Ah okay, good to know it won't affect player v player combat (although I guess I still wouldn't be able to have players troops surrender to me). I'm happy to try without any compensations, but if after I've done a few maps its clearly making things harder and I can't solve the bug then maybe that could be looked into again :)

I think either way, I have a big learning curve on fighting human players anyway. I'm definitely good at the game, I love hard maps like Athendore 2, Race to Death, Dark Hordes, some Ibob levels etc, but the AI even with army advantages like on those levels, are still quite predictable and do stupid things. So I'm good at exploiting the AI, but much of that won't work against people, so probably I'll be pretty rubbish against you lot for a while :)
Definitely try the email wrapper, I got it working at the weekend for the first time to play against my brother, and it did take a bit of trial and error to solve some problems, but works really well once you've done it. I found it easier to set up with gmail than outlook if that helps. The person who made the program doesn't do it anymore, but he did kindly email me when I couldn't get it working, so if you run into problems and its the same issue I had, then maybe I can help.

Yeah with no manual PvP combat, MP is much more about where on the map your guys are. having vision, and keeping track of how far the enemy can see and move are the new fundamentals. Cocealment is suddenly a thing too unlike vs AI.

A handicap is definitely merited for someone who can't manual combat vs AI.

We need to give Arnuz this bug / feature. :)

He's taken my crown and left my ego a shadow of it's former self.

Edit: I'll be up for a new SM game or two as well. Vanilla games work for me. I actually dislike the crazy, crowded maps created by folks trying to push the boundaries of what can be done. (Or maybe it's because I never read the instructions I'm given.)

Okay here is where I am at:

I downloaded the e-mail wrapper

I have G-mail

Having difficulty finding those settings in g-mail you are alluding to, as such I think that when I created a test game playing both sides, when I sent off the file the wrapper received an error message stating that the username and password were not accepted.

Would you be able to direct me to those settings or let me know if this is a seperate issue. I really appreciate the support, I have always loved this game since I was young and really looking forward to playing with others

I think if I am able to set the two-factor authentication I should be able to get through because the pop-up I am receiving is about improper credentials. If anyone knows where I can set that on gmail that would be great!

I think that's because Google doesn't know the wrapper is safe, so you have to allow less secure apps. Instructions on how to do that are here:
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en

That's what sorted it for me at the weekend.

I honestly don't know where any gmail settings are as they seem to change things each year. I just look up guides to the gmail UI.

Sign in and go here: https://myaccount.google.com/security

There should be some settings there that will let you either set up 2FA or just lower the security standard, whichever way you want to go.

Good news!

Thanks to the support I've received and some troubleshooting I was able to get PBEM to work with a singular email account for both players.

I'd like to run a test if anyone is willing to send me a quick scenario to see if it works between other players.
My e-mail is: humeniuk.laforest@gmail.com and I go by Zak for the character titles. Pretty sure this will be just a formality but want to be sure before getting involved in a serious game.

Greatly appreciated

I've added you to my little red book of aow PBEM emails. Which out of aow1 and aow2 are you interested in?

Also, what do you mean by 'character titles'? Do you mean that when starting a game, we should rename the leader you're playing to Zak? Kind of a very cool idea actually, to rename the ingame leaders to the forum names. I will do that in future. But you probably meant something else? If you mean you want to be known as Zak, I don't know you you can change your name on GoG, but you can change the text underneath it (ie 'Old user' for me) by going to 'my settings' on any forum discussion page.

Ahhh true, I just meant I know sometimes the player's names are listed in the order in the title so you know who is going next. Also I am a fan of the original: AoW 1 for me :)

My email is... you can add it for aow2 or aowsm games :)

[*Post modded by PainOfSalvation: Please refrain from posting your email address as this is against Forum Code of Conduct.]

I've staken the liberty of starting a PBEM with us 4 in, 'First Conflict', thread I shall post presently

Heh, I didn't know it was against forum rules to post emails - but we can PM them anyhow. I already noted yours down.

It looks like the AoW2 players are less in evidence right now, so would you be up for a 1v1 with me?