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Age of Wonders 4, Civilization by way of Dungeons and Dragons, has taken a step into a world of sanguine darkness. Where the last expansion for Triumph Studio’s fantasy 4X strategy game focused on Age of Wonder’s archons, paragons of good, Thrones of Blood invites you to make a more blood-filled vision of the future as you slip into the shoes of an immortal vampire.
We got our hands on the expansion early, and we’ve done our best to map out all of the exciting new features. There’s no hiding of your true nature as you might in Vampire The Masquerade; you’re to build your Vampire’s Castle and spread a pox of blood magic across the land like a born villain. Age of Wonders 4 Thrones of Blood is out now, alongside the free Gargoyle update, which has streamlined its tutorial system to make it easier than ever to jump right in.
- Age of Wonders 4’s new vampiric-themed DLC is out now, adding all manner of blood sucking features.
- You can lead a faction as an Elder Vampire ruler, with stellar customization options as either the pure-blooded vampire race or as the malleable hybrid.
- Players can remake the world to suit their undead image by cursing the lands around them and constructing a mighty vampire castle.
- You can engage in a new story in a cursed world as you find yourself caught between arch-vampires and noble vampire hunters.
Your Elder Vampire ruler sits upon a Throne of Blood
To my mind, the most significant mechanical addition in Age of Wonders 4 Thrones of Blood is the new ruler choice: the Elder Vampire. When an Elder Vampire leads your faction, it drastically changes the nature of the game you’re playing, as they are greedy rulers, focusing on a playstyle that encourages putting all your eggs in one bloody basket.
When your ruler is an Elder Vampire, all other heroes you field will also be transformed into vampires, forced to give a portion of their XP gain to the ruler, allowing them to grow powerful much faster.
All vampires also gain the benefits of undeath, gaining a unique vampiric origin tree, including the ability to drain blood and even dominate their foes. If you’re feeling less outwardly evil, you can instead upgrade your vampires to buff your units in exchange for some of their blood.
Best of all, you can either be a pure-blood vampire or a hybrid vampire, the difference being purely cosmetic. A pure-blood vampire is somewhere between a pale, undead elf and a monstrous Nosferatu with bat-like features, but the hybrid can be anything you like. I don’t know any other game that is happy for you to become a dark and terrible vampiric toad, and frankly, I don’t want to.
Age of Wonders 4’s map has never been darker
To offset the vampires’ natural weakness to their oldest enemy, the sun, Age of Wonders 4 has introduced a new type of cursed terrain, the Sunless lands. These lands are blighted by dark magic and prevent sunlight from affecting your armies of the damned, as well as debuffing any factions not accustomed to such horrifying locations.
These also give suitably gothic-looking locations for your zoomed-in turn-based battles, letting you fight amongst intimidating grotesques and dying flora.
This new terrain only shows up in limited map types because it is so uniquely advantageous to vampiric factions, but as you might expect, there are ways that a vampire ruler can curse the land.
If you want to be more aggressive with your movements, you can use a blood-sacrifice ritual, using home-grown thralls from your cowed population, to transform whole swathes of land at once for your armies to march on.
Elder Vampires get their own unique buildings as part of their vampiric castle, including the Desecration Chambers, which, over time, will transform and corrupt the land around your domain. This is not the only aspect of your vampire’s home, with the ability to unlock such evocative gothic dwellings as a Soul Forge or an Abattoir to further harry your own subjects.
Let your blood-sucking side out with a new story
Age of Wonders’ horrific new lands are shown off extensively with a new realm, Rued Drevanya, and the Blood and Courtship story held within it. This can only be accessed by a vampiric faction, set to explore the long-dead home of the first vampires and the prison of the banished ‘Deathless God’ that once ruled over them.
Here you’ll explore and conquer a world almost fully corrupted by these Sunless lands, and sit between the machinations of arch-vampires much older and stronger than you.
The game encourages you to pick a side between these arch-vampires as you search for the resting place of the ‘Deathless God’ and build up to taking their power for your own, but there is always a chance to take the higher path. There’s a faction of vampire hunters who hate you less than the more entrenched nightmares of the arch-vampires, and you could always side with them to save this realm from vampiric influence.
You can take your Elder Vampire across the map to expand your domain, plunder near-endless tombs for power and followers, and claim the lands surrounding the giant beating heart of a long-dead world tree. The Blood and Courtship story has all the right vibes for the coming nights and is an excellent place to learn how to exert yourself best as a vampire.
The magic touch
Thrones of Blood also seeks to expand Age of Wonders 4’s tomes research system by adding three new tomes, each themed around suitably macabre fascinations. You can start any game with the Tome of the Blood Rite, which, as you might expect, focuses on bleeding your enemies. It gives your melee units the ability to sap life force from their targets, and the chance to recruit your own blood cultists, infecting your foes’ blood with parasites that can burst forth after they’ve been slain.
The Tome of Torment revolves around the ‘torment’ status effect, damaging and demoralising units for daring to use their abilities in a fight. Its unique units and damaging bonuses focus on stacking the debuff, but the Tome of Torment also allows you to upgrade your own units with the ability to gain morale whenever they are struck.
Last is the dramatically named Tome of the Crimson Reign, which grants bonuses for engaging with a horrifying pact with ancient, endritch forces. This corruptive power stems from the Blood Exarch unit, expanding on the promise of the Tome of the Blood Rite with more blood parasites, as well as gaining similar blood-drinking powers to your vampiric heroes.
To double down on this eldritch Bloodborne vibe, you can also pick up the Gift of the Old Blood, making all your units vampiric in their own way and strengthening them as you deal death to your enemies.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this gothic expansion. Age of Wonders 4 is at its best when it allows you to double down on fantasy elements, letting the experience detach itself from the likes of Civilization 7 and stand on its own two feet. Thrones of Blood delivers this in a big way. Vampire fans are in for a feast.
FAQs
Yes, Age of Wonders 4 is a 4X game with elements of economy management, diplomacy, exploration, and military strategy.
Yes, a lot of Age of Wonders 4 feels similar to Civilization, though it is in many ways more complicated. It also handles conflict very differently, with combat happening between armies on a separate turn-based map.
While Age of Wonders 4 is a 4X game like Stellaris, they work very differently, and the similarities are quite surface-level.
Age of Wonders 4 is a very fun turn-based strategy game with elements of Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic. However, its depth can be quite overwhelming for players, and, like many other games published by Paradox, it requires DLC to feel complete.
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