Posts from Demon invasion.

There is a bug/exploit in mission 4. If the Cave Lurkers from the hero's specialization defeat all enemies with a Fireball at the beginning of the battle, and the battle ends, they remain and are added to the army (interestingly, this doesn't work in battles against demons). Out of curiosity, I completed the mission using this bug, and by the time Duncan arrived, I had 10k+ Cave Lurkers.

Yozh, you shouldn't have written about this bug. Now, the Master will fix it, and it will no longer be possible to complete the campaign using it.

I decided to replay the second mission after Remix's streams in order to find new strats. Before playing, I checked the distance from the portal near the Necropolis city to the portal leading to the Overlord and discovered that you can completely avoid fighting the blue demons if you have certain skills / artifacts; Sigrif can simply run straight to the Overlord [blue demons cannot pass through there, nor can they go past garrisons, toward the utopia or onto the southern plateau guarded by death knights]. Thanks to this, you don't need to spend 1-3 months accumulating fodder to kill the blues and then Kha-Beleth. Nevertheless, you will still have to build up an army using Summon Reinforcements, as the demons available initially—including a couple of caravans to the Necropolis—are far too few for combat.
I'll briefly describe the Walkthrough for 4/4/1 here and attach several replays

Almost all chests are taken for gold to build markets and town halls as quickly as possible. With good luck, by the end of the month, it's possible to build almost all creature dwellings in all 5 castles. "Almost," because there is no need to build them all within such a timeframe; regardless of income, there is never enough money to hire and upgrade all troops in this mission. I maxed out the starting city (Ur-Hinnokh) and Thor Thrall

The start of the mission is standard—restart until Sigrif gets Chaos + Wizardry / Lore on the first level-ups, and a boost to Magic own 2nd-3rd level; on the surface—until there are at least 1-2 stacks of creeps that can be killed with minimal losses. The fights for Sigrif are simple, and ~90% of them go like this: imps use summon in the enemy's face, Sigrif hits them with chain/wave, then kites if necessary. Chaos is mandatory in the first stage, otherwise the necromancer will wipe out almost the entire army; it's needed to use Devil's Strike in this battle, which deals more damage than wave and chain once you have Advanced Chaos magic. It's also worth noting that the necromancer casts Magic Fist when he has a large army, but when it is significantly smaller, he starts ressurecting them. My best combat result is in the screenshot m2nekr.sav


Skills: Expert Chaos with Pyrokinesis, Defense with BDP, and Wizardry. Without BDP and Pyrokinesis, it was a hopeless loss regardless of where I placed the gates.
+ fight with phoenixes for the Sar-Issa Robe m2fen.sav I remembered and saved this because I restarted here 8 times
Capture the Necropolis and surroundings, and in the demon lands, go to the mentor, remove Chaos and take Lore with Scholar and Darkness; then get the necessary Haste, Berserk, and Subjugation from allied demons. Follow the plot, obtain the Staff of the Underworld, and then using chain/wave, a Secret crystal, and sometimes Darkness magic, clear everything around. Examples of battles where only the crystal + wave/chain were used m2cyclops.sav m2manticore.sav Darkness is truly needed, as random stacks of shooters/demons still exist, and fire-breathing stacks aren't broken by the crystal. Sigrif is level 36 in the screenshot thanks to two very long fights against dragon legions [one stack of succubi + secret crystal and hell wave ]
Once finished, go back to the mentor and remove magic—you won't have time to use it in the fight with Kha-Beleth anyway, and his magic resistance is very high. I took Lore + Attack/Defense/Leadership/Luck.
Perform the ritual, and this is where the differences from a standard Walkthrough begin. I didn't wait for all blue demons to be at their middle/lower city; instead, I ran to the well in the Necropolis lands; by this time, the starting city was fully built. The army replenishment method is as follows: equip all possible artifacts for Knowledge, approach the well

cast "Summon Reinforcements" and use all mana to take troops from Ur-Hinnokh starting from tier 6-7. Immediately after casting, drink from the well and repeat. One week was spent gathering the army shown in the replay below.
The second difference is running from portal to portal without fighting [no Logistics skill]. At the beginning/end of the week, put on red boots, enter the stables, then stand exactly in front of the portal

And when all movement points are restored, gallop toward the Overlord. If there are no enemy heroes on the path, there are enough movement points for this maneuver. Tests with log/boots/stables performed before the run:

Header

1) No Log
Short by 12 cells
Boots / stables: short by 6 cells
Boots + stables: passes

2) Basic Log
Short by 10 cells
Boots / stables: short by 3 cells

3) Advanced Log
Short by 7 cells
Boots / stables: passes

4) Expert Log
Short by 5 cells
Boots / stables: passes

The fight with the Overlord m2beleth.sav is not particularly difficult. The Dwarven Hammer, like the Ice Shield, is not mandatory due to the massive army. Build+artifacts



P.S. After writing the post, I realized that with such an army taken from Ur-Hinnokh (120 devils, 200 pits, etc.), you could easily wipe out enemy heroes immediately [just don't remove Darkness magic beforehand], rather than doing portal gymnastics and rushing to the Overlord, but I was going for the minimum number of days, so I didn't think about it.
The strat of capturing the upper blue city followed by retreating to the utopia and summoning reinforcements from Hrothtar is slow. Even if you buy up all troops on the surface and send them via caravans to Hrothtar, you first have to wait for a moment when none of the demons with huge armies are near the portal and upper city, and it's unknown when that will happen. If you take troops from Ur-Hinnokh, such problems do not arise.

On the surface, Grol usually starts best thanks to Chaos. Nimus can then be made the main using mentorship and many spawning dwarf stacks capturing mines via quests. I couldn't come up with a stable tactic for starting fights here; I just leveled Chaos, War Machines, and Log (I also wanted Defense with BDP, but it never dropped, so I took Darkness at level 14), and in some places, I either killed everyone immediately or used tricks. After getting Haste, Berserk, and Subjugation, the strategy obviously changes. Alternating red and green boots, and ignoring some neutral stacks, using Log with Path of War, I reached the most distant city (Thor Mirdala) by the end of the 3rd month.
The combat isn't very interesting; I only saved the finals with Duncan and Faedan m2duncan.sav m2heam.sav Since ~60% of the army was given to Sigrif, I had to defend in the city. I used the "occupied" tactic—when the opponent's catapult is destroyed and all gates are placed inside the garrison, as a result, enemy flyers cannot fly over the walls
Build+artifacts


It's also beatable with the Staff of Sar-Issa, but Tactics is needed; otherwise, dragons/angels can fly straight into the city.

Overall, I enjoyed completing it with this kind of rush in 4 months, but I wouldn't say it was easy. I rolled for a good start for about 30 minutes, there were hassles bringing the army to the starting city, summoning reinforcements isn't fast, and many battles required multiple restarts, including the final one with Duncan.


If fighting with full armies, the battle with the Overlord is won in 1.5-2 turns m2belethful.sav, and you can fight Duncan and Faedan in an open field m2duncanfull.sav m2heamfull.sav

Battles on the 3rd week of the 6th month; Nimus has a slightly different build here to avoid losing on the first turn
Tactics is a must-have, otherwise paladins with angels and dragons will wipe out half the army immediately, and there's no saving it then

Yozh, you shouldn't have written about this bug. Now, the Master will fix it, and it will no longer be possible to complete the campaign.

I completed it twice on Grandmaster difficulty without even knowing about it... by the way, this isn't the most challenging campaign; there are more complex campaigns.

Will there be a continuation of the campaign? A very interesting story campaign with a high difficulty level.

Yesterday, the continuation was released, just for you!) It’s called “Change of Eras”.

Updated the campaign file, made changes to mission 4:
1) Fixed a bug with the Cave Lords;
2) In several places, the guard has been weakened, and the growth of the number of some neutral creatures over time has been disabled;
3) The AI's armies have been slightly weakened;
4) Enemy heroes appear less frequently;
5) Guilds have been unlocked in the Inferno cities.

P.S. I left the trick for winning mission 3. Those who figured it out are clever.

The great and invincible Grobok. I don't know, maybe I would have made things easier for the player, but also protected the interests. But that's just my opinion. It's nice that the Master paid attention to the latest playthroughs of old campaigns.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the update; I finally managed to complete the fourth mission without using cheats. It has become significantly easier. However, I'm still having problems with the second mission; are there any updates planned for it? P.S. Yesterday, I watched a stream by Niksan about the "Path of the Hero" map, and I was very unpleasantly surprised by how much they were criticizing you. I think it was very undeserved. Niksan and Someone_Unknown were the ones doing the criticizing. I can send you a link to the video.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the update; I finally managed to complete the fourth mission without using cheats. It has become significantly easier. However, I'm still having problems with the second mission. Are there any updates planned for it?
P.S. Yesterday, I watched a stream by Niksan about the "Path of the Hero" map, and I was very unpleasantly surprised by how much they were criticizing you. I think it's very undeserved. Niksan and Someone_Unknown were the main critics. I can send you a link to the video.

I haven't seen it, but I don't really need the link. A stream of negativity from certain individuals is nothing new to me.
Regarding the criticism, I can say that there are two approaches. The first, the approach of a reasonable person, is to write in the forum or to me personally something like, "Hey, in that map, you clearly messed something up. Let me send you a save file so you can see it yourself?" I fully support this approach and often go to meet the players, making corrections, especially if I see imbalances and shortcomings with my own eyes. For example, I recently watched the aforementioned blogger's stream about the fourth map and saw that I had clearly overdone the difficulty in some places and hadn't taken certain things into account. As soon as I saw it, I quickly fixed it.
And then there's the second approach: negativity and criticizing everything. It should be understood that a happy person with healthy self-esteem will not engage in such things. So, all that remains is to feel sorry for them and wish them good luck and success.
Regarding this campaign, I already mentioned in another thread that I now have time to work on old campaigns. There will be an update for this one soon, which will include many changes to make the game easier

Yes, I also think that such behavior towards a person who tries and creates great content, even if it has some flaws, and does it for free, is nasty and disgusting. That's why I decided to write this.
We'll see...)

Campaign update released.

General changes:
- The campaign file has been re-uploaded to Yandex and Google Drives.

Map-specific changes:
Ice and Flame:

- Most neutral creatures in the second part of the map have been changed;
- All spells have been unlocked, except for most fifth-level spells – they can be obtained as artifacts by completing a quest;
- Enemy hero armies (dwarves) accumulate more slowly;
- The rule for transferring a hero to the second part of the map has been changed. Accumulated stats can now be partially taken into account.

Rebirth:

- The starting bonus has been made more noticeable;
- Many neutral creatures on both parts of the map have been changed;
- Army coefficients for enemy heroes have been reduced;
- The number of creatures that can be recruited has been increased.

Archipelago of Pao:

- Many neutral creatures have been changed;
- Shipyards have been added to the islands;
- The orange player no longer dies without cities;
- The Grobok has been slightly weakened;
- Orc cities can be converted into Inferno cities for 100,000 experience points;
- Creature weeks have been disabled.

Invasion:

- In addition to the previous changes, creature weeks have been disabled.

Deadly Desert:

- Many neutral creatures have been changed;
- The number of creatures that can be recruited has been increased;
- An artifact has been placed near the starting area;
- Creature weeks have been disabled;
- A main hero has been assigned for mages, and the army formation rule has been improved for necromancers.

Good evening, please tell me if the campaign conflicts with "Invasion from the Underworld," as I didn't finish the 5th mission and want to try this one. I remember downloading it once, starting it, being amazed, and then quitting. Thank you, I'm already playing as my favorite demons.

Good evening, please tell me if this campaign conflicts with "Invasion from the Underworld," as I didn't finish the 5th mission and want to try this one. I remember downloading it once, starting it, and being amazed.

Good day. All three of my campaigns do NOT conflict with each other and affect a minimal number of standard objects.

I downloaded the latest version, and it seems to have a problem: Cannok's innate ability doesn't work; only the ballista works like it does for Dalek.

Downloaded the latest version, and it seems to have some kind of problem; Cann's innate ability isn't working, only the ballista works like it does for Daleb.

So, there are no fireballs at the beginning of the battle?
I'll check why this might be happening, but I would advise waiting for the campaign update to be released.