Posts from Ranger – “Emerald” [5th campaign, 2nd mission]

I hope all of this happened on the "Hero" difficulty level.

Version 1.6, hero difficulty
After easily completing the last two missions with Railag, I felt a bit more relaxed, especially since the first mission for the elves was a piece of cake. But then I encountered a problem. Not an unsolvable one, but...

A rush strategy didn't work – from the very beginning, an Alastor with a decent army (a hundred imps, a good number of demon-cerberuses, plus demonesses and other units) roams around in the city above. This is more than enough to defeat my army, especially since this jerk likes to meet me right at the port, not even letting me take a step towards the Castle, and this has happened three times in a row.

I decided to develop a bit, and overall, it went quite well – by the second week, I had built ents and upgraded archers, plus everything else except dragons was upgraded, without a Citadel. However, my neighbor above also developed, and even better than me. Demons were peeking out from the left with a not-too-large army but didn't attack me. I spent a couple more weeks exploring the dungeon, and at the beginning of the second month, I went to war.

And from that moment on, I played three times. In the first attempt, after gathering some strength, I headed to the northern Castle (the central one was packed with demons). I somehow managed to defeat Alastor from his Castle, the losses were significant but not critical. After that, I went to my western allies and even defeated one of them... But then one of their heroes ran to the central Castle and wiped out the army there. In total, he had over eighty demonesses, 50+ upgraded horses, twelve archdevils, 400+ imps, ~30 cave lords, and other stuff. And almost two hundred cerberuses for dessert. I had... well, something around fifty archers, thirty upgraded druids, fifteen upgraded ents, and everything else in smaller numbers. In short, I managed to capture the southern city, but this army simply crushed me.

In the second attempt, I attacked the central Castle. But I didn't have enough skill for that.

The third attempt was to attack the southern neighbors. But one of their heroes still managed to run to the central Castle, and then the first scenario repeated.

Faidaen with advanced leadership and luck, light magic, and expert logistics + standard ranger skills.

:confused: :confused: :confused:

In my opinion, this is the most difficult mission for Faidaen and, perhaps, the second most difficult mission in the original game after the third mission for Railag.
If you're lucky, you can level up Archery in the first mission and find Resurrection in the Tower of Magi; otherwise, it's tough. Trying to capture the central Castle right away is almost useless, as there are a lot of troops there. It's better to capture the Castle in the upper right corner right away; the army there is usually weak at the beginning. However, you need a good army to capture the other Castles; sometimes, I even had to include demons in my army and weaken the enemy with secondary heroes. I captured the Castle in the lower left corner as my second target, and the central Castle at the end. In general, it's better to play quickly here, as the enemy is initially ahead in construction.
I last completed it without Resurrection, so I struggled. I leveled up Attack, Defense, Logistics, Archery, and Luck.

I played without artificial lighting. While replaying it, I suddenly noticed Ossir in the tavern. With his help (or rather, with his archers), I cleared the starting island with some losses of a couple of sprites in one week, and somewhere in the middle of the second week, I had a brilliant idea – to break into the Dungeon earlier and rush the central Castle before it was built, because that's where most of the problems came from later. I defeated the Lords with minor losses, taking advantage of the AI's stupidity; half of the Dancers and two upgraded archers were lost (I managed to upgrade them and the Druids in time). I ran around the sea and the island, and it was just enough. In general, on the first day of the third week, the central Castle fell under my onslaught :smile13:
I fought a little on that island, captured a couple of mines, and hired a hero to collect resources. As a result, after settling in a bit, I went to do good at the northern Castle at the beginning of the fourth week. Alastor was not in the Castle, and I defeated him there, after which I captured the Castle and bought the reinforcements.

But while I was sailing to the southern island, various Archdevils appeared there, which was an unpleasant surprise. As a result, I created a "ladder" of heroes in the Dungeon, which quickly delivered troops to me, and I somehow defeated the enemy in parts.

P.S. Fae'daen has rather strange stats for an elf. At the time of the demons' death, he was level 18 and had 3-10-8-10. Is that normal?

It's okay, because I couldn't seem to capture the central castle first, although I probably just arrived when the army had already been purchased by the third week, and you managed to do it a day earlier.
Well, the mission is completed, I think the original campaign shouldn't cause any more problems.

In general, the average stat increase for a Ranger is:
45% defense
30% knowledge
15% attack
10% magic

So it's relatively normal, except for the high magic. Although it also depends on which stat-boosting locations you managed to visit. As far as I remember, there are many stat-boosting locations in the first mission, especially for magic.