Welcome to the developer diaries for both the new Seals Victory and the new Tomes that are coming in Empires and Ashes. There is a lot to cover so this dev diary will be split in two, starting with…
The Seals Victory
Hello everyone! I am Sam Minh, a designer for Age of Wonders 4. Today I will talk about the Seals, what they are, how to achieve a Seals Victory and what challenges will stand in your way. The Seals are ancient structures constructed by the order of the Archons, to protect a world from the outside… or to seal something within. Controlling the Seals gives one great power over the realm thus Godir are racing to take control over them.
People who have played Age of Wonders 3 might be familiar with how the Seals Victory worked there. There are a limited number of Seals spread around the world. Each Seal is defended by an army of strong defenders. Once they are defeated, you will gain one seal point per turn as long as your units stand on top of the Seal. Capturing and holding multiple Seals will provide you with more points per turn. Once a specific amount of points has been reached, you achieve victory.
But the capturing of Seals will not go uncontested. There are two sources of opposition that will try to prevent you from obtaining a Seals victory.
First and foremost are the other Empires. Capturing a Seal will provide every other Empire with Grievances as they become aware of your ambitions of controlling the Seals of this realm. As you approach the Seals victory, they will be forced to stop you.
The other source of opposition are the defenders of the Seals, for they were left heavily guarded. These defenders will awaken and sporadically attack any trespassers. The frequency and intensity of these attacks increase as you capture more Seals and collect more points.
These Seal Defenders come in a lot of variety, each providing a different challenge to overcome. They could be angels, demons, elementals or dozens of others, each attack has its own theme which determines what kind of units appear and what Combat Effect will be present in the fight. These Combat Effects can vary from providing some extra challenge to forcing you to approach the battle in a completely different way.
While you are channeling the power of the Seals, various events can happen. Your surveyors can uncover the secrets of the original creators, accidentally wake up a Progenitor Golem, or the Seal can suddenly become unstable. With the massive power of the Seal running rampant, how will you choose to resolve this imminent crisis?
Not all worlds have Seals on them. You will find some on one of the new story realms and you can choose to add them to your own games. Their presence is added in the form of a realm trait.
How many Seals are added in a world is dependent on the amount of players in that game. There will always be more Seals than players, ensuring that rulers must fight over multiple Seals to get an edge over their rivals. The amount of points you need is dependent on the amount of Seals in the world and can be further changed by choosing to play with either the Active or Dormant Realm Traits.
Now that you know what the Seals Victory is and how you can achieve one, let’s explore the new ways you can achieve this victory condition with the Tomes that will come with Empires and Ashes.
Tomes
Hello again Godir and/or Mortal visitor, Thomas Schuiten, Designer at Triumph, has returned to regale you with tomes of lore about Tomes of which we made more. For Empires and Ashes we wanted to inject some new tome combinations into the game, thus each Tome for E&A is designed as a “twist” on the Materium affinity by combining it with another. Each supports a playstyle that may combine uniquely with particular cultures or base game Tomes, such as the Tome of Alchemy being an excellent source of Weakened which the Dark Culture may benefit from greatly. Empires and Ashes comes with 4 new Tomes (5 if we count the Reaver Culture as well). The Tome of Alchemy fuses the inventiveness of Materium with the afflictions and support of Nature, while the tome of the Construct fuses Materium’s constructs with Order’s expertise in formation fighting and so on.Tome of Alchemy
The tome of Alchemy specializes in negative status effects, both applying them to the enemy and removing those afflicting your forces. The Afflictor provides an early ranged unit, able to spread afflicting miasma and deal both blight and physical damage with their repeating crossbows. While Fumigation grants you a useful siege project uniquely early, letting you damage and poison the defenders before rushing into relatively undeveloped settlements.
Here’s a look at the unique power of the Afflicting Miasma:
Tome of the Construct
The Tome of the Construct fuses the material superiority and defense of Materium with the discipline and formation fighting of Order. It grants access to the Bronze Golem, letting you construct the powerful Tier 3 Polearm constructs directly without the need to fully rank up your Copper Golems first.
But more uniquely this Tome holds two powerful buff spells in the form of the Cascading Commands.
Cascading Command: Defend lets you grant additional retaliations to your units while allowing even those that have already acted to enter defense mode. This effect is notably exclusive to Constructs or Racial units with the “Linked Minds” transformation, but cascades through the entire formation to affect any number of viable friendly units.
Meanwhile Cascading Command: Reposition instead lets your Constructs close the distance rapidly by granting them Hastened and strengthened to strike first.
Linked minds provides a new minor transformation, letting you get the most out of your racial units when mixing in with your new construct legions, it also gives a powerful safeguard against flanking, granting any affected unit Hyper Awareness when adjacent to another Linked Minds or Construct unit.
Tome of the Dreadnought
The Dreadnoughts of the third Age of Wonders may have decayed, but some of their mightiest weapons of war remain documented in the Tome of the Dreadnought. This Tome focuses on Area-of-Effect firepower and siege warfare. The Great Bombard provides a powerful siege project while Tuning Kits grant your support units the ability to overcharge the firepower of your Constructs. If that all isn’t enough, the Destabilized mana core has been refined since its old days, able to be used with more “precision” than before:
Ironclad
The Ironclad is a powerful Tier 4 Mythic unit, able to lay down a horrific amount of ranged firepower through either its Direct Fire shot when maneuvers are necessary, or through its powerful, but inaccurate tri-shot Barrage when in position.
When using the barrage, beware of friendly fire, as it has a tendency to scatter wildly.
Both shot types can be affected by the special Ammunition the Ironclad carries with it, each ammunition type can only be loaded once per battle as a free action and enhances the Ironclads firepower for that turn only, so choose wisely when to spend these powerful shells.
Tome of Severing
The Tome of Severing is a powerful anti-magic tome, wielding the power to disrupt Enchantments on your foes as well as banishing their summons or projecting the magic warding of Spelljammers outside of your own domain through the Spellward.
Those pesky powerhouse Magic Origin units will bother you no longer, if your opponent has units able to resurrect through Resurgence or Undead sorcery, perhaps you are more interested in a pre-emptive solution:
This grants a powerful heal option in larger battles, and a useful way to be rid of troublesome material for enemy necromancers.
Lastly a glimpse at the Severing Golem, a rather unique Mythic Construct fulfilling a hybrid role between support and battle mage.
The Severing Golem’s dispelling field provides a useful anchor in large end-game battles, but the real power lies in its Magical Disruption:
The fiery carnage above will wrap us up for now, we haven’t shown you everything that the Tomes contain, and all of these are only glimpses at the powers contained within. We hope you will enjoy discovering new combinations and making fresh stories with these new Tomes!
Join us in two weeks for a look at the new Form Traits system and the Item Forge — next Dev Diary will be published on November 9th, while Empires and Ashes Expansion will be released on November 7th on all platforms!
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