Age of Wonders 4: Creating maps Age of Wonders 4 guide, tips

AoW 4 allows you to create your own maps, which is a great opportunity for you to create a unique game world and test your strategic skills. You create maps with the land editor - it offers the simplified or advanced mode.

To start creating a new land, you need to use the "Create Land" button in the new game menu. After launching the editor, you can choose a simple or advanced mode, depending on your experience and preferences.

• Simple mode
• Advanced mode

Simple mode

The simplified mode will allow you to set only a few basic options. By default, the game will offer you a land with the "Continents" feature. By clicking the Customize Land button, you will be able to select other features, which will be described later in the guide in the Land features subchapter.

Simplified land creation menu.

Moving on to the next land settings, you will be able to choose from the following options:

1. Player distance. This is a feature that allows you to adjust the size of the map. Greater distances between player capitals and a large number of them will make your land bigger. Conversely, lowering the number of players along with decreasing the distance between the capitals will cause the land to get smaller.
2. Players. Here you choose how many opponents you will face. The smallest number of players available is 2, and the maximum is 9 players.
3. Difficulty level. Here, you can choose the difficulty level, i.e. how other players will act, as well as what obstacles the map itself will have for you. You will have 5 difficulty levels to choose from, starting from the easiest: Casual, Easy, Standard, Hard, Brutal.
4. Turn-based system. This setting will determine how you can use your time during your turn. You can choose Classic Turns, where each player makes a move in a specific order, and the next player will not be able to start their turn until the previous person has finished theirs. The game also offers you the Simultaneous Turns mode. By using this setting, you allow all players to take their turns at the same time.

Advanced mode

Using the advanced options, in addition to the tab available in the simplified mode, you will get additional features for your land to configure. The first of the new tabs that you can configure is the Factions tab. Below you can check the features available in this tab.

1. Custom rulers. Enabling this option will allow the AI to select custom rulers.
2. Generating rulers. Enabling this option will allow the AI to procedurally generate new unique rulers of empires.
3. Teams. Selecting this option will disable diplomacy, because both alliances and wars will be continuous and cannot be ended diplomatically.
4. AI difficulty levels. Difficulty levels work in the same way as in the case of the simplified mode. An additional option is the ability to set the difficulty level individually for each player. There is also an option for you to choose additional difficulties or facilities for human players.

Another of the tabs that you will get access to after choosing the advanced settings for creating a map will be the game flow settings.

1. Turns clock. Thanks to this option, you will be able to check how much time you have left before the automatic end of the turn.
2. Pace. This option will allow you to determine the speed, population growth rate and cost of city constructions.
3. Starting conditions. Thanks to this option, you will be able to regulate the amount of players' starting resources as well as the starting size of their army.
4. Victory conditions. This option is described in a separate chapter called Victory conditions.
5. Hero settings. This option will allow you to regulate what will happen to a hero who died during a battle that was victorious for their army. You have 3 options to choose from; never, after auto combat, always.

The last tab is called Combat. With its help you will be able to change the settings for the battles taking place in the land you are creating.

1. Combat vs. AI. Here you choose how battles should be played when your army encounters an AI army.
2. Combat vs. human. Here you choose how battles will be played when your army encounters another human's army.
3. Observe manual combat. Thanks to this option, you can determine whether and in what situations you can observe fights of another human player.
4. Tactical idle timer. Here you determine the duration of your turn during combat.
5. Enable combat replay. With this option, you can enable or disable replaying a fight after it ends.
6. Enable combat restart. With this option, you can enable or disable restarting a fight before it ends.