Yeah, don't let the difficulty curve deter you from playing this game. Both the game and its sequel where well worth the money spent when I bought them new. There's major race diversity, the magic aspect is fairly well balanced, imo, as well as the epic multi army battles and for me, the climactic sieges. That was one aspect I think HoMM/Disciples never really spent enough time on.

AoW conveyed the hectic feel of sending multiple armies up against a well fortified citadel, or on defense, the race to get your ranged units into firing range while sending your melee units into place to guard the gates against major incursion.

My best advice if the standard creep/fortify/produce formula doesn't work for you, play around a little. The game is worth it.

Yup :) The first Age of Wonders taught that in the very first scenario for the evil campaign.

I had issues doing this in Wizard's Throne. Maps tended to have a lot of bottlenecks and the enemy tended to start out with a lot of units. Which reminds me -- did anyone ever port the WT campaign over to SM?

I also wonder what the Wizards & Heroes v3 mod would do with regards to this. It adds a lot of skills and alters the stats of all of the Wizards to make them more defensive but also less tankish, and apparently alters prices so that the AI builds up bigger armies and wizard towers.

When creating a new campaign on the dark side. Get your hero dominate. This is very useful if you increase your hero's stats. It's very useful. I like the challenge in the game. Sometimes a bit frustrating though.

Don't think I ever used it. I'm leery of some of the hero upgrade choices as if the random number generator rolls against them and they don't work that turn, you lose a major player in the battle, and some other ones are only occasionally useful. I tend to stick to lifestealing, defense, attack, damage, and spellcasting for the most part, as their use is universal and reliable.

I do like to get every spellcaster a mana-less spell like Black Bolts or Hurl Lightning, though, as they are huge power increases to a character. I also love Web and especially Trap, as you can whittle the enemy's active players down a lot with Web, and with Trap you sometimes wind up keeping them, which is a great way to get free units to defend your frontiers and replenish troops far from home. I got a Dire Penguin to play with the other day using trap -- fun!

A hero upgrade tip re physical ranged damage -- archery misses a lot, but throw blade hits a lot. One or the other is a big help when your melee hero is low health but you still want him to contribute instead of just run away, and also when you bump into flyers. Being able to attack while not in melee is a big advantage for both melee characters (archery, throw blade) and caster characters (black bolts, hurl lightning).

I find poison darts not too reliable, so never take it.

Here's the big mistake that I find a lot of new players to any AoW game make:

They don't use enough magic.

Mana should be a problem. You should be struggling to keep it in the positive. New players will often have over 1000 mana crystals kicking around - this is a sign that you're probably in trouble.

Cast, cast, cast. Augment your units with enchantments. Swell your ranks with summons. Conjure up Poison Plants or Holy Woods to impede your enemy's movements. Blast them with storms, delay them, put status effects on them. Good usage of magic can easily turn the tide, especially in AoW2 and SM. Dark Gifted, Unholy Champion Bladedancers with Enchanted Weapons and Black Spider support can easily slaughter legions of enemy good-aligned units, as an example.

I made this mistake at first too. I would only cast spells in combat, aside from raising the occasional hero and summoning the really tough summons. My game got much better once I focused on making sure all my casting points were used up at the end of every turn (so long as mana allowed).

Agreed with this post. AoW and Disciples are very similar in the fact that if you don't take advantage of that burgeoning library of spells, you're gonna get creamed when going up against real threats.

yo, KingCrimson, good stuff!
just started AoW 2 after working my way through the campaign and every scenario in AoW 1, and i can tell you i'm getting slaughtered on a regular basis. will take a much closer look at magic -- used it just fine in AoW 1 with excellent results, but something tells me AoW 2 is a whole different animal. i often finish a turn with plenty of manna in reserve, but i'll see how i can use that now.
*heads back to computer to restart Campaign, Episode 1 for the dozenth time*

I haven't played AoW2 in ages (it's basically inferiour to SM in every conceivable way), but the first campaign is Fire, right? Humans vs Tigrans? Yeah that's a tough one, because Tigrans have Fire Cats and Mystics which, especially when behind walls, can absolutely shred Knights. The fact that so many of their units can attack air, as well, makes the Air Galley less valuable (though still pretty important). I don't think they have Beholders in TWT so that makes your life a lot easier, but still, those Mystics can be deadly.

Take advantage of Fire Halo to protect your units from his spells (and maybe Fire Cats? I can't remember if they do physical damage or not in AoW 2). Fury + Enchant Weapon on your Medium Cavalry can make a strong early strike force, and you can easily capture a couple of cities that way. Fire is great because it's summons are my favourite: Hell Hounds and Efreet are both very effective units, and a few Hell Hounds can round out your Cavalry quite nicely. I can't remember if you can get higher level spells in the first mission but if you can, Forge Blast can easily turn the tide. Not to mention Phoenix and Hellfire.

Fireball is an incredible combat spell. Get it and cast it often.

thanks much KC, will take all that under advisement.
still getting slaughtered. something tells me this is a map i've gotta explore many times until i find the sweet spots. right now, every time i bump into the Wakas, i'm vastly outnumbered and overpowered -- i can win the odd battle, but it leaves my forces so depleted, i may as well start over. furthermore, every time i establish and invest in a city, they come in great numbers and take it away -- permanently. (i'm considering an assassination run at the leader, whoever he/she may be.)
your advice on spells is helpful -- Hellhounds, Efreet and (yes) Forge Blast are readily available, as well as Enchant Weapon and Fury, but the AI seems to want me to research Dispel Magic from the start, and i always change it to something else. are you familiar with this spell (didn't use it at all in AoW 1)? and is it good policy to go along with AI-suggested spell research?

Funny you should mention that, the other day I was just playing that mission. Didn't finish it, but by turn 70 I had explored every corner of the map and Yaka had only one city left.
I didn't train many units - most of my forces until that point were those I rescued around the map. And in my "main" city, where I left Merlin, I didn't even built a single military structure.

Random tips:
-after getting the first city (the one with the mage tower) secure all mines and nodes around. They will be a crucial source of gold and mana until you get more cities.
-send your weakest units, those you'd never use in combat to explore. For the time being, the south path is the most dangerous to explore; fortunately, it is not the only one...
-Yaka has only three cities, and I've never seen the AI attack neutral towns in any AoW game. This is a great advantage for human players, in many, many ways.
-along the coast there are two neutral cities, with some good troops. An excellent chance for expansion. I recommend bribing them over fighting: you will recover the gold loss very soon (notice your income skyrocketing) and on top of that, you can use the extra troops to conquer the tigrans on the west.
-in this map there are many ruins, wich can be rebuilt with settlers. While they'd be a great addition on the long run, settlers are extremely hard to build early, because they'll drain a lot of your town population. I don't reccommend doing this, unless you're looking for a challenge.


On use of magic: I almost never use summons (except the most powerful, dragons and angels), and rarely use unit enchants, especially in the early turns: they are too costly. Instead, I rely on direct damage spells.
Since I don't have high need for mana, I can shift all my "power" to research, and get some much needed talents, Casting Specialist I and II at least, before researching new magic. The ability to cast 3 fireballs or one AoE spell per battle in the early turns is devastating.
This gives me quite an edge in battle, especially against units with low hp, wich die in one or two hits; even hopeless battles, when my forces are outnumbered (usually happens to my scouts) result in several enemy casualties. Given enough turns, even massive armies can be decimated by guerrilla tactics, such as using fast units to attack a garrison, unleash all magic, and then retreat.

well, well. after all that dithering, i ended up winning this mission in conventional fashion:

built up armies in the north and west, recruiting all neutral forces and making ample use of ship and teleporters, and by turn 50 had Yaka's forces semi-surrounded in a single city in the south by about 60 various troops (oddly, aside from the occasional repelled threat, Yaka's forces kept their distance the entire time i built up. even more oddly, they never attempted to flee the city, but stayed in place while i moved into position).
with heroes waiting in the wings, used foot soldiers to break down walls and inflict as much damage as possible, then moved in with strongest forces and won the day on turn 52.
as far as magic, nothing too fancy -- used basic Enchant Weapon and Fury spells on key combatants and summoned the odd Hellhound, and that's about it.
still puzzled about Dispel Magic -- never used it in AoW 1, but the AI seemed insistent on my researching it from the beginning of this mission, so i did -- tried casting it in the final battle (it was ready), and couldn't find anyone or anything to cast it on. don't know if it was a manna issue or no appropriate target. that spell's a head-scratcher for me.

Dispel magic simply disrupt enchants such as Stoneskin, Fury, Enchant Weapon, etc. on a single unit, it doesn't do anything else. I almost never use it, a single damage spell costs less and it's more useful, given how weak most units are in this game. Were it castable from the world map, then I'd definitely use it more, but as a combat only spell it's very, very situational.

There is no logic at all in the computer research reccommendations, at least I've never found it.