During the late-game stages of Age of Wonders 4, players face a problem. All their best units come from a few cities in their faction's heartland, but all the fighting takes place far from home. Armies move faster on roads and in friendly territory, but they still need a few turns to reach the front lines.
That's why Age of Wonders 4 features teleporters. Teleporters allow units to disappear from one corner of the map and reappear in another, assuming there's a teleporter improvement in both locations. The only trouble is in understanding exactly how this useful mechanic works.
Unlocking Teleportation
The first thing players have to do to use teleporters is unlock access to them. On the General branch of the Empire Development tree, players can find the skill Teleporter Infrastructure. It unlocks at 500 total affinity points but only costs 200 Imperium to activate.
There are also two Wizard Tower structures players can build even without getting this skill. The Room of Recall gives players access to the Recall Ruler spell, a strategic spell that lets players teleport the ruler's army back to the capital for the cost of 80 mana and 80 world map casting points. Next is the Teleportation Circle, which costs 120 mana and 120 world map points but lets players teleport any of their armies to the capital.
However, while these spells are good for defending the capital, they offer no help to players who want to move armies from the capital to the frontier. To do that, players must buy the Empire Development skill and start building teleportation improvements.
Teleporter Types
Once players activate the skill Teleporter Infrastructure, they can build the Teleporter special province improvement in any of their cities. This improvement has no resource bonus and applies the usual -5 to stability, but armies can move between any two teleporters in an instant.
Players can also get several special improvements from tomes that work like teleporters and provide special bonuses on top. For instance, the Chrono Gate gives the city +3 mana and +3 knowledge for each adjacent conduit or research post, and armies that visit it can apply the Evasion buff before they leave. The Demon Gate is a teleporter that adds several fiend units to the city's recruitment pool. However, players must still get Teleporter Infrastructure to build these improvements.
Another bonus that comes with the skill is the ability to build teleporters in any outpost player's own. This costs 280 gold and 3 turns, and it's the easiest way to move armies to the front lines. However, if players later upgrade an outpost with a teleporter into a city, they'll have to rebuild the teleporter as a special province improvement.
How to Use Teleporters
Once players have at least two teleporters set up, clicking on one of them should display a drop-down menu in the description box. Players can use this menu to send an army standing on the teleporter hex to any listed destination. Every outpost teleporter is simply listed as "Outpost (Outpost)," but players can click on the crosshair next to each name to zoom to its location.
An easier way to teleport is to select an army that's in marching distance of a teleporter and then move the camera over to a destination teleporter. Players should see the destination, and all six adjacent hexes light up as if the unit could move to any of these spots. By telling the army to move to this spot, the army will automatically use the teleporter. The army may even have some extra movement left over, so select it again to see if it can keep going.
The game will also use teleporters automatically when calculating the fastest path to any given hex. However, the game will also make units teleport one by one instead of teleporting to adjacent hexes all in the same turn, so keep that in mind when moving several armies at once.
One other thing players can do is make a teleporter the unit spawn location for a city. Click on a teleporter improvement and then on the circular arrows in the bottom-right of the description box, and along with the usual replacement options, players can choose "Set as Unit Deployment Location." When this is active, every unit built by the city will appear in the teleporter province instead of inside the city. However, Rally of the Lieges units will still show up inside the capital city, so build the throne city teleporter close by.
Age of Wonders 4 is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.