This guide's intent is to cover the basics of everything in the game to give the reader an understanding of what to expect from the game, and how to work everything. I won't be covering every little thing in the game, but I will be trying to cover everything in broad strokes. So, don't expect an explanation of how to win fights on a certain map, exact stats, or a guide on what exactly to do.

Besides, it's more fun to come up with your own tactics and understanding than it is to simply be told what to do by someone else, right?

The first thing you'll be doing upon starting up a new random map is to give the map various traits, such as its size and terrain types. Most of the options are obvious, city size, terrain bias, etc, but lets go over what the rest of them do. The various options for map types are a collection of pre-set playable maps aimed at different things.

Roads influence both the number of roads on the map, and the amount of places connected by roads. As most cities tend to spawn on a road, these act as a handy navigational guide as well.

Roaming Units influences the amount of bandits in play. Higher means more bandit camps and more bandits coming from them.

Cities influences how many cities there are on the map that start out not owned by players. This only impacts cities owned by the main races, like humans and elves.

Dwellings influences how many "monster" cities are on the map. Giants and Dragons and such. Goblins are NOT a Dwelling.

Visit structures are shrines, and their ilk, things you go stand on to get their benefit.

Resource structures are things like gold mines that give you money and other resources if they're within your territory.

Treasures influence how much gold and such is simply lying around the map.

Once you have the settings you want, you can move on to the second page, which includes the ability to tweak the various AI's and add a few extra settings, such as if the map is revealed, if you can found new cities, hero soft cap, and how much you start out with.

Your leader is the cornerstone of your empire. They determine your starting race, your selection of spells and techs, your buildable units, and more. If you lose them and your capital city both, you lose the game immediately.

Don't let this sound like they're to be held back in your capital though. You're going to be seeing them fighting quite a few battles, as they're likely to be your single strongest combat unit for a large portion of the game. As such, you're going to be seeing them alot, so don't hesitate to mess with their appearance.

Your leader's primary defining traits are their Race, Class, and Magic.

Your leader's Race determines the race in the starting city, and the benefits you get. Most races add a small bonus to the growth of a city itself, but the primary benefit is in the units and stats you get for a specific race. Since this is a beginner's guide, we're not going to focus on optimization. Every race is viable, and every race is strong.

Humans.
+Mages have Healing.
+Heavy focus on durable units.
+Well rounded with no real weakness.

Elves.
+Potent offense.
+Archers have massive range.
+Access to Stun.
- Less Durable


Draconians.
+Archers have AoE.
+Access to fire damage.
+Rapid HP regeneration

Dwarves.
+Mages have Healing
+Durable
+Firstborn are among the strongest units in the game.
+Deal with underground terrain better than other races.
-Expensive

Orcs.
+Well rounded with an offensive focus
+Irregulars have shields.
+Shocktroopers are among the strongest units in the game.

Goblins.
+Inexpensive.
+Can settle blight effectively.
+Deal with underground terrain better than other races.
+Massive poison resist.
-Less durable by far.

There are other, additional perks and differences between the races that futher push them in different directions, but they are small, and often on a unit by unit, case by case basis, and will not affect playstyle very much.

Your class is your most important choice, deciding your army makeup, techs and spells, and your leader's clothing.

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Warlords focus on hefty armies, backed by buffs. They don't tend to rely on mana very much innately, but they do have a number of spells to squeeze a little bit extra out of their cities. Their unique units favor combined arms, with an emphasis on melee.

The warlord leader, itself, goes to battle with a melee weapon, and a heavy crossbow, a single shot weapon capable of doing solid damage even at the end of their movement. They tend towards giving buffs to their allies, turning even the weakest unit into a perk-laden destroyer. Their infantry can act as cavalry, they can rip apart creatures and walk right through holy magic. The warlord itself, however, is not the greatest of fighters, preferring to strengthen its allies as opposed to smiting things directly.

In terms of magics, the Warlord focuses its efforts on boosting the strength of its army yet more. giving units powerful perks and stat increases to further empower their forces. A dragon alone is a scary prospect, but a dragon that swings first, and can attack endlessly is a terrifying, awe-inducing being of destruction.

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Dreadnoughts are masters of machinery and production. Where other classes rely on man and beast, dreadnoughts rely on cold, hard steel, and streamlining the production thereof. Their spells are weak in battle and often costly, but they can strengthen cities quite a bit. Their armies favor heavy machines backed by technicians, and rifles.

The dreadnought themself, goes to battle in heavy armor, wielding a melee weapon and a powerful musket, which is a single shot weapon like the crossbow, with almost twice the damage to it, but needing a turn to reload after every shot. They tend towards leading from the front, able to absorb jaw dropping amounts of damage and with the proper equipment, able to outright ignore swords and arrows. Their cavalry can act as mounted gunners, running circles around the enemy and shooting them full of holes. Furthering their emphasis on ranged dominance, they bring shotguns, cannons, riflemen, and flamethrowers to bear, able to destroy targets before they get within reach, while their heroic leader fights them head on. This is helpful, because all their heavy machinery does not heal itself innately.

In terms of magic, the dreadnought focuses on production, streamling their cities to put units on field sooner, resetting the cooldowns of their machines, and getting broken machines back into the fight.

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Theocrats are masters of defense and synergy. Healing comes innately to them, and many of their units are able to boost, protect, and draw strength from eachother. They have an easy time raising gold, but their strong reliance on working together hampers the ability of a weakened army.

The theocrat itself brings a melee weapon and a holy rod into combat, able to make up to three attacks, depening on how far it has moved. They are innately magic resistant, but their real strength is in their mixture of party buffs, and healing magic, keeping their units fighting and only joining combat as needed. Their units tend to focus on protecting and empowering eachother and forming a solid advancing wall, instead of bringing down their enemies in short order.

In terms of magic, the Theocrat's ability to heal, protect, and weaken is second to none, bringing potent debuffs to bear alongside healing and protecting magic. Their offense, outside of the Smite spell, is lacking, but it hardly matters when the enemy cannot make a dent in your forces. They increase gold gains and protect their cities, while being able to lay debuffs upon enemy cities to weaken them.

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Rogues are the sneaky, underhanded masters of politics and growth. They're just as likely to stab you in the back as they are to bribe a senator to vote in favor of a bill. Or bribe a city to join them. They raise armies fast, and many of their units are expressly built to deal with a specific situation, while being average or lacking at others. The sheer speed at which they can expand their empire tends to leave them rushing to fortify everything, and can leave holes in their defenses to be easily exploited.

The rogue itself can deliver impressive damage, and focuses its buffs almost entirely on offensive growth. They go to battle with a melee weapon and a blowdart tube, able to deliver three shots at boosted damage. Of all the heroes, they get the largest number of unique abilities to further enhance their combat prowess, but only have average stats at best. Their units trend towards being either counters to specific things, or focusing on recruiting other units from battles into your army. As such, a rogue's army tends to have very little synergy with eachother, but large numbers.

In terms of magic, Rogues mix a few city buffs with countless ways to control the flow of information and weaken their rivals. In battle, they focus on increasing how agressive their troops can be, and covering them as they make their approach, lacking the means to do effective direct damage from magic, or to increase their troops combat ability directly. Where a warlord would strengthen a unit's resistance to damage, or a theocrat would heal, a rogue would use a smokescreen to weaken both sides in one area, while fielding units who don't rely on that style of combat.

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The druid is a jack of all trades, favoring mobility and well rounded options. They can wield healing, damaging magic, debuffs, and buffs, all at once, but often face restrictions on the exacts of what their magic works against. Likewise, their units tend to mix multiple schools of combat together, and have the ability to fight just about anywhere.

Druids themselves are a mixed bag, posessing a melee weapon and a long ranged longbow, capable of making three attacks that do full damage to the edge of their shot range. They learn to heal and buff as well, but oftentimes find themselves having to pick between spells, skills, and shooting things with their bow. Their units are versatile, and powerful, but don't really excel at any one area. They field large amounts of animals in combat, which gives them ready access to cheap reinforcements, but add an element of randomness to their armies.

In terms of magic, druids bring a bit of everything to bear, from siegebreaking spells to city buffs, to potent direct damage. They don't really have a true focus however, making them adaptable to their opponents, but unable to carve out a true area of expertise. Don't mistake this for weakness however, the sheer wealth of options they have on hand always means they have something they could do to ruin another empire's day. They also have the ability to summon potent units into play.

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Sorceror's are the masters of magic. While other classes rely heavily on gold, they trade in mana. Potent magics of all type are at their disposal, far moreso than any other class, but their units come from the same pool as their spells. Where a druid is versatile and able to bring everything to bear, the sorceror has to pick and choose what they will.

Sorcerors themselves head into battle with a shock magic staff, and a melee weapon, able to fire three projectiles of electrical death at their enemies, or swipe at them. However, they will spend most of their time raining magic on their hapless opponents from a distance, burying them under waves of fire and frost. Their units are almost all summoned beasts, making growing their army and raining fiery death mutually exclusive quite often, but allowing them to reinforce quite quickly.

It goes without saying that sorceror's have massive amounts of magic to choose from, and some of the most potent. Generally assume that if you want to cast it, they can do so.

Along with your race and class, you can choose three schools of magic, which determine alot of your combat spells, and a few city spells and perks as well.

There is already a very strong guide for this up, but if you're just starting out, experiment with what you happen to think sounds cool or interesting.

You start out with a city, some soldiers, and your leader, an unexplored world waiting for you to hunt and slaughter your enemies in. however, you've been dumped in the middle of the map with no idea what anything does, so lets cover that.

The game has four primary resources, Gold, Mana, Research and Casting Points. Gold is your currency, used to buy soldiers, buildings and cities. Mana is used to cast spells and build higher end units. Casting points, is your ability to bring your magic to bear, measuring how many spells you can cast every turn. Research is your ability to learn of new magic and units.

You increase all of these resources except Casting Points by capturing land and building up your cities. People have to pay taxes and gold can be mined out of the ground afterall, and there is always somewhere where mana is simply pouring out of the ground. Ancient ruins and shrines can give your scholars places to weave new spells and discover new technologies to improve the lives of your people and strengthen your warriors.

Casting points come from a specific line of research, and the ultimate building for each city, the Grand Palace.

The city you start with, and the borders around it, are more than just places to build more units.

Each race has a specific type of terrain they happen to like around their city. Elves like forests, humans like plains, goblins love themselves some poisoned swamps. The happier a city, the harder its people work, and the more you get from it.

Anything within the city borders will immediately be worked by the city, boosting what you get from the city itself. Goldmines make you money, forges are production, mana nodes give you mana, and farms give you people.

Cities can only build one thing at a time, but they build quite quickly, seeing a city build a new unit in a single turn is hardly a rare sight.

Your city cannot defend itself innately, but it can build fortifications to give its defenders an easier time protecting it. Something as simple as six irregulars can break most sieges themselves if sitting behind a wall.

You begin with a stack of soldiers including your leader, a horseman ready to scout, and a hero waiting to join you. Obviously, your horseman should be scouting and your hero army fighting off enemies around you, but there's more to it than that.

Your starting army will consist of some measure of Swordsmen, pikemen, archers, cavalry, and irregulars.

Swordsmen are sword/board using melee units. They hit pretty hard and can climb over city walls, but they're hardly fast or durable, built for offense instead of defense.

Pikemen are defenders. They attack first while on defense, and are able to do bonus damage to cavalry and flying units. However, they are, again, not terribly durable. Their main job is to block enemies up while your other units kill them.

Archers do ranged attacks. Of all your early units, most of your damage will come from archers. They are, however, weak in melee and very easy kills.

Cavalry are fast and durable, but prone to overextending themselves. These are your flankers and your primary fighters early, but tend to die easily due to their tendancy to get too far ahead, or make themselves too easy a target.

Irregulars are cheap units who have access to both melee and ranged combat, but aren't terribly good at either. They build fast, cost little, and are usually easy to get however, making them the backbone of an early army.

Units and heroes level as they attack, gaining perks. Heroes and your leader may choose their perks, but units follow a pre-set upgrade tree. Units, however, tend to gain in stats far faster than heroes, but cap out far sooner.

Each fight you engage in will take place on a hexgrid map, where each unit in our army is its own piece to be moved about the field. The defender always acts first, while the attacker can retreat by going to the arrows on the map's edge.

Battles in AoW3 are quick, lethal affairs, especially when involving armies of low tier units, who are able to almost completely wipe eachother out in a single turn.

Each terrain type has only a single battle map to it. However, where players are in relation to eachother has a massive influence on how the battle will play out. The targeted stack of the defender will always begin in the middle of the map, with the attacker on a map edge, determined by what side the attacker attacked from. A battle where the attacker is to the northeast of an enemy stack will result in a different starting position than one where the attacker is to the east or northwest.

Units can move a distance based on their move points (boots), and attack based on their remaining action points. Every unit has 3 action points to begin with, represented as green, yellow, and orange lights, and the tiles being colored green, yellow and orange. the further you move, the less AP you have to attack with. Every attack you make subtracts every point of armor or magic resist above 10 (or adds for below 10) from your attack damage, then rolls for damage. As such, one armor is equivalent to -1 damage. You attack and are countered based on your and the enemies AP. Each attack you make consumes an AP, each counter they make consumes one of their AP for next turn. At the end of your turn, all your units regain their AP. Attacks CANNOT miss, by any means, only do less damage.

Casting magic will consume all your casting hero's AP, and even if you have multiple heroes on field, you can still only cast once per turn. If your leader is not in combat, they may still use magic, but the CP and mana cost of spells is doubled.

Units can critical hit, or critical fail based on their morale, which is influenced by terrain and buffs.

As you explore, you will come across small, independant cities. Each of these can give you quests for you to gain gold and units for killing things, be invaded and subjugated, or be bought out. This includes both major race cities, and monster cities.

You can find them by following roads on maps with roads.

If you set it to enabled, maps will have cave entrances to the underground, a map located below the current map.

The underground is a far more hostile place than above, with larger concentrations of bandits and hostiles, lava flows, and more restrictive movement, as well as slower movement per tile. However, these very issues also make reinforced cities underground nightmares to take, and can make it very easy to build chokepoints and fortifications.

On island and continent maps, the underground will connect the various disjoined islands, while the ocean blocks them off from above.

There is -no- way to build access routes between above and underground. The ones that do exist are massive chokepoints.

The secret to diplomacy in AoW3 is to always seem more threatening to the other guy than he is to you, and even then, this game is about warfare. Expect to have to murder everyone and everything that crosses your path at some point.

Rogues have some means to skew diplomac,y and your alignment basically exclusively alters your diplomatic relations with others, but you're going to be killing everything nine times out of ten.