The War of the Dragon- The Way Under

[Mellizo]

Hello everybody,
I desesperatly need help to beat "The way under" scenario of "The War of the Dragon" campaing -so far one of the best campaings ever.
I´ve tried everything, but nothing seems to work for me.
Any clues?
Thanks from Uruguay

[Velensk]

I don't have any replays for the most recent version of War of the Dragon however you should find lots of advice in the War of the Dragon thread.

The basic idea is that you push forward with most of your units and play survival while a smaller number of units (and crystals) hold defendable points in the rear. Fight cautiously and always try to keep moving forward. Don't let your front line and your back line become to far spread.

[silent]

Yeah...I'd also like some help with this scenario, as I'm playing on medium 1.6.5

Do we really have to do a complete circuit of the cave, because it is currently impossible for me to do that. I was only just able to defeat the hydra and it is just way too hard to defeat all the units coming at you. Between cuttlefish poison, blood bats, hard to hit devlings and naga, it is a damn miracle to get to the hydra with all your forces alive, then when I sacrifce 2 units including a harbinger to destroy the damn thing, and see a nice bridge in front of me (23,1) which I figure is the exit and my last chance to get alloria out, I have the absolute joy of finding out it is nothing but a dead end and with my half injured, some dead force ready to die, there is no way I can make it to wherever the exit is.

Where exactly is the exit? I tried the advice below but it simply doesn't help.

[Velensk]

The exit is just on the opposite side of the river from where you start.

If you can give a replay I might be able to help more.

[silent]

alright, I hope this works okay...I deliberately kamikaze lisuandra at turn 37 because I know there is no hope from where I'm at.

[Velensk]

Comments:

It will save you some money if you recall your low level units first, this will let you get a few more crystals for sacrifice I’d generally suggest sending Lisaundra the other way as it is swifter.

There’s really not allot of point in recalling leveled crystals. You could almost get two of the smaller ones for the same amount of gold and there is plenty of opportunity to level them.

By turn 6 you’ve already lost two crystals. This will make later parts more difficult.

On turn 12 you make what I would regard as a mistake by abandoning one of the easiest to hold points on in the early map. With enough crystals and a couple healers and maybe a couple other units you can hold that point indefinitely and even inflict a few casualties allowing your front line to fight forward without having to worry about attacks from the rear. You would have to abandon it eventually when your frontline gets to far ahead but by that point both the number of enemies will have thinned and you would have leveled a few crystals and maybe a harold or two to reinforce your retreat.

As a note: none of your units picked up the berserker ‘curse’ which is a quite useful powerup. If you step on the keep with the skulls the unit who does becomes a berskerer (there are a few other side effects but that is the main thing). This can be used on a lore/oathkeeper to create a jugernaught, or on a pathfinder to create an assassin.

(turn 19) You approach the scenario has left you with simply too many enemies to fight. You really need to fight to take control of the bottlenecks so that you can make the fact that they outnumber you less of a problem. At the same time you also need to be inflicting casualties at a decent rate so that the fact that they out-produce you will not leave you as swamped. If you look at the clash cave (what I call the 45, 17 area) examine the ways into it. Assumeing you block the ways into it from the rear like I was suggesting you do on my “On turn 12...” section you will find that the majoritiy of the sea enemies can be held off if you can take control of the 41,16 area. A lorekeeper on the tower with a healer supporting it can stop the inflow of water units from the central lake and a single unit can stop up the intake from the narrow channel. The other two paths are too wide to easily block however what you can do is design a trap. With your superior quality units it shouldn’t be too hard to create a set-up where they will attack you without being able to kill any of your units and then give you an opportunity to mount a counter attack which will crush them leaving the path mostly clean. Getting kills will also allow you to level up your units making the survival game easier. By the time I get to the hydra I typically never have any level 1 units left.


I will say that I found it very fun to watch you even though I could tell that it wasn’t a winning play. It was quite impressive for you to get that far with those few kills. You don’t need to keep your front and back line as close as you did though. If you do not take advantage of the easy to defend points it will be hard for you to kill enough enemies while still moving forward.

[silent]

Thanks for that Velensk, rather ashamed my impatience and not redoing the turn leaving those crystals dead, although the damn soothsayer was lucky with it's 16% ctk.

The berserker curse I did see, but at this stage the units going near it weren't suitable enough for it, so probably will have to alter that strategy.

I started moving quicker after turn 12 I think for 2 reasons, one was I felt an enemy keep was close by, and I thought it'd relieve pressure to finish the saurian leader off, since ambushers require more units getting hit in the front line due to skirmisher, and secondly the turn limit and the map size seemed as if I should keep moving given how long it may take to get out, and I figured I needed to push further, not knowing the map had so many chokepoints to block to avoid endless enemies.

I'm also finding the AI rather irritating in this campaign, it seems different and one aspect that really annoyed me was somewhere around turn 25 where a devling flapper attack my phrophetess 1xp away from leveling, despite the fact it had 0 chance to kill (both at full health).

I'm probably going to replay the campaign up to here anyways, I think between the berserker item and 2 harbingers, I may have more chance to slice through the waves of enemies, especially the flappers which are annoying me to no end, and for other irritating things like half dead cuttlefish, since they will always choose the poison the gatekeepers/upgrades I was using as a front/rearguard.

Thanks again for the review though, EoM campaigns are quite a different challenge, And I rather liked count Kromire, after seeing the Michbie thread get so much attention.

EDIT: Hmm latest strategy worked although it has irritatingly cost me fast units which I now find I need when running in scenario 6? I think.

[Velensk]

Not really. In Scenario 6 you can get through it entirely on new recruits.

[Mellizo]

It took a heavy toll (I´ve lost all but the water elemental) but your strategy worked fine for me at the end, so thank you very much, Valensk. I´ll replay the game now to make sure I´m not losing to much units that I think I´ll need in the next stages.

[Khal_Mark]

Is it on 1.10? I can't find it anywhere

[Kanzil]

No it's not on 1.10, unfortunately . They're discussing 1.6.5.