Age of Wonders 4: How to Recruit Heroes and Their Functions

Age of Wonders 4 brings the series back to its fantasy roots. In it, you’ll be able to field several heroes in an effort to claim more lands for your empire. Of course, you’ll need to know how to recruit them and how their roles factor into gameplay. Indeed, you’ll also need to know how to revive them. Our guide below helps you with all of that in Age of Wonders 4.

How to Recruit Heroes in Age of Wonders 4

To recruit heroes in Age of Wonders 4, you’ll need to have a city. Since you have one city at the start of each match, your faction’s ruler is the only hero-type unit available early on. Eventually, though, you’ll be able to control, conquer, or build new cities in the game via the following mechanics:

• Double-click on a ruler/hero on the world map -> build an outpost -> turn that outpost into a city.
• Rebuilding any town/city ruins you encounter.
• Conquering AI-controlled cities.
• Vassalizing and integrating free cities.

Each new city under your control allows you to recruit one new hero. You’ll receive a notification that a hero wants to join you, and you can inspect their traits and skills before recruiting them from the selection pool.

Heroes, Governors, and Passive Boosts

Likewise, you can assign a hero as a city’s governor, so they can provide passive boosts if they have any. For instance, some governor passives will allow you to recruit certain types of units, while others add boons to a city. These include extra gold, research, mana, production, and even stability.

Be forewarned, though, that some traits can have negative effects, too. As such, it’s important to check what a hero’s traits before recruiting them.

Hero Actions and Roles Explained

Apart from those mentioned above, Age of Wonders 4 heroes have several functions and roles. For instance, heroes can build outposts and interact with points-of-interest on the map. These include Ancient Wonders, which only a hero-led army can enter.

Moreover, heroes can level up and acquire new abilities and perks, which you can learn about in our hero skills guide.

How to Revive Heroes

Additionally, you can change how heroes are revived after falling in battle.

• You can see the settings under Realms -> Edit -> Advanced Settings -> Game Flow -> Hero Resurgence.

This is in case you want a hero to be automatically revived after winning, after auto-resolved battles only, or if you don’t want them to be automatically resurrected at all.

AoW4 Pantheon: Heroes as Rulers

Last but not least, your ruler-type heroes that lead a faction can be added to your Pantheon, the game’s meta-progression system. They’ll then appear as selectable or AI-controlled heroes in future matches.

Hopefully, these tips helped you better understand the hero recruitment and functions in Age of Wonders 4. Again, heroes are key to winning battles in the game, and the actions they provide are invaluable. For other in-game mechanics, visit our AoW4 guides hub.