Age of Wonders 4 Archon Prophecy: DLC Features Guide

What Does Archon Prophecy Add?

Build an empire whose monuments shape its power and whose ruler has a prophecy to fulfill. Age of Wonders 4 Archon Prophecy expands faction creation, city development, and tactical combat with the Architect culture, celestial magic, and new narrative objectives. Released on August 12, 2025, the expansion also continues the struggle against Urrath across two story realms.

The paid DLC includes:

• The Architect culture and its affinity-focused monuments.
• Elysian and Ancient forms.
• Three Prophecy society traits.
• Four Tomes of Magic.
• The Battlesaint hero class.
• Two story realms, Blessed Regions, and new world-map encounters.
• New creatures, mounts, music, and customization options.

The accompanying Griffon Update is free for all owners of the base game. Its faction customization tools, hero class changes, and quality-of-life improvements are separate from the expansion purchase.

You can get the paid content through the Archon Prophecy expansion on Steam.

Architect Culture: Monuments, Wondestone, and Affinity

Architects connect city development with your empire’s magical identity. Their great monuments strengthen the economy, grant additional affinity, and support bonuses tied to the affinity you dedicate them to.

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Their special resource is Wondestone, obtained from Magic Materials and used to construct monuments. That gives resource acquisition a direct role in developing your culture’s signature structures.

Scout for Magic Materials and consider their locations when planning expansion. Access to them supports the monument system, so they deserve attention alongside ordinary economic resources.

How Monuments Affect Your Army

In the Griffon launch version, Architect units gain +1 damage per stack of Affinity Incarnate granted by their monument. Their damage type also changes to match your Dominant Affinity.

That relationship makes affinity a combat consideration as well as an empire-development choice. Your army’s damage profile and your monument planning belong in the same conversation.

Check your Dominant Affinity when choosing tomes and developing monuments. Build around the damage profile you intend to use, and inspect the resulting unit tooltips before committing to a battle.

The culture’s monument progression includes Foundation, Sanctum, Zenith, and Apex. Its city structures reinforce the architectural theme with buildings such as Affinity Obelisks and the Architect Institute.

Prophecy Traits Give Your Faction a Purpose

Prophecy Traits are society traits that introduce an early vision into your campaign. The vision asks you to interpret your ruler’s ambitions, and fulfilling the resulting prophecy unlocks rewards.

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The three traits establish different narrative directions:

Society Trait	Prophecy Theme	Your Ruler’s Role
Vision of Promise	Your people are destined to settle in a promised land.	Decide where that land lies.
Vision of Destiny	Your faction has a great purpose that draws the Endaillon’s attention.	Choose a mark borne by your people.
Vision of Ruin	Your people foresee a destructive event they are destined to cause.	Decide whether to prevent or bring about the ruin.

These traits let faction identity develop through campaign decisions. A faction seeking a homeland has a different motivation from one wrestling with a vision of destruction, even before you choose its military direction.

Read the vision before setting your next campaign objective. Let its requirements inform your decisions rather than pursuing the reward without checking what fulfillment involves.

Four New Tomes Explore Divinity, Fate, and Undeath

The expansion’s magic includes righteous endurance, battlefield foresight, celestial ascension, and corrupted Archon power. Its four tomes give those themes distinct roles.

Image: Steam / Triumph Studios

Tome of Virtue

The Tome of Virtue strengthens armies through righteousness and endurance, helping them keep fighting under pressure.

Inspect its army-strengthening options when planning a force built to endure difficult engagements. Focus on how those effects support the units you already field.

Tome of Prophecies

The Tome of Prophecies brings omens and prophetic magic into combat. Its theme centers on manipulating probability, disrupting enemy attacks, and anticipating an opponent’s downfall.

Read its spell effects before planning your turn. Fate-focused magic calls for attention to the opportunities each effect creates during a fight.

Tome of the Revenant

The Tome of the Revenant channels the dead and turns corrupted celestial knowledge against the living. Its magic includes ways to protect undead forces against light and fire.

Review those protections when preparing undead armies to face enemies using those damage types.

Tome of the Archon

The Tome of the Archon provides celestial allies and the power to elevate units into the ranks of the Archons. Purity and rebirth are central to its magic.

Plan your mana spending around the summons and spells you intend to use. Adding celestial reinforcements creates new demands alongside your existing magical commitments.

Battlesaint Heroes, New Forms, and Mounts

The Battlesaint is the expansion’s new hero class. It supports two divine-warrior directions: a sacred support role that guides allies and a resilient tank role built around sacrifice.

Choose skills around the job your army needs the hero to perform. Develop the support side when you want the Battlesaint helping other units, or emphasize its tank role when you need a hero to hold the line.

Faction creation also gains two forms:

• Elysian: Heavenly, ascended beings suited to a divine visual identity.
• Ancient: Withered beings from the distant past whose appearance incorporates magical enhancements.

Keep form, culture, and hero class distinct when designing a faction. Each contributes a different part of its identity.

Mount additions include Chariot and Griffon options, while the form-trait selection also includes Celestial Griffon Mounts. These expand the ways you can present your faction and its mounted forces.

The package adds an Archon interface skin, banner emblems, five music tracks composed by Michiel van den Bos, and eight achievements.

Story Realms, Blessed Regions, and New Encounters

The story continues as Urrath’s forces threaten worlds where Dreamers reside. With the Godir of Magehaven searching for help, the Archons become central to the next stage of the conflict.

Rings of Emnora

Rings of Emnora takes you into the Archons’ hidden stronghold. The journey centers on seeking their aid in the war against Urrath and learning more about these celestial powers.

Cliffs of Sordünn

Cliffs of Sordünn sends you to a land overtaken by the Umbral Abyss. Your task involves reclaiming the realm from Urrath and fulfilling a prophecy that influences the struggle between light and darkness.

Blessed Regions and Map Features

Blessed Regions use a celestial terrain overlay and provide a minor economic bonus. Annexing Blessed provinces does not incur a Stability penalty, giving that terrain a practical benefit during city expansion.

Inspect nearby Blessed provinces when choosing your next annexation. Compare their resources and improvements with other options while accounting for that Stability benefit.

The Fountain of Creation is a new landmark associated with these regions. Other map additions include:

• Archon Observatory: An ancient wonder.
• Crusader Host: An infestation.
• Angelic Envoy: A pickup.
• Blessed: A province climate.

New roaming creatures include the Griffon and Celestial Griffon, three Archon representatives, and two Revenant Archons. The latter bring an undead counterpart to the expansion’s celestial forces.

What the Free Griffon Update Includes

The Griffon Update launched alongside the DLC on August 12, 2025. It brought faction creation options, revised magical hero classes, additional difficulty controls, and improvements to managing armies.

Flaws and Extra Faction Data

Flaws are Form Traits that introduce drawbacks while adding points you can spend on strengths elsewhere.

Read each drawback before spending the extra points. Build your faction around managing the weakness you select.

Extra Faction Data adds an Advanced Settings menu for deeper customization. You can create custom city-name lists, design recruitable heroes, and define a Tome Path for the AI to follow when it controls your custom faction.

Set an AI Tome Path if you want your custom faction to pursue a particular magical identity when it appears in another campaign.

Magical Hero Class Changes

The free update reorganized magical hero roles:

• Elementalist: Concentrates on magical damage and powerful elemental attacks.
• Ritualist: Provides nature-based support, healing, and utility.
• Warlock: Combines curses and necromancy with debuffs, healing, and summoning.

These changes belong to the free update. The Battlesaint belongs to the paid expansion.

Difficulty and Army Management

AI Strategic Bonuses let you give selected opponents tailored early advantages. Tactical AI profiles adjust combat behavior and difficulty.

Use these controls to tune the part of the challenge you want to change: early strategic pressure or tactical opposition.

Multi Stack Movement lets you select up to six stacks and issue a combined movement order. Notification Settings provide more control over which alerts appear during play.

The update also introduced Persistent Forged Weapons. Items you create in the item forge are saved when you finish a session and have a small chance to return as rewards from quests, events, and clearing locations in future sessions.