Mr_Stibbons plays Age of Wonders 3
- Thread starter mr_stibbons
- Start date
- Let's Play
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- strategy let's play
Blasted Nirvenkiln part 2
- Location
- Canada
Well it's been a while. I have a long list of excuses that nobody cares to hear about, so lets get back to this mess.
When we left off, We had brought our first neutral town under our control, and the thread had voted to crush the neutral druid Tannah Bosleaf to increase our control over the situation. In this episode, we will be experiencing why I shouldn't leave foreign policy to a vote and how to mismanage a sneak attack.
What do I mean by that? Well, Tannah ad this little scouting army sitting right outside our new borders, so I figured that I might as well neutralize the annoyances before they could stir up trouble.
Now, a five versus four battle isn't a curb stomp by any means, the enemy forces are a just rabble of tier one goblins, while our forces are backed up by a moderately levelled hero and a gold medal apprentice unit. We also are facing off a melee heavy army with a pile of archers in dense terrain, which generally goes well. By the end of the first turn I'd shot down a dire penguin unit, and was safely our of range of the rest of the enemy force.
This also gives my an opportunity to break out some goblin units off my own, specifically their casters. Blight doctors are a bit of a middling unit by themselves, but are something of a necessary evil in goblin armies. Their special ability is a debut that penalizes a targets defences and adds a massive 60% vulnerability to blight based damage. And the goblin army loves it's blight damage. It's just a shame blight damage is objectively the worst damage type in the game, because of the sheer number of units that resist it. Notably, every single undead unit and Dreadnaught machine is immune to blight damage, and all goblin and dwarf units resist it. Blight doctors are your most basic way to compensate for this issue. In AoW, immune is coded as 100% resistance, so once debuffed the percentages stack to 40% resistance. It's not great, but any amount of damage output is better than zero.
Sadly, I wasn't able to keep my army perfectly intact: my rescued high elves got themselves killed by goblin irregulars. No great loss. I can easily replace them with summons
So what was I saying above about failing in sneak attacks? Well after I ganked her scouting force Tannah has mustered everything she could get her hands on and plopped it atop her capital. Fifteen units, including two heroes, hiding behind stone walls. Now if I had snuck my army over here before declaring war I could probably have stolen the town past minimal defenders, killed Tannah, and been done with it.
While Laryssa has been failing at sneak attacks Edward has been rustling up a new army, and picking up a new pair of boots to replace his old high heels. Thanks to the infrastructure that's been built up, tier one and two units get produced with a rank of vetrancy. Now we just have to wait to either build up enough of a force to crush Tannah, or for the AI to make a silly mistake.
While we wait, we can take advantage of the fact that the sorcerer class creates most of it's class units by summoning. This basically gives the class an extra production queue that only needs mana to fuel it, so we can easily outproduce Tannah. The downside of this system is that it's far less valuable late game. Where a dreadnaught can pump out flame tanks and cannons from any city he can pay for the facilities in, a sorcerer can still only produce it's unique units from it's one summon queue. If you can't leverage your early game advantages as a summoning class, you'll have a bad time as the game goes on.
Pictured above: the AI making a silly mistake three turns later.
One of the fundamental rules for the strategic layer is the adjacent hex rule: once an attack is declared, all armies on a hex adjacent to the attacked hex are part of the fight. The AI is criminally bad at remembering how this rule works. Which is a shame, because it generally is quite competent in the tactical battles.
In the case above, by attacking the two units at the southeastern section of the city, I can keep slightly over half of Tannah's army from participating in this fight. Which, gives me half a chance to bail myself out of the mess I'm in.
It may be hard to notice in the shot above, but I'm running out of mana. Once my mana supply hits zero, the various summoned units that have been bulking out my army will start to vanish. This really is a now or never moment.
Now I may outnumber Tannah three to two, but this isn't going to be an easy fight by any stretch. The enemy composition is heavy on ranged units and irregulars and is leveraging the advantages a defender has in a siege to the fullest.
My first plan to take the wall was the two units of Phantasm Warriors that I've summoned up. These wonderful fellows are like flying walls, very hard to kill, airborne, and packing surprising punch with their lightning swords. But their survivability hinges one their incorporeal nature, like wisps. Against a foe with a lot of elemental damage, say, poison spamming goblins, they are much less effective. In this fight they're facing down a metric ton of elemental ranged attacks, and do little but get shot up.
Plan B would be the goblin tier three unit, Big Beetles. Normally used to tunnel out underground cities, these monstrosities are shockingly effective against enemy units and city walls alike. This is a little counterintuitive, as their normal attacks do blight damage, but they get a massive damage bonus against walls and machines to compensate for the immunity of those targets. They are markedly more effective than mundane battering rams, and should get us through the walls in two turns.
They would break down the gate faster, but this isn't as effective a plan. Due to the layout of the walls, only a single unit can attack a gate at once, forcing you to wait a turn to actually get anything through the gate, while exposing your siege equipment to more incoming fire. Attacking the outer walls is not only safer, but makes it easier to get units through the gap. In this battle they have the large advantage of staring down the enemy two-stack, which keeps them from taking two much damage.
My last, and most effective, plan are the goblin basic archer units, Swarm Darters. These inventive goblins load blowpipes with an unspecified species of murderous, poisonous insect to launch at their foes. Since all the goblins need to do is get the bugs within a foot or so of the enemy they ignore cover, and since the bug is doing all the killing they ignore ranged penalties. They come very close to beinghorrendously broken the best archer unit in the game, save for their two key drawbacks:
Blight damage is, as I said before, objectively the worst damage type in the game. In this fight we get to enjoy the entire enemy lineup having some degree of resistance.
As the goblin version of the most fragile basic troop type in the game, they die to sharp looks and stiff breezes. The only thing in the game with less health then these guys are wisps, and those are incorporeal.
Of course, ignoring all of the rules for ranged attacks is pretty nice, so all those drawbacks do is make them the second best archers in the game.
Of course, the incredible fragility of these units works both ways. Swarm darters make up Tannah's best ranged force as well. Whoever can take out the opponents darters first is probably going to win.
The battle quickly breaks town into two halves: The North side, led by Edward and supported by darters and beetles and the south side were my phantasm warriors advance backed up by Laryssa. The theme of the battle is Edwards force kicking ass and Laryssa's force being driven off by a hail of poisoned death. Laryssa herself is sent running by a round of concentrated fire from the entire southern flank.
After Larissa flees the field her position is replaced by her apprentices, who manage to turn the tide by finishing off the southern swarm darters.
On the northern flank Tannah's forces are forced to sally after all of her ranged elements are shot off the walls. They don't last long. I'm not even forced to take my beetles off of demolition duty.
My Phantasms are having a rather poor showing, and I'm forced to try to retreat a squad in the face of too much magic damage. The don't make it out of range though, and are cut down before they can get away. In response I'm able to bring my remaining human archers south and wipe out the blight doctors. All that's left is a single unit of goblin untouchables.
Which, over the course of two turns manage to make their way across half the map and crit-kill Laryssa. God dammit.
Laryssa deaths-2
But, there's no rest for the wicked. Time for round two!
Yes, somehow after killing every enemy on the battlefield, we are now back to running at the same set of walls manned by a new pack of enemies. And it's obviously the same set of walls because the hole I blew in them the last time round is still there. I guess we called a retreat when Laryssa died, and are coming back for seconds now? Try not to think too hard about it, okay?
This fight is looking a lot tougher than the last one. Numerically, our forces are at parity, but I've got a slight edge in the quality department. This is compensated by the enemies fortifications and Laryssa's defeat tanking my morale. Normally I wouldn't dare try this fight, but having a ready made breach is giving me some confidence.
Tannah opens the fight by having her theocrat minion debuff my cavalry squadron. Their morale and speed are going to be spending the fight in the toilet.
The breach looks like a less enticing strategic opportunity when my human cavalry isn't in a position to back up my goblins, but I go for it anyways, since cavalry behind the walls is infinitely more useful than cavalry sitting around outside the walls.
From a tactical perspective this is a text book case where going on guard mode is the optimal move: Attacking the hero would lead to me getting flanked twice next turn. All the beetles need to do is distract the enemy and do as much damage as possible, my ranged units can mop up next turn.
Have I mentioned I hate spiders?
Not in general, just in the context of this game. Though if you do have a fear of spiders, this game may not be for you.
All the spider units in this game have a webbing touch special attack. This will randomly either reduce movement by a small amount, or make the target lose it's next two turns and make all attacks on the target get the flanking bonus. You can probably see how this attack has a rather large degree of variance.
Like a lot of very swingy random mechanics, this makes spiders an utter pain. A few lucky webbing rolls can turn a fight from a cakewalk to a curb stomp in their favour. And one variety can teleport before using this attack, so keeping them from your valuable units is an exercise in futility.
Now through a string of very very lucky rolls, my beetles managed to evade being webbed three times in a row. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have survived the turn.
When we left off, We had brought our first neutral town under our control, and the thread had voted to crush the neutral druid Tannah Bosleaf to increase our control over the situation. In this episode, we will be experiencing why I shouldn't leave foreign policy to a vote and how to mismanage a sneak attack.
What do I mean by that? Well, Tannah ad this little scouting army sitting right outside our new borders, so I figured that I might as well neutralize the annoyances before they could stir up trouble.
Now, a five versus four battle isn't a curb stomp by any means, the enemy forces are a just rabble of tier one goblins, while our forces are backed up by a moderately levelled hero and a gold medal apprentice unit. We also are facing off a melee heavy army with a pile of archers in dense terrain, which generally goes well. By the end of the first turn I'd shot down a dire penguin unit, and was safely our of range of the rest of the enemy force.
This also gives my an opportunity to break out some goblin units off my own, specifically their casters. Blight doctors are a bit of a middling unit by themselves, but are something of a necessary evil in goblin armies. Their special ability is a debut that penalizes a targets defences and adds a massive 60% vulnerability to blight based damage. And the goblin army loves it's blight damage. It's just a shame blight damage is objectively the worst damage type in the game, because of the sheer number of units that resist it. Notably, every single undead unit and Dreadnaught machine is immune to blight damage, and all goblin and dwarf units resist it. Blight doctors are your most basic way to compensate for this issue. In AoW, immune is coded as 100% resistance, so once debuffed the percentages stack to 40% resistance. It's not great, but any amount of damage output is better than zero.
Sadly, I wasn't able to keep my army perfectly intact: my rescued high elves got themselves killed by goblin irregulars. No great loss. I can easily replace them with summons
So what was I saying above about failing in sneak attacks? Well after I ganked her scouting force Tannah has mustered everything she could get her hands on and plopped it atop her capital. Fifteen units, including two heroes, hiding behind stone walls. Now if I had snuck my army over here before declaring war I could probably have stolen the town past minimal defenders, killed Tannah, and been done with it.
While Laryssa has been failing at sneak attacks Edward has been rustling up a new army, and picking up a new pair of boots to replace his old high heels. Thanks to the infrastructure that's been built up, tier one and two units get produced with a rank of vetrancy. Now we just have to wait to either build up enough of a force to crush Tannah, or for the AI to make a silly mistake.
While we wait, we can take advantage of the fact that the sorcerer class creates most of it's class units by summoning. This basically gives the class an extra production queue that only needs mana to fuel it, so we can easily outproduce Tannah. The downside of this system is that it's far less valuable late game. Where a dreadnaught can pump out flame tanks and cannons from any city he can pay for the facilities in, a sorcerer can still only produce it's unique units from it's one summon queue. If you can't leverage your early game advantages as a summoning class, you'll have a bad time as the game goes on.
Pictured above: the AI making a silly mistake three turns later.
One of the fundamental rules for the strategic layer is the adjacent hex rule: once an attack is declared, all armies on a hex adjacent to the attacked hex are part of the fight. The AI is criminally bad at remembering how this rule works. Which is a shame, because it generally is quite competent in the tactical battles.
In the case above, by attacking the two units at the southeastern section of the city, I can keep slightly over half of Tannah's army from participating in this fight. Which, gives me half a chance to bail myself out of the mess I'm in.
It may be hard to notice in the shot above, but I'm running out of mana. Once my mana supply hits zero, the various summoned units that have been bulking out my army will start to vanish. This really is a now or never moment.
Now I may outnumber Tannah three to two, but this isn't going to be an easy fight by any stretch. The enemy composition is heavy on ranged units and irregulars and is leveraging the advantages a defender has in a siege to the fullest.
My first plan to take the wall was the two units of Phantasm Warriors that I've summoned up. These wonderful fellows are like flying walls, very hard to kill, airborne, and packing surprising punch with their lightning swords. But their survivability hinges one their incorporeal nature, like wisps. Against a foe with a lot of elemental damage, say, poison spamming goblins, they are much less effective. In this fight they're facing down a metric ton of elemental ranged attacks, and do little but get shot up.
Plan B would be the goblin tier three unit, Big Beetles. Normally used to tunnel out underground cities, these monstrosities are shockingly effective against enemy units and city walls alike. This is a little counterintuitive, as their normal attacks do blight damage, but they get a massive damage bonus against walls and machines to compensate for the immunity of those targets. They are markedly more effective than mundane battering rams, and should get us through the walls in two turns.
They would break down the gate faster, but this isn't as effective a plan. Due to the layout of the walls, only a single unit can attack a gate at once, forcing you to wait a turn to actually get anything through the gate, while exposing your siege equipment to more incoming fire. Attacking the outer walls is not only safer, but makes it easier to get units through the gap. In this battle they have the large advantage of staring down the enemy two-stack, which keeps them from taking two much damage.
My last, and most effective, plan are the goblin basic archer units, Swarm Darters. These inventive goblins load blowpipes with an unspecified species of murderous, poisonous insect to launch at their foes. Since all the goblins need to do is get the bugs within a foot or so of the enemy they ignore cover, and since the bug is doing all the killing they ignore ranged penalties. They come very close to being
Blight damage is, as I said before, objectively the worst damage type in the game. In this fight we get to enjoy the entire enemy lineup having some degree of resistance.
As the goblin version of the most fragile basic troop type in the game, they die to sharp looks and stiff breezes. The only thing in the game with less health then these guys are wisps, and those are incorporeal.
Of course, ignoring all of the rules for ranged attacks is pretty nice, so all those drawbacks do is make them the second best archers in the game.
Of course, the incredible fragility of these units works both ways. Swarm darters make up Tannah's best ranged force as well. Whoever can take out the opponents darters first is probably going to win.
The battle quickly breaks town into two halves: The North side, led by Edward and supported by darters and beetles and the south side were my phantasm warriors advance backed up by Laryssa. The theme of the battle is Edwards force kicking ass and Laryssa's force being driven off by a hail of poisoned death. Laryssa herself is sent running by a round of concentrated fire from the entire southern flank.
After Larissa flees the field her position is replaced by her apprentices, who manage to turn the tide by finishing off the southern swarm darters.
On the northern flank Tannah's forces are forced to sally after all of her ranged elements are shot off the walls. They don't last long. I'm not even forced to take my beetles off of demolition duty.
My Phantasms are having a rather poor showing, and I'm forced to try to retreat a squad in the face of too much magic damage. The don't make it out of range though, and are cut down before they can get away. In response I'm able to bring my remaining human archers south and wipe out the blight doctors. All that's left is a single unit of goblin untouchables.
Which, over the course of two turns manage to make their way across half the map and crit-kill Laryssa. God dammit.
Laryssa deaths-2
But, there's no rest for the wicked. Time for round two!
Yes, somehow after killing every enemy on the battlefield, we are now back to running at the same set of walls manned by a new pack of enemies. And it's obviously the same set of walls because the hole I blew in them the last time round is still there. I guess we called a retreat when Laryssa died, and are coming back for seconds now? Try not to think too hard about it, okay?
This fight is looking a lot tougher than the last one. Numerically, our forces are at parity, but I've got a slight edge in the quality department. This is compensated by the enemies fortifications and Laryssa's defeat tanking my morale. Normally I wouldn't dare try this fight, but having a ready made breach is giving me some confidence.
Tannah opens the fight by having her theocrat minion debuff my cavalry squadron. Their morale and speed are going to be spending the fight in the toilet.
The breach looks like a less enticing strategic opportunity when my human cavalry isn't in a position to back up my goblins, but I go for it anyways, since cavalry behind the walls is infinitely more useful than cavalry sitting around outside the walls.
From a tactical perspective this is a text book case where going on guard mode is the optimal move: Attacking the hero would lead to me getting flanked twice next turn. All the beetles need to do is distract the enemy and do as much damage as possible, my ranged units can mop up next turn.
Have I mentioned I hate spiders?
Not in general, just in the context of this game. Though if you do have a fear of spiders, this game may not be for you.
All the spider units in this game have a webbing touch special attack. This will randomly either reduce movement by a small amount, or make the target lose it's next two turns and make all attacks on the target get the flanking bonus. You can probably see how this attack has a rather large degree of variance.
Like a lot of very swingy random mechanics, this makes spiders an utter pain. A few lucky webbing rolls can turn a fight from a cakewalk to a curb stomp in their favour. And one variety can teleport before using this attack, so keeping them from your valuable units is an exercise in futility.
Now through a string of very very lucky rolls, my beetles managed to evade being webbed three times in a row. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have survived the turn.
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Blasted Nirvenkiln part 3
- Location
- Canada
Since my heavy cavalry is still alive and unentangled, Tannah and a pack of wild boars sally out to fight my army head on. This means that my archers are going to be spending most of their turns keeping themselves alive instead of killing spiders and getting my beetles free. I bring up the troops that started facing the southern flank to help clear out the advancing enemies.
Swarm darters continue to impress, finishing off an enemy hero that had gotten herself mauled by my beetles. Sadly, this doesn't end the curse she laid on my cavalry, and they will continue to be useless.
Edward also contributes by wiping out one pack of spiders.
After the sallying force is dealt with, I warp in my wisps to provide some support on the battlements. I fully expect them to die, but if I'm lucky I'll be able to keep my goblin cavalry alive.
Such is not to be. The big beetles fall, taking another squad of spiders with them, and my wisps are casually destroyed by a blight doctor squad I honestly had forgotten about.
Fearing a repeat of the last battle, I pulled all my troops north instead of engaging the southern section of the walls. By this point it's caught up to me. Edward takes a terrifying amount of damage from swarm darters the enemy pulled of their souther walls, and is going to be spending the rest of the battle hiding as far away from the enemy as possible.
Though we've been repulsed from the breach and lost our heavy cavalry, we've got this fight under control. My swarm darters are able to finish off the spider horde and kill a unit of irregulars, leaving the enemy with just three units left.
After the AI basically wastes it's turn unloading all of it's remaining firepower on my crippled cavalry regiment, I'm finally able to apply lightning swords to fragile goblins. Tannah Bosleaf is no more.
And that is how you kill eighteen units squatting on a fortress with twelve units. All we lost were a unit of wisps, Laryssa, a phantasm warrior unit and some beetles. And between the loot and losses to my summons, I'm not in any danger of running out of mana!
Edward hit's level seven, picking up some extra defence and Wizard hunters, boosting his army's magic resistance granting bonus damage against summoned units.
I wasted enough turns besieging Tannah's town, and need to get moving. My remaining forces are splitting up into two groups- the phantasm warriors and the apprentices are heading back to Froth to get built up into a new stack, while Edward takes everyone else west. If we're lucky we'll be able to finish the quest for that human outpost we saw in time and make a vassal out of them.
Next turn our vassaled goblins cough up a tribute of units, giving us some cavalry and pikemen. This is quite helpful, Edward's unit composition was a little too archer heavy for a serious fight. It would have been more helpful two turns ago, but everything worked out OK.
I could of course produce units faster if I had the town under control, but that would cost gold I don't have. I'll be keeping the town as a vassal for the foreseeable future, it dosn't have enough production sites (and I don't have the gold or patience) to build it up into a decent military city.
Meanwhile Laryssa respawns and clears out the tomb that's been inside Froth's domain forever, getting some wonderful all around economic boosts. Inside, she picks up one of the best ranged weapons in the game, the dirty blowpipe. This gives a hero the same attack as a swarm darter.
I also use some of my spare casting points to call a magical egg. This is a sorcerer strategic spell that generates a random egg that will turn into a mount in ten turns. Since your hero's items carry over, I strongly recommend screwing around on this mission until you have a collection of high quality eggs-the ones that grant flying are especially useful.
So, it turns out that we show up a turn too late to finish Carlsberg's quest. Even if we wipe out their target, they're pissed at us for taking so long and refuse to join us.
Well, you guys already voted for an evil option, so it's time for some pro-active diplomacy.
This does not take very long. And now we've picked up the heart of the blight, which clears up the morale issues caused by the terrain.
For your reference, this this is the state of our holdings so far. The rest of Nirvekiln is on the other side of the inlet, and getting reinforcements from our home cities to the front lines of the expedition is going to get very difficult shortly.
Larissa pops down the underground passage to the north, and discovers a Draconian fortress dominating a set of mana nodes.
Once liberated, we find some research materials and what looks like our objective behind a partially collapsed tunnel. We can't move the rockslide, but we have a rough idea of where we need to search.
Edward goes spelunking near Karlberg, and finds a mysterious teleporter. What's on the other side?
A skeleton giant. And some loot.
Edward's crack force manage to fend it off without using losing a unit thanks to the heroic efforts of our goblin butchers. These are highly unusual for pike units because they are a tier two unit, with stats to match. They give the goblin lineup a beefy frontline melee unit that you wouldn't expect from their racial modifiers, and basically ignore their health penalties thanks to their innate life drain. This also makes the goblins the only race besides the high elves that are issuing magic weapons to their normal soldiers.
Aside note: Butchers were patched in, and in some locations on the campaign map you run into old fashioned tier one goblin pikes. I'll point them out if they show up in a battle that's interesting enough to show.
Aside aside note: This particular titan was set of fire by Edward. Archon Titans are not on fire at all times, nor do they enjoy being on fire.
Meanwhile in the northern cave system, Laryssa just got ambushed by a pack of archons and a fire elemental leaving it a little shot up. She does manage to score a fancy new robe that sets her attackers on fire for her troubles, and she'll pop up near our capital, where there are new troops waiting for her.
Terribly sorry for the delay in getting this out. Between real life, X-com, and failing my attempt to take out Tannah several times this took far longer than it should have. Hopefully, I'll be returning to a more regular update schedule from here on out.
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Good to see this again.
Though I have to agree it isn't exactly smart to let others vote what to do. It's time consuming and we never have the same amount of information that you have to make good decisions.
Though I have to agree it isn't exactly smart to let others vote what to do. It's time consuming and we never have the same amount of information that you have to make good decisions.
Blasted Nirvenkiln part 4
- Location
- Canada
Well, last time around we killed off a probably innocent druid and the only organized resistance we should be facing for some time. For a the next section of the map we are entering the monster infested hellhole of Nirvekiln proper. We are promptly greeted by a pair of friendly giant spiders.
After they have been fended off, (incorporeal units are immune to webbing, making phantasm warriors a counter) we call in a builder unit to start improving our supply chain by a minor fractional percentage. I also plan on using it to set up fortresses near any gold sites.
A small amount of exploration reveals the likely source of the plague of giant spiders, a Shrine to the Queen of Spiders. According to our scout reports, we could clear it out easily. That's a pile of wishful thinking though, and we bring in Edwards force.
The shrine is will whip up additional spiders each turn until all of the original defenders are dead. They do spawn in random locations, so it's not as bad as it could be, but even with good tactics you'll have to deal with about twice the army you thought you were facing and way too many chance to get screwed over by webbing touch.
It's possible to remove this twisted enchantment, but I have to gamble my entire turns summoning points on a coin flip. The best way to deal with this is just straight up overwhelming force, kill the "real" units in as few turns as possible and then mop up the extra spiders.
Next turn, after Edward's force had moved out, we get ambushed by a zombie dragon. Not the pair of giant spiders that were lurking beside the shrine and didn't move, a zombie dragon with an entourage out of nowhere Welcome to Nirvenkiln.
Ok, how to not lose a third of my army. Step one, bait the carrion birds onto pikemen and phantasm warriors. DON"T ENGAGE THE DRAGON. We take some damage from poison gas breath but we'll need to isolate the dragon before we can safely deal with it.
Step two, clear out the birds. Pikes have the support of my cavalry, and I laid a buff on one pack of phantasms which will let them win their fight. The last one requires us to send blight doctors in to melee, but thats all three in a single round. We're going to take a hit from a dragon, and it'll probably be on our darters, but that's an acceptable loss.
Step three, mourn the inevitable loss of my swarm darters.
Step four, did I mention the Shrine of the Queen of Spiders grants greater webbing touch on anything that steps on it? The Shrine of the Queen of Spiders grants greater webbing touch on anything that steps on it. If we use the blight doctors to weaken the bone dragon and throw the dice as many times as we can . . .
Beautiful.
It is so satisfying to be on the other end of webbing touch. The dragon just got rendered helpless for the next three turns, and get's hacked to pieces in short order.
Meanwhile, Laryssa has rustled up a new army and her ice wyvern egg has finally hatched. Wyverns are the gold standard for high level hero mounts, because having flight on heroes is really, really convenient. She's also broken out the second tier of summon spells, summon fantastic creature. This is one of several randomized summon spells in the game, which will grant one of a short list of possible units whenever you cast it. This cast whipped up a non mount frost wyvern.
She also gets attacked by a zombie dragon swooping out of the fog of war. Welcome to Nirvenkiln.
Something's off here, because this dragon is only accompanied by one, almost dead, carrion bird. I don't recall losing any of my scouts to a dragon.
We'll probably figure it out later. Laryssa and co are able to kill the dragon, but not before it eats my wyvern.
So, you may be wondering why zombie dragons are crawling out of the woodwork. The most likely reason is that their are some haunted boneyard sites that have had time to ramp up a bit. These are spawn sites, and like all spawn sites they will escalate the difficulty of their spawn packs as the game goes on. Since we took so long killing of Tannah, they've escalated to spawning dragons. If we left them alone for a really long time these sites would start spitting out full stacks of nothing but dragons. Need to kill them quickly.
To back up my forces I used a summon fantastic creatures, which this time popped out a
It turns out throwing twelve units at the boneyard guards is an effective way to clear it out.
On the northern front, Laryssa is heading up the coast in search of any other spawn sites, and instead we find Werlac's troops sailing around. That probably explains the damaged undead units we saw earlier, because I would expect Werlac to explore in much more force.
So Laryssa summons up some more phantasms and swoops in. This may look like a fair fight, but it's not. Fighting aboard transports forces a brutal debuff to defence and speed, and though early versions of the game gave the transport ships weapons as a counterbalance, this is no longer true. Troops aboard ships are sitting ducks against flying, amphibious or naval units and I'm able to manhandle veteran tier two troops that would give me trouble on land.
I've also picked up one of Laryssa's most powerful abilities on her most recent level up-inflict stun. Every single attack she makes has a small chance to make the target lose it's next turn. I've already been building her into a ranged attack focused build, and this synergies really well, since she'll be getting three stun attempts a turn for almost all of her turns. Between the constant stuns, and Werlac's lack of elemental attacks to hurt my phantasms, I wipe this little expedition out without any losses.
Down south the pack of wraiths eat my builder and go on to jump Edward. Welcome to fucking Nirvenkiln
This is slightly worrying because Edward is lacking any really effective way of countering incorporeal undead: their immunity to blight damage makes my two darter units virtually useless. I bait the wraiths with three units that have a chance to fight wraiths-My knights, who have enough raw stats from promotions to have a reasonable chance of holding them, Edward, who has a spirit damage weapon that wraiths are vulnerable to, and the butcher regiment which I buff up with star blades to give them a chance. The butchers get a crit, and make short work of the wraiths attacking them.
The other trick I can use is my basic human archers. When the get to gold medal rank they gain bonus spirit damage on their ranged attacks which makes them far more capable than the swarm darters of actually fighting off wraiths.
The archers finish off the wraiths that had engaged Edward, which lets him tie down the last pack. Between the raw stats of my knights and what little help the darters were they brought down the pack engaging them. From here I had the butchers flank the last pack and kill them with enchanted poleaxes.
Pushing north I pick up a few minor sites and a vetrancy pickup. Sadly, I didn't realize that Edward had hit the level cap for this mission and wasted one of levels I could have gotten.
Big picture shot for context. Laryssa is the two purple flags in the centre north, surrounded by mountains. She's found another haunted boneyard and a cave entrance which SPOILERS, is the one leading to our objective.
Edward's army is the three flags to the southwest beside the lake, and isn't near anything terribly interesting. After Laryssa clears up that second boneyard, I'm going to try my best to link up my forces. Edward is going to take all the cavalry and flying units from the southern force and make a beeline north. The infantry will continue exploring west.
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Blasted Nirvenkiln part 5
- Location
- Canada
The boneyard is quite lightly defended, and it looks like Werlac used a lightning storm to soften them up. Too bad we killed all of his troops before he could bring them to bear. I've done something that I don't usually do with Laryssa's force and brought along a trebuchet. I originally built it to siege Tannah's castle, but had to attack before it could get to the fight due to my lack of mana. It's been a solid contributor, but I can't heal it at all, and I don't think it's quite as useful as any other tier three unit.
The remaining southern expedition attempts to clear out a monster den, and provides and object lesson on why teleporting spiders are piles of bullshit. They do manage to bail themselves out of this situation, the swarm darters tag the spider queen, distracting it so the archers can slip by and kill off the baby spiders in melee, and the butchers flank and, well, butcher, the queen.
And who should they see on the other side of the mountain but Werlac! He's copied our strategy and rallied up an army of the local goblins.
The elven bastard sends some of his lighter cavalry off to scout some other direction, and I'm not about to let an opportunity go to waste, bringing up some freshly trained apprentices to bulk up my force. But my main force in the west is in poor shape: They got tagged by one of Werlac's lighting storms and accidentally stumbled through a patch of blighted vines a few turns ago, leaving the force dead on their feet.
The moment the battle begins Werlac finishes off a pike unit with combat magic.
On the right flank my apprentices soften up the enemy apprentices enough for my warg riders to shatter them in one charge.
Werlac takes advantage of one of the Sorcerer upgrades to give all of his caster units phase. He teleports one of this apprentice units through the trees to clear kill one of my weakened darter units. My other archers make sure that they take a one way trip.
On the north front he uses his blight doctors and big beetles to wipe out my warg riders. It's a shame, I had hoped that he would try to break through my damaged butcher unit I'd been using to hold a chokepoint through the trees.
But Werlac isn't the only one with the ability to teleport, and my apprentices warp out of charge range of the angry heavy cavalry unit.
Then I have my blight doctors weaken the beetles. They can either charge my pikes or try to take the long way around while under heavy bombardment.
He chooses to chance the buchers, and gets demolished for his troubles thanks to good morale on my part. My surviving swarm darters are enough to finish off the weakened beetles. Then I use some more teleportation shenanigans to catch his last unit in a magical crossfire.
That was fun, but ultimately tangential to the completion of mission. Up north our objective has finally been found. Let's just hope we can do our tomb raiding in peace.
No such luck. Werlac's here personally, and he brought enough beetles to eat a castle. Good thing I brought a fairly substantial force, with my own tunnelling units.
Bold words from a man outnumbered three to two. Let's see your best move.
Umm, what?
I may have just broke the games scripting a tiny bit. You see, Werlac is supposed to use his stack of beetles to dig through the wall, then follow up with his own stack, and stop. But since I parked my army in the path he's supposed to take, I forced him to throw his army at me piecemeal. So what would have been a fairly easy fight turns into a military farce.
And here he goes, throwing away the other half of his army. This is probably the weaker half, but those elementals he has are individually a bit more challenging than the beetle units were. Werlac himself is only a pathetic level two, the start of what's going to be running theme in this campaign.
Interesting note: For some baffling reason, Earth elementals can be petrified by beholders. I have absolutely no idea how that makes sense.
Continuing on our previous path, we find a necropolis of archon revenants that Werlac has swayed to his side. It's defences are paltry compared to the army we've marshalled here, and it'll be easily swept away next turn. There is also a road leading suspiciously towards a removable wall.
I, I . . .
WHAT!
How is Werlac defeated? I know he has another city, I've played this mission before! He is totally not supposed to lose here. THIS IS INCREDIBLY ANTICLIMACTIC!
Actually, why does it give the message it gave when Tannah was defeated? What have I done to this poor mission's scripting?
Next time: Since my opponent just conceded out of embarrassment, I should be wrapping this mission up next update. We've just got to clear out a bunch of independent troops and grab the Mcguffin.
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aledeth
The Flesh is Weak
- Pronouns
- He/Him
He probably got his other city punked by Zombie Dragon shenanigans.
Blasted Nirvenkiln Finale
- Location
- Canada
Alright. So, somehow, our primary opponent lost last turn. Since this is a rather unusual map, we've still got to clean up the mess, grab our objectives, and grab as much loot as I have the patience's to grind for. First things first, Edward is going to be taking this nest of Archon Revenants that formerly were controlled by our enemy. As scary as archon titans are, they still do only physical damage and get humiliated by phantasm warriors. I don't need to throw my entire force to knock this place over.
Then, for the good of all that live in these blasted lands, the necropolis is to be raised to the ground, after some choice artifacts are identified and shipped to the Hengvolt museum.
Aside note: For some reason razing a dwelling of creatures that are dedicated to evil across the board still counts as an evil act. If their was a point to make an exception, it would be here.
Laryssa has her goblin beetle riders excavate the collapsed tunnels and makes her way into the depths of Melenis' sanctum.
Once some of the inconvenient undead and overgrown spiders kill themselves in futile attacks we reach the core of the facility, where Melenis maintained her wizard tower.
I have to say I like the aesthetic of Melenis' lair. It's broken into several sections like this one, small rings of land surrounding a pool of water, each surrounded by lava and studded with different mana nodes. It really feels like whoever built this place was able to tell the laws of physics and magic to go fuck themselves.
The tower doesn't have any lingering enchantments on it, but its guarded by a large assortment of magical constructs and a be-tentacled Eldritch Horror-the sorcerer ultimate unit. I've handpicked the best units Laryssa had available, two watchers, one gold medal beetle unit, gold medal phantasm warriors and silver medal blight doctors.
On the left flank of the battle, Laryssa lays her favourite buff on her phantasms and baits one of the enemy phantasm packs onto them. Between the watcher backing them up and their counterattack they wipe the baited enemy. On the right the Horror uses its AOE lightning breath to soften up some of my units. In response I have my blight doctors do their thing and weaken it.
The goblin cavalry move to flank the horror, make excellent early progress but panic in the face of the thing which should not be and break off. Fearsome is possibly one of the nastiest abilities in the game on defence. Every time a fearsome unit is attacked they have a chance to panic their attacker, making it break off and run away on their next turn.
And yes, the forced movement from being panicked does trigger opportunity attacks. One of the phantasms came over to help beat on my beetles, and once they get the chance to run away they're holding onto life with a single hit point.
Laryssa kills the horror with her ranged attacks, and we discover that incorporeal units can be petrified by watchers, despite them being immune to every other type of stun. Watchers are souped up irregulars, with a very powerful single shot doom gaze attack that does most of their damage.
On the other side of the battlefield, my buffed veteran phantasms prove their superiority over the second pack of regular phantasms with some fire support from my watcher and the blight doctors.
And with that we have our Mcguffin, the Oscillator Gem.
Laryssa: Ah, I have heard of you. You are one of the few High Elves who have chosen to remain in the Commonwealth. You have made quite a name for yourself. I would welcome your assistance. What do you think Edward?
Edward: Yes, it seems we just trigged some ancient protections. I would defiantly welcome your assistance, thank you!
Valery: Very well. My target has eluded me, so I have nothing important left to do here anyway. When you bested him in combat Werla teleported to his Throne, and in spite of my best efforts I have not found it's location. I can guarantee it's not here in Nirvenkiln however. He may have escaped, but I will catch him some day.
Valery's dialogue here suggests that Werlac is supposed to not appear again after he gets defeated, but on previous playthroughs that didn't cause his forces to disband, just made Werlac himself not take the field again. Perhaps he is supposed to lose?
Regardless, I actually would have liked Werlac to stick around a bit longer, because Valery starts out a level one hero, and there aren't very many independent stacks left to level her on left on the map.
Now I could walk all the way to Hengvolt, but pressing a bit further into the lair reveals a one way teleport. This sends her to another cavern that exits near Hengvolt. Must have been Melenis' bolt hole.
While Laryssa and co were tomb raiding, my additional forces have been exploring the rest of the map. Here's Werlac's capital, now in the hands of an independent government. We'll get around to teaching them what happens when you cooperate with the elven court.
However, Valery found a patch of lose earth hidden at the back of Melenis' cave, and found this massive stack of independents guarding a secret cache of resources, and an item sack. She dosn't have anywhere near the forces to take them, partially because they're hiding in a choke point and refuse to be baited into attacking multiple stacks.
I could win this mission at any point. And this loot cave is in the ass end of this map. Do I really want to be waiting around for a dozen turns just to see what that item is?
Many, many turns later . . .
We've called in an all-star lineup to deal clear this treasure cash. Edward, now on a snazzy new griffon mount, Valery, because she needs levels badly, also with a new mount, an Eldritch Horror of my own, because I had far too many turns on my hands, and an assortment of veteran heavy cavalry.
Despite being abominations from beyond time and space, Eldritch Horrors play quite similar to dragons. They're flying units with a one shot breath attack and beefy melee stats. They're a bit slower than dragons, but have extra domination special attack to compensate. Sadly all dragons and undead are immune to mind control, and we can't use it in this fight.
In response to my attack the Horror gets mobbed a bit, but I'm able to send in my cavalry to bail it out. Knights get Dragon Slayer by default, one of those fluffy bonus abilities which can randomly make your life much easier, especially if your opponent forgets that they have that ability.
Valery also gets jumped by a wyvern, and it falls to Edward to bail her out. There isn't much tactics left in this fight, just throw melee units at anything that's still alive. So is what we found worth the time?
Yes. So much yes. In addition to a bunch of attack bonuses, it grants fearsome, which is a hilariously effective way to humiliate mobs of weaker units.
Now Laryssa, who's been hanging around outside Hengvolt for ten turns can finish the mission.
And there we go. Mission two of the Commonwealth is complete, and the gang settles in for some much needed downtime and studying a mysterious artifacts ripped from the trapped lair of an ancient evil witch.
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Promised Lands(Elven Court Mission 2)
- Location
- Canada
And we're back, taking a break from our normal steampunk tomb raiding for a story with elven princesses, hermits, dragons, befriending and spiders. So, so many spiders.
From Briska, far to the north, word comes that the Commonwealth has recaptured the territory and broken the freedom loving rebels, robbing the Elven Court of potential allies. All-out war is at hand. My quest for freedom has be surrounded in hostile lands. I have no means to co-ordinate with my Fathers court, so I'll act on my own. I'll make the draconian our allies. Reskar requires a homeland, so I'll lead him to Ralikesh.
Ralikesh
Ralikesh is a land of scorching heat. Not my favourite place, but it's perfect for the Draconians to keep their eggs warm The High Elves hold these lands by ancient birthright from a forgotten era, but only a few are hardy enough to settle here. It will be good to establish ties between the Draconians and High Elves - to really cement our alliance. Unfortunately, we've also seen evidence of the Commonwealth burning through these fragile lands.
My support for Reskar also gives me a chance to spy on the Commonwealth in this land. Is there a reason they are destroying these jungles
I know Reskar has the gift to harness the powers of nature and shelter the draconian people in this savage territory. I will help him as his heroine. Once established in their promised land, I know these draconian will prove a most powerful ally.
So, to recap that, Sundren's master plan is to set up a an ally puppet state out of a large amount of draconian refugees led by Reskar, so that they will help the Elven Court fight the Commonwealth. She's taking them to Ralikesh because some ancient pieces of paper say the place is property of the High Elves, even though barely anyone remembers the treaty. Please note that Sundren dosn't mention whats going to happen to anyone squatting in High Elven lands.
Yeah. Where the second Commonwealth mission is massively ill advised, the second Elven Court mission borderline evil, but sometimes the writers don't seem to notice.
Reskar: There is a Dragon's Peak in the far West of this region. The Radiant Egg must be connected to it somehow. I feel the life within growing now, getting stronger. It is drawn to the Peak. I must go there.
We start off in the Northeast corner of the map, with our heroes, two settlers, some Draconian cavalry, and one of each of the arch druid class units, hunters and shamans.
We've also got two optional objectives on this map. First, as Reskar mentioned, we need to visit the dragon peak in the west of the map, but first he needs to wait for the radiant egg to hatch. This isn't really a problem, you would have to deliberately rush the map to an insane degree to get to the peak in less then the ten turns it takes for the egg to hatch. Secondly there are some High Elven settlements somewhere on the map, which will join us if we find them.
Right beside us is a ruined city. This will let us start off with extra pop and a barracks and boots the happiness of all draconian cities and units. The downside is that this is a massive map, and not much built at this city will be getting to any front lines.
Reskar: This is the first step towards a homeland where we can live free of oppression and intolerance. We will no longer be chased from our fields before the harvest. We will build a proud civilization where we can live the way we are meant to, in honour of our heritage and in harmony with nature. And no one will ever drive us away again.
Heading west, we knock over a bandit camp hidden a bit off the main road, rescuing some goblin swarm darters who volunteer their services. Not being one to turn down such an excellent unit, they get added to my army. It can be easy to miss this camp if you don't scout heavily, and then it'll be a royal pain down the line.
Then as our settlers move out of the forest and into the desert, a crazy goblin jumps down from the nearby mountains, and joins our cause as well.
Sundren: Wait just a minute. Who are you? Why do you want to join me? How could you help me? These are rough times, and it's dangerous where we're going for a lone goblin. Are you sure you're not confused?
Nomlik: My name is Nomlik, and I come from a famed Temple to the Allfather in Xablor Province. The Allfather's servant sent me here to wait for a sign. You are it, I know it! I am not confused, and though I smile, I am no fool. This is indeed dangerous, but it is even more important. As to what I can do for you? Everything the Allfather wishes, I promise.
Sundren: Alright, welcome.
Nomlik will be our third hero for the high elf campaign, and he's one of my personal favourite characters in the game, both for his role in the story and for his effectiveness in gameplay. He's a theocrat class hero, which specializes in turning a relatively mundane army into a force of invincible holy wrath with a wide array of buffs and healing.
My second settler sets up on the edge of the desert. This may seem like an unusual move, but there are some good reasons behind it. Firstly, that tomb in the desert is far more valuable that a simple gold mine or mana node. Second, Draconians like barren terrain like deserts, so placing this city here will boost it's happiness levels through the roof.
A little bit to our west, we can see a new faction of goblins, who aren't terribly friendly to us at this point. Their lord, a rouge named Shaga the Pretty, tells us to stay out of her territory. We'll play along for now, but Reskar won't let anyone else rule a kingdom in his promised land.
We also meet her ally, and boytoy, Urlagh the unchained, Orcish warlord.
Now, I may be overanalyzing this, but I think that Shaga and Urlag are such stereotypical class/race combinations is to emphasize their barbarity in comparison to the commonwealth characters. In the untamed lands, aspiring lords only have the traditional paths of their race, whereas in the commonwealth any race can learn multiple different arts. For example, a goblin could become a priest or a sorcerer in the Commonwealth, but here in the back of nowhere, a goblin will probably end up a rouge.
Instead of picking a fight with Shaga, my forces break south into the desert, and stumble across a pack of hunter spiders lead by a spider queen. I have some spiders of my own spawned from the summon wild animal ability. This is a quite good result for the spell, both because baby spiders are good units by themselves, but because the baby spiders will evolve when the hit gold medal into spider queens. This is one of the really really powerful evolve abilities, with a tier one unit available at the very start of the game turning into a tier three unit. Druids are one of the classes that can run a dedicated evolve rush strategy- you invest heavily in early evolve units to clear the map aggressively and the transfer them into high tier units via evolve. It's an especially useful strategy if you're good at winning fights but bad at running an empire.
Shamans are one of the arch druid class units, a tier three support unit. They have a pile of abilities, and have more speed and much more health than regular caster units. One of the most commonly used abilitesis Awaken Spirit, a buff applicable only to animal units that boosts their damage output and morale. They also have entangling touch, which works likes the storm sister's stunning touch, but with a longer duration.
Their most dramatic ability however, is befriend animal, which permanently converts an animal unit to my side. Reskar can use this ability as well, and between the two of them we're able to talk the spider queen around to our way of thinking. It's a good thing that arachnids aren't big on maternal instincts, because we have to kill all of her children.
As I mentioned back in the last Elf mission, but didn't get a chance to demonstrate, any unit that is mind controlled at the end of a battle is permanently under your control, so our forces have grown by one massive spider.
Our path south leads us to the end of the desert, boxed in by impassible mountains. There are two underground passages that we can look into for loot, animals to mind control, and space to expand.
In the Eastern cave, we find a pack of baby spiders chilling with some bad company. Reskar manages to talk them around and we kill off the filthy kobolds. As you can probably guess, in classes like druid with mind control abilities, rushing up the tech tree to mind control units and spamming them to turn the independent units into a massive army is a viable strategy, though druid is rather poor at it compared to other classes like rogue. Players don't tend to have many animal units, and that hurts the ability to close out the game using your shamans.
Sadly, I'm not going to be heading anywhere special in this cave, though there is a haunted boneyard to destroy and another spider queen to befriend.
The boneyard is going to be a bit of a problem to defeat, even though we have a massive numerical advantage. As with last game, our army is pretty heavy on the blight damage, with four spider units (managed to summon up another one) and goblin darters. Normally shamans would also be restricted to blight damage, but draconian shamans are granted the ability to fire their choice of fire or blight damage. This is really handy, both because blight damage is a terrible damage type and because they can dodge around fire resistant units by switching back to blight damage. This makes draconian shamans my personal favourite type of shaman.
The other problem we're facing is that the Revenant Infantry have the unholy champion special ability. This gives them bonus damage against Animal units and devout units like Nomlik among other things. This makes trying to win a melee fight rather risky, so we focus on ranged attack and use the draconian cavalry to keep the murderous skeletons away from the units they get bonus damage against.
Raptors are a rather generic cavalry unit, their only unique element is that they do a mix of fire and normal damage. It's a bit of a shame, because their design is really cool.
Sundren also takes a dangerous amount of damage from two infantry units, but we're able to bail her out with fire bolts and flanking spiders. Then our spider queen and raptors charge the archon casters and wrap up the fight. Looting the place we find a magic shield that reflects ranged damage and an armour that grants the wearer holy champion, the reverse of the unholy champion ability. This grants the wearer bonus damage against undead, monsters, and dedicated to evil units. For thematic bonus points, Nomlik takes both items.
Once the Boneyard has be demolished, were return to our game of giant spider pokemon. I do my best to cocoon our potential recruits but fail. This isn't the worst possible result: every failed web attempt causes the target to lose some movement points and an action point on their next turn. With three failed webbing attempts the wild spider queen only has a single action and can't move. Even my baby spiders can survive a single attack, and then the queen is successfully tamed. I can't just run at a unit and try to befriend them because units on guard mode have increased magic resistance, which will tank the chances of a successful befriending. We have to wait for the target to make an attack and lower their guard first.
Next up, we launch another unprovoked attack on an innocent goblin. We've kinda have to do this now, because I've summoned too many units and am slowly running out of mana. If this sounds like an oddly familiar situation then you were paying attention to what happened last mission.
We are slightly less restricted on the mana front thanks to a big supply of mana from our new city, which is already at the maximum level of happiness. Getting big cities at max happiness can do hilarious things to your economy from these randomized bonuses.
----
From Briska, far to the north, word comes that the Commonwealth has recaptured the territory and broken the freedom loving rebels, robbing the Elven Court of potential allies. All-out war is at hand. My quest for freedom has be surrounded in hostile lands. I have no means to co-ordinate with my Fathers court, so I'll act on my own. I'll make the draconian our allies. Reskar requires a homeland, so I'll lead him to Ralikesh.
Ralikesh
Ralikesh is a land of scorching heat. Not my favourite place, but it's perfect for the Draconians to keep their eggs warm The High Elves hold these lands by ancient birthright from a forgotten era, but only a few are hardy enough to settle here. It will be good to establish ties between the Draconians and High Elves - to really cement our alliance. Unfortunately, we've also seen evidence of the Commonwealth burning through these fragile lands.
My support for Reskar also gives me a chance to spy on the Commonwealth in this land. Is there a reason they are destroying these jungles
I know Reskar has the gift to harness the powers of nature and shelter the draconian people in this savage territory. I will help him as his heroine. Once established in their promised land, I know these draconian will prove a most powerful ally.
So, to recap that, Sundren's master plan is to set up a an ally puppet state out of a large amount of draconian refugees led by Reskar, so that they will help the Elven Court fight the Commonwealth. She's taking them to Ralikesh because some ancient pieces of paper say the place is property of the High Elves, even though barely anyone remembers the treaty. Please note that Sundren dosn't mention whats going to happen to anyone squatting in High Elven lands.
Yeah. Where the second Commonwealth mission is massively ill advised, the second Elven Court mission borderline evil, but sometimes the writers don't seem to notice.
Reskar: There is a Dragon's Peak in the far West of this region. The Radiant Egg must be connected to it somehow. I feel the life within growing now, getting stronger. It is drawn to the Peak. I must go there.
We start off in the Northeast corner of the map, with our heroes, two settlers, some Draconian cavalry, and one of each of the arch druid class units, hunters and shamans.
We've also got two optional objectives on this map. First, as Reskar mentioned, we need to visit the dragon peak in the west of the map, but first he needs to wait for the radiant egg to hatch. This isn't really a problem, you would have to deliberately rush the map to an insane degree to get to the peak in less then the ten turns it takes for the egg to hatch. Secondly there are some High Elven settlements somewhere on the map, which will join us if we find them.
Right beside us is a ruined city. This will let us start off with extra pop and a barracks and boots the happiness of all draconian cities and units. The downside is that this is a massive map, and not much built at this city will be getting to any front lines.
Reskar: This is the first step towards a homeland where we can live free of oppression and intolerance. We will no longer be chased from our fields before the harvest. We will build a proud civilization where we can live the way we are meant to, in honour of our heritage and in harmony with nature. And no one will ever drive us away again.
Heading west, we knock over a bandit camp hidden a bit off the main road, rescuing some goblin swarm darters who volunteer their services. Not being one to turn down such an excellent unit, they get added to my army. It can be easy to miss this camp if you don't scout heavily, and then it'll be a royal pain down the line.
Then as our settlers move out of the forest and into the desert, a crazy goblin jumps down from the nearby mountains, and joins our cause as well.
Sundren: Wait just a minute. Who are you? Why do you want to join me? How could you help me? These are rough times, and it's dangerous where we're going for a lone goblin. Are you sure you're not confused?
Nomlik: My name is Nomlik, and I come from a famed Temple to the Allfather in Xablor Province. The Allfather's servant sent me here to wait for a sign. You are it, I know it! I am not confused, and though I smile, I am no fool. This is indeed dangerous, but it is even more important. As to what I can do for you? Everything the Allfather wishes, I promise.
Sundren: Alright, welcome.
Nomlik will be our third hero for the high elf campaign, and he's one of my personal favourite characters in the game, both for his role in the story and for his effectiveness in gameplay. He's a theocrat class hero, which specializes in turning a relatively mundane army into a force of invincible holy wrath with a wide array of buffs and healing.
My second settler sets up on the edge of the desert. This may seem like an unusual move, but there are some good reasons behind it. Firstly, that tomb in the desert is far more valuable that a simple gold mine or mana node. Second, Draconians like barren terrain like deserts, so placing this city here will boost it's happiness levels through the roof.
A little bit to our west, we can see a new faction of goblins, who aren't terribly friendly to us at this point. Their lord, a rouge named Shaga the Pretty, tells us to stay out of her territory. We'll play along for now, but Reskar won't let anyone else rule a kingdom in his promised land.
We also meet her ally, and boytoy, Urlagh the unchained, Orcish warlord.
Now, I may be overanalyzing this, but I think that Shaga and Urlag are such stereotypical class/race combinations is to emphasize their barbarity in comparison to the commonwealth characters. In the untamed lands, aspiring lords only have the traditional paths of their race, whereas in the commonwealth any race can learn multiple different arts. For example, a goblin could become a priest or a sorcerer in the Commonwealth, but here in the back of nowhere, a goblin will probably end up a rouge.
Instead of picking a fight with Shaga, my forces break south into the desert, and stumble across a pack of hunter spiders lead by a spider queen. I have some spiders of my own spawned from the summon wild animal ability. This is a quite good result for the spell, both because baby spiders are good units by themselves, but because the baby spiders will evolve when the hit gold medal into spider queens. This is one of the really really powerful evolve abilities, with a tier one unit available at the very start of the game turning into a tier three unit. Druids are one of the classes that can run a dedicated evolve rush strategy- you invest heavily in early evolve units to clear the map aggressively and the transfer them into high tier units via evolve. It's an especially useful strategy if you're good at winning fights but bad at running an empire.
Shamans are one of the arch druid class units, a tier three support unit. They have a pile of abilities, and have more speed and much more health than regular caster units. One of the most commonly used abilitesis Awaken Spirit, a buff applicable only to animal units that boosts their damage output and morale. They also have entangling touch, which works likes the storm sister's stunning touch, but with a longer duration.
Their most dramatic ability however, is befriend animal, which permanently converts an animal unit to my side. Reskar can use this ability as well, and between the two of them we're able to talk the spider queen around to our way of thinking. It's a good thing that arachnids aren't big on maternal instincts, because we have to kill all of her children.
As I mentioned back in the last Elf mission, but didn't get a chance to demonstrate, any unit that is mind controlled at the end of a battle is permanently under your control, so our forces have grown by one massive spider.
Our path south leads us to the end of the desert, boxed in by impassible mountains. There are two underground passages that we can look into for loot, animals to mind control, and space to expand.
In the Eastern cave, we find a pack of baby spiders chilling with some bad company. Reskar manages to talk them around and we kill off the filthy kobolds. As you can probably guess, in classes like druid with mind control abilities, rushing up the tech tree to mind control units and spamming them to turn the independent units into a massive army is a viable strategy, though druid is rather poor at it compared to other classes like rogue. Players don't tend to have many animal units, and that hurts the ability to close out the game using your shamans.
Sadly, I'm not going to be heading anywhere special in this cave, though there is a haunted boneyard to destroy and another spider queen to befriend.
The boneyard is going to be a bit of a problem to defeat, even though we have a massive numerical advantage. As with last game, our army is pretty heavy on the blight damage, with four spider units (managed to summon up another one) and goblin darters. Normally shamans would also be restricted to blight damage, but draconian shamans are granted the ability to fire their choice of fire or blight damage. This is really handy, both because blight damage is a terrible damage type and because they can dodge around fire resistant units by switching back to blight damage. This makes draconian shamans my personal favourite type of shaman.
The other problem we're facing is that the Revenant Infantry have the unholy champion special ability. This gives them bonus damage against Animal units and devout units like Nomlik among other things. This makes trying to win a melee fight rather risky, so we focus on ranged attack and use the draconian cavalry to keep the murderous skeletons away from the units they get bonus damage against.
Raptors are a rather generic cavalry unit, their only unique element is that they do a mix of fire and normal damage. It's a bit of a shame, because their design is really cool.
Sundren also takes a dangerous amount of damage from two infantry units, but we're able to bail her out with fire bolts and flanking spiders. Then our spider queen and raptors charge the archon casters and wrap up the fight. Looting the place we find a magic shield that reflects ranged damage and an armour that grants the wearer holy champion, the reverse of the unholy champion ability. This grants the wearer bonus damage against undead, monsters, and dedicated to evil units. For thematic bonus points, Nomlik takes both items.
Once the Boneyard has be demolished, were return to our game of giant spider pokemon. I do my best to cocoon our potential recruits but fail. This isn't the worst possible result: every failed web attempt causes the target to lose some movement points and an action point on their next turn. With three failed webbing attempts the wild spider queen only has a single action and can't move. Even my baby spiders can survive a single attack, and then the queen is successfully tamed. I can't just run at a unit and try to befriend them because units on guard mode have increased magic resistance, which will tank the chances of a successful befriending. We have to wait for the target to make an attack and lower their guard first.
Next up, we launch another unprovoked attack on an innocent goblin. We've kinda have to do this now, because I've summoned too many units and am slowly running out of mana. If this sounds like an oddly familiar situation then you were paying attention to what happened last mission.
We are slightly less restricted on the mana front thanks to a big supply of mana from our new city, which is already at the maximum level of happiness. Getting big cities at max happiness can do hilarious things to your economy from these randomized bonuses.
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I say keep it coming.
The only thing the LP really lacks is information about how all the classes and races compare with eachother. But I'm assuming that you'll keep that rather minimal unless you use them or either is used against you.
Seeing how large this game is it might be for the best to play the game and if you're in the mood at the end describe your take on the game.
The only thing the LP really lacks is information about how all the classes and races compare with eachother. But I'm assuming that you'll keep that rather minimal unless you use them or either is used against you.
Seeing how large this game is it might be for the best to play the game and if you're in the mood at the end describe your take on the game.
Promised Lands part 2
- Location
- Canada
So we're back. Now where were we?
Ah yes. There we are.
Urlagh: Hah we will crush you Draconinan. Just like the human who came to take away our lands, you too will fall! These lands now belong to Shanga and me. Ancient letters on pieces of paper mean nothing. Only strenghth, and you Elves and Draconinans have none!
This is an interesting little note about this mission: As far as I can remember it's the only time in the game where you must declare war on your enemy. There are some other neutral factions like in the last mission who you can declare war on, but in every other mission your primary opponents, the one's that matter for your objectives, will declare war on you the second you meet them. Not here. Shnaga and Urlagh will both sit around forever if you don't violate her territory, and be perfectly happy. And Shnaga has you boxed in aboveground and below ground, so you can't leave without violating her territory. The player has to go and declare war, which makes sense. These two tribal leaders aren't part of the commonwealth, aren't involved in the civil war, but we need their land, and they're both terrible enough people that we can justify it. Or at least, the characters can. This is still a massive dick move on Sundren's part.
Now, in retrospect, I've brought way more troops to this fight than I strictly need to win. I was under the impression that this city had wooden walls up, and brought a ton of troops to compensate for my lack of units that are decent in a siege. But Shnaga only has barricades, so this fight turns into me using my massive numerical superiority to toy with her.
So while I post mostly unrelated pictures of my army crushing hers, let's talk about the Archdruid class, and how it compares to others.
By far the class that is most like the Archdruid is the Sorcerer class. Both classes have the majority of their special units available through summoning rather than production, and tend to use the extra production and easy logistics you get from summoning to play a very aggressive early game, but suffer when other classes can mass produce their special units from multiple cities. Both also have techs that improve research speed to help with their aggressive rushy strategy, and tend to have very good mobility on the strategic map with their class units: sorcerer units are almost all flying, and most arch druid units ignore difficult terrains and have above average movement speed.
Now, there are a couple of major differences between the two classes. Firstly, remember how Sorcerers had Summon fantastic beasts, which gave you a random selection from a short list? Yeah, three out of the druids four summons work like that: Summon wild animal, summon eldritch animals, and summon gargantuan animal. Like the sorcerer one, each summoning list has some entries that are blatantly more powerful than others on the list. This mechanic understandably receives some flack from more competitive players who don't like to deal with this degree of randomness.
The other major difference with the druid is that they don't have a dedicated scout unit-instead they go straight to summoning wild animals. On one hand, this will give an even faster army buildup, but the lack of easy flying scouts can hurt expansion efficiency.
Now, the last point to discuss about this quick breakdown is how this the class synergizes with your race. It has two racial class units: hunters, buffed up archers that can be used to fill in for poor racial archers, and shamans, later game support units that have several useful abilities but lack in damage output. There are also a pair of empire upgrades that focus on archer and support units, giving them bleed effects (seen above) extra speed and bonus damage against monster units.
This synergizes pretty well with our own draconian race. Flamers, are a quite powerful in some situations and are attractive to buff, but don't quite fill the role of conventional archers, which makes producing hunters valuable, even without a unique buff on them. I've already talked about the usefulness of draconian shamans above, but the alternate damage typing does much to compensate for their usual lack of damage output. Also, draconian cities produce extra mana, which can ease the strain aggressive summoning can cause on your economy.
Anyway, now that that's been dealt with, I'm going to be splitting up my forces in two. Reskar is taking a detachment west, in search of that dragon roost that's supposed to be waiting around. He's taking with him a swarm darter that used to work for Shnaga who Sundren charmed to our side.
Sundren: Why do you want to join us, exactly? Surely you do not wish to risk your life for these draconian and the good of the Elven Court without some reward? It would be much easier for you to just keep out of this, right?
Groshak: I will not sit idly by and wait to be conquered. I understand the inevitability of the coming war: we have to chose. Urlagh, my ignorant nephew dosn't see the humiliation my kind faces at the hands of the Commonwealth. The Elven Court respects all who respect it. The understand magic is the true power, not machines or gold. Together we can bring an end to the human empire.
And now we have our fourth hero, Groshak Sharp-Edge. Who displays a sense of cold blooded pragmatism that's frankly a little disturbing, since we're about to use his services to dethrone and kill his own nephew, but there seems to be some bad blood in there already.
Groshak comes with himself, a sorcerer hero, as well as a minimally built up orc village and two orc apprentice units. This will defiantly help, and while sorcerer hero's aren't the best type of hero in the game, any hero is better than no hero at all. Considering that we didn't get our third commonwealth hero until the very end of the second misson, I'm perfectly happy to pick up hero number four.
Now we'll just keep heading west. Shnaga has another village in the way, but Groshnac's extra forces should let us steamroll them.
Or not. Seventeen units including Shanag herself and, bizarrely, three battering rams. And that looks like Urlagh himself coming from the west. Hmmmm. Let's see what Sundren and Nomlik are up to while we figure a way out of this.
They've headed back towards my capitol to head down this underground passage. Past it, Shnaga has another city underground. They've got twelve units between them to take this city, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
Three round of futile siege combat later, Sundren fumbles her last hope at not getting eaten by blowpipe delivered mosquitoes, and is promptly shot down.
I can say with confidence that this is the first time hard mode has actually felt harder than normal mode. I thought that I could easily split my forces and rush down two different fronts, and got rammed into two different dead ends. Now, rather than save scum this fight until I win, I'll try to figure my way out of this mess.
So instead, I'll head Sundren and Nomlik south. They'll clear out this tomb on the way, which should easy my mana issues, but that is not their primary objective. While they're on their way, my two cities will be pumping out units, primarily to keep the enemy army below us from wrecking my stuff.
Back in the west, may I demonstrate cheesing the Age of Wonders campaign number, one? No, probably two. Number one is rushing the map with overleveled carryover heroes. Number two is seeing through the fog of war because of the objective indicators. Each one of those floating grails is one of the enemy leaders, and most of their army. This lets me keep tabs on the two armies without having scouts, and is a humongous exploit. Not that anyone cares.
But it does let me see that Urlagh breaks up into the forests in the northwest, which gives me an opportunity. I've got enough forces on this front that Shnaga shouldn't want to engage without her fortifications, but not enough to take the town. So. I'll just bypass it, and keep heading west to the dragon peak.
Meanwhile Sundren is going to capture this fort, also underground. This is still not her primary objective, but the extra income and research is useful. No, we came down here to use the teleporter in the southern tunnels.
This picture was taken much, much later in the play though because I forgot it the first time. Pay no attention to the mini map.
The teleporter leads straight to the missing high elf settlements. They aren't much, starting with low pop and a lack of extra production sites, though they give me a few extra units. More importantly though, they're in the far southwest corner of the map. This lets Sundren take her half of my eastern army and move north to link up with Reskar. I'll finally have enough concentrated forces to start taking enemy cities.
Back in my home cities, it seems that Shnaga has gained some nerve, and is moving to attack. I only sent half of my forces through the teleporter for a reason, though Nomlik is still a couple turns out.
Thankfully they move to retake Shnaga's old town rather than assault my closer settlement, and I have the time to engage them with Nomlik and the force of draconian units that I've been building up.
This battle gets rather weird because of the offset deployment: Nomlik's left flank starts in charge range of the enemy right flank, while my second stack of units are too far away to be useful for the first couple turns.
However, massed low tier units still get demolished by fire bomb attacks, which tips the odds back in my favour
Then, my dire penguins fearlessly throw themselves atop the assassin unit to keep it from one shotting any of my squishy archer units or Nomlik. Sure, they inevitably die next turn, but they're expendable, like all tier one melee units without evolve.
A snag gets thrown in the plan when my hunters get charmed by some goblin bards and try to murder my swarm darters. Shnaga even decides to buff them up to make it hurt even harder.
Of course, after the bards get firebombed multiple times and eaten by wolves, I can use her own buff against her to finish off her hero. Thanks for throwing away half of your garrison AI: I'll be headed back underground next turn for a reckoning.
---
This was supposed to be part one of a double update, but part two will be out tomorrow, I thought I'd be able to get both parts up tonight, but it wasn't to be
Ah yes. There we are.
Urlagh: Hah we will crush you Draconinan. Just like the human who came to take away our lands, you too will fall! These lands now belong to Shanga and me. Ancient letters on pieces of paper mean nothing. Only strenghth, and you Elves and Draconinans have none!
This is an interesting little note about this mission: As far as I can remember it's the only time in the game where you must declare war on your enemy. There are some other neutral factions like in the last mission who you can declare war on, but in every other mission your primary opponents, the one's that matter for your objectives, will declare war on you the second you meet them. Not here. Shnaga and Urlagh will both sit around forever if you don't violate her territory, and be perfectly happy. And Shnaga has you boxed in aboveground and below ground, so you can't leave without violating her territory. The player has to go and declare war, which makes sense. These two tribal leaders aren't part of the commonwealth, aren't involved in the civil war, but we need their land, and they're both terrible enough people that we can justify it. Or at least, the characters can. This is still a massive dick move on Sundren's part.
Now, in retrospect, I've brought way more troops to this fight than I strictly need to win. I was under the impression that this city had wooden walls up, and brought a ton of troops to compensate for my lack of units that are decent in a siege. But Shnaga only has barricades, so this fight turns into me using my massive numerical superiority to toy with her.
So while I post mostly unrelated pictures of my army crushing hers, let's talk about the Archdruid class, and how it compares to others.
By far the class that is most like the Archdruid is the Sorcerer class. Both classes have the majority of their special units available through summoning rather than production, and tend to use the extra production and easy logistics you get from summoning to play a very aggressive early game, but suffer when other classes can mass produce their special units from multiple cities. Both also have techs that improve research speed to help with their aggressive rushy strategy, and tend to have very good mobility on the strategic map with their class units: sorcerer units are almost all flying, and most arch druid units ignore difficult terrains and have above average movement speed.
Now, there are a couple of major differences between the two classes. Firstly, remember how Sorcerers had Summon fantastic beasts, which gave you a random selection from a short list? Yeah, three out of the druids four summons work like that: Summon wild animal, summon eldritch animals, and summon gargantuan animal. Like the sorcerer one, each summoning list has some entries that are blatantly more powerful than others on the list. This mechanic understandably receives some flack from more competitive players who don't like to deal with this degree of randomness.
The other major difference with the druid is that they don't have a dedicated scout unit-instead they go straight to summoning wild animals. On one hand, this will give an even faster army buildup, but the lack of easy flying scouts can hurt expansion efficiency.
Now, the last point to discuss about this quick breakdown is how this the class synergizes with your race. It has two racial class units: hunters, buffed up archers that can be used to fill in for poor racial archers, and shamans, later game support units that have several useful abilities but lack in damage output. There are also a pair of empire upgrades that focus on archer and support units, giving them bleed effects (seen above) extra speed and bonus damage against monster units.
This synergizes pretty well with our own draconian race. Flamers, are a quite powerful in some situations and are attractive to buff, but don't quite fill the role of conventional archers, which makes producing hunters valuable, even without a unique buff on them. I've already talked about the usefulness of draconian shamans above, but the alternate damage typing does much to compensate for their usual lack of damage output. Also, draconian cities produce extra mana, which can ease the strain aggressive summoning can cause on your economy.
Anyway, now that that's been dealt with, I'm going to be splitting up my forces in two. Reskar is taking a detachment west, in search of that dragon roost that's supposed to be waiting around. He's taking with him a swarm darter that used to work for Shnaga who Sundren charmed to our side.
Sundren: Why do you want to join us, exactly? Surely you do not wish to risk your life for these draconian and the good of the Elven Court without some reward? It would be much easier for you to just keep out of this, right?
Groshak: I will not sit idly by and wait to be conquered. I understand the inevitability of the coming war: we have to chose. Urlagh, my ignorant nephew dosn't see the humiliation my kind faces at the hands of the Commonwealth. The Elven Court respects all who respect it. The understand magic is the true power, not machines or gold. Together we can bring an end to the human empire.
And now we have our fourth hero, Groshak Sharp-Edge. Who displays a sense of cold blooded pragmatism that's frankly a little disturbing, since we're about to use his services to dethrone and kill his own nephew, but there seems to be some bad blood in there already.
Groshak comes with himself, a sorcerer hero, as well as a minimally built up orc village and two orc apprentice units. This will defiantly help, and while sorcerer hero's aren't the best type of hero in the game, any hero is better than no hero at all. Considering that we didn't get our third commonwealth hero until the very end of the second misson, I'm perfectly happy to pick up hero number four.
Now we'll just keep heading west. Shnaga has another village in the way, but Groshnac's extra forces should let us steamroll them.
Or not. Seventeen units including Shanag herself and, bizarrely, three battering rams. And that looks like Urlagh himself coming from the west. Hmmmm. Let's see what Sundren and Nomlik are up to while we figure a way out of this.
They've headed back towards my capitol to head down this underground passage. Past it, Shnaga has another city underground. They've got twelve units between them to take this city, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
Three round of futile siege combat later, Sundren fumbles her last hope at not getting eaten by blowpipe delivered mosquitoes, and is promptly shot down.
I can say with confidence that this is the first time hard mode has actually felt harder than normal mode. I thought that I could easily split my forces and rush down two different fronts, and got rammed into two different dead ends. Now, rather than save scum this fight until I win, I'll try to figure my way out of this mess.
So instead, I'll head Sundren and Nomlik south. They'll clear out this tomb on the way, which should easy my mana issues, but that is not their primary objective. While they're on their way, my two cities will be pumping out units, primarily to keep the enemy army below us from wrecking my stuff.
Back in the west, may I demonstrate cheesing the Age of Wonders campaign number, one? No, probably two. Number one is rushing the map with overleveled carryover heroes. Number two is seeing through the fog of war because of the objective indicators. Each one of those floating grails is one of the enemy leaders, and most of their army. This lets me keep tabs on the two armies without having scouts, and is a humongous exploit. Not that anyone cares.
But it does let me see that Urlagh breaks up into the forests in the northwest, which gives me an opportunity. I've got enough forces on this front that Shnaga shouldn't want to engage without her fortifications, but not enough to take the town. So. I'll just bypass it, and keep heading west to the dragon peak.
Meanwhile Sundren is going to capture this fort, also underground. This is still not her primary objective, but the extra income and research is useful. No, we came down here to use the teleporter in the southern tunnels.
This picture was taken much, much later in the play though because I forgot it the first time. Pay no attention to the mini map.
The teleporter leads straight to the missing high elf settlements. They aren't much, starting with low pop and a lack of extra production sites, though they give me a few extra units. More importantly though, they're in the far southwest corner of the map. This lets Sundren take her half of my eastern army and move north to link up with Reskar. I'll finally have enough concentrated forces to start taking enemy cities.
Back in my home cities, it seems that Shnaga has gained some nerve, and is moving to attack. I only sent half of my forces through the teleporter for a reason, though Nomlik is still a couple turns out.
Thankfully they move to retake Shnaga's old town rather than assault my closer settlement, and I have the time to engage them with Nomlik and the force of draconian units that I've been building up.
This battle gets rather weird because of the offset deployment: Nomlik's left flank starts in charge range of the enemy right flank, while my second stack of units are too far away to be useful for the first couple turns.
However, massed low tier units still get demolished by fire bomb attacks, which tips the odds back in my favour
Then, my dire penguins fearlessly throw themselves atop the assassin unit to keep it from one shotting any of my squishy archer units or Nomlik. Sure, they inevitably die next turn, but they're expendable, like all tier one melee units without evolve.
A snag gets thrown in the plan when my hunters get charmed by some goblin bards and try to murder my swarm darters. Shnaga even decides to buff them up to make it hurt even harder.
Of course, after the bards get firebombed multiple times and eaten by wolves, I can use her own buff against her to finish off her hero. Thanks for throwing away half of your garrison AI: I'll be headed back underground next turn for a reckoning.
---
This was supposed to be part one of a double update, but part two will be out tomorrow, I thought I'd be able to get both parts up tonight, but it wasn't to be
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Promised Lands part 3
- Location
- Canada
Part two!
While Nomlik was doing outstanding work on his front, in the west Reskar finally makes contact with the dragon nest. This gives us control of the dragon dwelling and a free gold dragon to help us with our issues. Sadly the dragon dwelling is lacking bonus production sites and can only produce gold wyverns, not full grown gold dragons, so we won't be able make more walls of scale and muscle in any reasonable timeframe. Still, a gold dragon is an impressive unit, in terms of raw stats it's the most powerful unit in the game, with the highest hp, top tier melee attacks and defence stats, immunity to fire, spirit and blight damage, and it passively boosts the resistance and morale of all other units in it's stack. Of course, it also has the highest price tag in the game, and can only be built from a dwelling.
On her way north to link up with Reskar, Sundren does a little poking at Urlagh's territory, revealing that he hasn't been idle in defending his lands. That's a full stack of units that isn't on the centre tile of the city, implying another full stack is on the city centre. But this isn't where we're headed, so we'll deal with this later.
On the enemy turn an enterprising squad of Urlagh's monster hunters walks into Groshnak's undefended village. I should probably get better at keeping this stuff safe, but this village wasn't a strategic priority, and I'll have it back soon enough. This game is about to turn around.
First we finally capture this annoying little town down here. Between the large numerical advantage and having brought a critical mass of cover ignoring flamers,I've got this fight in the bag.
It turns out that flamers are quite effective at countering garrisoned swarm darters: They can move and shoot from outside of the max range of wall mounted archers, and swarm darters are so fragile that they easily die in two hits
I've also summoned up some blight tusk boars, one of the results on the second tier of druid summoning spell, summon eldritch animal. Generally, this is the spell that you want to tech past as soon as possible, most of the units are rather poor, with comparable abilities to racial cavalry units, and the payoff results are fragile tier two flyers. The third spell is a much better use of your casting points, though summon eldritch animal does get better in the expansions, where some new animals are added to it's table.
The blight tusk boars get hacked to pieces by a unit of goblin butchers despite being on guard mode, but by that point I'd burnt almost all the defenders off the walls, and could shoot the victorious butchers full of holes.
Then, on the same turn we take out this town that we had previously bypassed. Since the AI has once again buggered up on how the adjacent hex rule works, this is barely a fight. Well actually its about half a fight, followed up by a quarter of a fight fighting Shnaga isolated stack, so call it exactly three quarters of a fight.
We get the chance to unleash our new draconic ally, though it isn't terribly happy with us right now. Part of that is because it's suffering from the ministrations of the enemy blight doctors, and part of it is because the dragon is dedicated to good. Reskars made progress in that direction, but his karma still qualifies as neutral, and the dragon is still a little unhappy with him. He'll have to shape up his act, and release a lot of vassals or his new friend is going to be a glorified meat shield.
Reskar and some spiders come in to mop up the left flank which is in much better shape than it was supposed to be after getting hit with dragon breath, while Sundren uses quick dash on the dragon to get it to earn it's keep and eat goblins.
In response, Shnaga decides to take the description "wall of scale and muscle" literally and attempts to slay a dragon with battering rams. Points for innovation, but is not a terribly effective endevour, and the rams are swiftly crushed.
On the right flank, Groshak has been leading yet more spiders to crush the meagre goblin resistance. He is having a bit more trouble without an unkillable dragon to spearpoint his efforts, but he's doing well. The raptors gain gold medal rank for using their fire damage to kill battering rams.
Then the rest of my forces roll up come in to clean up.
With the bulk of her forces crushed before she can get into the fight, Shnaga makes a surprisingly brave final stand, but stands absolutely no chance against my army.
With the bulk of her forces crushed before she can get into the fight, Shnaga makes a surprisingly brave final stand, but stands absolutely no chance against my army. This should mark the end of Shnaga as an opponent for the foreseeable future: all her cities are captured and her armies are crushed. Now we focus on Urlagh.
With that done, I'm splitting my forces again to deal with Urlagh's incursions into my territory. Groshak takes the full spider contigient, now getting within a few experience points of evolving and what archers are available to take back his home from his nephew.
Urlagh is massively outnumbered, and most of his troops are conscripted irregulars, but he's got the advantage of walls and his monster hunters get a healthy amount of bonus damage against my spiders. He also has the very annoying warlord upgrade called Garrison's Honour, which buffs the defence of any units garrisoning a city.
His main weakness is his inability to cover the full length of the walls which let my spiders and some goblin infantry that I've borrowed from Shnaga ascend the walls unopposed. I do like how spiders get to climb the walls on a bunch of webs instead of the ladders everyone else uses.
Of course, some of my spiders can just jump the wall, though that pesky defence boost prevents them from webbing their immediate targets. At this point the fight is over, though it comes at the cost of my hunter spider babies.
While Groshak was using the bulk of the army to kick out the bulk of the army, some of my more mobile elements are hunting down Urlagh himself, who has been hiding in the jungle up here for no readily explainable reason. Perhaps he hoped to hide and later make a break for his own lines, but I can see him through the fog of war, and have no intention of letting him get away. He and his hero get eaten by a dragon.
While Nomlik was doing outstanding work on his front, in the west Reskar finally makes contact with the dragon nest. This gives us control of the dragon dwelling and a free gold dragon to help us with our issues. Sadly the dragon dwelling is lacking bonus production sites and can only produce gold wyverns, not full grown gold dragons, so we won't be able make more walls of scale and muscle in any reasonable timeframe. Still, a gold dragon is an impressive unit, in terms of raw stats it's the most powerful unit in the game, with the highest hp, top tier melee attacks and defence stats, immunity to fire, spirit and blight damage, and it passively boosts the resistance and morale of all other units in it's stack. Of course, it also has the highest price tag in the game, and can only be built from a dwelling.
On her way north to link up with Reskar, Sundren does a little poking at Urlagh's territory, revealing that he hasn't been idle in defending his lands. That's a full stack of units that isn't on the centre tile of the city, implying another full stack is on the city centre. But this isn't where we're headed, so we'll deal with this later.
On the enemy turn an enterprising squad of Urlagh's monster hunters walks into Groshnak's undefended village. I should probably get better at keeping this stuff safe, but this village wasn't a strategic priority, and I'll have it back soon enough. This game is about to turn around.
First we finally capture this annoying little town down here. Between the large numerical advantage and having brought a critical mass of cover ignoring flamers,I've got this fight in the bag.
It turns out that flamers are quite effective at countering garrisoned swarm darters: They can move and shoot from outside of the max range of wall mounted archers, and swarm darters are so fragile that they easily die in two hits
I've also summoned up some blight tusk boars, one of the results on the second tier of druid summoning spell, summon eldritch animal. Generally, this is the spell that you want to tech past as soon as possible, most of the units are rather poor, with comparable abilities to racial cavalry units, and the payoff results are fragile tier two flyers. The third spell is a much better use of your casting points, though summon eldritch animal does get better in the expansions, where some new animals are added to it's table.
The blight tusk boars get hacked to pieces by a unit of goblin butchers despite being on guard mode, but by that point I'd burnt almost all the defenders off the walls, and could shoot the victorious butchers full of holes.
Then, on the same turn we take out this town that we had previously bypassed. Since the AI has once again buggered up on how the adjacent hex rule works, this is barely a fight. Well actually its about half a fight, followed up by a quarter of a fight fighting Shnaga isolated stack, so call it exactly three quarters of a fight.
We get the chance to unleash our new draconic ally, though it isn't terribly happy with us right now. Part of that is because it's suffering from the ministrations of the enemy blight doctors, and part of it is because the dragon is dedicated to good. Reskars made progress in that direction, but his karma still qualifies as neutral, and the dragon is still a little unhappy with him. He'll have to shape up his act, and release a lot of vassals or his new friend is going to be a glorified meat shield.
Reskar and some spiders come in to mop up the left flank which is in much better shape than it was supposed to be after getting hit with dragon breath, while Sundren uses quick dash on the dragon to get it to earn it's keep and eat goblins.
In response, Shnaga decides to take the description "wall of scale and muscle" literally and attempts to slay a dragon with battering rams. Points for innovation, but is not a terribly effective endevour, and the rams are swiftly crushed.
On the right flank, Groshak has been leading yet more spiders to crush the meagre goblin resistance. He is having a bit more trouble without an unkillable dragon to spearpoint his efforts, but he's doing well. The raptors gain gold medal rank for using their fire damage to kill battering rams.
Then the rest of my forces roll up come in to clean up.
With the bulk of her forces crushed before she can get into the fight, Shnaga makes a surprisingly brave final stand, but stands absolutely no chance against my army.
With the bulk of her forces crushed before she can get into the fight, Shnaga makes a surprisingly brave final stand, but stands absolutely no chance against my army. This should mark the end of Shnaga as an opponent for the foreseeable future: all her cities are captured and her armies are crushed. Now we focus on Urlagh.
With that done, I'm splitting my forces again to deal with Urlagh's incursions into my territory. Groshak takes the full spider contigient, now getting within a few experience points of evolving and what archers are available to take back his home from his nephew.
Urlagh is massively outnumbered, and most of his troops are conscripted irregulars, but he's got the advantage of walls and his monster hunters get a healthy amount of bonus damage against my spiders. He also has the very annoying warlord upgrade called Garrison's Honour, which buffs the defence of any units garrisoning a city.
His main weakness is his inability to cover the full length of the walls which let my spiders and some goblin infantry that I've borrowed from Shnaga ascend the walls unopposed. I do like how spiders get to climb the walls on a bunch of webs instead of the ladders everyone else uses.
Of course, some of my spiders can just jump the wall, though that pesky defence boost prevents them from webbing their immediate targets. At this point the fight is over, though it comes at the cost of my hunter spider babies.
While Groshak was using the bulk of the army to kick out the bulk of the army, some of my more mobile elements are hunting down Urlagh himself, who has been hiding in the jungle up here for no readily explainable reason. Perhaps he hoped to hide and later make a break for his own lines, but I can see him through the fog of war, and have no intention of letting him get away. He and his hero get eaten by a dragon.
It is, as is common in 4x style games, all downhill from here. The rest of the mission is already completed, and I'll be posting it as soon as I finish writing it. Comments, as always are appreciated.
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- Location
- Val Habar
To be honest when I played through this I found it incredibly frustrating. The thought hadn't occured to me to beeline the Gold Dragon. I kind of... murdered shnaga entirely before clearing that quest But at least Draconian druids do not give too many fucks about Shadow Stalkers.
Just discovered this thread, enjoying the walkthrough so much!
Then arrived at this point of no further posts - serious AoE withdrawal symptoms ensue
Hoping there is another thread this connects to or mr_stibbons will continue here! - joined the forums just to say so - honest!
Then arrived at this point of no further posts - serious AoE withdrawal symptoms ensue
Hoping there is another thread this connects to or mr_stibbons will continue here! - joined the forums just to say so - honest!
Promised Lands part 4
- Location
- Canada
Hmm, I might have an update lying around somewhere. Give me a second.
Since I've been gone, Uncle Groshnak has been taking good care of our remaining baby spiders, and one has finally grown up into a big girl! She might have eaten the rest of her sisters in the process, but that's the beautiful way that nature works. And after a few extra easy fights I'll have another free spider queen in the field.
Back on the home front, Nomlik has dealt with the religious troubles of our vassal city and got rewarded with a squadron of goblin heavy cavalry. This is important, because they're the only tunnelling unit we've got at this point. So Nomlik will use them to start looting several of the hidden areas in the underground of this map.
It's not all good news however. Despite his temporary death, Urlagh's troops had rallied a rather significant army and are marching on Grolar Wish, are dragon dwelling. We don't have a large enough force to fight them off, so I order the one wyvern made to head south to the elven settlements, and let Grolar Wish fall.
But the one escapee of Grolar Wish is only heading towards more danger: to the south, a large army flying Shnaga's banners is advancing on the elven settlements. I don't know if the AI actually knows where my settlement is, or this is a heavily armed exploration party. If I'm lucky, Nomlik's forces will be able to relieve the elves by dashing back through the teleporter.
Reskar, Sundren, the dragon, and my cavalry are also headed south to strike back at Urlagh, but he's left his closest city heavily defended. They might be able to take it, but theres a high risk that one of my heroes would die, or I'd lose my dragon.
So we're going to bypass the forward fortress, marching east for three turns and linking back up with Groshnak, who lead his troops south through a pass in the mountains, evolving my last spider in the process. They find a city which is both much larger and far more poorly defended to bring down the hammer on.
In her ascent to level seven, Sundren's been picking up some more leadership abilities. Poison knowledge is a really nice one, because unlike almost every bonus army damage ability it applies to both melee and ranged attacks. Really helpful with early game armies, where the it can turn into 2-3 damage per shot from ranged units against weaker troops.
Ta daa!
I mean, sure they had walls, but I outnumbered them three to one, had way more ranged attacks, and have a dragon.
And we also see . . . purple troops? Human purple troops? Yep, the Commonwealth army that got mentioned in the briefing have finally shown up to play. Sadly, as much as I like unfair fights, I'm not getting into a war with three opponents unless I have to, so we won't be engaging purple until our current problems have been dealt with.
Instead we're ambushing half of the army that Shnaga sent into our territory. Nomlik reinforcements managed to arrive to relive the elf troops who were cowering behind their wooden wall. Shnaga hadn't tried to take the place in three turns, she retreated some of the troops she had been menacing me with originally, and the rest had been looting some of the ruins that were to the west of the elven settlements.
We have the advantage of numbers, but Shnaga is loaded up with high quality units, big beetles, trolls and a trebuchet. I score an early kill with longbowmen, but I'm not liking the look of that heavy cavalry unit.
I end up retreating my longbows off the map rather than let them get killed, and let the beetles chase some imitate into the corner. They won't survive, but the beetles will be out of the fight long enough for me to crush the rest of the force.
The trolls do a number on my draconian crushers, before the rest of my army falls on them and rips them apart. Apologies for the foliage in these shots.
Which leaves the now isolated beetles to get gunned down.
Cleaning up an undead nest around our newly captured city, Groshnak picks up a wyvern egg. We aren't going to have a sorcerer mission starting up any time soon, so it's good to pick up as many flying mounts as we can.
Our next priority is to take out Urlagh. We don't actually have to take all his cities after all, just his take his capital and kill his leader. And the AI loves putting it's leader on its capitol, which makes things so much easier. The stacks guarding the city to northwest, and the nasty army that took Grolar Wish will go independent once he loses, and won't bother me ever again.
Now, the AI has set up his troops to try and force me to fight him three stacks on three stacks, but I have no intention of fighting fair. Between the flying units I brought with me and the flying troops that had been fighting Shnaga in the west, I can drop a full stack on this mountain here and Urlagh loses the ability to deploy almost half of his troops.
Unlike previous fights, I'm very equipped for a siege this time around. Reskar and a griffon clear the troops off the left flank of the walls, while my dragon engages the rest of the enemy force. This gives me the chance to scale the wall in peace, while still leaving some flying units in reserve.
Then a spider queen jumps the walls and shuts down the orc priests, significantly hampering Urlagh's chances. They take some incidental short bow fire, in the process, but nothing even vaguely threatening, and they uses the webbed up enemies to stay safe from melee retaliation.
To his credit, Urlagh sends a reasonably powerful counterattack to my incursion on the left flank. Unfortunately, they elite phalanx he sends can see the way the wind is blowing, and defect to my side with some encouragement from Sundren.
After that it's just mop up. We also get to watch Urlagh's elite monster hunters panicking in the face of a gold dragon.
Since I've been gone, Uncle Groshnak has been taking good care of our remaining baby spiders, and one has finally grown up into a big girl! She might have eaten the rest of her sisters in the process, but that's the beautiful way that nature works. And after a few extra easy fights I'll have another free spider queen in the field.
Back on the home front, Nomlik has dealt with the religious troubles of our vassal city and got rewarded with a squadron of goblin heavy cavalry. This is important, because they're the only tunnelling unit we've got at this point. So Nomlik will use them to start looting several of the hidden areas in the underground of this map.
It's not all good news however. Despite his temporary death, Urlagh's troops had rallied a rather significant army and are marching on Grolar Wish, are dragon dwelling. We don't have a large enough force to fight them off, so I order the one wyvern made to head south to the elven settlements, and let Grolar Wish fall.
But the one escapee of Grolar Wish is only heading towards more danger: to the south, a large army flying Shnaga's banners is advancing on the elven settlements. I don't know if the AI actually knows where my settlement is, or this is a heavily armed exploration party. If I'm lucky, Nomlik's forces will be able to relieve the elves by dashing back through the teleporter.
Reskar, Sundren, the dragon, and my cavalry are also headed south to strike back at Urlagh, but he's left his closest city heavily defended. They might be able to take it, but theres a high risk that one of my heroes would die, or I'd lose my dragon.
So we're going to bypass the forward fortress, marching east for three turns and linking back up with Groshnak, who lead his troops south through a pass in the mountains, evolving my last spider in the process. They find a city which is both much larger and far more poorly defended to bring down the hammer on.
In her ascent to level seven, Sundren's been picking up some more leadership abilities. Poison knowledge is a really nice one, because unlike almost every bonus army damage ability it applies to both melee and ranged attacks. Really helpful with early game armies, where the it can turn into 2-3 damage per shot from ranged units against weaker troops.
Ta daa!
I mean, sure they had walls, but I outnumbered them three to one, had way more ranged attacks, and have a dragon.
And we also see . . . purple troops? Human purple troops? Yep, the Commonwealth army that got mentioned in the briefing have finally shown up to play. Sadly, as much as I like unfair fights, I'm not getting into a war with three opponents unless I have to, so we won't be engaging purple until our current problems have been dealt with.
Instead we're ambushing half of the army that Shnaga sent into our territory. Nomlik reinforcements managed to arrive to relive the elf troops who were cowering behind their wooden wall. Shnaga hadn't tried to take the place in three turns, she retreated some of the troops she had been menacing me with originally, and the rest had been looting some of the ruins that were to the west of the elven settlements.
We have the advantage of numbers, but Shnaga is loaded up with high quality units, big beetles, trolls and a trebuchet. I score an early kill with longbowmen, but I'm not liking the look of that heavy cavalry unit.
I end up retreating my longbows off the map rather than let them get killed, and let the beetles chase some imitate into the corner. They won't survive, but the beetles will be out of the fight long enough for me to crush the rest of the force.
The trolls do a number on my draconian crushers, before the rest of my army falls on them and rips them apart. Apologies for the foliage in these shots.
Which leaves the now isolated beetles to get gunned down.
Cleaning up an undead nest around our newly captured city, Groshnak picks up a wyvern egg. We aren't going to have a sorcerer mission starting up any time soon, so it's good to pick up as many flying mounts as we can.
Our next priority is to take out Urlagh. We don't actually have to take all his cities after all, just his take his capital and kill his leader. And the AI loves putting it's leader on its capitol, which makes things so much easier. The stacks guarding the city to northwest, and the nasty army that took Grolar Wish will go independent once he loses, and won't bother me ever again.
Now, the AI has set up his troops to try and force me to fight him three stacks on three stacks, but I have no intention of fighting fair. Between the flying units I brought with me and the flying troops that had been fighting Shnaga in the west, I can drop a full stack on this mountain here and Urlagh loses the ability to deploy almost half of his troops.
Unlike previous fights, I'm very equipped for a siege this time around. Reskar and a griffon clear the troops off the left flank of the walls, while my dragon engages the rest of the enemy force. This gives me the chance to scale the wall in peace, while still leaving some flying units in reserve.
Then a spider queen jumps the walls and shuts down the orc priests, significantly hampering Urlagh's chances. They take some incidental short bow fire, in the process, but nothing even vaguely threatening, and they uses the webbed up enemies to stay safe from melee retaliation.
To his credit, Urlagh sends a reasonably powerful counterattack to my incursion on the left flank. Unfortunately, they elite phalanx he sends can see the way the wind is blowing, and defect to my side with some encouragement from Sundren.
After that it's just mop up. We also get to watch Urlagh's elite monster hunters panicking in the face of a gold dragon.
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Promised Lands part 5
- Location
- Canada
Time for round 2 in the battle for Urlagh's capitol, now with actual Urlagh!
We've been forced to change up our lineup some, as our flyers were out of movement points, but we brought in more ranged units to compensate, and Urlagh has a smaller, if more elite force.
Of particular note is this warbreed, the penultimate unit in the warlord's arsenal. It's got a pile of hit points and regeneration: I believe the flavour is that it's a half troll super soldier. Not a match for my now fully promoted dragon, which is now sporting a stat line best described as comical. Seriously, eighteen defence when off of guard mode and a hundred and sixty hit points. It's virtually immune to tier one units through raw stats.
Everything dies in short order, though Reskar takes quite the hit from the warred. A shame, because we'll have another big fight soon that he won't be able to help much in.
Strong words from the goblin without any cities I can see.
Seriously, where are you? Besides that one attack force I haven't seen any of your troops in ages.
By the way, what's in that cave?
Reskar: My people must be free to grow and form their own nation. I do not find you tempting. Your appearance causes me only nausea. Nor do I believe that you have honour. Your reign here will end, wretched creature.
Ok, lets break this down. First, Shnaga, did you really build your capital city directly below Urlagh's? Secondly, you were promising to kill us all not ten seconds ago, and now you're trying to seduce Reskar? That doesn't sound like a coherent diplomatic strategy. Lastly, SHADOW STALKERS? plural? I am not looking forward to this fight.
Technically, shadow stalkers are tier three units. However, that's more of the rouge class' lies: they're actually a tier 3.5 unit- You still pay tier three upkeep, but shadow stalkers are hands down the most powerful tier three unit in the game, and can easily go 1v1 many tier four units. Which makes sense, since they're the rogues' ultimate unit.
What's their secret? Primarily they're incorporeal, while also hitting like absolute trucks for a tier three unit. And to add insult to injury, they're immune to both cold and blight damage, but have no vulnerabilities. Because ultimate units.
Of course, I've still got a bigass dragon on my side, that conveniently deals one of the few damage types that shadow stalkers don't resist. It immediately gets hit by both a curse and weakness, but it's still a massive amount of power.
On the left flank, Sundren escorts the Dread spider squad up the ramparts.
On the centre, our newly recruited orc phalanx gets the honour of bait duty, while our flying troops hide in reserve. Safe from everything but a tiny amount of incoming fire.
And the bait do their glorious duty. For the record, that's a "tier three unit" attacking another tier three unit that's on guard mode. Yeah. Shadow Stalkers are not to be messed with.
My plan having succeed, I can bring my draconian shamans to bear. As mentioned before in the thread, having fire damage as an option means that they can deal nonzero amounts of damage against shadow stalkers. Also, despite some assistance from a squad of goblin assassins and a flock of grimbeaks, my bait phalanx still is standing. They aren't going to survive another turn of course, but it's an impressive performance!
As a back up plan for dealing with shadow stalkers, I've brought elven initiates. Who, despite being an otherwise almost useless unit, do shock damage. Which is just enough to kill this stalker in one volley of shooting.
On the left flank, spiders and gold dragons continue to be bullshit. Also Grimbeak crows can be effected by befriend animal, one more reason why fighting with them is foolish.
I actually forgot about the unfortunate unit of beetle riders here for a time, and thought the game was bugging our at the end of my next turn when the battle didn't finish. Since everything else on this flank was dead.
Back on the interesting front, the second stalker scythes through my initiate unit. This likely means the AI is convinced it's going to lose, and is just aiming to kill off as many units as possible, rather than any sensible goal.
And then Groshnak is mind controlled by a succubus. And I was counting on his shock bolts to kill this stalker.
Quiz time: how can you maneuver my forces to kill both the succubi and the shadow stalker? Keep in mind that if the succubi die Groshnak get's his full turn back, and that the griffon has an elemental damage buff on it.
Step one,-distract the succubi with Reskar. Step two, lay into them with a buffed up griffon.
Step two, distract the stalker with your hunter spider, then blow it to tar with the shaman unit and the freed Groshnak.
Then finish off the rest of Snag's army with dragons.
Two warlords down. Two names I no longer have to spell!
No, this mission isn't done. We've still got one non challenge to finish off, and a lot of loot to clean up.
So what happened? Well, school was starting up, and this project wasn't getting much interest, so I left it abandoned for most of a year. I might do some more stuff once I'm on Christmas break.
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Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
Huzzah! An Update!
Promised Lands Finale
- Location
- Canada
And we're back, wrapping up this mission. Before we kick out the commonwealth, there are a few tiny things that we're going to clean up. The first is the newly independent city to the west, which is getting subjugated because I was a little bored.
While the dregs of those forces I had assembled handle that problem, my hero units, the dragon and a couple spiders head into a local Ziggurat in search of sweet loot. It's guarded by a trio of phoenixes and some draconian guards.
Phoenixes are a neutral tier four units that play very similar to dragons, i.e. a flying melee unit with a breath weapon. They revive after combat, but that is rarely relevant for ones you find in sites, since losing to a hard site is already such a disaster that you shouldn't worry that it will still be difficult to defeat.
Our reward for clearing the place out is a pretty nice sword.
Nomlik meanwhile i taking a force of goblins to clear out some of the underground treasure sites in search of yet more sweet loot. He gets a cockatrice egg for his troubles. Cockatrices can't fly, but have a mean death laser that they grant to their rider.
Anyhow, back to crushing the hopes and dreams of our enemies.
Really, this last part of the mission is a bit of an anticlimax compared to the rest. I've got three quarters of the map under my control, and a large, veteran army. While the Commonwealth forces have some units, it's really nowhere near enough to let them have a fighting chance, and is frankly poor mission design.
Seriously, this city isn't even defended.
There are a smattering of commonwealth troops guarding mana nodes on this half of the map. These might as well be independents, since they won't ever move from the nodes they guard. They're basically free xp.
I also like the idea of surrounding the commonwealth cities with deforested tiles. Really emphasizes the amount of environmental damage the commonwealth does.
After crossing the river we actually encounter resistance! Three basic units, versus elite high tier ones. This will be a running theme in this update.
The AI isn't completely static, and it manages to send a flame tank up to menace my home cities through the underground. However, flame tanks have terrible shock vulnerabilities, and are noted to be ineffective against units that are immune to fire. It gets torn apart by giant snakes.
Meanwhile, the advance into Commonwealth territory continues to face minimal resistance. They've set up a spell jammer in the area, which is a giant radio tower that prevents other people from casting tactical or strategic spells in the area. It is less effective at preventing an understrength garrison from being eaten by dragons.
Also, Groshak joins us, as his wyvern egg has finally hatched.
Groshak: Hah, they deserve no mercy. They are the enemy. We should rid ourselves of all traces of them. Nomliks soft minded thinking is exactly what's wrong with the leadership of this generation. It's grim and unpleasant, but to ensure a safe future we'd better replace them and migrate our own population here.
It's a little odd to be finally discussing the city taking mechanics this far into the game, but at least they are mentioning it. Let's be frank, this is a video game where you purge cities of their old population with the press of a single button.
Also, in case it wasn't clear after he helped us kill his own family, Groshak is a murderous asshole who advocates genocide. He is not a nice person. At all.
Taking yet another undefended fortress we get a look at the heart of Lucians empire. Unlike the last place, this one has actual walls, which have been backed up by a moat of blazing dragon oil. Of course, that doesn't help when my one gold dragon could outfight the entire garrison and fly right over the fortifications.
And once it is crushed we find yet more spell jammers, deforested deserts, and underpowered commonwealth armies.
I take this town for the sake of thoroughness, but it really isn't important. Might as well grind my heroes as high as possible.
Have a shot of the entire map at full(ish) size. Really, looking at the number of cities that the commonwealth side has, I can't understand how they put up such an underwhelming defence. They must be running under a pretty restrictive scripting, probably preventing them from expanding or even making units and doing research until they first encounter the player, otherwise an AI of the normal difficulty would make a much more formidable army. I'd speculate that the devs didn't want the AI going off script by taking out one of your other opponents or weakening them to the point that they were a cakewalk. Still, they probably should have thrown a lot more free units at the commonwealth side to compensate for a thirty turn handicap.
Another possible issue is that the game doesn't change the map setup based on the difficulty level, just the AI difficulties. So they couldn't make the commonwealth hard on hard without it crushing new players on normal
Anyway, lets run over the last bastion of civilization around here. Place doesn't even have walls, for goodness sake. Once again, the AI seems to have a fondness for battering rams even when not attacking, which is a slightly odd strategy.
On the second round, the defenders get hit with a one two punch of the gold dragons breath weapon and their own spy drone exploding, which collapses their left flank and kill the dwarf hero.
Sundren gets the finishing blow on the enemy leader herself.
And thus concludes the second mission of the elven court campaign. Through somewhat dodgy methods Sundren has set up a puppet state for the court and halted the commonwealths exploitation of Ralikesh.
Welp, exams are done, and I can update this again. Sorry for the brief update, but it is simultaneously kinda boring and a game I played half a year ago. Expect some more updates over the break
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Machinations(Commonwealth Mission 3)
- Location
- Canada
We're finally on the third set of missions, so once again it's map time!
Compared to the last map, the commonwealth hasn't been been having a very good time at all. Ralikesh has flipped from partially red to mostly white, and the elven court has gone on the march, securing their hold on the pool of origins and advancing through no man's land in force. By contrast, the commonwealth has yet to make any moves towards the court itself, and only has a small amount of gains in the east.
We are apparently sitting on our asses in Henvolt and being bored. Edward, take it away!
Invention Envy: My fellow dreadnoughts, the dwarves masters Drugal and Gorsmog, look on with envy as I finish a golem. With their innate affinity for mechanisms, dwarves have smugly driven the technology we Dreadnoughts learn at the academy. Now, I have proven that in the Commonwealth all races can contribute to the betterment of us all.
We approach the final days in Hengvolt.
Larissa's contributions are indispensable. I wish I could tell her, but working with the Oscillator Gem strains her. She seems wary of something. We even had an argument the other day. She dosn't believe the Emperor is wise to leave the Oscillator Gem in Hengvolt. She fears it could be used to unleash terrible powers upon the world. I thought she was being dramatic and Valery told her not to question the Emperor's divine will. She has been avoiding us since.
So we've been betrayed again. Valery will be running the show this time around, and Laryssa is going to be benched doing important research and not gaining levels.
Valery herself is a rather strange character. Despite being the target of racism, she maintains her loyalty to the very government that supports the racism, where others of her race chose to leave. She has even bought into the divinity of the emperor, which the elves of the elven court think is bullshit. I can't shake the feeling that some of her loyalty is a sunk cost fallacy, that she has to back the commonwealth on all points since she burned her bridges with the elves.
Gorsmog: Of course, I will do everything in my power to assist you. The best I can do right now is to send some units to guard your city, if that would make you feel safer. There is not much more I can do for you.
Ok, here is our starting position. We've got a small city with decent sites and a small fortress that'll provided some extra income, but overall our economy is pretty weak when we compare it to our starting forces. We've got two small groups of elven troops, mostly swordsmen sadly, both of our heroes with all of their kit, and three warlord units, including a tier three phalanx. These units and our heroes will let us clear the map pretty effectively. There's also the stack of dwarves who will guard our cities for us, but aren't under my control.
Before we start, lets get an overview of the map, or at least as much of it as we can see. We can see our objective, Svengir's capitol in the southwest. We've also got our two allies from Nirvenkiln back again, but unlike before they both have their own cities and armies. Each dwarf has three cities: one small one and a capitol in the east, and a small city in the northwest. Gorsmog also has a little fortress guarding the road to his capitol. Now, if the surprising strength of our ai allies is triggering your video game generosity paranoia, don't worry. That's just a sign that it's functioning normally.
Another thing to take note of is the terrain, namely that it is terrible. This entire map is lousy with rivers and mountain chains, which will make getting around a pain in the ass. Amphibious units and mountaineering units are going to be more much valuable than normal.
Clearing this inn next to our domain, we get a set of mercenary high elves for hire. I'll get the rest of them later, since we'll have much more gold than things to spend it on this mission, but right now I'll take the longbows to give some extra range firepower to my attack force. My heroes and the warlord units will be making the main thrust west, while the garrisoned units are on cleanup duty.
Next step on the plan to beating this mission is clearing out these ancient ruins. Which sounds like a perfect time to show off our new units!
First up are the berserkers. Who aren't in fact, very berserk at all. I mean, they have lower defences than normal for tier two melee infantry, but they don't have any abilities that scream berserker thematically. Like being out of control, or getting powerups from fighting or killing units. Not that these particular berserkers are going to be doing anything this fight, because those spiders are about to web them.
They also start the trend of warlord units not thematically meshing very well with some races. It's hard to see the cultured and thin limbed high elves running about carrying axes the size of their entire torsos. Of course, you could say the same for dwarf druids and a few other race class combinations, but the warlord's barbarian aesthetics tend to bug me more than others for some reason.
The next warlord unit are the monster hunters that we got in the first high elf mission. I like these guys a lot both aesthetically and mechanically. Between their bonus damage against monsters and their good mobility on the strategic map, there's always a reason to use them. For instance, on this map my opponent won't be using any animal, monster, or dwelling units, but the terrain is so awful I'l stilll be making heavy use of monster hunters. The extra damage on their crossbows from being elves helps a bit as well.
Lastly, we have the warlord tier three unit, the phalanx. Yes, these guys are tier three. Thematically, this is the unit which really embodies the class. Who needs magic, giant robots, or monsters, the warlord can fight on an even footing with all of these powers with nothing but iron discipline, cold steel, and a little practical genetics.
Mechanically, they're a souped up pike unit, no special tricks, but very good at being tanks, with a ton of defences, pike bonuses against cavalry and flyers, and a chance to slow targets on hit.
Sadly, the monster hunter unit gets walloped by the wild ogres and dies.
Ogres are such a pain in the butt to creep against, they just plain hit too hard to contain easily. I probably should have tried to bait them from the edge of their charge, but the berserkers got webbed so I committed to try and keep them from getting flanked.
Turn two rolls around, and I make a scout. You may not remember the scout unit, since it was bathed into the game around the release of eternal lords. Originally the warlord didn't have a dedicated scout like other classes did, but that made terrain heavy maps very punishing to the class. So the warlord gets a relatively fast infantry unit with all of the rough terrain abilities that it can make from any city.
The warlord still has a different feel from other classes when it comes to scouting because scouts are made at cities, where other scouts are summoned. This means that warlords have poorer early game scout production, since they have to sacrifice production turns making scouts instead of real units of infrastructure, unlike classes which can summon scouts. I only make the one scout this game, whereas I normally make piles of scouts with other classes. This unit will make it's cost back picking up treasure, and has an important part to play.
The main show on turn two is a bit of aggressive negotiations to the southeast. I'm on a tight schedule this mission, so I'm abandoning the pretence of being nice to the neutrals. This dwarf city is being crushed and migrated to high elves to give me a less terrible economy in a timely fashion. Also, Valery is not a good person, so we're doing an evil game this time around.
The next couple turns are spent clearing our immediate surroundings. There's a major river to the west which is blocking our advance , and a mountain range to the north and northwest which just leads to the edge of the map. Our only way our of our little starting area is the little bridge to the southwest-the southern mountain passes are a dead end, unfortunately.
The only interesting thing that happens in the clearing of the starter zone is this engagement in a tomb. Edward starts out the fight with his dreadnought issue fire bombs, and all seems well.
Then he promptly gets surrounded by literally the entire dungeon. It's a testament to how powerful he has gotten that he managed to take four different flank attacks from tier two units and still has almost half his health left. And this is the first turn of mission three. Your carryover heroes are by far your best asset in the campaign, especially if you spend any amount of effort hitting level caps and getting all the notable loot. They quickly get virtually immune to lower tier units, highly mobile, and able to do a ton of damage at both melee and range.
Thankfully the birds themselves are now flankable, and my troops are able to clear out most of the monsters in a single round. Edward heals himself with guardian flame rather than risk getting himself killed, and the battle ends in short order.
During this period I bought out the remaining mercenaries at the inn, and have been using raise militia to drum up additional forces on the cheap. This is technically a strategic spell, though to tie into the warlord classes non magical flavour it costs city population in addition to mana. There are several warlord spells that work this way and it gives the class a nice twist. All your 'spells' are just particularly ruthless strategies rather than actual magic.
On a side note, via logical extrapolation from the population cost of the spell, each six model unit in Age of Wonders 3 represents 100 troops.
Since I'm taking a deliberate rush strategy on this map, I'll be casting raise militia as often as possible. I wouldn't recommend this on a normal game setup though unless you're being rushed down, the economic pain you'll leave yourself in may not be worth the extra bad irregular units. Warlord is not a rush class, it's the strongest in the super-late game when industry has been built up, like the dreadnought.
Once most of the easily takable sites have been cleared, I send Ed, Valery, andmy best troops whichever troops were closest down the southeast bridge. Past it was an independent village, which I did not conquer, and then the first sighting of Svengir, holding a fort dominating the river crossing into his territory. With my two flying heroes and a bit of fire support, it's trivial to overwhelm the mostly militia garrison.
Edward: What?! Treason?! How can you do this? You have sworn allegiance to the Commonwealth and taken a vow to uphold the Law! You do not deserve to live any longer!
Valery: There is an Elven Village not to far from here, it's where I grew up. I'm sure they will assist us. The traitors will pay.
Welp, nobody saw that coming. Yeesh, look at all the diplomatic alerts from two factions switching sides.
So, we just got betrayed by our two allies, one of whom left a stack of troops two tiles from our capitol. Our main army is days away, at the edge of enemy territory, and this is now a 1v3 where every other side has a bigger economy than us.
But I've got a plan.
Compared to the last map, the commonwealth hasn't been been having a very good time at all. Ralikesh has flipped from partially red to mostly white, and the elven court has gone on the march, securing their hold on the pool of origins and advancing through no man's land in force. By contrast, the commonwealth has yet to make any moves towards the court itself, and only has a small amount of gains in the east.
We are apparently sitting on our asses in Henvolt and being bored. Edward, take it away!
Invention Envy: My fellow dreadnoughts, the dwarves masters Drugal and Gorsmog, look on with envy as I finish a golem. With their innate affinity for mechanisms, dwarves have smugly driven the technology we Dreadnoughts learn at the academy. Now, I have proven that in the Commonwealth all races can contribute to the betterment of us all.
We approach the final days in Hengvolt.
Larissa's contributions are indispensable. I wish I could tell her, but working with the Oscillator Gem strains her. She seems wary of something. We even had an argument the other day. She dosn't believe the Emperor is wise to leave the Oscillator Gem in Hengvolt. She fears it could be used to unleash terrible powers upon the world. I thought she was being dramatic and Valery told her not to question the Emperor's divine will. She has been avoiding us since.
So we've been betrayed again. Valery will be running the show this time around, and Laryssa is going to be benched doing important research and not gaining levels.
Valery herself is a rather strange character. Despite being the target of racism, she maintains her loyalty to the very government that supports the racism, where others of her race chose to leave. She has even bought into the divinity of the emperor, which the elves of the elven court think is bullshit. I can't shake the feeling that some of her loyalty is a sunk cost fallacy, that she has to back the commonwealth on all points since she burned her bridges with the elves.
Gorsmog: Of course, I will do everything in my power to assist you. The best I can do right now is to send some units to guard your city, if that would make you feel safer. There is not much more I can do for you.
Ok, here is our starting position. We've got a small city with decent sites and a small fortress that'll provided some extra income, but overall our economy is pretty weak when we compare it to our starting forces. We've got two small groups of elven troops, mostly swordsmen sadly, both of our heroes with all of their kit, and three warlord units, including a tier three phalanx. These units and our heroes will let us clear the map pretty effectively. There's also the stack of dwarves who will guard our cities for us, but aren't under my control.
Before we start, lets get an overview of the map, or at least as much of it as we can see. We can see our objective, Svengir's capitol in the southwest. We've also got our two allies from Nirvenkiln back again, but unlike before they both have their own cities and armies. Each dwarf has three cities: one small one and a capitol in the east, and a small city in the northwest. Gorsmog also has a little fortress guarding the road to his capitol. Now, if the surprising strength of our ai allies is triggering your video game generosity paranoia, don't worry. That's just a sign that it's functioning normally.
Another thing to take note of is the terrain, namely that it is terrible. This entire map is lousy with rivers and mountain chains, which will make getting around a pain in the ass. Amphibious units and mountaineering units are going to be more much valuable than normal.
Clearing this inn next to our domain, we get a set of mercenary high elves for hire. I'll get the rest of them later, since we'll have much more gold than things to spend it on this mission, but right now I'll take the longbows to give some extra range firepower to my attack force. My heroes and the warlord units will be making the main thrust west, while the garrisoned units are on cleanup duty.
Next step on the plan to beating this mission is clearing out these ancient ruins. Which sounds like a perfect time to show off our new units!
First up are the berserkers. Who aren't in fact, very berserk at all. I mean, they have lower defences than normal for tier two melee infantry, but they don't have any abilities that scream berserker thematically. Like being out of control, or getting powerups from fighting or killing units. Not that these particular berserkers are going to be doing anything this fight, because those spiders are about to web them.
They also start the trend of warlord units not thematically meshing very well with some races. It's hard to see the cultured and thin limbed high elves running about carrying axes the size of their entire torsos. Of course, you could say the same for dwarf druids and a few other race class combinations, but the warlord's barbarian aesthetics tend to bug me more than others for some reason.
The next warlord unit are the monster hunters that we got in the first high elf mission. I like these guys a lot both aesthetically and mechanically. Between their bonus damage against monsters and their good mobility on the strategic map, there's always a reason to use them. For instance, on this map my opponent won't be using any animal, monster, or dwelling units, but the terrain is so awful I'l stilll be making heavy use of monster hunters. The extra damage on their crossbows from being elves helps a bit as well.
Lastly, we have the warlord tier three unit, the phalanx. Yes, these guys are tier three. Thematically, this is the unit which really embodies the class. Who needs magic, giant robots, or monsters, the warlord can fight on an even footing with all of these powers with nothing but iron discipline, cold steel, and a little practical genetics.
Mechanically, they're a souped up pike unit, no special tricks, but very good at being tanks, with a ton of defences, pike bonuses against cavalry and flyers, and a chance to slow targets on hit.
Sadly, the monster hunter unit gets walloped by the wild ogres and dies.
Ogres are such a pain in the butt to creep against, they just plain hit too hard to contain easily. I probably should have tried to bait them from the edge of their charge, but the berserkers got webbed so I committed to try and keep them from getting flanked.
Turn two rolls around, and I make a scout. You may not remember the scout unit, since it was bathed into the game around the release of eternal lords. Originally the warlord didn't have a dedicated scout like other classes did, but that made terrain heavy maps very punishing to the class. So the warlord gets a relatively fast infantry unit with all of the rough terrain abilities that it can make from any city.
The warlord still has a different feel from other classes when it comes to scouting because scouts are made at cities, where other scouts are summoned. This means that warlords have poorer early game scout production, since they have to sacrifice production turns making scouts instead of real units of infrastructure, unlike classes which can summon scouts. I only make the one scout this game, whereas I normally make piles of scouts with other classes. This unit will make it's cost back picking up treasure, and has an important part to play.
The main show on turn two is a bit of aggressive negotiations to the southeast. I'm on a tight schedule this mission, so I'm abandoning the pretence of being nice to the neutrals. This dwarf city is being crushed and migrated to high elves to give me a less terrible economy in a timely fashion. Also, Valery is not a good person, so we're doing an evil game this time around.
The next couple turns are spent clearing our immediate surroundings. There's a major river to the west which is blocking our advance , and a mountain range to the north and northwest which just leads to the edge of the map. Our only way our of our little starting area is the little bridge to the southwest-the southern mountain passes are a dead end, unfortunately.
The only interesting thing that happens in the clearing of the starter zone is this engagement in a tomb. Edward starts out the fight with his dreadnought issue fire bombs, and all seems well.
Then he promptly gets surrounded by literally the entire dungeon. It's a testament to how powerful he has gotten that he managed to take four different flank attacks from tier two units and still has almost half his health left. And this is the first turn of mission three. Your carryover heroes are by far your best asset in the campaign, especially if you spend any amount of effort hitting level caps and getting all the notable loot. They quickly get virtually immune to lower tier units, highly mobile, and able to do a ton of damage at both melee and range.
Thankfully the birds themselves are now flankable, and my troops are able to clear out most of the monsters in a single round. Edward heals himself with guardian flame rather than risk getting himself killed, and the battle ends in short order.
During this period I bought out the remaining mercenaries at the inn, and have been using raise militia to drum up additional forces on the cheap. This is technically a strategic spell, though to tie into the warlord classes non magical flavour it costs city population in addition to mana. There are several warlord spells that work this way and it gives the class a nice twist. All your 'spells' are just particularly ruthless strategies rather than actual magic.
On a side note, via logical extrapolation from the population cost of the spell, each six model unit in Age of Wonders 3 represents 100 troops.
Since I'm taking a deliberate rush strategy on this map, I'll be casting raise militia as often as possible. I wouldn't recommend this on a normal game setup though unless you're being rushed down, the economic pain you'll leave yourself in may not be worth the extra bad irregular units. Warlord is not a rush class, it's the strongest in the super-late game when industry has been built up, like the dreadnought.
Once most of the easily takable sites have been cleared, I send Ed, Valery, and
Edward: What?! Treason?! How can you do this? You have sworn allegiance to the Commonwealth and taken a vow to uphold the Law! You do not deserve to live any longer!
Valery: There is an Elven Village not to far from here, it's where I grew up. I'm sure they will assist us. The traitors will pay.
Welp, nobody saw that coming. Yeesh, look at all the diplomatic alerts from two factions switching sides.
So, we just got betrayed by our two allies, one of whom left a stack of troops two tiles from our capitol. Our main army is days away, at the edge of enemy territory, and this is now a 1v3 where every other side has a bigger economy than us.
But I've got a plan.
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Machinations part 2
- Location
- Canada
Last update we were betrayed by our supposed allies. This update we will be providing some much needed revenge. Now, first up, we need to get the aid of the local elven populace.
Remember that one scout I made? This was why.. This village is a little out of the way because of the river between it and our starting location. To get to it by land you have to pass Svengir's fortress and then take a long road to the north. However if you use an amphibious unit like a scout or a monster hunter, you can be ready to meet them the same turn you get betrayed.
This village is seriously heavily armed. They bring eleven combat units, including two of the high elf racial tier three unit, griffon riders, and a free settler. This is supposed to be a safe area where we rebuild our base, but I have no intention of losing our first city, so this will just be a way to clear the northwest corner of the map free of dastardly traitors.
Back home, a collection of mercenaries, militia, and actual troops that weren't close enough to assault Svengir have been rallied over the last few turns, and are about to dispose of our 'guards', that Gustav lent me earlier. This is why you shouldn't betray people in the middle of their turns, morons.
Initial attacks by dwarf miners and crossbowmen are countered with concentrated ranged fire from longbows, irregulars, and close quarter combat via the monster hunter squad. The enemy axeman unit was reinforced by the stone skin spell, slowing them down, but making them very hard to hit with the equipment we've brought.
Turn two comes around, the berserkers slam into the second miner regiment and demolish it at some cost, but are countered by the enemy crossbow regiment firing into them from their flank. That leaves the crossbows open to flanking fire from my archers. Now all that's left is to wear down the buffed up infantry.
Wear down is the real thing we're doing here. The speed penalty cancels out the defence benefit by giving me an extra round of pouring fire into them before they can close, and the stone skin buff only benefits defence, not magic resistance. Initiates can do pretty good work against them.
Now to clear out the other expeditionary force that was hanging around my territory. I'd probably have been screwed if these two had linked up, but the AI is after all, terrible.
Well, now that we've secured our home front, and gained extra allies, we can let our main force saunter back and crush Gustav and Gorsmog.
After they finish rushing down Svengir. Shouldn't be too long at all.
Even if you hadn't prepared in advance for the betrayal trigger, the best option is totally to throw a single unit up to the elven city and rush Svengir down. He doesn't have the economy, the extra units, or the mutual support potential that the two dreadnoughts have, if you hit him quickly rather than backing off he'll fold since you just put a pretty large force on his border to hit the trigger.
Regardless the Svengir's city on the other side of the river dosn't offer any resistance whatsoever.. No walls, a bunch of tier one units and a low level hero versus overleveled heroes. Thus concludes an eventful turn nine.
Turn 10 rolls around, and I maintain my evil reputation by brutally subjugating another neutral dwarven village with the elven troops that recently joined us.
The way the morality system works causes a pretty terrible slippery slope which feels scarily real, and it's emphasized on a map like this where it's dominated by a single race. Every time you commit a crime against that race, say kicking them out of city, their happiness takes a hit, and any members and units of that race get less useful to you, which incentivizes you to kick them out the next one of their cities you find. It's a bit of a lost opportunity that the AI won't react to your race happiness levels, which could really bring the thematics to the next level.
Down south we run into a second mercenary inn, with the entire dwarven lineup sans calvary. Firstborn are a bit expensive at the moment, but I pick up some priests to keep my army healthy, and some axemen to fill out Edward's stack. I also reinforce them by raising militia in Svengir's city that we had just captured, which is not something I knew you could do before this play through. You just need to own the city you cast raise militia on, not have control of it, so you can summon on recently conquered cities.
We can also see a city the Svengir has vassaled, shown by the red outline on their borders. We'll have to crush them soon, before moving on to Svengir's capitol.
More conquest, knocking out one of the two northwestern settlements off the map with griffons. Far less resistance than I expected. The AI must be out of position, or have gotten it's troops killed.
We run into yet another independent city, which is also getting crushed. This is actually a human settlement, rather than dwarves for a change, which could have been relevant if this had more than a handful of units and wasn't going to be migrated to elves because it's a minimum pop size.
And taking yet a third independent city falls on the southern front. To be fair, this one I had to kill. It wasn't even an evil act!
And lets kill off the annoying autocorrect bait lord on the start of turn twelve, three turns after he called in his allies to save him. Which was clearly the right move, since he's about to die.
Edward and Valery jump the walls and begin scything through the fragile crossbows and miners while the rest of my army does it's best to provide fire support. It doesn't take long to win the day.
Our northern force closes in on the last rebel city in the northeast. I could bring my second stack in if I waited a turn but I decided that there are so few troops here that it wasn't worth the wait. The city is duly crushed.
Here's the map as of turn twelve. Svengir has been crushed, I have secured control of almost two thirds of the map, and my frontier to the east is secure.
How the hell did this work? Because the map is balanced on the idea that the player takes a few turns to rebuild in Niveresse instead of ramming your starting forces down the throat of Svengir. I also deliberately ignored a lot of the optional sites in favour of taking cities as fast as possible. Regardless, this is probably the point where the mop-up starts.
Speaking of our western frontier, lets go rattle Gorsmog's cage, since he's been pretty quiet while I've been crushing his ally. I manage to take advantage of my monster hunters terrain abilities by reinforcing my original forces as fast as I can recruit new units. Though the regular footsloggers have to take three days by road to get to the enemy city, monster hunters can cross the river, forest and mountain in a single turn.
Though the loss of my berserkers was painful, I manage to take the town over on turn thirteen.
Remember that one scout I made? This was why.. This village is a little out of the way because of the river between it and our starting location. To get to it by land you have to pass Svengir's fortress and then take a long road to the north. However if you use an amphibious unit like a scout or a monster hunter, you can be ready to meet them the same turn you get betrayed.
This village is seriously heavily armed. They bring eleven combat units, including two of the high elf racial tier three unit, griffon riders, and a free settler. This is supposed to be a safe area where we rebuild our base, but I have no intention of losing our first city, so this will just be a way to clear the northwest corner of the map free of dastardly traitors.
Back home, a collection of mercenaries, militia, and actual troops that weren't close enough to assault Svengir have been rallied over the last few turns, and are about to dispose of our 'guards', that Gustav lent me earlier. This is why you shouldn't betray people in the middle of their turns, morons.
Initial attacks by dwarf miners and crossbowmen are countered with concentrated ranged fire from longbows, irregulars, and close quarter combat via the monster hunter squad. The enemy axeman unit was reinforced by the stone skin spell, slowing them down, but making them very hard to hit with the equipment we've brought.
Turn two comes around, the berserkers slam into the second miner regiment and demolish it at some cost, but are countered by the enemy crossbow regiment firing into them from their flank. That leaves the crossbows open to flanking fire from my archers. Now all that's left is to wear down the buffed up infantry.
Wear down is the real thing we're doing here. The speed penalty cancels out the defence benefit by giving me an extra round of pouring fire into them before they can close, and the stone skin buff only benefits defence, not magic resistance. Initiates can do pretty good work against them.
Now to clear out the other expeditionary force that was hanging around my territory. I'd probably have been screwed if these two had linked up, but the AI is after all, terrible.
Well, now that we've secured our home front, and gained extra allies, we can let our main force saunter back and crush Gustav and Gorsmog.
After they finish rushing down Svengir. Shouldn't be too long at all.
Even if you hadn't prepared in advance for the betrayal trigger, the best option is totally to throw a single unit up to the elven city and rush Svengir down. He doesn't have the economy, the extra units, or the mutual support potential that the two dreadnoughts have, if you hit him quickly rather than backing off he'll fold since you just put a pretty large force on his border to hit the trigger.
Regardless the Svengir's city on the other side of the river dosn't offer any resistance whatsoever.. No walls, a bunch of tier one units and a low level hero versus overleveled heroes. Thus concludes an eventful turn nine.
Turn 10 rolls around, and I maintain my evil reputation by brutally subjugating another neutral dwarven village with the elven troops that recently joined us.
The way the morality system works causes a pretty terrible slippery slope which feels scarily real, and it's emphasized on a map like this where it's dominated by a single race. Every time you commit a crime against that race, say kicking them out of city, their happiness takes a hit, and any members and units of that race get less useful to you, which incentivizes you to kick them out the next one of their cities you find. It's a bit of a lost opportunity that the AI won't react to your race happiness levels, which could really bring the thematics to the next level.
Down south we run into a second mercenary inn, with the entire dwarven lineup sans calvary. Firstborn are a bit expensive at the moment, but I pick up some priests to keep my army healthy, and some axemen to fill out Edward's stack. I also reinforce them by raising militia in Svengir's city that we had just captured, which is not something I knew you could do before this play through. You just need to own the city you cast raise militia on, not have control of it, so you can summon on recently conquered cities.
We can also see a city the Svengir has vassaled, shown by the red outline on their borders. We'll have to crush them soon, before moving on to Svengir's capitol.
More conquest, knocking out one of the two northwestern settlements off the map with griffons. Far less resistance than I expected. The AI must be out of position, or have gotten it's troops killed.
We run into yet another independent city, which is also getting crushed. This is actually a human settlement, rather than dwarves for a change, which could have been relevant if this had more than a handful of units and wasn't going to be migrated to elves because it's a minimum pop size.
And taking yet a third independent city falls on the southern front. To be fair, this one I had to kill. It wasn't even an evil act!
And lets kill off the annoying autocorrect bait lord on the start of turn twelve, three turns after he called in his allies to save him. Which was clearly the right move, since he's about to die.
Edward and Valery jump the walls and begin scything through the fragile crossbows and miners while the rest of my army does it's best to provide fire support. It doesn't take long to win the day.
Our northern force closes in on the last rebel city in the northeast. I could bring my second stack in if I waited a turn but I decided that there are so few troops here that it wasn't worth the wait. The city is duly crushed.
Here's the map as of turn twelve. Svengir has been crushed, I have secured control of almost two thirds of the map, and my frontier to the east is secure.
How the hell did this work? Because the map is balanced on the idea that the player takes a few turns to rebuild in Niveresse instead of ramming your starting forces down the throat of Svengir. I also deliberately ignored a lot of the optional sites in favour of taking cities as fast as possible. Regardless, this is probably the point where the mop-up starts.
Speaking of our western frontier, lets go rattle Gorsmog's cage, since he's been pretty quiet while I've been crushing his ally. I manage to take advantage of my monster hunters terrain abilities by reinforcing my original forces as fast as I can recruit new units. Though the regular footsloggers have to take three days by road to get to the enemy city, monster hunters can cross the river, forest and mountain in a single turn.
Though the loss of my berserkers was painful, I manage to take the town over on turn thirteen.
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Machinations part 3
- Location
- Canada
In response to my earlier incursion, Gustav attempts to counterattack. I pull back my troops as fast as possible and manage to intercept and gun them down with a response force that doesn't have a single melee unit in it. This is what happens when you play elves, ladies and gentlemen.
However, putting this force together gives Drugal the opportunity to walk into his allies old city with a single irregular unit. Possibly not the best move I could have made.
However, this is the second of Gustav's stacks that's tried to assault my capitol and been defeated, so I'm questioning how many troops he can possibly have left guarding his single city. Once again, it's time to attack.
Valery: Hengvolt, the place where it all started. Foolish Gorsmog thought only of what power he would gain, but I will make him lose everything! I hope Laryssa is unharmed somewhere inside.
As expected, the forces defending Hengvolt are limited, a single stack mix of miners and crossbowmen backed up by a unit of golems.
It quickly becomes clear that the dwarf irregulars aren't going be be winning a shooting war with my mass of archers, and monster hunters, so the golems exit the gates. However, my initiate's shock damage takes large chunks out of their health bar. As much as I may disparage the irregulars, the fact that many of them do elemental damage is a saving grace. Against units with elemental vulnerabilities, or just a far higher defence stat than resistance stat, elemental damage irregulars can shine.
And thus the last of the defenders is shot off the walls, and the city falls to us. Probably after an extended, offscreen, period of monster hunters hammering down the gates.
On reflection, I think that this slightly silly ability to clear siege battles with only ranged attacks is a consequence of the two extra range on longbows. It lets them start doing full damage attacks at the same range as the defenders, and also notably lets them start doing full damage on the second turn. Regular archers would either be doing three quarters damage or running even closer to the wall on turn two, and giving the defender another turn to shoot the attackers.
Also, dwarf crossbows are terrible in sieges. They work like very high damage irregulars, but that still doesn't give them the raw output of traditional archers in sieges, where you probably aren't moving much. So the AI's tendency to spam them for defence isn't paying off much. It should be trying to make priests.
And that's that. Gustav Gorsmog has been defeated. I get the impression that the designer expected him to be the last to fall, but that was probably tied to the expectation that he takes your starting capitol. If you hold it successfully, he doesn't have the economic power to be much of a threat, and he's an easy target.
Valery has returned to our capital, to head off any more exploratory attacks from Drugal with Edward flying hot on her tail.
To get Valery up here so fast I had to use one of the most powerful but dangerous spell in the warlord's arsenal, "forced march". This spell can target a single stack, and immediately cuts away half of the total HP for each unit in the stack. In exchange, that stack gets all of their movement points refunded, letting them move twice as fast. If you use it correctly, it will win you the game, but if you misplace your damaged stack, you can easily lose the game.
Meanwhile, our less mobile forces are taking a more direct route to get to the enemy, sneaking into the western edge of Drugal's territory by sailing around the mountains. This city we're advancing towards seems to have only recently been added to the enemy empire, and there are still a few treasure sites that we can loot. The Great Farm will notably give us some more expendable bodies.
In further search for free troops, Valery, Edward, and some of our best men go to clear out the dungeons in our starting areas. These sites will reliably give out two tier 2-3 units every time you clear them, but I didn't feel strong enough to clear them at the start of the mission. Now, especially since my heroes have levelled up a bunch, we can take out the guards them without much trouble
Of course Edward gets himself stunned on the first turn, so that makes things a bit difficult.
The rest of the enemy army follows up, with two griffons dog piling the stunned edward, and the berserkers on the flanks slam into Valery and my berserkers. However, the ones charging Valery fail their fear check and start fleeing. This frees up valery to flank one of the griffons and shred it. The other is shot down by my elite longbows and shiny new mounted archers.
Mounted archers, are basically a tier two archer unit. they do more damage hen foot archers, have more health, and move at cavalry speed with a once per battle sprint. Of course, we're playing elves, so our mounted archers get the same ability to ignore ranged penalties as normal archers. This unit is so powerful for its cost and time that it almost single-handedly makes high elf warlords a high tier multiplayer choice.
Now, the phalanx tried to attack the manticores, but they got stunned as well. However, they ate enough action points to keep Edward alive, which is enough. My gold berserkers were easily able to thrash the unupgraded wild versions, and they're able to come to the rescue, opening the manticore up to flanking attacks from all of my heroes and archers.
After riding down the fleeing berserkers, I get some dwarf boar riders and ogres to join my ranks. Not terribly good units, but they'll have to do.
Everyone starts the march south. Ed and Valery have another dungeon to delve into, while the forces that had just taken Hengvolt clear off the skeleton crew of Drugal's guards and retake Gorsmogs old city. To the south, things are heating up though.
The amphibious assault is go!
It's a slaughter. I've got a pretty large numerical advantage, and Drugal doesn't even have a single tier two unit, or walls.
I feel a little embarrassed since I keep going on about the strengths and weaknesses of various race-class combinations and which units are best, but in these screenshots my armies turn into a pile of whatever the hell I could get my hands on, with dwarf mercenaries and animals taken from treasure sites making up more of my troops then the actual elf warlord units. I may be a little weak in the building management side of the game, because I usually have enough free gold to upkeep all of the random crap I end up with This map is pretty generous with the free troops, with mercenary inns, farms, and dungeons everywhere, and my rush strategy gave me more than my fair share in all honesty.
Keep in mind though, this is the campaign where your heroes don't get mind control powers. Sundren's armies are going to turn into even bigger piles of random garbage.
The other dungeon coughs up storm sisters and flyers, much more useful then the calvary and ogres I got from the first one, and I didn't almost lose in pulling it off.
With all the dungeons cleared, all of the various advances link up on another of Drugal's cities. This one is pretty lightly defended, and lacking real walls, but the AI has compensated by using the dragon oil power, giving the fortifications a defensive wall of fire in front of them, which prevents my ability to run right through to a degree.
This doesn't prevent me from flying over with the flying troops and heroes I've picked up over the course of the game, and it doesn't do a thing to equalize the massive firepower advantage I have from playing elves.
Seeing the uselessness of his defences, Drugal runs his undermanned forces out in front of the rest of my army. This, if anything, makes them do a little more damage than they would have if they had stayed behind cover, but dosn't meaningfully prevent my troops from massacring them. It does reveal that the dragon oil power is somehow unable to hurt friendly troops though, which I didn't know.
Valery: This is Drugal's capitol. The traitor may think it is well protected, but I'll show him otherwise.
Wow! In a shocking change of pace, Drugal actually has put together a competent defence of his capitol. Stone walls, and a mass of ranged units to leverage that advantage. Though he did leave that dungeon uncleared, which will give me a few extra troops for the assault.
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Machinations part 4
- Location
- Canada
Well, that's not good.
I stalled for one turn too long while offscreen troops cleared easy sites for loot, and in that one turn Drugal respawned, summoned a spy drone, and his city finished making a cannon. Probably should have gone for the throat last turn.
In an effort to make this challenging, I've handicapped myself a little in this battle. There are about five units that could join the fight if I waited one turn, and I sent Edward off on an exploration mission that turned out to be utterly boring. However, this means I don't have to protect him this fight, which reduces the annoyance level considerably.
After Drugal opens by firing a cannonball at my ogres, I get to advance. My left flank, composed of lots of archers, irregulars, and the cavalry I rescued from the dungeons, was unopposed on the wall. This would give the knights a chance to rush the gate unopposed and smash it down, while the archers supported my centre.
My centre was even more archer heavy, with two longbow regiments, two irregular units, and two mounted archer units. They would be facing off against a very conventional dwarven garrison, multiple crossbow regiments and irregulars backed up by a Trebuchet.
On the right flank was my best troops. Valery, leading gold medal Monster Hunters, Berserkers, Phalanx, and longbows, backed up by ogres. They'd be facing off Drugal, two musketeer regiments, a cannon, and a trebuchet. Unlike the center, which would largely be a missile duel, I'd have to take the walls using valery and berserkers or force the gate to have a chance here. I did divert one of cavalry archer units from the centre over to this side to help even the firepower irregularity.
On the left flank Drugal concentrates most of his firepower on this mounted archer unit, which holds on with a sliver of health remaining.
Our own shooting is much more successful, and lucky strikes allow us to shoot a crossbow regiment off the ramparts in our first turn of fire.
Then Valery makes her move, swooping down on the right musketeer unit, while her berserkers scale the walls and the phalanx charge the front gates. Sadly, the musketeers survive even after the bombardment from the monster hunter unit into their flank.
On the left flank another crossbow regiment is shot off the walls while my knights crash into the gate. The crippled cavalry archer unit makes the dwarves pay by helping eliminate the prospectors and securing the flank. They don't survive the retaliation, but they die as heroes.
In a display of uncharacteristic, and ineffectual, ruthlessness, Drugal wipes out his own musketeers by firing his cannon at the right battlement, wounding Valery. Really unsure why he didn't order the musketeers on a suicidal attack before firing to squeeze out a few points of damage.
Drupal himself attempts to fend off the berserkers while having his spy drone distract Valery. The defence penalty for scaling the walls lets the traitor do a fearsome amount of damage.
To clear off the drone, mounted archers use their once per game speed boost to dash across and shoot the drone down, which then explodes in Valery's face.
In retrospect, the opportunity attack would have been significantly less damaging then then explosion.
Slightly singed, Valery flanks Drugal, and with the help of the berserker unit, brings him down.
The knights and phalanx bust through two of the gates, while another crossbow regiment is shot off the walls. Drugals remaining troops rally behind the one secure gate for their final stand.
The musketeer unit gets a second volley off before being flanked by an angry unit of knights, crippling them, while the last remaining miner unit sallies to finish off a unit of longbows. My monster hunters, frustrated by wall penalties, jump on the chance to kill something in hand to hand.
On the right flank, Valery and the Phalanx chase down the cannon before it can fire a third time, while the ogre unit smash a trebuchet. After this, it's all over.
Valery: Thus falls Drugal. Good riddance to a Dwarf who placed his own importance above that of the Commonwealth, who couldn't be trusted and had no honour.
Edward: All the traitors are dealt with. We have demonstrated here that treason will only lead to ruin, and have cleansed the commonwealth of lords who didn't deserve their position as leaders. We will be stronger for it.
I'm rather skeptical about the commonwealth being stronger after fighting a major war in one of their most productive provinces. Especially with the full scale war with the elven court on the horizon. But, just keep repeating that fascist propaganda Ed. I'm sure it makes you feel better.
Full text provided due to slight cutoffs.
No Place for Traitors: With the traitors thwarted, I see now that Werlac and Svengir manipulated Drugal and Gorsmog by playing to their egos. The fools thought to follow the Elven Court and create a "Dwarven Court" using mana fuel technology as leverage.
The most heart-breaking discovery was Laryssa's disappearance. I feared when the traitors came for me, that they would have slain her, but we have found no body. The Oscillator Gem is still missing.
Valery tracked Laryssa's trail to a teleportation gate outside Nirvenkiln. It was too risky to chase after Laryssa without reporting everything to the capitol. Still, I feel as though I have abandoned a friend.
Rumours buzz throughout the empire, claiming Laryssa stole the Oscillator Gem and gave it to our enemies.
I've taken my rescued mana cell designs to Stronghelm's academy where the empire's finest greet me with cheers. The Emperor awarded Valery and me with the Mark of Valor. To the Empire I am a hero, but I feel useless.
I don't know what to believe. I would verify the reports personally, but mobs of students monopolize my every moment. I'm tired of accolades, I must discover the truth.
Well, Edward is finally getting the stick out of his ass about the Commonwealth leadership, he isn't quite taking matters into his own hands yet. It's interesting to note that uncle Werlac was implicated in the rebellion. Judging from the story text, this rebellion was probably part of his plan even if he got his hands on the oscillator gem.
The dwarfs having sympathy for the elven court isn't unheard of. After all, though not immortal, they're far more long lived than other races, and historically were close allies of the elves. The wood elves at least. They didn't like the dark elves. But somehow a former dark elf, not a former wood elf is implicated in the plot. Very odd.
Though the betrayal twist concept is a fun change of pace from normal missions, it does make the mission suffer on replays, as demonstrated in my play through. A prepared player can easily snap the mission in two. Overall, marks for effort, but next time think of what happens the second time around, especially on hard mode.
On a more stylistic note, how detailed do people want the battle scenes? I noticed I've been showing a bunch of fights with only a few screenshots, and also skipping over important but easy combats and I'm not sure I like the effect. Do you want a closer look at fewer important combats, or keep the overview of and shots of minor battles?
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