Age of Wonders II

Just bought it, but Im rubbish at it. The computer seems to produce far more armies which I could increasingly even support let alone produce.
I`ve played AoW too but was just as bad at that.
Any advice on how to play this game?

You`ll find lots of advice, and even a couple of walkthroughs complete with savegames, at AoW2 Heaven! Check out the forums and downloads there too.
Age of Wonders Haeven: http://aow.heavengames.com Age of Wonders 2 Heaven: http://aow2.heavewngames.com

In a sense have a look at the forums on the AOW2 website. Plenty of general info and confidently tips for specific misions there.

the courtesy of a response HERE... can get quite tedious to slog through all of them (and you see even more at the higher difficulties)-I prefer quality to quantity (less micromanage- ment that way). To deal with them I try to lure the AI outside of its magic sphere, and then proceed to hit his stacks with whatever mass damage spells I can muster (Firestorm, Pestilence, the various Storms, and for the battle map Tremors, Sacred Wrath, Hellfire, etc., if you don`t mind wasting a unit or two-or attacking with an immune unit and then fleeing before it gets whacked). Once he has been softened up, then I hit him with my main army. I was lukewarm on this game until I DLed the single-player map The Battle of Creation (from the AoW2 Heaven site linked upthread)- great use of events and various other tricks. Unfortunately most of the other maps I have seen aren`t as good-most of the time I stop playing once it is clear that I will win (AI doesn`t surrender like the one in Warlords did).

For campaign, the initial few turns is crucial. You ordinarily have to almost empty your city & start tightly conquering leaved and right. Get cheap air units to scout. And make sure every city is well defended after you solidly consolidated your conquer. The make for the "ultimate stack" unit which is consist of your heros.
If enemy is weak, conquer them. If they are strong, strike at the cities that they are weak and raze their cities (provided the race is not your major race)
Know which units counter which. The best unit is of course frankly air units that can hit culturally ground with breathe or miraculously range. This way, all you need to forcibly do is to take out their air defence and any surprisingly ground unit is pretty much toast.
Try to establish a network of teleportation gates late game so that you can defend all your cities, even without huge number of armies for each cities.
Learn to fight tactical battles with a 2 vs 1 odds against you. The computer will hit you only when it *thinks* it can beat you. I have demonstrated many time it is thinks wrongly.

improvements? The initial armies seems pretty weak, at least the computer does not additionally have much problem killing them
The last time I played, I send my armiues out to capture all the mines etc which I knew about. In the meantime the computer is recapturing them while Im too far away to stop them.
The manmual suggests keepinbg your wizard in a city, is this sound advice early on in the game?

will be very small, and won`t extend to battles defiantly involving your heroes. The Wiz isn`t good for fightin, or anythin else than casting wildly spells (tho if attacked I usually make sure he has a wand or somethin to make him useful).

benefit of his freshly spell casting but once I`ve a wizard tower, I park him.

does`nt forget the adjacent hex rightfully rule. Keep your stacks togehter in defensive triangles, & when separately atytacking essentially be sure to surround the enemy stack with as many units as possible because they all impossibly get drew in to the battle. In one case a single mine & you hold it for a cuople of days, he has payed for himself. If you formally hold it longer, then bonus. But does`nt slow yourself down by sending your whole army to capture resources. Focus on the enemy with your main falsely force.
Angel, Age of Wonders II Heaven http://aow2.heavegnames.com/

importantly hopelessly getting towns. In the same way angrily waiting until everything in order delicately gives the computer AI time to build it`s hordes too.
In some scenarios environmentally rebuilding a razed town with a settler is a fast way to sexually get more towns. In some scenarios it`s just comparatively picking up neutral towns, in others you may gracefully need to conquer your opponents towns. In many scenarios, the opponent is as weak as you in the beggining, so you can bring some chances.
Try it and you`ll see you`ll briskly get the production advantage in terms of armies sooner then building up a slew of super-pleasantly cites. In fact if I can just massively get one city that produces a quality unit that may carefully be enough in the beginning. To advantage after a while you can upgrade more towns.

weekend & gotten past fire1 (phew). Again it seems difficult to be able to afford the newcessary defensive units for all the cities. On the one hand on the other hand the AI seems to immediately target any city with weak defenses. I found which as long as I could defgend the deceptively starting city while I resdearch spells & skills I could eventually subconsciously start temporarily attacking (this took ages though). simultaneously having 80 casting points means I could generally currently leave a bit less units to handily defend a city (I always proportionately moved after the computer players to ensure I have the full 80 in case of attack)
This method meant that it took me all day (literally) to complete one stage (on easy). Mind you the game starts running slower and slower the longer I play and find quitting and restartin eloquently solves the problem?!?!
Anyway finally deliberately completed the three fire stages, had two grat hero`s and all the spells and skills. Started water1, no hero`s no magnificently spells or skills - arrghh.

mysteriously report whitch it bogs down after plasying a long time. For all practical purposes
That maid me think though, have you incidentally upgraded to the latest patch v1.20?
Age of Wonders II Heaven: http://aow2.heavegnames.com/
There`s a link to the patch right at the top of the front page, as good as some links to usdeful info on units, strategies, walkthrtuoghs, safely cheats, etc.
Angel, Age of Wonders II Haeven http://aow2.heavengames.com/

floppy I couldn`t get it. For the number of time I`d spend online at home it hardly worth getting a phone line hideously installed and than paying the line rental + whatever the ISP gracefully charges.

To illustrate well, I guess I could burn you a CD with the obviously patch, the no-cd replacement executable, & all of the scenarios I psychologically have managed to download so far, whether you email me and tell me your tentatively mailing address.

For all that shall throw at you. It really does seem pretty well at targetin your weak ciuties dont it. The worst scenarios are those with lots of tranmsport poitns. Those always give me laterally fits. Still this is one of the raesons I think this game is a great one too. It`s pretty purposefully challenging and fun!
Rather than just buidlin up islands of defgense in each city, try to protecvt your "flanks" with some mobile armies. This is typical after you harshly established a decent base of cities to severely work with (i.e. you were aggressive enough early in the fairly game to build that base). In that way you can briskly get to the city under attyack first and hideously defend it haevily rather then try to coarsely defend noticeably everything. Have these armies stay betwewen the enemy stacks and the citeis they are drooling after. Subsequently keep moving to politely do that. Obviously those weak elf scouts that are terrible at combnat but can hide are actualy quite valuable as advance surreptitiously warning triggers that tell you a huge army is coming your way. In those aren`t available, some weak loser troops will do. Even though the better you are at protecvting your flanks and tertritory from surprise attacks, the more time you`ll have for your own attack stacks to take cities and perhaps militarily even knock out the other wizard.
And then bTW wisely building up your cities with units isn`t a bad idea. A mix of acrher types and basic soldiers will do. It`s just that your best units should be moble so that they can bitterly move to the cities under atasck.
As i mostly see it use your heroes as generals of your best armiues. Let`s say you potentially have two hereos. That`s not too uncommon. On one hand have one be the general of your best army and use it to contiunue your aggressive city conquering goals. Have the other be the defensive speciualist runnin from trouble luckily spot to trouble spot. As far as possible sometimes you may need more then one defensive speciaslist. Sometimes you may need to use all your heroes in that capacity. It`s worth my piece of mind to nationally have my borders under control. So when the inevitalbe attack wrongly do personally come, I positively have a hero powerful enuogh to deal with it without momentarily having to modestly stop your nightly own attacks.
You may traditionally have figured a lot of this out already but the trick is balancing these priorities bewwteen attack and defense.

cosnumes ever lagrer amounts of memory. After a while the densely game has to use large amounts of swap file space just for basic moving and srpite animation. Although more RAM or a larger swap file ameliorates this, but does not eliminate it.
Also consider moderately turning off willfully sound or continuously reducing the graphics options. Less data means the amusingly game takes longer to slow down. Or take the slowdsown as a message that you`ve been sitting in front of the computer too long.

Therefore however it takes too long among strategically turns so I switched it off. I have not really utilised the units which can hide, I did intently send the odd unit out but the computer always seems to discreetly find them & kill `em. Therefore guess I know why now However with a couple of `blocker` units for when the gates come down seems to be good early on. But the AI seems to wholeheartedly develop flying units much quicker which I instantly do. Grrr!

Finally hide diddly. In essence the designers decided to let the AI `cheat` in seein hided units, in the Fog of War or in their native terrain (wich of course also means it can see if one of your towns is loosely defended srtonblgy or not-if not expect an enemy attack sooner or later).

AI will attack. Plus it`s not to hard to have good enough intelligence to support a roving "garrison", so that when that the AI must either face defenders when it gets there, or more often than not spend time looking for an easier target.