Video Game / Age of Wonders

Age of Wonders is a Turn-Based Strategy PC-game released by Triumph Studios in 1999. Originally titled World of Wonders, the game incorporates elements of a fantasy RPG with 4X strategy. It has often been compared to Heroes of Might and Magic and considered the Spiritual Successor to Master of Magic. Age of Wonders was followed by sequel Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne and a stand-alone expansion AoW: Shadow Magic.

Age of Wonders 3 was released 11 years after Shadow Magic on March 31, 2014, and has its own TV Tropes page, as does the sci-fi installment Age of Wonders: Planetfall which was released on August 6, 2019. Age of Wonders 4 would continue the original series when it was released on May 2, 2023.

The elves once ruled a peaceful empire over the other civilized races in the Valley of Wonders. This Golden Age ended when hordes of humans arrived from across the sea, conquering everything in their path, killing the Elven King Inioch and his court, and claiming the Valley for themselves. Years passed; the evil races began to spread unchecked by the Elves, warfare became constant, and the Undead were awakened in a desperate attempt to win a war.

During this time, two organizations came to power, led by the half-sibling heirs of the Elven kingdom. Inioch's daughter Julia becomes the leader of The Keepers, an organization attempting to foster cooperation and diplomacy while containing the belligerent races. Her half-brother Meandor, Inioch's firstborn son, founds the Cult of Storms, dedicated to reclaiming his throne by force and exterminating humanity.

The game features kingdom-building similar to Civilization: developing cities, constructing infrastructure, and creating armies. In addition, there exist neutral structures around the map such as gold mines or watch towers, often guarded by independent forces, providing ongoing income or one-time benefits like new spells. Tactical combat involves stacks of units performing basic movements, attacks, and special abilities like spells or fire breath. Any forces in overworld map hexes that are adjacent to the defending units will be included, allowing for multiple stacks to fight a single battle.

A list of races, characters and their tropes can be found at the character sheet.

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The Age of Wonders series provides examples of the following tropes:

Age of Wonders 1

• Actually Four Mooks: A stack is composed of one to eight creatures. On the game map, the current strongest creature in the squad (or a hero unit, if that's the case) is the only member visible and represents the whole.
• Age of Titles: Naturally.
• Analogy Backfire: In one of the short stories, one human notes that another man fights worse than a nymph does. He then gets a story about what nymphs can do to people.
• Basilisk and Cockatrice: Basilisks appear in the Lizard Man army in Age of Wonders and as unaligned, summonable monster units in Age of Wonders 2. In both cases they're gigantic lizards (four-legged in the first game, six-legged in the second) with poisonous attacks, poison immunity and the Doom Gaze attack.
• Battering Ram: Rams are the most basic way to get past enemy walls and even small villages can build them. However, their slowness makes them difficult to use, and they suffer from a form of Crippling Overspecialization in that they can only attack walls and not other units.
• Beast of Battle: A mainstay throughout the games, as almost every race can field some sort of large monster as a high-end unit and several get other sorts of war beasts earlier in their unit progression. Dragons of various sorts are common, the tigrans have sphinxes, manticores and beholders, the Lizard Men can field giant turtles with catapults or ballisats mounted on their backs and several more beasts are present as unaligned summons.
• Beneath the Earth: Caves allow you access to the underground map layer. Exaggerated in that maps can have two underground layers in the Caverns and the Depths.
• Breast Plate: Julia's form-fitting armor is basically her visual trademark.

• Can't Argue with Elves: Inverted. The Humans decided to say Screw You, Elves!, killing the Elven King Inioch and kicking the elder race out of the Valley of Wonders to claim the fertile lands as the heart of their new empire.
• Character Customization: Occurs as the players' leaders and heroes level up, and depending on the options, can be done when the scenario or campaign begins
• Combat Medic: The Cleric, and other races' equivalents thereof (Shamans, Saints, Storm Priests, Doom Priests, etc.) is a capable combat unit in addition to their healing abilities, to the point that it's debatable whether they're medics who can fight, or mystical warriors with healing on the side. While their actual attack and defense values are usually low, they have a useful magical ranged attack, and infuse their melee strikes with magical (or elemental, depending on the race) energy to strike hard. They're especially useful against pesky units with high defense or against those which are flat-out resistant or immune to physical damage (like Undead Wraiths).
• Downer Ending: If the Undead win, they'll begin systematically killing all life in the world with no-one powerful enough to stop them. The Cult of Storms protagonist will be resigned to their fate, while the Keeper protagonist will realize their error and try to Fling a Light into the Future.
• Dragon Rider: One goblin unit is mounted on a wyvern, while a frostling unit rides a frost drake.
• Dual-World Gameplay: Two to three levels. The Surface world has varied terrain and mimics the real world, albeit with Patchwork Map tendencies. The (one- or two-levelled) Underground is a vast warren of caves that restricts movement and visibility for most races, giving an edge to natural burrower factions like the Dwarves or Goblins. Shadow Magic adds the Shadow world, a bizarre astral plane that allows rapid movement, but inflicts a debilitating shadow sickness on most races, giving a huge combat advantage to units that are immune to this effect.
• Dungeon Bypass: Subverted in the early campaign mission which requires the player to go through an underground tunnel under a broad mountain range. If you try to go over the mountains instead, you'll run into several very aggressive red dragons, which at this point are much stronger than the best units the player can field. Also, even if you somehow managed to defeat the dragon(s), it actually takes longer then going through the cave system, because mountains give you a movement penalty.
• Easy Logistics: Each unit costs a small amount of gold each turn, or mana in the case of summoned creatures. If you cannot pay, their morale will suffer and they may desert you to wander the map, with summoned creatures disappearing immediately. However, it only matters that you have the resources at all, while supply lines are not addressed.
• Elemental Embodiment:
  • Air, earth, fire and water elementals appear as summonable units. In original game only the earth and air elementals are humanoid, while the fire elemental is a living, skull-like Fireball and the water elemental is a living wave with a simple face, but in 2 each elemental resembles a humanoid being made out of its respective element. Age of Wonders also has fire sprites, implike creatures with small flames for heads.
  • Nature elementals, resembling women made out of wood and vines, are available as elf units in the original game.
• Elves Versus Dwarves: Averted. The Dwarves and Elves are ancient and steadfast allies, especially against the Human invasion. The default relation between the two races is "Polite", which is standard for races of the same alignment, one step below the best, "Friendly" (which is generally the default only for your own race).
• Enemy Exchange Program: You can mix units of any faction in a single stack, but it generally causes issues due to morale penalties if you try to mix units of different alignments. Units might abandon your cause, and cities might rebel unless a sufficient force is garrisoned in it to keep them "Oppressed" or "Enslaved". However, the game also gives you the option to convert cities to allied races, or just Rape, Pillage, and Burn them to the ground.
• Enemy to All Living Things: A unit with the "Path of Decay" ability will degrade tiles in its path, turning them to wasteland, while the spell "Darkland" will gradually produce the same effect on all tiles within your spellcasting range. This can have in-game impact, as certain races get economic and morale bonuses or penalties on certain terrain types. Most cities' income will be affected, as only the Undead can place outlying fields (graveyards, in their case) on wasteland tiles.
• Eye Beams: The Death Gaze is a powerful energy beam that comes from the eye of a Beholder, and that same power can also be purchase as a starting natural ability for a hero during hero creation for the campaign in the first game.
• Fallen Angel: The High Men, called Archons in later games, are allegedly descended from angels who lost their wings and divinity due to some past crime, and now serve the gods in hopes of redemption.
• Fantastic Nuke: The various Storm spells play pretty much like this, having an impact on a geographical scale.
• Fantastic Racism: It's possible to be friendly with both good and evil races, but put them in the same party and you may end up with deserters in short order.
• The Farmer and the Viper: The Keepers attempt to raise some goblins to be good in a small, isolated village on the Keepers' home island. The Cult of Storms has no trouble convincing the goblins to riot and help kill the Keepers' leader, kicking off the evil side of the campaign.
• Fertile Feet: The Elven Nature Elemental possesses the Path of Life ability, which acts opposite to the Path of Death in that it regenerates the hex tiles in the Elemental's path to fertile grasslands. While no unit in the sequel has the ability, it's still available as an item property. Wizards with at least one Life Sphere can have a similar magic effect active in their domain that slowly restores terrain, or can cast a spell to rejuvenate an area immediately. All of the elemental wizards can turn their domains into an embodiment of their element: for example, air wizards can turn verdant grasslands into frost bitten tundras, and freeze over rivers and even the ocean.
• Field Power Effect: Several, depending on the spell being cast.
• Flavor Text: Generally included for every unit, and quite serious in the first games, while much more snarky in the sequel and its standalone expansion.
• Garrisonable Structures: This primarily comes from walled cities, as well as watchtower structures whose only purpose is monitoring a wider range of the map. Terrain such as encampments, old temples, and even resource structures can be considered "garrisonable" due to providing cover, the high ground, chokepoints, or beneficial magic effects.
• Geo Effects: Certain races get bonuses on certain types of terrain, such as Frostlings' morale being better on icy land (and correspondingly worse in deserts).
• Healing Spring: The healing springs on the map can also become dangerous poison springs if the land around is changed into wasteland.
• Heel–Face Turn: A player on the good or evil starting factions (The Keepers or the Cult of Storms) can join either of the good or evil new factions that spring up halfway through the game (the High Men or the Undead), although the ending will show either switch in sides to be a temporary state of affairs. In any case, the change is often opportunistic and/or situation-based. An evil character who chooses to side with the High Men, for example, is just doing it because he thinks only they can stop the undead, who are presumably way more evil than even he is. On the other hand, if he picks the Undead, it's because they offer lots of power or seem to be unstoppable. There are more than two sides in the campaign.
• Hell Hound: Red-skinned, lizard-tailed, fire-breathing Hell Hounds appear as units in the Undead roster in the first game. They return as unaligned summonable creatures in Age of Wonders 2.
• Hero Must Survive: The death of a race's leader means the defeat of their whole empire. No matter how badly you're losing, you can make it all better with one assassination. Conversely, one stupid mistake with your own leader can avert what would be a winning game.
• Hero Unit: Leaders and their subordinate heroes.
• Holy Hand Grenade: A few units can deal Holy damage, which is a useful damage type in that it has a chance to cripple enemies with the Vertigo debuff. Most spells that deal Holy damage are from the Life sphere of magic, and the incorruptable, quasi-angelic High Men/Archon race has several units that deal holy damage in melee or from afar, the earliest example being the Saint unit, which can fling Holy Bolts as an effective ranged attack.
• Horse of a Different Color: Most mounted units ride horses, but several units throughout the games ride rather unorthodox mounts:
  • Goblins and Frostlings are both in the habit of riding wolves; goblins also ride wyverns and giant beetles. In Age of Wonders 2, the frostlings trade in their wolves for mammoth and ice drake riders.
  • One Lizard Folk unit rides a giant frog.
  • Dwarves ride boars and giant moles.
  • One syron unit rides an unnamed, armless, vaguely dinosaurian creature with a large fin along its tail.
  • One halfling unit rides giant eagles; similarly, nomads can come mounted on Roc Birds.
  • Some tigrans ride saber-toothed cats.
• Instant-Win Condition:
  • If you can take out the enemy's leader, you win instantly, even if they controlled 90% of the map and were about to crush you next turn. Semi-averted in the sequel and standalone expansion, in which you need to raze or conquer all enemy cities containing a wizard tower before destroying said leader unit becomes possible.
  • The first game also has a "leaders disabled" mode outside of the single-player campaign, for those who want to avoid this issue.
• Kill It with Fire: Used quite a bit. Numerous units enjoy the Fire Strike ability, letting them deal fire damage to foes, while the Fire school of magic does exactly what you'd expect. The first game also featured flamethrower siege engines, originally invented by the Dwarves but accessible to anyone in possession of a Builders' Guild.
• The Magic Goes Away: If the High Men win, Humans inherit the earth and only the player remains of the magical races (revered as an oracle if good, outcast as Cain if evil).
• Massive Race Selection: 15 as of Shadow Magic, not counting races that were removed between games.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: If the evil Dark Elves win, their king Meandor vanishes in the last battle, and the player (the Dragon Ascendant and immediate successor) is unable to prevent the civil war that will destroy him.
• Multiple Endings: Six of them depending on whether the player began on the good or evil faction and which of the final four factions he ends up supporting (you can end up leading any faction except the one you started out opposing).
• No Experience Points for Medic: Averted, as healers have a ranged attack.
• One-Man Party: A properly customized hero is basically invincible. It's possible to beat the entire single player campaign, as well as most AI skirmishes, using only a single unit. Equip any Hero unit with one item that offers physical immunity (there is one) and one item that offers magical immunity (there is one) at the same time. That sound is the AI crying.
• Our Elves Are Different: The regular good-aligned Elves are Wood Elves and their subterranean, green-skinned evil cousins are Dark Elves, both in name and in fitting the trope to the tee. The role of High Elves is (somewhat) filled by the "Pure Good" but ultimately creepy and of questionable morality High Men.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: Wyvern riders appear as mounted units in the goblin roster, as well as individual flying units for the Lizard Men. Neither has the dragon descriptor, unlike true dragons and hydras, and both have poisonous attacks while being immune to poison themselves.
• Place of Power: The magic nodes. A given node might not provide you any benefit if it's not a school of magic you control.
• The Quisling: The Cult of Storms protagonist tries to play this role for the Undead in their route, hoping against hope that the Omnicidal Maniacs will still have a use for living subjects in the long term. The reality sinks in after the final battle concludes, but by then there's nothing anybody can do, and the Cult protagonist is resigned to their eventual execution.
• Randomly Gifted: When you first make your character, you can give them powers that are well out of the norm for any being in the game. It could be as simple as your character starting off with a musket to your characters shooting powerful energy beams out of their eyes. There's no origin, or rhyme or reason that your 1st level character has these powers - they simply just start being able to do that.
• Sand Worm: Enormous, funnel-mouth sand worms appear as units in the Azrac army.
• Shoot the Medic First: Averted. Cleric-type units, which boast the Healing ability, can only do so once per strategic game turn and thus only once per tactical battle, or not at all if they already used it that day. They tend to be targeted anyhow, because they boast a reasonably powerful ranged magical attack. More advanced units with Healing also tend to be targeted quickly because they usually possess other, more dangerous, abilities. Finally, Leaders are always targeted first as they tend to be the most dangerous units on the field, regardless of whether the leader can or can't cast multiple healing spells.
• Short Cuts Make Long Delays: A major aversion occurs in the Keeper campaign. If you can remember the way through the Underground Path, you can literally walk straight past an entire map of enemies. If you have the Haste spell and click fast, you can complete the entire mission in under 30 seconds.
• Shout-Out: To The Bible; Humans were expelled from their "garden", while the angelic Gabriel shows up in the campaign, and the mark of Cain is alluded to in one ending.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: You have all the Tolkien classics, right down to difference between Men and High Men.
• Status Quo Is God: If the good elves win, everything stays much the same. This is the ending that leads to the sequel games.
• Straight for the Commander: The only way to eliminate other factions is to hunt down and kill their leader, a powerful wizard. The moment he drops dead, all of his remaining units and towns flip neutral, even in the middle of a combat encounter.
• Summon Magic: You can get a variety of magical units summoned by your wizard, ranging from familiars and weaklings to absurdly powerful creatures.
• Super Drowning Skills: You can use transports and certain enchantments to move troops across water. If the transport is destroyed or the magic is dispelled before they reach land, any of them lacking an innate ability to swim will immediately drown.
• Suspiciously Small Army: There is a maximum of eight units per hex, and each unit on the battle screen is merely one person, creature or siege engine. This leads to battles over large cities being fought between armies of around 20 to 30 people.
• Take Cover!: Objects or buildings in the way of a ranged attack have a chance to block it.
• Token Super: The character you created can be made to start with super powers that no other hero has. This includes giving your character Doom Gaze, an ability otherwise unique to the Beholder and Basilisk units, the Dominate ability, and other very unique powers.
• Turn Undead: An ability that every Cleric-type unit has by default.
• Universal Poison: Poison is both a damage type and stats-weakening (but not life-sapping) Status Effect. A unit can be hit by a Poison-type attack and suffer Hit Points damage, but then becomes "Poisoned" only if it's also hit on second resistance check.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Gold and Mana are two resources you need to do everything in the game. In fact, running out of gold will stop construction and recruitment if they were quequed.

Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic

• Annoying Arrows: Any unit with sufficiently high Defense will completely shrug off arrows, throwing darts and similar weapons, as they will deal zero damage. Bolts from crossbows, and bullets, meanwhile, will at least deal some damage, even to a high-tier unit.
• Antimagical Faction: The Phobian Empire is on a crusade against magic, or so they say, since their commanders actively use it.
• "Arabian Nights" Days: Nomads, who were introduced in the Shadow Magic expansion, are fully under this trope, with camels, djinnis, rocs, flying carpets and, well, desert nomads. There are also elephant riders in their ranks, for extra exotic flair.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Any unit with a high Attack (or at least using an attack ability that has a high Attack rating) will overcome Defense of their target. A particularly good example is Throw Javelin attack of a balista, which is capable of hitting various No-Sell units and dealing significant damage in the process.
• Artificial Stupidity: You can negotiate with rival wizards and trade them spells, resources or locations - and they will trade for a watchtower in your territory right next to a stack of dragons that can retake it at a moment's notice. Even better, you can give them a magic item with a serious drawback (like The Halfling's Ring which gives invisibility (which many high-level units can see through) but increases physical damage by 50%) and the wizard will always equip it.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Spirit of War may reward quests with some useful spells like Hellfire and Fireball but his quests are often Stupid Evil Violations of Common Sense and he'll put you at odds with the far more practical Spirit of Order.
  • The spells Hellfire and Tremor damage everything on the battlefield, including city structures you might have planned on using. The former is useful in moderation, though, as machines are weak to fire.
• Beast of Battle: Various races apply animals and fantastic beasts directly as their units, without the presence of any rider or handler.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Balista is an excellent siege defence unit, and great early power multiplier for your armies, despite being the most basic siege engine. That's due to Throw Javelin having a very high Attack rating (you won't be able to get anything better until you build cannons) that also comes with a big Damage roll. If your faction is stuck with bows for ranged units, Balistas will be better than your archers, especially in the long run.
  • Crossbowmen of various races. They are all tier 1 units, so nothing fancy, but Shoot Crossbow attack ability has a high Attack rating, allowing them to reliably hit even high-tier units with high Defense, keeping them useful even late into any given map.
• Bows Versus Crossbows: Inverted. Bows are used by a whole variety of races of different alignments, but the largest share is of... evil races, like Dark Elves, Orcs and Undead. Meanwhile, crossbows are completely absent from the arsenal of the evil races, while Good-aligned Dwarves and Neutral Humans are the races excelling in crossbow usage.
• Breath Weapon: With fire and ice variants. Draconian units often have this ability, along with true dragons and there are even artefacts that can grant it to heroes.
• Chokepoint Geography: Played with. Both campaign and randomly-generated maps often have chokepoints that are particularly tough to overcome or require roundabout paths... but you can always use units capable of things like walking over mountain tiles or even outright flying, offering handy shortcuts.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Getting a dragon hatchling is undeniably a cool thing and it's a decent unit on its own (or better than any of your units, if you play as a particularly weak faction). But reaching gold medal veterancy with it, so it will turn into an adult dragon? That's probably the worst sort of hell when it comes to micromanagement, because you will need to finish off an insane amount of units. And then there is grinding up the adult dragon to full potency - usually the current map is already over before you get all the exp needed.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Handicaps inflicted by attacks include Cursed (from attacks with Death damage), Poisoned (Poison damage) and Vertigo (Holy damage); these are defense reduction overlapping with elemental weakness. And of course, there are many debuff spells. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic adds Shadow Sickness, forced on most normal units visiting Shadow World without protection.
• Damage Typing: Set of flags for an attack (may stick Status Effects): Fire (Burning), Cold (Frozen), Lightning (Stunned), Magic, Poison (Poisoned), Death (Cursed), Holy (Vertigo), Physical, Wall-crushing (2x for machines and gates, affects walls and other map objects).
• Dark Is Evil: Dark elves are explicitly an evil race. So are the undead.
• Dark World: The Shadow World from the expansion, a separate plane of existence, further applying a "Shadow sickness" to non-Shadow units even getting there. Not to be confused with the simple Underground.
• Deadly Upgrade: The Martyr enchantment doubles one unit's HP, but this unit dies once the battle ends.
• Death from Above: Beware any flying unit, especially one that can attack with ranged attacks. There is no way to attack them other than with your ranged units, and fliers tend to have high Defense, shrugging off things like arrows, on top of already being impossible to hit by melee troops.
• Death World: According to the archons in the final scenario of the Shadow Magic campaign, the world started out as this until they found it and made it habitable.
• Dem Bones: Basic undead units are animated skeletons.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: As in the first game, items can be created in the Map Editor, but Shadow Magic enables the player to make them within the game, subject to some limitations that prevent overpowered equipment being made - no Physical Immunity, only one level of bonus Wizardry, no more than 3 enchantments per item, and some enchantments can only occur on a particular body slot, limiting what powers can stack. Said all that, it's incredibly broken feature and the only real limit is how long it takes to set up the required buildings.
• Disc-One Nuke: Courtesy of the Design-It-Yourself Equipment. In a campaign game you can bring equipment and heroes across scenarios. Lingering on the first level to build superior equipment for later scenarios.
• Easy Logistics: Even easier than in the first game. As long as you can pay for unit upkeep, there is nothing to worry about. Pioneers make moving around even easier, as they can build roads, nullifying hard terrain movement penalties, too. And once you have two sufficiently advanced Mage Towers, you can simply build teleporters and freely move units instantly across the map.
• Elite Army: Other than the steep upkeep, there is nothing preventing you from forming an entire army out of top-tier units - or even high-level Hero Units.
• Elite Mooks: Tier 2 units are cheap and fast to produce and maintain, while the vast majority of them are a massive upgrade over the tier 1 chaff, often coming with powerful abilities on top of already strong stats.
• Explosive Breeder: Goblins. While other races get extra production, money, mana and what not, goblins get extra population growth. It's not that important for AI, but in the hands of the player, it is easily the best bonus possible, making goblins prime candidates for pioneers.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Tigrans are heavily styled after Ancient Egypt, right down to having a Sphinx as their top-tier unit.
• Firewood Resources: Small wood bundles were terrain items that gave your closest city an instant structure building bonus. Or just build something out of a scratch if nothing was in the construction queque.
• Giant Flyer: In the skies of the Shadow World swim the whale-like Skwahl. They aren't present as a playable unit but the description of the Syron Forceship says they are made from hollowed carcasses of old Skwahl.
• Giant Spider: They can be summoned into your armies. Not that great in combat, but come with a very useful ability to web-up any unit they attack.
• Glass Cannon: Any 1-level unit with Poison, Lightning or Cold range attack is very fragile, but even 2-3 of them can hurt a lot. The nastiest is Syron Lightning Catcher whose attack covers 7 hexes and stuns; Frostling Snowscaper is a cheaper basic unit, but with a single Frost Bolt is more luck-based.
• Grim Up North: Frostlings come from the land of Endless Winter, and all their units are rugged, goblin-like creatures.
• Humans Are Average: Humans come with a well-rounded unit roster, with nothing special, but also no particular weakness, and being a Neutral race. They are quite literally the baseline from which all other races are adjusted.
• Holy Burns Evil: Holy Attack is a Status Effects that deals extra damage and decreases Defense of targets that have a weakness toward holy (like the undead). All archon units, even their peasant militia, come with Holy Attack
• I Shall Taunt You: Heroes can get this as a skill, and certain units get it by default.
• Incendiary Exponent: Burning unit have -1 HP/round and -2 Attack. Not counting special qualities, Human Infantryman recruit has 12 HP, attack 7 dam 5, Knight has 20, 14, 9. With up to 3 strikes/round, it's quite possible to cut down few weaker units while aflame.
• Instant-Win Condition: A bit more complicated this time around, as a slain Wizard can respawn at any town he owns with a Mage tower built in it, so winning this way is only possible if you have already taken most of his territory or if he lacked the funds to build a backup tower.
• Jack of All Stats: Humans, Dwarves and Halflings don't rely on any sort of gimmick, don't have particular weaknesses and their units never become obsolete due to tier progression.
• Javelin Thrower: The "Throw Spear" ability allows a single rather strong ranged attack. While at first glance it might not look like anything special, it has enough Attack rating to reliably hit high Defense units, including top-tier ones.
• Knightly Lance: Various cavalry units are armed with lances or at least spears. Lances are also among the potential artifacts, granting First Strike and general attack bonuses. Including, of course, one with a bonus against dragons.
• Lethal Joke Character: Halflings hat as a whole, as their units gain a variety of extra bonuses against facing stronger opponents, while still being a race of chill, Cowardly Lions with easily the silliest roster of militia- or even posse-like units.
• Lightning Bruiser: Cavalry of any kind or form, along with Giant Flyers, Beast of Battle and the Steam Tank, combine high mobility with good overall stats. Probably the only exception to this trope is the Human's Flying Ship, which has rather lackluster combat capabilities and works as an all-terrain transport unit instead.
• Mage Tower: A critical mechanic and serving a dual purpose. Wizards who sit in a tower will have their domain (spell range) extended, and can cast adjacent to allied heroes. Even more importantly, if a wizard dies, he or she will be resurrected at a tower on their next turn. And if there's no tower to resurrect at...
• Magikarp Power: Shadow Magic allows you to buy dragon hatchlings. They start off rather weak and are often targeted by the enemy, but if you can build their experience to gold medal rank they will grow into full size dragons.
• Master of None: When making a custom wizard, one can spread the points to their liking. However, it takes at least 3 points (out of 6) into any given school to be able to unlock all its spells, so not focusing is a great way to be stuck with a wide range of tier 1 spells, that are for the most part useless and will take forever to research due to their sheer amount.
• Master Swordsman: Dark elves have Blade Dancer, which is an exceptionally good swordsman unit, focusing first and foremost on attack.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Rogue and, to a lesser extent, Ranger as a hero class. They have access to a variety of utility skills from other classes, without suffering from Master of None and, more importantly, have strong fighting abilities and bonuses along with decent magic ones. Fine-tuning them with the right racial bonuses can further increase their usefulness or simply allow them to start with certain skills.
• Morale Mechanic:
  • Races are aligned as Good, Neutral or Evil. Mix races from different alignments or simply throw too many units from different races and the morale of the whole army will tank, which will cause desertion. There is a wizard skill that can be picked either as a starting one or researched during the game to decrease the penalty to morale.
  • One of the main advantages of siege weapons is that they do not take part in the morale evaluation, working exactly the same for everyone - including the dwarven Steam Tank.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons are powerful reptilian creatures that, in the backstory, once inhabited the Valley of Wonders and were hunted into near extinction once humanity moved in. Several dragons appear as units in the game:
  • In the original Age of Wonders, red dragons are units in the Orc army and frost-breathing ice drakes are part of the Frostling roster. In Age of Wonders 2, fairy dragons with four insect-like wings are present as powerful units in the elven army.
  • The draconians, in Age of Wonders 2, are a faction of Neutral-aligned Draconic Humanoids that came into being when several clutches of dragon eggs were enchanted to protect the dragons from extinction, transforming the hatchlings into a new humanoid species. They are physically very variable — several draconians have vestigial wings, which in some cases are well-developed enough to allow them to fly; further, while most have typical humanoid proportions, some are hulking and heavily muscled and others are still quadrupedal. The draconian army roster includes two types of true dragons as high-end monster units: the multi-headed hydras and the large, powerful red dragons.
  • Several true dragons are present among the factionless summonable units, including dragon hatchlings, undead bone dragons, Evil-aligned black dragons, Good-aligned golden dragons, and ice dragons with frigid breath.
  • In addition to true dragons, a few draconic creatures appear without the "dragon" descriptor, including wyverns, frost drakes (ice-blue Palette Swaps of the wyvern model), sea serpents and great wyrms (very big snakes).
• Our Genies Are Different: Fire Wizards can summon an Efreet. Meanwhile, Nomads from Shadow Magic expansion have djinnies as one of their units.
• Our Hydras Are Different: Hydras are giant, six-headed quadrupedal reptiles that can be recruited as high-end monsters by the Draconians. They have regeneration and immunity to poison in addition to the dragon descriptor, which they share with other dragons but which drakes and wyverns do not have, making hydras true dragons where these other creatures are not.
• Our Manticores Are Spinier: Manticores are monster units in the tigran army roster; they resemble lions with batlike wings and scorpion tails, and deal poisonous attacks.
• Power Up Letdown: A whole host of units receive just a simple +1 to some of their stats with veterancy levels. This can even include a particularly unlucky roll for a hero, where you will get the choice to improve specific stats, but not gain any sort of useful extra ability.
• Randomly Generated Levels: One of the main selling points of Shadow Magic was a map generator, which allowed the AoW series to gain HoMM-like replayability.
• Recycled In Space: Age of Wonders: Planetfall
• Roc Birds: A high-tier Nomad unit rides a roc, depicted as an eagle-like bird that, while gigantic compared to any regular avian, is much smaller than traditional rocs.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: Shadow Magic's campaign messages and unit descriptions have a few proofreading slips. Nothing bizarre or hilarious, but they made it to release just the same.
• Shout-Out: There's an artifact giving the wearer invisibility for the cost of raised vulnerability to attacks. Does This Remind You Of anything? Hint: its name includes the words "ring" and "halfling".
• Siege Engines: As an unit class, which removes morale effects from them, but makes them vulnerable to fire. By default they include balistas, catapults and cannons. Shadow Magic expanded the roster further, offering Fire Throwers and Repetitive Balista, which are giant Automatic Crossbows. There are also dwarven Steam Tanks, which remove the fire weakness.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Variety of tier 1 spells that provide Status Effects, particularly Haste and Enchant Weapon. They are nothing fancy, but come with great utility, especially in city-defense battles, where they are cast automatically on all defending units.
• Squishy Wizard: Attempting to prevent the One-Man Party in the first game. The player character is no longer "super" hero unit and must be stationed in a tower to use global magic across your territory. While your wizard can still equip gear it's usually better in the hands of your recruited heroes who are in the field and end up as one man armies anyway.
• Standard Fantasy Races: The series features a large selection of races divided among Good, Neutral and Evil ones. The Good races include elves, dwarves and halflings, the Neutral ones two human cultures and tiger-like Cat Folk, and the Evil ones dark elves, orcs, goblins, demons and the undead. There are also other races, but they break from the "standard" mold.
• Static Stun Gun: Lightning damage may leave the target stunned for a round.
• Storm of Blades: One of the most powerful spells in the series features a volley of sharp projectiles raining on the entire field. The spell appears in the second game, but this time, it rains actual swords, that only hit enemies. It is also the most powerful spell that can be used by heroes, which means you can actually use this spell several times in a single fight.
• Straight for the Commander: Like the previous game, factions exist until the death of their leader, whereupon every unit and town flips to neutral. This time, however, leaders can respawn at any friendly town with a wizard tower, giving them much more staying power and protection from snipes or accidents. This change would become the standard for the rest of the series.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: The non-aligned units will simply attack whoever gets close to them, no matter if they are facing a lone tier 1 scout, or an Elite Army that will pound them to the ground in a single round. Often, this includes units that are outside your view, so they run half the screen toward the army they are attacking.
• Sword and Gun: Human Swashbuckler is a pirate-like unit armed with a pistol and a cutlass - and he's great at using both. There is no need to switch between them and both are equipped at the same time, but if engaged in melee, the Swashbuckler will counter-attack with the cutlass.
• Tactical Withdrawal: You can always retreat from any given battle without any ill effects, by simply reaching the edge of the map (the retreat points are even marked by arrows, but you don't have to reach them, just the edge of the map). It's particularly useful when besieging an enemy settlement and realising there is no way to win it - you can simply leave, without even being chased.
• Tank Goodness: The ultimate dwarven unit is a Steam Tank. It's a highly mobile cannon with No-Sell capabilities and, if that wasn't enough, the ability to harm all units surrounding it by releasing steam.
• Technophobia: Technophobia is a negative trait that be attached to Wizards at creation. It lowers that Wizard's production points in all cities.
• Walking Wasteland: Certain units spread around their race-friendly terrain. Except those include undead and their dead wasteland and frostlings spreading Endless Winter, both of which are serious terrain obstacles for other races.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Almost all siege engines have weakness toward fire. Which is absolutely dreadful when facing tigrans, as they focus on fire magic and their range unit is dealing fire damage — you can end up with your precious cannon destroyed before it can even fire, or set ablaze, so it will die next turn anyway.
• Wizards' War: The story focuses on powerful Wizard Kings who serve as both prominent characters in the plot and leaders of their factions; as such, the series' conflicts take the form of magical wars between these kings and their armies of summons and monsters.
  • The original Age of Wonders enables some spectacular (and cruel) acts of magical warfare as your wizardly leader grows in power, such as raising or levelling mountains and volcanoes, raising the sea level to slowly flood the map, and blighting the earth to poison armies and kill crops.
  • In The Wizard's Throne, the newly-realized wizard Merlin wages war against conspirators within the Wizard's Circle, who betrayed and murdered the leader of the Circle because he had sought to curtail their tendency towards self-declared godhood and magical war-crimes.
• Word Sequel: Age of Wonders, Age of Wonders II, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. In this case, as Shadow Magic is essentially a corrected and expanded version of II, it was not presented as a fully new generation.
• Wreathed in Flames: Ignition ability and Fire Halo enchantment. Anyone who isn't immune to fire is set aflame upon striking such an unit.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Humans can build Flying Ships as their final unit. Rather than being a great combatant, it allows the rest of the army to pack inside and cross whatever terrain there is to cross, then unload and continue on foot, offering excellent mobility. In combat, though, it's just a flying balista.

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