Halfling Campaign - Mission 1

A guide to help you with the first halfling campaign mission. The first part contains general tips, later on the guide contains spoilers.

Introduction

This guide is designed to help you beat the first mission of the halfling campaign. The guide is divided into 2 parts. The first 3 sections of the guide give a general overview of some helpful tips for the level. These sections do not contain any spoilers so if you want to enjoy the story, just read these 2 sections first.

The second part is more of a walkthrough and will contain spoilers and maps! You've been warned! On to the guide...

General Mission Tips

This mission is a long and challenging one. It forces you to play both defensively and offensively. It is also a LARGE map! Here's some general tips to keep in mind.

1. Keep your cities well defended! Your cities will get attacked eventually. There's quite a few monster nests (and other things) near your starting position. Monster hunters and adventurers really pull their weight defending against monsters and killing nests. Don't forget to build walls and rabbit burrows as well.

2. Level up your sorceress early. Make sure she gets lots of xp early on. Although she has to survive, make sure she gets in on the action. If you level her up enough, she can get the awesome chain lightning with enough spell points to use it.

3. You'll need a navy eventually. 1 large boat and 2 small boats was enough for me early to mid-game and then I built a few more later.

4. Keep your early units alive by doing manual combat early. It can be tiresome, but in the early turns it's safer to keep both your armies grouped together and to do manual combat. Halfling units are pretty fragile, despite the lucky trait, and autocombat tends to kill tier 1 units that might not need to die.

5. Strength in numbers. Your armies will be small and possibly outnumbered. Early on it's best to keep 2 stacks each led by a hero together. This minimizes losses and lets both leaders gain xp early on. When fighting the large enemy cities, you'll probably want 3 stacks of units to have even odds.

6. Don't ignore Inns. With such a large map, your reinforcements will take a while to arrive from your home cities. There's one inn that is really good for restocking your army. With the partisan specilization, you automatically get a 25% discount on all units purchased from inns. This makes them a lot more afforable than you're probably used to. Sometimes it's even worth it to wait a turn or two, saving up money to get a nice tier 3 units or some elven longbows. Don't forget there's an inn outside your capital if you need a quick emergency defender!

7. Scouting is vital and rewarding throughout the entire game. Warlord scouts are cheap and they can walk on water. It's a huge map and you're going to need multiple scouts. If you're careful with them, you can avoid some of the wandering monsters by going to into the ocean. Avoid enemy ships by hopping one tile onto land. By staying near the coast, you'll improve your scout's life expectancy. The good thing about all of this scouting is that the map is FILLED with goodies! There's tons of piles of gold, treasure chests, mana piles and free building upgrades. It pays to scout from early game to late game. You can also use your scout to drop a sneaky dread siege on an unsuspecting enemy town or to disjunct a glyph of warding before your army arrives.

8. Skip the crypts! There's several crypts near your starting position including one that will eventually be within the borders of your throne city. Sadly, this is a pretty big challenge. The units in there can be pretty tough early on and any dead units can come back alive. I opted to skip the crypts early on and come back to them when I had strong units like warbreeds and mounted archers. If you decide to go for it, be sure to make a save first. I was able to beat the crypts pretty early, but lost several units for rather medicore loot so I reloaded. If you really want to clear them safely, you can spend several turns casting a spell like chain lightning or rot and then retreating. However, I didn't find this to be worth the time.

Unit Tips

The unorthodox design of the map and your leader will likely lead you to try some lesser known units and spells. Some units and obscure spells are better than you think while others are not worth building or researching. Here's my take on the value of certain units for this mission.

Halfling Units:

Halfling Adventurer- These units are better than you might expect for this mission. Monster slayer and animal slayer are key abilites. There's lots of monster nests, roaming animals and dangerous serpents. Their slingshots aren't bad but don't forget they can melee as well. The best part about this unit is that you can get them for free with the spell Call Militia. When used with some monster hunters, adventurers can handle annoying nests with few losses for cheap.

Halfling Jester- While I like this unit on random maps, it's not so good on this mission. Why? Because your halfling monster hunters are tougher, get the same "shoot fireworks" ability, and they hit harder. With your units needing to melee, having to shoot area effect can sometimes harm your own units. Also, for most smaller towns, they take 2 turns to produce which could be spent building something stronger or just a monster hunter.

Halfling Nightwatch- You start out with several of these. If you get some free, that's fine. Shield can be handy and so is wall climbing. I wouldn't go out of my way to build these because they're really slow. In big battles, they'll be lagging behind the rest of your units.

Halfling Farmer - Normally a fun unit, it's sadly outclassed a bit since you're a warlord. I didn't build any but got some free. Throw chicken can be handy in trying to slow down enemy units but it's not reliabe on tougher tier units.

Halfling Brew Brother - Another unit I didn't bother building. You'll eventually get a few of these free. If you're having trouble keeping your units healed, you may find them more valuable than I did. However, I took the field medic perk on Ernest and moved injured units into his party to heal faster while wandering around. The other problems with Brew Brothers are the fact that you need to build a temple and shrine to get them. It's unlikely you'll have mana problems after you have two cities that have expanded their borders a bit. Therefore, it's a bit of a waste of 3 turns to build a shrine, then temple, then a brew brother. Late game, you might want temples for Grand Palaces but not early or mid-game. Finally, the range on their cleavers is really short!

Halfling Pony Rider - I didn't bother with the pony riders either. I could see an argument for them, however. Your throne can get a really nice stable upgrade. With the bloodlines research that boosts mounted hp, you could build a pack of these. However, I focused more on warlord units instead. Another reason I didn't build these is because I didn't build many war halls, opting instead to build the warlord buildings that give more powerful units than the farmer and pony rider.

Halfling Eagle Rider - Finally, a good unit for this mission! They're quite good at covering a lot of ground, they can fight ships, fly over water, and sneak over walls. The only problem is that the building you need for them is quite expensive and takes a long time to build. I opted not to build too many of these, instead focusing on the warlord units. If you complete the empire quest for monoculture (easy to do on this map) you'll get a small stack of these free! You'll need to decide if you want to try and go for these in a city or try to research manticore riders. It's probably best to dedicate a city to building one or the other, since you'd pay a ton of gold to produce both in the same place.


Warlord Units:

Scout - Possibly the MVP of the entire map! No kidding! These guys are so useful it's incredible. They're only 24 gold to build once you research discounted infantry. They will always pay for themselves! There's so much treasure and free building upgrades scattered around the map you'll be glad you made them. Try to have 2 or 3 scouts looking around at all times.

Berserker - Not a bad unit. I certainly built some but they tend to die a bit more often than I like. Sometimes you just need something to hold the line and do some big damage. These fit the bill, but don't expect them to last. You'll probably want to build some of these in the early to mid game. If you spend a turn buffing them with warlord or sorcerer stuff, they can be pretty deadly.

Monster Hunter - You'll be building a lot of these! A really great unit for this level. There's tons of nests and monsters running around. Their fireworks attack is a solid ranged attack as well. When paired with adventurers, you get a cheap force that can either defend your towns or strike out and get rid of pesky monsters.

Mounted Archer - Quite a good midgame unit. Takes a bit to research but worth it. I didn't find that the calvary bloodlines upgrade was necessary to enjoy them. If you're careful with them, they shouldn't get hit anyway. Don't forget to use their sprint ability!

Phalanx - Another solid warlord unit. I didn't build too many of these simply because I bum rushed the AI a bit and by the time I had researched these, I opted for the more offensive warbreed or manticore rider. That being said, these are great for protecting your more fragile units and can really clog up a town gate. If the game had degenerated into a drawn out slugfest, I would have built a ton of these.

Warbreed - A good unit that gives your halflings some durablity. Sadly, if you're aggressive you probably won't need to build too many of these. I did make a few to clear out the tougher crypts and sites near my cities that I didn't clear in the early game. Their lack of flying is a drawback, however.

Manticore Rider - Big surprise! This unit is really good! It's even better than normal because of all the water you need to fly over while hopping between islands. Once you get it, it will certainly help you win! The only possible drawback is that it sort of competes with eagle riders that play about the same role. You will probably want to try to go for one or the other early.

Other Units-

All Siege Units- Not really necessary. There's lots of rough terrain like forests, wetlands, jungle and bodies of water to cross. A lack of roads means these will really slow your armies down. As a warlord, you should be able to smash through gates with ease or fly over them. If you have a city that keeps getting attacked, a lone trebuchet wouldn't be a bad investment.

Builder - I built one builder to extend some roads in the midgame. Probably not necessary but can be helpful shuttling reinforcements to the front line.

Frigate - Quite useful. Your good cities will be able to build these in one turn. For my navy, I would use mostly frigates. You can crank out 2 frigates in the time it takes to make 1 Galleon. Considering how powerful their ram attack is, I would say the frigates are usually the better value.

Galleon - I would typically build 1 Galleon as the flagship for my navy and then the rest would be frigates. The cannon shot is nice but keep in mind boats cannot heal.

Spell and Upgrade Tips

There's some cool uses for some rather obscure spells in this mission. I'll mention some of them here while skipping the obvious ones.

Shout of Intimidation - Useful for the entire mission surprisingly enough. Early on, it can scare away the toughest wandering monster or animal for 2 turns. Later on, however, you can use it expecting it to fail on tougher units. If used for several turns in a row, even when failing it can significantly delay your opponent's best unit. For example, I had a closely matched fight with 2 of my frigates and a galleon vs. 2 baby krakens and a real kraken that appeared in an ambush. I cast intimidation 2 turns in a row on the big kraken. It slowed it enough that we made short work of the baby krakens, then were able to focus ramming on the big one.

Bloodbath- Really critical for the city fights at the end. I usually like to cast this around the 2nd or 3rd round of combat. Sometimes the AI likes to disjunct it so usually I'll cast a cheaper, less useful combat buff first.

Raise Militia - Really useful early on. Can help you get some quick defenders and can even be handy once a city becomes a metropolis to make some quick guards to help defend a settler or something. Adventurers are quite good in this level so make use of this spell a lot.

Dread Siege - Critical to drop on big enemy cities. The trick is you really want to cast it the turn before the big battle so your leader has full spellpoints for the fight. Sneak a scout into the city's view early and drop this on them. It makes for a lot of fumbles.

Warrior Culture - Try to get this one early because there's lots of annoying enemy boats, wandering animals and such that will hurt your city morale by hanging out in your borders.


Water Master Spells - Water master is a rather rare choice. However, it has some cool uses on this map which might not seem immediately apparent.

Vengeful Frost - This spell is quite nice against draconians. If your scout gets attacked by a single draconian out in the wild, usually 3 frosts will kill the draconian tier 1 unit.

Rot - Not the most useful spell but there's a few crypts, a light amount of wandering undead, lots of boats, and later on you might have to fight a machine or two.

Summon Baby Kraken - Often as a warlord, you'll be out of gold but have plenty of mana. This spell gives you something to boost your navy for "free." Keep in mind that if the game drags on into a slugfest, the warlord's mastery spell will upgrade all baby krakens into the real ones for total mastery of the sea late game!

Freeze Water - Possibly the coolest spell in this level. Get this as soon as you can! It might even be worth getting some less useful water spells just so this shows up in your research. This spell is amazing on this level! You can lock enemy boats down for 3 turns, you can save your own land units 2 turns by freezing a narrow channel of water. There's lots of islands that have narrow gaps between them. This saves you from basically wasting 2 turns embarking your armies and having to protect them with boats. It's a great spell that's cheap to cast!

Partisan doesn't give you too much, but it does have some uses.

Folk hero you start out with makes Inns much cheaper and a viable source of units.

Guerilla Tactics can be handy if you want to wear down some tough monsters in a crypt for a few turns or if you happen to bite off more than you can chew taking on a heavily fortified enemy city!

So that's it for general tips, units, and spells. The next section is the start of the mission walkthrough. There will be SPOILERS! If you don't want spoilers, stop reading, play the mission until you get the plot events, then you can come back and read again.

Walkthrough - Early Game (SPOILERS)

You begin with a solid throne position and a decent starting army. Start building up your town and strike out to the west. There's a halfling town over there. Since time is of the essence, I say screw diplomacy and just invade the town. It's a lot faster than doing their dumb quests and paying them money. Halflings are a cheerful race, they'll get over it soon enough. Don't neglect to make a scout or two as well and start scouring the map for goodies. There's tons of gold on the various islands and also floating in the ocean in places. Often, finding a pile of gold early means getting another critical building early in the game instead of waiting to build it.

After you take the second town, you'll probably want to clear out a few mana sources near your throne. At first, mana will be a bit scare but after you clear these nodes and convert them to water nodes, you'll be flooded with mana. You can probably even skip building a temple.

Once you've secured your mana, you're faced with several options.

Option 1- You can try to hurry up and build a third town. There's a decent site directly south of your capital once you clear out the stuff. One spoilery thing is that the quest to build 5 metropolises doesn't actually matter past a certain point so don't stress about it. City building isn't critical but if you want to use your first cheap settler, the plot to the south isn't bad.

A decent spot for your 3rd town. You'll find a better one in a bit but keep this spot in mind.

Option 2- If you follow the land southwest of your 2nd town, there's a pennsula that connects to a fairy dwelling. There were a quite a number of monster nests, brigands, and pirates roaming around this area. If you want, you can clear them out and either ally or invade the fey dwelling. Personally, I am not a huge fan of these because it takes forever to upgade these cities and you can never build walls there. Since alignment isn't a concern in this mission, you could also pillage it for gold but the number of monster nests down there just didn't make this very attractive to me. More importantly, past the fey dewlling to the south on another island is a large draconian city. This is a more appealing target and it's not too heavily defended. However, getting to it will require either embarking and a naval escort or casting freeze water.

This shows the fey city as well as the draconian one. I've built a small town between the two. Note that this screenshot is from the late game but was the only thing I had to show it since I didn't explore it early. Also, check out how freeze water makes for a good bridge and keeps the enemy navy at bay.

Option 3- Continue to follow the road south and then east, staying on the large starting landmass. This is the option I chose. It leads to less initial cities but also gives your leaders lots of experience AND it has the chance to deliver an early knockout blow to your enemies before they get too established.

Follow the road east, clearing the easy sites, getting some loot and xp for both leaders. Really try to focus on getting your sorceress a lot of xp. (She doesn't stick around the whole scenario and you start with her current xp on the next level) I took field medic with Ernest very early on. You should have 2 armies, each led by a leader. Whenever a unit is damaged, be sure they end the turn in Ernest's stack for healing. Following the road for a while, you'll come to a draconian fort. It's pretty poorly defended and easy to take. Sadly, it's really not of much strategic use. I didn't even bother to keep a garrison there and the AI didn't bother it. It's mostly useful for the sole gold mine in the radius. Resist the temptation to build a town there, there's a MUCH better spot down the road!

Fort Useless...

On the homefront, continue to build structures while you can. Wandering monsters will probably begin to get on your nerves. You may want to consider making a squad of adventurers and monster hunters to start hunting down the nests. However, don't buy the adventurers, use Call Militia to get them for free! Keep building vital buildings and don't neglect research or defense. Be sure to keep both towns defended with a decent force of ranged units. At one point I left my 2nd city empty to kill a few wandering monsters and a sneaky succubus from pirate independants snuck in and took it! Your capital can also get attacked by wanderers and it's important to keep a good garrison there for plot events coming up after turn 20. Research wise, focus on unlocking the warlord units as well as getting enough spellpoints with warfare to use your spells.

The homefront on turn 14. 30 casting points, a small garrison in both cities and an annoying snake nest to the west. My armies are far to the east at this point as you can see on the minimap.

Cross the bridge and keep your wits about you. There's a black dragon hiding in the woods somewhere so it helps to only move after the AI has moved and keep both party groups close together. Dragon slayer party is another worthy upgrade because of this and the draconians. Eventually you'll arrive at an Inn. There's a number of sites around it and this is an excellent spot for a really good city! By the end of the game, the city I built here could crank out 1 trebuchet per turn, which is rare to have production that high. However, by now, your army has probably suffered some losses. This is where the inn really comes in handy. Strongly consider sticking around for a few turns to rest, recover, and save up some money for some reinforcements at the inn. With your new army in hand, it's probably close to turn 20 when some events start to happen.

An excellent spot for a great halfling town! Note that I probably should have moved it over to the east one tile so that it was touching the water. It would have let me build a harbor there later.

If you have the money, it's a good idea to start building a new settler if you haven't already. You can opt for the closer and decent position south of your capital or you can go for a further but more rewarding position near the inn. Note that you can actually get there with a settler quite quickly due to the handy placement of haste berries along the road. I opted for the further, better location for my 3rd town. Just be sure that you've cleared out the monster nests along the road!

When the plot events happen, you'll lose your sorceress and gain Camilla, a rather weak rogue with bad spells at this point. This is sad because I'd just unlocked chain lightning.. Your mission will also change. A few turns after the plot stuff, your throne city will get attacked by a nasty stack of 6 naga units. It's a tough battle so be sure you have good ranged units and rabbit holes built. The Nagas are tough opponents because they have a lot of hit points and regen. You'll want to really concentrate fire or risk them just gaining xp and regening your small amounts of damage. With monster hunters, adventurers, some spells and cunning and maybe a good melee unit or two, you should be able to hold them off. However, don't let your guard down! This is not the last naga raid on your capital so always keep a good defensive force there. Now we know the true enemy and it's around turn 25. Let's move into the mid-game strategy.

Walkthrough - Mid-game

It's about turn 25. Things look pretty grim. Roger has lots of powerful Naga mercs that seem to spawn quickly. You've probably got 3 cities and 2 decent armies. It's time to make a bold move! An event should fire where you meet a funny halfling dreadnought. Luckily, she's pretty good and comes with a full stack of units. The golems are particularly useful!

Strike out east again, crossing the bridge past the inn. There's a lot of difficult jungle there so it's a tough slog. On the other side, what do you find? Oh look! It's Roger and his main army and a big city, how nice. Lets kill him and take it!

Now, this battle is going to be pretty dangerous and epic. You should both have 3 stacks of units. It will be a close fight. Be certain to cast dread siege on his city the turn before you attack. The fight itself is difficult so be sure to save first. I opted for a manual battle and it was one of the more challenging AoW3 fights I've played. He has a ton of Nagas, but they're rather useless behind the walls. You can take advantage of this by first killing off all his ranged units. You can further frustrate his giant group of nagas by moving your entire army either to the extreme right or left. His nagas will get bunched up and will largely be useless and exposed to monster slayer fireworks. Once his ranged units are down, you can back off and let the nagas slowly file out of the gate where you work on them with your ranged units, using golems and berserkers to hopefully tank / block them for a turn or two. It's a tough fight and there will be losses, but it's very winnable.

If you've researched Guerilla Tactics, you might find it advantageous to kill off his ranged units then retreat. This drags the battle out a turn but could give you more spell points to deal with the nagas in the 2nd battle. I was able to win in one decisive battle, but this is an option.


Hopefully you win and Roger is dead (for now). This is a setback for him but he's not out of the game yet. If you've been scouting like you're supposed to, you'll have discovered that his throne is actually just across the water from your own throne. Time to kick him while he's down and knock him out of the game early!

I left the dreadnought lady guarding the new city I was absorbing but this probably wasn't necessary. You can leave a light garrison there, it wasn't attacked at all for me. If you haven't already built a few boats, you'll need at least 3 boats built in your capital. These will secure the waterways while your armies are embarked. They also can destroy wandering nagas. Take Ernest's army and Camilla's army and head back to the inn. Purchase some reinforcements there and after the boats are built, start building a good third stack in your capital. The good third stack should have calvary archers, berserkers, possibly a phalanx if you've researched it. You're going to be tangling with more nagas so you'll need some melee units.

Clear out the channel between your throne and his and then take your two armies north of the inn and across the ocean onto his island. Do the same with your third good stack from your throne with the calvary archers and reinforcements. Scouting is very important here to make sure your armies aren't sunk while crossing. In the meantime, consider founding a fourth city at the site you didn't pick the first time.

Both leaders main armies have embarked. A scout watches for threats from Roger's throne while the navy patrols the water.

Once you land on Roger's capital island, group up your armies and be sure to have your best stack touch that cloverfield! Double lucky is really great, especially when you dread siege his capital the turn before the attack. When you finally are ready to attack, it will probably be difficult to get your armies in the proper position. If he has boats in the water blocking you, take your navy and wipe them out so that you have enough space to attack. The battle ahead is even more difficult than the first one because he has more nagas, better upgraded units and a really annoying shrine of smiting.

You'll need to pull out all the stops for this battle. Save before you do it of course. When I went to the battle screen, it said "probable defeat" for me which I found surprising. It was a really tough battle! His shrine of smiting was really hard to kill and it wiped out some of my archers with the ultimate attack. The sheer number of nagas was tough to deal with at this stage. It would have been easier to deal with if I had a lot of phalanx, warbreeds, and manticores but I was really trying to rush him and knock him out early. It worked, but it was a very challenging battle!

Heavy losses on my side, but it was worth it to knock Roger out early.

If this strategy is too difficult or too aggressive for you, there's a milder option to take. Instead of attacking his capital, there is another city to the east of his throne. This city is not nearly as well defended. Taking it will hurt his income and production while giving you a homebase on his own island. This will give you a chance to research some of the better warlord units and spells and buildup a really good tier 3/4 army. To stop the constant threat of nagas that seem to just pour out of his capital, build up a big fleet along with several scouts. When they catch nagas in the water, ships can defeat them rather easily. With good scouting and ships, you should be able to bottle him up on his throne and slowly build up for the kill. To be extra annoying, be sure to keep a scout dancing around his captial's border for morale penalties and to disjunct any of his spells. :D

If you manage to take his throne first, be sure to take the city to the east next. It's poorly defended in comparison and the income will really help you expand. With Roger rotting in a ditch somewhere, it's time to mop up the draconians! On to the late game!

Walkthrough - Late Game

The draconians didn't present too much of a threat to me while I was dealing with Rogers. They're actually quite spread out and difficult to track down. You're going to need a few special spells to fight them. The first one is freeze water. I haven't mentioned it yet because the distance is too far to Roger's throne to use it effectively. However, you will be doing a lot of island hopping with 1 to 3 gap spaces that is perfect for freeze water! The other spell you should consider is greater disjunction. Glyphs of Warding is a pretty nasty spell and it's best to remove that before attacking their cities.

Hopefully your scouts have been doing their job. Even in the late game, there's plenty of goodies to be found. The best are city upgrades that give you a free building like a masters guild! You'll probably want to build a second fleet of ships at the city of Bolmington. Anyway, your scouts should have found a number of draconian cities. They're really spread out. There's one that I previously mentioned in the bottom left corner. It's really far away from anything else. It would take a really long time to get your main armies from Roger's lands all the way down there. I suggest just building some secondary armies in your capital and 2nd city to take care of that one. It can be reached by going south of the fey town and then freezing water. Just be sure to disjunct that glyph of warding first!

By the time you absorb Roger's two halfling cities, you'll have quite a lot of gold coming in. You'll also have at least 6 cities. Building, or taking one more halfling town will give you the "Monoculture" empire quest which has the very nice reward of 3 eagle riders placed near your main hero! There's a decent spot for a small town between Roger's 2 cities, you can put a small town in the fort, or there is a heart structure right near the middle of the map which gives you a nice bonus and casting points. See my final map to see where I built all my cities.

There's also a few draconian towns in the middle of the map. I opted to take those out with my main armies. The fights aren't too difficult really. I think that if you're in a hurry to win the level, you can skip them and try to find the draconian leader. They don't seem to have too much will to fight once Roger goes down. I found the draconian leader at Xinax, which is a city in the middle west that is partially surrounded by lava. It was an easy fight, despite only being able to get 3 stacks into the fight due to the lava. Once their leader went down, they promptly surrendered to me and that was the end of the level, even though it wasn't even the throne. In fact, I don't think I even found their throne. Just take out their leader and they should crumble.

We gave the draconians some Nibbles and Bits! Mission Success! (Note the frozen water I used to get my army in a better position)

Scenario Map

Alternative Options

The beauty of AoW3 is that there's multiple ways to reach the same goal. No one strategy is perfect, including mine. This was simply how I beat the scenario. When I play random maps, I usually don't try to rush because I like to enjoy the game and take my time. Also, the higher tier units and spells are usually a lot of fun. However, in scenarios I've noticed that if you let the AI build up too much, it can be a brutal slugfest. Therefore, I went for early attacking. If you beat this scenario a completely different way, feel free to mention it in the comments. I'd be interested to hear it.

A few strategies that I think might be worth considering that I didn't get to try would be:

Have an elite unit of fully upgraded pony riders and calvary archers. Give them all the upgrades in your research and your capital and use stables of vigor as well. Could be a very interesting mobile unit.

Focus on rushing eagle riders. I think this could be a good strategy because it doesn't take any research, just a lot of gold. Luckily there's a ton of gold all over the map for your scouts to find. I think you could have an eagles nest or two in your main cities pretty early which could be an interesting and powerful strategy.

Summon a ton of baby krakens then have them all evolve for free by casting global assault. They have to win 1 battle to evolve but shouldn't be difficult. I think this would be more funny than powerful, but still a thought if the game drags on. The idea of a giant halfling warlord kraken navy makes me smile for some reason.

I also think it is pretty viable to take the southwest draconian city along with the fey dwelling early in the game. I've read reports that this works well. I actually lucked into going east when I did because I didn't want to deal with a crappy fey city and I saw a ton of wandering monsters roaming around down there. I just didn't want to deal with it and went east instead :D

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the guide. I had fun making it. Feel free to leave comments, suggestions and (constructive) criticism. Mission 2 awaits!

[Wise Joe]

Thanks for the guide. I would have lost without the spoilers because I had three full stacks sent against my capital in the second wave of invaders. I would have rage quit without being prepared. Luckily I had a full second army close enough to get into the battle.

[[ᐰ] Frostburn❄]

I personally made use of an Inn early. Shaman is always there to hire at start, and Partisan spec gives you cheaper units from Inns. That Shaman can help you by befriending animals - there's lots of them around, from simple Elephants to Shock Serpents (from the spawner located west from your capital. If you're lucky, you can grab Baby or even Mature Shock Serpents and level them up. Conqueror Empire Upgrade helps a lot and even one King Shock Serpent can wreck some stuff.

I focued on growing my capital city later, grabbed Vault of Knowledge (it can give you a Baby Shock Serpent as well if you luck out) and pumped the improved Mounted Archers. Later you can just go and recruit other Warlord units and slowly expand - archers will easily keep your cities defended.

[Logi]

Thanks for the guide some useful tips there.

[Nabeghlavi]

Glad I could help, I planned on doing guides for 2 and 3 but 2 is pretty straighforward. I love New Mexico :D My home and it rocks. If you see a Lamborghini or Porsche GT3 driving around NM give me a wave : ) It's Submarine hahah

[unicorn]

Nice to see the New Mexico flag as your avatar picture :). I grew up in Las Cruces many years ago. Since I am new to the game I do play it on the easy difficulty. I had no idea it would make such a large difference in the placement of cities and the number of Naga armies. Thanks for letting me know.. I was also looking for guides on the second and third maps but made it through those eventually.

[Nabeghlavi]

Glad my guide helped. I think I played this mission on medium difficulty. It might have been patched or perhaps you played it on easy difficulty?

[unicorn]

When I did this campaign map there was no halfling city to the west of my throne city. I had a free settler unit to start with and I used it to set up my second city to the west. Also, at turn 25 is when all the scene action happens and things change from a contest to war. I found Camille rather useless as well and used her to basically guard some cities. Roger sent two waves of nagas at my throne city and once those were defeated I never saw another naga in the whole scenario. I dont know if these differences came as later patches or what since I am new to AoW. Your tips and tricks are really helpful though.