I have to agree with you on the sad lack of Hybrid units beyond the hybrid Clockwork men. I mean I can only imagine how awesome say a Hybrid Juggernaut would be.
Still I will say that one thing I liked with the Vinci over the other factions was the prototype factory it's a shame the other factions don't have one but I can see why. That said I Giacomo is an inventer I almost wish he kept that factory and just got different options when playing the other factions.
Darn it now I want to start a Rise of Legends Quest.
Alright! Some more things to talk about. First, back when you got Andromolek. Huh, pretty cool that you pegged his mission as one of the best in the Alin campaign. But, as I said in my first post here, Andromolek is the -coolest- Alin Hero in the game. I mean. Look at this.
BAD. ASS.
As for why Sawu joins you in the Cuotl campaign no matter if you inoculate the Vinci or Alin, yeah there's no explanation for that. I think it's probably more because he's just that damn powerful, and not because he's a genie, because as yourself noted at the bottom of page 2, Dakhla (and by extension, Damanhur) are both genies, too. Speaking of which, let's talk about Dakhla for a sec. You know centaurs. You might have seen wolf-taurs. Maybe dracotaurs, if you're really into 3rd edition D&D splat. You've seen spider-taurs(driders) and scorpion-taurs.
Have you ever seen a gawedamned earwig-taur? That is why, in spite of all this game's flaws, it remains one of my favorites. It's just so CREATIVE!
Also, there's a few things missing from your rundown on the Cuotl Research:
Worship increases the effectiveness of holy arks and the transport capacity of fanes.
Zeal increase the attack of all your units by about five percent per, and a spawns an increasing number of free sentinel units to supplement the ones you aren't getting from military districts
Judgment provides free timonium, increase building health, and makes subjugation do less damage.
Divine power gives you free energy, and levels up the national power.
Namely, Zeal and Judgment are a little more than what you say. While for the Vinci and Alin, the majority of the units have no "spells" or "special abilities" at all, EVERY Cuotl unit has the same two spells; Personal Shield and Personal Cloak. They don't start immediately available. Judgment doesn't technically increase building health, it increases building -shields-, and Judgment I enables the Personal Shield spell (and every subsequent level of Judgment improves how much damage Personal Shield absorbs for unit). Zeal II enables the Personal Cloak spell, and I think subsequent levels increases its duration. Zeal also has another well-hidden effect. You know the Cuotl High Priest? In addition to those two spells that every Cuotl unit has, the High Priest has two others, a "Blinding Armor" spell, and a lightning-zap spell. With no research in Zeal, that lightning-zap spell is piddly--tiny area and does next to nothing for damage. But increased levels of Zeal actually improve that spell. In short, when you get Zeal IV? That lightning zap-spell has a MASSIVE area, and deals so much damage that not only does it annihilate all infantry, but can knock off, like, half the health of a Sun Idol! When I discovered that, I made sure to have multiple High Priests in every army I made and prioritized Zeal research, because just one use of the maxed-out lightning strike can single-handedly win a small battle, and instantly turn the tides of a larger one.
But now, the real thing I want to rant talk about.
Finally in the Cuotl campaign. You have picked up the only two Heroes you are ever going to get in the last campaign. I will not dignify them with their names, I only refer to them as Skinny Bastard and Fat Bastard. I loathe them. Despise them utterly. No, not because their 'lackluster' abilities, they actually could be useful if you use them right (Skinny Bastard's rez spell can indeed be cast on your other Heroes, I thought that was like...the only point to ever using it, it's not like you'd ever care about rezzing any production unit except -maybe- an Elite Sun Idol or Death Sphere in the middle of a down-to-the-wire battle). No, I hate Skinny Bastard and Fat Bastard because of what they represent. You are in the Cuotl campaign. They are the only Heroes you get in the Cuotl campaign. You get no real Cuotl Heroes whatsoever.
...Lemme back this up for a sec. I was first introduced to Rise of Legends at a friend's house, by playing skirmish maps (and of course, seeing the intro cutscene). In Skirmish, as Vinci, you get access to Giacomo, Lenora, and The Doge. I knew enough about the game to know Giacomo+Lenora=Good Guys, Doge=Bad Guy. For the Cuotl Skirmish faction, you get Xil Sun God, Shok Storm Goddess, and Death God Czin. -Clearly-, Sun God and Storm Goddess=Good Guys, and Death God=Bad Guy. It made sense! Why? The intro cutscene. The very first thing you see is the Cuotl ship shattering into multiple fragments on approach to Aio. Why did that happen? I thought the answer was so obvious! CUOTL CIVIL WAR, of course! Then I got RoL for myself and started playing the campaign. Vinci campaign went more or less as expected. Got into the Alin campaign. In Skirmish mode, the Alin faction gives you Dakhla, Damanhur, and Sawu as Heroes. So, in the Alin campaign, imagine my excitement to see "additional confirmation" of what I already "knew". Dakhla+Damanhur=Good Guys, Sawu=Bad Guy! (Well, sorta at least, in the Alin campaign, but it was close enough).
But then I got to the Cuotl campaign. Enter Skinny Bastard, to a wrinkled nose. "Okay, don't know who the fuck -you- are. Just gonna ignore you, I'll get a real Cuotl Hero soon...". See Ix, Moon Good. "Oh hey, he's gotta be with Czin! That's how the civil war was broken down! Xil and Shok versus Ix and Czin! I mean, it's kinda cliché, you know, Sun and Storm good guys and Moon and Death bad guys, but meh, I don't care about cliché! I just can't wait to meet the friendly alien-robots and hear their story!" Enter Fat Bastard to raised eyebrow. "Okay, you're still not -really- Cuotl. So you're leading a rebel faction, okay, fine, but I still don't care about you." And -then- I see the Strategic Map, after collecting Fat Bastard. And I saw Xil and Shok...arrayed on the map as enemy commanders, with Czin.
Cue horror of dawning comprehension jawdrop. "They're...ALL bad guys?! Am I not going to get ANY real Cuotl on my side AT ALL?? No, no, fuck you, don't tell me there's not a single friendly actual Cuotl Hero hidden in one of those territories for me to collect!" Finish Cuotl Campaign.
So. Damn. Disappointed.
You get no true Cuotl Heroes for the entire Cuotl campaign. Skinny Bastard and Fat Bastard do not count. No, not even Fat Bastard, he's just a random guy using a stolen Cuotl laser cannon, don't give a shit about him. And Skinny Bastard, that motherfucker doesn't have anything to do with Cuotl at all! He's a leftover from one of the gawdamned cut factions!.
--And let me take a brief aside here. I hear a lot of people bemoaning that there were two additional factions planned for RoL that didn't make it into the final cut. I've seen the concepts of those two factions. Let me be the voice of dissent here and say that I am glad they were cut. They would have added nothing--and in fact, actively ruined--the very slick, tight theming we got in the final product of the game, and that theming being Technology, Magic, and Magical-Technology. The two concept factions had nothing to offer for that, they would have muddied it up, diluted that well-done story-theme triangle.--
But yeah. There was so much promise in the Cuotl story (learning why certain pieces of their tech is 'corruptive', completely missed civil war, learning about the Cuotl themselves--the Cuotl "gods" appear to be robots entirely rather than mecha-suits, but in the final cutscene you see [spoilers], which to me suggested that the Cuotl robots are, like, some kind of intelligent robotic explorers/terraformers, which could have easily provided reasons for a civil war between them on approach to Aio if they had conflicting priorities), and then there was just...nothing. Textbook TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot. On top of poor storywriting and execution, outside of the Vinci campaign, which is one of the things that makes it so painfully, regretfully obvious that the quality of the RoL campaign degrades the longer you play it. Among dozens of other little things. Also the, to me, questionable decision of actually following one single guy (who started as Vinci) through the three campaigns, I was expecting that each campaign would do a -complete- switch to new protagonists (even if villainous ones) since this game is so reminiscent of StarCraft(imagine my surprise when I got to the Alin campaign for the first time), but they couldn't have actually done that, with their decision to make each campaign Factions Vs. Itself (Vinci-Vinci, Alin-Alin...) because of the city-cap mechanics rather than ensure that you have missions in all three campaigns fighting all three factions, because then there would have been absolutely nothing tying the three campaigns together. I -love- Rise of Legends for being hands-down one of the most -imaginative- games I have ever seen...I'm just so -sad-, seeing its unimpressive execution, seeing so much that could have easily been better...
*sigh* And there will never be a chance to see any kind of improved sequel or remake of this game, because of that holy fucking shitKingdoms of Amalur FIASCO. The devstudio was dissolved and the Rise of Nations/Legends IPs were auctioned off to anonymous buyers (while the Amalur IP itself tragi-hilariously failed to auction), so there's essentially zero chance we'll ever see anything in this...beautifully rich setting and concept ever again.
Welcome back, to Rise of Legends. After our initial advance we've finally come into the territory of another god. Due to the structure of the Coutl realm, we aren't very likely to engage more than one god at once.
Anyways, research is still stalled, so after the normal building of merchant districts, upgrading Giacomo, and adding extra infantry to my army, it's time to attack the gods.
So, this is one of the few non skirmish missions in the Coutl campaign, and we start with a small army and five cites. The premise is simple, we have a couple minutes to build as many defences as we can before a wave of Coutl troops crashed down on us
The enemy wave comes as three separate groups attacking my outlying cites. There's a mix of Coutl troops, but the headliners are the three elite sun idols backing up each attack force. These are like bigger, nastier Coutl versions of glass golems, and my favourite Coutl unit by a large margin. The rest of the troops, though upgraded, are too few in number to be a major threats to my army, though the four cannons will obliterated any defence structures in short order.
Oddly these troops have Czin's colours, despite being in Xil's territory and using his signature units.
So, early in the mission the fallen suggest forting up in central city rather than dividing your forces trying to hold everything. We are kind of holding to that plan, but the point isn't taking advantage of our fortifications- the attack has enough siege to crush anything you can build. Rather, we want to fight each of the attack forces one at a time instead of letting multiple groups converge on my army at once. So my army is going to sally and engage one of the attack forces as they're waiting about for the city to be captured.
For the first time in forever, the AI prioritizes taking down my heroes instead of my army. This means I lose Giacomo but keep most of my troops. Fair enough, Giacomo isn't that good.
However, we don't have time to waste. At this point the outlying cities have been captured, and the attack forces are now on the move. The key point is that there are only three attack forces, and four outlying cites, so one is going to head to the southeast, while the other one heads to my capitol, where we are going to engage them.
I really love the Sun Idol's attack animations. Normally there's a perception that laser weapons can be hard to sell to the audience as actually dangerous, but the combination of the ominous pre-shot charge cycle and the visual impact of the sun beams really make the Cuotl sun weapons come across as devastating.
Once agin, having giant robots with laser hands focus on my heroes is a lethal experience. It's a shame, since I had just spent a pile of resources reviving Giacomo. Now I'd like a refund so I can resurrect Arri.
There's only one attack force left, and I think that the AI's prioritization of my hero units haven't served it very well, because I have a quite sizeable force left over. This attack force gets itself tossed around like chumps.
I like this mission a lot actually-it's very puzzle-like, which is a different feeling from the usual dungeon crawls and skirmish maps, or even the previous defence missions.
They're incredibly great giant death robots, and with the right research they get cloaks too, so they're invisible infiltrating giant death robots. It's hilarious what a small attack force of those appearing in enemy territory can do.
They're terrible. The transport capacity is determined by worship research. Level one lets you carry a single unit, and level two gives you six/eight. So after three research points, these are more expensive and carry less than a cargo dirigible or magic wind. Sure, you can use the building to produce units, but you can't make things and transport things at the same time.
Worse is the UI elements. Because Fanes are buildings, and the selection methods always put more importance on selecting units than buildings. Combined with the somewhat low point of view regarding air units, and you easily end up unable to select fanes, and makes using them as transports pretty awkward.
Worse is the UI elements. Because Fanes are buildings, and the selection methods always put more importance on selecting units than buildings. Combined with the somewhat low point of view regarding air units, and you easily end up unable to select fanes, and makes using them as transports pretty awkward.
I always just went full air-power, secured a beach-head by dropping Battaglion to one-shot a city/neutral site and then turreted up. Rinse and repeat until map cleared.
So, this is going to be a long one. Probably the first of many long ones, because there are a lot of skirmish maps in the campaign, so we're running the first of many double updates. But the second half of this update is an enemy capitol, which is the longest and bloodiest slog that I have had to play so far in this game.
Prior to a long and bloody slog, I take my traditional campaign step of upgrading my basic infantry.
So, this skirmish map happens like is highly typical for skirmish maps. Except in reverse. There's a brutal wall of units led by an enemy hero that is rammed down your throat in impressively short amounts of time. This time I'm the one who I've got to hold on against the storm.
So I have the slight advantage in this fight, in that my infantry is upgraded and Xil's is not. I don't have the advantage of my city providing fire support, and those infantry get demolished when giant robots step on them.
Yeah, it doesn't go well. I get steamrolled and have to restart.
The second round, frankly I get lucky. Though I do try to build faster and play tighter, ceding a close by neutral site, the real deciding factor is the AI roulette deciding to hold off an attacking for a bit.
This gives me the time to bring along Belassari, and scorch everything with giant flamethrower lizards.
Having won the single major battle of the mission, the mission naturally ends as my victorious army crashes through the enemy base.
So, because I have an image limit, it's time to put an end to Xil. I'm still prior to the point in the campaign where I have points to spend on upgrades, so no map. His capitol hosts a colossal laser cannon called the Eye of the Gods, which is the main gimmick of the level.
There are three objectives on this map-capture the eye of the gods, capture Xil's capitol, and defeat Xil himself. That last one is really easy, since the enemy will rush him at you as soon as possible, along with his starting army. Usually I have enough time to capture a city literally ten feet from your starting capitol before the god of the sun comes to call.
I manage to fight off the Sun god, but he manages to get line of sight to my mine, and takes aim with the eye of the gods. It kills all the miners in a single shot, stalling my economy. Probably better than if he wiped my initial army with a shot form that.
Then the grind begins. Xil spends the rest of the mission throwing elite sun idols at me one at a time, accompanied by a handful of defenders.
Something odd is going on with the enemy upgrades this game. Xil's starting army and some of the troops spawned as initial defenders are mostly unupgraded, but pretty much everything else is very upgraded. This is a serious problem for me, because my troops absolutely cannon win a straight fight. Using Giacomo's pile of health to tank, and summoning Arri for a similar role is my best bet.
The eye of the gods is actually very close to my starting location, which theoretically makes it easy to capture and play around with, though it does have a bunch of defence towers and scripted defence forces. I attempt to push forward to take it with whatever I can fight with, but am forced to retreat as yet another attack force starts harassing my home front, losing a lot of troops during the retreat.
But that retreat spells my end of my first shot on this map. It takes a while, but I am just not able to get my feet under me at any point and slowly get ground down by sun idol after sun idol.
Let me state in advance that this bloody mission is the new champion for most retries on one map, at around six. Several of them end where I get all my troops killed in the first engagement by the Eye of the Gods, and then get slowly beaten down.
So, after failing to get started another time. I come into a winning strategy-summon bellasarri instead of Arri. Belassari has two advantages over the other heroine-she has a heal that works on percentage of health, very effective on heroes, and the majority of her damage comes from her auto-attacks, so she can beat down the enemy waves without being reliant on cool down abilities.
Proper use of hero tanking actually leaves us in a position where we can afford to summon in Arri and storm the eye of the gods with a mass of infantry.
Don't worry guys, I'm working on getting some heavy stuff researched. You won't have to look at my ugly infantry spam much longer. Right now though, guardians are pretty much the only unit that can stand a chance against the superior quality of the enemy troops on this map.
And, then I make a colossal blunder, and try to throw my army at Xil's capitol to win the game quickly, running into this monstrosity. This is the Sun citadel, a massive special site on this map. Unlike the Alin citadels, this thing is actually has defences-quite formidable ones at that. It doesn't do anything else, but it's a nasty roadblock.
However, it is a site, and by tanking with my heroes I can keep enough troops around to just storm it once it's been whittled down a little.
But that just lets me run into yet more defences and troops, and I'm getting the living tar beaten out of me. Meanwhile, my home from has been devastated in my risky push.
Let's try that again.
It take a couple attempts before another run is anywhere near as successful as that one. The main problem surviving the initial fight without Xil winning by blasting all of my troops with the eye of the gods, and then crushing me.
So after another couple failed attempts, I manage to fight my way back to that point. I actually go back to the strategic map and upgrade Giacomo's heal another level before running this-from my run on normal I remembered the heal being a bit redundant as it only heals more as it levels up, but with the amount of heat my heroes have to take in this level, I really appreciate it.
Anyways, after taking the Eye of the Gods, I summon Andromolek, because a lot of posters seem to like him very much. I levelled him to five during the Alin campaign because he was the only other hero who was coming with us that I could invest points in. Theoretically the ability to freeze sun idols and the ability to make Dark Alin units helps bump up my unit count without struggling without the ramping costs.
I'm not sure I really feel that Andromolek really shows off much in this battle, though the ability to summon cannons is useful. The Dark Alin units have a hefty ramp factor and aren't as high quality as the rest of my units. It is enough to to take the fight to Xil and take his capitol.
And this mess is finally over. Ugh.
I'm not a great map by any means. There's an odd lack of secondary objectives, outside of the couple cities on the other side of the map that I never bother to deal with which makes it feel quite small. The eye of the gods isn't a terribly interesting site, because firing it is incredibly costly at 250 energy, so really it's a long slog towards the enemy capitol. Certainly a challenge though.
I'm not a great map by any means. There's an odd lack of secondary objectives, outside of the couple cities on the other side of the map that I never bother to deal with which makes it feel quite small. The eye of the gods isn't a terribly interesting site, because firing it is incredibly costly at 250 energy, so really it's a long slog towards the enemy capitol. Certainly a challenge though.
Hm. Your army seems light on siege units. That might be part of the issue. Generally the AI doesn't have too many defense units, but this map really likes them. When I do this map I generally try to have 4-5 cannons, more if I've summoned siege units using heroes. And even that can seem light at times.
Also, I find using sun jaguars really useful. They disrupt enemy units, and can tank enemy units reasonably well. Sure, they die fast and don't do a ton of damage vs large units, but the act as a pretty great road block for infantry blobs, which is what you need.
Finally, getting a lot of energy income is pretty easy on this map: the AI generally has trouble taking a bunch of cities, so if you capture a bunch and focus on reactors in the rearmost cities you end up with a ridiculous energy income. Especially since at this point in the campaign you don't really have any huge energy sinks.
Welcome back. This is a skirmish map. It will be short. Outside of the recurring problem of the Coutl gods having inconsistent colour schemes (These idiots are allegedly Czin's troops and are using his stuff, but are wearing the late Xil's colours) there i very little interesting about it, as I have no new toys.
The usual script for skirmish missions in this campaign plays out, and boy is it depressing that I've gotten to this point so bloody early in the campaign. Anyways, we kinda advance, hold off the enemy until I can afford a better hero than Giacomo, and the take whatever is left so they can watch the leads brutalize everything in their path.
Yeah, well that's what happens. Let's continue on.
So, back to the strategic map. We have slowly been going somewhere, and cleaned out the little cul-de-sac that is XIl's territory, and are slowly moving towards the territory of the second god, Shokk, goddess of the storm (yes, the name is stupid). This is the point where I'm heading towards making some science points in addition to merchant districts. Earlier than I would have previously, but the game is shorter.
But, let's take this one last neutral territory.
This mission. This mission. So this is one of the two missions you can do at the start of the campaign, and is almost a skirmish map. We start with a city, they have a city, and the map is suspiciously symmetrical. The only thing that makes this not look like a skirmish map is an actual into spiel instead of the skirmish map one.
Now the part that isn't a skirmish maps are this little flying things. These are shipments for Kakhoola, though they are apparently on autopilot. They will show up in the most forsaken corner of the map above a bottomless lava chasm. If you can protect them (you can lose a single one) from enemy fighters you will get a fantastic (unspecified) weapon. What you won't get, is any hero points like many other bonus objectives.
Why is this? Probably because this stupid side objective is one of the hardest tasks in the game. Especially when the enemy's fighters are more upgraded then yours. These shipments get destroyed really easily, fighters are expensive, and you have to rush straight across the map to intercept the enemy fighters because shipments coming from both sides.
Ok, this might be a personal psychological hangup. The first time though the game, I never did the secondary objective on this map, and the only other complete let's play I found also didn't do it. It's surprisingly hard. So when I started this project, one of the major goals was to finally find out what these shipments actually did.
So long story short, I cracked after a couple tries and turned down the difficulty. I'm reasonably confident that I could win the mission on hard, which would give me all the points, but wouldn't answer my questions.
The basic plan was to take the other side of the chasm so I didn't have to run entirely on my fighters. I also wanted to see if I could blow up the enemy temples to stop their fighter production, but I couldn't find any. I strongly suspect that the enemy fighters on the map are spawned in for free. Probably a major reason why this doing the side objective is so hard.
So, after camping my army in front of the enemy base for a frustratingly large time, I get my reward-two units that don't have researched yet.(only one of which is likely to actually research). The unimpressive on is the storm disk, the aforementioned heavy anti air unit. It's doesn't really have a reasonable tactical niche since you have perfectly functional anti air unit already. Also, it seems like it's half the size it was supposed to be? This thing has about as much health as an air destroyer, but it's about the same size as a pirata flyer. Shouldn't they make it a little more impressive?
More impressive is the Death Sphere, which is basically a portable black hole used as a melee unit. Unsurprisingly it does a terrifying amount of melee damage (But still less than air cruisers and Rhuks), an even more terrifying amount of trample damage, and poisons anything nearby. It's also costs like fourteen research points to get, and six hundred timonium per sphere, so ... maybe not the best unit from a cost efficiency standpoint. Awfully cool though.
I have previously praised little things like this that give new players the ability to play with advanced units. HOWEVER-if you know what you're doing, you will save yourself a ton of headaches by ignoring the shipments and playing this mission as a straight skirmish map. It's just way to frustrating to deal with.
Huh. I might be misremembering here, but I'm pretty sure that finishing secondary mission spawned City of Venegance for me. Which was awesome and actually worth defending the caravans over.
I might just be replacing disapointment with fantasy though.
Welcome back. This is a skirmish map. It will be short. Outside of the recurring problem of the Coutl gods having inconsistent colour schemes (These idiots are allegedly Czin's troops and are using his stuff, but are wearing the late Xil's colours) there i very little interesting about it, as I have no new toys.
The usual script for skirmish missions in this campaign plays out, and boy is it depressing that I've gotten to this point so bloody early in the campaign. Anyways, we kinda advance, hold off the enemy until I can afford a better hero than Giacomo, and the take whatever is left so they can watch the leads brutalize everything in their path.
Yeah, well that's what happens. Let's continue on.
So, back to the strategic map. We have slowly been going somewhere, and cleaned out the little cul-de-sac that is XIl's territory, and are slowly moving towards the territory of the second god, Shokk, goddess of the storm (yes, the name is stupid). This is the point where I'm heading towards making some science points in addition to merchant districts. Earlier than I would have previously, but the game is shorter.
But, let's take this one last neutral territory.
This mission. This mission. So this is one of the two missions you can do at the start of the campaign, and is almost a skirmish map. We start with a city, they have a city, and the map is suspiciously symmetrical. The only thing that makes this not look like a skirmish map is an actual into spiel instead of the skirmish map one.
Now the part that isn't a skirmish maps are this little flying things. These are shipments for Kakhoola, though they are apparently on autopilot. They will show up in the most forsaken corner of the map above a bottomless lava chasm. If you can protect them (you can lose a single one) from enemy fighters you will get a fantastic (unspecified) weapon. What you won't get, is any hero points like many other bonus objectives.
Why is this? Probably because this stupid side objective is one of the hardest tasks in the game. Especially when the enemy's fighters are more upgraded then yours. These shipments get destroyed really easily, fighters are expensive, and you have to rush straight across the map to intercept the enemy fighters because shipments coming from both sides.
Ok, this might be a personal psychological hangup. The first time though the game, I never did the secondary objective on this map, and the only other complete let's play I found also didn't do it. It's surprisingly hard. So when I started this project, one of the major goals was to finally find out what these shipments actually did.
So long story short, I cracked after a couple tries and turned down the difficulty. I'm reasonably confident that I could win the mission on hard, which would give me all the points, but wouldn't answer my questions.
The basic plan was to take the other side of the chasm so I didn't have to run entirely on my fighters. I also wanted to see if I could blow up the enemy temples to stop their fighter production, but I couldn't find any. I strongly suspect that the enemy fighters on the map are spawned in for free. Probably a major reason why this doing the side objective is so hard.
So, after camping my army in front of the enemy base for a frustratingly large time, I get my reward-two units that don't have researched yet.(only one of which is likely to actually research). The unimpressive on is the storm disk, the aforementioned heavy anti air unit. It's doesn't really have a reasonable tactical niche since you have perfectly functional anti air unit already. Also, it seems like it's half the size it was supposed to be? This thing has about as much health as an air destroyer, but it's about the same size as a pirata flyer. Shouldn't they make it a little more impressive?
More impressive is the Death Sphere, which is basically a portable black hole used as a melee unit. Unsurprisingly it does a terrifying amount of melee damage (But still less than air cruisers and Rhuks), an even more terrifying amount of trample damage, and poisons anything nearby. It's also costs like fourteen research points to get, and six hundred timonium per sphere, so ... maybe not the best unit from a cost efficiency standpoint. Awfully cool though.
I have previously praised little things like this that give new players the ability to play with advanced units. HOWEVER-if you know what you're doing, you will save yourself a ton of headaches by ignoring the shipments and playing this mission as a straight skirmish map. It's just way to frustrating to deal with.
This objective is really hard to get. I generally go due east, taking the tower that makes the special air units(thus lowering the ramp costs a bit) and the neutral city in that direction. Build only minimal amounts of land units and expansions, focusing on economy stuff to prevent going over your resource cap. Then build as many of the two types of fighters as you can. And make sure to micro: the enemy fighters will generally spread their damage out to all of your fighters. So focusing each of their fighters down works well.
Also, it can help to add some of their flyers to your army before this mission.
But, as people have mentioned, if you get all of the shipments it's a City of Vengeance, which is a pretty nice reward.
Wait what. Holy shit you get a goddamn City of Vengeance if you get all the shipments? That's awesome! Where the hell did they get the resources and the tech needed to build one of those? I think those only show up at one other part of the campaign like the other superunits.
Bit of fringe logic too. They don't have all the parts to build a City of Vengeance, so they salvage what they could so you get the Storm Disk from the flying components and the Death Sphere from the Black Hole power core thingy.
Pardon my slowbro, but this has been bugging me through the Alin campaign - forgot about it, then only now just remembered - my old dim memories of the campaign keep trying to tell me that Damanhur's model is bare-chested nekkid, and I'm wondering 'of course not!' but '... is it?'.
I mean, the opening spiel literally says that you can only build the great weapon if you get all of the supplies.
But even with the City, it's only questionably worth it. If you ignored them entirely you'd probably win the map faster, just by being able to build a city/economy/army faster.
Welcome back. We're finally going to meet the last Coutl god, Shok goddess of storms. She, pretty obviously focuses on the Coutl air force, which probably makes her a little easier to handle then Xil's sun idol spam or Czin's highly upgraded force with multiple death spheres.
This is another non-skirmish map, and because it isn't part of Shok's starting territory, my designated enemy is Czin. So much for an easy battle. So, because of a lack of other cities for her to take, Shok and her air force runs straight at my base. The designers seems to be aware of this tendancy-as we start with a free military district and a defensive site in front of our base, which helps compensate against this rush.
Shok is quickly reinforced in her assault by the forces of Czin, which pushes my army to the limit. It actually takes me several tries to win this battle. It's a worthwhile exercise for my micro skills.
The solution is related to heroes-The first couple times I waste a lot of time attacking Shok, who dosn't do much damage but has a ton of health. I also lose most of my forces while Giacomo is still untouched, when I should have ordered him forward to tank much earlier.
We also start the map with this fallen refuge under our control, but it quickly come under assault by Czin's forces. There's no need to fight for it-I'm having a hard enough time already, and if they want to waste time taking this place, then I'll let them.
After the initial assault you can take a nearby neutral city, and clear out this enemy base that's sitting right out here just past your borders. This should give you a little breathing room.
So the only side objective on this map is to take all the other cities on the map, instead of just the capitol. Probably the most boring side objective in the entire game. The first is in this isolated valley to the east of your territory.
While Giacomo is taking the city as fast as he can, I summon Bellassari and have her hold the front against enemy attacks, which really haven't let up.
Past the front line there a fortress which defends both the path to the enemy capitol and the the path to the next cities. Once Giacomo is back from taking the eastern city, we smash it.
I'm going to claim the enemy cities of course, but my tight economic situation means I'm a little short on siege.
But, as is the case, mass infantry is surprisingly effective at breaking cities, due to the ability to storm it once the city drops to half health or so.
So in a rather unusual move, I actually build a palace district. Normally I never bother, as upgrades and unlocked units ignore the city size requirements in the campaign, so why bother wasting resources? Well, in the Coutl campaign, there are two good reasons for this. Firstly, you can only research third level techs with a large city and fourth level techs with a great city. Now, since the game just hands me research points for building districts, I occasionally want to spend them once I've got everything at level 2. Also, there's a useful mine upgrade that requires a large city that can increase the timonium or energy output.
The upside of this is that I can actually build a siege elephant, the final fallen unit, which does what it sounds like it does. It has a hilarious amount of siege damage, meh damage to other units, Ok trample damage, and more health than a heavy tank
So, with my new pachyderm, I start the assault up the giant ziggurat where the enemy capitol resides. It's a hell of a slog, with multiple defence towers lining the path and a reserve force of high tier units waiting for my assault force.
This is also where I start to question the efficiency of the elephant, as opposed to just building more cannons. Heroes are better tanks, and the thing is so expensive and tends to die.
So, I run the hell back to my defences after getting shredded by the enemy, which let's me kill off the death spheres.
This retreat, and the need to build back up my forces, gives the Coutl the opportunity to launch assaults on the western cities, taking them back until I can launch a counterassault.
This cycle of attack, retreat counterattack occurs again, before I finally get the decisive advantage against the heavily fortified enemy capitol.
Really, not the best mission. Better than yet another skirmish map, but really isn't too far from a skirmish map. There's nothing interesting or outside the norm for a game of rise of legends, and this campaign is desperately in need of something out of the ordinary.
Part of what makes the last third of the game so bland is the sameness of the terrain. The Vinci forests had a lot more varied heights and the desert sands were broken up by differently colored rocks here and there. In the rainforest, changes in elevation don't really look all that different from boring brown undergrowth.
Welcome back. I finally get play with the cool parts of the Cuotl arsenal, adding my first Sun Idol to my army, as I start the first of several skirmishes with Shok.
Sun idols, as mentioned before, are somewhere in the nebulous grey area between good and broken that really only exists because few people played this game competitively. In addition to having a laser cannon that is effective against everything, they have a absurd amount of trample damage and are surprisingly affordable.
One part of the affordability is that they are are energy heavy, and energy costs do not ramp. This makes then a bit more spammable than other heavy units.
So, this skirmish is against Shok, which is a huge relief. She doesn't have the same amount of tech as the main villain Czin, and for the first time in a long time my infantry aren't outclassed in a straight fight.
This first skirmish ends with a comical display of incompetence on the part of the goddess, as we manage to capture her capitol while her army is expanding into neutral cities, and by the time she gets around to attacking us, the capture is complete and we've won the mission.
So, at this point we can take Shok's capitol, take on another skirmish map, or fight Czin. We're going to be going with option two, because if we defeat Shok, then Czin takes over the skirmish map and that's frustrating.
While I'm here, I upgrade my Sun Jaguars, and get access to Death Snakes, the third Coutl barracks unit. Snakes are Anti large melee units, but they also have a poison effect and rather high trample damage, making them slightly useful against most land units.
This time around Shok is capable of finding us in a much more timely fashion, and even graces us with her splashiest ability, hurricane. This is the second global effect on a hero ability, and the only one available in multiplayer. However, the effect is more dramatic on air units than ground units, and I have next to no air units in this campaign. It doesn't take long to break Shok's army and start my advance on her capitol.
For a change of pace, I bring out Sawu to play, as I've been throwing points at him for a while on account of him being cool This adds some glass spiders to our army, and gives me some options.
Sadly, the summoned dragon dosn't have the special abilities of real elder dragons, but it makes up for it with it's raw pile of stats.
Yeah, this is where the campaign starts to fall apart. There are three skirmish maps in the Vinci campaign, four in the Alin campaign, which is a slightly bigger map. There are six in the Cuotl campaign, which is shorter than the vinci campaign. It just feels lazy, it's boring to play and it's a huge disappointment after the level of polish in the previous two campaigns.
So, lets finish off another god. Czin, as you may have noticed, doesn't move ever in this campaign, which means that once we take Shok's capital we no longer have to worry about losing territories. I get the thematic reasons for it-reinforcing the otherwise unsubstantiated idea that Czin is working on his Master Plan and we need to get to him soon, but I'm not quite sure the developers really thought through the implication of only having two armies to fight the player-it really robs the tension of the strategic map unless you deliberately waste turns and avoid fighting Xil and Shok's armies.
So, as before, we get rushed by Shok's kitted out air force almost immediately, and we begin the process of swatting them out of the sky. I've gotten the last upgrade in the Cuotl infantry, defenders prior to this battle.
You can also see that when Shok uses her abilities, she pulls out a a giant robot sized holographic touchscreen. It's a cool touch, reinforcing the idea that all of the Cuotl nonsense is some form of technology, even if it isn't clear how it works.
Shok's stronghold isn't as tough as Xil's, but it follows a similar structure in that right outside our starting base is an overpowered super weapon that we are supposed to take over. This one is the crypt of knowledge, which can mind control one enemy unit. Not as splashy as the giant laser cannon, but it's free to use, and much easier to capture. Shok also is reluctant to use it on us, unlike the Eye of the Gods which is almost guaranteed to blow up your initial army two minutes in. So after fighting off the initial rush I walk in and take it over.
Funnily enough, there are a large amount of fallen sentinels guarding the crypt-I'm not sure if this is an intentional reference to the crypt's mind control powers, or if the AI had just been buying out sites to replace the troops it lost in the first assault.
After taking control of the crypt, and setting up defences around it, we get attacked again, though not with much force.
Unlike Xil, Shok respawns in her capitol defence, which is very strange. Especially since you only need to kill her once to complete the mission objectives. I am pretty confident that this was on oversight.
Anyways, after fighting that off, our only remaining objective is to take over the remaining cites controlled by Shok. She starts with two in the northeast, and usually expands to the third one by the time you get up there. I summon Arri to do this, which is a pretty baffling decision in retrospect, since neither she, her desert walkers, or her Rhuks have an anti air attack to use against Shok's flying spam. The rhuks also all get stunned by hurricane, which wastes a good portion of their lifespan.
Shok also has a giant temple fortress, the rain temple. It's pretty much a reskin of the sun temple, and really is just a giant defence structure. It's between her two starting cities, and can pretty easily be ignored for most of the mission.
This really just feels like a lazy repeat of Xil's capitol, without even the saving grace of being actually hard (to be fair, that's as much because of the unbalanced nature of the Cuotl arsenal and the normal power curve of the campaign as it is because of bad design.) Hold off assault, take super weapon, take capitol with fancy defence temple outside it. No side objectives save for a few out of the way cities and sites that you could attack if you have nothing better to do. It's just boring! Couldn't they add like a mind controlled fallen AI faction which switches sides when you take the crypt or something?
Big Huge clearly had a lot of ambitious ideas for the game (with three factions they didn't finish of varying degrees of completion ranging from Mongols with moving cities to Slavs to Giants); story ideas they had planned but never implemented, more unfinished units or things ghetto'd into the campaign than most games have in their entire rosters, and essentially trying to make a narrative campaign with animations and everything even when they'd never tried anything on remotely that scale before. The game we have is probably 50% of the game they wanted, and I think it's pretty clear that by the Cuotl Campaign Big Huge was running out of time and money for their big passion project.
I mean, they still squeezed out one of the most unique and distinct RTS games around; but it was clearly not finished. That being said, it's still really quite good in spite of that which I think speaks volumes of the passion that Big Huge had for the game. They really wanted it to be their big hit, the game that would take them to the big leagues to compete with the likes of EA LA, Blizzard, Ensemble, and Relic in the public eye for RTS games and poured their heart and soul into making it as good as they could. And well; despite them not being able to really finish the game it's still not even close to bad at all.
Big Huge clearly had a lot of ambitious ideas for the game (with three factions they didn't finish of varying degrees of completion ranging from Mongols with moving cities to Slavs to Giants); story ideas they had planned but never implemented, more unfinished units or things ghetto'd into the campaign than most games have in their entire rosters, and essentially trying to make a narrative campaign with animations and everything even when they'd never tried anything on remotely that scale before. The game we have is probably 50% of the game they wanted, and I think it's pretty clear that by the Cuotl Campaign Big Huge was running out of time and money for their big passion project.
I mean, they still squeezed out one of the most unique and distinct RTS games around; but it was clearly not finished. That being said, it's still really quite good in spite of that which I think speaks volumes of the passion that Big Huge had for the game. They really wanted it to be their big hit, the game that would take them to the big leagues to compete with the likes of EA LA, Blizzard, Ensemble, and Relic in the public eye for RTS games and poured their heart and soul into making it as good as they could. And well; despite them not being able to really finish the game it's still not even close to bad at all.
Funnily enough, there are a large amount of fallen sentinels guarding the crypt-I'm not sure if this is an intentional reference to the crypt's mind control powers, or if the AI had just been buying out sites to replace the troops it lost in the first assault.
