probably the most posted and joked about in the AoW-forums.

Highmen Theme

The song "Highmen Theme" seems to be remix of Journey.umx which is played during the Nagomi Passage level ('day' version) in the Unreal mission pack Return to Na Pali.

Information also contributed by Grov, MDMaster and toothbrush

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Related Games

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
Released 2003 on Windows
Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne
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Age of Wonders: Trilogy
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Age of Wonders: Trilogy
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Age of Wonders III
Released 2014 on Windows, 2015 on Macintosh, Linux
Age of Wonders III Collection
Released 2015 on Linux, Windows, Macintosh
Age of Wonders III: Golden Realms
Released 2014 on Windows, 2015 on Macintosh, Linux
Age of Wonders III: Eternal Lords
Released 2015 on Windows, Linux, Macintosh
Age of Wonders III (Deluxe Edition)
Released 2014 on Windows, Macintosh, Linux

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  • MobyGames ID: 634
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Jean-Paul Cardinal.

Additional contributors: Tomer Gabel, PCGamer77, Unicorn Lynx, Grov, Patrick Bregger, MrFlibble.

Game added December 30, 1999. Last modified February 13, 2024.