LOW - The Human Alliance

[Maiklas3000]

I'm impressed that you managed to populate the castle with mostly level 1 recruits and survive.

I noticed that you accidentally created a monster - a level 3 warlord. I didn't what led up to his high XP's but I assume he ate some of your level 1's.

Because of the layout, there are times you need to defend a spot that can be attacked from 4 hexes. However, early on you chose a sharpshooter and then a druid for defense of such a hex. The druid didn't make it. Even an avenger can easily die in that spot. Use dwarvish lords or something. You had Olurf chilling out on the back of the castle much of the time. It's okay to risk Olurf if he's healthy. He can usually survive whatever they throw at him.

Your promoted dwarf lords were really getting beaten up by the assassins. You need to rotate them out of the front line, because if they're facing assassins they never get to heal. They only get to de-poison, if next to a healer.

You wound up getting surrounded. It may be because you abandoned the southern villages, or because you crawled onto the rocks to the east, or a combination of the two. Being surrounded was not a huge hardship for you, since you had that extra maneuvering room, due to holding the rocky outcrop, but it looked like you were having a hard time defending it.

Your troll task force was getting awfully low on hit points awfully often. Maybe you had at least one of your saving reloads to save some of those units.

[Thrash]

Attached is a (very, IMHO) successful attempt, granted on Medium. Survived with minimal loses - a couple Sharpshooters against the trolls, a druid in Ally's fort and a random unit here and there in the NW - and lots of leveling.

What I did was, instead of rushing reinforcements straight to the Ally's fort, I put some elves at the southern edge of the forest to draw the orcs. (I sent a few dwarves ahead just because they are slow, but they saw no action until the rest of my troops arrived). That spreads the orcs out such that Ally can pretty much beat the first wave, which buys you a number of turns before you have to defend Ally.

Then, having drawn the orcs from the south, you just need to survive the onslaughts from both sides until reinforcements arrive, which is a little hairy but not too bad with river on the north and tree-line on the south. Once reinforcements arrived, I held out until the third way of orcs arrived and then retreated as fast could east, splitting off units to reinforce Ally's fort.

It was cutting it a little close getting to Ally's fort - you'll see from the replay I actually got cut off and retreated some units North to join with was was by that point a massive retreat by my forces in the NW to the old troll base. But enough units made it to fill the fort and hold it with only losing a druid I think.

In parallel I attacked the trolls, which went OK - lost a couple sharpshooters before I could get them wrangled, then sent those troops down to Ally's fort (and actually pulled some back when the fort filled up).

BTW, anyone actually finish this scenario with positive gold (much less above the 100 minimum for the next level)? I don't believe it's possible and would love to see a replay if someone manages it. I can keep it close until reinforcements arrive, but then upkeep is overwhelming, so I don't even bother trying.

[Thrash]

Hey, and first off - thanks Maiklas for the tips.

Second that thanks.

4) When the black orcs popped in TURN 11, I decided to fall back with my river force (I was lucky that there were no enemy units in the forests east of the river). This was almost a mistake, as the black goblin knights were fast enough to get at least three turns of attacks on my fort at the end.

Kudos for the idea, I did the same thing, but it worked better for me - probably a combination of me being on Medium and having a scary set of Champions to keep orcs at bay.

6) The fort was strong. I gave up on the southern villages immediately, just taking the village touching the fort on the north. Later in the game with units from the troll and (about TURN 18-19) the river taskforces, I set up a defensive position on the hill north east of the fort - dwarves have the same defense bonus, so it's possible to hold that quite well at least for a few turns. The extra units help you juggle your wounded etc. to the best fit, while making sure you have some room to actually switch places.

...

Dwarves defending fort. Absolutely. Even level 1 warriors/guardians can make it through (thunderers are too weak, scouts are pretty useful though, as they're faster and have a better defence percentage.

Your holding of the fort was impressive - having a sold set of dwarves helps. I could not have held out as long as you did. BTW, I notice you just let the enemy have the SW space of the fort, which I think was a good idea - it's almost impossible to defend.

I'll put the replay up here too, if anyone's interested.

Thanks.

[kukn]

I'm impressed that you managed to populate the castle with mostly level 1 recruits and survive.

I was a bit surprised myself... I guess dwarves are a tough bunch If you have enough to switch out the wounded and healers to heal/cure, then it's fine. I was mostly attacked by assassins, which is a good thing I found in the end, as they don't do nearly as much damage as the warriors and slightly less than crossbowmen. The poison was cured straight off, so the overall loss from one assassin attack would have been around 6 hp - no big deal.

I noticed that you accidentally created a monster - a level 3 warlord. I didn't what led up to his high XP's but I assume he ate some of your level 1's.

Actually as far as I remember I didn't lose hardly any of those level 1's, just a lvl 2 thunderer, lvl 1 rider and my loyal lvl 3 outrider in the last few turns (which was pointless really, but not game losing so didn't load). The orcs got a lot of xp from slaughtering the allied forces, though sometimes it felt like they were getting lots of extra xp from somewhere (one crossbowman suddenly leveled up when he had been needing 6 xp at the end of my turn (and he didn't kill anything)... so dunno, maybe they can kill each other for xp (and laughs and giggles

Because of the layout, there are times you need to defend a spot that can be attacked from 4 hexes. However, early on you chose a sharpshooter and then a druid for defense of such a hex. The druid didn't make it. Even an avenger can easily die in that spot. Use dwarvish lords or something. You had Olurf chilling out on the back of the castle much of the time. It's okay to risk Olurf if he's healthy. He can usually survive whatever they throw at him.

Yeah I totally messed up with that south-western castle hex and the lost druid was a pain. I just gave up the spot to the attackers after that as it gave me a much stronger line (no 4-hex danger zones). I had the level 1's up front to start with so that they could get xp and heal sooner, but I used the dwarf lords almost constantly unless they were down on health a bit more, when I would give them a turn of respite.

Your promoted dwarf lords were really getting beaten up by the assassins. You need to rotate them out of the front line, because if they're facing assassins they never get to heal. They only get to de-poison, if next to a healer.

That's kind of contradicting your previous paragraph I switched them around when their health got lowish (assassins don't do so much damage of themselves, so curing the poison is enough for several turns usually). I actually found out that one of the best defensive units (against assassins and crossbowmen) were the sylphs, as the enemy was simply too scared to try and attack them for a lot of the time.

You wound up getting surrounded. It may be because you abandoned the southern villages, or because you crawled onto the rocks to the east, or a combination of the two. Being surrounded was not a huge hardship for you, since you had that extra maneuvering room, due to holding the rocky outcrop, but it looked like you were having a hard time defending it.

True, and it was a situation I wasn't sure I could hold indefinitely, though it wasn't desperate. I think they attacked round the back because of the units I sent there (the river force).

Your troll task force was getting awfully low on hit points awfully often. Maybe you had at least one of your saving reloads to save some of those units.

Yes, one time when I failed to kill an almost dead troll and failed to slow the other... I was in a bit of a pickle with just one healer there (the other got smashed from full in a chain lucky troll hits during one turn...) I tried to make sure the troll warriors were either dead, too far back to attack, or slowed, but it wasn't always possible, especially when I wanted my units to be healed - the section just south of troll keep isn't an ideal spot to defend, but I had to move further east to avoid getting swamped by the goblin knights.

Thrash: Glad to have helped in any way I think it's pretty much a necessity to give them the SW castle corner if you don't go for the southern villages... which I thought was way too risky what with having to have units on the two field hexes.

[chak_abhi]

Here is an autosave of turn1.Can anyone please help?

[Maiklas3000]

Here is an autosave of turn1.Can anyone please help?

Solved. See replay below. This is just medium, right? Meh. I was hoping for a challenge. Losses were two fighters and two captains. One of the captains was loyal, which I didn't see; I could have sacrificed a different unit in its place. Promotions were very numerous. I did no restarts, except one turn when I forgot to move the whole Elvish reinforcement division.

Strategy:

1. Recall one keepful of mostly low level troops to attack trolls.
2. Rest of recalls go to castle. Abandon northwest front. In defending the castle, remember that you can forego an attack if your unit would suffer damage.
3. When Elvish reinforcements arrive, kill all orcs on your side of the water. On medium, you can hold this ground forever. On hard, you'll eventually get overrun and need to flee to the east.
4. When the troll taskforce has finished its job, join them up with the Elvish reinforcements and/or castle forces as you see fit.

[chak_abhi]

Thanks for the solution.
Actually Arkildur was killed on the 18th turn.I eventually managed to save him,but lost 1 avenger and 1 champion in the process.But it helped well,as he put up a commendable performance in "Breaking the siege" and got promoted to a marshall.

[Maiklas3000]

Now you just need to beat it by yourself, with no save-reloads. Think of the glory.