Age of Wonders 4: Empires and Ashes is a DLC for the fantasy 4X game Age of Wonders 4, released in May of this year. It expands the game by adding content mostly related to the techno-magical aspects of Age of Wonders 4, including a new culture, four new tomes, a new form, a new mount, two more story realms to extend the story of the base game, a new victory condition, and a bunch of more minor content updates. 

#1: The Reaver Culture is Thematically Fun 

The first of the two centerpieces of the Empires and Ashes DLC is the Reaver Culture. It is the most technologically advanced of the cultures in Age of Wonders 4, focusing on war and conquest that exceeds any culture in the game. Their core mechanic, Total War, allows them to declare wars without the standard imperium penalties and gives them War Spoils which can prevent other empires from using grievances against them, can be used as a resource for diplomatic traders, or to enforce the civilization’s will upon free cities. 

The Reaver’s unit roster is the most ranged-focused of any roster released so far. It has two ranged units, one that can only be purchased with War Spoils, and two skirmishers. The unit roster is rounded out with a polearm unit and a support unit. In addition to the strong ranged focus, there is also a subtheme of what is essentially enemy unit capture/domination as the Tier one skirmish units can immobilize enemies, and the support unit can subdue them and then purchase them permanently after the battle using War Spoils. 

Heroes and Champion Rulers for the Reavers also get some solid thematic options. New visual customization options and several new equipment options are available, the most noteworthy of which are the Magelock Rifle and the Pistol and Sword. The Magelock Rifle is a heavy, single-target ranged attack item. It can only be used with a complete set of action points, but it hits really, really hard, especially once you get to higher-tier versions of the weapon and start stacking hero bonuses to ranged damage. The Pistol and Sword is a dual-wield option that combines a repeatable single-handed melee attack with a strong, single-use short-range missile attack. 

The Reaver’s culture unit buff is called Focused Aggression. It gives an additional 10% damage to units with the culture buff for each application of the marked status on the target. Some culture units offer marked, and there are sufficient sources of marked outside of the faction to ensure that there are lots of synergistic options even as you get to the more advanced tomes. 

The Reaver culture, on the whole, is well done. While I would have preferred a more thematically broad culture similar to the ones in the base game, as there are a lot of techno-magic cultures that would not quite fit into the Reavers’ framework, I appreciate the solid thematic grounding it provides. Having a ranged-heavy cultural roster is fun and exciting, and even the Tier 1 units have a distinct role and something to distinguish them from other culture’s units and each other. The War Spoils system gives you a solid incentive to wage war against different factions, and Focused Aggression is both thematic and robust. 

#2: Techno-magical Tomes are as Cool as They Sound

The other core feature of Empires and Ashes is the four new tomes. Each of these tomes features Materium plus another aspect and is on a different tier. The Tier 1 tome is Materium and Nature, the Tome of Alchemy. The Tier 2 tome is Materium and Order, the Tome of the Construct. The Tier 3 tome is Materium and Chaos, the Tome of the Dreadnought. The Tier 4 tome is Materium and Shadow, the Tome of Severing. This combination of tomes provides a massive expansion of options for materium-focused builds while still slotting very well into a variety of other builds as well. The Tome of Alchemy is the least golem-focused tome of the four, serving as an excellent choice for status effect-focused builds, and is also interesting for Dark culture builds thanks to having a spell and unit that can provide weakening applications. 

The Tome of the Construct and Tome of the Dreadnought are perhaps a bit more focused on supporting golem-focused gameplay, but each provides options for builds outside of that. The Tome of the Construct’s featured unit, the bronze golem, has a weakening attack and is the first Tier 3 polearm unit. It has a racial transformation and associated spells that are good for almost any build and has an enchantment that is good for shield and polearm units. The Tome of the Dreadnought is a bit more narrow but features a couple of good general-use combat spells, a new general-purpose mythic unit, and a couple of unit enchantments that are primarily useful to line-ups that are directly going to feature golem units. 

The Tome of Severing is probably the most interesting of the four tomes, featuring a combination of strong general use options with effective counter-plays to specific strategies. The Disruption is a new mechanic that the tome features in both the unit enchantments and hero skill, which lets you peel away unit enchantments temporarily. There are tools to fight strategies focused on using corpses, using status effects, magic origin units, and spellcasting in general using the Conjure Spellward strategic spell. This spell is one of the first to let you effectively place province improvements on the map, without claiming the province in question first. I appreciate the potential of additional deployable options beyond outposts to impact the world map. The crown feature of the tome is a Tier 4 unit which is the the tome’s philosophy presented in stone – golem unit which applies weakness, cleanses allied units of negative status effects, and randomly disrupts enemy units. 

In total, I am pretty excited about the impact of the tomes and suspect their use will extend further than that of the Reaver culture. Tome of Alchemy, Tome of the Construct, and Tome of Severing are all quite good and fun with a lot of uses for a variety of strategies. I am less convinced of the relative place of the Tome of the Dreadnought, but it will almost certainly be a must-have for golem builds and may find its way into more general Materium and Chaos builds, too. 

#3: More Story Realms, but Will You Care?

The weakest part of the DLC is probably the story realms. This is primarily a result of the developers attempting to fit too much into them, between introducing the new cultures, a thematic basis for the new form, the new victory condition, and moving forward the story presented in the core game. This is not to say they are bad, simply that they end up being somewhat claustrophobic. I wish there were a few more of them so that each of the overall goals would be given more room to breathe. 

These story realms also feature some new realm traits that, much like the final realm of the main story, are not available as options after they are introduced. While some are clearly very specific to these realms, some are general enough that I can’t think of a good reason why they couldn’t be included as additional options for custom realms. 

#4: There’s More, Great Content, Too!

Rounding out the content available in Empires and Ashes is a new form, a new mount, and a new victory type. Some smaller bits of content help to feel the game more fleshed out, like more wildlife, a new infestation type, and many new events. 

The Avian form looks great with a variety of available options. These tend to lean more towards the tropical bird side of things, and, disappointingly, there does not appear to be an option to make a penguin/dire penguin equivalent race. But, on the whole, you can make a really wide variety of different types of bird people. Unfortunately, generated heroes tend not necessarily to match the overall phenotype of the bird you create, but the ability to adjust the heroes’ appearances easily resolves that. Less fixable is that some cultures and tome units will generate with helms that are smaller than the avian face and beak. This is a bit immersion-breaking and is something they account for with some units, but some of them appear to be either oversights or lack of concern for verisimilitude. 

The bear mount does pretty much everything I could ask. It is big and imposing, has a powerful, distinct, and relevant mount culture trait, and lets us finally have barbarian dwarves riding big angry bears as a faction option. 

The Seals victory is another good addition and changes the dynamic of the game positively. It introduces a bit of a “capture the flag” element to the game. While the magic victory is similar to this in some regards, ownership of golden wonders is not a problem until it is. However, Seals provide a constant source of pressure, especially if you are fighting against more substantial levels of AI difficulty. They can get to the Seals earlier than you usually can, and you are forced into a situation where you have to directly address any AI that is accumulating a lot of points, rather than being able to mostly ignore the AI as you put yourself into position for another victory condition. This is going to force me, at least, out of my comfort zone in single-player games, and I think it will also allow for interesting strategic considerations in multi-player games as well. 

The rest of the new content is good in that it provides more variety but is probably not worth addressing beyond sharing the list of what is being added:

• 16 New Events spread across Free Cities, Seals, Ancient Wonders 
• 10 Achievements 
• 6 New Music Tracks 
• New World Map Locations & Wildlife 
• New Realm Template & Realm Traits 
• New Empire & Ashes-themed Interface Skin

Conclusion

I like Empires and Ashes. I also like Age of Wonders 4 and had almost 500 hours in the game before getting this review copy, so the addition of new content and mechanics is quite welcome. I think what is in this DLC will shake up the game, in both single-player and multiplayer, and should provide a lot of additional content for people who enjoy the game to explore. The free update, though outside the scope of this review, is quite substantial too, and between the DLC and update, there are a lot of new reasons to revisit the game, both for those who have been playing the game since release and those who have not touched it in a while.

In a word, this expansion is eXcellent.