Gold is used to build units, buy heroes, cities and spells (in Wizard Towers), upgrade cities. Mana is used to cast and research spells and use altars. Units can be built in cities, which can be further upgraded to produce more advanced units. Also, wandering independent (not belonging to any player) groups of units can be hired, if they are well-disposed towards the player. Units may have different strength, reflected by their level, which can vary from 1 to 4. Units under player control require a certain amount of gold every turn as an upkeep, the size of which depends upon the level of the unit. Summoned units use mana for upkeep instead of gold. Units earn experience for killing other units. The amount of experience earned depends on the number of enemy units killed as well as their level - the level of the enemy killed is the amount of experience gained.

Upon earning a certain amount of experience, the unit gets a silver medal, and later on a gold one. Higher level units require more experience to earn medals. Units with medals also get slight increases to their basic parameters, or otherwise improve their combat performance.Ī special type of unit, a hero, can only be hired when they appear at random at one of the player's cities. Heroes earn experience points just like all other units do however, instead of getting medals for it, they gain levels to a maximum of level 30. Upon reaching the next level, they get a number of skill points, which a player can then spend to improve their parameters and teach them special abilities. This point system is similar to that used in many role-playing video games.

In addition to that, heroes are the only units in the game which can learn the Spell Casting special ability, allowing them to cast spells.

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