Each unit's characteristics are determined by six statistics, damage type and special abilities. The six primary stats are: Attack, Defense, Resistance, Damage, Moves and Hits. Units gain experience with each victorious battle and can increase these statistics and gain additional abilities.

Most units are produced in cities (with proper upgrade levels), but some are only available at key locations such as ship yards, sacred groves, filth holes, fire pits, gates, dragon peaks, or Neptune rocks.

A party can be composed of up to eight units of any type, including heroes and transports. Keeping this number relatively small reduces the likelihood of tedious combats and, in conjunction with the adjacent hex rule, creates more tactical decisions on the global map. With the many different abilities and strategies possible in Age of Wonders, you'll want to balance your parties rather than try to load them with only the strongest units. Players making only cheap units or only strong, expensive units will not have any clear advantage–balance and creative use of special units is key!

Each of the units in Age of Wonders are 3D rendered and animated with over 50 frames of animation apiece. Units are also represented graphically in information overviews, with a more detailed portrait drawn in the style of top-notch fantasy art.