Seems like several people are having a lot of trouble with the Cult of Storms campaign. Maybe I'll give it a shot tonight and see what's going on.

OK, here's what tends to happen with the first mission of the Cult of Storms campaign.

One of the issues I have is that you're constantly on negative gold per turn.

This is because you start the game with several units and no towns/mines.

You only begin with 250 gold as well.

Even when I get three towns (goblin, two elvish) and two mines I still barely get into positive gold per turn (when they are producing merchandise).

And because that takes a few turns, my 250 starting gold is almost all gone (and it takes 80-90 gold to take the goblin town without a fight).

This means I can't really make any units or fortify those towns, and with no new units I can't expand any further.

Then the mines get stolen from me because I don't have the units to protect them.

Warning: It's been a while since I've played this game.
Here's some decent tips:
How do you defend properly?
There are few things as annoying as being raided, and here are some tips:
1: Use natural chokepoints!
You can build those scout towers, and you can use guard mode too, to set watches.
If you have chokepoints, such as river crossings and mountain passes, put a defensive stack there. This way you might be able to use 2 stacks to defend against just about anything, and not need full stacks in every city.
2: Defensive stacks are different from offensive ones. They have different needs, and different strengths. A good *basic* defensive Human stack is:
4x Pikemen
4x Ballista
The formation is like this:
[ENEMY FORCE]
P P P P
B B B B
This way, they'll weather a storm of bolt-fire, and their cavalry have to face pikes, which they won't like. This is not a be all, end all stack, but it's a good starting point.
The idea behind a defensive stack is to HOLD the enemy, and shatter them. If they have the ranged advantage, they will force the enemy to move within range quickly, and they will force the enemy to spend their movement points moving towards you, instead of around you. This way you won't need much speed. If you defend a settlement, you have an additional advantage in that you don't have to worry about breaching the gates. And Ballistae are good against rams, the cheap level 1 siege unit.
ALWAYS have a stack in your city. It doesn't have to be a big stack, but you don't want that single flyer to take out every city you own. 2 archer type units is enough for most of the low-tier flyers. I'm not saying a full stack, just a small one.
When fighting defensively, realize that you have a very simple objective: Smash the enemy siege weapons and flyers, and hold any breach.
That's it. You want heavy infantry and ballistae to do this, as ballistae are cost effective bastards, and heavy infantry will slaughter their lighter brethren. (Orcs are surprisingly good on the defensive if you play them this way. Swordsmen and Warlords are very good units, and their ballistae are cursed for that extra oomph. Dwarven Cannons make for the good-guys' defensive specialists.
Raiding in force:
This is when you have a stack of mobile decent troops, that can go far, and kill smaller stacks without much worry. Halfling riders, Azrec elephants, human medium cavalry, etc. are good examples. (Halfling riders are the poorest ones statwise, but a size 2 city can crank them out every round! You can swarm the enemy with cavalry this way).
Raiding in force is a good way to take care of artillery heavy stacks, as you have the mobility to get into melee before they shoot you to pieces. If the enemy employs pikemen, take down the artillery and run away. Let some other stack take care of the rest. :)
Siege: Remember that you have plenty of time.
Don't rush it. Remember to choose units that fit the purpose. You want cavalry and heavy infantry to rush into any breach, artillery to make those breaches happen, and maybe som flyers if you have them, or something similar to go get those pesky ballistae.
As for strategic advice: Raiding in force is expensive, you can get 4 stacks of 2 cavalry instead and spread out much more quickly. However, it gives you the flexibility to overrun early settlements. Azrecs and Halflings should aggressively pursue this strategy, since they have good level one raiders. (Elephants can knock down walls!) Everyone else might want to wait it out. If your opponent fortifies it might seem like a waste, and even capturing smaller settlements seems like a waste when you know he'll retake them pretty soon.
Thus, my advice is: Send those stacks in deep. If you can afford a stack of 8 cavalry not being a part of your main forces, it's likely rather late game. Send them deep into enemy territory, and have them raze EVERYTHING they can get their hands on. Remember that units cost money, and everything you deny him, he can't use against you. Raze nodes, mines, waterwheels, construction yards... Everything.
This strategy is most effective with azrecs (elephants!) and halflings (Pony Riders!), but can be used by any race. Listen, all you have to do is to kill the keeper leader. (Your boss' mother.)
Just pack all your strongest units together, and head north. Let the other crap run free. :)
Your stack should be 4x wolf raiders, 2x Orc assasins, the big beetle and yourself.

Just run like hell to the north, and assault the walls. Everything else is optional, although conquering the cities in the middle of the map gives the elves something to do in the meantime. That's how I did it, in about 5 minutes.

Seriously?

I'll give that a shot.

Seems very counter-intuitive though, I'd always assume that you need to build up your troops before assaulting the objective. (I do like to turtle...)

Nah, your objectives are to take out the leader. Also:
you should still grab the mines, and the gold. Use the shitty stacks for this. Grab anything undefended with the shitty stacks you have. This way the enemy will have to spend time getting their stuff back, and won't have time to bother you. Be advised that there are two dangerous stacks before finding the boss, so be careful.
(I played all combat on auto before submitting this tip though, so you should do fine. Most importantly: put all your skillpoints into defense. That way you're untouchable by lower level crap, and can wipe out small stacks yourself.)

EDIT: There is a nice way of doing this the turtle way too, which is a good 2nd playthrough kind of thing, as it allows you to grab all your spells on the first level. (My favourite is water/earth, btw)

This involves you eating a lot of shit early on, and fighting some difficult battles, in order to grab the two elf-cities right north of the first goblin one, building walls, and migrating them to goblins. In that order. Once you have done that, spam archer-type units and just auto-combat. :)

Thanks for the tip!

Took five minutes, like you said. I knew I was doing something wrong, that the first mission shouldn't be that hard!

Finally got to playing the evil campaign. The first round is pretty tough if you try to be methodical about it. There are a few secrets, including one involving using one of the beetle's special powers.

It IS pretty much a rush job, but I managed to grab all the towns but the main town in the direction the beginning clue tells you to go. The problem is, in part, that you don't have a starting income, and that your money drops significantly as long as you manage to keep getting new units.

One way to remedy this was to take risks with my troops; the more that die, the fewer I have to pay for in upkeep. The best way to keep the towns you have is to build walls around them when you can afford to. The more walled cities the less likely they'll be taken, because a lot of the troops in this level simply don't have siege weapons.

If you manage to grab enough things efficiently, you'll start gaining income in a while.

But yeah, if you can run in and do the assassination that the scenario title suggests, you don't need to be as worried about it as I was.

It IS a tough mission to start out on, though. I'd suggest anyone having trouble with campaigns to try scenarios first. Much more breathing room with those.

Run and... what. A bit counter-intuitive, but i guess that is in the mission statement. >_>

Every strategy game ever, you have lied to me! o/

What I have learned, as someone who is normally fairly turtle-ish in my style of play, is that you have to be very aggressive in this game. It's a nice change of pace from HOMM, where I can beat Hard (Rook) computers fairly easily at this point. In this game, I still struggle with even squire difficulty.

Also, I prefer having allied victory on, as otherwise all your allies will declare war on you once you finish off the other side, which just seems kind of weird and anachronistic to me.

Maybe I didn't turtle enough in HOMM, and that's why I'm better at AoW than I ever was at HOMM. I was sorta surprised when people were playing HOMM on higher difficulties because I never could get that far if I had anything more than the level that doesn't give either side advantages.

I do allied victory too, although it doesn't always work out if the AI personality is set to "jerk". Sometimes I would have definitely lost if I didn't have that on, because I allied with an AI in a superior position to me.

To everyone:

What is everyone playing? Classical (turn based) or Simultaneous?

Classical. The simultaneous mode feels weird and wrong to me.

When single player, classical. When playing with people over the net, simultaneous - makes arranging strikes and huge battles so much easier.

Yes, the simultaneous is for multiplayer.

This game will be difficult in the beginning, but a part of the fun is to figure the game out yourself.

One really important thing that isn't covered in the manual is how to split your party. To deselect a squad you left click the area below the unit portrait where their remaining distance number is displayed. But if you only want to select one or a smaller number of the squads you deselect those that you want to use and then rightclick. The selection is now inverted.

A useful feature in battles is the ability to see the hexagonal grid. Just press F5 to see it and then repeat to remove it. This is useful since shooter units that use archery and many other projectile weapons can always shoot 8 hexes across. Some can shoot 12 hexes across, like ballistas and catapults.
You can also calculate how far a unit can walk if they are walking across normal terrain. Each hex costs 4 points to cross and to attack you need one point. Thus a highmen swordman can walk across 8 hexes, but he can just walk across 7 hexes if there is a unit next to the seventh that he needs to attack.


If you would like some more tips these will be helpful:


Daveman's Unofficial Age of Wonders FAQ is a good place for beginners:
http://aow.heavengames.com/strategy/faq.shtml


The last post in this thread explains some combat mechanics that wasn't explained in the manual:
http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=1&tn=178&st=0


Little Known Gameplay Tips & Tricks:
http://aow.heavengames.com/strategy/tips-tricks.shtml

This section contains many useful tips for those that have played the some more.
A few of these tips are things I consider exploits and I advise against using them.

Here are some excerpts from the page that I think you should know of:


By clicking on messages from the Event Screen (lower right-hand corner of display) you can get lots of info and even review entire battles. Very useful for determining enemy forces that may be out of sight. Double click on a battle to view it in fast combat (FC) mode (even if it was played out in tactical combat (TC)). Right-click on the event and you will be shown where on the map that event took place (even if it’s still unexplored to you).

If your hero gains a level, but you're not sure what you want to adjust right away, hit the "Cancel" button and begin your turn. Now you can check out your hero and decided what you want to power-up. To recall the "level up screen," double-click on the "Hero gained a level" message from the events screen in the lower-right hand corner.
This will only work on the turn he\she leveled up.

You need at least "neutral" relations with a race to migrate another city to that race; even if you have one of the race's cities under your control or your ally's control.

You need at least "polite" relations with a race to be able to buy a neutral city of that race.

The more farms a city has, the more gold it makes per turn. If a city has forests right next to its walls, no farm can appear where that forest hex is so this is lost income to you. However, when you use a Builder to construct a road, it will demolish the tree hex and replace it with a road hex. Farms can grow on a hex with a road through it. Have you drawn the connection yet? Thus, you can use a builder to demolish the trees growing immediately around a city, by constructing a road all around the city. Farms will then appear on the newly plowed earth at a rate of 1 per turn. NOTE: Constructing roads can be tricky; you can only construct roads in a straight line. So if you have to turn the builder, stop it, select the "construct road" option again, and resume building until you run out of movement points for that turn.

Defense and Resistance
Defense will protect a unit against all attacks and spells that do damage.

Magic bolts, and most magic spells, target defense, not resistance.

Possess, Invoke Death, Dominate, (and some others) are touch attacks, and have to overcome both defense and resistance. First, you have to touch them (defense), then you have to affect them (resistance).

Resistance protects against "other effects" like curse, poison, frozen, stunned, entangled, as well as the spells Vaporize, Entangle, Slow and Turn Undead.

No, it's very easy. Your mission is: Run to the leader, and kill her. This is a very viable strategy in AoW, and it's good that the lesson hit's you early.

If the AI have 50 stacks of level 4 units heading 4 you, but you're going to kill the leader the next round anyway, then you've won. It's one of the reasons the Human faction is so great: The air galleon is rape-tastic, since most leaders are melee oriented, and lack good enough spells to take one down. Enchant it to hell and back, and it will slaughter leaders.

They're teaching you a very good and necessary strategy. That they want to tease you into learning this strategy early on is a very good thing.

As for the first mission, there is a size 4 city to the northeast if you really *want* to turtle.
Grab the little town to the west, annoy the elves, grab the large city and migrate it, and you're good to go. :)

It's only counterintuitive because it's not a usual strategy. But leader assasination is great.
Especially if you have a good stack, the leader you're opposing doesn't, you have no economy, and no army... Just like in the first mission.

AoW is difficult until you realize that assasination is a valid tactic, and that there's units specially made for it. (Orc assassins, halfling rogues, every flier ever, and HUMAN AIR GALLEONS OH MY GOD WTF.) You don't want to play against late-game humans. They will make every melee unit you have useless, and try to kill you in new and interesting ways...


As for your own hero, based on what I've just said, what sort of skillset should he have?
1: 10 defense.
2: Whatever you want him to do.
3: 20 Health.
4: Every enchantment you can afford. Earth/Wind and water is your friend. (Physical protection? + 2 defense? That means 12 defense and half damage recieved! Call within the next 20 minutes, because you know we can't do this all day, and recieve the graty absolutely free.)

However, since we're like 4 people from heavengames here, it seems, what spellbooks are people using?

Are there other like me who're torn between Earth/Air, but must have water?
Great hail, shards of ice, healing water, that thing that makes you partially liquid, flood + waterwalking...

Am I the only one who LOVES this spellbook?

I've played this a ton, so I know a lot of it, but I think you miss my point: you can make it so assassinations are impossible in the scenarios if you want a bit of a challenge. Lord difficulty feels different if you can't rush the leader.

My spellbook tends to be some combination of life, water, and earth. I like having remedy AND healing water since 2 remedies allow for a 4-cost blast of something, but water heals totally.