Age of Wonders 4 begins with a faction creator that looks like a costume box. Pick a body, pick a culture, pick two society traits, name your ruler. It reads as flavour and it is actually the most consequential build screen in the game.
The decision doing the work is not on that screen in any obvious way: which of the six affinities you are committing to. Everything else should be chosen to agree with it.
What to do first — in priority order
| Priority | What to do | Why it ranks here | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Choose the affinity before the culture | It sets your damage channel and gates which tomes you can ever research. Tier III needs 3 points in it, tier IV needs 6, tier V needs 8 | Picking the culture you like the look of and discovering at turn forty that its affinity fights your tome plan |
| 2 | Pick a culture whose points land there | Culture gives 1 or 2 of your 6 starting points. High is 2 Order, Industrious is 2 Materium, Architect is 2 in an affinity you choose. Barbarian is the only split, at 1 Chaos and 1 Nature | Treating culture as purely a unit roster. Units are the first thirty turns; affinity is the whole game |
| 3 | Point both society traits at the same affinity | Each gives 2 points, so the pair is usually four of your six. Culture 2 plus traits 2 and 2 is exactly the tier IV gate at turn one | Choosing traits for their economy text and scattering the points |
| 4 | Spend your first two tomes freely | Tier I and II have no affinity requirement, and their spells cost 250 and 400 Knowledge — the cheapest you will ever pay | Saving Knowledge for later spells. Later spells are the expensive ones |
| 5 | Expand with outposts before cities | Cities cost Imperium and bring stability problems that scale with distance from your throne. Outposts claim provinces cheaply | Founding a third city early and spending the next fifteen turns fixing its stability |
If you take one thing from this: decide the affinity first, then let it veto the other three decisions. Everything below explains what each decision is actually buying.
The four decisions
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1
Form — the physical body of your race
The most cosmetic of the four, and the one the interface spends the most time on. It matters for terrain and a few traits, but it does not touch affinity, so decide it last and enjoy it.
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2
Culture — 1 or 2 affinity points, plus six units and buildings
Also decides your cities' appearance, a province improvement, three special buildings, hero outfits and three hero skills. Seven of the eleven cultures have sub-cultures chosen here too — Dark cults, Feudal authorities, Mystic schools, Reaver governments, Primal totems, Oathsworn oaths, Nomad traditions.
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3
Society traits — 2 affinity points each, and the largest single effects in the creator
You take two. Gifted Casters adds +10 world map and +10 combat casting points. Empire of the Cosmos rewrites the tome rules. Chosen Destroyers removes your ability to hold captured cities at all. Read these carefully — several exclude each other.
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4
Tomes — the research line, decided in play
Not chosen at creation, but planned there. You will unlock exactly one tier V tome in the whole game, so it is worth knowing which one you are aiming at before turn one.
The gates are the thing to internalise. Tier I is always available. Tier II needs 2 tomes. Tier III needs 4 tomes and 3 affinity points. Tier IV needs 6 tomes and 6 points. Tier V needs 8 tomes and 8 points, once per game. A faction whose six starting points are spread across three affinities can hold eight tomes and still be locked out of tier III in every one of them.
The six affinities, briefly
| Affinity | Damage channel | Opposes | Flavour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Order | Spirit | Chaos | Light, faith, justice, government |
| Chaos | Fire | Order | Conquest, strife, demons |
| Nature | Blight | Shadow | Growth, farming, druidism |
| Materium | Physical | Astral | Extraction, transmutation, golems |
| Astral | Lightning | Materium | Scrying, illusions, summoning, meta-magic |
| Shadow | Frost | Nature | Death, decay, deception |
For a first game, Materium or Order are the easiest. Materium channels Physical damage, which nothing resists into uselessness, and Order's Spirit damage lines up with High culture's Awakened effect so the two multiply the same number.
The opening thirty turns
The rhythm is the same regardless of faction:
- Scout aggressively. Several cultures give you a better scout for free — Dark scouts see further in enemy territory and cost 10 Gold less, Barbarian scouts build Outposts without a Hero present, Reaver scouts fly and sense armies from far away. Use whichever you have.
- Clear infestations rather than avoiding them. They pay resources and experience, and the Fabled Hunters society trait exists because clearing is a viable economic strategy on its own (+75% resources from infestations, wonders and nodes).
- Take your two free tomes early. Cheap spells, no affinity requirement, and each tome grants +5 casting points regardless of tier.
- Then commit. From your third tome onward, take single-affinity tomes in your affinity. Two points each, and you want to be past 6 before you need tier IV.
Every tome grants +5 casting points whatever its tier, and counts toward the tome-count half of every gate. So a cheap tier I tome in your own affinity is never a wasted pick — it moves the count and the affinity total at the same time, which is exactly what you need when you have the points for tier V but not the eight tomes.
Five things that waste a first game
- Choosing the culture first. It is one or two of your six starting points, and if it points the wrong way you cannot fix it mid-game.
- Splitting your society traits. Two points each. Split them and you are four points behind where you could be at turn one.
- Hoarding Knowledge. Spell cost is set by tome count at selection, so Knowledge is worth roughly four times more at tome three than at tome eight.
- Taking dual-affinity tomes on the way to a tier V. They give +1 to each of two affinities rather than +2 to one — half the progress toward the gate you actually want.
- Founding cities to expand. Outposts claim provinces far more cheaply. Found cities when you want what a city does, not as a land grab.
Once the faction is settled, the culture tier list ranks all eleven by how efficiently they spend those points, the tome guide covers the gates and the research cost curve in full, and the build guide gives three complete factions you can copy. If you have not bought it, the honest review covers the DLC question.
