Who told you that?
Lies, all lies. :-D

Well, I had my fill of AoW back then and mos people were slowly leaving as well.
Doesn't mean I can't appear one day and play game or two. ;-)



Doesn't mean you can't play MP. It is even possible to play with human ally against AI opponents, so one does not have to face another players. It's not that much fun, though.

It can be quite long. There were longer games that took us almost up to year. Shorter ones can take month or 2. But if one plays 1-on-1 adn both are active players it is possible to take several turns per day.
But in the others you get to play 1 turn per day at max. With more players it was usually 1 turn per several days.


I too prefered to transfer my hero. It is hard for me to lose my precious, carefully nurtured unit.

Year long games.. pls no.
Maybe we could try a very small map, but only if we focus on the game and do a lot of turns per hour.
I'll have to improve my gameplay first, however.

Ok, map5 was short and easy, but map6 is a tunnel hell again!
I mean, I like the layers idea, but not with all those openings.. damn.

I thought I was doing well, as I managed to conquer both surface and caverns, but now the enemy is pumping out dragons!
I should maybe have attacked the dephts before trying to secure the higher layers. :\

I fear I'll have to restart, unless:
- you tell me which are the best ways to kill dragons (my heroes don't have ranged attacks!)
- you tell me how to reach the Hall of Heroes, so I'll try rushing for it, if possible O_o'

If I survive this last attack, I'll immediately send my heroes underground.
I'll have to be very lucky, though, because gold is few and my units are crap..

Another question:
what makes the races unhappy, exactly?
I kept both the humans' and the (now wandering) frostlings' forts intacts, so they became content, but the status slowly decreases.
New towns and upgrades fix that just temporally.

It seems that the dragons are scared of ballistas!
When I built one, the attacking party retreated. :D
Then, I managed to kill the front ground units and I'm now fighting back.

Btw, I don't know how you could do anything without those OP heroes and the Town Gate spell O_o

EDIT:

OMG.. the main dark elves city was right under my nose! O_o
I.. tried attacking it alone for lols, even if there was a dragon and.. I killed the remained boss, thus winning the map! :O

I'm shocked now..
Basically I could have ended this like 50 turns early XD

An easy cost effective way to counter dragons is having a stack of archers. 8 archers can kill 1 dragon on average.

Races become unhappy when you migrate one of their towns. Or neglect them in terms of building walls or upgrades. the second part only if they are not with your allignment to begin with. So if you're good, a neutral party's happiness will slowly decrease til it's back to standard. Which is neutral. Obviously declaring war on the leader of a race will make that race unhappy too.

I decided to continue the map anyway, because I wanted to find the Hall of Heroes.
I razed\conquered all the cities except from the main one, so the enemy didn't annoy me anymore.
I found the HoH in the last tunnels, not far away from one of my towns.. facepalm XD

--

Btw, I've read a small guide about the spells.
Can Wind Walking make melee heroes reach dragons?
Maybe the air spheres would have been better then, as high level water spells seem a bit unimpressive (except for Geyser and Liquid Form).
These seem interesting too: Summon Great Eagle, Winds Of Fury, Shock Wave (dmg?), Call Hero (what level\cost?).

--

Also, what should I transfer to the next mission? Are the available units random?

I chose:
1 hero, 1 halberd (+1dmg, 3 strikes skills), 1 ring of movement, 1 fairy (flying).

Interesting choices would have been:
- a secondary hero (low skills, maybe too expensive to keep in the future).
- a crown of leadership (skill), an armor (+2def, +1a), shield (+1def, +1r), mace (+1def, 2 strike).
- a titan, avenger, valkyrie (weak), a wisp (neutral)

Ah thanks.
Signing treaties can annoy allies too O_o'

Nope. Sorry. It only lets your heroes float over terrain. Just bring archers/ballistas/your own flyers/use spells. * The Great Eagle is a good scout, but useless in combat.
* Winds of Fury is fun to try and throw defenders over the city walls, but not nearly as good as the water spells.
* Shockwave is utterly useless.
* Never had much luck getting Call Hero to work. I usually end up getting some hostile hero I have to kill. Or it says something about "no hero available." Honestly I never bothered with it after the first few failed attempts, so perhaps there is a trick to it.

All in all I don't think air magic is much use, though Air Mastery and Air Elementals are pretty great if you have dragons or other flyers.

As for water magic: don't forget Great Hail and Beam of Frost. They're useful against massed enemies. Ice Shards also remains an excellent single-target spell. Can hurt dragons, with a bit of luck. Finally, Chain Lightning often is one of the best attack spells to use against regular foes even though it's level 1. Won't hit as hard, but the stun is invaluable.


My favourite water magic story, though, is casting the Flood spell on an map full of narrow islands and land bridges, and in one turn drowning every enemy who stood on the shore. Which was about half of them, must have been 50+ units total. Also drowned some of my own units. Fortunately, I was playing Lizardmen at the time. You need 4 spheres and a lot of luck for that one to work, though. Ring of movement seems rather useless. Low level heroes aren't much good either. Easier to just find a new one in the next mission. The fairy will be helpful as a scout, though it's too weak to do much in combat.

I'd have brought the Titan, if at all possible. They're perhaps the strongest tier 3 melee unit in the game. Fast, round attack, first strike, amazing stats. Cast some buffs on them and they can take on armies single-handed. They're also immune to fire, so they can beat up Red Dragons.

The wisp is also a good choice. They're deceptively tough because they have so many immunities and resistances. Neutral isn't a problem: because it's not a normal Frostling unit, nothing you do will make it like you or hate you, so it will never desert. (This goes for all units with the "Creature" description. You can make the Undead like you even if you're neutral or good, by migrating cities to undead and building walls and such. But demons are Pure Evil Creatures, not Pure Evil Undead, so will never like you.)

The items usually aren't worth it. You can find new ones on the next map, or just rely on buffing spells.

As for what units get selected for transfer: I'm not sure how the system works. But what I do is simply disband every unit I don't need or don't want to bring right before I end the mission, so I'll be able to always bring my favourite gold medal units.

Ah, I see then, thanks.

I surely agree about Chain Lightning.
My hero only used Great Hail in automatic, but it seems quite expensive.
I'll try Beam of Frost and Ice Shards.

:O

But..but.. the ring allowed me to travel fast everywhere for just 80 points! (also across mountains)
The halberd, then, enabled useful reaction strikes (I think).
The titan didn't impress me much: his damage seemed low and he always attracted all fire (often killed in automatic).
That's useful info about neutral creatures, I'll go back and select the wisp!

Lol, nice trick! (even if a bit click-intensive).

Water is probably by far the best offensive sphere in the game, which is unusual. If you can pull off that Flood trick as Lizards it is a ton of fun and you've basically won the map. Of course it will probably take about 250 turns to happen and you've likely conquered the whole map by then anyway. I remember I was about 30 turns away from pulling it off in a MP game once. When transferring units in the campaign it is good to take one cheap flyer if you can as it helps to scout the map early. Also, if you are playing all the games campaigns in order then Halflings-Dwarves-Elves is the canonical ending for the first game. I personally like the Goblin-Lizard-Highmen ending myself, but they are all fun.

That's also my favourite ending by far. I love the main character's rants about the hypocrisy of the high men.

Yeah, I like how many "unhappy" endings Triumph includes in their games. The canon ones are usually the "best" ending, but you get to choose any one you like.

How many, exactly, endings there are in all the AoW games? o.O I knew there is more than one per campaign, but...

I do teach them fighting abilities, but in their later levels :) Except for defense of course, which is a really important stat

Hmm the evil campaign lets you end up with either undead or Dark elves. However you can go neutral route and then end up with highmen after all I believe? Not too sure about that.

With the good campaign you can get highmen and elves. Or go neutral with lizards and then ultimately pick the undead route or stick with neutral.

So I think about 8 endings?

Woah... more than I expected... Now I really need to see them.