I had wondered if it might be a double loss, or if it would end in a tie. I suppose it doesn't matter, since the player has lost either way.

I was wondering about city size, as in number of tiles. If a City has any tiles that don't touch every other tile in the city, then you could conceivably attack one of the the non-touching tiles and win, but who controls the city if the (previous?) owner had units that are in the city but NOT killed in the battle.

On rereading, it appears that "the city is effectively paralyzed" is the answer? Are the gates open for both players, if you run combat with dual occupation?

...What happens if a 3rd force, hostile to the two previously mentioned antagonists, assaults a city hex that adjoins both of the occupiers? THREE WAY BATTLE?!?

Looking in the AOW1 FAQ that Mimo linked, and cities are capped at having 4 hexes size. So much for dual-occupation/triple battle shenanigans.

Another question answered: Killing a leader immediately ends a battle, so a dual leader kill in a single battle isn't possible.

To be honest... i don't remember, but does it really, when there are more that two leader there? Though a scenario like that is unlikely, unless on multiplayer.

And about cities - yes, cappend at 4. And occupation by more that one player is only possible without walls - if they are build you cannot enter a city, even when it's undefended, unless you have siege weapons/skills, or flyers. If there are defender, then even when there are empty city hexes, you can't enter them.

Defenders can defend adjacent walled city tiles even if there's no friendly troops there. However, a 4-tile city with only one stack of defenders, which are in in one of the side hexes can end up in contest mode if the opposite side hex is attacked, because those hexes aren't adjacent.

So there is a loop hole... I thought that evry hex was adjacent to each other.

You better remember how you snuck those kobolds in, so you can tell me when it's over. Although the boars ended up being a bigger nuisance.

Somehow I missed this... ok. Is what you said make sense to me? No. :D
I would say warfare and deceit are part of the mechanics, so not allowing people to play in battles is a huge disadvantage that I can't explain. Maybe to people who play it regulary it makes more sense, but for me... This also explains white did Senteria has so much troopes everywhere on screenshots he once showed in one of the topics here. Cause they will die, horribly. :D
Then again, in PBEM games it does make sense, cause waiting for every-friggin-person to play their battle would take the game into years... tactical makes sense in an, let's call it like that, 'normal online session'.
But I do belive this is pure madness in motion. :D

This bit isn't true in AoW1. It only applies in AoW2/SM.

In AoW1:

* Units only attack twice. Three times with Extra Strike, but that doesn't apply to retaliations.
* Units get infinite retaliations.
* There is no Double Strike ability
* The bit about First Strikes and Relations otherwise is still the same in AoW1, so there Vitek's explanation is correct. So how combat works:

* Each attack has a 50% chance to hit if the attack value is equal to defence. (i.e. 3 attack vs. 3 defence = 50% chance to hit.) It goes up and down 10% for each point of difference. i.e. 5 attack vs. 3 defence hits 70% of the time.
* An attack always has 10% chance to hit or miss. i.e. 9 attack vs. 1 defence can still miss.
* The damage stat is MAXIMUM damage. You do 1-DAM damage.
* A natural roll of 10 on the virtual to-hit dice means you do maximum damage. If you have very high DEF, almost all attacks that do hit will require that natural 10 and therefore do maximum damage. This is why your 10 DEF hero can weather 8 catapult shots without taking a scratch and then get flattened in one lucky shot. (This is also why you should boost hitpoints on your heroes.)

* A unit's stats are only used for melee attacks. Ranged attacks (archery, poison darts, call flames, etc) have their own inherent attack and damage value.
* The only way to improve ranged attack and damage is through the Marksmanship skill. This applies to all ranged non-spell attacks: if your hero has the Death Gaze ability and takes Marksmanship, the attack rating on the Death Gaze will improve.
* Spells have an inherent attack and damage value just like other ranged attacks, but it can't be improved by anything.

* Resistance only protects against magical status effects. Most of the time, these are only checked AFTER the attack roll hits. So a Nature Elemental with Entangle Strike first needs to hit your defence, then needs to hit your resistance to entangle you. If the second roll fails you take damage as normal, but are not entangled.
* There are exceptions: some spells, like confusingly the Entangle spell, will target resistance directly with no need for an attack roll.
* Status effects have an inherent attack value that depends on the effect. This greatly influences how powerful they are. I.E. Stun has a very high inherent attack rating. Freeze has a much lower one. This is why the Lightning Strike ability (which stuns) is generally more valuable than the Cold Strike ability. (which freezes) Generally, it's a better idea to mass low-level archers than low-level swordsmen. Archers don't suffer retaliations, and can still shoot when they're being attacked by an angry dude with a sword.

Berserkers are pretty great, but you should use their Round Attack ability. Even when you can only hit one melee enemy. Round attack doesn't allow retaliation, so if your berserker is fighting a swordsman and uses round attack, he'll attack 3 times every turn and the enemy only twice. (1 round attack + 2 retaliations vs. just 2 normal strikes.)

Just be careful not to hit your fellow berserkers. Round attack does inflict friendly fire.

No wonder I lost fast last PBEM game. :-)

No.

There should be various enemies to fight and no, they won't come, they start to move only when you get in certain range. But the range is usally larger than is the units movement so if you move carefully enough you can trigger them without them being able to reach you right away. I usually place my units at teh desired spot, take some fast moving unit, trigger enemies and lure them abckt o my army.

Never ran into one but that doesn't mean there isn't one. But if there is, I think it is large enough.

Ah. I popped into the ruin, decided to test the "Exit Battle" arrows, then reentered it. I'd saved since I didn't know what the heck I was getting into, so I had everyone fan out to look around, and a wraith found my hero in the bottom corner. I ran out of mana before I could holy bolt the thing to death, then I hit auto-battle to see what the computer would do against the now-invincible enemy. My units chose to flee, though they weren't great about thinking ahead with pathing (if all paths to the exit were blocked, it wouldn't move at all instead of covering what ground it could). The wraith made a valiant effort at killing my hero, but amusingly a debuff from one of the spells weakened it enough that my hero escaped in spite of incurring multiple attacks of opportunity from the wraith. He only had about 1 hp when he escaped, but everyone escaped alive (except that one swordsman that I suicided just to test the immunity).

Then I reloaded, and decided to come back later. I picked up Turn Undead when my hero leveled, so now I just need to make time to get back over there and Do Unto It.

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Is there a limit to the number of shots any given ranged unit has in one battle?
Does this limit apply to all ranged attacks, or does each ranged attack have its own quiver (meaning my Hurl Stones bag might not be empty even if I've run out of Archery shots)?

You're welcome!

Yeah, that's exactly right.

You can even park your swordsmen right next to the enemy without attacking (well, unless you have berserkers, who don't have anything to lose by round attacking) so they remain alive longer and stop the enemy from moving so you can shoot them. Just be careful about not blocking lines of sight to your archers.

Later on, when you move to tier 3 units, this changes. There's a BIG jump in power between tier 2 (cavalry, priests) and 3. (stuff like unicorns, warlords, trolls, giants.) Also, it's at tier 3 that the really fun and unique units start to appear. At lower tiers most races have a swordsman, archer, priest and cavalry unit. At tier 3 and 4 it's all over the place.

High-end units like that can often go toe to toe with amusing numbers of low-level swordsmen, who'll suicide against them just like your berserkers did against that hero. I often try to save up most of my money and make do with units I bribe from towns and such until I can get some of these really good units.

Otherwise, in the early game, your best bet is to have several stacks of low-level archers and a few swordsmen, and then when you engage the AI to spend the first turn or two moving your armies together to make one solid battleline.

The AI always moves to attack when confronted with multiple stacks (even if one only consists of 1 unit) so this way you can fight defensive battles even when you're the attacker, and can shoot down most of the AI cannon fodder before they even reach your lines.

Berserkers and Pony Riders are the two biggest exceptions to the "mostly use archers" rule. They're both excellent tier 1 units.

Pony Riders in particular do well as an escort for your hero because of their greater speed on the strategy map. Speed is everything. Well, not quite everything, but it's a lot.

All kinds of different monsters. They can either be randomly generated, or custom placed by the map-maker. (In the map I made I custom placed almost all of them to fit a theme, but I think most maps just do the random thing)

A good trick to lure them is to have a hero with Night Vision and/or a bunch of normal Vision upgrades. This is pretty useful in general: at Vision IV, a hero sees about as far as a watchtower on the strategy map. Very helpful in not getting ambushed. Still, it's best left for high-level heroes, since at low levels you'll want defence and hitpoints and such.

Wraiths are nasty, but if you're low on mana the best way to beat them is the humble Magic Weapon spell. Cast it on someone tough (i.e. your hero) and smack the beasty around.

Magic weapons you find also generally work, as long as they have "holy strike" or "magic strike" in the description, but Magic Weapon is a great spell in general that you want to cast on all your good fighters whenever you can. It only costs 2 mana upkeep and gives 2 medals/3 hero levels worth of combat boost.

Buffing spells like that are actually a pretty important thing to keep in mind in general. There are lots of good ones, though many cost too much mana to use on troops other than a few heroes.

Nope. Every unit can attack and shoot an unlimited number of times.

Finally, here's a page with all kinds of strategy articles for AoW1. From that website you can also finds tons of custom maps to download, in case you want a change of pace from the campaign at some point.

I don't think aow1 has limits on any ranged attacks.

In aow2 some ranged flying units had a limit of 3 shots per battle.

Only healing is once per day, I can't think of anything else that's limited in aow1.

Undead wraiths have Physical Immunity so you can only injure them by hitting them if you have enchanted weapons.

Edit; oops, I posted a little too late :p

I hope to see some of you lurkers in PBEM sometime.

I have one tip that maybe others haven't yet mentioned - if you want to attack an adjacent hex without moving your whole stack there after winning, you can just move one of your guys to start the fight. The whole stack will fight, but only the one guy will end up there. This is generally useful for moving around the map a bit more promptly.

I hope to play a AoW 1 PBEM with alliances. I would love to partner up with nickthenoob. He's my IRL friend as well.