There were in reality too many abilities available for heroes, so they never quite managed to balance them properly (here is an overpowered main hero:
Get a ranged attack (hurl stone or archery is recommended), and max out marksmanship. Get defense up to at least 5, and if you have any points over, get regeneration, then get defense up to 7 or 8 (depending on what equipment you find, as no stat can go higher than 10), and then start investing in health & resistance).
Anyway, I found AoW to be a better multiplayer/hot seat game than HoMM. You will start to interact with the other players far earlier, as there are less misc things on the map. The way terrain interacted with movement (and the skills that in turn could impact this) also gave the game more strategic depth, and the economic part of the game was also a bit deeper, even though there were not as many resource types. The spell system was also more flexible, allowing for more strategic spells (the tactical spells were a bit more limited though). Also, one often overlooked thing was how your relationship with other races also impacted how likely troops & cities from that race were to rebel against you. And finally, the unit descriptions (every unit had a description that several sentences long) just added a lot of character to the game.
As much as I enjoy the HoMM series, I've always found them to be a bit shallow. Fun time killers, but not all that strategically or tactically complex. AoW was a bit deeper in these regards, without being overwhelming.
