The first Age of Wonders game was known for being a surprisingly good high-fantasy turn-based strategy game that combined a Hero-centric RPG system with party-based mechanics for the management of armies, along with doles of content that have actual gameplay ramifications such as many different terrain types, races and spells.
The sequel, The Wizard's Throne, appears to continue this design tradition. It also introduces new game mechanics that significantly increase the prominence of spells and magic in the gameplay. The successor also revamped the mechanics of settlements. However, the story for the sequel's single-player campaign would not seem as competently made, as will be elaborated on later.
The eponymous game mechanic that gives the sequel its subtitle is the Wizard and his/her spell-casting prowess. The Wizard is a variant of the Hero unit, but he/she does not gain any experience or any levels. In return, he/she is practically immortal and has tremendous spell-casting powers, more than a Hero could ever hope to attain, and cast spells into any region of the map within his/her zone of influence.
However, the Wizard is not enough to win a game on his/her own; a player can still be defeated by losing all his/her Settlements or failing scenario requirements. Nonetheless, the introduction of the Wizard does add a layer of strategic deliberation to the gameplay of Age of Wonders, which is welcome. The Wizard is also tied to the mechanics of spell and magical research, which will be elaborated later.
The Wizard's Throne retains the resource system that is oriented around Gold and Mana. Typically, the more of these that the player has, the more options he/she has to defeat enemies with.
Like in the previous game, Gold is obtained from resource nodes. The previous game had less-typical nodes like Workshops and Trading Posts that had functions other than churning out income, but the Wizard's Throne had removed most of these in order to incorporate these functions into cities. This can be a slight disappointment to players who had appreciated the additional strategic depth that these structures offered, but the revamp of the mechanics for cities would more than compensate, as will be described later.
However, the game does not exactly resort to cookie-cutter designs for gold nodes as in other high-fantasy strategy games. In keeping with the new emphasis on elemental magic, the Wizard's Throne offers up to four types of gold-producing nodes, each of which is associated with one of the Spheres of Earth, Fire, Water and Air and benefits the player with this Sphere more than any other node. For example, the ubiquitous Gold Mine benefits Earth-element players more.
The Spheres of Life, Death and Cosmos do not have any special gold nodes that they are compatible with. However, they compensate by having certain spells with economic value that the other spheres do not have, which will be described later.
Like the previous game, there are different kinds of Mana Nodes that the player can capture to obtain a steady income of Mana; the amounts of mana gained from these per turn are dependent on the synergy between the Wizard's Sphere of magic and the element of the node, similar to how gold resource nodes work. For example, the Cosmos Sphere is "neutral" towards any elemental Node, but the plain Power Node which is associated with the Cosmos Sphere gives more mana.
In addition to these resource nodes, there are loose piles of gold and mana that can be retrieved for a quick infusion of these. These were retained from the original and are still intended to encourage the player to explore the map.
Gold and mana can also be obtained or expended via diplomacy, for which there will be more elaboration later.
Gold is primarily used for developing cities and raising and maintaining armed forces that are composed of individual units (which are creatures native to the world that Age of Wonders is set in), while Mana is used for casting spells (of course), performing magical research and maintaining the allegiance of summoned creatures.
Settlements are also sources of resources, as well as units and the Wizard's zones of influence. Therefore, they are the backbone of any of the player's strategies.
The first game had a fixed number of settlements for any map that had been made, which can cause issues of imbalances when a player has managed to wrest control of settlements from other players. The sequel addresses this issue by allowing players to erect new ones as they need, as long as they are not too close to each other. However, to balance this feature, developing new Settlements requires deep investments.
New Settlements start out at the status of Outpost. An Outpost can only build basic facilities and units; the player will have to wait for the Outpost's population to grow before it is upgraded to the statuses of Village, Town and City, in that order. These upgrades will allow the construction of more facilities. This game design prevents the abuse of the feature of building new Settlements.
These designs for creating and developing new settlements are not entirely new; they have been done before in other strategy games that involve the management of settlements, such as the Civilization series. Yet, this feature especially contributes to another game mechanic in the game, namely the mechanic of zones of magical influence that allow a Wizard to cast spells into regions around a Settlement that has a Wizard's Tower.
Speaking of a Wizard's Tower, this is one of the new facilities that a Settlement can have. It is one of the most important because it cements the hold that a Wizard has over the region surrounding the Settlement by projecting a zone of influence, but it also happens to be one of the most expensive facilities. Further upgrades to the Tower will increase the range of the zone of influence (measured in hex-based tiles).
The Wizard's Tower - and further upgrades to it - also unlocks special magic-related facilities that enhance the player's research efforts, increase mana income or unlock instantaneous transportation methods, among other useful benefits.
The set of structures that is associated with the raising of armies includes the Barracks and its upgraded variants, which are needed to unlock progressively more powerful units that the race associated with the Settlement has.
Every Settlement can have religious structures like Temples that increase Town Happiness and (somehow) improve mana production. They can also be upgraded so that the benefits are even bigger, and also to unlock the recruitment of Monk and Priest units, which can heal other units and provide unholy/holy/magic fire support to the party that they are a part of. The final upgrade gives the settlement the ability to completely heal parties that garrison it over a turn, thus making the Settlement and its garrison a lot more difficult to be affected by attrition tactics.
As in the previous game, a Settlement can ever have only one task to work on at a time. Every task or project has a cost, depicted by the cost in gold that the player will have to pay to fund the project. It won't be immediately completed upon paying the costs, however; the Settlement will only complete it over the course of multiple turns, depending on the Settlement's Production rating. Conveniently, the player can cancel the project at any time to fully recoup the investment costs, though there will be no compensation for any turns that the Settlement has wasted on the canceled project.
The higher a Settlement's Production rating, the faster it can fulfill the task. Otherwise, the Settlement can be set to convert a fraction of its Production points into additional income (via the Produce Merchandise assignment) or invested into producing more Housing (which accelerates growth). Also, the player can choose to "hurry" the completion of a building or recruitment project by expending a lot more gold than the investment costs needed, as well expending some of the Settlement's population.
(This "hurrying" feature was in the previous game, though it no longer has the penalty on the Happiness rating of the Settlement.)
The Production rating of a Settlement can be directly improved by building structures known as the Builder's Hall and its upgraded variants. Additionally, these structures allow the creation of Machine units, meaning that every race will have access to Ballistae and Cannons now, which is a welcome change; in the previous game, certain races lack access to certain siege engines that put them at a disadvantage in sieges, such as Goblins.
In addition to buildings, Settlements will also grow crops, if they can and need to. In the previous game, crops serve as a segment of income, though in the sequel, they serve as an indication of the sustainability of population growth. If a Settlement is surrounded by hexes that can be farmed, these will be farmed on and the more hexes there are, the easier it is for the Settlement's population to grow. However, as the population increases, the strain on sustenance will increase, and this will result in slower growth. Eventually, a City's population will cap out and can grow no further. However, if the crop tiles are damaged or removed by any means, there may not be enough food to support the population, which will consequently drop.
In an attempt to maintain the player's interest in the current scenario at play, the game feature of Shrines has been introduced to ensure that the player would never run out of quests in any map.
A Shrine to one of the four aspects of civilization can be built in any one Settlement. The most immediate benefit of a Shrine is its bonuses to the Settlement's productivity and prosperity; each aspect provides different, tangible bonuses. Choosing the right Shrine is an important decision, as it helps in specializing cities in economic or military functions early- and mid-game. Furthermore, choosing a type of Shrine is a permanent decision.
The more important design of Shrines is that they allow the spiritual embodiments of said aspects to commune with the player. These Spirits will offer quests that the player can optionally pursue. These quests have the player performing one of a variety of tasks, such as hunting down a group of so-called "infidels" that have been spawned into the map just for this purpose. The player has to achieve these quests within limited time frames, or suffer a setback brought about by the angered Spirit. Refusing quests (and removing them from the aforementioned list) will also disappoint them, though not as much as completely forgetting about the quest (though the degree of the disappointment still depends on the time elapsed since the start of the quest).
The completion of quests will net rewards from the Spirits, who apparently have the clout to gather worldly materials to be offered as remuneration but not the wisdom to offer a matching recompense. There will usually be two choices of rewards for every completed quest, both of which have their nature randomly chosen and the amount of the reward - if applicable - randomly generated too, as befitting the Spirits' poor familiarity with worldly matters. Sometimes, all it takes to get a reward from a Spirit is to build a Shrine to it, which further emphasizes their fickleness. Nonetheless, the rewards can be lucrative, and a player can get lucky by obtaining something powerful early on during a game - in return for having to be subjected to the attention of the Spirits.
What is more certain about the Spirits is that they will attempt to conspire against the players that they consider to have snubbed them. To determine whom they hate, the AI-scripting for Spirits appears to consider the number of Shrines that any player has and the demographic of these. Generally, building more Shrines dedicated to one Spirit than those for the others will raise the ire of the rest. Furthermore, they also consider the number of quests that had been completed or forfeited by the player.
Spirits that are angry at a player will often encourage other players to make acts of aggression against said player through offering quests that require these. They may also spawn parties of hostile units to attack the more vulnerable of the player's Settlements (usually those that happen to not contain Shrines to said Spirits too), or cast hostile spells on these, if they are exceptionally angered.
The mechanic of Spirits and their quests makes sessions a lot more interesting, though it has to be mentioned here that not all players would be enamored by their fickleness. Players can choose not to bother with the Spirits altogether by refusing to build any Shrines at all during a game, which will not draw the attention of the Spirits, though the player will be missing out on one of the most entertaining features of this game.
It has to be noted here that the structures in the branches that the aforementioned Barracks, Builder's Hall and Temple belong to have to be built and fully upgraded to their highest tier before the most powerful unit that the Settlement can offer is made available for recruitment. This is a slight departure from the unit-unlocking mechanic in the previous game, but considering the power of these top-tier creatures, this is perhaps a wise balancing design, if a bit contrived.
The last, but still somewhat important aspect of Settlements is its Happiness rating. Like in the previous game, Happiness is affected by many factors, such as the population of the Settlement (a congested City is harder to keep happy), any facilities that improve Happiness, the race of the garrisoning units of the City, the moral alignment of the player (more on this later), the former and current allegiances of the Settlement (recently captured Settlements may balk at the abrupt change of rulers) and the races favored by the player in his/her forces. Happiness determines how content the Settlement's population is: High Happiness means that there won't be a problem with the Settlement, but low Happiness means there would be riots and even complete rebellion. However, in the sequel, Happiness is no longer just a source of worry; if the player can maintain high Happiness in a Settlement, the player has a high probability of triggering a Golden Age in said Settlement, which will boost gold income.
It would be apparent to veterans of civilization-building games that the revamped game designs for Happiness - and the growth of Settlements - are more than familiar, as they had been present in franchises like the Civilization series. Although Age of Wonders is not a civilization-building game, these re-designs certainly add more sophistication to the gameplay.
There are twelve races in the game, each with their canonical history in the world that Age of Wonders is set in. Their nature and history determines the gameplay bonuses (and disadvantages) that they will confer on the Settlements of which they live in. These also determine the units that they have, as well as their general moral alignment. Races with the same moral alignment get along with each other very well, leading to high party morale (more on this later), while mixing units from races with different alignments will pretty much result in disaster. In addition, certain races especially despise certain others, resulting in exceptional hits to morale.
The original races of Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Humans, Orcs, Undead, Goblins and Dark Elves return with their themes and canon intact. The High Men have been ret-conned into the Archons, while there are three new neutral races in the form of the Draconians, Frostlings and Tigrans. In return for these three new neutral races some of the neutral races in the previous game have been removed. The nomadic, Middle-East-inspired Azracs are gone, having been replaced by the Tigrans (and, in a way, their diametric opposites which are the Frostlings). The Lizardmen has also been similarly removed, superseded by the Draconians.
Settlements are a reliable source for the units that these races offer. Another category of units that Settlements can offer, regardless of race, are regular Machines and Priests, though the latter is dependent on the moral alignment of the race.
Regular Machines, which include the Pioneer that is needed to make new Settlements with, are units that can be built by the aforementioned Builder's Hall and its upgrades. Regular Machines are generally slow and weak against fire (being made of wood, or using munitions that are susceptible to flames), as well as being (obviously) immune to poison. They are generally needed for early- and mid-game heavy fire support.
A veteran of the first game would notice here that some machines from the previous game have been removed, such as the Drill and Flamethrower have been removed. Rather than being removed completely, their functions have been absorbed into other units. For example, there are a lot of units that can breathe fire, rendering the Flamethrower obsolete.
The Priests/Monks are dependable healer/fire-support units, as described earlier, and they will not cause any serious imbalance if added to parties. Yet, it has to be stated here that their aesthetic compatibility with the races are highly questionable. In the previous game, every race has a Priest-type unit with a sprite that is thematically appropriate; in the sequel, the vaguely human Priests/Monks stand out like sore thumbs among units of non-human races, such as a Monk standing amongst Draconian units.
This is an issue that can be glossed over if the player is not concerned with aesthetics, but for especially discerning players, it would strengthen the suspicion that the Priests/Monks were a late addition to the game during development. That the Black Priest has the Turn Undead ability, even when recruited for an Undead party, would further reinforce this suspicion.
The player can also summon units through spells; these are tagged with the "Summoned" property, which makes them vulnerable to certain attacks and spells that are specifically targeted against them. Unlike the typical summoned units of other high-fantasy games, summoned units are there to stay for the long-term, as long as the player still has enough mana to retain their allegiance. That they can be summoned via spell-casting would make them seem overpowered, especially the Tier 4 ones, but the mechanic of spell-casting, which will be described later, fortunately prevents players that are flush with mana from swamping their enemies with hordes of these.
In addition to the usual statistics of hitpoints, strength (melee damage), defense and other ratings that have been carried over from the first game, units also now have sizes. All units still occupy one hex on the battlefield regardless of their sizes, but their sizes now determine how easy they are to be hit by ranged attacks and how well they can benefit from cover. (Naturally, large creatures won't be able to make use of rocks that would otherwise hide human-sized units.) Considering that there are many, many units with ranged attacks, size does matter more than ever.
All units, including Summoned units, can gain experience from killing enemy units in combat. Reaching experience thresholds, of which there are two (one after the other), grants them bonuses to their stats and upgrades their Marksmanship skill, if they have ranged attacks.
The Wizard's Throne has a tremendous variety of units with different capabilities. Such designs make for a wealth of game content, but not necessarily for purposes of game balance.
While the early-game units, namely the Tier 1 units, are somewhat well-balanced against each other and are in fact almost analogous to each other in terms of functions, e.g. every race has a footsoldier and basic fire-support unit, the ones in later tiers can be game-changers once they are obtained.
The Tier 2 units will not affect the balance of power so much, but they do introduce special abilities that are both passively and actively used. For example, some units like most cavalry/mounted units have the Charge buff, which grants them extra damage on their first Melee strike when on the attack. These change up gameplay a bit, though not enough to shake up the rock-scissors-paper deliberations of using cavalry on footsoldiers, footsoldiers on archers, archers on cavalry, etc.
The later ones, with their many variations in statistics, costs, functions and capabilities, simply throw these deliberations out the window. The previous game had plenty of variation in late-game units, but The Wizard's Throne certainly raised the bar much higher. High-tier units offer the player a lot more strategic options, but without the right counter, they can be quite overpowering.
Considering that individual units can be split off from the main army to do reconnaissance in Age of Wonders, the player can make great but almost unfair use of high-tier units that generally circumvent difficult terrain, such as flying units like the Archon's Pegasus Rider or the Dark Elves' Incarnate, which simply floats through a lot of things. Perhaps the unit that is most representative of this design consequence is the Human Air Galley.
The Human Air Galley was in the previous game, and it was especially infamous for being able to ferry units around the map rather easily, and being a flying unit, impossible to hit with melee attacks. It returns in the sequel pretty much unchanged, though it has lost the simply overpowered buff of Cold Protection and incurred a permanent Weakness to Fire in addition. There are also a lot more ranged attacks in this game and more abilities that can bring down a flying unit in combat. Nevertheless, it retains its ability to ferry around seven other units, which can make for devastating flanking strategies if a player can get more than a handful of Air Galleys.
Some of the top-tier units have astonishing movement allowances; the most prominent of these are the Goblins' Kharagh (which can be best described as a troll crossed with a carnivorous dinosaur) and all Dragons. These have some of the highest base movement allowances, which coupled with their prodigious stats, practically allow them to rampage across maps, out of the reach of retaliating forces.
Some units in Tiers 3 and 4 have abilities that allow them to attempt to take control of enemy units, such as Control Animal (which is effective against mounts and Animal creatures), Seduce (which can be used against units designated as "Male") and Dominate (which can be used against any unit). If they are successful, the tables can turn quickly during battle. Furthermore, if the controlled enemy unit survives the battle, it is automatically added to the victorious player's forces, which can result in gameplay imbalance.
High-tier units also tend to have a lot of protective abilities, such as Willpower, which prevents units from being controlled by the enemy in any way. This would not be an issue, except that units that are supposed to have vulnerabilities to Control powers have them too. An example is the Elves' Tier 3 Iron Maiden unit, which is a mounted unit that would have been vulnerable to Control Animal attacks. Instead, it has the Magical Mount property, which renders it immune to such attacks, as well as Willpower. These buffs mean that it can only be defeated through direct harm, but its plethora of other natural abilities/skills such as Charge, Holy Champion, Magic Strike and Phase makes this a difficult proposition.
Many of the top-tier units also render other lower-tier units useless. For example, the Dwarven Steam Tank, with its cannon and Steam ability that grants it a close-combat attack, is completely superior to the Cannon; the same can also be said for the Human Air Galley, which renders the sea-bound Galley and Ballista obsolete.
Perhaps the most annoying of the top-tier units are the ones that can alter terrain as they move across the main map. These include units like the Frostlings' Frost Witch and the Undead's Dread Reaper, which convert the terrain that they move on into terrain types that are advantageous to their races. Reversing the changes can be difficult without having a unit that can do the same thing.
On the other hand, some top-tier units have embarrassing vulnerabilities. For example, Dragons, being Dragons, are typically fearsome and difficult to kill the old-fashioned way. However, their "Dragon" attribute meant that they are vulnerable to one-hit kills from units with Dragon-slayer abilities. Another couple of examples are the Undead's Dread Reaper, who always has the embarrassing chance of suffering a successful Turn Undead attempt, and the Frostling's Doom Wolf, whose "Animal" status means that it is vulnerable to Animal Control. Yet another example is the Steam Tank, which despite running on steam and being apparently all-steel, is still vulnerable to fire. Furthermore, all flight-capable top-tier units can be brought down to the ground with attacks like Web and Entangle.
These lop-sided balancing attempts meant that certain top-tier units will be absolutely more reliable than the rest, such as the Goblin's Kharagh and Dark Elves' Incarnate.
All units require upkeep, which is represented as a drain on gold income that will be incurred per turn. This is a game design that had been carried over from the first game to prevent wealthy players from amassing armies that are too large to defeat. While this mechanic is satisfactory, it is a bit disappointing that there is not much difference in upkeep costs for units across all races. For example, all Tier 1 units have the same upkeep - 6 units of gold per turn - regardless of their recruitment costs. Considering how poor that some weak but cheap-to-recruit units can be and, conversely, how valuable that strong but expensive-to-hire units are in the long-term, this can lead to some balance issues that will only be apparent when a game has progressed into the dozens of turns.
Heroes return in the sequel, essentially being super-units that can grow in power as well as equip special items that give them powerful buffs (which can also be obtained through spells). Heroes may randomly appear at towns to give a player without Heroes a chance at partaking in the mechanics of Heroes. They may also appear as neutral units on the main map waiting for a player to come by and hire them, or are trapped in locations like Ruins, waiting for a player to rescue them and gain their allegiance, among other methods to gain their service.
Every map has a limit on the number of Heroes that are available, though. The permutations of these Heroes may be random, unless specific Heroes are chosen to appear for the scenario in play. It is in the player's interests to gather as many of them as possible before other players do (or slay them to prevent them from falling into enemy hands).
Developing Heroes into powerful units that can sweep away enemy forces can be a very satisfying experience. Unfortunately, this also means that they are still what they were in the first game: potentially overpowered.
This is perhaps even more so in the sequel, in which they are given a lot more options for improvements when they gain a level after accruing enough experience. There are Hero Classes (up to six of these, all based on typical high-fantasy Hero archetypes) and racial limitations in order to restrict these options to what they specialize in, but any Hero can still be developed into monstrous powerhouses on the battlefield.
Of course, developing a Hero into a powerhouse is easier said than done, though the player would not take long to realize certain exploits with how Heroes – and other units - gain experience. One of these is that the unit delivering the killing blow will always be the one to gain experience; this means that a player can make use of sacrificial units to help whittle down enemies for the Heroes to take all the glory.
Heroes that have taken all skills available to them can choose to improve their stats instead, potentially giving them numbers that are even higher than those of Tier 4 units. This was present in the first game, but it returns with a few re-designs that make it even easier for Heroes to gain awesomely high numbers; stat gains are now packaged into four options, each granting boosts to not one, but two stats.
It should be noted here that there is a hard limit of 50 points for each stat that cannot be surpassed by any means, but this is already a prodigious number. A Hero with maxed out stats is very difficult to take down without resorting to a lot of spells and a throng of Tier 4 units.
What a Hero cannot get through level gains, he/she can gain through equipping items. There is a wealth of items that Heroes can use in the sequel, more so than in the first. There are items that grant the usual stat bonuses, while some give the user special abilities or even permanent buffs. Considering that some items can grant bonuses that are beyond the Heroes' class restrictions, this can upset the gameplay balance of Heroes. For example, Rings like the Liquid Ring and Ring of Nature grant permanent and powerful spell-based buffs.
These imbalances are especially apparent in the single-player campaign, which does not implement any level cap for Heroes whatsoever; the previous game did, however. The sequel also allows Heroes to carry all equipped items into the next mission, whereas the previous game implemented a point system in the single-player campaign to limit transfer of Heroes, units and items. While these changes makes for satisfying development of Heroes, e.g. there will never be any advancement opportunities wasted by a pesky level cap that the player is not informed of, but it also means that the player can obtain very powerful Heroes that turn the next mission into a cake-walk.
Multiplayer would seem to be not so much affected, but that is because most of the official maps at launch have the Heroes starting out at low levels. Yet, they can still be developed to overpowering heights if the player is careful enough.
The new mechanic of Wizards and the revamped spell system fortunately does not have as many issues with gameplay balance.
Each of the Wizards that appear in the single-player campaign is playable in multiplayer. Selecting one will determine the default race, elemental sphere and colour affiliations that the player will start out with, if the player choose to play in character (though he/she can switch these as he/she likes; the character is no more than a sprite to represent the player's Wizard with).
The player may also choose traits for the Wizard before starting a game with him/her. However, positive traits, e.g. those that grant the player's civilization bonuses, have to be balanced with negative traits, e.g. those that have the player incurring penalties instead, via a point-system that assign value in the form of points to each trait, negative or positive. The player may also choose not to take on any trait at all.
As mentioned earlier, Wizards can cast spells into his/her zones of influence. The range of these zones is shown on the map via dotted borders with colours associated with the owning player. Other than Wizard's Towers, the player can obtain more zones of influence through magically potent units that project a zone of their own (spell-casting Heroes by default can also do this), or capturing a Magic Relay map feature, which extends a zone of influence of its own.
The Wizard must be in a hex tile with a Wizard's Tower for his/her zones of influence to be active throughout the whole map. This initially appears to be an odd game design, but the significance of this would be apparent when the player realizes that Wizards are still units that can be forced out of tiles for any reason.
The mechanic of spells is still governed by a system of elemental spheres, which include Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Life and Death, as in the previous game. However, as the game has a greater gameplay and story focus on magic now, this mechanic has been expanded further with the introduction of a new magic sphere, the Cosmos, which is supposedly the one that governs them all (story-wise).
Not all spells are available for the player to cast when a map is loaded for play; a Wizard only gets a few basic spells, but that's it. To gain more spells, the Wizard will have to mainly resort to the Research mechanic.
Every turn, the player may choose to divert a portion of his/her mana income into either the mana stockpile or into research. The mana that went into research will be used to fulfill the Research costs of spells. In addition to this mana, Settlements may also generate Research points through certain facilities that had been mentioned earlier, thus reducing the need for reserving mana for Research.
The spells available for research depend on the chosen sphere of the Wizard. The four primal elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water generally only offer spells associated with the respective elements; these rigid adherences to element-specific spells are balanced by the design of gold resource nodes, as mentioned earlier. The Sphere of Death offer some spells that can affect a player's economy directly, such as Death's Animate Ruins spell which turns a City that had been razed into an Undead City and City Plague, which damages the economy of enemy Cities. Meanwhile, the Life Sphere has spells which grant buffs that allow units to return from death during battle (effectively extending the lifespan of the unit) and even resurrect slain Heroes (including those that were formerly under the control of other players) and placing them under the service of the player for no gold cost up-front.
The Cosmos Sphere is the most versatile, giving the player the greatest number of spells that can be researched, including some of those from the other six Spheres. However, it also means that the player is spoilt for choice, and a Cosmos player would rarely be able to Research all spells available before the end of the game.
The Wizard can also gain spells from other Spheres through uncovering magical treasure or completing Shrine quests.
In addition to spells, the Wizard may also Research additional, beneficial traits, which are exactly the ones available during the customization of the Wizard. These traits have very high research costs, however, in order to balance against the advantages that the player may gain from them.
A Wizard can gain a lot of spells, even from those outside of his/her Sphere. This may seem imbalanced, but a Wizard can only cast so many spells per turn as he/she has limited casting points to cast spells with. A Wizard will generate an amount of spell-casting points per turn, which cannot be hoarded and have to be spent on spells, or are otherwise converted into mana by the next turn.
Therefore, a Wizard can cast several cheap spells like Bless and Haste per turn, but the powerful ones like the Elemental Mastery spells and spells that summon Tier 4 units will need many spell-casting points, thus requiring the Wizard to spend several turns investing casting points into these before he/she can complete the spells and ready them for casting. Even so, he/she will need to have the mana to cast these. Fortunately, the player can choose to cancel a spell at any time and convert the casting-points invested so far into Mana.
As should be apparent already, the spell-casting system that Wizards have is quite well-balanced with costs and restrictions that prevent players from casting spells willy-nilly.
(As for spell-casting heroes, they can cast them in a way that is similar to how Heroes can cast spells in the previous game. However, they do not share the same spell-book as the Wizard; instead, each of them has their own, depending on their class.)
Like in the previous game, The Wizard's Throne has the player playing the game in a turn-based manner through two ways: movement of armies across an overland map, or main map, and battle scenarios between opposing parties, or among multiple parties if more than two players are involved.
The main map is still separated into two layers: the surface and the underground. Cave entrances allow a party to emerge from one layer into the other, though this is not the only way to do so, especially in The Wizard's Throne where there are spells that shift units from one layer to another. Shifting between one layer to the next can open a lot of strategic opportunities, so learning the methods to do so can be of great benefit to the player.
Both layers have a mixture of different kinds of terrain; even terrain usually found on the surface can be found in the Underground, such as underground meadows (though the opposite does not occur). These terrain types have an impact on the growth of Settlements, as had been mentioned earlier.
They also have effects on the movement of parties. For example, Forests generally slow down units that are not trained for moving through them, while Mountains are impassable to just about any land-bound unit. Units with the correct Movement skills can move through such terrain without much of a penalty, either individually (which is usually useful for scouting work) or in groups of similarly skilled units (usually for raiding work).
In addition to movement factors, certain terrain features also have properties that affect visibility. For example, smoke, dark clouds or poisonous fumes may linger over terrain, either naturally or through spells (or scripted events), and these block lines of sight for both units within and without these areas. There are also units that can conceal themselves within certain terrain like Water and Forests, effectively rendering them invisible to enemy units as long as the latter do not come too close. There is also the fog-of-war, which typically hides any updates to regions that the player has explored but left behind, and this fog-of-war is especially thick in the Underground layer.
However, it has to be mentioned here that although the Mountaineering skill allows ground-bound units to move through mountains, they still suffer movement penalties anyway, unlike units with skills to move through other kinds of rough terrain. This is perhaps an attempt to balance this skill, as having units moving through mountains can be a nasty surprise to opponents. Yet, once players have obtained flight-capable units, or other means to grant flight, or units that simply float through terrain, Mountaineering is rendered next to obsolete.
The same can also be said for Night Vision. Night Vision allows the unit to see through areas which are tagged with the Darkness property, such as any location underground that is not lit by torches or any other light source. However, outside of spell-induced fogs-of-war such as Domain of Darkness, Night Vision is only ever practical in the Underground, but it would only be useful if coupled with Cave Crawling. To put forth an example of the consequences of such a design, the Tigrans (and Orcs) may be said to be able to see well in the darkness of the Underground, but without Cave-Crawling, races like the Goblins would be outmaneuvering them in this layer.
Exploration of maps is an important part of gameplay in the first game, and it is perhaps even more so now that it contributes to the revamped mechanics of magic in addition to the others that are just as important to the player's efforts to win.
Many locations in the current map in play tend to have hidden, unaffiliated defenders guarding them from trespass by any player. They can be too numerous and powerful for a player to take on, and unfortunately, there is not really any way to know how many and what kind of defenders that are lurking within these locations without having some sacrificial units enter battle with these defenders to scout out their composition. Thankfully, loose warbands of unaffiliated units that are guarding other kinds of locations on the main map can be scouted out more easily.
Ancient Ruins return from the previous game, still hiding treasures like magical items or a large pile of gold, and often bands of monsters of random nature that guard these items jealously. Crypts are much like Ancient Ruins, though the defenders are predominantly Undead. The Rainbow's End is a tribute to a fairy tale about rainbows and Leprechauns' pots of gold, though the Leprechauns in this case would guard their gold in quite a violent manner. However, there may be a chance that they will give up their gold willingly, or require something in return (i.e. offering a quest); the appropriate dialogue prompt will pop up for the player to make a selection.
Finally, the nastiest of these treasure-hoarding locations is the Dragon's Lair, which is always guarded by dragons but often has the best loot to be grabbed.
The Magic Vault is a treasure-holding tomb of sorts, much like the previously mentioned locations, except that the contents are related to the magic system; these are usually in the form of spells, especially magical items (like staffs) or a tremendous amount of mana. However, in battles that take place over Magic Vaults, the player will have to contend with spells that are randomly cast all over the battlefield, virtually no cover and often angry defenders of the Vaults that are usually otherworldly monsters.
A Wizard can only cast so many spells in a single turn, as mentioned earlier. Therefore, the inclusion of the Magic Catalyst terrain feature can make for a conveniently extra spell or two, because it can grant a one-off bonus of additional casting points. These points have to be spent within the same turn, or they are lost upon the next one. The player can also choose to have the Catalyst grant additional research points instead, which have more long-term benefit, if the player does not need to cast more spells than usual in the current turn.
The Magic Rift is an un-activated Mana Node of sorts, but it is heavily guarded by otherworldly creatures. Getting rid of the defenders allows the victorious player to convert the rift into a Mana Node that is affiliated with the player's elemental sphere.
It has to be mentioned here though that despite having explored a treasure-hoarding location, the same location can be "explored" again by another unsuspecting player, but without anything turning up and causing the morale of that player's exploring party to take a temporary hit for time and effort wasted.
Other features on the main map have more to do with gaining a short-term advantage over enemies that usually last for only a turn. Many of these happen to be the new to the series.
The Campsite is one of the most interesting of these, as they contain independent units that can be hired if they are of a compatible alignment with the player's forces, or fought if they are not (or fought anyway if the player prefers to slaughter them for experience points).
The Haste Berry Tree restores the movement allowance for the party that approaches it and also grants them the Haste buff that lasts up to an astonishing three days. Certain maps have these trees within reach of each other for a very fast unit, allowing said unit to perform a quick reconnaisance. (The berries only replenish after three days, however.)
The Healing House offers free complete healing to one single party, which can be handy if a player has a party with units with plenty of hit points but have been severely wounded in a previous battle.
The main map can be a large place and a player can ever have so many units running around keeping an eye on everything, or have so many Settlements founded to open up the fog-of-war. The Watch Tower is a building that allows the controlling player to keep an eye on a region of the map; its stone walls also allow an occupying party to stage a defense, if it cannot retreat to better locations.
Another location that helps efforts at scouting is the Reflective Pool. It lets the player peek at the regions surrounding the other Pools. This seems like a handy scouting tactic, though wise players would eventually learn that it is not a good idea to place important cities near these pools.
It has to be mentioned here that the previous game allowed the player to build certain buildings on the map, such as Watch Towers (and especially these). In the previous game, they can be used to keep an eye on enemies and/or deliberately plug off choke-points, in conjunction with an occupying party that can make use of its stone walls.
The sequel had done away with this feature, and also somewhat superseded it with the feature to build new cities, albeit this feature is a lot more balanced and more difficult to exploit.
Battles occur whenever attacking parties engage enemy parties on the main map. The most common type of battles is the one that is instigated by moving a party onto enemy parties that can be seen on the main map. The player can choose whether to enact the battle, or withdraw without suffering any penalty. He/She can usually see the composition of such enemy parties that appear in the line-of-sight of the player, unless there are units within them that can conceal themselves in the terrain that they are in.
Such battles can involve more than one party. Any party - friend or foe - that is in any of the hexes adjacent to that of the defending party will be sucked into the battle and will appear on the battlefield in the appropriate edge of the battlefield.
Most of the designs for the enactment of battles are retained over from the previous game; they still work well in planning for battles, e.g. moving multiple parties against the defenders, satisfactorily enough.
Another common type of battle is sieges of Settlements. During this battle, the defending party always appears in the center of the battlefield, regardless of whether they are surrounded by enemies. They will be placed on the Walls, if any.
There are only two types of walls that can be had for any Settlement: the flimsier Wooden Wall, and its straight-upgrade, the sturdier Stone Wall. This has been so since the first game, and it would appear that sieges could have had a lot more variety if there had been more kinds of walls.
However, the Enchanted Walls upgrade and the new feature of gates that can be brought down by any unit do inject some freshness. Depending on the Wizard's sphere of magic, the Enchanted Walls upgrade will grant buffs onto defenders on the walls (but not attackers) or curse attackers on the walls with de-buffs (which will not affect the defenders). This can be highly advantageous for the defenders.
In the previous game, sieges of Settlements with walls have to be performed with siege engines, the least being the Battering Ram, or other units that can damage the walls. Otherwise, there is just no way to take over these Settlements through force. In the sequel, the attacking forces need only attack the gates in the centre of walls and bring them down in order to enter the Settlement; any unit can damage the gates, though units that are not siege-specialists will suffer damage penalties for attacking the gates without the proper equipment.
The feature of breakable gates allows any party of units to attack and take over a Settlement with Walls now, as long as they can breach the gates (which can be quite tough anyway) and did not suffer too much damage from the defenders on the walls such that they still have enough strength to take out the latter. This may be a welcome change for players who are frustrated over the need to bring along Siege Machines, which can be terribly slow, and whose destruction before the Walls are breached automatically results in a defeat.
As usual, units with flight, scaling or tunneling capabilities can circumvent the walls, though the new feature of Enchanted Walls can severely deter such attempts.
The facilities that a Settlement has also appear in the battlefield, so these can actually be damaged or even destroyed during the battle, though they can take so much damage and can only take damage from Siege weapons that a raid against a Settlement with this intention isn't likely to do much. This can be disappointing to players that like to perform hit-and-run attacks.
The third kind of battles occurs when the player has a party searching special locations like Ruins and Magic Vaults and encountering the hidden defenders. Only that party can engage the defenders; certain locations can have defenders that are too numerous and powerful for that party and the player would only realize this after the battle has begun. This contrasts with the other kinds of battles, where the player is generally able to see the composition of the opposition. This can be a bit frustrating for players who would rather have sufficient intel on enemy forces.
The player can choose to have the computer automatically resolve any battle, but this is usually not a good idea if the odds are not heavily stacked in the player's favor because the automated battles do not consider terrain cover as strong factors well, nor do they consider the positioning of units relative to each other well enough. However, the automated battles can be replayed to see where mishaps occur, so that the player can make adjustments to compensate for these.
For better or worse, the success of the actions taken by units during battle is still predominantly dependent on their statistics and luck. For example, a powerful creature with high attack rating can still miss a lowly target several times due to terrible rolls. Conversely, lowly units are not likely to be able to take down very powerful enemies such as the aforementioned high-tier units, even if the former outnumber the latter many times - unless the player has tremendous luck. The probability-based system also affects the effectiveness of spells that are cast on enemies.
Fortunately, there are some game designs that help the player gauge the probability of success for certain actions. Chief of these are the arcs that are displayed before the player decides to have a unit with a ranged attack shoot at a target.
Units in battles need not necessarily fight to the death. Units that lost their nerves, e.g. due to Fear or Terror, will run off the battlefield; players may also choose to move units off the battlefield, if he/she feels that they are threat of death. Units that managed to retreat from battle after being defeated will form a party that automatically moves a certain distance away from the victorious one, in an effort to get away. Of course, the victorious party may attempt to finish the job if it has movement allowance left, or it has units with movement allowance left that can be detached to form another party that can better reach the stragglers.
Some other minor changes in the mechanics that govern battle are that all actions now consume movement points, including attacks on enemy units and spell-casting. However, this also mean that units can now use a mixture of actions, such as moving and then attacking or vice versa, which is a good change from the more rigid restrictions in the first game (which prevented ranged units from moving and attacking within the same turn, among other things). Units also can no longer perform unlimited retaliatory strikes; all units will only have up to four of such strikes each, if they can survive long enough to use them all.
As in the previous game, the player may choose to send parties of units to raze resource nodes or even Settlements to the ground to deny an encroaching enemy access to these. Doing so will spawn angry refugees who would attack any nearby forces of any player. However, Settlements can take a long time to raze and require the presence of substantial occupying forces, lest the Settlements rebel and prevent the sacking; this is perhaps to prevent players from resorting too much on scorched-earth tactics. On the other hand, resource nodes can be immediately razed.
The mechanic of diplomacy returns in The Wizard's Throne, with a much cleaner interface this time. Like in the previous game, there are two kinds of relations that the player has to juggle: relations with the other players (humans or AI-controlled), and relations with each of the current map's available races.
Diplomacy with other players still involves the agreed exchanges of resources, units, items and cities (though the exchange of the latter is difficult to effect), but with the added trade goods category that is spells now. As usual, if the players are at war with each other, they may parley for peace.
The AI players are a lot more sophisticated this time around when it comes to diplomacy; sending an offer will trigger the running of scripts that will have the AI projecting the pros and cons of the deal offered, the time taken to do so depending on the difficulty of the AI chosen and the AI's past experiences with the player. Generally, friendly AI players are expected to hand over aid when prompted for the first time if the player had not done anything to damage their trust, while hostile AI players who have suffered what would be humiliating to a human player isn't likely to agree to any deal at all. This is in contrast to the previous game where the AI simply won't do certain things, such as trading Settlements.
Relations with races are still governed by factors like how many Settlements of that race that the player has, the moral alignment of the player character (which can change according to what the player does to Settlements under his/her control; developing them would make him/her "good", while razing them won't, for example), any aggressions that the player has performed against them (e.g. razing their cities, replacing the race of a Settlement), any acts that benefit them (e.g. replacing the race of a Settlement with theirs) and any perceived inclination towards races that they despise. Relations with races will directly affect the Happiness of Settlements of these races.
This segment of diplomacy is very much unchanged from the first game.
The single-player campaign would provide most of the enjoyment to be had from Age of Wonders, though the fun is marred by story designs and pacing that can best described as "all over the place".
The story will be driven along by a cast of characters, many of which are the titular Wizards. There is a story of intrigue, treachery and hope that drives the single-player campaign; this is shown through the cutscenes between each level, which is mostly written and voiced-over satisfactorily enough to portray the intended themes. A repetitive, but still relevant, animated picture provides the graphical depiction of these.
However, the writing for story-related sequences during levels is not as good. There are written lines that make the characters out-of-character with respect to the depictions shown in the aforementioned cutscenes, such as one segment that has the canonically soft-spoken protagonist exchanging groan-worthy taunts with another character.
The previous game offered well-written monologues that described the protagonist's doubts, aspirations and misgivings. They also portrayed him/her as a mortal leader under great pressure to do great things. In contrast, the writing for the protagonist's lines (monologue and dialogue) is a lot simpler: he knows that he is an inexperienced Wizard, but he always end every voice-over with a reiteration that he must do what he must do. His grit and determination are laudable virtues that would have been pleasing - if the story-writing does not keep reminding the player of that.
Perhaps the worst design of the single-player campaign is the one concerning the protagonist's main quest of mastering every Sphere of magic.
Each Sphere has its own chapter and villains and friends that the protagonist will meet. These would appear to give a semblance of continuity and would have successfully done so if not for the fact that the protagonist simply loses all spells and Heroes that he has gained from the previous chapter, effectively restarting from scratch only with a different Sphere this time. This is not conducive to the plot-line that the protagonist has mastered the previous Spheres.
Age of Wonders can be a slow game, so the multiplayer segment of the game offers settings that can speed up gameplay.
The first of these is the insistence on having the "simultaneous turns" mode turned on for all multiplayer matches over LAN, direct IP connections or through GameSpy Arcade. Available for single-player mode too (though this is not necessary for the single-player experience), "simultaneous turns" have all players taking their turns at the same time, moving parties of units simultaneously across the main map and fighting battles while other players make their decisions. This accelerates gameplay a lot, and a timer limit can also be set to prevent anyone from dallying/stalling. However, this also means that players will often have to resort to automatic resolutions of battles, if only to keep pace with the others.
Like its predecessor, Age of Wonders 2 allows players to play-by-email, effectively having the players sending each other special saved games that can be loaded and run through the game's play-by-email multiplayer mode.
There is also a "hot-seat" format that allows players to play on a single computer by having the user interface switch from player to player as they take their respective turns. Of course, this format requires the players to respect each other's privacy when they take their own turns, lest they become privy to each other's plans.
As for the experience of the match itself, it depends a lot on the map that has been loaded. Most official multiplayer maps are designed for balanced gameplay, but the players involved may also play custom-made maps, maps from the single-player campaign, or even saved games from this or earlier multiplayer sessions.
The game also comes with a scenario/map editor for the creation of user-made maps, many of which have found their way into online fan-communities like HeavenGames.
With the mechanics and core game designs of The Wizard's Throne having been elaborated on, this review will now move on to its aesthetics.
The previous game resorted to having the same simplistic animation sets for units, especially the early-game ones. They moved so similarly that the player would not be far from wrong if he/she had assumed that the developers had only made pixel swaps for the sprites of supposedly different units.
The sequel has eschewed such lackadaisical visual presentation of units in favor of creating unique sprites with their own animation sets for all units. The animations are still somewhat simplistic, e.g. swinging limbs for just about any action taken, and there are still semblances of similarities in the animation sets of certain pairs of units, e.g. the swinging animations of the Human Halberdier and Goblin Grunt, but otherwise, the overall visual designs for units are more than satisfactorily diverse.
The sprites for Settlements and terrain features have been updated over the ones in the original Age of Wonders, looking more detailed and colourful than ever. Sprites for Settlements will change in order to depict the incorporation of new facilities, so that the development status of a Settlement can be guessed at a single glance. The terrain also similarly benefited from a wider palette of textures and patterns, though large expanses of terrain such as wide mountain ranges still betrays some repetition of these.
Age of Wonders had some wonderful - if a bit simple - particle effects for spells and other occurrences where a player would expect a light-show. The sequel had expanded on the particle effects and refined them further, adding these to terrain features like the aforementioned Rainbow's End and Magic Vault locations to make them especially stand out from the rest of the map. Settlements particularly benefit from these particle effects when they are affected by spells or have magical facilities built in them.
If there is a major complaint about the graphics of the game, it is that the Heroes still appear like they did in the first game: mounted, hooded and cloaked individuals whose garb renders their gender indeterminate, with only their heads clearly showing the races that they belong to. They have some variations in their sprites, but these are mostly pixel and palette swaps; they also share the same animations. There may be six Hero Classes, but all of them practically use the same race-dependent sprite.
Fortunately, there are some attempts to create special sprites for Heroes of certain races, namely the Draconian, Tigran and Frostling Heroes (who incidentally belong to races that are new to the franchise). The Draconian Hero in particular is very impressive, being fully animated all the time and sporting impressive wings (though they do seem like they have been copied over from the sprites for actual Dragons).
Unfortunately, the voice-acting in The Wizard's Throne does not appear to have received the same re-design efforts. Units have nasty voice-acting, many of which were ported over wholesale from the first game, which was dubiously known for having terrible and cheesy voice-acting. It is (still) difficult to know whether an injured Halfling is retching or screaming, whether an Undead is groaning like an undead should or it is yawning in boredom, whether a female unit is groaning in pain or pleasure, etc. Voice-over is still shared among many units, such as the teeny, wretched voice of Halflings being used for Goblins and Frostlings.
As had been mentioned in the review for the first game too, this reviewer would recommend turning the unit responses off completely in the sequel.
Fortunately, the sound effects and musical soundtracks had seen some attention. The sound effects of the previous game had been transferred over too, but their library has been added to with new ones for the new mechanics and features in the sequel, such as magical-sounding warbles for units making use of Teleportation Gates. The musical soundtracks have also been expanded to include more tracks that elicit a sense of wonderment (as befitting the name of the franchise).
In conclusion, The Wizard's Throne addresses some shortfalls in its predecessor, but not all. It retains some of them, such as the lackadaisical voice-over of units, and even performed worse than its predecessor in the story design aspect. However, The Wizard's Throne would, and should, perhaps be better known for the new and mostly splendid mechanics and content that it has added to the franchise.