Age of Wonders 4: Affinity Guide

When playing any scenario in Age of Wonders 4, you need to keep the Affinity system in mind. Affinities in the game have less to do with the classical elements (although many affinities provide elemental damage types) and more to do with personality types and play styles. Learning this system is essential if you want to have the best chance of winning the game.

The six Affinities in Age of Wonders 4 can determine which Empire Skills you can access, which allies and enemies you can expect, and which units you can summon or build. While it's possible to stick with one Affinity from start to finish, a more well-rounded empire can be a far more dangerous threat to its foes.

Affinity Basics

The first thing worth knowing about the Affinity system is that it maps very similarly to the land types of Magic: The Gathering. If you have any familiarity with the card game, you'll know the basics of how affinities work in Age of Wonders 4.

If you're not familiar with Magic: The Gathering, no need to worry. This guide will explain each Affinity in detail.

Each Affinity in Age of Wonders 4 has an opposite. The pairs of opposites are Chaos and Order, Materium and Astral, and Nature and Shadow. Players suffer zero penalties if they build an empire around two opposites. The opposition mechanic only matters when dealing with a free city or rival empire that has an Affinity that opposes yours. This penalty vanishes if both empires also share an Affinity. The only major issue you may encounter is that opposing Affinities don't synergize as well as others.

Every faction starts out with 6 Affinity points. Two come from their Culture, two from Society Traits, and two from their starting Tome of Magic. It's possible to build an empire with all 6 points in a single Affinity, but this isn't the best strategy. While there are six-point empires in the faction library, most factions have at least one point in a second Affinity type.

Affinity Boosts and Tomes

You can get more Affinity points during a scenario by collecting new Tomes of Magic. Once you complete enough research cycles, you can pick a new Tome from all those you've unlocked. Each Tome gives you +2 Affinity. Base game Tomes give you +2 to one Affinity, and DLC tomes give you +1 to two Affinities. Which Tomes you can access depend on your current Affinity scores.

• All tier 1 Tomes are unlocked at the start of a scenario, which means you can start diving into two or more Affinity types right away. However, tier 1 Tomes will vanish from the list once you pick up two of them. The only way to unlock them again is to pick up every other Tome with the same Affinity.
• All tier 2 Tomes unlock after you own two Tomes of Magic.
• Tier 3 Tomes unlock once you own four Tomes of Magic, and once your empire has 3 matching Affinity points. DLC Tomes accept 3 in either Affinity.
• Tier 4 Tomes unlock once you own six Tomes of Magic, and once your empire has 6 matching Affinity points.
• Tier 5 Tomes unlock once you own eight Tomes of Magic, and you have 8 matching Affinity points. You can only ever own one tier 5 Tome.

Based on these numbers, it's easy for an empire that has two or three Affinities to keep up with an empire that focuses on one. If you start with four or more points in a single Affinity, you only need to choose two additional Tomes of the same Affinity to unlock the tier 5 Tomes as fast as possible. In fact, you can choose a tier 1-4 Tome of two different Affinities, and choose between their tier 5 Tomes at the same time that a single Affinity faction would choose theirs.

Empire Skills

The biggest impact your Affinity score has is on your Empire Development screen. The Empire Skill tree lets you spend your Imperium on various short-term and long-term bonuses, and these bonuses unlock based on how many Affinity points you've gathered.

• At the end of each turn, your empire's current Affinity points are added to the same Affinity's skill branch.
• Once you gain enough total points in a skill branch, new Empire Skills unlock.
• The first skills unlock at 15 Affinity, while the last skill in each branch needs 500.
• The Empire Development tree also has a General branch, which counts every Affinity regardless of type.

Empire Skills are the main reason why you might want to focus on a single Affinity instead of several at once. The more points you have in an Affinity, the faster you can access those high-level skills. However, there are some issues with this approach.

1. Once you max out an Empire Skill branch, your Affinity points for that branch do nothing useful.
2. High-level Empire Skills cost a lot of Imperium, and there are plenty of other places you'll need to spend this resource.
3. Low-level Empire Skills are also very useful, and buying several of them instead of one high-level skill is usually a better investment.

Ultimately, you're best off focusing on two or three Affinities, even when it comes to making the most of your Empire Skills.

Story Decisions

The last way in which Affinities affect the game is when you're making decisions in conversations and encounters. Depending on the conversation, only your highest Affinity will show up as an option, but certain choices only provide extra options for specific Affinity types. Whenever this is the case, the dialog option that exists because of your Affinities will have an Affinity symbol next to the option.

A few Affinity dialog options have a chance of success or failure. When that's the case, the odds of success depend on how many points you have in the relevant Affinity. However, these odds stop improving after you reach eight Affinity points.

All Affinity Types, Explained

Chaos Affinity

Chaos Affinity is all about high numbers, high damage, and lots of destruction.This makes it an ideal Affinity for a military victory. You don't have to be evil to make use of Chaos, but it helps.

• The Chaos element is Fire.
• Chaos Tomes are good at improving friendly Morale, inflicting negative status effects, damaging enemy cities, and summoning Fiends.
• The Chaos Major Race Transformation is Demonkin, which turns your people into Fiends. It's in the tier 4 Tome of the Demon Gate.
• Chaos Empire Skills give you extra benefits for winning battles, pillaging, and razing cities.

Materium Affinity

Materium magic focuses on building faster and defending better, making it useful for players who prefer to aim for a score or magic victory.

• The Materium "element" is Physical.
• Materium Tomes are good for boosting ally defenses, tearing down enemy defenses and buffs, making friendly cities better at production and sieges, and summoning Elementals.
• Unlike the other Affinities, Materium has no Major Race Transformation.
• Materium Empire Skills make outposts and city structures cheaper, province improvements more effective, and experienced units cheaper.

Order Affinity

Order favors diplomacy over combat. However, when combat does happen, their units are hard to kill thanks to constant healing and defense buffs. You don't have to be good-aligned to use Order, but it helps.

• The Order element is Spirit.
• Order Affinity Tomes help with City Stability, inflict Condemned (which makes units vulnerable to negative status effects), provide several healing and resurrection spells, help with friendly Morale, and summon Celestials.
• The Order Major Race Transformation is Angelic Transformation, which turns your people into Celestials. This spell is in the tier 4 Tome of Exaltation.
• Order Empire Skills make Vassals and Rally of the Lieges more useful, make it easier to rank up certain unit types, and can give your units an extra bonus if they max out their experience.

Nature Affinity

Nature is all about population growth and terraforming the world around you to be more useful. Empires with this Affinity also tend to be good at summoning creatures, both in combat and on the world map. A domination victory isn't so hard when you're investing in Nature.

• The Nature element is Blight.
• Nature Tomes let you summon plenty of Animals and Plants, use regeneration to keep hit points high, transform provinces into forests, and boost both City Stability and Food production.
• The Nature Major Race Transformation is Gaia's Chosen, which converts your people into Plants. You can find it in the tier 4 Tome of Paradise.
• Nature Empire Skills give you faster growing cities, a better annexation range, free Animal units, and faster army movement in friendly terrain.

Astral Affinity

Astral Affinity is the magic about magic. An Astral empire's spells are more effective and more numerous, and eventually they can get enough Mana per turn to do whatever they want. Needless to say, they have a leg up when it comes to the magic victory.

• The Astral element is Lightning.
• Astral Tomes provide effects like vision bonuses, teleportation, plenty of Ethereal and Astral summons, and boosts to Mana and Knowledge incomes.
• The Astral Major Race Transformation is Astral Attunement, which makes your people Ethereal. You'll find it in the tier 4 Tome of Astral Convergence.
• Astral Empire Skills give you more Casting Points and cheaper spells, more Knowledge and cheaper research, and free experience for all Magic Origin units (this includes every kind of summon).

Shadow Affinity

Units from Shadow factions are hard to keep down. Empires that invest even a bit into Shadow can get access to the special Souls resource, which gives you a new way to cast spells and maintain your units.

• The Shadow element is Frost.
• Shadow Tomes provide many ways to inflict negative status effects, craft Undead units from fallen enemies, inflict Morale damage, and gather Souls from friendly cities.
• The Shadow Major Race Transformation is Wightborn, which turns your faction into Undead units. This spell is in the tier 3 Tome of the Great Transformation.
• Shadow Empire Skills let you use Whispering Stones to subvert enemy vassals, gain Mana and Knowledge from beating enemies and conquering cities, hide from enemies, and see everything.

Platform(s) PC , PS5 , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S Released May 2, 2023 Developer(s) Triumph Studios Publisher(s) Paradox Interactive Genre(s) Turn-Based Strategy