But orcs have red dragons and lizardmen have basilisks. ![]() Dwarves have “firstborns”, who are powerful infantry. Humans have air galleys, for instance, that can let them ferry troops across the map. There’s only one fourth tier unit for every race, usually some monster that’s associated with it, though not always. Trolls, giant bats, eagle riders, balloons, giants, djinns, ice witches… Here the races differ much more and the units on this roster, three for each race, become a mélange of fantastic creatures and monsters. The third tier is where things get interesting. Lizardmen mount their ballistae and catapults on giant turtles – which is relevant because it lets them swim like most of their units. The siege engines are largely the same between all races, though there’s exceptions – Azracs use elephants instead of battering rams, for one thing, and orcs have stronger ballistae. The first two tiers contain the basic infantry, archers, battering rams, special units, cavalry, priests, catapults and ballistae. And the maximum level of units depends on the size of the city. How many of them you can recruit depends on the cities you own – you need to upgrade the cities and install the units first. But what do races give us?Įvery race has a set of twelve units, many of which are shared. What this means is that regardless of your starting race, you’re likely to end up leading several, and so mixing and matching units from different races is important. There’s an exception to this exception though, in that high men can ally with humans. The exceptions are high men and undead, who are respectively pure good and pure evil. Neutral races can get along with both good and evil ones, which gives them an advantage. Any cities and races of such races you own will be perpetually unhappy and rebellious. If your starting or dominant race is evil, you can’t recruit good races and vice versa. In a single mission, alignment dictates your diplomacy. Then we move on to other races and the story branches depending on that. In the campaign, we take the side of good or evil, starting with command over halflings or goblins regardless of our leader’s race. The races’ alignment has impact on both the campaigns and single missions. I can’t help but feel like this has some unpleasant implications. High men are a race of celestial beings that look like pale humans with a Greco-Roman theme. Then I actually found out they’re…desert-dwelling humans with a fantasy-Middle Eastern theme. Azracs…I wondered who they were when I played the demo. Frostlings are a goblin-like race living in, no surprise, the arctic. Most of those are self-explanatory, but there’s a few that won’t be immediately obvious. Finally, the evil races are orcs, goblins, dark elves, and undead. The neutral ones are humans, frotslings, azracs, and lizardmen. The good races are elves, dwarves, halflings, and high men. ![]() ![]() Good races are good, bad races are bad, neutral races can be both. Now, my opinion about assigning moral standing to entire races is as low as it gets, but sadly Age of Wonders plays it entirely straight. There are four good races, four evil races and four neutral races. What is Age of Wonders? It was, at its core, a fantasy wargame between twelve races. Many years later I could finally play the full version. I’m not sure what about it spoke to me the way other games didn’t. My younger, more excitable self found it as a demo version in a gaming magazine and fell in love. The series begins with the first game, titled simply Age of Wonders. This time it’s “Age of Wonders,” a turn-based fantasy strategy game. Today I will introduce you to yet another game series that made an impact on me when I was growing up.
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