Damn right. Some people will tell you the campaign is meant as a tutorial, but I think it does an equally shoddy job at that.

I'm sorry you guys lost 4 hours of your lives that you'll never get back playing the campaign.  Lucky for me, I haven't played it yet.  The fact that Lord Xia got crushed the other day gives me hope.  I might have to fire EWOM up again in a few weeks.

Having just completed the campaign myself I must agree. I was all ready to conquer the rest of the map after this upcoming dragon fight. Turns out I built multiple squads of "Axemans" (!) for naught.The tutorial's pacing also seems off. My three towns ran out of anything to build other than spamming extraneous workshops long before the required events to complete the campaign quests could possibly have taken place, and that was with a 5-movement army. The map is too spread out and has too many dead ends. It's like I was expected to possess perfect foreknowledge of where each town and objective was and just move in a direct line to each in order, not exploring any hidden corners (may as well have since there was nothing to find - a good rule to follow is to always reward players for exploring, not punish them by simply wasting their time). The campaign needs some serious extension and should introduce all the game concepts. How does being granted free access to short swords in campaign help me understand that in sandbox mode I would have to generate Tech knowledge points through various means and research in the Military category a couple times to unlock it - which will not be explained to me in any case? That is COUNTER to learning how to play. In fact the more I think about this the more angry I feel about how much the campaign sucks and doesn't represent the core gameplay very well, so let's leave it there.

Aside - obviously the game doesn't have the ability to pluralize correctly - it's impossible to create a squad named Axemen. Any dev could whip up basic pluralization code in minutes, come on, it would be a lot better than nothing! Or change the code so it doesn't say "Axemans" but "Axeman (8)" Details details, details. If you skimp on the details like proper pluralization and spelling then that distracts from whatever you did right. Strive for triple-A production values, Stardock guys!

Lol, this bothers me some too.  Something as simple as Swordman, becomes Swordmans, or fix it to Swordmen, then Swordmens...DAMN IT! lol, But I am a simple creature, So I rarely have more than 3 units any way, Cheap melee, Expensive Melee, and Archers.

Personally i loved the campaign, right up to the point of defeating the dude with the dragon. Never before have i seen a campaign set itself up for such greatness, then....??

Imagine a new high speed motorway, just opened, all these motorists entering and expecting to accelerate to great speed but instead suddenly drop off the edge after a few hundred meters! Yep, this describes the campaign quite nicely!