Age of Wonders 4: Empires & Ashes release date and gameplay revealed

Fuel your war machine with these DLC details

Marco Wutz | Oct 11, 2023

Age of Wonders 4: Empires & Ashes release date and gameplay revealed /

Age of Wonders 4: Empires & Ashes arrives on November 7, 2023, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S alongside the free Golem Update for the turn-based strategy game from Triumph Studio and Paradox Interactive. Empires & Ashes is the second of a series of planned expansions for the game and it has a boatload of content in tow.

Players will be able to choose a whole new culture as well as brand-new a physical form in the faction builder: Reavers are an industrial and technologically minded people, who stop at nothing in the name of progress, fueling their relentless march towards the future through conquest and war. After Dragon Dawn introduced the Lizardmen as a form, Empires & Ashes brings Avians into play, allowing you to fashion your people as birdlike creatures.

Magic bird conquistadores? Take my money, Triumph! :: Triumph Studios / Paradox Interactive

What’s more, Empires & Ashes has four new Age of Wonders 4 Tomes of Magic in tow, which allow you to unlock the secrets of transmutation, get some anti-magic capabilities, and muster armies of battle automatons.

In addition to the units included with the new culture and tomes, an array of wildlife creatures comes to the game in the new expansion. Among them are bear mounts for your characters and scrap hermits.

Empires & Ashes contains an additional victory condition, the Seals of Power, as well. Two story missions, a new Ancient Wonder, and a fresh Infestation Location round out the package on top of six additional music tracks for the game.

This is the new Avian form introduced in the expansion, clad in the Reaver culture's gear.

Reaver cities have an industrial steampunk look to them.

The Ironclad is very reminiscent of the Steamtank from Warhammer.

Best not step into that sludge if you want to keep your foot.

The Tome of Alchemy is a new Tier 1 choice.

The Tome of Severing will be a new Tier 4 choice for research.

Various new events are added with Empires & Ashes as well as the Golem Update.

Fresh discoveries are waiting to be made on the campaign maps.

Now that's a funky battle map.

The free Golem Update for everyone, which will release on the same day as the expansion, has more goodies in store. It’ll introduce a new feature called Item Forge, which allows you to create magic equipment for your characters. War Coordination will enable you to make better use of your allies and 25 additional in-game events freshen up the experience. Form Traits will get a big rework in this update to provide a better faction creation experience. Finally, water gameplay will get visual and mechanical improvements that will hopefully make this relatively weak part of the game more enjoyable.

You can watch a trailer for Age of Wonders 4: Empires & Ashes below:

“Age of Wonders 4 continues to evolve with ongoing development and community feedback. To add new and different elements to our fantasy world, we’re adding a new culture into the mix that will help shape new stories,” said Lennart Sas, co-founder of Triumph Studios and director of Age of Wonders 4. “We will add many features on top of this industrial warfare, like the Avian Form and Seals of Power victory condition, alongside one of our biggest free content updates, the Golem Update, which we built based on direct community feedback. Together with our players, we have many more worlds to explore!”

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Published Oct 11, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg