Dev Diary #69 - Water Improvements

Hello everyone! My name is Tom, and I’m the Game Director for Age of Wonders 4. Today’s Dev Diary is going to focus on the general improvements we’ve made for water gameplay in the upcoming Manta Update, coming alongside The Silver Seas expansion on November 3rd.

Background

This is actually the second major update we’ve done for water gameplay, with the first being the Golem Patch back in 2023 alongside Empires and Ashes. In that update, we:

• Added new terrain types to the water, such as Mangrove Forests and Sunken Ruins
• Added underground entrances in the water
• Removed dedicated naval units
• Redesigned the ship models for embarked units
• Added more water combat maps
• Made various balancing adjustments

During development, we considered a lot of other ideas - such as adding unique cultural ships and having water combat take place on the decks of boats - but these were ultimately cut because they were impractical or because we ran out of time.

Since this update accompanies a major water-themed expansion, we wanted to revisit some of those ideas. However, before committing to anything expensive, we felt it was important to understand what you, our players, actually wanted to see. In addition to speaking with developers who read the Discord channels, forums, and subreddits passing along feedback, we also commissioned a user research report:

User researchers observed community members playing water maps and interviewed them to generate a report detailing where to focus our efforts.

What we discovered was:

Many people want more reason to enter the water

This essentially comes down to content: we need more places to explore and rewards for venturing into the water, as well as a wider variety of aquatic units, since players can only fight so many turtles and penguins before it gets repetitive!

Water Combat feels too limiting and dangerous

A lot of players avoid water combat because embarked units feel vulnerable, and many spells and abilities do not work in the water. Since water combat doesn’t offer unique mechanics or advantages, it becomes a net negative, and most players prefer fighting on land.

Water combat feels indistinct

Related to the above, the only real differences between water and land combat were the drawbacks. There were no special movement or combat mechanics to make naval encounters feel distinct, which many players cited as a top priority to fix.

Water Units lack personalization

A core pillar of the game is letting players customize their armies to match their personal fantasy, yet embarked units always looked identical. The ship models rarely matched their faction aesthetics, nor did they display special visual FX from unit enchantments to reflect the player’s research.

There was plenty of other feedback—including suggestions that were too radical or scope-prohibitive for this update—but these key findings gave us the foundation we needed.

More Content

As mentioned, responding to the first piece of feedback requires us to add a large amount of extra content to the world, such as:

• Infestations
• Land marks
• Ancient Wonders
• Special Province Improvements
• Water Units

This idea became the main driving philosophy behind the design of the Silver Seas expansion. Although it would have been nice to include some free content here, we only have so much capacity and we felt it was better spent addressing other concerns.

Combat Mechanics - Fewer Restrictions

The main criticism about water combat being restrictive stemmed from the sheer volume of abilities that didn't function in the water. In a setting where players spend considerable time at sea with a smaller pool of units, this could be solved by creating abilities that only work on water. However, that wasn’t a viable option for Age of Wonders 4, so we evaluated what was currently blocked and considered what would happen if we simply allowed it.

Three main categories of abilities and spells were traditionally blocked during water combat:

Summoning Spells/Abilities

The reasoning was that summoning a land creature onto water shouldn't work, as the creature would simply drown. While we could summon the unit in a boat, we felt that would look silly and break the fantasy of the spell.

We ultimately decided to allow these summons while granting the summoned units a magical Water Walking trait - after all, if magic summoned the unit, magic can let it walk on water!

Corpse Targeting Spells/Abilities

It was previously assumed that fallen units would sink beneath the waves, so corpse-targeting abilities (like resurrections) were disabled. We also realized that the Gravestone marker used to indicate dead units was bugged, appearing several meters below the water surface.

The fix was creating a new corpse marker that rests on top of the water and enabling the spells accordingly.

Teleportation/Jump Abilities

With teleportation and leap abilities, the issue wasn’t that the unit was in the water, but that it was in a vessel. Just because a Unicorn can teleport doesn't mean it should teleport the boat it’s riding in! This was even worse for leaping abilities, as a boat jumping through the air looked absurd and made little thematic sense.

The final decision was to allow magical teleportation for units in vessels, while keeping physical leaps and pounces restricted. Thus, a unicorn can teleport its ship, but a monk cannot leap through the air while embarked.

Freshly summoned zombies walk on water to battle a baby kraken. A visual effect around their feet represents the magic preventing them from sinking back to their deaths!

Combat Mechanics - Embarked Redesign

Since Age of Wonders 3, units traveling over water automatically enter transports and gain the “Embarked” status. Historically, this status applied a defense debuff to make embarked units easier to kill, serving two primary purposes:

1. We wanted aquatic units to be better than embarked ones, so we needed a way to weaken them.
2. We chose lower defense rather than reduced accuracy or damage because the latter options would slow down battle pacing.

Given the feedback that naval combat felt overly punitive and lacked identity, it became clear this approach was flawed. A complete redesign of how embarked units function was needed.

Inspired by spaceship combat in Owlcat’s Rogue Trader, I initially wanted ships to feature realistic naval mechanics like momentum and broadsides. However, I quickly realized this was too ambitious, as it deviated so heavily from standard movement rules that it would practically be a separate combat system. Instead, I looked for simpler mechanics to capture that feeling while working seamlessly alongside standard flying, floating, or swimming units.

The first iteration required a ship to move forward one hex for every 60-degree turn, creating a turning radius. While this felt great in practice, our pathfinding algorithms couldn't properly handle the restriction, preventing the AI from navigating effectively.

The second attempt charged 1 movement point for each 60-degree turn. This allowed ships to move quickly in straight lines, but significantly slowed them down when making sharp turns.

The ship has a combat speed of 5, allowing it to move 5 hexes forward in a straight line, but its travel distance decreases the more it turns along the path.

Overall this model worked well, though we refined a few key details:

• To ensure attack targeting wasn't hindered, turning to face a target is always free - you can rotate to fire at an enemy behind you even with 0 movement points remaining.
• Rotating a ship on the spot now consumes movement points, preventing players from spinning in place for free before moving.
• We removed the flat stat penalties for embarked units, as positional movement restrictions provided enough inherent disadvantage.
• We ensured all ships have a minimum combat speed of 5 to preserve baseline maneuverability.
• We assigned ships the Large Target trait, making them easier to hit with ranged attacks but ensuring they deal full damage regardless of lost HP.

This iteration was well received: ships felt distinct and required tactical movement, but felt more formidable without flat stat penalties. Since some felt movement restrictions were still slightly too strict, we added the “Reinforced” trait to vessels, granting them extra damage resistance against ranged attacks.

Map Generation

Since the Mercantile culture can build cities in water provinces, we needed to change how provinces in the ocean were generated. Previously, only provinces near the coast were inhabitable, with the far ocean being filled with larger, uninhabitable provinces. The new generation makes all water provinces inhabitable, and capable of having nodes, landmarks and wonders.

We also took a look at how the Continents RMG trait generated maps. The original design generated a number of large islands surrounded by seas of variable sizes. This meant that the edges of the map required water provinces around them, which ate into the available space and made the seas between continents feel too small and insignificant. We reworked this to allow continents to extend to the world’s edge, creating larger oceans in the middle of the map that offer more room for combat and settlement.

A map with the new continents layout, a large ocean surrounded by several distinct landmasses.

Miscellaneous Updates

We fixed an issue where the world map movement path preview flickered or miscalculated hex positions when armies were embarking. This was related to how the cost of embarkation was interpreted by the game’s pathfinding code, and the only real fix was to change those costs—embarking previously consumed all remaining movement points, but it now costs a flat 20 MP.

We gave all cultures the ability to build outposts in the water to make it easier for players to access nodes and ancient wonders that are not adjacent to a coastline. However, to actually upgrade that outpost to a city, you will need to play as the new Mercantile faction!

Visual Improvements

Hi there, it’s Elle (2D Artist here at Triumph) hijacking this dev diary for a hot second to talk about all the improved visuals coming to you as part of our water improvements! You will have seen sneak peeks of all of this already, but they deserve their own callouts. Behold:

Combat Map Updates

Oyster Node tactical combat map before (left) and after (right)

Fishing Node tactical combat map before (left) and after (right)

You’ll find that the water tactical combat maps have quite a drastic new look! This was done through a new and improved water shader, new lighting, new props, and manually redressing all of the existing water maps (the transparent water material is great, but ultimately useless if you don’t also go back and add props to be seen under the water haha).

With the new Ice content in The Silver Seas in mind, we’ve also added support for a Frozen overlay on oceans, resulting in ice maps when combat does not take place on a node or structure. We hope all of this new variety makes the oceans more fun to explore!

TC Map with the Frozen overlay

Ship Visuals

Besides the maps themselves, we’ve also put some effort into the player ships, giving them a much-needed glow-up:

Army ships before (left) and after (right)

I’ll spare you all of the gory details, but these were a whole undertaking. Long story short, the original ship set had 8 variations:

Original ship set

And now we have 17 …

Updated boat set

And that’s not all the actual variations you’ll see in-game, two ship units of the same class still won’t always look the same thanks to a modular sail set:

Modular sail set

Ship Animations

Animating the ship attacks has always been a difficult question. In real life, ships obviously don’t move much when attacking, but having them totally static makes it hard to read when an ability is being used. Revisiting the animations and VFX, we found a better balance between readable but overly stylized movement and proper grounded, weighty feeling impact:

Ship animation in Maya

Ship animation + VFX in-game

Ship type variations

With all of this work for just one ship … why not make a couple more? We added several core vessel archetypes, allowing players to select the style that best fits their faction—similar to selecting mount types during faction creation. Each of these ship types also has the full set of 17 variations!

You can select your ship type during faction creation, as well as customize the primary colors of the ship's armor and wooden panelling.

For the initial release, we've created 3 unique ship types, with plans to introduce additional designs in future updates!

1. Classic Galleons, tailored for traditional cultures
2. Graceful vessels with curved sails, ideal for mystical cultures
3. Aggressive vessels with jagged sails, suited for sinister or militaristic cultures

You’ll also spot a 4th variant—a tattered, weathered version of the Galleon designed for independent marauder units.

Selecting ship models was a big step forward, but we wanted further customization options to make your fleet feel unique:

Banner Icons on Sails

Your faction banner is now displayed on your ships' sails, helping distinguish your fleet from opponents.

Alfred’s Galleons set sail!

Enchantment Effects on Boats

Visual effects from unit enchantments now render on vessels as well. If your units have flaming weapons, those flames will glow from the prows of your ships!

Fiery Imbuement enchantment on a support and ranged ship

But that’s enough blabbering on a dev diary that isn’t even mine, let’s give it back to Tom for the conclusion!

Conclusion

That’s all for today! We hope these changes will entice you to set sail once again and re-explore the seas of Age of Wonders 4! The changes will be available in the free Manta Update alongside The Silver Seas expansion, launching November 3rd.

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