As in Fallen Enchantress (with which AoE 3 shares a huge amount of design similarities), the exploration component gets extra love due to the basic RPG mechanics present. As in all 4X games, you have the standard components of exploration, city building, combat, a tech tree, and diplomacy.

Once you start getting the hang of the game, though, it turns into a fairly polished experience. But all in all, you’re going to be trial-and-erroring your way through the game mechanics for a large chunk of time. There is an in-game reference manual, a la the Civilopedia, and some vaguely worded tool-tips when you hover over certain items. I’m still not sure how to manage the difference, in terms of gameplay effects, between climate and topography.

The elf campaign starts you out slowly and introduces new concepts piece by piece, but much of the minutia remains a mystery, even hours later. But for someone new to the genre, there’s little help to be found. It wasn’t a huge deal for me since I’ve been gaming for decades and could understand most of the basics from my own experience.

One of the first things I noticed about AoW 3 is that there are almost no tutorials. Still, I’m not quite sure it’s the holy grail of fantasy-Civ that everyone’s looking for. While I’ve never played an Age of Wonders game before this third iteration, I was pleasantly surprised with how close it came to realizing its ambition. Starting with Masters of Magic and continuing on with mods and games like Fall from Heaven and Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, there’s clearly been a market for magic-based 4X gaming, though nothing has ever quite hit the nail on the head. From my perspective, it’s always seemed that the moment Civilization broke onto the scene, developers have dreamed of creating the perfect fantasy-themed version of it.

Age of wonders 3 hero customization