I have done most of the possible campaigns in Age of Wonders 1. It's the same campaign start and finish but there are a number of different routes and the ending changes according to which one you pick.
This is actually the second scenario. In the first one you assassinate Queen Elwyn to freak out the Keepers. Here we need to find the passage to the city of Lunaris in 20 turns/days.
You get an ally for this one!
You can't use certain spells underground!
A nice bonus like this can really liven up any scenario.
Will press north to find the Dwarf enemy and hopefully the tunnel exit.
I bought Lightning Strike and Dominate at the start when building my character and I almost always choose to be Lizard as I get swimming, which can't be bought but you can cast it on yourself.
Probably the best spell selection in my Air/Death/Water/Cosmos spellbook.
Pushing north
The wipe out
There are the Dwarves!
I ran instead... if you kill the Dwarf the Orc turns on you... so decided to concentrate entirely on escaping this place
My motley crew find Lunaris
The advantage of starting one hex away in a city battle is they all start running straight at you, giving you a few turns to form up
They were a little too close so I moved back to blunt their charge
The Troll took out 3 or 4 Halfling Swordsmen by himself, the Goblin Darters are excellent as usual; they have a good chance of inflicting Poison status which really weakens enemy units.
Victory.
I always liked this. Choose what you could bring forward to the next scenario in the campaign.
Lunaris, now Goblin infested. Yet again, an Orc ally to assist.
Fire magic is meh, weak enchantments, unexciting combat spells and weirdly narrow/unusable/broken global spells. Dark and Light are probably the most solid at all levels. Air is excellent throughout as well while Water has the very powerful Healing Water spell but is not too exciting beyond that. Would probably rank them Dark/Light/Air then Water then Earth and finally Fire at the bottom.
The Halfling Leader threw himself at me in the centre of the map. He got himself killed. Two each of Satyrs, Swordsmen and Slingers versus my 4 Darters and 2 Priests. One of my units was a Ram which is useless in combat bar breaking walls. The base of poisonous, magical fire was too much. They normally don't just run at you but this guy did.
I had dropped these guys in just to harass the guy and he attacked me with a small force.
Moving against the Elves and the hidden Frostling player in the far north. Couldn't quite convince the Elf to move out at the right time so settled in for a longer game.
Wraiths are ridiculous. OP if you will. He killed all of these guys.
There are just so many little things crammed into this game. Note how many turns have passed. I'm not rushing this, researched loads of spells (the low level ones in this game are best) and leveled up my leader.
Orc ally managed to force Elf city into war mode!
They almost always leave when this happens. Took his capital without losing anyone.
These two red dragons would go up and murder the Frostling leader alongside the aforementioned Wraith (the only casualty).
Had to chase this guy around half his lands but eventually got him.
If the odds are tight I'll go tactical. They were stacked in my favour so I chanced the automatic battle.
Love this. Choice of siding with Orcs or Lizards next. While there are some splendidly massive battles in the Orc campaign against the Azrac Empire, I went for my old friends the Lizardmen, Probably my fave race.
Loads of write-ups in the campaign,
I'm a masses of archers kind of guy but I do love the variety in the Lizard race. The fiery Salamander, the unique Turtle Ballista and Catapults... Frog Riders!
The first scenario... I got lazy with the screenshots but I'll capture the next one properly
Lots of options to bring forward now. The heroes get very expensive as they level up in later scenarios, a few hundred points each by the last scenario. I'll make Shai Eggbuster here some sort of tank and leader of men and beasts. Leadership, Bard Skills and so on. Then I'll get another hero who can assist in my spellcasting.
