Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic

30 ratings
Campaign tricks
By Akomis
I love this game, finished campaign few times, wanted to share some tricks i discovered. There are hard missions, for them there are ways how to change "AI is cheating, this is not fare and not fun!" into "He-he, where is your mighty army now?".

Disclaimer: i never played pvp, all hints are for solo players.
   
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Winning a siege
Problem:
You need to win a siege against 3-6 packs of high level units.

Basic math behind this method. In defense you cannot choose the battlefield, so you must place your troops so they could not be caught into battle apart from each other. This means that you can have up to 3 packs and you will face no more than 4 packs:


Strategy. Units you need:
  • tanks - attack doesnt matter, most valuable parameters: defense, hit points, immunities/protections (phys is especially good), resistance.
  • single target heavy hitters - poor man`s option is basic archers. Crossbows are better. Then - balistae and cannons are top choise. Just get what you can afford.
  • ranged aoe - enemy units will mass at the gates, so anything with "*** breath" is good. But catapult is better. Their fire bombs can be absolutely devastating.

Tactics:
  • Priorities: fliers, siege weapons, heavy hitting melees, supports, ranged units. Dont waste your time on archers - the wall protects you really well. Your main threat is that somebody will hit your cannons with a sword.
  • Dont attack with your tanks.Damage you can deal with him is not worth the risk of getting unfortunate hit and losing the whole battle with breached gate.
  • Dont move your tanks forward when gate are crushed - it will get more damage. You need it at green hexes, not red one:

  • Place your ranged units apart from each other. You are not the only one with aoe attacks.

Pros
  • It is very cost effecient way to kill enemy units.
  • It is fun to play such sieges.

Cons
  • It is very expensive. 3 packs of level 2-3 units will consume about 150-300 coins per day. You cannot protect every city.
  • It binds a large army to a single city. You wont have them at your second front when you will need to catch a city.
  • It wont protect your mines/mills/magic sources and other objects.
  • There are army compositions that counters your units. Good luck killing Efreets with fire bombs. Or trying to keep Iron Maidens out of the town.

Summary:
It can work only in case if AI dont have choice and have to attack same city again and again. If done right it can crush wave after wave until you will have every city maxed, every skill and spell learned (you can also pump your heroes up with home made artiacts if this is not enough). But beware of relying to hard on static defenses. It can fail and usually after shell is cracked nothing is there to stop intruders from getting weakly protected inner parts.
Getting through unwinnable fight
Raiders are already at city gates just a turn before you army can get there or dragon training will be finished. Sometimes you need just one more turn.

Run, Forest! Run!
If you have at least one quick unit, you have one simple option - run in circles until turn 25. Done. It wont work if enemy has range, quicker units, large pack that can surround your runner, deadly magic and lots of other reasons. But if you have just one tough but slow thug against your light cavalryman, why not to try?

Hide and Seek
Variation of previous method. If you have a city wall you can escape even from cavalry. What you need is: after the gates had fallen and enemies almost got your lone wizard - go out of the city through another gates! If AI`s pathfinder will tell that your runner is not far - attacker will run back through the gates it broke. Next turn - go back into town.

Too high
If you have air - kill anything that can damage it.

Get me if you can!
If you have air and ranged units behind the city walls you can do even better. Place them at the corners of the wall like that:

Until flyer is there your ranged unit cannot be hit by ground melee units. What`s more it even prevents walls from being damaged, so dont fear wall crushing beasts! But beware - this position is very vulnerable flyers or wall climbers.
Capturing a city
This section is about how to capture a city with limited resources. When you have the whole map it is trivial, but not so at first turns.

Hero
It is possible to capture a city with a single high level hero. This way has its limits but it is very powerfull at start of new mission when you have no army and is very cost effecient.

Commando style
If you have units that can bypass city walls - they can become your advantage, hindering movement of defender units.

The most devastating stike is - all air. Ground melee will be useless. All you need is just kill all ranged and air units. Then either finish ground ones or retreat. Without ranged units in the city you can safely attack your ground force.

If you have mixed forces - it is best to delay commando attack until your ground forces breach the walls. Commando units are usually less defended, so if you dont wait they will get all the attacks and die quickly. Striking during the melee fight will do a lot more damage.

Front assault
If you dont have high tech it can be done with simple ground units. The key is - split your forces. You dont want have 6 units waiting until other 2 will crush the gate and squeeze through the defenders. This way they will take a lot of damage from ranged attacks. Better solution is to keep only 4 units in each pack and attack from different directions. Then send every 2 units to separate gates. Such way you will greatly reduce damage from ranged and aoe weapons.
Heroes
I use heroes in two roles: terminator and support

Terminator
Can serve as one man army, destroying weeker enemy squads, capturing cities, exploring ruins for items, spells and gold. To get one you need:
  • Defense first. Solo hero will take ten times more hits than he/she will deal.
  • Attack/damage.
  • Special attack modifiers:
    • Cold strike - disables unit for 3 turns. Great for crowd control! But will be removed on any extra damage, so be careful with aoe attacks.
    • Lightning strike - stuns unit for one turn.
    • Double strike - just x2 damage
    • Life stealing - with this you just cannot lose some fights
    • Fire strike, ignition - best part of this is -3 attack effect for few turns
    • Energy Drain - sets -3 att / -3 dmg on hit.
  • phase, wall climbing - very usefull for city battles
  • willpower, protections, block - very useful, but are present on many items and spells

Support
  • Spell casting
  • Healing
  • Leadership
  • Ranged attacks, markmanship
  • Breath attacks
  • Unit control attacks: net, trap, seduce, dominate, strangle
  • defense/resistance - you need your hero alive
To be continued
Guide is not finished, have plans to cover:
  • Strategic things, beating large forces with small rembo groups
  • Economy of war
  • Cities
  • magic and skills
7 Comments
aeroth Apr 16, 2022 @ 6:25am 
Focus on summoning monsters in early game then get hellfire spell from the war temple quests and spellcasting heroes. you will wreck any army with 2 hellfires
olivier.boissiere Mar 6, 2022 @ 5:30pm 
Well more than that rtc, use your max casting specialists heroes (well + create and hat for casting specialist0 so your heroes and avatar can cast hellfire once per day at least each.
RTC Nov 12, 2020 @ 4:17pm 
Sacred Wrath + army with multiple wizard heroes
EclYpse Sep 14, 2020 @ 11:18am 
You could also put in there something like having a single (or a few) units with fire immunity attack a city and then casting hellfire. Retreat and repeat.
Usually if you use it twice weaker units will already be dead by then making the city very easy to overrun, but if you want to go all out, having your wizard wear a helmet with casting specialist further increases your casting points to a max of 90 which enables you to unleash 3 hellfires on 1 day which will most likely kill all level 1 and 2 units and even many level 3 ones
malice Oct 2, 2017 @ 9:13pm 
Good guide
Akomis  [author] Aug 23, 2017 @ 11:08am 
After 25th turn you have a draw, which means keeping a town.
Thank you for comment, i had forgotten about this guide. Will try to finish it)
Cross Kamui Jul 31, 2017 @ 1:34am 
"Run, Forest! Run!"
What happens after the 25th turn? :D Btw i love the references!