Video Game / Age of Wonders 3

"I have lived since two thousand years. I ruled the Wizard's Circle and reduced it to dust and shadow. I've made way for the new age... for you to inherit. Create an empire in your own image. Become a scion of magic. The herald of technology. Inspire through faith. Through fear. Rally the forces of nature. Conquer with the blood-stained sword. But know that there is corruption... but you must face it to rule the third age of wonders."

— Merlin, the trailer of Age of Wonders 3.

The third official installment of the Age of Wonders series, Age of Wonders 3 is a turn-based strategy game released by Triumph Studios on March 31, 2014.

Set many years after the events of Shadow Magic, the world is going haywire again as the traditional, tree-hugging Elven Court and industrious Commonwealth head to war. Really, it was inevitable considering the type of game this is.

The gameplay of AoW3 mixes many aspects of the prior installments. Wizards (or rather "Leaders") are back to being frontline units (casting from outside the battle costs twice as much), but are much safer from sudden death and empire failure. New to the series, units in combat are vulnerable to flank attacks; weaker units earn their place on the battlefield by being distractions, setting up attacks to be delivered by your bruisers. Units are also more explicitly categorized as Infanty, Archers, Cavalry, etc, with each group having innate abilities and weaknesses (Cavalry is weak to pikemen but can Charge, Infantry can climb walls, etc).

While many of the races don't return, a new class system adds a lot more variety to the returning races, and the base lineup of each faction has also been diversified more.

There are two DLC that expand the race and class selection. The first expansion, Golden Realms, added several new units and races, including the Halflings from the previous games as a playable race, and mystical city upgrades, buildings a city can build depending on treasure sites within its domain. The second expansion, Eternal Lords, brought back Tigrans, Frostlings, and the Undead (by means of the Necromancer class), and added alignment-based specializations.

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

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Age of Wonders 3 provides examples of the following tropes:

• Actually Four Mooks: A stack is composed of one to six creatures, with the strongest creature in the stack (or the most senior Hero Unit if present) representing the whole group on the strategic map.
• Age of Titles
• Always Accurate Attack: Goblin swarm darters fire living "mosquito darts" that ignore penalties from line-of-sight or long range, meaning they'll always deal their full (if modest) damage. The Seeker Enchantment combat spell in the Air specialization can be used to grant this ability to any ranged attacker in an army.
  • Mechanically, all attacks in the game could be considered to be this due to the overall lack of hit/miss chances (Halflings' Luck trait notwithstanding). Reduced accuracy due to distance or the target being obscured generally just translates to a reduced damage output.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • Although averted with the playable races this time around, it's played straight with some units, which can be "Dedicated To Evil" or "Dedicated to Good". In practice what this means is that they suffer morale penalties when recruited by leaders who don't match their alignment. Neutral leaders can still use them if they're careful, but leaders of opposed alignments will need to use some really tricky maneuvering to keep them from deserting. On the evil side, this is creatures like Kobolds, Hellhounds, Archon Revenants and most other kinds of Undead, many kinds of monsters like Cockatrices and Dire Penguins, and Obsidian Dragons. However, see Not Always Evil, below.
  • Also played straight with the Shadowborn specialization introduced in Eternal Lords, due to having skills that are inherently evil in nature, and providing bonuses for having an evil alignment. One of these skills attaches the aforementioned "Dedicated to Evil" trait to every unit in your army, including ones normally Dedicated to Good!
• Always Lawful Good:
  • Although averted with the playable races this time around, it's played straight with some units, which can be "Dedicated To Evil" or "Dedicated to Good". In practice what this means is that they suffer morale penalties when recruited by leaders who don't match their alignment. Neutral leaders can still use them if they're careful, but leaders of opposed alignments will need to use some really tricky maneuvering to keep them from deserting. On the good side, this is mostly creatures like Felhorses, Unicorns, Nymphs, Phoenixes, and Golden Dragons.
  • Also played straight with the Keeper of the Peace specialization introduced in Eternal Lords, due to having skills that are inherently good in nature, and providing bonuses for having a good alignment. One of these skills attaches the aforementioned "Dedicated to Good" trait to every unit in your army, including ones normally Dedicated to Evil!
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Shadowborn, the primary antagonists of the campaign, is a secret organization responsible for flaring up tensions between the Commonwealth and Elven Court in order to weaken both nations so they won't stand a chance against the forces sealed in the Shadow Realm once the last shadow gate opens.
• Anti-Frustration Features: There is an advanced option to give heroes the Ressurgence effect (revive at the end of the battle if you win) for all battles or only when you let the Computer fight for you, and by default it's set to the latter. Since the Computer is pretty bad at resolving a lot of fights, it's definitely nice to have. Even so, it's better to save beforehand anyway. The game also autosaves every turn and makes a new save file when you win in the campaign, which is also handy since there isn't much of an option to replay missions otherwise.

• Back Stab: Attacking enemies from the back or sides is generally rewarded (called flanking), but the Rogue, naturally, specializes in this, with a passive skill with the same name giving a +6 damage bonus for flanking attacks.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Played with. The Destruction and Creation specializations tell the player outright before selecting them that many of the skills they grant are evil or good in nature, however that doesn't mean the player has to follow that alignment path. One might take the Destruction specialization just for useful abilities like Storm Magic and Disintegrate, ignore all the skills related to blighting the land and razing cities, and use their ultimate destruction spells to eradicate evil. Or they might take Creation and use the powerful healing spells to keep their armies of doom healed and able to cause more destruction.
• Bait-and-Switch: A few missions get... more complicated. Probably the best example is the first halfling mission, where you are given an objective that gets discarded long before you get any chance to complete it.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: The Grey Guard specialization that comes with the Eternal Lords expansion is centered around this. Its skills confer powerful bonuses, but only so long as you maintain a neutral alignment on the Karma Meter.
• Beast of Battle: There's a lot of them, of both the animal and monster variety. The Arch-Druid and Sorcerer classes are particularly fond of these.
• Bee-Bee Gun: Goblin swarm darters use stinging insects as Abnormal Ammo for blow-guns. These "mosquito darts" deal physical and blight damage, and ignore shooting penalties for both long range and obstructed line-of-sight.
• Beneath the Earth: Caves allow you access to the underground map layer, ripe for colonizing. Some maps even have a layer below that, referred to as "the depths." Taking the Earth Mastery specialization provides your empire with an enchantment that gives your cities and produced units a preference for dwelling underground, boosting their morale while they remain in the tunnels.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Beetle-riders make up the goblin cavalry, and Giant Spiders are a common sight, some of them big enough for heroes to ride.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: There's a few different varieties. Charm, Seduce, Dominate, and Convert recruit enemies to your side permanently. (Technically Seduce and Dominate only last 3 turns, but if the unit is still seduced or dominated at the end of combat then they remain with you permanently.) There's also the Warlord's Berserk spell, which drives an enemy unit mad and forces them to attack their allies. There's also a particularly interesting variation of this given in the Succubus unit's class description.
  "She came from the shadows, with a sultry song. Her nearly nude form was more than most men could resist, but I was ready. My moral fortitude is beyond reproach. I would never fall for the Rogue's trollop. She made my men lift weapons against me. I fought them, wounding many of my fellows to stop this creature whose touch caused blight. I told myself I would slay the succubus as soon as I stopped my friends, so I fought until one of my seduced friends landed a killing blow. The winged woman lay dead. I saw clearly. I had been deceived. I was seduced, not by her beauty, but by my own pride."
• Breast Plate: Surprisingly averted with Julia this time, who wears a standard Arch-Druid outfit instead of her form-fitting armor. Played straight with a few of the leader outfits, though, as well as units like the Succubus.
• Character Customization: Even more so than in previous games. Including aesthetics on a level rivaling what you might find in an MMO, rather than just choosing a portrait image.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats:
  • The Tigran Sabertooth Chariot are pulled by sabertooth tigers.
  • The Frostling Ice Queen are pulled by polar bears.
• Charm Person: The Seduce and Charm abilities are available in units like Bard and Succubus. A Leader or Hero can equip ability-carrying items to be capable of seducing or charming the opposition.
• Combat Medic: Support units such as the priest-type units, although they generally need to gain a few ranks before they can actually heal or need a specific research upgrade.
  • Most Heroes can also do this, either with a spell (Sorcerer, Theocrat, Warlord), abilities (Archdruid, Theocrat, Dreadnought) or a passive leadership ability to speed up healing on the world map (Archdruid, Theocrat, Warlord). Only Rogues are pretty much out of luck there, preferring to avoid getting hurt in the first place, and they can cast Cunning Escape to instantly retreat a wounded unit if they are attacking.
• Compete for the Maiden's Hand: The first mission of the Eternal Lords campaign has Arvik fighting three rival lords for Sanhild's favor and position to be her consort.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Powerful late-tier units, such as dragons, are often completely immune to all forms of mind control, preventing opportunistic players from hijacking them during battle. Faction leaders are also impossible to mind control.
• Creator Provincialism: Spoofed with cheat codes, which are all surnames of famous Dutch people and companies, often with some additional context ( like Tasman revealing the map). If you ever wondered, Triumph Studios is a Dutch game developer.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Ships and aquatic creatures such as kraken. Since any units who can't swim or fly can embark with an early research you don't need transports and they can't attack anything on land. Aquatic units are still the best in water so there is some use to them, but if the map isn't particularly wet...
• Dem Bones: The Archon minor faction. Yes, the same Archons from the previous games, who died out between games and rose from their graves for some reason. There are also Bone Wyverns and Bone Dragons. The Eternal Lords adds Cadavers and Bone Collectors.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: The Item Forge from Shadow Magic returns, although it has been toned down quite a bit and isn't available in the campaign. But on random maps it's a great way to get your heroes some decent equipment.
• Dire Beast: The notorious Dire Penguins return, but now they're joined by Dire Bears, Dire Panthers and Dread Monkeys.
• Disintegrator Ray: The ultimate spell in the Destruction specialization, Disintegrate. It has a chance of causing instant death, and even if that fails it still causes massive damage (more than any other spell in the game). The only downside is it's considered physical damage, meaning that certain enemies can resist or even ignore it.
• Dragon Rider: Wyverns can be found as mounts for your Leader and Heroes.
• Dual-World Gameplay: With the underground, again.
• Dungeon Bypass: Pointed out as an option in one of the campaign missions, using specific units to tunnel underground.
• Dung Fu: Heavily implied in the Throw Filth ability, a skill for Dread Monkeys.
• Easy Evangelism: The Theocrat and some of his units can get the Convert ability, which basically uses this method to turn enemy units to your side.
• Easy Logistics: Each unit costs a small amount of gold (or mana for summoned creatures) each turn. If you cannot pay their morale will suffer and they may desert you (summons will disappear immediately). However, it only matters that you have the resources at all. Supply lines are not addressed.
• Eldritch Abomination: The ultimate unit for the Sorcerer is like something out of the Cthulhu Mythos, with a unit description written by someone who went mad from seeing one. It's even named "Eldritch Horror."
• Elemental Embodiment: Air, earth, fire, and water (well, frost) elementals return, and this time they're joined by blight and spirit elementals. The shadow stalker unit for the Rogue class also has aspects of an elemental, in its case a darkness elemental (a combination of frost and blight).
• Enemy Exchange Program:
  • You can mix units of any race once you own a city of theirs, though it takes some time to "absorb" them into your empire. However, the game also gives you the option to convert cities to allied races or just pillage and burn them. Due to the class system, however, you won't get to build units specific to the enemy class, though they can get said units through other means such as charming them or getting them as quest rewards.
  • The Necromancer is more limited here since he can only control ghoul cities, which requires conversion on its own, unless he releases conquered cities as vassals (a feature introduced alongside the expansion). The same goes with every other class conquering a ghoul city.
• Extreme Omnivore: The Glutton, the pinnacle unit for the Naga, which actually has the ability to swallow units whole as an attack.
• Faction Calculus: 9 races and 7 classes so far, which can also lead to some interesting mixes.
  • Powerhouse: Dwarves (strong but expensive units), Dreadnought (takes a while to get going with his machines).
  • Cannons: Orcs (physical strength but vulnerable to magic), High Elves (ranged strength but low population growth), Warlord (though plays more as Horde with the Raise Militia spell in the early game).
  • Horde: Goblins (cheaper but weaker units), Archdruid, Sorcerer (both are big on boosting their numbers with summons), Necromancer (weaker ghoul units but can easily revive them or raise cadavers as meat shields).
  • Subversive: Halflings (frail but can avoid attacks if lucky, lots of tricky abilities), Frostlings (freezing enemies), Rogue (stealth, poison, can steal income from enemy towns), Theocrat (conversion, healing, protecting their important units with Martyrs).
  • Balanced: Humans, Draconians and Tigrans.
• Fallen Angel: The Archon Revenants, who actually complete a fall started way back in the first Age of Wonders. Previously they were disgraced angels trying to earn their way back to Heaven, but sometime between Shadow Magic and this game a large number of their race gave up and sold their souls to an evil god, transforming into undead.
  • The Eternal Lords Expansion brings us an actual Fallen Angel summonable by any leader who chooses the Shadowborn Mastery specialization. Their abilities include Life Stealing and a petrifying scream.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The fairy fire fairies and apprentices shoot works like this, dealing fire, frost, and shock damage at the same time.
• Garrisonable Structures: In addition to the cities and watchtowers from before, there are also small outposts that can be built to bring resource buildings under your control without having to build a new settlement.
• Geo Effects:
  • Somewhat expanded from previous games, with any tile having a climate(except underground, which is considered its own climate) and a terrain type, which mainly affects movement costs. Each race has different preferences for both, though magic can change this: an advanced Fire specialist can both spread tropical/volcanic terrain and enchant their cities to like it, for example.
  • In addition, fighting on certain spots like a mana node causes unique effects. Sometimes they benefit the defender, but the nodes in particular have effects that target at complete random.
  • Many strategic spells enchant a city and its domain with a variety of effects, ranging from attrition damage for enemy armies to status buffs for your own units.
• Godzilla Threshold: Between Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic and this game, Merlin, Meandor and Queen Julia conspired to destroy the last remaining gateway to the Shadow Realm and the Wizard's Circle, seemingly in response to a dire, unexplained threat Meandor had found while exploring The Multiverse. This stranded the Wizard Kings outside Athla and caused the Old Magic to fail, leading to a devastating outbreak of famines, climate shifts and natural disasters that were normally held at bay by the wizards' spells.
• Guardian Angel: One type of wizard shrine is dedicated to the aforementioned figure, restoring the health of all troops entering it and giving them the Regrowth buff.
  • In opposition to the Fallen Angel entry above, the Eternal Lords Expansion brings the ability to Summon Arch Angels if you chose the Keeper of the Peace specialization for your leader. Special abilities include returning to life if you win the battle they died in and making units around them happier and therefore more likely to Criticaly Hit their foes.
• Guide Dang It!: Research works in strange ways this time around. Some research goes along a set path (Increasing spell points, Seafaring and Logistics and at least one path for every class), but the tooltip doesn't always tell you this. The rest is pretty much random, but you only get a limited amount of choices at the same time for each of the three categories, so if you want to get a specific research you'll have to know which type it is and finish other stuff in the same category and hope for the best. The ingame manual, the Tome of Wonders, helps to some degree.
• Hero Must Survive: Your Leader isn't quite as vulnerable this time around, but most missions have this condition for one or more of your normal heroes.
• Hero Unit: The Leader and Heroes (duh), which aren't as powerful.
• Holy Hand Grenade: The Theocrat class is pretty much based on this, especially their strongest unit, the Shrine of Smiting.
• Horse of a Different Color: Leaders and Heroes of each race get their own default mount with regular horses being used only by humans. Orcs get dire horses, elves have unicorns, goblins ride wargs, dwarves use boars, draconians raise prehistoric raptors, halflings choose ponies, tigrans ride tigers, and frostlings ride polar bears. You can also find more exotic mounts with special abilities which are used as equipable items for your Leader and Heroes.
• Instant-Win Condition: Sort of, as stated above. If a Leader is killed in battle, he flees into the Void and will respawn in a few turns at his Throne City, much like the Wizard Towers worked in the second game. You only get one Throne, though it can be relocated even if you lose your Capital. Your faction is eliminated if your current Throne City is occupied and your Leader is in the Void at the same time. That being said, some campaign missions operate like this, as do specific game modes such as the Seals of Power introduced in the first DLC.
• Karma Meter: "Alignment" is a point scale of how good or evil your faction is, based on how you treat neighbors, independents and conquered cities. Acts of mercy, peacefulness and generosity bring you closer to good, while warmongering and acts of cruelty bring you closer to evil. Using certain strategic spells will also influence your alignment. Some units suffer morale penalties if they aren't part of a faction of the same alignment, and your alignment relative to someone else's can affect diplomacy. There are achievements for reaching the extremes of Pure Good or Pure Evil (600 points to either end of the scale) within the space of a single game.
• Kick the Dog: Treating cities badly is considered this on the Karma Meter, and includes some of the heftiest alignment penalties in the game. Expelling a racial populace to migrate to another race is worth -100 points; destroying a conquered city by plundering it for loot/razing it to the ground is worth -150 points; and doing the same to one of your own cities is worth -200 points. These actions also have severe penalties to the global Happiness of the race that lived in a victimized city, which may result in rebellions by that race within your empire.
• Kill It with Fire: Used quite a bit. Draconians have quite the affinity for it, and Fire specialists naturally do as well. The Dreadnaught class also favors it a bit, building Flamethrowers among their arsenal of siege weaponry. And of course you are free to combine all...
• Lethal Joke Character: Halfling Farmers from the Golden Realms add-on. The chickens they throw are quite lethal (more powerful than Human Civic Guard's crossbows, for example). Though they are usable only once per battle.
  • This trope applies to most of the Halfling units, really. All have underwhelming statistics compared with their peers, and many fight with odd weapons (party fireworks, cooking implements, or the aforementioned chickens), but their innate dodge mechanics and surprisingly strong special abilities make them a force to be reckoned with.
• MacGuffin: The Oscillator Gem, an artifact Edward and Laryssa uncovered from Melenis' hideout in Nirvenkiln, is mainly used to fuel the Commonwealth's mana-based technology, only for it to be stolen by Laryssa, who wants to keep it safe from the wrong hands. It is mentioned again in the Golden Realms campaign as an artifact Laryssa gave to Ham, who gave it to Karl, in turn. It is revealed that the gem is Melenis' Soul Jar.
• Mage Tower: The Wizard Tower Ruins is a treasure site that used to be the Wizard Kings' center of operation before their banishment to the Shadow Realm. Although it is guarded by powerful magical creatures, it grants a great reward to whoever clears the Tower, like a mythical spell, ranging from a powerful battlefield spell, a summon spell that summons rare and powerful monsters, or True Resurrection, and the Mystical City Upgrade Arcane Catalyst, which grants summoned units within the city's domain an extra rank and the Supercharged ability that spawns a Lesser spirit when the unit dies.
• Magical Library: The Lost Library is a treasure site that contains magical secrets. Often guarded by Support units of varying races and classes, liberating it grants you extra knowledge and a basic research. Adding it into your city both increases knowledge and allow you to construct Magic Academy, which grants your Support units extra damage and resistance.
• Magikarp Power:
  • This game is all over the dragon hatchling idea from Shadow Magic, even though those are themselves absent. A lot of animals and all elementals come in 2-3 forms, starting with the baby being able to evolve if it survives until the gold rank, and sometimes the Mature version gets it as well, resulting in a tier IV unit. Draconian Hatchlings can do it as well, and there are research upgrades for a few other units as well.
  • Most hero units start off fairly squishy, having statistics somewhere between T2 and T3 units. Once properly leveled up and equipped with "legendary" and "mythic"-quality items however they can become nigh-invulnerable and defeat entire armies in solo combat.
• Military Mashup Machine: The Dreadnought's Landship. A ship on steel wheels with tons of cannons.
• Multiple Endings: Two for each campaign in the base game and three in the Eternal Lords campaign.
  • If the Torchbearers win (in both campaigns), they inform Saridas and Leonus about the Shadowborn, and they take steps to hunt them down.
  • If the Elven Court wins, Sundren turns it into a totalitarian state where humans were enslaved and all dissidents - whether Shadowborn or just people who disagree with the government - were put on trials presided by a Kangaroo Court. Other races stop supporting the Elven Court, leaving it at the mercy of the wizard kings once the last shadow gate opens.
  • If the Commonwealth wins, Athla runs out of mana decades later due to overexploitation by the technology Edward devised, sparking widespread rebellions and leaving Edward alone against the forces from the Shadow World.
  • The endings of the Eternal Lords campaign depend on which leader you allied with in the end: Werlac (Shadowborn), Melenis (Undead), and neither (Frostling). According to Word of God, the Shadowborn ending is canon.
• No Experience Points for Medic: Averted, healing or buffing allies gives experience as well.
• No Points for Neutrality: Subverted by the Grey Guard specialization in Eternal Lords, which provides a number of useful skills and spells that hinge on the player maintaining a strictly neutral alignment on the Karma Meter.
• Not Always Evil: Certain creatures encountered in the wild automatically come with the "Dedicated to Evil" or "Dedicated to Good" tags. If these units are summoned using magic, however (such as a Hellhound summoned by a Fire specialist, or a Cockatrice summoned by a Sorcerer), they do not have that ability. Presumably because their dedication to their masters is enough to override their own nature.
• Not Playing Fair With Resources: The AI difficulty levels only change how much free money they get. Simply rushing the enemies before that gets out of hand is pretty much mandatory in the campaign on anything but Easy.
• One-Man Party: Maybe not quite as extreme as in previous games, the Game-Breaker potential of item crafting has been scaled back quite a lot. But by the end of each campaign, you'll have quite a few powerhouse heroes who can at least clear resource buildings single-handedly without breaking a sweat.
• Our Angels Are Different: The third specialization introduced in the Eternal Lords expansion, the Grey Guard, can summon a unit called the Chthonic Guardian. Visually they look like an angel statue carved out of raw stone and are actually much better at defending than attacking. Their unit description also states that rather than being the servant of a god they protect the "Gateways between Good and Evil".
• Overrated and Underleveled: The campaigns are pretty bad at this, pretty much every character who joins you starts at level one and no equipment. Even in the final missions. This includes Julia in one case. Even enemy leaders don't fare any better, but by the time you'll be facing them they usually managed to get at least a few levels and items. Characters who didn't directly carry over to the next mission will still be stuck at whatever level they were before when they come back.
• Schizo Tech: The Humans' base units are a bit hard to pin down in military technological terms - their Civic Guard use rapiers and crossbows (rapiers becoming popular around the 16th century during which crossbows retained use though they were usually supplanted by guns), their infantry do not use shields and wield halberds or longswords in both hands (which would seem to place them technologically somewhere around the 14-16th centuries), their ranged units are archers (archery declined significantly in favor of crossbows by the twelve century), and their cavalry units are armed with a sword or are knights acting as heavy lancers where both rider and mount are fully-armored. Outside of the Knight and the Civic Guard, their units seem to be wearing munitions-grade armor which became common in the 15th century. This is also accompanied by how unless a Human faction has a Dreadnought leading them, they will be incapable of fielding any gunpowder units while gunpowder started becoming prominent in the 14th century.
  • Just about all of the non-Human factions having a Dreadnought in charge of them will cause this trope for sure, allowing them to wield gunpowder in battle even if their faction doesn't use plate armor or still makes use of shields, clubs, or darts.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • The Wizard Kings of the Second Age have become this, after spending centuries trapped in the Void Between the Worlds. The Shadowborn cult believes that releasing them is the key to restoring the Old Magic that faded with the end of the Wizard Circle, and the Downer Endings of each campaign concern the Wizard Kings conquering Altha to reclaim their thrones.
  • In The Golden Realms and The Eternal Lords, the Oscillator Gem taken from Nirvenkiln is revealed to be the Soul Jar of Melenis, a powerful necromancer and major villain from the First Age. It corrupts the halfling Karl Hushwick, who uses it to restore Melenis' physical body, and she quickly puts in motion a plan to destroy all life on Altha to fuel an ascension to godhood.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The troll's description starts off like Three Billy Goats Gruff with satyrs, then veers completely off-course. "You know how this story ends. No third brother came, because there were only two satyrs. So the troll ate the poisonous mushrooms that always grew there in abundance because no one else can eat them without dying. Moral of the story: Don't be a stupid troll."
• Shout-Out:
  • The monster hunter unit's description is from a book called "Catch Them All", written by Ashley Katsun. Hmm...
  • The unicorn's description is a poem that includes the line, "Ever singing that friendship is magic".
  • The Horned Helmet of the Verbose Dragon Slayer, the Trinket of the Moongate and Halfling Trick Bauble reference various other fantasy worlds.
  • One of the heroes that can join the player is Per Notchson, a dead ringer for Markus "Notch" Persson complete with his trademark fedora. Per was added to the game as thanks to Notch for sponsoring Age of Wonders 3's development.
  • Another hero the player can recruit is a dwarf sorcerer named Dhorraine the Explorer, who has the Free Movement ability, allowing her to move around terrain without suffering any movement penalties.
  • The Night Wish spell for Rogues has been confirmed as a shoutout to the band Nightwish. The spell icon is based loosely on the cover art for the 2011 album Imaginaerum.
  • Ham the Wanderer, a halfling adventurer often quoted in unit descriptions, references multiple events in The Lord of the Rings, such as hiding from "black riders" in a ravine or stabbing a monstrous spider in the belly.
  • The blight elemental looks more than a little bit like Slimer from Ghostbusters.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: In three of the campaigns, at least one hero will leave your army with the equipment you give them if you pick certain decisions that will affect the ending you'll receive. Averted with Nomlik Trismegistus, who drops all of his equipment upon leaving if you choose to remain loyal to the Elven Court.
• Storm of Blades: One of the Rogue's offensive spells, adding poison for good measure.
• Stripperific: The succubus unit, naturally.
• Suspiciously Small Army: This time around it's only six units per hex, down from 8. Though on the other hand at least most regular units are represented as squads of up to something like 20 soldiers. Also, armies on neighboring hexes may join the fray, creating the potential for battles with dozens of units on each side.
• Tunnel King: Units with the tunnelling trait (chiefly the Dwarf and Goblin irregular units, though heroes of those races can also pick it up) can dig through the soft dirt walls found Beneath the Earth. Besides opening new paths, each dirt wall removed yields a tiny amount of gold.
• Unluckily Lucky: Many unit descriptions are written by a halfling called Ham the Wanderer, who is often getting himself into deadly situations, only to be saved at the last minute by dumb luck and/or something embarrassing. With the first DLC bringing the Halfling race back... that's pretty much their specialty. They have inherent physical weakness but the ability to dodge attacks as long as their morale is positive.
• Ultimate Forge:
  • The Arcane Item Forge is a building that allows the creation of items. This building is often locked from being accessed in the campaign.
  • The Magma Forge is a Treasure site that provides extra production to cities that hold it in their domain. It is guarded by Dreadnought units, Draconian units, or fire-related units, like Hell Hounds and Fire Elementals, and it has the Choking Fumes battlefield enchantments, which inflicts Choking that reduces movement, melee damage, defense and resistance, and happiness.
• Walking Ossuary: Bone Collectors are gigantic heaps of bones in the form of a fiddler crab (with a dragon's skull serving as the claw) that can consume corpses n the battlefield for healing and a stacking buff to health, resistance and attack.
• Wall Crawl: Units with the Wall Climbing ability (which are all infantry units and spiders) can climb up walls at a cost of reduced damage and defense, unless the unit also have the Improved Wall Climbing ability, which removes the penalty when climbing walls.
• War Elephants:
  • Elephants can't be built, but Arch Druids can tame wild elephants and use them in battle.
  • One of the Frostling units is the Mammoth Rider, a Frostling riding a mammoth.
• You Don't Look Like You: The various Shrine structures are all dedicated to Wizards from previous games, and most of them do not look much like their counterparts. Considering the wizards themselves don't appear in the game, it's unknown if their appearances were actually Retconned, or if the statues just aren't a good likeness. For reference, the changes are...
  • The Shrine to the Guardian Angel depicts Ariane as a Winged Humanoid even though the previous games never depicted her as having wings.
  • The Shrine to the Fickle Mermaid depicts Nimue as a mermaid even though the previous games depicted her as human in appearance.
  • The Shrine to the Frozen Beauty depicts Artica as a bald woman even though her previous look showed her with long hair.
  • The Shrine to the Queen of Spiders depicts Arachna as a Drider even though her previous look had human legs.
  • The Shrine to the Earthen Mother depicts Mab as obese, even though her previous look was rail thin.