Age of Wonders 4 lets you build high-fantasy civilizations — at a cost

polygon.com:

Immediately after starting Age of Wonders 4, I decided to make a custom race of molekin for the tutorial realm — a swarming, mana-channeling people ruled by High Matriarch Enam’ru Onimole. I could have just as easily made a race of feudal toadkin or poisonous halflings, but as a selective isolationist when it comes to 4X strategy games, the idea of building my empire underground and popping up like a horde of gophers sounded irresistible. Unfortunately, there is great hubris in getting too creative before learning a game’s systems and synergies, and as a result, the proud mole-folk of Holemind paid a dear price.

This is the first Age of Wonders game since 2019’s Planetfall, and a return to the series’ original high-fantasy theme after nearly a decade. Like its predecessors, Age of Wonders 4 has a story-focused single-player campaign, tactical turn-based combat, and a global spellcasting system. It’s my first time playing any Age of Wonders game, but playing within the 4X genre is largely learning how to apply the same titular principles: explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. Once things started to click, I wholeheartedly embraced the 4X school of justification that leads an otherwise serene and unbothered person to ruin — if not their own, then most certainly someone else’s.

The real magic of 4X games lies in watching shit happen: an opposing civilization’s capricious reaction, or the reveal of a fatal weakness that nobody saw coming. It’s in moments in multiplayer when staid friends turn into rabid enemies (and vice versa). It’s in sinking hours into an esoteric victory condition and getting backstabbed by a bunch of primitive hermits. There’s a wonderful kind of emergent storytelling that rises up in these games,