TBS Fantasy General II by Slitherine Games

[Lacrymas]

So, I finally finished the swamp missions and afaik I'm close to the end of the campaign, so I have a question for people who have finished all the other campaigns - how would you rate them? Which is the worst and which is the best? I want to start with the worst.

 

[Parabalus]

The newer the campaign the better it is.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, Onslaught < Empire Aflame < Evolution?

 

[Lagi]

I pick it up FG2 again. First I want to play with lizards again, but I already deplete the experience i think.
I start with the invasion, but this campaign is so platitude (i try to not read the narratives but i just cannot unsee stuff like "Dark Visitor" - till now I really thought anything named in English cant be a cringe).

I go with Onslaught - and I am having a blast on iron maiden veteran. So far I killed necro-chick, and winged-chick. I have no clue what this campaign is about, because i dont read. I really enjoy the game mechanic in FG2. All the skills units have mixed with items create pure fun combination. There is much more choice and options than in FG1. Also the AI has nice moment, like Shaman that charmed my animals. Or hidden units that kill my General.

I had general on pegaz, and i notice there is castle-city without any shooting units,
I tell myself "the Fuck you want to do moron. You never charge with your main character into center of enemy base. Its not a movie! You understand the game will be over? you pick Iron Maiden you dumbfuck. Load button is grey - there is no going back".
... anyway I conclude "even if there is something, she will survive 1 attack, she has full hp" .

Ambush from 2x units later, and i select the necromancer gurl. I was so suprised that the gameplay within 1 faction could be soo different.

A big BIG kudos to the guys who molded the game rules together.

oh BTW... you can turn off the forest. and the graphic is much more readable. Forest is a brown stain on the ground then. I know its not a graphic quality of FG1, but its still an improvement.

Spoiler

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, FG2 is a pretty excellent game. I still like FG1 a lot too, I actually played it a bit again when I was "on vacation" (i.e. in my home country) the last 3 weeks. I can't really say which is the better one because it would be comparing apples to oranges, but I can say that FG1 is more consistently good, while FG2 has higher highs but also lower lows. The strategy aspect is also quite different, both have some unforgiving elements but in dissimilar ways. FG2 is more happy to trick you into thinking you are doing a good job because it doesn't have a strict time limit, so you might find yourself softlocked at one point due to having too few troops and resources (if you are playing on non-scaling enemy numbers. Which you should). This can happen in FG1 too, but since it forces a time limit you have to rush and that tends to make you more willing to accept losses until you find yourself unable to beat the timer, which makes it much clearer that you are shit and should git gut.

 

[Lagi]

look at this guys - nice 2d graphics

Spoiler

its FG2 map editor

 

[Lacrymas]

I just finished the Invasion campaign -

This was my army just before the last mission (the only unit I lost in the last mission was my precious ghost wolf) -

There are some things I didn't do on purpose. Like saving the princess and doing the mission to unlock flying units. I wanted to do those on my next playthrough on a higher difficulty. Technically, the hardest mission after the swamps was when you are forced to split your army between two river shores, but that's because I didn't think it through and didn't put enough units with magical attacks on the side with all the undead. I didn't savescum as much as I could, that's why I don't have the black bard and the imperial transmutor with me. Overall, I liked it a lot and plan on not only playing it again but also finishing the other campaigns too. Here are my more critical and general thoughts about the gameplay:

There are two somewhat major gripes I had with it, one of them gameplay- and the other UI-related. The gameplay one concerns Ailsa and her magic. Her summons are freakishly overpowered compared to any other spell in the entire roster I had access to. There is literally no reason to cast anything besides them, especially since the mana pool is shared between all units. It doesn't matter that her most powerful summon is 10 mana and everything else doesn't surpass 4 (except the owlbear), you are going to wait for that shit. The only thing I cast besides that is the haste of wind spell, sometimes it was necessary to either save someone or kill a strategic target. The biggest offender is that Ailsa's summons do magical damage and a lot of it. If they did physical damage, they'd be more manageable. Actually, magical damage is an apt aspect to bring up. At the end of the campaign, you are being swarmed by undead and golems with absurd amounts of armor, so half my units were mostly useless most of the time. The last boss is literally immune to physical damage. I don't see a reason to upgrade units to ones that don't do magical damage. The only physical-based ones that are worth it are the winged maidens. The trade-off is supposed to be squishiness (i.e. units with magic attacks have almost no armor), but that doesn't really matter when the most dangerous enemies at end-game also do magic damage that ignore armor. The heavy axemen could survive only a single round and I had to pull them back even though they have 11+ armor. Really, I can write a whole paragraph about every single unit (which is good), but let's move on.

The UI-related issue is one I noticed after having played Gladius somewhat extensively. Just like in Gladius, it's not really clear how and why units do certain amounts of damage. I'm sure it has to do with the number of hexes between units, whether they are adjacent, whether it's a straight-line, etc., but I didn't find a reliable way to intuit that at all. You can press ctrl in order for the units in Gladius to go to the hex from which they will do the maximum damage possible, but there is no way to do this in FG2. There is also no undo button, which drove me up the wall numerous times.

Having said that, I think the campaign is great. There are plenty of choices that affect your army throughout and quite a lot of them are very significant. The maps are varied and with different objectives, the AI is surprisingly competent, it doesn't feel too long even though it says I've played for 50 hours, it can be extremely brutal if you want it to be (legendary iron maiden with no army scaling would be a tremendous challenge even for wargame veterans imo), the unit variety is staggering and the campaign keeps introducing new enemy units up until even the last mission. Really, I can sing its praises to high heavens. I'm even willing to say I like FG2 more than FG1 *gasp*. New thing better than old thing? Blasphemy! Well, I wouldn't say it's better, they are too different for direct comparisons like that, but FG2 appeals to me personally a tiny smidge more than FG1. Don't get me wrong, though, I still play and enjoy FG1 immensely too, so FG2 in no way "replaces" FG1, you can put your pitchforks down.

Soooo, yeah, if you were on the fence, don't be. Just play it. I know I will.

 

[Lagi]

The UI-related issue is one I noticed after having played Gladius somewhat extensively. Just like in Gladius, it's not really clear how and why units do certain amounts of damage. I'm sure it has to do with the number of hexes between units, whether they are adjacent, whether it's a straight-line, etc., but I didn't find a reliable way to intuit that at all. You can press ctrl in order for the units in Gladius to go to the hex from which they will do the maximum damage possible, but there is no way to do this in FG2. There is also no undo button, which drove me up the wall numerous times.

If there were option to automatically place the unit in best position, the game will play itself.
if you press Ctrl the left combat estimation expand and you can check all factor affecting damage - hex, flanking, damage type etc.

I was thinking about UNDO button. But this would allow you to scout hexes with impunity. I play some hex game where you can only undo, if you dont reveal new hex, although.

 

[Lagi]

I like FG2 more than FG1 *gasp*.

I like gameplay rules of FG2 more than FG1.
I like the maps "tempo" much more than FG1. FG2 give me time to utilize all type of units, but still reward me for blitzkrieg.
I like units upgrades more in FG2. However, FG1 unit rooster still feels more "fantastic", more epic.
FG1 UI is senile, but graphic is just perfect. Maps, terrain, units - gorgeous. FG2 unit portraits are beautiful, but game itself is unreadable.

So yeah, for me FG1 win only in visuals.

 

[Lacrymas]

The UI-related issue is one I noticed after having played Gladius somewhat extensively. Just like in Gladius, it's not really clear how and why units do certain amounts of damage. I'm sure it has to do with the number of hexes between units, whether they are adjacent, whether it's a straight-line, etc., but I didn't find a reliable way to intuit that at all. You can press ctrl in order for the units in Gladius to go to the hex from which they will do the maximum damage possible, but there is no way to do this in FG2. There is also no undo button, which drove me up the wall numerous times.

If there were option to automatically place the unit in best position, the game will play itself.
if you press Ctrl the left combat estimation expand and you can check all factor affecting damage - hex, flanking, damage type etc.

I was thinking about UNDO button. But this would allow you to scout hexes with impunity. I play some hex game where you can only undo, if you dont reveal new hex, although.

Gladius doesn't play itself with that handy button. It technically shows you the hex from which to do maximum damage, but that doesn't mean it's a good position to leave your unit in. Sometimes, however, it doesn't matter, like in the case of siege trolls. I noticed this with them actually. They do wildly different damage depending on where they are and it's extremely not clear why. Oh and the undo button. In Fantasy Wars, you can undo only if you haven't spotted an enemy in the fog of war. In Trials of Fire, you can undo only if there was no RNG involved in the last action you took.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, I began the barbarian campaign again, this time on legendary, and I forgot you have to choose what you want to become and get a buff depending on your choice. I suppose choosing to become a leader (it gives you a +1 morale and +10% aura) is the best option? The +50 health and 20% damage to only Falirson is eh and the +1 speed and 20% cost reduction to berserkers seems extremely underwhelming. You are obviously going to get more damage from the 10% aura rather than just 20% to Falirson. On top of that, you can chain chug healing potions, so +50 health is basically worthless unless you get destroyed in one turn.

 

[Lacrymas]

Has anyone tried the iron man mode on the hardest difficulty? I just beat the 4th scenario and I had to savescum like there's no tomorrow (it's not on iron maiden), you are allowed *no* mistakes or you will lose units which will cause a death spiral. I had to employ mercenaries too. If I had to guess, you'd have to deploy all your units in the big settlement, let the enemies raid everything else and funnel them into the chokepoints until they run out of units. Which is harder than it sounds because they love retreating and resting. I don't know if it's even possible to beat the timer to get at least some gold.

 

[Lacrymas]

Since I'm not satisfied with the results from yesterday, I'm going to try the scenario again and try to do better. Here's what I'm thinking:

Spoiler

Station almost everyone at A and hold the two chokepoints, along with sending hasted wolves to get the morale buff from the encampment in the center of the map. B, C and D are you own starting settlements that need to be sacked immediately for gold and to stop the enemies from getting that gold. B - Station either Falirson or the unit with the blood oak buff in order to get the permanent +20% dmg buff against lizards from the dragon bone on turn 2, then retreat to A. C - this is the trickiest one, I'm thinking of recruiting 3 mercenaries here along with deploying one of my regular troops to sack it on turn 1. Then get the ruins in the water and try to kill the bear in the very southeast edge of the map and flank the enemy clan later. But I'm not sure if this is going to work. If the enemies immediately go for the C settlement then I retreat to the north to join Falirson/fated unit at retreating to A and forget about the bear with the cave. D - only use the provided mercenary maidens to sack and get the speed shrine, then retreat to A.

I'll try this when I get the chance today. The chokepoint to the south of the A settlement might be a problem, but I can plug it somehow if it comes to that, I have enough units. Damage is definitely not a problem here, all of my units are upgraded and the mercenaries are as well, it's just the overwhelming amount of enemy units coming from everywhere, sacking your cities and recruiting even more units. Turtling can also win, obviously, I did it very messily yesterday, but it's not satisfying and you lose out on a lot of the goodies on the map + any gold from completing it fast. I also think Falirson should be the one to get the +20% damage against lizards because he will eventually do muuuuch more damage than a Thane.

 

[Lagi]

Sounds like it stop being a tactical game, and become a puzzle.

 

[Lacrymas]

It depends on what you are trying to do. If you only want to win the mission, it's possible to do in many ways like I did yesterday, but if you want to get all the goodies you have to get creative.

 

[Lacrymas]

I tried out my tactic and it worked -

Spoiler

This is the last turn, 4 turns left on the timer. I could've shaved off a few turns but I didn't expect for their stag riders to run around the map and me chasing them down, lol. I could've played better in general, I suppose, and shaved off even more, but whatever, I have 750 gold after this scenario ends anyway. I only lost the starting mercenary maidens. I got every single cave and the ruins, along with the dragon bones for Falirson. The game also didn't like that I burned down my own cities (shocker) and gave me morale penalties, but also +20% damage to human enemies to the units who actually sacked the cities. Two mercenaries and Falirson. You'd think it would be better to sack them with your regular units, but you also gain a -1 morale aura for each unit that sacked a city and I'm not sure if it stacks, so I didn't want to risk it. Once you know what you are doing and have a plan, this scenario isn't as tough as it appears at first glance. Which isn't saying much because every game is much easier with metaknowledge. All in all, one of the best scenarios in the entire campaign, imo.

 

[Parabalus]

So, I began the barbarian campaign again, this time on legendary, and I forgot you have to choose what you want to become and get a buff depending on your choice. I suppose choosing to become a leader (it gives you a +1 morale and +10% aura) is the best option? The +50 health and 20% damage to only Falirson is eh and the +1 speed and 20% cost reduction to berserkers seems extremely underwhelming. You are obviously going to get more damage from the 10% aura rather than just 20% to Falirson. On top of that, you can chain chug healing potions, so +50 health is basically worthless unless you get destroyed in one turn.

Are playing release Falirson (bear-rider) again or the hunter/tamer/marksman added with the DLC? Never did the latter, but it looked very cool.

Since I'm not satisfied with the results from yesterday, I'm going to try the scenario again and try to do better. Here's what I'm thinking:

Spoiler

Station almost everyone at A and hold the two chokepoints, along with sending hasted wolves to get the morale buff from the encampment in the center of the map. B, C and D are you own starting settlements that need to be sacked immediately for gold and to stop the enemies from getting that gold. B - Station either Falirson or the unit with the blood oak buff in order to get the permanent +20% dmg buff against lizards from the dragon bone on turn 2, then retreat to A. C - this is the trickiest one, I'm thinking of recruiting 3 mercenaries here along with deploying one of my regular troops to sack it on turn 1. Then get the ruins in the water and try to kill the bear in the very southeast edge of the map and flank the enemy clan later. But I'm not sure if this is going to work. If the enemies immediately go for the C settlement then I retreat to the north to join Falirson/fated unit at retreating to A and forget about the bear with the cave. D - only use the provided mercenary maidens to sack and get the speed shrine, then retreat to A.

I'll try this when I get the chance today. The chokepoint to the south of the A settlement might be a problem, but I can plug it somehow if it comes to that, I have enough units. Damage is definitely not a problem here, all of my units are upgraded and the mercenaries are as well, it's just the overwhelming amount of enemy units coming from everywhere, sacking your cities and recruiting even more units. Turtling can also win, obviously, I did it very messily yesterday, but it's not satisfying and you lose out on a lot of the goodies on the map + any gold from completing it fast. I also think Falirson should be the one to get the +20% damage against lizards because he will eventually do muuuuch more damage than a Thane.

Did you try holding at the settlement above A, left of D? That's how I did, but it was bloody.

There's also a story choice here, whether you get Kinslayer or not has several forks later.

 

[Lacrymas]

I actually played archer Falirson the first time and on this playthrough I'm going bear-rider Falirson. Archer Falirson is tougher to do well with even though he's ranged because he doesn't do much damage and isn't as tanky. You also have to know what you are doing in order to properly use his main gimmick, the animal taming, especially on the higher difficulties. I didn't know what I was doing and didn't make use of it at all, lol, but it was on a much lower difficulty. Oh, and I ultimately decided to go with the -20% berserker cost reduction and +1 speed. Even though I thought it was underwhelming, it turns out it reduces the weapon and liquid mana requirements too. On top of that, a Thane gets the same leadership aura you get if you choose to be a leader.

You could try defending the mana node above A, but you have 4 chokepoints to worry about and it's not worth it, imo. Yeah, you get a steady stream of mana, but you have nothing to use it on yet. Haste of Wind costs 1 mana, you'll always have enough mana for that, and that's by far the better spell choice from the two initial ones. And yeah, I did get kinslayer because I sacked 3 of my own settlements ;d I don't think it's possible to do as well on this mission if you don't relentlessly sack them.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, yeah, after having completed a few more missions, I'm now certain you need a plan for every map in the early game in order to get everything and beat the timer. There are ways to do it, but it requires actively avoiding conflict with the most obvious enemy on the map. In the troll woods for example, if you start going down the path you are immediately hit with a wall of enemy units that will single-handedly cause you to fail the timer. You have to go through the woods to the west. Heartspire is much the same thing - going directly south will get you caught up in an avoidable fight, it's better to go west where there are almost no enemies. I'm not going to replay every mission in order to get the best results, I might do that some time in the future if I decide to replay the barbarian campaign again. Who knows, I might decide to iron maiden it then.

 

[Parabalus]

It's not a hard timer though, you just have to get the high value loot beforehand. In some mission it'll run out, no biggie.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not a hard timer though, you just have to get the high value loot beforehand. In some mission it'll run out, no biggie.

Yes, obviously it's not a hard timer, I just want to beat the devs at their own game ;d Also, I just completed the Thing and I'm severely low on gold and especially weapons even though I searched basically all treasure spots, so beating the timer would help, even if it's just 4-5 turns. That 100-125 gold adds up. I lost my wolves, though :/ But I got the two thanes from the red clan.
Here's my current army -

Spoiler

People are saying Thanes are meh, but they are actually amazing. They stop charge breakers from breaking charges and that's insanely good coupled with the berserkers. I can recruit a few more units, but I'm not sure what I should recruit. Siege trolls would be nice maybe. Although I want some stag riders eventually. I was thinking one wolf mother, but they were extremely underwhelming last time so I might skip those in this playthrough. You also get one for free at one point iirc, but I don't remember which mission it was ;d

 

[Lacrymas]

So, I just completed all the swamp missions, including the last one where the imperials and lizards team up. That last one took me 4 hours, lolol. This whole cluster of missions is a nightmare in a bad way, you are slowly inching your way across the humongous maps and are being menaced on all sides by hordes and hordes of lizards. I completed only 1 without the timer running out and I'm not sure how the devs think we are going to do this with the allotted time. Perhaps you either need a very specific army composition or spend inordinate amounts of gold you don't have on training your troops to cross all terrain types. You could start farming a lot of gold once you get Dolos and spend another inordinate amount of gold you don't have on Pilfer training, but good luck with that. And there are almost no playthroughs on Youtube, let alone expert ones that show how any of this is done. Here's my current army -

I think it's pretty good and certainly better than last time, but I'd say I need even more ranged troops to deal with the copious amounts of flying units the enemies field. You'd think I have a bit too many tanks, but actually no. The game expects you to separate your army so frequently, you need to have this many in order to secure all the front lines you have. I'm just not entirely sold on the berserkers. If you time it right, they do probably the most damage out of all the units, even the imperial fire archers, but they are so incredibly squishy. I send them to the front lines to murder one unit and in the next turn I have to retreat them because they are already at 20% hp. I've also noticed that camps don't give me animal volunteers with bear-rider Falirson, that's pretty neat and really differentiates the two playthroughs. Either way, I had to save scum like there's no tomorrow to keep this army. Had I ignored unit losses like I did in my last playthrough, I would've lost half this army by now if not more. It's brutal.

 

[Parabalus]

So, I just completed all the swamp missions, including the last one where the imperials and lizards team up. That last one took me 4 hours, lolol. This whole cluster of missions is a nightmare in a bad way, you are slowly inching your way across the humongous maps and are being menaced on all sides by hordes and hordes of lizards. I completed only 1 without the timer running out and I'm not sure how the devs think we are going to do this with the allotted time. Perhaps you either need a very specific army composition or spend inordinate amounts of gold you don't have on training your troops to cross all terrain types. You could start farming a lot of gold once you get Dolos and spend another inordinate amount of gold you don't have on Pilfer training, but good luck with that. And there are almost no playthroughs on Youtube, let alone expert ones that show how any of this is done. Here's my current army -

I think it's pretty good and certainly better than last time, but I'd say I need even more ranged troops to deal with the copious amounts of flying units the enemies field. You'd think I have a bit too many tanks, but actually no. The game expects you to separate your army so frequently, you need to have this many in order to secure all the front lines you have. I'm just not entirely sold on the berserkers. If you time it right, they do probably the most damage out of all the units, even the imperial fire archers, but they are so incredibly squishy. I send them to the front lines to murder one unit and in the next turn I have to retreat them because they are already at 20% hp. I've also noticed that camps don't give me animal volunteers with bear-rider Falirson, that's pretty neat and really differentiates the two playthroughs. Either way, I had to save scum like there's no tomorrow to keep this army. Had I ignored unit losses like I did in my last playthrough, I would've lost half this army by now if not more. It's brutal.

I think there is a lot of RNG involved with purple/epic items - I got lucky and got an unlimited retaliation fire one (imperil archer trait). You put that on fire archers, and many of the lizards will kill themselves. Later on I found a purple flag which gives a the same effect in an AoE, having that early would make the swamp really easy.

You can def get some animals with bear-rider, like the very useful pathfinder wolves.

I have a very different army composition to you (no slingers, more archers, cavalry, more air), but I remember also barely making all the missions on time.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, you get the wolves with bear-rider Falirson, but that's it. By this point in my last playthrough, I had 2 spiders, a bear and the wolves. The camps don't give animal volunteers with bear-rider Falirson, it's all humans. I've never seen those unlimited retaliation items you speak of, lol. I've also refrained from using trolls, the one I have is given by Tir when she goes to her tree to die. They were pretty good on veteran, but surprisingly squishy on legendary, so I opted for human tanks instead. The siege birds are a good replacement for siege trolls. The slingers aren't my favorite unit as well. Technically, they do more damage than the fire archers, but they have to be next to the opponent to do that damage, fire archers don't have that weakness. The best way I've found to use them is if you get them next to the opponent, kill the enemy unit and park a tank in its spot so the slingers are protected. I honestly don't know how to use cav, lol. I got these two because I thought I'd need cav for something and wanted to look at the cool models. I have 3 more supplies, so I might get more birds, we'll see.

 

[Parabalus]

Yeah, you get the wolves with bear-rider Falirson, but that's it. By this point in my last playthrough, I had 2 spiders, a bear and the wolves. The camps don't give animal volunteers with bear-rider Falirson, it's all humans. I've never seen those unlimited retaliation items you speak of, lol. I've also refrained from using trolls, the one I have is given by Tir when she goes to her tree to die. They were pretty good on veteran, but surprisingly squishy on legendary, so I opted for human tanks instead. The siege birds are a good replacement for siege trolls. The slingers aren't my favorite unit as well. Technically, they do more damage than the fire archers, but they have to be next to the opponent to do that damage, fire archers don't have that weakness. The best way I've found to use them is if you get them next to the opponent, kill the enemy unit and park a tank in its spot so the slingers are protected. I honestly don't know how to use cav, lol. I got these two because I thought I'd need cav for something and wanted to look at the cool models. I have 3 more supplies, so I might get more birds, we'll see.

The monster hunter birds don't need liquid mana and they can oneshot the lizard drakes with some items. I didn't find the bomber birds useful, but that might have been my mistake.

I def had more human/imperial troops then you, found them more useful than the barbarians.

The troll chargers are the barbarian cav, but they need the item/trait to charge into water. I had one, whom I put the frenzy trait on from that one tree, he was campaign MVP easily.

I don't think there's magic bullet for the swamp, no matter your army it's gonna be a slog. Maybe going heavy on Winged Valkyries and their dive bombs?