A few random tips:
(written by SloDragon)

 

 

 

 

1. Always check your tools when you first start your mission, this will tell you if you need to save picks for miners, or an axe for the butcher.

 

 

 

2. Always check your settlers menu when you start your mission, to see how many craftsmen you have. in some missions you are not given certain craftsmen and you will have to save tools to create them.

 

 

3.Using storage yards to store ore from the mines, will keep your miners mining until the smelters are built.

4. Always keep more carriers than you need, and watch your recruiting so you don't run low on carriers, or your smooth running economy will suffer.

5.Watch your fishing huts. When they catch all the fish in their area, they will stop fishing and just sit in their hut. select a new area for them to fish, or move their hut to a new location.

6. Pioneers and Geologists have no sense of danger when you're near the enemy and will work themselves onto the end of a pointy sword. Keep track of them or place them out of harms way when you don't need them, select them while pressing and holding alt. then click a spot for them to stand....they will not move till they're killed or you put them back to work...This also works well with the rest of the specialists...pios, geos, and thieves.

7. Use your gold bars wisely, 30 level 2 archers will do much more damage than 15 level 3 archers.

8. Viking priests can destroy mushroom farms with a single cast of their "Thors Hammer" spell. (Update) There is a bug in S4 that allows the Thors Hammer spell to destroy "ANY" enemy building).

9. Holding the "alt" key and clicking the right mouse button will allow you to force your soldiers to retreat. This makes it easy to send out a single soldier and lure the enemy into an ambush, Or to pull them back when they get to close to the fire field that protects the Dark Tribes barracks.

10. If you crush the enemy's towers with Viking axemen, or a siege engine, the enemy's buildings will still stand and continue working...its better to capture them with swordsmen and then crush them. Or...Bring in saboteurs to destroy them.

In missions against the Dark Tribe your priest is a "very" valuable asset. He can destroy a mushroom farm with one cast of the "snowmelt" spell. He can turn a spot green in dark land to place a tower to advance on the Dark Tribes Temple. He can also turn the dark land green underneath the Dark Tribes Fire Field and render it "useless" against your soldiers.

This will allow your archers to safely stand at the Temples entrance and eliminate the DT soldiers as they emerge. But remember !! You will need a large accumulation of mana to make "any" of these strategies work.

But once you've eliminated all of the DT's standing army. Its a simple matter to control any new soldiers that emerge from the DT temple. Then your priest can green all around the temple to destroy it. And not have to search for all the mushroom farms.