Legend of Wesmere - Human Alliance (Hard)

[Narchya]

Hi there

Can't seem to get past Human Alliance. I've been reading a lot on this scenario, and have tried some different strategies on hard, but it's useless. Lately I have been going for the "run to the castle with everything I got, and on the way over kill the troll leader, which worked out fine, but once I am good and well in the castle, on turn 17 (night-time) things start to become impossible. By the time I reach the castle I usually have 4 shydes, 1 druid, 4 dwarven lords, 2 stalwards (lvl 2), 2 elvish champions, 1 marshal, 1 sylph, 1 enchantress, 2 avengers and 1 or 2 lvl 2 elf fighters. The thing is, by turn 15 or 16 they start encircling the castle, and by turn 17 they hack my tanks to shredds, as they are not full hp anymore. I start this scenario with 460ish gold, and can't recruit much more than I have anyway, and the reïnforcements are pretty useless. the 4 avengers have no chance to make it to the castle, so I hide them and distract some lonely orcs, the rider actually made it, but got whacked, and the other 2 were doomed from the get go.

I actually replayed the previous 3 scenarios in order to level up more tanks and get some extra gold, but I don't see any way in dealing with the night time. Any help would be appreciated.

Attached is the save game I am at.

[taptap]

I just played this scenario for the first time... My first reaction was "What?"

I abandoned at turn 13 mainly because I tried to play according to the dialog information (defend the north), with only limited reinforcements to the AI. The positioning of my own reinforcements (half of it sharpshooters that I really do not want to move out of the forest) and the sheer amount of opponent reinforcements took me by surprise. AI allies are so useless when they have no base income, and I took many villages away from it too (which doesn't help at all when you suddenly get sth. like 10 L3 units that eat up all income as upkeep and the gold for the scouts wasn't so efficiently spent as well). More the next time.

2nd attempt:

Left most villages to the ally, who recruited more units, survived the first night in good shape and did pretty much damage during the second day. Based on preknowledge of elf reinforcements - they are way too important to abandon them. 12 losses 75 kills.

[Narchya]

I have actually managed to beat this with some heavy losses, by just defending the castle and keeping my loyals out of harms way, but I am not too happy about it yet. I might replay it again to see if I can get some more loyal units to survive the slaughter.

Just played breaking the siege a couple of times, but I can't seem to get enough gold for the next scenario with the saurians.

[taptap]

Replay available? I don't see how I could have survived by simply retreating right away without recovering the reinforcements.

[kriskrosed]

After looking at the save and watching the replay, there's a couple pieces of advice I think could help.

First, it is really helpful to hold the waterline in the northwest. You are horribly outgunned in this scenario. The only way to balance the odds is by maintaining a ridiculous defensive disparity and by getting the most out of your units by leveling them efficiently. The best way I've found to do that is by keeping the orcs in the water.

Second, it really helps if you can eliminate the troll leader quickly. This is about the only part of the official walkthrough that sill seems applicable. It feels harder to do in 1.10 than I remember; I don't think the trolls used to be able to spam reinforcements like they do now. Still, the sooner you can eliminate that front, the better. Those units will be needed at your ally's keep.

Third, this may seem sacrilegious, but you should really refrain from taking many villages. This is one of the few scenarios where your AI ally can actually use the gold better than you can. I know, that sounds a bit crazy but let me explain.

You usually run out of gold in this scenario at the end of turn 3. After turn 3 you're in negative funds where you will stay for the rest of the scenario. No amount of village grabbing can change that. You just have to churn out too many troops too quickly. That means the only villages that give you any kind of benefit are the villages you can grab on the first two turns. If you really hustle, you can nab about half a dozen. With the upkeep bonus and the 1 gold per turn, that gives you around a 20 gold boost. That's worth one unit, and it's probably a level 1 unit because you'll have planned on recalling your best units no matter what. You could spend the entire scenario grabbing every village possible and that one extra level 1 unit is all you'd have to show for it.

Your ally, on the other hand, never goes into negative funds. Never. Those half dozen villages you grabbed will stay in his hands for a good 10 turns or so, depending on how the scrum in the middle goes, and keep feeding him income. That's about 60 to 70 gold. That's 2 units. Not only that, they're level 2 or 3 and they get thrown straight into where they're needed most: the killing fields in the middle of the map. Sure, they kamikaze themselves, but they hold up the horde of orcs an extra turn or two. That could be the difference between winning and losing, and that's much more than that extra level 1 unit could have done.

Finally, get yourself a sylph. Better yet, get two. This is more of a campaign level piece of advice, but the sooner you can get a couple of sylphs, the easier LoW becomes.

I've attached a replay. The basic theory I like to use is hold the waterline, annihilate the trolls, and stuff your ally's keep with some tough dwarves and some units with room to level. Tear up the first two waves as much as you can, and then, once the black units start piling up, clam up and pray you don't get horribly unlucky. It usually works fairly well, but a string of bad luck will blow the whole thing apart, especially in the keep. That's kind of how it goes on the hardest difficulty though.

It might look odd that I didn't use all of my gold. I wanted to limit myself to the 478g that was begun with in the replay above while using a similar recruitment scheme (although I wound up using 479g... it was too tempting to slip in the last fighter). Also, in full disclosure, I save-loaded once after one of my sharpshooters missed one of those damn orcish slayers with all 5 of his arrows. I hate those things. Other than that, it was a clean play-through.

[taptap]

Your replay is broken for me with: "elvish horse archer"-error. Same version or did you play starting from an old save? Otherwise I agree with everything - the main point being not to steal villages (although I couldn't restrain myself completely). Obviously I can't change my recall list mid-scenario, but back in acquaintance in need I was probably a little too preoccupied with levelling woses to get a sylph ready soon enough.

[kriskrosed]

Shoot. I used a save from 1.10.0, not 1.10.1. I'd forgotten about that stuff going around about how the horse archer wasn't meant to be included and got removed. I tried doctoring the save by removing all the references to the horse archer. I'm not sure if it's that simple, but it could work I guess. If it does, let me know, and I'll edit the post above.

[Ravi]

Lol I find this level very hard even on easy difficulty !!

[stargazer]

This scenario seemed to me pretty easy in the previous releases now it became almost impossible although I have a plenty of advanced units.

The hardest task is to defend the allied leader.

[beetlenaut]

I have completed every other campaign at the hardest difficulty including NR on Nightmare. I cannot finish this one because of this scenario. I have won twice after about a dozen tries, but without enough units to get through the saurians later. I did finish this campaign a long time ago, but not since it was reworked for 1.10.

[taptap]

I did in March (see replay above). I found the advice above regarding village stealing important. I believe you can get away with pretty few units against the saurians when you defend behind the ice in the northwest so maybe you just overestimate the difficulty of the next scenario?

[beetlenaut]

I don't understand that replay! I usually lose when my force guarding the ally finally disintegrates under a massive crush of units four layers deep. In your replay, the enemy AI barely even tries to attack the castle! They go after villages or go north to attack the elves. I tried leaving the ally equally undefended a few times, and he always died by turn 14. I left him more gold than you did too. My reinforcements coming down from the troll battle always get shredded on the plains. Yours weren't even challenged. Maybe something changed in the AI targeting since 1.10.1, but it certainly doesn't go this way for me.

[taptap]

Well, it surely feels like an unreasonably hard scenario. Especially with the drop in difficulty later in the campaign - to me this felt like the final. What units did you use to defend the ally? (I feel the AI behaves strangely towards some units with high scare value. Wonder if some such scaring was at play in me not getting attacked thoroughly in the castle. A stupid AI just throwing everything at me would probably overwhelm me there.)

[beetlenaut]

What units did you use to defend the ally?

Three dwarf lords, two druids, and every other castle hex and nearby village filled with dwarvish guardsmen. Sixteen units. You had two lords, one guardsman and a shyde. At one point, goblin knights could have attacked the shyde and didn't, and for several turns a dwarf lord could have been attacked by four units including crossbowmen and slayers at night. The leader could have been poisoned too, but none of that happened. I know a single dwarf lord can sometimes hold a bridge indefinitely, but I don't think that's what is happening here because the AI could have gone around the lords if they were too intimidating. I heard there were some changes to this scenario lately, but I didn't see anything relevant in the changelog. Does anyone know what they were? Was the AI made less cautious or something?

it surely feels like an unreasonably hard scenario

Yeah, this is only an intermediate campaign, and the difficulty level is only one step above "normal". "Nightmare" is usually three steps above normal, and this campaign is definitely in a nightmare class.

[The_Afterman]

I'm on this right now on easy. 3 tries, 3 dies.

1st attempt: split my army into a strong northwest force, and a small northeast force. Trolls win. Northwest force wins with three units remaining but is forced to retreat thanks to the endless orc reinforcements(why does every campaign have 1,000,000 new orcs? Do they give birth every week instead of a humanly 9 months?) My only live units are the heroes, who run southeast trying to stay alive. Aldar falls on turn 17 to my sadness.

2nd attempt: I spam elvish scouts/few riders and charge southwest, hoping to rout the western orcs, then go back to the castle to hold off the northies. My army gets absolutely wrecked. I also stole many villages from Aldar. Humans had better control of that battle thanks to my help, but of course there's 100 northies coming down on them...so quit this attempt.

3rd attempt: Two equal balanced armies, one northwest, one northeast. The troll guy spams like crazy, more than he did the last time I tried this strategy. Cleo and Olurf can't carry their troops to get the job done, and my armies were too small to save Aldar.

My only good units are a couple rangers, and a few riders at this point. Archers & Fighters have done a good job in the northwest for me, so I'm going to commit my better units & heroes to the trolls on my upcoming attempt.
Update: Aldar falls on the 17th turn yet again. The turn 12 reinforcements are both overkill and game slowers.