Cool! :D
I hope I'll have enough points, because in 1000 I barely fitted 2 heroes and that item.

I'm on a far island now.. and I was almost at the valley!
Silly elves can't ever defend themselves..

Nice! :D
From what I see this map (third for Cult)... probably should allow me to butcher some quantity of units, and do some reaserch. It seems quite big, and there was no mention "hurry up, lad".

This is gonna be goood~!

EDIT: OK... Although it was suicide, my strategy was successful! In t4 halfling city with, roughtly, 18-19 units, I attack with army of 8. Or 7 + Leader. A suicide squad, but... We managed! Killed enemy leader and made them scatter before the wind, now <after few turns> I attack again, this time to take the city. 8 vs 12. Lost two wolf raiders, but it was worth it. >:3

Woa, I had to restart the island map, because the CPU totally rushed it O_o
Luckly it wasn't that big and with 3 total heroes and full speed I finished it very fast.

The transfer points are now 1500! (I wish they planned them better for the previous levels)
I can add 2 heroes and the halberd, but now I have 400 unused points..

Should I stay more in the previous map and produce a few high level units for the last level?
What do you suggest?

Btw, the transfers always make me start the maps with negative income +_+

I won the third map... and I'm baffled. The Halfling were systematically slaughter, as planned, but Elves... Elves were even more stupid.

Why did they leave that one, single unit outside their city? Thanks to that I could force their leader into combat with me outside the walls, kill him and all his units, and then take the city without much problem.

And then were the Frostling. My scout unit with one t4 goblin unit (can't remember the name) and 5 wolf riders. Took mine next to his capital. So he wanted it back... attack with quite a force of 17 units. But with a leader.
And said leader was butcher in the second turn of combat by said t4 goblin unit. The game was won.

To be honest the most exhilarating battle was with Gold Dragon that spawned via destruction of life nod and with Syron in a dungeon.

Now... Orc or Lizardmen? I'm almost sure someone mentioned here that going with Lizard should give me Undead...
Or not, either way is fine... then, a question - which one would be better to take - Orc or Lizardmen?

Yeah, the AI sometimes makes mistakes like that. You can play scenarios with leaders disabled, which removes all exploits like that. Can't assassinate one unit to win. Nor lose because of one lucky shot, that way. But it can make scenarios drag on too long because you then have to kill every last enemy to win. Later games have solutions to this through the throne/wizard tower principle, which helps.

Anyway, choices. Playing as the Cult, you will always get the option to side with the Undead.

If you choose the Lizardmen, you can also pick the High Men later. If you choose the Orcs, you can also pick the Dark Elves later.

As I mentioned before, I love siding with the High Men as an evil character. It's quite an unusual plot. But the traditional Orcs+Dark Elves plot is also fun.

I prefer Orcs to Lizardmen. (The lizards lack style, I think. Which may be why they were dropped from the sequels.) But siding with the High Men later is worth it. Up to you.

Grr.. the stupid enemy suicides prematurely against my hero just because he has a dragon -_-

EDIT: ok, with some retreat I stabilized the situation while I produce fairies.

Lizards are my favorite race. They have a very brutal Darwinist society where the fit survive. They aren't evil, but animalistic. Many fans have attempted to mod them into the later games. The real reason they we're cut is because they were too unbalanced. On land maps they are too physically weak, and on river and water maps they are unstoppable with swimming artillery.

*SPOILERS?*

Why the hell am I fighting humans in the end??
Weren't the keepers supposed to protect them? :\

Although it's only my guess... but aren't humans, to some point, quite the savage nation? So while you try to maintain peace, there are some folk who can't just sit and watch you. But...
Were not it explaind at the beggining of the map?

Well... strangly enough I like the idea of player personification in the game as leader. And they mortality only adds to this. The hard way in AoW1 since, like you said, rng can be a bitch, but still... To be honest AoW3 deal with this the best way - leader can be revived automatically after some time <minus Necros, because>, but they still are 'hero class unit', and fat, lazy cupcakes in high towers. Also, except for skill/items, ressurgence is NAY.

Hmm... Hard choice indeed. Well... I can always do both, at least after some time, just to see the endings. In this playthrought - Undead is the goal, so... I think I will pass on Highmen. But maybe not on Lizards...

Not that much.
Also, the human hero is a king, so that doesn't look like some rebel settlement.

Btw, the undeads have been the first ones to bite the dust :P

MORE SPOILERS

Unfortunately it does not cover it very well in the game, but this forum post from the writer Ray Bingham goes into more detail. http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&amp;fn=29&amp;tn=5537&amp;f=29,5537,0,0&amp;st=0 . Be warned it has spoilers for the next two campaigns.

Short version is that the Dark Elves want to exterminate Humanity, while the Wood Elves still want them to exist, but be heavily controlled by them. The Humans first rose in rebellion because the elves wouldn't let them plant crops and made them wait years to have permission to have children. The general mythology is that Humans are proto High Men, but must enjoy total freedom in order to be able to choose good over evil. It can't be forced on them. There is an implied agreement that the Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings are terraformers to make new worlds ready for Human use, since that is the only way for High Men to reproduce. Inioch didn't want to give up his world and move on, so he oppressed the Humans in the hopes of avoiding them replacing the Elves. It didn't go well for him.
Yeah, the Humans usually send an Air Galley to assassinate Inioch as soon as the scenario begins.

What? No, I killed him myself O_o
But I'm rushing the levels since a while.

I don't know if the Dark Elves are still alive, but the Higmen declared war to me after a short peace. :(

(I'll read the spoiler part after the ending)

Well... greyhuntr explaind why... And I really need to see all campaigns in all games now. Things start to made a whole, but there are blanks.
And as sad it may be - I'm starting to appreciate the writings. :D

So, in response to this thread I've replayed some old campaign scenarios, specifically the Deepmir map, and damn... I'd forgotten how tough Red Dragons are in unmodded AoW. (Warlock's nerfs them quite a bit, and I can see why.) 7 defence? Ouch. One of these can take out armies of low-level units. And on hard difficulty, the AI builds a lot of them.

Stacks of archers really do not have much luck against these at all. Ballistas and Air Galleys do much better, though. It was quite a cool visual to see my fleet of air-galleys cross the straits near the end of that map. (Because I just couldn't find a path through all those tunnels to reach the Orc leader otherwise. I'd also forgotten how much fun 3 layers of underground/depths/surface are.)