How to beat Scenario 3

[Shroud]

Just wait off the coast for the naga to come and attack your land units, slay them, free the mermen and go and kill the the rest


not to difficult!!!!!

I passed this level on my first attempt and havent even thought about re-attempting it


B0rsuk good to see you got Konrad up a level, I am up to level 10 and I havent advanced him yet....

[Jaramir]

Just wait off the coast for the naga to come and attack your land units, slay them, free the mermen and go and kill the the rest

i've not passed that level, not even with this tactic..
this time the evoluted bat have slayed my dear 2 knight..
and an horde of nagas have murdred the mages, elves and my leader..
at the 7th retray i think i've got to rethink the way i play the campaing..

if only the initial island (the one with the castle and the leader) was a little more large.. (and more green..)

footnote: i've noticed this time the trident of storm.. not bad: 10-1 70%.. but not enoght

[Dave]

Planned change: On easy and medium difficulty levels, the player will be able to recruit mermen in scenario 3.

Does anyone doubt that this should make the scenario easy enough to beat?

The storm trident is meant to be 'nice'. It's not meant to be a game breaker or the 'secret' on how to beat the scenario.

David

[Jaramir]

Planned change: On easy and medium difficulty levels, the player will be able to recruit mermen in scenario 3.
Does anyone doubt that this should make the scenario easy enough to beat?

well.. it will give an advantage on keeping nagas away from the castle.. i'll try

The storm trident is meant to be 'nice'. It's not meant to be a game breaker or the 'secret' on how to beat the scenario.

it is nice, but after having traversed all the sea i was expecting something more.. i think i'll not take it again, or i'll take it when i've got to kill the leader on the island..

[Dave]

I may also add more villages further out in the sea, perhaps on small islands, and likely with more mermen trapped in them.

That way there'll be more incentive to go there than just the storm trident.

David

[fmunoz]

Just launch an attack to rescue the mermen in the cage at the south west.
This makes things easier.

[Pahan]

Planned change: On easy and medium difficulty levels, the player will be able to recruit mermen in scenario 3.

I admit that am new on this forum, but I don't think that's a good idea. What makes Scenario 3 interesting is that the units you need the most are limited, and you can't replace them. While I can see an argument for it on the Easy level, medium should remain the same.

The storm trident is meant to be 'nice'. It's not meant to be a game breaker or the 'secret' on how to beat the scenario.

It gives beached mermen better chance against the "boss".

That having been said, there are two ways in which I've won that scenario (in 0.4.8 ):

1)
"Assassination" tactic: liberate mermen in two northernmost towns, split the resulting four mermen into two groups of two, send one group Southwest to free the three mermen there, and send the other group Southeast to liberate the six mermen there.
The mermen will get attacked along the way, of course, but at most, you'll lose one from each group before they reach their destinations. Then, use the group in the Northwest to draw the naga while have someone in the Southeast group fetch the trident. Surround the trident-bearer with six mermen and break through to the bay on the left of the Boss's island. Make landfall and attack the boss, clearing the naga in the way of the trident-bearer. Use the trident-bearer and surviving mermen to weaken and finish the Boss. Remember that mermen are very cheap, so unless they gain level or have the trident, they are not worth keeping alive. I call this "Assassination" since it involves essentially ignoring enemy minions and going straight for the boss, since the minions will vanish when he is killed.

2)
After reading some of the posts on this board, and redoing the first two missions...
I had a more diverse army than in (1), so I had everyone liberate the Southwestern mermen, then placed a Shaman on an island town and surrounded her with mermen. I then waited until the land forces almost defeated the Western boss, at which point I moved the mermen to liberate those to the Southeast in order to attack the island boss. However, it turned out to be unnecessary because one of the Red Mages gained a level, so I just had a merman take a town on the island, teleported the Arch-Mage there, and killed that boss.

Thank you for the fun and polished game!

[Dave]

Hi Pahan,

You got an Arch Mage by scenario 3? That's pretty impressive!

With one of those, it really should be no problem

I agree that one of the fun aspects of the scenario is having limited mermen, but so many players seem to find the scenario difficult that I'm not sure what to do about it

I've actually never been able to pull of the 'assassination' strategy (only tried it a few times) -- I always lure the naga onto the beach, kill them off, and then slowly try to cross the water and get to the island orc.

The scenario should change alot in 0.5, as now the middle orc gets more bats and less naga.

David

[Pahan]

You got an Arch Mage by scenario 3? That's pretty impressive!
With one of those, it really should be no problem

I should probably mention that I've been playing on Easy so far. ;;;

Anyway, as I see it, Mages need to be cultivated. My policy towards them is that whenever possible, I have other units beat an enemy unit down into low red, then have a Mage (or a Shaman, since that's the only way a Shaman can ever get decent XP) finish it. All in all, I find that Mages are dainty and pretty close to useless until they gain a level, but when they do...

Now that I think about it, maybe Shaman should gain XP from healing other units --- maybe gain 1 XP for every turn during which she healed at least one unit. (That is, at most 1 XP/turn.) It might unbalance things, though.

I agree that one of the fun aspects of the scenario is having limited mermen, but so many players seem to find the scenario difficult that I'm not sure what to do about it

I can think of a few possibilities. For one thing, correct me if I am wrong, but right now, a Merman in a village fights like a Merman on land. It would make more sense if a sea village were treated like a sea hex for movement and combat purposes. This would make "holding ground" while healing easier for Mermen, while not being as advantages to Naga, because they are relatively expendable in that scenario.

Another thing you could do is introduce a Merman unit that heals others, though that might be overcomplicating it. Though, enabling a Druid to "walk on water" instead might be interesting.

Lastly, if it's just that scenario that's the problem, placing two Mermen instead of one into each of the three villages in the Northeast of the map would give the player more Mermen to play with.

Now that I think about it, it would make sense if Merman Lords had "leadership" ability, but that's a more general matter and can unbalance the game.

I've actually never been able to pull of the 'assassination' strategy (only tried it a few times) --

It might have something to do with my playing on Easy for now.

I always lure the naga onto the beach, kill them off, and then slowly try to cross the water and get to the island orc.

So you destroy the first wave of Naga on the beach, and then counterattack with land units?

The scenario should change alot in 0.5, as now the middle orc gets more bats and less naga.

So you are going to give him fewer Bats and more Naga, or vice-versa?

A scenario that someone ought to implement (if no one has yet) might be something I would call "Wizard Chess" in honor of Harry Potter. I wish I had time to work on this...

Consider a rectangular map, longer than it's wide, with all edge squares forming a rectangular "moat" with water. (The moat can be one, two, or three hex wide.) The southernmost "shore" will have the following units, from left to right:

• Merman
  Horseman
  Shaman
  Mage
  Konrad
  Shaman
  Horseman
  Merman

Note that Mermen can enter water squares on their first turn. Also, it is possible to have the second-level versions of these units in this row instead of the first.

The next southernmost row would be filled with a mix of Fighters and Archers. There should be no "castle" or village squares, so no unit recruiting or recalling is possible.

On the opposite side of the map, there would be an analogous arrangement of Orcish army creatures.

The goal would, of course, be to destroy the enemy leader unit. There would be a massive bonus per turn for early finish, but no other sources of money. After the scenario, all surviving units would be available for recall.

This might make a good "filler" mission, perhaps to help recover after a difficult scenario, because no starting moneys are needed and the only unit that's affected by the previous missions is Konrad himself.

A reservation I have about this is that the AI might not be able to handle it well, since it's probably not designed to wage a castle-less, moneyless battle. Thus, "Wizard Chess" may be relegated to multiplayer.

Another remark is that the units I chose to represent the respective chess pieces probably make more sense in Russian, where Queen is called "Ferz'" which is probably something similar to "Vizier" or "Prince" and "Rook" is called "Lad'ja", a type of war ship.

[Fulk d'Anjou]

Version: 8.0
Difficulty: Medium
Gold at Start: 315

My strategy differs from others' in this council.

I have been successful in destroying the orcish sea captain nearly every try with my blue mermen. I race to the south with as many as I can free, paying visits to all cages. After freeing the 4 blue swimmers in the SE, I grab the big trident and then concentrate all surviving mermen on an assault on the sea captain's castle. He sallys forth to engage me, and I slay him by using my big trident.

On land I form up after taking as many villages as possible with scouts, and then moving as fast as possible toward the land captain's castle.

Go with Hex:

[pip8184]

I slain the orc on the island in turn 8, and my land army form a line near the shallow water beachhead, and OMG, the trolls just sit there doing nothing, even at night they just can't take on knights, marksmen, elven hero, captain and loads of healers too bad I didn't attack sooner, wasted a few turns at night waiting for them but they never dared.

[themroc]

Version: 8.0
Difficulty: Medium
Gold at Start: 315

I played this game on Version 0.7.x in "EASY" dunno my gold

I have been successful in destroying the orcish sea captain nearly every try with my blue mermen. I race to the south with as many as I can free, paying visits to all cages. After freeing the 4 blue swimmers in the SE, I grab the big trident and then concentrate all surviving mermen on an assault on the sea captain's castle. He sallys forth to engage me, and I slay him by using my big trident.

i use the same strategy and won, i didnt think it is too easy, but playable.
"Crossroads" is 400% more difficult, i am not mention "Princess Revenge"

On land I form up after taking as many villages as possible with scouts, and then moving as fast as possible toward the land captain's castle.

i got the best i could and go south, and won.

cya themroc

PS: "Return to wesnoth" is toooo heavy, this should be easier

[Bablefish]

I found the sea battle only slightly difficult, just sacrificing one or two of my units to get the triton. Once I had that is was rather easy... However the battle on land was another issue. Granted that I did beat it with a number of turns left on hard, but it was annoying that I had to wait for my army to accumilate. The most aggrivating problem that I found was only being able to move one unit at a time from the keep to the land mass to the west. My suggestion is to replace one hex of water with that of land so that two units can be moved across in stead of one.

I also found it anoying that you can only recall/recruit 2 units at a time.

[scott]

I found the sea battle only slightly difficult, just sacrificing one or two of my units to get the triton. Once I had that is was rather easy... However the battle on land was another issue. Granted that I did beat it with a number of turns left on hard, but it was annoying that I had to wait for my army to accumilate. The most aggrivating problem that I found was only being able to move one unit at a time from the keep to the land mass to the west. My suggestion is to replace one hex of water with that of land so that two units can be moved across in stead of one.

I also found it anoying that you can only recall/recruit 2 units at a time.

If your only problem is getting units across the tributary, then you are doing alright. Once you defeat the main mass of trolls in the NW part of the map the rest is cleanup. The small castle is designed to be annoying on purpose!

[Elvish_Pillager]

The small castle is designed to be annoying on purpose!

Do you have inside information? I remember asking about this a while ago, and nobody said anything like that...

Anyway, this is a game. Games are meant to be fun. NOT annoying.