There are plenty of spells you can research for use in or out of combat too. Your alignment will affect your negotiations with other leaders, and how they react to you. Throughout the course of the game you will come across many choices which will affect your alignment, from deciding on whether to let a band of independents live, to what kind of spells you choose to cast. Alternatively you can slaughter them, if you’re so inclined, which will gain you some ‘evil’ alignment points. If your army is overwhelmingly powerful when targeting a group of independents (groups of smaller enemies with no ties to a leader) you may get the option to let them flee, which will gain you ‘good’ alignment points. So, I manually controlled my encounters most of the time, that way any mistakes were on me, and I couldn’t just blame the AI. You can opt for auto-combat when you attack or are attacked, but of course there are risks you could lose a much-loved unit, or even worse, a whole army.

With less focus on city management, and more on improving your armies, AoW3 lets you enjoy the action regularly, levelling up your leaders and heroes, and exploring the map at a decent pace. It’s loaded with info, but doesn’t overwhelm with complex descriptions it’s straight to the point and concise, so you can get straight back to playing the game.

The in-game tooltip system, the Tome of Wonders, is an encyclopaedia for everything in the game – it comes in really handy, especially if you’re new to the series or this genre.

Age of wonders 3 coop gameplay