Age of Wonders III is a high fantasy game in which the player assumes the role of a political-military leader. Gameplay is chiefly concerned with exploration, resource and infrastructure management, and defeating your opponents in battle, though diplomacy does figure in; one major game option in previous games in the series is whether or not more than one player can achieve victory by means of an alliance. As in the case of the first game in the series, Age of Wonders III offers a campaign playable from two sides, the human-centric Commonwealth Empire and the Court of the High Elves. Single-player scenarios, online multiplayer, random map generation, and an extensive map editor will offer a variety of gameplay experiences.
There will be six races available for play: humans, draconians, high elves, dwarves, orcs, and goblins. These are notably fewer than the races available in earlier Age of Wonder games, though it has been implied that some of the initially excluded races may be included in later expansion packs. Unlike the previous games, the player's alignment is based not on race, but rather the player's actions and the cultures the player absorbs into their empire. As in Age of Wonders II, players will have domains, areas of influence in which the leader character can make use of his magical abilities; in this third game, however, domains will also affect diplomacy and income.
The graphics of Age of Wonders III will be presented in 3D instead of the isometric view the series has utilized up to this point.
Age of Wonders III is a turn-based strategy game. Units have a limited number of movement points that are restored at the beginning of each new turn. In past games, there have been two modes of turn system - simultaneous, in which players can move their units all at once in the same turn, and classic, in which players take their turns in a predetermined order.
