Well...after i read several posts how good AoW-SM is..i gave it a try.
No..i am reached the last mission and looking back...i wasn't more fun AOW...more a "Know the Triggers-Puzzle"-game then a tactic or strategic game and that most mission have a 50 Turn's Challenge/150 Turn + boring work to prepare the heroes for the next scenario.

And for the HIVE..well..i still have to bet it and i only go on that i can say i did it...expect from this the mission feels like a bad joke until now.
Turn 1 ...o..again a starting without a city, no spells and only the basic Feat..well..i expected it...what i didn't expect...why the hell have my allies erased memories and lost there heroes^^
Turn 5 2 Citys as a gift..nice..thats somethin one can work with...at least i thought
Turn 6 2. Hero, build a Outpost with Julias 2. giift
Turn 7 conquered a Gobocity SE of the Dwarfcity
Turn 8 conquered a Gobocity SW of the Draconiercity
Turn 9 Found a Orkcity SW of the Dwarfcity but are to weak to take it imo
Turn 10 2 full armys of Demonlords are attacking Keenan...but i get a sucubuss and 3 Exc. to rescue him...:)
Turn 13 2 new full armys of Demonlords are attacking symon, i get a small Syron army to help him but i start at the other side of a lake and can't reach him in time.
Turn 15 Keenan and Symon are destroyed and the Lordstacks start wandering around, "weak" normal armys of Demons start coming through the rift south of the Dwarfcity
Turn 20 -Demons start coming through the rift north of the Dwarfcity,
-my surviving scout at Keenans former Domain
-Julia told me somethin about a sword that i need but i am just fighting for my live
Turn 23 Conquered the Orkcity
Turn 25 Meandor is under attack now and viewing what he has produced yet...he want last much longer then my first two allies
Turn 28 Found a Tigrancity, lack the money to buy it and the force to conquer it

Well...to restart and change a few things to make the first turns more smooth but...
did i make some mistake or do they really expect to stop full Lordstacks at Turn 10^^...
I can get the first 4 citys earlier if i rush in with my fastest Units and then i can get 2 Gobocitys and the pionier 2 -3 Turns faster but aside from this i can't change much.

So...restarting...if someone has a good advice :)...i would love it.

I think most folks would say that the campaigns in AoW and AoW:2 are better than the campaigns in AoW:SM. And I also think most folks would say that the multiplayer in AoW:SM is better than the other games due to the balancing of races and cool new units with the 1.4 user patch.

Sorry that I have no specific advice re: the campaign, other than to say "forget about it and come play with people that don't use cheats (trigger events) to get their advantages." :)

The Hive was very challenging but fun, it took me maybe 5-10 restarts until I managed to beat the map. It's been a while though, so I don't remember everything. I believe what finally worked for me was to be very aggressive but keep the dwarven city at all costs. The allies and the cities you take will drop one by one eventually, but by being aggressive the heroes can gather nice experience and you'll find items and treasures along the way. By picking independent and shadow towns, the AI will also split their forces up which can't be a bad thing.

At some point, go for the sword and enter the hive, read closely what the elves are telling you. You need a decent army for that, and strong heroes, just avoid battling Lords in the open. Let them try and capture the dwarven city instead. It's not always easy to defend, but you can soften them up with spells before combat, like sacred woods. I think I managed to keep the dwarven city until the end by keeping a stack of tanks/cannons in there.

Well..saving my Dwarven Area was my maingoal too but
-the first time they just overrunned my because i had split my forces to explore/secure..i had not expected full Lordarmy at Turn 10 :)
-the 2. Try i started today was..hmm..not sucsessfull..i most have triggered something and the first army from the northern "Dwarvenrift" arrived at Turn 5^^, my Heroes(and their troops) where allready past the southern rift, nearly at the Orkcity and my Inf. + the cannons where supressing the Gobos during the Racechange.
I reconquered it but lost time&ress...but worse...more armys cam from both dwarven rifts..whatever i triggered..i was no under attacked..much to early and had to give up several turns later^^.
I have to try out if it happend again but i think i triggerd the early attack through casting Unicorn at allied domains to gather stuff.
-öhm...3. try..first enemy army through the notheren rift at Turn 3^^...think i will give it a break und return to Eador and Aow1

That's weird, in all my restarts, I never had stacks of Lords come that early, they were usually much weaker with maybe only one and some other units. It must've been a trigger then. I do have a savegame where I tried to go for the sword immediately, and that seems to be a valid strategy as well, but the heroes of course will be weaker, but there are some free stuff coming your way once you enter the Shadow world. Diverting attention is still probably a good idea once you set up a new base, or the demons will just overwhelm one area.

The armys that start coming at Turn 3 and 5 where no Lordstacks, 1-2 Harvesters, 2-3 other T1/T2 Units and the Rest larvae..but because i had split my army to conquer the Gobo and the Orkcity as fast as possible and gather the free stuff at the northside early...Merlin was the lone defender of the city :)

I thought i would be save at my starting position at least until the demonwaves officialy starts :)..that was the fault.

The 3. try i had kept enough Units for defence, still it slows down if you are under attack that early.

Okay, I believe that happened to me as well. If you keep some units close by, preferably cannons or other shooters, they should be able to deal with the waves for a while.

One thing I just thought about is that in one game, where I went south with the heroes, they became very strong but one hero rebelled after 50 or so turns, then killed my other hero and some powerful units. Maybe I didn't win the game when I tried to level my heroes but won where I rushed for the sword immediately with a small group of strong units. Not sure, I'd have to replay it one day to try the slow approach.

Rebelling might happen because Merlin is neutral and his Mainrace are the humans...and they give you
good and pure good heroes for this scenario...a think they didn' really thought about, you get relationboni for the races of your allies but not for your problematic hero.

Still it's enough for stable moral(with peacekeeper) but sometimes (Triggers/Events/War...) the morale drops for a few turns..and then...

Yes, it's good to be careful. There aren't many neutral towns, so Peacekeeper skill might be a good idea to choose if the game drags on for a long time.

Well, i think it's usefull from the start at this( and most) campgainscenarios because of the "giftscripts".

Like i said...Merlin=neutral, your heros are good and pure good, you start with good and neutral citys, get evil Units early, etc....

I even thought about getting the Rebuild Ruin spell from Meandor but Undead with pure Evil and without Alliancebonus would be difficult and to be honest i was a bit disapointet as i played the new undead first because their T1/T2 Units are so weak now that even their immunities can't balance it..and until a decent number of T3 Units is at hands...

That's true, the heroes are good. The Dwarven race is of good alignment too but the wizard may be neutral.

For me Peacekeeper never was that useful because it takes many turns to research and I rarely have enough money to recruit troops. They usually don't join for free. In this campaign though, it does seem to be worth it, to maintain decent morale.

I don't know, the lower level units are quite weak for all races. Zombies are extra bad though, even though they have Resurgence and Death Strike. They're too weak and slow to be useful. In theory, maybe you could build 6 or so zombies to travel with 1-2 stronger units. Then they could take away retaliation from the enemy and let the stronger units finish the job even against higher level units, but their speed is just too bad. Maybe it works better in caves because they have cave crawling. They'd move about the same speed as archers and swordsmen then. Otherwise Death Knights and vampires are not too bad for level 2 units. They have abilities like Death strike, Charge, Seduce, Regeneration. Life Stealing is nice too, but usually isn't great when defense is low, same with Wall Climbing.
The great thing about death strike is that once an enemy is cursed, they get death weakness and units do 50% more damage. Cursed enemies are also easier to seduce, so try to curse the enemy first if you can.

In the Hive I wouldn't keep Undead towns though because of morale issues.

Well..being Undead they all have Reg and their Immunities but also have the "Weakness" that Turn Undead can be used against them and ATT 15 is speaking for itself and being pure Evil brings a diplomatic weakness.

Death Strike is nice because it's prevents healing for 3 days so it has a good strategic value but compared to poison or even vertigo it's influence for the ongoing battle is small.

Talking about the Death Night i think you're right, he's a decent Unit and my bad impression of it comes from the Meandor campgain where the enemy sends Waves of Knights against you while you struggle you produce enough T2 Units :) to slow him down until the Heroes are strong enough.

Talking about the Vampire...well..yes...he has several nice abillities but 6 Deff, Fire and Holy weakness makes him the Unit fragile, esp. in combination with being a melee fighter and being seduce a 8 ATT touchattack, limited to 1 use..but still...i need to test it at MP game or at a normal SP-Map.


Taking all into account i think it's a bit harder to build Undead up and you need a strong economy because you need to fight a War of attrition..together with the strategic Boni from death Domain spells...

But...i never played a AOW MP so it's only a suspicion

I just read that veteran zombies (silver medal) gain Smoky Haze ability which is not bad for tanks/meat shields. In Unofficial patch v1.4 they also have an extra +2 attack, so maybe they can be useful after all, for a level 1 unit that is.

Regeneration is nice, but but only Vampires and Bone Horrors start with it. In UP1.4, Dread Reapers also start with Regeneration. Otherwise units need Gold medal. I recommend that you install UP1.4, because it does a good job balancing units.

I think you may underestimate the power of seduce and death strike. Seduce works surprisingly often, especially when units are cursed (with death strike or black bolts), poisoned (smoky haze from zombies) and you have spells like Weakness on top. Even strong enemies like Warlords can easily be seduced. Races always have some sort of trade off. Orcs for example are strong but do not resist magic very well. Halflings on the other hand are weaker fighters but resist effects and magic much better, undead can be affected by Turn undead, etc. The issue with the vampire is how fragile it is, so it is good to bring other troops for protection. However, once it receives a Gold medal, the Resurgence ability will make this less less of a problem.
Death Strike is especially useful because most undead have this ability which means that there is a good chance that the enemy will be cursed at one point. If you then bring strong units like Bone Horror or Reaper, you'll see up to 18-21 damage in one hit. A Death Knight will do up to 9 damage per hit (excluding charge and unholy champion). Even lower damage is multiplied by 1.5, and an unlucky 2 damage will be 3 and so forth. There's another thread which discusses how good Death Strike is with Dark Elven Bladedancer for this reason (double strike + death strike).

As i said :)...i have to test it out at SP-Maps or even a MP-Game becuase i only played them at the campaign until now and there you start in a position where you build up nearly from nothing and the enemy is throwinh waves of Knights at you...but many thanks for the Tipp.

By the Way, the Hive is done but to be honest it wasn't neither fun or difficult...just painfull and annoying.