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| Thread: SOD, New Beginnings, Map 2 | |
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gnohmon
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 12, 2005 11:36 PM |
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SOD, New Beginnings, Map 2
This is the map that has 3 Castle towns in a north-south line in the middle of the map, the central town cannot build Portal of Glory, and the central town can be assaulted from above or from the right by Red forces coming through a Red garrison.
The strategical puzzle set for you by the mapmaker is that when you leave this castle to start breaking through the garrisons, Red might be able to capture this town and then overrun your entire homeland -- and in the process will surely kill one of the two heroes who are your "special loss condition".
If you direct all your attention in this direction, you can take this town early in week 2. However, it seems to me that this leaves you starved for resources and unable to build for quite a while -- so I like to take it early in week 3, when Red has built most of the dwellings. I think it's week 3 -- I did this just last night, but didn't take notes and don't remember.
A couple of weks after taking this town, it should be able to defend itself with all Castle troops. Last night I ran up the tunnel to take the red town in the upper left, and while my main hero was four turns away from the center town, the AI showed me a hero 3 times as strong as I expected. Poor Kirre, sitting there in the Castle with 2.5 weeks of production, felt so strong, so safe, but Thant could animate dead quicker than she could kill them. Worse still, it was day 7, and nobody could arrive in time to take the town back on day 1.
I reloaded the autosave and bombed Thant with four diferent Heroes, leaving more blocking the path and luring him to turn aside. This already took him down to 46 spell points, and killed some trivial number of his troops (the spell point reduction was the important part).
He didn't attack the town, so Kirre bought the new week of troops, attacked, died, :-( reloaded, and waited for Gem to arrive down the tunnel. Thant started down towards my southern Castle, then disappeared! How he got TP I'll never know, because in week 2 of month 3, Red was vanquished.
What I did wrong was to take the undefended northwest Red town with my strongest army. I should have turned back after beaing the red dragons, to defend the central area, and sent a lesser army up the tunnel to take the red town, then the ore mine and sawmill, then jump into the one-way gate.
I also need to try going to the right through the garrison first; perhaps the strong leaders do not appear until the northwest town is taken?[1]
That's why I like this campaign so much, the maps are complex enough to allow you to make mistakes at a truly strategic level.
Going to play it again and do better...
(edited
I can't say that I did better, but I did something different :-)
On Day 1, I split my troops and let Clancy take the ore mine with CCs, the elves that came with Mephala and whatsername, and all the dwarves; Gem had 200 spell points, so she simply went in with CCs and cast lightning bolt as many times as it took. Both places were guarded by a pack of air elementals. This put me only two steps ahead of schedule, but it meant that Gem, with the recombined armies, could reach the harpies guarding the underground crystal mine on day 2 instead of day 3. The guards to the underground were nomads, and they joined.
The witch-hut to the North was Archery, so I went there with my main army and worked Southwards, clearing the map, occasionally trading the army off so Clancy could do some work, and because of where I was at the end of Week 1 I decided to take a new route.
Two mistakes I noticed: since I couldn't resist the temptation to hire Jenova, +350 gold, I should have hired her on day 1; and I could have built Town Hall one day sooner without disturbing my attacking plan.
The extra 1550 gold would have helped a lot.
Anyway, I wound up with my main army by the alchemist shop on day 7, with a bit of movement left, and Gem in charge still with many spell points. (And with about 60 nomads, because some other groups had joined.) So I decided to go through the several dread knights and take the critical central town early in week 2, without taking the southern area first.
I never went in this directon before. I really like maps where you can do things different ways!
It wasn't a very good way of doing things. The need to keep my main army there to defend the keystone, plus the need to develop the keystone castle, made me very poor for a long time in cash and in other resources.
When I captured the Shackles from an AI army, I forgot about efficiency and just had a lot of fun :-), but even so red was vanquished by month 4 week 1.
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[1] I've played this map with the reveal-map cheat, and have seen that all leaders are created in the northwest and then sent through the one-way gate. I suspect that troops may accumulate in the towns to the west because no Heroes "belong to" those towns. I also suspect that there are timed events giving extra troops to Red.
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