Siege of Elensefar replay

[max_torch]

Hi this is my first post!
Thought I'd upload my Siege of Elensefar replay to be critiqued.. Was there anything I could have done better or do you like my strat? This replay was done with no load/saves but it took me several restarts to get this result. I find that crossroads is way easier compared to siege of elensefar.

[Velensk]

I'll take a look at it and edit this post to comment however I'd like to note that this kind of thing should be in the stratagies/tips section.

EDIT: I'm not going to do a turn by turn like I usually do for this one.

I do not feel that your strategy was a particularly wise approach here. Generally your enemy doesn't recruit that many assassins and I think a large deal of your success is due to the fact that he did. I cannot fault that it was decent given his recruit but were he much more warrior/crossbow heavy I think you'd find it hard to avoid critical loses. You strategy is also fairly upkeep intensive without paying a ton of attention to grabbing villages and that kind of thing will kill you in harder campaigns even if you are good at finishing fairly quickly.

EDIT: As another note, it's generally both easier on us and more productive for you to ask for feedback on loses. Now granted, in campaigns you an win a scenario and still have lost because your campaign effort has been sabotaged but that clearly wasn't the case here.

[max_torch]

Sorry i thought this was the right place to post.

Thanks for the feedback!

Actually i still have no idea how to deal with the warrior/crossbow combo, and it really was luck that assassins came out.

You strategy is also fairly upkeep intensive without paying a ton of attention to grabbing villages and that kind of thing will kill you in harder campaigns even if you are good at finishing fairly quickly.

Hmmm... how can i pay attention to maximizing taking villages when siege of elensefar is about speed because you have to kill the orcs before skele arrive?

[Pentarctagon]

Moved to the correct forum.

[Velensk]

Generally I don't crush the orcs before the undead arrive, I crush both of them in pretty close sequence.

[monochromatic]

As it always is: Generally it is inadvisable to rush a fortified position, unless you are either incomparably stronger, or you are willing to take heavy losses and possibly be pushed back. Unless you have a specific plan in mind, don't do it.

I did not see the replay. But I can say this: if you saved the Mermaid Initiate from BoP and leveled her into a priestess, and also leveling the merman with the storm trident from the same scenario, you can easily delay the skeletons at the choke point north of the city itself.

My favorite hold out spot was always the forest south of the river bank for the first day/night, and then at second watch rush everyone across the secret ford and hold out there. There's two castle hexes, two villages, and water surrounding it, making it an easily defensible spot. Also, most of the orcish army will be still wandering around south of the city.

[ayearhasgone]

I haven't watched the replay yet, but let me say this before I do. SoE is a pretty tough scenario, it's difficult to avoid heavy casualties, even with a fair number of leveled units in your army. I've tried the scenario with several strategies and have always lost a few hardened veterans and plenty of lvl 1 fodder. So take what I say with a grain of salt.

A lot depends on what to do with the thieves. You could either hold back and force the orcs to fight from the water until you can slip into the city via the ford, or you could have the thieves pop up behind enemy lines and attempt a leader assassination, or otherwise at least clog up enemy forces. I personally assassinated the leader, though I would consider this unwise; the orcish leader has 60% terrain defense in his keep and you're more or less guaranteed to lose a large number of loyal thieves, if not all of them.

For this reason, I recommend forcing the orcs to fight from the water and then infiltrating the city via the hidden ford. It was in my experience the strategy which produced the lowest number of casualties. My other strategies were:

- Rushing orcs and attempting to secure the keep before undead arrive (heavy casualties, not recommended)
- Using thieves for leader assassination, then mounting major assault just as undead arrive
- Drawn out siege were mermen fought orcs and land forces intercepted undead (ran out of time)

[ayearhasgone]

Okay, watched the replay, here's what I have to say.

You finished this scenario early with few casualties, good work. But, no offense, a lot of it had to do with luck. Your first bit of luck was the large number of assassins that the orcs recruited (as Velensk pointed out), I always faced an even mix of Warriors and Crossbowmen, which were more devestating. Second bit of luck, and I still can't believe this happened, the undead leader jumped right off his keep and attacked your paladin right after all the high level undead units appeared, meaning you only had to deal with level 1 skellies on open ground. I generally got bogged down slugging it out on the enemy cave and lost a lot of good men.

Even mix of cavalry and druids/sorceresses, looks like you're going for the fast attack-- and you are. Some of your horsemen got lucky with nailing those assassins. Between them and the 70% chance of hitting with magical attacks you made short work of those orcs.

You made the error twice of attacking a unit, THEN slowing it with a druid. Always slow first, this cuts the enemy's attack in half. You did this with a crossbowman and the orc leader himself.

Now the undead are arriving. With your mages and sorceresses they didn't hold up at all.

I have a problem with your actions on turn 10. There are a few skellies stuck in the swamp and obviously this is a good time to attack them, so you sent two knights. Problem is, there were no less than six skellies that came after you during the enemy's turn. You lost one knight and I'm surprised you didn't lose the other one as well, you very nearly did. Always be doubly wary about being counter-attacked than of attacking-- if you're going to take a lot of damage after a move, don't do it! Especially with a unit as valuable as knights.

And yes, here's the cave scene. The necromancer taunts you, two high level bad guys pop up in the corners, he fills his keep with skellies, looks like a bad fight... then he jumps right off his keep to attack your paladin, by himself. Next turn he is instantly cut down and you avoid all cave-fighting. Again I can't believe it.

Overall, good work, but there were some small errors on your part. Looks like you played the scenario better than I did, though.

[Great_Mage_Atari]

The only comment I have on this is: the enemy of my enemy is my friend (or for the time being, at least)

During this scenario, as I have progressed through it, I have noticed that if you hold off the orcs on the bridge, this will give the undead time to arrive. Since the undead are unfriendly to the orcs, this will split the orc's forces and allow you to get in a frontal assault. That being said, make sure you have units to counter the undead forces.
This all being said, also take note of the time of day. Getting caught between an orc and undead fight in the dark of night is a bloody mess. I prefer to wait until it is either dawn or morning, just to ensure that I don't take very, very heavy casualties.

Hope this helps. If anybody wants to expand on this, go right ahead! I was a little pressed for time.

[Velensk]

Atari: The orcs and the undead are allied.

[averyimaginativename]

Since the undead are unfriendly to the orcs, this will split the orc's forces and allow you to get in a frontal assault. That being said, make sure you have units to counter the undead forces.

No they're not.

Spoiler:

[side]
type=Orcish Warlord
id=Agadla
name= _ "Agadla"
side=2
canrecruit=yes
recruit=Orcish Warrior,Orcish Grunt,Orcish Assassin,Orcish Crossbowman,Orcish Archer
{GOLD 100 180 240}
team_name=orcs
user_team_name=_"Evil"

[side]
type=Dark Sorcerer
id=Muff Jaanal
name= _ "Muff Jaanal"
side=3
canrecruit=yes

recruit=Skeleton Archer,Skeleton

{GOLD 100 160 220}

team_name=orcs
user_team_name=_"Evil"

[edit - agh, ninja'd]

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Hmmm... last time I played they killed each other off... sorry guys!

[HomerJ]

Hmmm... last time I played they killed each other off... sorry guys!

Never happened to me and this would be a scenario breaking change.


Greetz
HomerJ

[max_torch]

ayearhasgone wrote:
But, no offense, a lot of it had to do with luck. Your first bit of luck was the large number of assassins that the orcs recruited (as Velensk pointed out), I always faced an even mix of Warriors and Crossbowmen, which were more devestating.

Actually I observed that if you restarted enough times, the orcs would recruit mostly assassins and crossbowmen. Since the units I leveled were suited for dealing with the assassins I just restarted the game again and again until the orcs recruited assassins. But I played with no load/saves.

ayearhasgone wrote:
you could have the thieves pop up behind enemy lines and attempt a leader assassination, or otherwise at least clog up enemy forces. I personally assassinated the leader, though I would consider this unwise; the orcish leader has 60% terrain defense in his keep and you're more or less guaranteed to lose a large number of loyal thieves, if not all of them.

In this replay and in everytime I used the loyal thieves to try to assassinate the leader they barely did damage and all or most died...

And yes I also couldn't believe it when the necromancer just went right in front of the paladin... its not my first time winning SoE and this never happened. I was deciding though whether to prioritize killing remaining skeles for exp or getting the bonus gold for turns saved by killing the necro early since I know the following scenario crossroads barely has villages and id need the gold... but what do you guys think is the better decision?

I also tried the "hold orcs at river and go for ford at second watch" tactic but every time I tried it I couldnt penetrate the main island ... but maybe with the strategy involving the priestess and hoplite with storm trident as mentioned above by monochromatic this would be easier. Anyway Im not done with SoE, Im still determined to get the formula to completely ace this scenario.

To everyone replying to the post so far, thanks!

[Velensk]

I will note that you came into that with very little gold for that scenario, even for hard. Judging by the way you played I would guess that you are very fond of bringing all your leveled troops over just bringing in a few and spending most of your money on recruits. In my experience, your procedure is a good way to win battles and lose wars as it is very expensive in terms of upkeep and will cause you to come into future scenarios with less. The other problem with it is that to a certain extent limits your ability to replace your highly leveled units when they die as the higher level units tend to soak up the experience that their replacements need to replace them (also it tends to be more efficient to have many lvl 2s than a few lvl 3s). In any event, more gold always helps and in general strategies that use mostly recalled units tend to cost a ton of upkeep and if you were doing that in previous scenarios that might explain why you have so little gold in this one.

Your force composition (chargers and lvled shamans with mage type follow-up) should actually work fine against the enemies you face in this scenario but only on the condition that you face your enemy at an ideal time of day and/or in an ideal location (one where your charges will hit the enemy most of the time) (also you probably want at least one more shaman). Just slow down the warriors and use the horsemen blade resist to tank the rest as you slaughter them, crossbows can do quite a bit of damage to you but only on offense so they are priority targets. Once the orcs are dead you'll be up against skeletons but with that many knights and with healing you should be able to hold the line and block them from getting at your mage types while they blast away to their hearts content. You just have to get the tactics of using them down. That said, I do think that a mostly elvish force with a couple horsemen, mages, and the magic wielding mermen works best.