Do you clear every single enemy unit of the enemy or do you go straight for the leader as an assassin. Personally I train one of my heroes to be a brute fighter. Super lethal in damage, good defense and hp and accurate. So he can penetrate the defenses and go for the kill. Usually I go for a quick leader kill when I know I can bribe/take over the enemy units if they are from the same allignment. Though sometimes I like to surround the enemy leader city with piles of 8 troops. So how do you play?

Senteria,

interesting question, and although i'm hardly a seasoned player,i'll be the first to chime in.

i haven't done an assassination run in ages -- only did it once, in fact, and that was from sheer desperation in one of those AoW 1 tri-level scenarios (although i'm sorely tempted to try it now after hammering away at an AoW 2 campaign mission for a week).

i still do my campaign missions the old-fashioned way: capture a town, build it up bit by bit until i deem it safe to venture further (which all too often backfires), then look for another city to capture to deprive my enemy of the income and troop-building capabilities.

yes, i also beef up my heroes any way possible, giving them available enchantments, exploring ruins for the equipment, etc., but in the missions i've been playing lately, sending them forth to kill the leader doesn't seem like an option.

as far as troops, i've done it both ways -- scads of level one archers, shard-throwers, etc., to defend a town, or if i have the luxury, witches and priests can hold a town indefinitely, and when it's time to leave and fight on the ground, they're pretty handy there too.

as far as fighters i find it excruciating to wait 15-20 or more turns to wait for an Ice Dragon, Angel, Elemental or other high-level summoned creature, but it often proves to be worth the wait (but, oh, the misery when they get hit with Banish Summoned spell).

ultimately, i've found the most crucial factor in winning a campaign mission is simply learning what's where on the map, meaning the early game is often an exercise in frustration (someone could do a great public service by publishing campaign/scenario maps, but i suppose that would be cheating, eh?).

that what you had in mind? will keep an eye out for other responses, as i'm currently getting smacked around in the AoW 2 campaign, and i'll take all the advice i can get. cheers.

Running through the AoW1 good campaign at the moment, and I've been using my HoMM3 strategy, mostly.

Rapid expansion with my heroes as castle killers (leader is spellcaster V, hasted groupies, chain lightning spam, second hero right now is beater, round attack, extra strike), hunting down any opposing forces when I can to remove them from the map.

If things become really dire, as they have in several of the levels so far, I rush to the enemy leader and try to create a block at his castle to severely stunt his growth. A lot of these maps became much easier when the enemy needed to concentrate on his castle defense and not on the crazy expansion they normally do.

Don't underestimate the piles of troops method, either. In the scenario where you're fighting four enemies at once (orc king, dark elf queen, lizards and frostlings) I had to stall the orcs with 30+ archers and swordsmen to keep their orc warlords from overrunning everything. If I used auto combat, they'd slaughter the entire force, but only take 1 or 2 casualties (auto always attacked warlords first). If I fought tactically, though, I could take down a force including 4 warlords and still have 8-10 troops left after the battle, enough to stall the king from moving, and give me time to retrain and move in more troops. This let my leader work on killing the frostling king, and my second hero take out the dark elves and lizards.


I'm in the first undead level now, after joining the high men. Issue I'm running into right now are those undead cities protected by the black cloud. Can anyone clue me in on how to break through those? Really cramping my expansion plans at the moment.

Ah, the AoW1 campaign -- great stuff, and since i'm currently totally stymied in Air 2 of the AoW 2 campaign, i can say with hindsight that it's a bit easier than the AoW 2 campaign. (Actually, that may be completely untrue, but i'm so frustrated right now that the AoW1 campaign is looking pretty attractive, although one thing about the AoW1 campaigns i haven't come across in 2 yet is those tri-level (surface/cavern/depths) missions, which i always hated.
your post about leader/spellcaster V has got me thinking -- that means no researching spells, but i really like the idea of having all those spellcasting points, could come in extremely handy. hmm... and what are hasted groupies and chain lightning spam? i always preferred Cosmic Spray over Chain Lightning because it seems to do more damage, but than again it doesn't freeze opponents like Lightning. hmm...
i do recall (very un-fondly) that mission with the Orcs -- i actually went after them first to get them the hell out of my hair, but it was brutal (and i think it may have contained an element of assassination). and yes, stacks were definitely involved -- who doesn't love stacks?
finally, i must have waged the Undead mission, since i've completed all missions/scenarios in AoW 1, but i seem to have blocked it out for my mental health. because i don't recall a black cloud. is it impenetrable? try posting a separate topic on it, you never know, someone might recall that particular obstacle. (in AoW2, the Undead (Nekron) are one of the weaker races, but if recall correctly, they're very difficult in 1. i don't envy you.)

The black clouds seem to hover over specific undead cities, and keep my groups from being able to even move inside it, so I can't attack them at all. Been searching for guides and even walkthroughs, but everything is so unspecific that I've found no mention of it at all.


Hasted groupies : I keep my spellcasting hero and anyone in his group hasted. His group only includes fliers or cavalry types to make sure his full movement is used each turn.

Chain lightning spam : With spellcaster V he can cast 8 chain lightnings a turn. Chain lightning has worked well on orc warlords, demons, and makes trash clean up pretty easy. Using fliers to either kill off units that didn't get stunned, or take out some of the heavy hitters that did get stunned ensures that my hero and his group take the least amount of damage possible.


I think my rapid expand policy is hurting me in this first undead map. I keep hearing about triggers and stuff, and that might be why I'm avoiding / harassing bone horrors and reapers with forces that couldn't hope to succeed in a full battle.

try heavengames (i think that's it). a wealth of resources there, though i don't recall a strategy guide -- or maybe i do but it was (as you say) vague on specifics --probably impossible to do a genuine walkthrough on a strategy game, mostly an assortment of tips and stats.
really like the "hasted groupies" idea --Haste happens to be an available enchantment in the mission i'm playing right now. on the other hand, if it's going to be a real brawl, wouldn't want my hero's party to outrun their mates. gonna give this some thought.
and that "Chain Lightning spam" is making me like spellcasting V even more -- i'm sold ("makes trash cleanup easier" -- laughed out loud).
sounds like the only way you're getting around the Undead army is to either hunker down and build some muscle, or hope to catch Undead leader unprotected (it happens -- i could tell you a story about two heroes on a boat and a horde of Dark Elves... )

Once my hero is sufficiently powerful, he usually just goes with his own stack (his groupies) and takes down multiple enemy stacks on his own. With each undead mission, this has been my strategy. My caster has a couple pegasi and an astra or two, everyone hasted. My beater has a titan, maybe a yeti or something else fairly fast as a backup, everyone hasted. They go out and terrorize the enemy, handling most everything on their own.

I was able to figure out eventually what those clouds were (Pestilence). My first time encountering them and unholy woods, so it took some accidents to figure out. A troop won't willingly move through terrain that damages them, but they will move one step at a time if you force them to. It took about 3 missions for me to figure that out.

I finished the good campaign, hated the last mission. Waiting for humans to move took forever, and Julia forced me to kill her. She'd offer me peace, but always reject an alliance, so I had to assassinate her to end it. *cry*

So far the evil campaign is fun. Been trying to get karagh to carry over to make my hero assassinating really take off, but none of the ones I build are offered on the carry over screen. I think they do that on purpose.

Can't wait to join the undead. Wraith spam is going to be fun.

... and actually i believe (could be wrong) that if you get through the cloud and get where you're going or doing what you're doing (a siege, for instance), and don't end up your turn in the cloud, you take no damage (pestilience cloud is usually green -- could it have been some other atmospheric catastrophe?)

never fought the evil campaign -- i'm far too noble for that ):O. actually, my grandson (he's 8) just started AoW 1 and wanted to play the dark side, and i talked him out of it, mostly because i know i'll be hand-holding the first 4-5 missions and i can't see leading a troop of evildoers, or to put it another way, i can't see fighting against Merlin after taking him through the entire campaign and all the scenarios. i think i need counseling.

[btw, i just recently started AoW 2 (9th mission, turn one) -- have you played it? quite a few impressive upgrades, graphically and gameplay-wise, but now that i'm going back to the first with my grandson, i honestly couldn't tell you which i like better -- AoW is much more simplistic, but we decided the battle sound effects were more fun. Merry Christmas,]

I've been playing shadow magic for the last week or so, and I generally buff up my hero to obscene levels as well as research everything before progressing to the next campaign. My heroes can basically take out entire armies by themselves with magic support from my wizard. Its kind of amusing.

I just played another campaign and this time I attacked the orc leader, being a halfling hero, with a full stack of 8 silver dragons, just for the fun of it. It felt so powerful. Too bad I couldn't take any to the next level. I wonder if anyone knows how that's determined.

I am currently playing through the Shadow Magic campaigns, and my basic strategy is to take my time...and I use the time, to build up my cities, especially my main starting city to the point I build an Item Forge. Once I have the Item Forge, I make a "Casting Crown" for my wizard (10 more casting points!), and then "use" items for my Heroes with Drain Will, and Dominate. When all works well, I can often steal the enemies more powerful units to my side, and more often than not, a hero or two of thiers as well, that carry over into your next mission :-). The only thing you need to be careful of, is watching the alignments of your stolen units. Mixing for instance "good" units with "evil" units can result quickly, in poor morale, and having them desert you (sometimes even with a hero in the stack with Bard Skills). Keep such units with similiar alignments together in a stack, or with Neutral alignment units, and they'll hang and fight for you to the end :-). The other great thing about dominating and stealing the enemies units, is the cost to them. You are getting free expensifve units and heroes, and they are paying the gold or mana casting cost to put them into play!

In short...I never rush through a campaign scenario....I love taking the time to explore everything, and build my army and heroes to the final strike

I also found that In SoM campaign, it's a good tactic to simply build at least one Item forge, and then create a dominate + doom gaze artifacts and regeneration rings. The doom gaze has 15 attack and paralyzes enemies for one round which is very useful in many situations. Any spell that paralyzes or dominates the enemy is useful really, unfortunately most of them have low attack. To deal with that problem I try to improve my odds with poison etc.

I've experimented with life steal + double strike, and it's good too but is probably redundant with doom gaze. Doom gaze probably gives my heroes a better chance to survive because the troops don't have to deal with retaliation as much.

Usually, the campaign scenarios have troops you can buy while you are scouting, so it's a good idea to save the gold that you have, simply do housing for more growth. Of course, if you have seduce/dominate/trap, you'll get some troops that way too.

When I scout the map, I like to run with big stacks of units. My heroes are almost always protected by units who will serve as meat shields and/or healers. Healers are excellent units, great for offense and defense.

Yep, agreed. Haven't tried the Doom Gaze artifacts (love those Beholders though), but the Regeneration rings, Life Stealing, First Strike, and Double Strike items all rock too. Love casting Static Sheild on Heroes and some key units as well, as it often leaves enemy units stunned for a round much like Doom Gaze. Enchanted Weapon kicks ass too :-) *** when you have been able to research them, or trade for them with other wizards of course!