And I don't mean that we've finished the quest. We just got a trio of stone giants, one of the most bullshit units in this game, and a giant Dwelling that can make more. The three giants could win this mission single handedly if you manage them properly.
So, what, exactly, is it that makes Stone Giants so overpowering? You mentioned that Frost Giants are boring slabs of muscle, so what does the Stone Giants bring to the table that the Frost Giants don't?
I've also taken the liberty to hide the earlier posts in the thread behind spoiler boxes, because the image loading was making things incredibly frustrating.
So, what, exactly, is it that makes Stone Giants so overpowering? You mentioned that Frost Giants are boring slabs of muscle, so what does the Stone Giants bring to the table that the Frost Giants don't?
Stone Giants can hurl boulders, which makes them walking artillery pieces that happen to swing a mean club of rock. In contrast, Frost Giants have to cross the distance before they can engage, which is problematic because there are a lot of ways to slow them down. Even worse, their special abilities trigger in hand-to-hand combat, meaning that they're very one-note compared to other Tier 4 units such as the Dread Reaper, the Horned God, and the Shrine of Smiting.
Stone Giants can hurl boulders, which makes them walking artillery pieces that happen to swing a mean club of rock. In contrast, Frost Giants have to cross the distance before they can engage, which is problematic because there are a lot of ways to slow them down. Even worse, their special abilities trigger in hand-to-hand combat, meaning that they're very one-note compared to other Tier 4 units such as the Dread Reaper, the Horned God, and the Shrine of Smiting.
That's why they are better than frost giants. That's not why they're "one of the most bullshit units in the game". The reason they're bullshit is that they throw boulders with the same range and power as a trebuchet, but they can move and shoot. Their movement speed, by the way, is equal to that of cavalry. This lets them do the one thing you aren't supposed to be able to do in this game, which is kite.
Against the normal infantry chassis, a stone giant can attack from outside of charge range, unlike normal archers, and is also significantlyfaster than said infantry unit. They're also still giants, with a solid set of defensive stats and melee attacks. Without a large amount of fast units or archers on the enemy side a single stone giant can kill arbitrary amounts of units without really being in danger.
Oh, so they're heavy artillery that can also fight in melee? At least now I see why Stibbons acted like he'd already won and the only thing left to do was cleanup.
That's why they are better than frost giants. That's not why they're "one of the most bullshit units in the game". The reason they're bullshit is that they throw boulders with the same range and power as a trebuchet, but they can move and shoot. Their movement speed, by the way, is equal to that of cavalry. This lets them do the one thing you aren't supposed to be able to do in this game, which is kite.
Against the normal infantry chassis, a stone giant can attack from outside of charge range, unlike normal archers, and is also significantlyfaster than said infantry unit. They're also still giants, with a solid set of defensive stats and melee attacks. Without a large amount of fast units or archers on the enemy side a single stone giant can kill arbitrary amounts of units without really being in danger.
Well, I now I see why you call them bullshit. Two things: does the enemy ever gain access to them, and can you bring anything other than your heroes with you to the next level?
Oh, so they're heavy artillery that can also fight in melee? At least now I see why Stibbons acted like he'd already won and the only thing left to do was cleanup.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that the Rogue on the first mission of the Commonwealth campaign is like the player in that it has restrictions on what it can build. At least, I don't recall anything more serious than Assassins, which I remember because Human Assassins can swim.
That said, it's been so long that my recollection is really, really faded.
Well, I now I see why you call them bullshit. Two things: does the enemy ever gain access to them, and can you bring anything other than your heroes with you to the next level?
Nothing stops the AI from using Dwelling units. If I remember correctly, it's actually possible for the AI to field Frost Giants in this mission, though I could be mixing it up with something else.
Regarding the second point, heroes are transferred along with their items. If it weren't for the facts that each mission has a level cap and that building custom items is blocked in the campaign, it'd be possible to solo entire levels with them. A Level 20 hero is absolutely terrifying, particularly if they have a collection of Mythic-level items collected over the course of a campaign to boost their strengths and make up for their weaknesses.
When last we left off, Edward Portsmith had gained the support of the giants of Stonoord against the Cult of the Frozen Beauty that was occupying Briska province. With the help of these new allies, he planned a daring attack at the heart of rebel territory.
In other news, scout drones sent to the north located a town that was outside of cultist control. Faces that didn't immediately want us dead are always welcome sight, and we would be able to bring them back into the fold after a quest or two.
You may remember from my previous scouting had found this ford over the main river. It's easy to miss this little crossing because it's off the main road, at to get to it you have to march through a pretty thick forest. Edward took the rag-tag army I'd put together previously and had already crossed the forest. Thanks to their mountaineering skills and a patch of haste berries, the rock giants would be able to bypass the forest and get into position for an assault next turn. Now a lightly defended wooden fortress was all that stood between Edward and the rebels' central city.
On a level walkthrough perspective, this bridge is about as hidden as it gets in Age of Wonders. You won't have the first idea it exists if you just follow the main road, but taking it will make your life far easier. I suspect it exists to allow experienced players replaying the campaign an shortcut to get this mission over with.
Oscar isn't taking my incursion into his lands lying down, and sent a squadron of cavalry to raid my territory. I had a an archer squad stationed a Oscars's old fortress, but they bypassed them and headed straight for my city. Since archers aren't going to win a fight with cavalry on an open field, I was forced to summon a pack of hell hounds to assist. I had wanted to use these monsters to reinforce Edward, but I don't wan't to be losing my lightly defended cities.
Now, you may be wondering what a good steampunk dreadnaught like Edward is doing summoning fiery demon hounds. These obviously don't come from his class skills, they instead come from his specializations. Each leader in Age of Wonders has three specializations slots, which they can fill with either studies of "old fashioned" elemental magics or with mundane talents. Edward is a master of fire magic, giving him summon hell hound, as well as an Expander, a mundane specialization focused on fast city growth. Summon Hell Hound was one of the spells we started with, but early on I'd been focusing on summoning scouts.
The hounds themselves are useful enough, roughly comparable to a racial cavalry unit, but a bit fragile. I find them quite useful in Edward's missions because the dreadnaught class otherwise lacks summonable combat units and tends to have little to do with it's mana early game.
In this fight I used a slightly counterintuitive tactic. Rather than attacking the enemy units, I simply moved adjacent to them and entered guard mode. You would think that giving the enemy unit the first strike would give them a large advantage, but that's rarely the case. Remember units don't lose any performance as they take damage in this game. Getting the first strike is far less useful when it comes to winning a fight then the twenty percent defence boost from being on guard mode.
The plan here almost works. The cavalry sanely don't want to get into a one on one with a unit in guard mode, and so make a break for my archers. They eat two attacks of opportunity doing so, but my archers have been weakened by a combat spell from Oscar. They just barely get wiped out. The enemy is mauled be doggies in turn.
Laryssa's army at the frost giant keep is out of position to attack Oscar, so I send her north into the relatively uninhabited wilderness. Her job is to hunt for loot and keep her incredibly valuable neck safe. Long term, she'll need to be on hand to finish off any quests the independent town gives us to make them join.
On the main front, we have good news and bad news. We won't have to fight our way through Oscar's perimeter fortress, but that's because the garrison bailed from their post and is sailing downriver into our territory. Since I never bothered to research seafaring on this map, we can't catch them on route. All we can do is build up our forces and try to fight them once they make landfall.
Well, what happens, happens. We have a city to take! One much more valuable than any of the ones we own. Oscar has a pretty fearsome garrison, heavy on priests and archers with a trebuchet backing them up. But we have three giants, who are ever so slightly a pile of nonsense. They're like artillery, mounted on cavalry, that have ninety hp and good defences. We can't do any kiting in a siege battle obviously, but all three focusing fire can reliably knock one unit a turn off the battlements.
Are giants overpowered? Possibly, but not as much as they come off in this mission. This mission is stone giant magic christmas land, giving them all the fun they could possibly want. For one, Oscar barely has any tier three units, and we have half a stack of tier fours. When our opponents are so badly outgunned we could repeat a lot of what you do in this mission with three of any given tier four unit. Giants may be better at humiliating large stacks of weaker units then some of the other options, but in a real game humiliating large stacks of weaker units will be one of the lowest things on your priority list by the time you can afford multiple tier four units. Every tier four unit save one cannot be kited to death. Secondly, it gives us enough stone giants to act independently with them. Kiting your opponent only really works in large battles if you can bring enough kiting units to thin your opponents ranks before they can surround you, and stone giants are difficult to mass produce. Giant keeps have lower production values than cities, and even with the one in this mission, which has comparatively high production, it still take three turns to make a single giant. They are still a brutal and showy hard counter to infantry heavy strategies, and can dominate smaller skirmishes, but they are such a late game option, and entirely dependant on the map layout, that I can't call them broken.
We did bring along more than giants, for what good it will do for us. Edward's forces are doing their best to demonstrate the conventional way to fight a siege battle. Basic infantry units, not pikemen, are capable of climbing city walls. They're incredibly vulnerable when doing it, so best practices are to either start climbing far away from your enemies or to use flying units, like draconian pikemen to make a beachhead.
I really should get used the the AI's tendency to do suicidal charges when faced with an overwhelming force.
The enemy cavalry are summarily outflanked and cut down, and the remaining archers are crushed by falling boulders. My draconian pikes get smashed by boulders in return, both by Oscar's magic and his siege engine. So I do what I should have done earlier, pull my conventional forces back, have the giants smash a hole in the wall and break the trebuchet. The stupid thing is annoyingly resistant to ranged attacks, even boulders
And there we go. We've taken one of the rebels largest cities, their only port, and cut off their reinforcements to their one isolated town. We also find some interesting things about what this cult of the frozen beauty really wants. They're founded by an old dark elf sorceress and are trying to find some unknown treasure she left behind. Considering the source of this mythical treasure, it is probably not a pile of gold and jewels.
Looking to the north, we can see that one of the cultist giants is lurking up north, as well as another camp full of refugees. There's more shrines to this frozen beauty floating around. Heck, there are four of the things in this one cities domain alone, and there were more of these shrines by frost giant keep. It's a nice bit of integration of gameplay and story, and it gets a little sinister because the shrines offer benefits to any units who visit them. This isn't some a case of cynical noblemen using a superstition to grease the wheels of rebellion. There's a real power behind the cult.
Northeast of the city is another fortress, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to guarding. The road doesn't go anywhere, but I suppose it keeps the gold mine under control. We don't want another one of Oscar's garrisons going on a death raid into our territory, so we'll be taking the fortress post-haste.
This is like the previous battle, save that Oscar has less troops but better cavalry. I take the smart route this time, and don't bother bringing up my conventional troops until my giants have smashed all of the enemy ranged units. Then we actually get an opportunity to do some stone giant kiting against the enemy knights. By hiding behind the fortress walls and the piles of rubble that always spawn outside fortresses we manage to gun down the enemy knights without letting them engage.
Back on the home front, the old rearguard gets back to help drive off Oscar's raiders. They end up just one fractional movement point short of bringing them to battle. Still, if Oscar had broke east instead of west we might be in a much bigger pickle. You can see the pile of troops I build up to get ready for the raiders in my alerts. We also finished . . . negotiating with the frost giant keep, though that one doesn't have the production boosters that the stone giant keep has, so that's the last I'll be mentioning it.
Meanwhile Laryssa has found her way to a monster den, another form of enemy spawner. Rather than making bandits, it will spit out stacks of wild animals and monsters like the giant spiders that we are currently facing. These tend to be much easier to defeat than you would expect due to the massive lava rifts that monsters like to build their dens over: nothing that spawns here has ranged attacks, so it's easy to use chokepoints to your advantage. I guess monsters like the heat?
I bugger this one up a bit. None of my units are able to race the spider queen to this chokepoint, and I don't want to be fighting the spider queen toe to toe with my longswords.
One of my civic guard units gets turned into spider food before we can bring the beast down.
Next up we're going to be putting an end to this little raiding party. Oscar's constant magical boulder barrages is getting slightly annoying. I could return the favour, but I prefer to keep my spell points for summoning. We completely outmatch the orcs in ranged firepower, and we'll have to make it count.
The orcs hit as predicted, and their cavalry outflanks and wipes out one of my archer regiments, while the pike regiment tries to assault my hell hounds.
It's an interesting note, but despite hell hounds behaving basically like cavalry, pikemen don't get their anti-cavalry bonuses when fighting them. Instead the hell hounds get bonus damage. I guess the dogs are too small a target for standard pike drills? Regardless, the hounds lay into the pikes, earning themselves a rank of vetrancy, and the surviving archers wipe out the orcish irregulars.
As with a bunch of other series, Age of Wonders units slowly gain vetrancy as they fight. There are four tiers of vetrancy, that follow a very strict pattern. Every level gives a unit +1 damage and a health boost, bronze medal gives an additional +1 defence, silver gives you +1 to resistance, and gold gives +1 defence and twice the normal health boost. If you continue to get experience past that units earn champion ranks, each granting 10 hp to no limit. Each unit will also pick up special abilities as it levels up, depending on what type of unit it is. Generally, higher tier units will get more specials and have larger HP boosts, making them more important to level up. Don't overestimate vetrancy boosts: a good rule of thumb is that a gold medal unit is equal to a unit one tier above it. Gold medal swordsmen are not going to be winning fair fights with ogres.
My longswords manage to best their softened up orcish counterparts, which frees up my archers to rake the flank of the orcish cavalry. Then we play the activation puzzle. Archers kill pikeman, freeing up the hell hounds to flank the cavalry, and the orcish irregulars get murdered by my own irregulars. One raiding party down. Now all we have to do is finish off the last three isolated rebel towns
Now would be a good point to attend to the one cultist town that we've ignored for so long. Upon reaching it, we see a tableau of four priests surrounding one of the frozen beauty shrines. After Laryssa says her part the priest do a small ritual and summon a pair of wraiths and a node serpent at the foot of the statue. This is kind of disturbing, as not only are none of those unit's summonable by a rouge, but you aren't supposed to be able to summon multiple units.
Now, I obviously knew I was going to hit this trigger when I started the mission. I figured that because of this trigger the AI was scripted to defend the town and would sit tight. That's part of why I've been leaving this town so long, and why I wanted to come in from the north. If you come in from the south, you're unlikely to be able to get to the spawned units immediatle, and they'll manage to regroup. From the north however, we have the ability to dismantle this force piecemeal.
I'm lacking in screenshots, but the gist of it is we can engage the four priests in two isolated groups of two with my giants, which is such a short fight that I wouldn't bother showing it if I had screenshots, before taking out the summoned monsters.
This fight is actually challenging for a change. The wraiths are incorporeal, making them resistant to thrown boulders, while the serpent is capable of teleporting, making kiting not an option. Thankfully it isn't tough enough to face multiple giants in melee, and the wraiths are vulnerable to the fire damage on the pack of hell hounds I brought with me for this fight.
I suspect the reason that this trigger exists is to force newer players to back off from their opponent and spend some time dealing with the giant quest and to spend time exploring the wilderness.
Priority number two is actually taking this bloody city, for which we're bringing up the old dreadnaught army to help out. Between giants and a cannon we've brought more than enough siege equipment to the fight to end this quickly.
As I've come to expect, the AI bails off it's walls after taking stock of the disparity in ranged firepower. It's probably the right tactical decision, but they still don't have much of a chance. Everything dies to ranged attacks before they reach my lines. Now,didn't that independent village have a quest for me?
Oh, god, not wisps. Anything but the wisps.
Once again, we're going to be fighting a pack of wisps with nothing but physical attacks. Laryssa has shock bolts (which are useless), but she also can cast an star blades on one of my swordsmen units. That'll give them an extra point of cold and fire damage.
First things first, all five, count them five, packs of wisps all teleport to surround and murderize my archers.
Well sod you bastards, I have bullshit scout units too! Ordering a spy drone on a suicidal attack manages to wipe out two packs of wisps in a single glorious explosion. I don't need scouts anymore anyway.
Then our enchanted swordsmen unit manages to hack down a pack of wisps with a lucky strike. After that its more, slightly painful, wrap-up, in which the wisps come very close to wiping out my surviving squad of city guardsmen.
This grants us both a new city, and the human tier three unique unit, the human knight. This is, as you might expect an incredible well armoured cavalry unit that hits like a ton of bricks when charging. The interesting thing about this unit is it's relationship with the blandly named human Cavalry units. The tier two cavalry is incredibly generic, but has the evolve ability. Any Cavalry units that make it the gold medal vetrancy level will be immediately be knighted and transform into knights. This provides an interesting strategic element for human players: by building lots of cavalry in the early game can give you a much stronger transition to the late game if you manage them carefully.
If there is any mechanical theme to the human lineup, it's a tendency to provide benefits at the strategic scale rather than at the tactical scale. Between evolving cavalry, civic guard with their cheap upkeep and the additional healing provided by priests the race provides some strong inbuilt macro advantages to compensate for its blandish roster.
This is getting a bit embarrassing, so we are going to put the mission out of it's misery. Oscar has two more cities left, both to the west. Now I could probably take this city out with just the force in the screenshot above, but I think I'll wait a turn. This force doesn't set the right message.
Thats more like it.
Edward: Rebels of Arricar, we have you surrounded. You are outnumbered and outmatched. Your Frozen Beauty is not coming to save you from Commonwealth justice. I am offering you a single chance to lay down your arms and face justice in a court of law. If you refuse, then you will face it on the battlefield.
I'll be honest, I didn't want to fight this battle. It would take near half an hour of shuffling troops around and chipping their heath down without any chance of the AI doing any real damage to my army. So I pressed the auto combat button. Because this is what it's for.
Unlike in some video games, the auto combat is perfectly fair. The computer will run the entire battle in the background, and you can even watch a replay to see just how the AI got your expensive veteran troops killed.
Before we finish off this mission, I thought I'd lay out my thoughts on the missions map and it's overall structure. Above you can see the full map of the mission as laid out in a pretty cool looking old times map. We, obviously, are red, with Oscar's surviving territory marked out in black. He still has one, out of the way fortress as well as his capitol, solely because I couldn't be bothered to get to the place on my way to his capitol. It looks awfully waterlogged from this view, but much of the rivers and lakes are partially frozen over, opening up the map a bit. There are a few hidden spots that I didn't visit, both in the extreme north and in the far west that you can get to by following the river.
The force guarding Oscar's capital is, well, pretty pitiful. Sure, he has a dragon, but a quarter of the army is scouts, and we still have three gold medal giants. I originally auto-combated this fight as well, but because I'm feeling nice (and can fit a few more pictures into these posts) I re-loaded and fought this out manually.
Because there's a lot of troops running around in this battle, this is what things look like at the start. There's a grand total of two units that have a chance of fighting back, the ice dragon and Oscar's one squad of assassins.
On the left flank of the battle, my experienced giant squad moves up and takes out an archer squad. Their job is to provide something nice and hard to kill for an angry dragon to attack.
On the left, the blob of doom advances, with the cannon taking a chunk out of some of the grimbeak crows.
One dragon, right on cue, and right where I need it to be.
My cavalry elements catch the dragon in a pincer attack. Knights, oddly enough, start with the dragon slayer ability for a rather silly bonus to damage. After this Laryssa and the adjacent giant bring the monster to the ground.
You can also see a bright blue bird in front of my army on the left flank. That's Oscar being on the receiving end of his own shrines to the frozen beauty. One of the abilities they grants a chance to freeze units that strike the blesses in melee. His assassin squad also just ran out the front gates in full sight of my entire army, and they don't last long.
After a bit of boring mop up, Oscar himself is blasted off the battlements by one of Edward's fireballs.
Well, that's not going to be making the peace negotiations go any smoother. We just uncover the Elven court outright backing an armed rebellion in commonwealth provinces. Also, our favourite racist uncle has returned to the plot. This is not the only time we'll be seeing his shady face: the tutorial does focus on him for a reason.
My mission to Briska was but a precursor for the true task. I have placed myself at Laryssa's disposal. Her brilliant research will change the Empire, most especially the Dreadnaught discipline.
I build machines that require engines, powered by combustible fuel, feeding hissing boilers to generate the steam required to turn gears and push lever arms. Now, imagine a compact power cell that fits in my palm, capable of powering our greatest vehicles!
We uncovered the location to a hidden lair believed to hold a legendary artifact used in sorcery. We believe we can use this artifact to create a stable power source from mana crystals. Previous attempts to build mana-powered devices have been disastrous failures: mana is too unstable to channel without constant supervision.
If we can find it, this technology will enable common men with machines to direct powers once only available to the ancient Wizards
What an amazing age to live in, when I think of all this potential! Compact power will unlock a whole new set of inventions.
This discovery will remake the Commonwealth, and guarantee our nations's stability for thousands of years. It must be safeguarded for the good of the whole.
No bonus points for pointing out how this plan could go wrong. Edward's elevation from an fresh faced academy graduate to the governor of a whole province, albeit a rather small, cold and remote one, is a bit of a hand-wave to allow him to run around going treasure hunting with Laryssa without having orders shouted at him from on high all the time.
And that's the first mission of the Commonwealth campaign. Next time we'll be checking in with the elven princess Sundren at the last negotiations between the Elven court and the Commonwealth.
As promised, let's take a look at the other half of the story of Age of Wonders 3, the story of Princess Sundren of the Elven Court. Both campaigns run in parallel for most of the story, which provide their own viewpoints on some events and contrasting themes.
My grandfather Inioch was King when the High Elves last ruled. Then the humans came and murdered him. The elves hearts were broken in two. Inioch's daughter, my mother, pursued healing, leading the Wood Elves, while his son, Meander, chose vengeance, leading the Dark Elves.
While we fought among ourselves, the humans grew in power. Then came the shadows to consume us all. For the first time, the world stood as one. Victorious, leaders of all races joined together to form the Commonwealth. My mother guided them, but one by one the mortal founders died. Their children forgot their forefathers. In two generations, they sought gold over virtue. My mother's dream of harmonious equality died.
The Dark and Wood Elves withdrew from the Commonwealth, turning to each other for survival. My parent's love was their catalysts. One Midsummer Eve, those broken Elves gathered for a night of sacred unification. Bodies and souls joined, performing a mystic ritual we call The Mending. My brother and I, the first of a new generation, were born thereafter. The High Elves had returned.
I found an opportunity to escape my guided cage when Thannis was sent to negotiate with the Commonwealth at the Council of Origins. I slipped out amongst the entourage and joined my brother. Thannis thinks that war can be averted, but during my nightly spying I have overheard even our trusted allies lusting for power. These lords would sell their families for an advantage in the impending conflict.
Though a warrior, Thannis favours peace. He repeats my mother's words: "Diplomacy is essential to prevent war". I fear they are too late, and history favours the one who strikes first.
The Council is to be held at the Pool of Origins, It is a sacred place where leaders go to settle disputes. It is guarded by a wise Orc named Gamblag. His powers ensure envoys can attend the council without fear of violence. Yet, on our approach we hear movement in the woods, trailing us. Thannis leaves his guards with me while he enters Gamblag's domain.
This narration suffers a bit due to it's requirement to cram massive amounts of exposition into three slides with a pretty shocking swerve into mandatory backstory during the middle of the opening. But despite the questionable presentation format there's a large amount of excellent stuff crammed into here.
One thing that I really like about the plot of this game is how it truly feels like it's set after a happy ending, and manages to have a believable plot without cheapening that ending. The most obvious way it does this is the mending of the high elves. It's a common enough fantasy trope for there to be two races of elves, one good, one evil, but it's not something I've seen before for both races to actually give up their differences and become one people again. It's part of the impression that yes, two hundred years ago in the second game you did accomplish something great and changed the world.
The Commonwealth's decline is another way this little motif is shown off. The opening slides here take the position that the reason the Elves seceded is that, being immortal, their leaders could remember the glory days of the Commonwealth and made enemies when they tried to keep the other races to older ideals. It's a noble sentiment, but as you could see with Werlac from the tutorial, this narrative have encouraged a degree of fascist and racist beliefs among the elves. They are the only people who can be trusted with power, for all other races, no matter how noble they may seem, will fall to greed and vice over generations. It's a rather nasty fantasy spin on good old fashioned totalitarian narrative.
Sundren: Strange, that Gamblag would allow brigands this close to the sacred pool. The Elven Court trusts him to protect those that travel here. I suppose we can do his job while he hosts the talks. We will need to strike the brigands quickly before they grow in strength and overrun these woods.
Awfully ironic that in her quest to gain a little independence Sundren is back to being sidelined. Her brother may be doing his best by give Sundren a chance to command troops and fight battles, but that's not what Sundren wants to do, or even what she would be best at. She's a spy, and Thannis is sending her away from politics to kill bandits. Of course, he's a warrior, and probably can't see why she wouldn't like this assignment.
We will get to our required bandit hunt. But first, in a nice piece of gameplay and story integration, we're going to take a look at the Council of Origins.
Six people seated around the sacred pool. One representative from each of the six playable races in the game, representing the Commonwealth, the Elven Court, and independents. Though if you give it ten seconds of thought, isn't Gamblag supposed to be a neutral arbitrator? So technically their isn't an orcish representative?
You can also see, in the background, that the pool is surrounded by six elven villages. This will come up later. It's odd that an orc is the one watching over a heavily elven populace, but makes enough sense. It would be rather difficult for an elven lord to hold himself neutral when their race dominates one of the two competing powers.
We have Thannis, Prince and heir of the Elven Court, our understanding, diplomatic, talented and all together saintly brother.
We have Gambag, overseer of the pool of Origins, and orcish holy man. Yes you read that right, and yes he has a halo over his head. One of the more quiet ways the game tries to undermine some traditional fantasy stereotypes is that any of the six races can be any of the six classes. And not in the dungeons and dragons style of "you can totally play any class as any race, but if you don't want to handicap yourselves you really should pick one of the small set of classes that your race is inherently good at." It's not perfectly balanced, but generally speaking every choice is viable and often provides a different spin on the class you have selected. So yes, the game features wise orcish priests, and goblin sorcerers, and dwarven druids and there are no "trap" options.
The first of the Commonwealth representatives is Durgal the Stout, a dwarven dreadnaught from Hengvolt.
We have Reskar Scaleshaper, a Draconian druid, speaking as an independent. The bright white colouring on his mount is a traditional draconian dye scheme and not at all an annoyingly persistent graphical glitch.
The fact that there are independent representatives makes it seem that this is less a final diplomatic conference between the Elven Court and Commonwealth per se, and more an emergency meeting of the fantasy U.N.
Then we have Yzzo the Rat, a rich goblin nobel who is apparently Dedicated to Evil. Well, I guess you have to let in all sorts, and the other Commonwealth representative seemed normal enough.
Lastly, for our human representative we have Voraditius, chief cleric of the Commonwealth who is . . .
also . . .
Dedicated . . .
to Evil . . .
I'm getting a bad feeling about his council.
Well, anyways, I'm sure our dear brother can handle himself. He'll have to, we aren't allowed to enter Gamblag's domain for the duration of the Council. Thannis's forces fall under our command, and were off to try out our not-so-new elven armies.
For the record, each race has a general template that is applied to each unit. Theoretically, each racial unit in the game was created by applying this template across generic unit statblocks, but special abilities and necessary balance patches has made this less than ideally true. Still, these templates give some insight into the general trends and design of each race.
Every High Elven unit gets +1 to their magic resistance and +1 to ranged damage. They also ignore the movement penalty for moving through forests, but suffer from a vulnerability to blight damage.
Elven swordsmen are the tankier shield version of basic infantry, which fit in with the elven strategy of doing the bulk of their damage with their ranged units. These are much like human swordsmen, in that they are a perfectly average basic infantry unit, and are thus, shite.
Elven Longbowmen, the elven ranged units, are the shining star of the elven lineup, and are central to the repeated accusations that the race is overpowered. Their key special ability is that they don't take any penalties for attack enemies at long range, in addition to the bonus damage from being elves. This doesn't sound broken, but it's a massive improvement how they play. They can do their full damage while still keeping at a safer distance. and can spend far more turns making three full damage attacks than other archers would be able to. There is a reason that the tutorial only starts you with caster units, because newbies shouldn't learn bad habits from playing with a unit which breaks the core rules of combat.
Storm sisters, the elven caster unit, are far less impressive. They still benefit from bonus ranged damage, but suffer from what is, in my opinion, the worst special ability for racial caster units: inflict stun. It can make a target lose two turns, but has a chance to fail, and is melee range. On the few occasions you have a good opportunity to use it and the effect succeeds, it can easily win a fight, but other support units have abilities that I am happy to use every battle. Also, their improved damage doesn't look that impressive when compared to the reliable damage output of longbowmen.
Union guard, the High Elf pikemen are also nothing to write home about. Their only claim to fame is that the do a small amount of shock damage as well as their physical damage. In this shot they are destroying the bandit's fortifications not to get through but to clear a shot for the archers.
Sundren Thank you brother, and good luck with that. However it seems I am not finished yet. It is apparent that a number of brigands were not accounted for and there are many tracks leading south. There is a High Elf village there, Eldaste, which may be in danger.
After wiping out one camp of bandits, Sundren decides to check on a local High Elf villages. In preparation for the fact that this mission isn't anywhere near over at this point, I've started researching the crow summoning and casting the spell Treasure Raiding. This is one of the main economic engines of the rogue class, but is rather unusual in how it works. It increases the rewards from pickups and treasure sites, which will provide great returns in the early game, but basically stops working once the game moves to the endgame. This plays into the themes of the rouge class, which absolutely doesn't want a long grinding war.
Sundren: Thannis! No! My beloved brother … Dead! Why?! There is no rebellion and there were no rebels in those villages! You murdered innocent people! And Thannis would never be the first to attack!
Well, goodbye generic wooden brother who we didn't really know. I mean, I know that Sundren is supposed to take this hard, but dear brother comes off as a clueless and a little condescending. Anyway, our objective now becomes to kill Gamblag for revenge. Of course to do this, we'd need a town to raise more troops, since we have six units total at the moment. Thankfully we were already on the way to a town, which we can hopefully talk around or capture.
Just outside the completely undefended town is another pack of scoundrels, this time led by an unit of assassins. The assassins in particular are a bit of a pain in the ass: they're fast, tough, and can kill any of your more fragile units in one attack.
It turns out that fights like this are a bit easier when my longbows are capable of killing entire units in a single barrage. Still, this is a game of assassin tag, where we try to take them out before they can get an attack off.
I manage to luck out on the second part where this fight can screw you over though. Human scoundrels, not any other race, just the human ones, have an ability to try and ensnare units in nets. This does the same thing as a stun, and a couple unlucky nettings can make this fight go south fast. Unfortunately, even though the net failed, Sundren still loses most of her movement for next turn.
Of course, if she had that extra movement, she could probably have finished off that last assassin before he single handedly wiped out my entire longbowmen squad. Assassins have a once per battle attack that does a ton of damage and will probably kill any of your more valuable ranged units in one shot. Between this problem and three net-happy scoundrels this fight can turn sour really fast, and you can easily outright lose in what was originally the second combat of the game.
Eldaste will helpfully provide a single longbow squad when you arrive, to patch up any holes in your lineup. The town itself isn't much to talk about, but it starts with a barracks and a pop boosting site. It'll be enough for your needs. This mission is pretty quick if you do it properly, so I'm going to be taking an aggressive approach.
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Well, that was the first bit of the first Elven Court mission. The game recommends playing the Elven Court campaign first, which leaves this mission a bit more relevant to the overall plot, but also far shorter and easier than the Commonwealth mission. The section I just played through was the entire tutorial when the game first launched, which left could leave some new players floundering a bit. One thing I missed the first time through is that this section never mentions that you can cast strategic spells, and it took me several missions to figure out how they worked.
Background-wise, it's interesting to note that there was a lot happening behind the scenes before the Humans killed Inioch and most of the Elven Court before pushing the survivors out of their homeland. For example, Inioch had placed unreasonable limitations on the Humans by Human but not Elven standards as an initial step to breaking his pact with the Humans' supernatural backers. Similarly, Meandor was the one who betrayed the Elven Court to the Humans but was betrayed by the Humans in turn because they suspected that he would be an unreliable friend.
On an unrelated note, Elven pregnancies in the Age of Wonders setting last at least 8 years, which might have contributed to the martial character of the current incarnation of the Elven Court.
The other reason Storm Sisters aren't that great is because they don't get any healing abilities. This isn't entirely unusual, about half of the support units don't, but they need either healing or a useful secondary ability to be worth using, and Stunning Touch is not. At least lightning is one of the better elements, since not much resists it and a bunch of units, including most of the Dreadnought machines, are weak to it.
BTW, you used 'rouge' instead of 'rogue' for most of the last update.
Now to start our campaign against the not-so neutral warden of the pool of origins
Literally three steps east of our borders, we encounter a dwelling of fairies. They immediately offer us a quest to kick down a fortress owned by Gamblag. Apparently he build it to cut in on the fairies tourist revenue. Since this is obviously a scripted quest, it needs to be done ASAP to get that shiny stack of free fairies.
Meanwhile, the first of my endless supply of scouts starts going in the other direction, picking up some free gold, and getting a free laboratory in my first city. Now that I have crows, I start researching Quick Dash, one of the more useful combat spells on the rogue spell list.
So, let's take this fortress. Gamblag has it positioned pretty well, the mountains flanking the bridge prevent us from moving more than one stack into this fight, so we might as well knock it off now. This will probably be one of the toughest fights I've yet to do, since I don't have a large force advantage and Gambalg has the advantage of walls.
The main obstacle in this fight is this one unit of Exalted. These are a flying tier three unit, and are a hell of a lot tougher than anything else in this combat. My original plan was to bait them onto my union guard, to demonstrate how effective the bonuses that pike units get against fliers are, but the AI proved to slightly more intelligent than average, and refused to charge the obvious trap. It wouldn't even attack my expendable swordsmen unit.
Instead it moved up a squad of irregulars onto the top of the ramparts and got into a very short shooting war with my longbows and storm sisters.
After I managed a few potshots inside the fortress, the orc great swords moved out the gates. I would have liked to mow them down, but I couldn't have moved any of my archers into range without the exalted swooping in and crushing my fragile archers. In other news, Gamblag dropped a fireball on top of one of my longbow squads, leaving them dangerously close to dead.
Next turn, the Exalted move in to attack Sundren, while the great swords run at my pikes. This puts me in a slightly precarious position. My solution is to suicide my squad of swordsmen into the exalted This is a little ruthless, but the exalted used all three of their action points on retaliations to kill them. This will both lose them their next turn and prevent them from making opportunity attack. It's a rare time that I have to try this trick, but that's probably because I forget to use it. The early game trains you to avoid all retaliations if possible, but once battles start getting critical it's useful to take retaliations on tough or expendable units to control the opponent's movements.
With the Exalted occupied, Sundren is free to swing around and wipe out the orcish great swords. From here on it's easy enough for my pikes to get a few free swings on the exalted, while my archers can shoot at the last irregular off the wall. Sadly I lost my weakened squad of archers to thrown javelins in the exchange.
Fairies: Thank you for capturing that dreary castle! You know, fairies have a strong connection with the supernatural. We feel something really wrong here. Some kind of corruption is tainting Gamblag and the Pool. We'll join with you to help remove it.
I lost two units, but I gained four swarms of fairies and a fey dwelling. Annoyingly, this dwelling only has a site which boosts population growth and happiness, neither of which apply to dwellings. Thankfully, fairies are really cheap. Now, if I kept north from the fortress there was a cave entrance that I could explore, but instead I'll be swinging southeast.
Sundren: I thank you for helping them. Can you tell me what happened! Do you know what happened with Thannis? Do you have any information that could aid me?
Reskar: Hmm, I don't know much, I am afraid. It happened when I was away. They said there had been a fight, but I saw Thannis had wounds in his back. Things moved fast, as if prepared. Gamblag switched sides to the Commonwealth and had his troops raze the High Elf cities. They tried to stop me from leaving but I fought my way out.
I know that isn't what you hoped for … I am convinced Thannis was innocent. He was kind, gentle. The only one who treated me with respect. He alone voted in favour of allowing me to submerge the Radiant Egg, a sacred artifact of my people, in the Pool of Origin. I would be honoured to help his sister in any way I can and join forces with you.
Sundren: Thank you. You are very welcome to join us. I could very much use an ally. The world has taken a turn for the worse. And when we retake the Pool for the Elven Court you are most welcome to submurge your artifact in it.
Thus we take control of Reskar, a draconian Arch-Druid and his honour guard of draconian warriors. He's also shepherded both a High Elf settler and three refugee camps out of Gamblag's slaughter at the pool of origin, which gives him a nice supply of good karma points in my book. After we clear out the nearby sites, the settler can set up shop right were the refugee camps are set up.
Reskar has brought with him a draconian version of Sundren's starting army. Innately, all Draconians get a small amount of fire resistance, a small amount of cold vulnrability, and heal twice as fast on the strategic map. Despite fairly bland and general racial traits, they have one of the more unusual selections of racial units.
Draconian Crushers, the big guys with the macuahuitls at the bottom of the shot are almost the same unit as human longswordsmen. It turns out that being magically created super soldiers is just enough to level the playing field with steel weapons and plate armour.
Draconian Elders, the Draconian support unit, are useable enough. Their support power is Dragon Ancestry, which provides a morale boost, +5 extra fire damage on all attacks, and more fire resistance. It's no healing power, but since every draconian unit has baked in extra healing they can live without it.
The Draconian archer equivalent are Flamers, which are very unusual in that they have an area of effect attack. It hits a one hex radius, and has no penalties for long ranged attacks or cover. The catch is that they only have a single attack per turn, so they don't have the single target damage output of a traditional archer, and in this game two half dead units are infinitely worse than one dead unit. So while Flamers shine in larger battles with lots of targets to catch in the AOE, they are less effective in early expansion fights.
The other unusual unit in the Draconian lineup are their pikemen, Chargers. They are rather fragile, but have two very useful abilities. The first is charge, like a cavalry unit doing more damage if they move far enough, and the second is Lesser Flying, aka Tactical Flying. They move like walkers in the strategic map, but in tactical fights they get all the benefits of being flyers-ignoring terrain, attacks of opportunities, and faster movement speed.
Meanwhile, I've sent my army of tiny fairies down into the underground passages. Normally this would be a dead end, as the teleporter across the river has been shut down by a small army of orcs. But fairies can fly, so they can clear out this underground path.
The Fairies are a pile of honestly fantastic units, and the basic fairy, buttercup fairies (don't laugh), are one of the contenders for the title of best tier one unit in the game. I mean look at that damage output! They do ten damage a shot with half damage penalty! In addition to their impressive ranged attacks they have shock, cold, and fire resistance and boost the morale of all units in their stack. And, you know, they fly. Just, keep them away from melee combat.
If you are confuse at how that damage output could possibly be fair, well, I'm exaggerating a bit. It's a product of how damage is calculated in the game. The short explanation is that any defence or resistance value below ten is actually a vulnerability to that damage type. When an attack has multiple damage types, like fairy fire, it works like multiple attacks, each gaining the bonus damage from the vulnerability. This makes these attacks highly effective against weaker units, but makes them far less effective against more powerful units, where each channel is reduced by the resistance value.
Toadstool Fairies, the tier two fairies are the old fairies plus one. Better damage, defences, health, elemental resistances, the works. If you check, they have the exact same health, attack, and defences as a gold medal Buttercup Fairy. They don't offer the morale boost, but have a far better melee attack available. They are actually quite unique, being one of the few multi attack ranged units with a tier two damage output. Part of the late game balance of the game is that you don't ever find outright replacements for your basic archers, so you have to put up with your fragile basic archers late game.
With the amount of firepower the fairies have available, they're able to blow away the orcs with only some minor damage, and then head east to a cave exit. This will let them pop up just past the edge of Gambalg's territory.
Meanwhile in the west, we come across a side quest of sorts. There are two units of monster hunters in this forest over here, and if you manage to kill a pack of wargs they will join you. Sadly I only had a murder of crows in the area, and they all were turned into warg-food. In the east, I've brought the remainders of Sundren's army, Reskar's army, and the Fairies onto one of Gamblag's cities.
The city is pretty lightly defended, but they are backed up by an orc tier three unit, the orc shock troopers. Still, overkill is the better part of valour in this game, and I've brought more than enough forces to overwhelm the defenders
It always feels nice to tag three or more units in a single AOE.
With the amount of concentrated fire I have available I can bring down the shock troopers in one turn, using my pikemen to finish off the wounded brutes. I manage to lose a unit of fairies to a archer fire and a fireball from Gamblag, but still take the day easily.
Now there are several options for what to do to a city after you conquer it, many of which will move you along the game's morality spectrum. You can absorb it, which will take several turns but give you control of the city as it stands. You can release it as a vassal, which gives it to a friendly independent faction that pays you tribute, and is a good action. The other three actions are all evil actions. You can raze the city, or plunder it. Both of which will destroy the city, but plundering takes longer and gives you free resources. You can also migrate the city to a different race, which will give you the city under a new race, but with a lower population. You know, because you kicked out the old inhabitants at sword point. One of the main advantages of migration over absorption is that the time to complete depends on how close the city is to a city of the race you want to migrate it to.
I find it interesting that, despite being a little tacked on, each moral path gives you a different experience on the strategic map. Being a card carrying villain will let you strategically level cities and fund aggressive attacks by looting cities, but being good opens up tactical options from multiple races and can give you free defences on your less critical cities.
Now, usually I like to keep my karma levels up, but getting the city active four turns early is a siren song I can't refuse. I mean, Gamblag just levelled six high elf cities. Fair is fair, right?
I'm a big fan of fairies, so much so that I'd take them over all of the other dwellings with the possible exception of the nagas. Sure, dragons and giants are big and powerful, but their dwellings take a lot of investment for not a lot of output. In contrast, fairies start cheap but usable, particularly since I like to play Human Warlords with Adept Wild Magic, which benefit a lot from having a source of non-Spirit elemental damage.
On a semi-related note, it's interesting to note that fairies used to be an Elven unit in the previous games. Out-of-setting, Triumph changed them because they wanted racial units to be exactly that - racial units.* In-setting, I like to think that it's a sign of the differences between the High Elves and the Wood Elves. Sure, the current Elven Court is based on Inioch's Elven Court, but in the end, their experiences mean that they're not really the same people, even if some of them would probably want to pretend otherwise.
* There is a seeming exception in the Tigran sphinx, but that doesn't count because Tigrans are naturally variable like that. Never mind that there's nothing natural about the Tigrans since as it turned out, most wizardly god-kings had no sense of ethics whatsoever.
I can sympathize - I liked most of the Naga designs, but the Naga Matriarch was bad enough on its own to ruin those impressions. That said, my least favorite dwelling units are the Archons, mostly because I loved them in AoW1 and 2, but also partially because their default Dedicated to Evil trait makes them a bit of a pain to manage.
Right past the city we took last time, Gamblag has a fortress covering the only mountain pass into his territory. If he had garrisoned it with more than a skeleton crew it might have been an obstacle, but we can swat it away.
Meanwhile Sundren takes some of the fairies east to find some free pickups, gold, a refugee camp, and an Inn where we can pick up some mercenaries for hire.
Further north, we have a bit of a strategic opportunity. Gamblag is leading relatively weak army sitting on an unfortified city, but only a few spaces away is a small but high quality army. Reskar can easily run in, send Gamblag back to respawn, and take the city, but I'm not sure if he can defeat the second army, especially if they focus fire on Reskar himself. Like all of our hero units, I'll immediately lose if he dies. If I wait for Sundren to swing back over here then I could probably take both armies at one, but who knows what my enemies would get up to in that time?
If in doubt, charge. Gambalg has an Elite tier two infantry unit and an irregular for his entire force, so I can probably take them down easily.
Now, I've said before that flamers aren't very effective against single targets, but they do have a useful little trick. Their AOE effect doesn't need to be centred on a unit, and if you target it at the very edge of their range they effectively have an extra hex of range over normal archers. This trick lets them attack slower infantry without being vulnerable to retaliation.
It doesn't take long to get the upper hand in this battle. Gamblag wasted both his turns dispelling the dragon ancestry buff rather than trying to do some damage before he inevitably dies, and his infantry are burnt to a crisp by flamers and elders. I also get a chance to demonstrate why chargers are so useful: flying units ignore opportunity attacks, so they can fly over enemy units into flanking positions.
The battle ends with Gambalg being put down personally by Reskar. He'll be back in a few turns, but his death will stop research, spell casting, and hurt morale. Not that the AI actually cares about morale what with it blatantly cheating.
After the battle is fought, I have Reksar pull his force back to link up with some freshly made unicorn riders. When the enemy has a cannon with them I don't think the barricades of an unfortified town are that valuable. It also leaves open the possibility that the AI will retake his captured town and let me crush his second army with all of my forces. Once Gamblag's turn comes around, he pulls his army back into his territory instead of taking the bait.
Sundren has cleared out her area, and I grab a mercenary elven longbowman and draconian flamer. Mercenaries cost double what they would cost to produce, but they show up immediately. I have more money than I can spend through my cities at this point and am trying to rush this map so paying a premium for units now is a cost I'm willing to pay.
There's one more area with treasure sites on this map, but it is pretty far out of the way. The only notable thing is this independent fortress with a ludicrous amount of guards on it. I'm not going to bother with clearing it out on this run through, though it would be a nice source of experience for my heroes. I'll just snag the treasure chest those knights think they're guarding with crows.
And my incessant scouting finally bites me in the ass. There is a script here that'll spawn both a battering ram and a trebuchet when you get close enough to Gamblag's capitol. Unfortunately, I triggered the script with a scout, on the other side of the city from my forces. So, that's a pair of free units down the drain. I manage to kill one of Gamblag's priests with trebuchet boulders, so, not so bad I guess?
I had some additional surprises during Gamblag's turn. Yes, that is the army that ran off. And that is the first city I captured from Gamblag. It turns out that when they ran away they slipped into the other exit to the cave system and snuck past my main armies. The forces that were chilling on this city get crushed.
Alright everyone, about face!
I've got a special surprise for this bloody cannon when my armies bring the hammer down on this little raiding party. Rust Strike is a spell Druids have that only effects machines. It does a massive amount of damage and inflicts large penalties to the defences and damage on it's unfortunate target. Situational, but when it is useful it's very useful
I also have an opportunity to take elven unicorn riders for a spin. These are slightly unusual for cavalry because they have a once per battle teleport ability. This lets them move around at slightly higher speed than normal, and ignore terrain, siege walls and opportunity attacks. They don't get the charging damage bonus when they teleport, and teleporting requires three actions and only leaves you with one when you land, so don't use it frivolously.
I've brought what is probably massive overkill to bear on this force, since I was worried that I'd have to run a merry chase back to the start of the map. Gamblag is doing his best to fight two full stacks with two units each, but it isn't going well for him. His cannon is already smashed, and though his orcish cavalry will inflict quite the beating on my elven cavalry, they won't last a turn.
The half of the army matched against Reskar retreat, but just end up being trapped between both halves of my army and cut down. Now that this little problem has been stamped out, the rest of the enemy force will be hunkering down at his capital until the end of the mission, because of a mix of mission scripts and the AI's overcautiousness.
Meanwhile, we finally accomplish the side quest I mentioned earlier and grabbed ourselves two units of Monster Hunters. Apparently these were some of Thannis' troops that he had sent to thin out the local warg population as a goodwill gesture. Didn't do him much good.
I also find a random treasure site over here in the middle of bloody nowhere with a scout. You can't even get to this area without flying units, and it's the only thing to find. I suppose that you could clear it out with fairies for the items if you were trying for a maximum efficiency run, but I suspect even the devs forgot this existed.
But I'm beating around the bush, and I've spent more effort on this mission than I planned to. We have an treacherous orc to kill.
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Next update coming in an hour or so. Thanks for reading, and any feedback or criticism is appreciated.
On paper, the most significant defence the city has is a Shrine of Smiting, which does exactly what it says on the tin. This floating box of religious paraphernalia fires bolts of burning holy wrath, but it's damage is mitigated by two factors. Firstly, it's a machine, and I have Reskar hit it with Rust Strike on the first turn, keeping it's damage down. Secondly, it wastes literally half it's damage for the first three turns firing on fire immune flamers. I'll actually be ignoring it for many turns just because it has too much health and isn't doing enough damage.
I don't have any units in this battle capable of knocking down walls, but my forces are quite prepared for a siege battle. Flamers, for instance, give no shits about fortifications. In fact, the tendency for units to cluster up atop the walls works to their advantage, and they clear the far right flank of the walls in a single turn. I've also got flying Chargers and fairies, teleporting unicorn riders, and more ranged attacks than you can shake a stick at.
On the left flank, things are proceeding more slowly. I can't ignore the defence bonuses from the walls and my unicorn riders are still recovering from the beating they got at the hands of Gamblag's cavalry last battle.
I send them in regardless, and buff them up with Quick dash. This spell gives the target some extra healing and a spare action point, and has countless useful applications. In this case it lets the riders finish off the orc priests while making them die slightly slower to the inevitable retaliation. They still won't survive, but those priests are the only ranged unit the enemy has on this flank.
The shrine of smiting has lost it's patience, and charges out to do it's ark of the covenant impression. My widespread fire immunity and it's deterioration keeps this flank mostly intact, but might come back to bite me later.
Seeing a golden opportunity to rid myself of this annoyance, I promptly mob the shrine an destroy it. Then I introduce the pike regiments that the enemy has sent at me to my flamers, crippling them.
On the other flank the orcs are sallying right into my pikes, then getting blasted by fairies, which reap a heavy toll.
I take the opportunity to move some of my fairies up to the walls. The range bonus works both ways after all, and if the cavalry move to attack my fairies then they'll be flanked by the rest of my forces. After this, all that's left is the mop-up.
And then it all comes crashing down. The orcish irregulars score a critical hit on Reskar, and their archers, incompetent as they are, seize the opportunity to finish him off. Game loss to death of irreplaceable character.
Reskar Deaths: 1
Restarts due to hero deaths: 2
Damm it I was winning too.
All I wanted to have a climactic final fight. It's clear now that fooling around like that is a good way to get heroes ganked. So lets do this the easy way.
A few turns of regrouping my troops and I can rustle up nine more units. The AI still has the same set it had on the last run-through. Let's do this.
Plan is the exact same as last time, save I have more guns, and Reskar keeps his critically important ass farther back.
The battle on the left flank goes just like it did last time: Flamers clear the far left ramparts, shrine runs in to use divine vengeance after being deteriorated at the start of the fight, is promptly crushed, and everything else burns. Reskar keeps out of range for a change.
On the right flank subtlety is abandoned and I shoot everything that moves until the orcs are forced to run out of their castle into my gunsights. Then I continue to shoot everything that moves, but let a few melee units have some fun. The only real change is I send a unit of fairies to hunt priests instead of my unicorn riders.
Sundren even gets the opportunity to personally kill Gamblag, and avenge her brother, before the rest of his forces are swept away. We've killed the villain, avenged our brother, and rescued the elves of the Vale. Except, Gamblag was being manipulated by Commonwealth lords, and may not have even been in on the plot to kill Thannis. Reskar admitted he didn't know the whole story, what if the orc we killed was just an misguided catspaw who was only trying to do his duty as the neutral arbitrator of the peace conference? And this whole region is about to be the front lines of a war between superpowers. What did we really accomplish here?
Then again, Gamblag did raise six of his own towns with minimal provocation. He probably had it coming. Score one for the good guys!
Sundren: Finally. Strange to think this sacred place has spawned so much bloodshed. Rescuer is ready to perform his ritual to submerge the Radiant Egg into the Pool now that Gamblag is dealt with. They say gazing into it may offer a vision. I might take a peak before we have to evacuate this vale. Perhaps I will see Thannis one last time.
The world blurred around me. Great gears clacked with the rhythm of war drums. On one side, a brother died; on the other, temples fell to ruin. Honour must be defended. Armies rallied. The blood of my enemies mingled in the pure waters of my people - a torrent of blood. Then a well of deep shadows gathered, drinking the sea of blood. Lastly I saw, floating across the crimson void, a speck of light, distant and flickering like a torch.
Then Reskar pulled me from my trance and we fled. I need time to sort out what happened. Our resistance has attracted the Commonwealth. Somehow they new both of us would be here. My spies say there's a price on my head. Something has gone terribly wrong here. I cannot return to my father - not yet. He would use this incident to insure I never leave, and I would never discover the truth. I must prove that I am more than the last living heir.
I commanded the elf troops to take Thannis' body back to the Elven Court. Their movements should distract the Commonwealth spies, while I help Reskar escape and follow his vision.
And that was mission one of the Elven Court. As much as I may have complained about the Commonwealth mission being super easy, really linear and having no strategic decisions, but this is all that taken to another level. It was the tutorial the game launched with after all.
On the story front, I find Sundren a bit of a bland character. She's defined by her relationship with her father and her status as princess, but seems a bit lacking in personality. I suppose that may be intentional, since she's supposed to be a teenager and a protaganist at that, but she isn't quite as memorable as Edward.
Playing this again, I also feel that the optional tutorial does help the plot development. The point is for both sides to have their good and bad points, but in the original script the Elven court comes off as unambiguously good for most of the time, and later actions come out of left field. After dealing with Uncle Werlac's Tutorial for Proper Fascist Princesses, it's easier to see the court taking the darker actions they'll later embark on, and it gives a bit of context to Sundren's hatred of humans and the Commonwealth.
Comparing the story of the two missions, both this and Norther Rebellion are used to play up the narratives of each faction. In the Commonwealth campaign, the rebels are cartoonishly evil self destructive cultists, without commonwealth rule Briska suffered from anarchy and a monster infestation, and the Elven court callously provoked the entire incident to weaken their superior opponent and find magical secrets. Meanwhile on this side the Commonwealth lords are shown to use a peace conference as a way to assassinate a political target, set up a false pretence for a major war, while the supposedly neutral and trusted orc Gamblag is revealed to be corrupt and tyrannical towards his good elven subjects. When you put it together though, neither side comes out smelling like roses.
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Next time on Age of Wonders, Edward is going treasure hunting in a blighted, monster infested hellhole. In the meantime, strategy votes!
What forces should we use for this operation.
[]-Bring in human forces from Briska. We're more familiar with their tactics, and for a mission of such importance we'll need troops whose loyalty to the Commonwealth is proven.
[]-Rally a force from the local Goblin population. They're more experienced at handling the treacherous local terrain, and Briska needs all hands to rebuild.
[X]-Rally a force from the local Goblin population. They're more experienced at handling the treacherous local terrain, and Briska needs all hands to rebuild.
[X]-Rally a force from the local Goblin population. They're more experienced at handling the treacherous local terrain, and Briska needs all hands to rebuild.
If the terrain is actually Blighted and all that, Goblins should have a Morale boost there.
[X]-Rally a force from the local Goblin population. They're more experienced at handling the treacherous local terrain, and Briska needs all hands to rebuild.
[X]-Rally a force from the local Goblin population. They're more experienced at handling the treacherous local terrain, and Briska needs all hands to rebuild.
Despite their scaly exterior, the Draconians were solidly neutral back in Age of Wonders 2. Even though they're reptile men created by inscrutable elder powers for the purpose of checking the uncontrolled expansion of the human race.
And now that we're on the second set of missions we've got a new map!
These world maps are the same for both campaigns at the same mission stage, at least until the very end of the campaigns. You can see that Edward isn't the only commonwealth lord making progress, and three formerly contested areas have turned to full on Commonwealth red, while a new front in the east has opened up. Edward is the white highlighted arrow, which is going west into the suspiciously unclaimed area on Nirvenkiln. Meanwhile, Sundren is heading south to Ralikesh. Also to note is what Edward has heard of Sundren's last mission, which blames the High Elves, not Gamblag, for levelling cities.
Melenis' Legacy
I accompany Laryssa to the blighted lands of Nirvenkiln. It's not the sort of land one takes a lady. This cursed wasteland has be haunted for as long as history records. All attempts to revitalize it have failed.
Thanks to our discovery in Brisska, we now know the reason the earth here stays toxic. A long dead Stormlord, Melenis, placed her secret lair within the heart of Nirvenkiln. Legend states she could trap power in mana crystals indefinitely, this perpetuating the blight long past her death. Laryssa's research indicates Melenis created an artifact to do this. If she can study it;s workings, Laryssa hopes to extrapolate the arcane patterns to create mana fuel cells.
My orders are to:
1.Protect and aid Laryssa
2. Enter Melenis' hidden lair.
3. Discover the secret that powers Melenis' lair in her absence, while avoiding the rumoured ancient magical traps and guardians.
4. Return to the dwarven city, Hengvolt, with the knowledge to create the first mana fuel cells.
With that colossal display of genre blindness, Edward is heading off to Nirvenkiln.
If you didn't know or guess, the mysterious man with the warning is Merlin, the protagonist of Age of Wonders 2 and Shadow magic. What's he doing on the side of a road giving warnings? We'll get to that later, but the last two hundred years haven't been kind on the old boy.
Laryssa: I don't know what Elves are doing this close to Commonwealth territory, but we will not allow it.
We start off with a small, archer heavy force, no cities, and elves to kill. We also have our first sorcerer class unit, a squad of apprentices. They work just like any other caster unit, with a heal that only works on magical creatures (and no, we don't start with any magical creatures), the ability to remove and steal buffs, and fairy fire.
Since this is Laryssa's mission, she has taken over the leader position from Edward, and we'll be using the sorcerer class. This is basically how the campaign justifies giving you different classes on different mission: various side characters will take turns running the show.
Now, the first thing to remember whenever you start a new mission in the campaign is that whoever is the new leader and whoever was the leader last time will have all their skill points de-allocated when the mission starts. Why? Because heroes learn combat spells with skill points while your leader learns them through research. Still, it's a nice feature since it gives you the chance to try out new builds on your characters if you didn't like how they were working out previously.
Learning my hard mode lessons, I did my best to spec Edward into a support hero, taking a healing ability and better defences. The dreadnaught hero also has a selection of powerful leadership abilities, but since I won't be able to produce more units for a bit I left them for later. Only one hero can use their leadership abilities for a given stack, and as faction leader Laryssa has priority.
Laryssa meanwhile grabbed all of the leadership abilities she had previously, Charged Army and Magic Affinity, then started throwing her remaining points into ranged damage. I tend to find that sorcerer leaders aren't very impressive, the hero is balanced around the class' high power combat spells, and when those aren't on the menu there aren't very many appealing options.
Once we take out the force occupying this watchtower, we can see some loot and a cave entrance, but our first priority is clearing out the goblin village that Werlac has captured. Sadly we won't be able to reach it in a single turn, which could let him make an extra defender.
But while we wait, we get a message.
Gorsmog: Just bring whatever you find in Melenis' lair to Hengvolt and we'll keep it safe from the elves.
Now, if you paid attention to the mission briefing, this should be old news, but it bears repeating. Defeating Werlac isn't the objective for this mission: all we need to do is find the Mcguffin in Melenis' secret lair and then get a hero carrying it into the territory of these two dwarves on the other side of the map.
Also, everyone say hello again to Drugal! We met him briefly last mission at the council of origins, where he was the only Commonwealth member who wasn't dedicated to evil.
Werlac's guards aren't terribly impressive, because the game doesn't really want you to lose at this early stage. Their longbow unit might have been dangerous, if only Edward didn't blind them on the first turn and prevent them from getting any shots off. This leaves the elves with the uneviable option of charging into range of my superior force. Dosn't take long to end them.
Now, because Laryssa is human, she can migrate any city she has to humans even without any humans on the map. But the thread has spoken, so we'll be taking the slightly more sensible plan of keeping the city as a goblin city. A human city would be taking quite significant economic penalties for being parked in blighted terrain.
Of course, it'll still be five turns until we can make any more troops. To compensate, Froth starts off with tier two military and production buildings, so it should start rolling quickly once it's under our control.
Heading south, we clear out a bandit camp, rescue some elves, and run into the fifth player on this stage, the goblin druid Tannah. She claims that she's neutral. However, neutral doesn't mean harmless. Nirvenkiln is a blasted wasteland, with very few decent spots to set up cites and Tannah will settle like crazy, stealing all the decent land unless you're quick. Of course you could always declare war on her if you feel like being a terrible person.
Now, we're looking for the secret underground base of a age old wizard, so we'll be diving into any cave we can see. And most of them will be full of monsters. Like this pile of skeletons that decided to attack us.
The skeletons, properly called Archon revenants, are the last dwelling faction you can find in the base game. Unlike basically every other dwelling faction they have units which correspond to normal racial units, though the undead versions tend to be a cut above their living counterparts in combat stats. Which they are demonstrating by getting very close to killing Edward with a single caster unit.
From a backstory standpoint, the Archons were a race that appeared in the previous titles in the series. They were a race of fallen angels who had been sent to pacify the world for the rise of humanity, and were about as dodgy as that description makes them sound. However, in this day and age the only Archons left on the continent are their undead revenants, after a psychotic death cult spread through their society and most of their leadership buggered off to other worlds in the aftermath of Shadow Magic.
Now, its an open question how many Archon Revenants we encounter in the campaign are supposed to be Archon Revenants and how many are standing in for generic undead. After all, their fall was relatively recent, and Melenis is a character from the first game, so it doesn't make that much sense for her to have tons of Archons guarding her lair.
Topside, our wisp scouting brigade finds an independent goblin village that we were able to talk around to our way of thinking with sufficient application of gold. It is really important that you get this village under control before some else does, or you'll end up penned in in your starting area and short on an economy. Tannah taking it over is actually one of the better outcomes, since you can just declare war on her. In one play through one of the dwarves managed to buy it out, and you aren't allowed to declare war on them. I ended up restarting and taking the village by force.
When the next turn comes around, the underground ambushes continue with an ambush by giant poison-spitting snakes. This is slightly concerning, as the big one is a tier four monster that could do some serious damage to my forces.
Thankfully, it only mauls Laryssa, who can respawn, and leaves itself hanging in the wind before a pack of ranged units. By jumping it with my entire army, including the buffed cavalry, we're able to bring it down.
It turns out that the first cave isn't the place to find Melenis' lair, but we do find a vault of knowledge. This is the site that wins the prize for most annoying site to clear in my personal opinion, and the reputation comes almost entirely from the passive spell. All melee attacks on it's guards will do bonus damage to you and have a higher than average chance of stunning you. It's feasible enough when five out of six of our units have ranged attacks, but trying to take this place with a melee heavy army will be a slaughter.
Sadly, my attempt to kill everything guarding the site with ranged attacks fails, and one of my archer units is two-shot. They would have survived, had they not gotten themselves stunned by their own retaliation attack. It was worth it, as the pile of research from the vault lets us finish our current tech and then instantly complete the research to produce apprentices. This lets us get started on one of the key early game techs, Summon Phantasm Warriors.
Meanwhile, our scouts continue west in search of our objective and free loot, and get themselves eaten my zombie crows. This map is a little unusual in that Werlac isn't actually our primary opponent. Instead, our primary opponent is going to be Nirvenkiln itself. Werlac will keep to himself, but the map is absolutely covered with roaming monsters and spawn sites, making progress a slog. It's actually a pretty cool concept for the mission, and it forces new players to figure out how spawn sites work.
I've sent another wisp up north, where it finds a cave and will inevitable also get killed by monster it just provoked. Some monsters in campaign missions are set to not move until you first stumble across them. This ice elemental is one of them. Now it's going to make a beeline for my stuff until I put it down.
However, scouts are completely expendable! Even with two dead, my third pack of wisps has traveled southwest, where it found an independent human settlement. Now, this is rather unusual, as almost all of Nirvenkiln proper has the blighted climate, and humans (along with every other race save goblins) HATE blighted terrain. It will dock a full morale state off of combat units and give a city a large happiness hit for every tile of it that's in your domain. One would expect that this settlement would be basically useless, but they have a secret. The big green glowing mushroom is a very rare site called the Heart of the Blight. If it is in a players domain every unit and city will ignore the morale penalties from blighted terrain.
Incidentally, the existence of this site is why proposed playing this map as humans. If it didn't exist migrating your first city to humans would be a suicidal move.
It'll be a couple turns until we can get this city to join, but we will be back. After that pack of bandits at the top of the screen is done eating my wisps for supper.
Speaking of cities joining me, this particular independent goblin city, Muck, just gave us a quest to raze a watchtower. Which is suspiciously undefended . . .
(Yes, those are two more wisps. Making scouts in this game is important, and I've been cranking one out every two turns for the whole game)
Well, the village isn't interested in joining me for blowing up one undefended watchtower, though they do give me a free unit. This isn't acceptable so I fall back on diplomacy plan beta-Bribery!
(For reference, Diplomacy plan Alpha is offer to murder things for them and plan gamma is to kick their teeth in until they do what I want.)
Now if you look closely at this picture, you're going to notice a few interesting details. Like Tannah's army that's lurking in the bottom left corner. Or the stack of orcs on the vault of knowledge that wasn't their last turn and aren't the usual defenders for a vault. When independent stacks are spawning in neutral cities, it's probably because of a quest. And if it's not your quest, then it's someone else's, and you better move fast.
Now that things are relatively established, our first city is working to order and I've done some key research, I have some questions to ask you. Questions related to a certain Goblin Druid
1.2x []-We can't afford any interference in this venture: Declare war.
1.0x []-There's no time for distractions-push onward
[X]-We can't afford any interference in this venture: Declare war.
Lore-wise, there is a connection between Melenis and the archons, though it is a pretty tenuous one. In short, Melenis was the Stormlord who sounded the Trump of the Dead, which was the first time that the undead were unleashed upon this particular world. The archons didn't help her in her endeavor, but it's suggested that they didn't exactly hinder her either because the undead incursion served as a useful reminder to the elder races of their respective roles in the scheme of things.
