The amount of mana you get per turn depends on multiple things:

1: The amount of mana nodes you got
2. The amount of earth/water/fire/death/life nodes you own
3. The amount of heroes you have (each give +10 mana per turn I believe)

I think the maximum mana capacity is either 2000 or 5000 iirc.

If you mean spheres, you get them through campaign progression

If you mean the amount of mana your hero can use during a turn: That is called: Spell casting.

Spell casting 1 = 10 mp to spend per turn
Spell casting 2 = 20 mp to spend per turn
etc etc until you reach spell casting V which has 50 mp to spend. Quite useful on your leader if I do say so myself.

I kinda liked that, actually. It could be tedious if armies started very far apart (in sieges and such) but otherwise it let me actually organise my troops in a proper battle-line before the enemy attacked. In the later games, there's no time for that. (Of course, if you could just set the formation of your units, you'd have the best of both worlds. Perhaps in AoW4, if there ever is one.)

The campaign works fine with the mod, but if it's your first time playing, I wouldn't install it. If you're done with the campaign and still want more, you can always try the other path with the mod, or play scenarios.

Drakefox gave the link to the page that lists the hotkeys. The important one to remember is "n" and "p" to scroll through units that haven't moved yet. Nothing to remind you of unused special abilities, though. You have to remember yourself.

There is no max mana in AoW1. (only in 3.)

You increase your mana income by capturing mana nodes, particularly mana nodes of elements you specialise in. (Nodes for elements you don't specialise in don't give any mana, but the generic blue sparkly Power Nodes always give a flat amount.) You also get a bit of many by raising your spellcasting skill. (Called Spellcasting 1 through 5.)

In addition, you can set the mana/research balance by going to the "magic" screen and hitting the "power distrubution" button. Early on, I typically set research as high as possible to get many spells, and rely on mana-crystal pickups to cast combat spells. Later on, when I start casting more buffs, I adjust it downwards to free up more mana. (Note that if you put more power towards research than you need to complete a spell, the excess gets converted to mana automatically, so nothing is wasted.)

If you mean "how do I increase my casting points" i.e. the amount of spells you can cast each turn: that can only be done by increasing the (expensive) spellcasting skill. 50 casting points is the maximum.

On hero skills:

* Generally, boost defence first. 7 or so is good, it can then be boosted further with buffing spells (bless, stoneskin) and magic armour. (loot from lairs/caves/castles/etc) Then add a few hitpoints to avoid one lucky blow killing your hero.
* Archery and marksmanship are good in Warlock's Mod, because your heroes are much more vulnerable there, but in vanilla they're generally not that important.
* Round Attack is a very good ability because it lets you hit several enemies without counterattacks. Beware friendly fire, though!
* Certain abilities like First Strike, Lightning Strike and Life Stealing are very powerful, but can only be selected when starting a new game.
* Spellcasting is expensive and probably not as strong as just boosting physical stats up to max, but it's a lot of fun. I say go for it.

On the campaign:
* You can transfer a limited amount of stuff between scenarios.
* Typically, magic items aren't worth it, unless you find a cheap but very useful one, like a weapon that gives First Strike.
* Many people like to transfer a second hero. This can be good, but also very expensive.
* I like to transfer tough gold-medalled tier 3 units instead, if I can. For example: Halfling Centaurs, Dwarf Giants. These will help a lot in later campaign scenarios where you're outnumbered at the start.

You can find the manual there: http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.280

Random advice.

Get resistance up on your heroes after defense.
Some attacks need to overcome resistance to take effect instead of defense. Not sure but I think dominance is one of them so try attacking enemies with low resistance.

It's risky but you can save level up points to get the more expensive skills.
To do this you have to first level up, don't use your points and then level up again. The thing is that those unused points gets wasted if you save, turn off the game and so on. You have to level two times during this game session. Your hero dies, you get a crash, paint yourself into a corner and have to backtrack to another save and etc those points are lost.

Resistance defends against every kind of "special" effect. Stunning, poisoning, burning, vertigo, panic, etc, etc, etc. Dominate, charm & seduce are definitely included in this category.

Some abilities do need to hit defence first (like the Turn Undead ability priests get, which is why it misses so often despite having a really strong attack value) but others target resistance directly. Like, say, the Entangle spell.

Note that these abilities have their own attack value that determines whether they will succeed, independent of your hero's/unit's attack value. For example, Charm has an attack value of 5 and Seduce has an attack value of 7, so Seduce will work much more often. (Each point of attack/defence boosts/reduces hit-chance by a flat 10%. So 3 attack against 3 defence hits 50% of the time, 5 attack hits 70% of the time.) This is also why Lightning Strike is so good: it's attack value is much higher than Cold Strike and such.

Resistance in general should not be neglected, but defence is a much higher priority. In general, the priority for stats goes defence -> attack -> hitpoints -> resistance -> damage -> movement Wait, that's not true. Those skillpoints don't vanish when you reload. That'd be a terrible bug.

You can save up skillpoints even across campaign scenarios.

Have you tested this? Because it's been a while, but I have played this game a LOT and I've never lost skillpoints even over many reloads.

This needs to be tested again. I remember losing skill points way back when AOW1 was released. That's why I started to always have a save just before one of my heroes leveled up just in case. I've been doing this all this time without having any second thoughts. Maybe I don't need to anymore?

I meant this. Thanks for all the info.
It's so cool that we can still discuss about an old game. : )
Btw, it's quite hard, and I'm just at at mission 3..

Ok. I chose that luckly.

Ah no, it was actually me. That's a trick to post links with low rep :P

Ok, even if only 10-50 mana is.. nothing in combat :\

Thanks!
Btw, I've transfered 1 hero and 2 items so far (map3).

WTF.. impossible for me.

It is quite hard for newcomers. Playing the evil faction is even harder. Key to victory is speed. Sounds strange in a turn based strategy but you basically need to expand asap. Save often, and exploit AI. Always go for tactical combat so you can get the best results. Unless you're at the end stage and it really doesn't matter anymore.

Discovering and playing AoW:SM a couple of years ago was the best run of super fun gaming I've had in two decades... No idea how I missed this entire series back in the day. Now you're making me really miss it with this thread. The only game that ever had me waking up super early before work on the hope that a turn or two would be in my inbox. :-)

And the pure joy when receiving a profanity laced in-game message from a friend when they finally saw your sneak attack or trap unfold and lay waste to all there plans... Good times!

The importance of speed is not unique to AoW in TBS but an important point to make. Not to waste turns.

Or getting a threatening message from Blaneck? :P

I still got screenshots from past PBEM campaigns. Like this one :) ( i started on the bottom right

I'm usually bad at strategy, because I prefer to "turtle" and slowly build good cities, than to rush.. and that never works XD

Speaking about rep. PBEM is the reason my reputation on GOG got so high. :D

I was the Orcs about to get demolished in that photo. Good game. I remember Davespice as the Lizards making a comment about my immediate demise or some such and I destroyed his entire army the next turn. Still lost the war, but I like to think of it as a moral victory. Definitely don't miss Blaneck.