So, I have gifted AOW1 to my girlfriend, and she can now play with me when she learns to play a bit. However, this bit is kinda hard to achieve: AOW1 is extremely noob-unfriendly.

First, it leads you through a very soft and easy tutorial where you learn to move troops, combine stacks, select spells to research, produce units in towns, and fight battles when outnumbering the enemy. But it doesn’t teach you countless things: actually choosing good spells to research and good units to install and produce, picking your battles, managing stacks to use the adjacent hex rule to your advantage, choosing the right abilities for your leader and avoiding his death, protecting your towns, understanding how some units change in FC compared to TC...

And after that tutorial, it throws you into one of the two campaigns where you have to fight in the opposite circumstances: now the enemy is outnumbering you, and you are very short on everything you need. The enemy is stupid, but you don’t know exactly where it is stupid, and how to abuse it. Let’s be honest: at this stage, you are very weak yet.

To even start progressing in the campaigns, I had to read piles and piles of different guides, forum posts, tutorials, PBEM turnlogs, watch some gameplay videos. I cannot reasonably expect anyone else to do it, at least not on that scale. What's worse, I am still actually rather weak.

How to teach someone to play the game?
In HoMM IV, there was a Russian RPG-style map with all those noob tips scattered here and there. Is there such a map in AOW1?

I could write a guide for here, but that’s going to take a lot of time. I could hand her the manual, but it’s long. The quick start guide, on the other hand, doesn’t have a lot of vital information. Guiding her through every step is probably going to be boring, and my advice is also likely to be wrong: I am really not a veteran.

So, what to do?
Thanks in advance for any help.

If you are both new to the game you can start a multiplayer game with no (or only one easy) npc players.
That way you can try stuff without pressure. You should probably activate "Allied Victory" so you can work together against the npc.

In the beginning you can play a hot-seat game at the same pc. That way you can both see and learn from each other and give each other tips.

When you feel comfortable with a race and its units and maybe have found some spells you like and a style for your hero, you can start adding enemies to your games or just jump into the campaign and see if you have gotten better.

Edit:
When I bought the game (one of my first fullprice games :) ) I started with the campaign.
I did play the demo version beforehand, but despite that I still remember having to restart quite a few campaign games. It was definitely a hard but great learning experience ;)

Unfortunately, there is going to be a learning curve, and some of the lessons will depend on what you want out of the game. Human players have very different advantages (actually intelligent) and disadvantages (don't automatically see all concealed units) compared to fighting the AI. Ultimately, it is experience that will really teach you how things work (and asking questions about what nonsensical BS scenario the game just threw at you, like how archers can't shoot past an opponent's walls in tactical combat but have no trouble shooting past walls in fast combat).

If you have experience with other TBS systems, that will lower the learning curve since you'll already know some mechanics.

When I first started, I had a lot of questions that I asked in this thread. Reading through it might help with learning certain specifics that I encountered while playing the campaigns.

Reading back over that thread, there are some inaccuracies with regards to AoW1 rules.

When I first played the series I ended up turtling in my starting area with ballista+catapult garrisons until I eventually built up a tier 4 force, and it didn't matter how bad I was in general because it was manual combat so I could abuse the advantage of walls+missiles super hard versus the AI.

I guess it should be about what your girlfriend enjoys about the game, after it's not really necessary to be a great player to have fun.

Unfortunately learning to play Age of Wonders WELL is a rather long and quite time-consuming process; I've been playing Age of Wonders for YEARS (basically since it came out, I haven't been able to put it down for very long) and I still don't feel like I always make the greatest decisions. It really does come with a lot of experience after quite a bit of gameplay.

Personally, I don't like recommending a bunch of pages to read and videos to watch because I believe that if a person is really interested in something, then they should do everything they can to learn how it works themselves. However in this day and age, it can be super difficult to do really figure things out without some help along the way; especially since this game is so old and (theoretically) there should be quite a bit of information floating around out there.

If you're interested in looking for things to read, I definitely recommend browsing around the old http://aow.heavengames.com website because they have some of the best information I've ever found littered around the site. As for videos, if you're interested, I'm working through creating a playthrough of both campaigns and I'll be posting (quite soon actually) some of my finished PBEM games edited together into singular videos. This content can be found on my blog at https://intronerdedliving.blogspot.com/p/age-of-wonders.html.

Other than that, I would happily answer any questions you may have whether you post on the site or personally message me on GOG. Also if you're interested, we could even work something out to set up a live game of some sort sometime.

Feel free to continue to reach out around here! We won't bite! :D

~ DaemonVirus

Back when I was introduced to the original retail version 1.0, I was advised to choose at least a sphere of water for healing water, a sphere of air for chain lightning, and at least life-stealing + first-strike for starting abilities. The game is a bit different now (no first-strike choice), but the advise still isn't far off the mark.

The golden units of each race:
Humans - cavalry and/or air galley
Frostlings - yetis or dragons (nordic glows situationally)
Azracs - elephants
Lizardmen - Salamander, I guess?
Elves - Healers for entangle strike? (I never figured that race out)
Dwarves - giants
Halflings - stone throwers / pony riders or eagle riders (AI will rush eagle riders)
Highmen - Astra
Dark Elves - executioners / incarnate (depends on opponent races)
Orcs - warlords or dragons
Goblins - dart blowers. Beetles and wyvren (AI will rush wyvren)
Undead - wraiths

The unit upkeep is the more important cost point to consider and it is based on the unit tier. An elephant looks like it costs a lot, but it balances out with higher tier units after just a few turns (and then passes them in value).

There are some tactical combat techniques to make an AI retreat or trick it to attack beyond its wall at your army. There are tricks for using vegetation to improve your chances when outnumbered. There are positioning/alignment tricks against archers. There are tricks for making a "one man army." I can add more detail if there is any interest.

Magic
Water or Fire?
Water is better.

Air or Earth?
Air offers better mobility solutions like haste, freeze water, and wind walking. Air magic also has powerful damage spells such as chain lightning and vaporize. Earth magic has the best hero-killing spell in the game: entangle. Earth also has stone skin and free-movement.

Life or Death?
Both have great little tricks but death magic can resurrect ruined cities.

Leader Abilities
Some abilities can only be chosen from the leader customization screen and cannot be chosen later when leveling up. Choose lifestealing (15) to add a bit of reassurance to melee survival and lightning strike (10) or cold strike (10) to increase the chances that your leader won't be hit in a counter-attack. Regeneration (10) is a good one to add. Doom gaze (15) is a free death ray, and dominate (15) is great for converting enemies. Abilities like wall climbing are important but can be left to gain during the game.

A basic formula for a "army of one" is lifestealing, wall-climbing, lightning-strike, 10 attack, 10 defense and an enchantment like wind-walking for mobility.

Learn by doing.
You cannot buy Gaming-Experience.

*grins*
Having a printed Manual with all Unit-stats and Spell-stats explained helps of course.
Sadly, it does not explain all unit abilities and how those work.
Most imnportantly: Do not enforce it!