Ashery
Prophet
- Joined
- May 24, 2008
- Messages
- 1,337
Time to cover the horrible assault mission. Not quite sure how much more of this I'm going to be doing as the game's becoming a bit of a chore. Too much micromanagement and exploitation required.
The initial setup.
Those sixty-nine spearmen might look like a lot, but spearmen are pretty much worthless in this game. They'd die in a head-to-head fight with the eighteen macemen; their only real use is to fill in the moat. Needless to say, I have no where near enough of *any* type of troop to do much of anything in a head-to-head match up, so this will all be about exploiting the AI.
Oh, and a couple of the buildings shown are examples of negative fear factor structures. The enemy is currently at -1 (Shown as a red tick when you highlight their hp) currently, so they're slightly weaker than normal, but it's still no where near enough of a difference for me to do a head on assault.
As is evident from this picture.
This was the first complete failure of the map. I sacrificed most of my spearmen to dig in the moat and then charged with the remaining melee while I had my ranged units fire from the field.
It was a massacre.
I also tried to bait their missile fire with my ladder unit, but, as you can tell, they pretty much ignored him.
With a frontal assault completely out of the picture, this side was the only option left open.
I probably spent a couple of hours at the lowest possible speed (10, default is 40) micromanaging troops to get this breach. If I sent the spearmen along a straight path to the moat, they'd be lucky to get a single tile's width of the moat filled before dying, so my solution was to send a single archer with them and dance in a circle. Ranged units attempt to anticipate where a moving target will be in the future by drawing a straight line from where they are now. With ranged units being a high priority target, running around in a circle near the moat with an archer would be enough of a distraction to pull off a sizable amount of the fire from the spearmen. On top of doing that for over an hour, I had to constantly micromanage the spearmen once they reached the moat as they'd take up positions along the entire moat instead of digging the narrow channel that I needed.
(Needless to say, I saved at this point immediately and reloaded frequently.)
First attempt with the breach. My initial strategy involved splitting my macemen into two equal teams to clear out the ranged units in the towers: One would go clockwise and the other counter. Once the two towers nearest the breach were clear, I'd send my ranged units up to man the tower they're pictured in.
It worked...to an extent. The hunters in the center (now all dead) probably didn't help my situation as they did a sizable chunk of damage to my archers as they climbed up to the tower. So, I was left with no where near enough troops to finish the job.
The whole story behind this mission is that you're supposed to break through and escape to the marshes behind the castle. I decided to amuse myself by doing just that: Escaping and not killing everything on the map. Sadly, the game didn't consider that an actual win, so it was time to reload...a lot, heh.
Between trying a multitude of different approaches (Keeping all the macemen in one team (Worse than my first attempt; micromanagement was a nightmare with so many macemen going into a single tower), directly assaulting the central keep (Also worse; pikemen delayed me long enough for most of my macemen to die to missiles), and a bunch of frustrated attempts at trying anything), I eventually surrendered to retrying my initial plan, but this time with a bit more exploitation: It was time to do some more dancing.
For the next attempt, outside of the dancing archer by the moat, I also ran serpentine patterns with my macemen to avoid a small amount of the incoming fire (Groups don't avoid damage as well as individuals, but every bit counted in this mission). My ranged units were sent up to the same tower as before, but earlier than my first attempt. They'd start approaching in a serpentine pattern as soon as my macemen crossed into The Pig's keep. The early approach meant that they'd take more missile fire, but every missile they took was one less that hit my macemen. Once in the tower, they'd work on killing the four crossbowmen in The Pig's central keep while my macemen cleared the walls.
By some miracle, it worked this time, with enough of a force left over to have a chance at actually winning.
After the walls were clear, my ranged units were able to safely take down the dozen or so pikemen in the front section of the keep.
I also did something that requires a bit of explanation at this point: Negative fear factor is based on the ratio of structures to population, so by reducing the population to as near zero as possible, I'd be able to maximize the combat penalty for The Pig's troops. This was accomplished by leaving a heavily wounded macemen near where peasants spawn in while my archers killed every worker in the keep. I also razed their granaries for shits and giggles and to cripple his popularity (No food is a -8).
The result? Enemy troops now at -3 instead of -1.
Once that was done, I moved my archers to the other side of the keep because the tower just off screen to the right was in a better defensive position to take on the remaining ranged units (Less time exposed on the wall). All that was left was to bring up my, as of yet, unused battering ram and take down the gatehouse from the inside.
With the macemen sweeping up from the south and my ranged units keeping their ranged units occupied, it was a simple and satisfying end to this hellish map.
The initial setup.
Those sixty-nine spearmen might look like a lot, but spearmen are pretty much worthless in this game. They'd die in a head-to-head fight with the eighteen macemen; their only real use is to fill in the moat. Needless to say, I have no where near enough of *any* type of troop to do much of anything in a head-to-head match up, so this will all be about exploiting the AI.
Oh, and a couple of the buildings shown are examples of negative fear factor structures. The enemy is currently at -1 (Shown as a red tick when you highlight their hp) currently, so they're slightly weaker than normal, but it's still no where near enough of a difference for me to do a head on assault.
As is evident from this picture.
This was the first complete failure of the map. I sacrificed most of my spearmen to dig in the moat and then charged with the remaining melee while I had my ranged units fire from the field.
It was a massacre.
I also tried to bait their missile fire with my ladder unit, but, as you can tell, they pretty much ignored him.
With a frontal assault completely out of the picture, this side was the only option left open.
I probably spent a couple of hours at the lowest possible speed (10, default is 40) micromanaging troops to get this breach. If I sent the spearmen along a straight path to the moat, they'd be lucky to get a single tile's width of the moat filled before dying, so my solution was to send a single archer with them and dance in a circle. Ranged units attempt to anticipate where a moving target will be in the future by drawing a straight line from where they are now. With ranged units being a high priority target, running around in a circle near the moat with an archer would be enough of a distraction to pull off a sizable amount of the fire from the spearmen. On top of doing that for over an hour, I had to constantly micromanage the spearmen once they reached the moat as they'd take up positions along the entire moat instead of digging the narrow channel that I needed.
(Needless to say, I saved at this point immediately and reloaded frequently.)
First attempt with the breach. My initial strategy involved splitting my macemen into two equal teams to clear out the ranged units in the towers: One would go clockwise and the other counter. Once the two towers nearest the breach were clear, I'd send my ranged units up to man the tower they're pictured in.
It worked...to an extent. The hunters in the center (now all dead) probably didn't help my situation as they did a sizable chunk of damage to my archers as they climbed up to the tower. So, I was left with no where near enough troops to finish the job.
The whole story behind this mission is that you're supposed to break through and escape to the marshes behind the castle. I decided to amuse myself by doing just that: Escaping and not killing everything on the map. Sadly, the game didn't consider that an actual win, so it was time to reload...a lot, heh.
Between trying a multitude of different approaches (Keeping all the macemen in one team (Worse than my first attempt; micromanagement was a nightmare with so many macemen going into a single tower), directly assaulting the central keep (Also worse; pikemen delayed me long enough for most of my macemen to die to missiles), and a bunch of frustrated attempts at trying anything), I eventually surrendered to retrying my initial plan, but this time with a bit more exploitation: It was time to do some more dancing.
For the next attempt, outside of the dancing archer by the moat, I also ran serpentine patterns with my macemen to avoid a small amount of the incoming fire (Groups don't avoid damage as well as individuals, but every bit counted in this mission). My ranged units were sent up to the same tower as before, but earlier than my first attempt. They'd start approaching in a serpentine pattern as soon as my macemen crossed into The Pig's keep. The early approach meant that they'd take more missile fire, but every missile they took was one less that hit my macemen. Once in the tower, they'd work on killing the four crossbowmen in The Pig's central keep while my macemen cleared the walls.
By some miracle, it worked this time, with enough of a force left over to have a chance at actually winning.
After the walls were clear, my ranged units were able to safely take down the dozen or so pikemen in the front section of the keep.
I also did something that requires a bit of explanation at this point: Negative fear factor is based on the ratio of structures to population, so by reducing the population to as near zero as possible, I'd be able to maximize the combat penalty for The Pig's troops. This was accomplished by leaving a heavily wounded macemen near where peasants spawn in while my archers killed every worker in the keep. I also razed their granaries for shits and giggles and to cripple his popularity (No food is a -8).
The result? Enemy troops now at -3 instead of -1.
Once that was done, I moved my archers to the other side of the keep because the tower just off screen to the right was in a better defensive position to take on the remaining ranged units (Less time exposed on the wall). All that was left was to bring up my, as of yet, unused battering ram and take down the gatehouse from the inside.
With the macemen sweeping up from the south and my ranged units keeping their ranged units occupied, it was a simple and satisfying end to this hellish map.
