Retaliation strikes consume 25% of a unit's MP... A unit's MP are restored to full at the -end- of their turn. So moving during your turn does not affect retaliations, but retaliations do affect your -next- turn's MP. Units with high MP have the advantage that they still have more MP after 1-3 retaliations than a slow unit.

Age of Wonders II's gameplay will offer a blend of familiar features and significant changes from the original game. The core gameplay will still combine large-scale strategy and empire building with tactical combat and RPG elements. You'll explore a colorful strategic world map to find resources like mines and magical mana nodes. You'll capture or build cities, which you'll expand with improvements like defensive walls and libraries that hasten spell research. On the grand scale, you'll also get to engage in diplomacy with other leaders, negotiating treaties, trading resources or spells, and declaring war. As an interesting way for the game to dole out new quests, deities will occasionally make their presence known, recruiting you to do their bidding.

Master of Magic had all the exploration, resource gathering, and conquest of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, but it also had the management, research, and diplomacy of the Civilization series. It was a combination like no other, and to this day, many devoted fans still swear by Master of Magic--to them, it's the quintessential fantasy strategy game, and nothing else comes close. That's going to change with Age of Wonders II. The sequel will build on everything in the original game, but it will also have new features that might just make it the closest thing to a full-blown Master of Magic sequel that we're likely to see this year.

Options for the player to set how AC AI handles spells for them would require a large amount of work, since this has to be synced across a MP game. This may be possible in the future, but not right now.

The main change from the demo is that AC AI will not cast spells if it considers the battle easy. This is calculated dynamically, so if the battle turns against you, the AI will start casting.

Animate Dead is no longer a small area-effect spell. It now creates up to 5 zombies from all over the battlefield. As such, it is much more useful.

Alex: That's what we had time to implement for release. Any additional features in this area would have been too time consuming to implement at this time. IMO this addresses the main concerns voiced by forum posters in this area...

Feel free to make suggestions for further improvements to AoW2 after the full version is available.

Um... because the writer of the game had about 15 personal emergencies over the past year, including having a crappy job, getting laid off, selling house, moving, getting a new job, working insane hours and having a new baby. Well, that and it wasn't part of my contract... errr... I mean "the writer".

As for the Iron Maiden, it is an interesting tale, involving Elven Physiology and their hatred of refined metals, in particular that of Iron... not involving the torture device...

Age of Wonders II has taken the bare bones of its predecessor, and fleshed them out considerably, with a luscious new engine, a new combat basis, and an epic storyline narrated by your traditional bearded old man with a twinkle in his eye. The world is out of balance - our human hero, Merlin (no, not that Merlin) has had his city destroyed, his people scattered, and is generally not a happy bunny. His ship is attacked and sinking to the bottom of the ocean, he believes his final days to be numbered - but not so! The wizard Gabriel saves him, and tasks him with saving the world.

Most battles will probably be fought out in the open with on the natural cover or trees and rocks hampering movement and providing cover from missile fire, but you'll also have the opportunity to attack cities, which can have walls around them. If you do attack these cities, you'll want to make sure you have some siege engines along with you to knock the walls down. If you don't, chances are you'll soon find your forces being picked off by the well-defended missile troops behind the walls. If you don't have the siege engines, you'll have to bash down the gates with melee damage. This can take a little while depending on your units and give defenders ample time to cause damage enough to seriously deplete your forces. Overall at this point, I'm finding the tactical battles quite the treat, even if I seem to be outnumbered most of the time.

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Thanks for pre-ordering Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne from EBgames.com! As an added benefit to ordering from us, we'll keep you informed of ship date changes. We are writing to let you know that we have made a slight change to the projected ship date. The new ship date for Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne will be 6/11/02. As always, EBgames.com will not charge your credit card until we ship your order.

"BTW, we resolved balance [i.e., mana] issues with summoning spells and pioneers. Now pioneers need a range of 10 between cities and an extra 250 gold to build an outpost. Pioneers can also build roads again.... The 'duplication of a hero' bug [has also been] fixed."

"I dabbled in a number of the game's mini-campaigns. Each of these smaller sequences of maps limits your in-game avatar to using just one of six realms of magic.... Learning the nuances and strategies that each spell school afforded only deepened the strategy and forced me to adapt constantly.... Maps were enormous, dotted with teleport stations that made the often-arduous march across the landscape much easier."