It's quite unfortunate that GOG didn't include the full manual with the game, as that would have covered pretty much all of your questions. However, a copy of the manual can be found here and I'd definitely recommend reading through it.

Also, to try to answer the questions you posted, how fast you can cast spells is determined by two factors- having enough mana (shown at the bottom right of the screen next to your gold income), and how much mana your hero can channel every turn. How much mana a hero can channel depends on what level of Spell Casting they have, with Spell Casting I allowing 10 mana to be channeled per turn, up to Spell Casting V allowing 50 mana per turn. Even with Spell Casting V larger spells will still require multiple turns to cast, and in combat you'll only be able to fire off a couple of spells before you hit the limit on how much mana your hero can channel.

For where your ranged characters can shoot, when you select a ranged ability (Archery, Poison Darts, etc) you'll see a circle of red dots appear, which is the maximum range of the ability you selected. As for hitting your own units, when you line up a shot but before confirming the shot you'll sometimes see little stop signs with numbers on them over objects along the shot's flight path. The numbers are the percent chance that the shot will hit whatever object they're over. It should also be noted that an object right next to a ranged unit will not get in the way of that unit's shots, which basically allows for the use of cover (position a unit right next to a wall and they can fire over the wall, but units shooting at them will hit the wall).

As for gold, there are two numbers that are important. The first white number is how much gold you actually have, while a second number (either green or red) is how much gold you're gaining or losing each turn. In many scenarios you'll actually start with negative income, due to having unit upkeep costs but not having a significant source of income. Generally you'll want to hold off on any major, non-essential purchases (like upgrading towns) until you've established enough sources of income that you're getting a decent amount of gold each turn.

Thank you SO much for the link to the manual and answering my questions; that really helped :P! I'm going to go read the manual now -- I had been playing around with it a little, and I did manage to figure some things out on my own, but I still haven't beat the first level :X. Hopefully the guide will clear some more things up, though.

Depending on which campaign you're playing the first level can actually be a real pain if you don't know the optimal strategy. The Keepers campaign starts off gently enough, but in the first Cult of Storms mission you basically have to bum-rush the enemy commander while ignoring everything else, otherwise you'll be in for a long, hard slog against superior enemy forces while having very limited resources.

I read the manual and ended up finally beating the first level last night. Actually knowing how city upgrades and fortification and units and whatnot worked really helped.

It was still pretty challenging, though, but I like that. I have played another game sort of similar to this on my gameboy called final fantasy tactics advance, and in those games, it was possible to keep all of your soldiers alive if you were really careful.

In this game, though, I think it's impossible to get through without losing some of your units. Then again, I'm not all that great with positioning...

As for rushing the enemy commander, maybe it was because I played as the Keepers, but I actually ended up killing every single other enemy on the board before killing the cult of storms leader.

Towards the beginning of the campaigns you'll almost certainly lose units (level 1 units are pretty squishy). However, once you start using level 3 and 4 units these can last you multiple missions if you're careful with them.

The first mission of the Keepers campaign is definitely much more slow-paced. Still worth keeping in mind that rushing the enemy commander remains a very viable strategy throughout the campaign, and can really help in scenarios where you can get to the enemy commander fairly quickly and are facing multiple enemy forces.

I'm playing AoW2 campaign, the second Death scenario. If killed everyone even my allies and the scenario still won't end. Serena's green symbol is still shown on the turn indicator but she is nowhere in sight. I've turned the whole map into darkland and all cities are undead. Has this happened to anyone else? Is there a solution or must I surrender and start the scenario again?

Legless

I've only played maybe four maps in the 'good' campaign and two scenarios, but here goes:

- walls and a 'keeper' unit or two will prevent some cheap raids on your cities. I prefer ranged units so they can shoot at siege weapons that have low or no range, like rams.

- in the campaign, you're allowed to carry over units and items from the previous map. Be careful doing this since those units add to your maintenance costs at the very start of the map when you have little income; this will drain your wallet in a big hurry. That said, if I can take a flier with me, I'll do that since it can grab resources, mines, towers, and lightly defended towns quite quickly, plus scout the map while doing so with Vision I or II. If offered multiple fliers (or giants or whatever) I'll take the ones with the best experience (look for the medal) to get an early leg up; it doesn't cost extra for that experience. Try to take as much gold as possible to bolster your wallet early.

- when scouting unexplored territory, I take small 'bites' of movement instead using the full allowance in one chunk. This allows you to a) alter your path mid-turn, b) retreat with leftover points if your scout wants to avoid an attack the next turn. For fliers scouting near enemy units, I try to end their movement over mountains or water. This makes them immune to attacks from units that can't go into those terrain types.

One thing I'll do to tie-up an AI stack or two: capture a mine / node with a flier and park over the nearest mountain. The AI will sometimes send one or more stacks to reclaim the mine / node, and I've seen the AI subsequently park those stacks near my flier for several turns. Sometimes this will strip a nearby heavily-defended town of most of the defenders, so you can go in with one or two stacks and make the town your own. If the town has walls, the AI likely won't try to reclaim it right away.

- another sorta trick with fliers: capture heavily-defended towns that have lower-level defensive units. Fly in and pick off the ranged units until you're half-dead, then escape to the edge of the map to end the battle. If you have a stack nearby with a healer, get healed. Next turn, repeat, and so on until all the ranged units are gone. Then you can use your flier to pick off the grunts one by one at your leisure. It may take a few turns to do this but you'll have captured a large town with moderate to heavy defenses using only two units (one attacker, one healer). Multiple fliers gets the job done quicker and I won't send a single flier into a town with more than three ranged defenders..

- don't forget that you can attack (and defend) with multiple stacks! Carefully place your stacks around the enemy and then send one of your stacks onto the enemy. It DOES matter which hex (square) you attack so keep this in mind when attacking 2, 3, and 4 size cities; choose the wrong hex and not all of your attacking stacks will appear on the map. All of your stacks need to be adjacent to the HEX (or unit) you attack, not just adjacent to the city. I think your stacks will join the attack even if they have no movement points left.

- when using multiple stacks to attack a city, a choose an empty city hex to attack, not the hex with the defenders in it. This places you forces farther away from the opposing forces and gives you more time and space to arrange your units before making contact. For instance, on a size 4 town, I'll arrange like this:

----S
S--1--S
--2---3
----4

where S are my stacks, 1-4 are the city hexes, and the enemy is sitting in hex #4 (ignore the dashes). Then I'll attack town hex #1. That gives me the space to arrange my troops and also brings all three of my stacks into the fray against his single stack. If I were to attack into hex #2 or #3, only two of my stacks would appear in battle.

- defense works the same way - adjacent stacks get pulled into battle on defense, so be aware when planning an attack or when setting defensive stacks. A weak defense is made stronger by keeping stacks adjacent.

- use your leader and hero(es) as bait. The AI tries to take them out first if it makes sense to do so, so you can sort of lure the enemy in certain directions. Note that this isn't a 100% priority for the AI so if you send your hero way off to the middle of nowhere, the AI won't drop everything just to chase him or her down, and it won't become a pincushion while mindlessly going after your hero.

- for that reason, I prefer to keep my leader as a ranged unit. That may change later since my leader is still fairly weak at level 9 or so.

- early-game, Giants make good triple-purpose units: extended ranged attack, siege weapon, and decent melee. And they have more movement points. Plus they can traverse mountain ranges.

- don't forget the ability to heal. If you're banged up after battle, use your clerics to heal up those you didn't heal during battle. Usable once per turn per cleric. Heroes and leaders can heal multiple units if they have the spell skill level to do so. For my low-level ranged units, I tend to go half and half between archers and clerics so my stacks can heal quicker. At the very least, have a couple clerics nearby in another stack for post-battle healing. When arranging units for battle, my clerics go somewhat toward the middle of the line so they can reach most of my wounded units in either direction.

- when migrating / converting newly-captured towns, consider racial diversity. This spreads around the unit-building capabilities instead of locking you into certain units in various areas of the map.

- if you capture a node that doesn't give you mana, consider razing it so the enemy doesn't reclaim it. Note that razing generates some enemy stacks nearby so be prepared for fight or flight.

Thanks for all these tips and links. The first "light side" mission was a bit of a struggle for me since I had no idea of the ins and outs of the system, so I had people guarding every town, draining all my money. The 2nd mission (20 turns to get to a certain location) seems oddly hard until you realise you can run through it for the most part. One thing that really threw me off is that I took out the enemy leader which triggered my Dwarven ally to declare war on me for some reason.

Anyway, all this info should help quite a lot.

For AoW 1:

#1. Defense is the most important stat. If you have a high defense, you're untouchable. If you're playing the campaign, building your leader and heros up so they have 10 DEF as soon as possible will make the game much easier, as they'll be able to take down entire armies on their own (note that this can go from making it too hard to too easy, so be sparing with it). This also means that spells that enhance defense (Bless, and especially Stone Skin) are highly worthwhile.

#2. Earth is a great sphere for new players, and in general. Stone Skin, as mentioned above, is incredibly powerful. Gold Rush is a level two spell that gives a city double income - essential if you have money troubles. Entangle bypasses Defense, so if you're facing something with a high DEF but a low RES (which is characteristic of a lot of heroes), you can use it to take them out. Dire Boars make good expendable scouts.

A good sphere combination for the Keepers is 4 Life (so you can ressurect heroes and summon Gold Dragons), 2 Earth, and 1 Water. I would recommend doing it in this way: 2 Life 1 Earth for Halflings, 4 Life 1 Earth for Dwarves, 4 Life 2 Earth 1 Water for Elves (you want to make sure you already have Gold Dragon researched by the time you hit the Elven campaign).

#3. In sieges, look for units that can breach your walls and take them out immediately. If you can destroy everything with wall-crushing before your walls can be breached, their army will retreat. This means it can often be worth doing a sortie, especially if you have calvary or fliers hanging around, to take down those siege weapons. On the flipside, catapults (or even better, Giants) are much better than battering rams because you can keep them at a distance and make sure the same doesn't happen to you.

Several sites talk about a "Beatrix" cheat. Can this work in the GOG version? I know it's lake to cheat but the sooner I get through this game, the sooner I can buy another. Plus this game is starting to frustrate me.

The games lasting value and strength is it's MP maps played with friends or alone. So it don't really end though the campaign does.

saw a post in here about Hall of Heroes campaign and thought i'd share what worked for me. after hours of painstakingly building towns and troops, i would inevitably be overpowered by enemies coming up through the tunnels -- this is a surface/cavern/depths campaign. finally got pissed and tried a scorched-earth policy. i see this "assassination" approach has been mentioned often, so i'm echoing here, but this seems the only way to succeed at this campaign. run like hell, raze the cities you take, ignore tempting targets, take any and all tunnels rather than backtrack, and when you find your target, he/she will not have had time to assemble a team of bodyguards. got extremely lucky and stumbled on my target first time (in the depths, i believe) and finished this one in about a half hour using this approach. Any advice on Safeland? i'm getting outnumbered and slaughtered no matter what i try or where i go.

If I'm remembering right, Safeland was the one with just the frostling opponent?


Grab a flier from the previous scenario and head to the south-east to look for the dwarven oasis. If you can get there before your gold reachs <150, you can grab a town there along with a bunch of mines to keep your gold from running dry. You have to be quick, as the frostlings are moving in yetis and ice queens to start taking over that area, and the giants waiting there are a big help to defend against them.

As this happens, take your castle killers south to start occupying enemy territory. As you capture the frost towns, don't migrate them. They're neutral, so you can build their troops without worrying about defection, and you keep the gold flowing in. If you can split up your heroes into two storng teams, the strongest group can head south west and the other south east.

Clean up.

Nailog: actually, that post was from July -- finished all the AoW campaign/scenarios since then *he says wistfully*.
don't remember exactly how i ended up winning that mission, but that sounds like a good approach to a difficult mission.