My hero doomstack is just one part of my total forces, instead of, say, the end of the Elven Court Shadowborn campaign where I entirely gave up on regular troops and just flew my hero doomstack to the west, assassinated one leader, then straight east to get the other, no stops and no real challenges.Īlso, the debuffs are just ridiculous. Only by cheesing the events within the mission to the maximum, using Whispers of the Fallen to both profit from and keep an eye on the other AI fighting each other, keeping my maximum military might garrisoned to encourage them to fight each other more than me, and a hell of a lot of delicate manual combat and save-scumming is making this work.īut it's working! And this may be the headiest sense of tactical and strategic success I've experienced in the entire series up to now. Now Fjalnor's main force is taking North Theocrat's Throne for me, and I am defending Fjalnor's capital from Ziko, the Rogue AI in the east, for long enough for me to plunder it.Įach of these three AIs is too strong, close, and aggressive to take head-on. So I cut west, wide around Fjalnor's troops, leaving them to take on the northern throne city while I circle back west, south, and then east again to (it turns out) perform a perfect pincer attack on Fjalnor's throne city in coordination with the Rogue AI, who took the betrayal trigger as a chance to stab Fjalnor in the back. Scouting east slightly reveals the betrayal trigger.I try to cut south around/through Fjalnor's troops, but there's just SO MANY. My superstack is below 30% health across the board. I am stuck between the Theocrat's throne city troops to the east and Fjalnor's fresh stacks coming up from the south. My superstack carefully carves up the northern AI's army, winning three Probable Defeats in one turn against multiple Shrines of Smiting and Exalted Ones. I rush northeast, hoping to find the trigger for Fjalnor's promise to declare war on the north AI if I find proof of past betrayal. All three of the enemy AIs have 4-6 full stacks in the field and another 4-6 on top of their throne city, at least a third of their forced being T4 class units (Shrines of Smiting in the north, Manticore in the south). After rushing along the same lines that worked so well for me in the Elven Campaign Underground Eruption, where you have a similar "the big scary enemies will wait awhile for you to get your playpen in order but better do it fast" situation, pushing class unit research and aiming for a large-ish army maximizing T3/2 synergies (cannon, musketeer and engineer for the Elven Court, Bone Collectors, Reanimators, and Banshees for this mission). I am immediately outmatched in terms of troop strength. It's turn 54 and, after luring the northern AI within pre-emptive reach and thinning him out, I rush his northern throne city with my superstack while holding the main army back to discourage Fjalnor in the south. Having had to restart the mission several times on Hard, I finally learned the lesson of the Bridges That Are Not To Be Crossed, found I could explore the western Underground and even Animate Ruins on a northern town just outside of my "borders" and lure one of the AI armies within my pre-event reach.Īfter more turns than I meant to take, I have the western third of the map cleared out, five stacks of bone collector/reanimator pairings, and a super stack of three level 10 heroes, a bone dragon, a death reaper, and a gold-medal banshee. Having picked it up on sale, I'm only maybe halfway through the first campaign mission (in terms of land control, probably well past the middle in turns) and holy crap is it fun.
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