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You start this scenario in the bottom left corner with Violet, Bohb and a basic Preserve castle. Bohb should be sufficiently leveled up to start clearing things out by himself and his summoning spells. Meanwhile, Violet should be used by herself as well, working on clearing out the local mines. Violet will sometimes have a tough time clearing out some of the heavily guarded mines, but you can always whittle down the forces then retreat and try again with reduced defenders. But for now, lets focus on Bohb.
Send Bohb northward until you reach the end of the small water inlet just to your north. Once you reach the waters end, turn the corner westward and take your first neutral town. Another preserve. Don't worry about defending this town (or your first one for that matter) because we're going to eliminate the nearby opposition before they can gain a foothold in the area. Once you recover your spell points from the battle to take the neutral preserve, head east. You will shortly find yet another neutral town. This time it's a Stronghold. Follow the standard formula for victory with Bohb. Summon, summon, summon. Once you clear out this town, recover your spell points yet again (mana potions are very useful for this especially since you can't recover spell points in the mage-guild-less Stronghold towns). Again, ignore town defense for this newly acquired town. Instead, head north along the far right edge of the grass-lands. In a few days travel, you'll find yourself face-to-face with the sole Red town. Another Stronghold. If you've pushed yourself by focusing on simply taking towns, you'll be at the Red town well before they've gathered a sufficient army to oppose the solo Bohb. If, by chance, they've acquired more troops than Bohb can handle by himself, simply have Violet join Bohb in the assault against Red. Truthfully, you shouldn't have much difficulty in defeating the Red stronghold. If you do, I'd highly suggest re-starting and trying again with a more aggressive tactic. But either way, you should eventually eliminate the Red AI.

Now that you have 2 preserves, 2 strongholds and no nearby AI enemies. It's time to build up your forces. For every castle you've taken, you should've immediately started generating gold with the City Halls as quickly as possible. Now it's time to start focusing on dwellings. Primarily I focused on the Preserves because there are numerous external preserve dwellings in the area to supplement your troops. It's also a very good idea to build up the mage guilds and libraries in both Preserves to further increase Bohb's spell selections.

One of the biggest bonuses to playing the left half of this map so aggressively is easily explained by simply sending either Bohb or Violet to the north. You'll shortly come across a Pyre (Phoenix dwelling) tucked away in the middle of a mountain range. Slightly west of this is a quest hut. The quest requires you to eliminate the Red AI team. Well, we've just done that so you'll be able to reap the rewards right now. And what a bonus it is. The reward is free Phoenix dwellings in BOTH your preserve towns AND access to the Pyre hidden in the mountain range. At this point, you'll truthfully not be strong enough to take this external dwelling, but the acquisition of the two free dwellings in town is just too good to pass up. Now that your two main towns are pumping out Phoenix's, you can take some time to clear out the left half of this map and gain some experience for Bohb and Violet.

While clearing out the left half of the map, make sure to send Bohb over to visit the school of Order just south/east of your first Stronghold town. Gaining some Order Magic skills is a great idea considering the fact that your last AI opponent (and all the remaining towns on the map) are Academy's.

Once you feel sufficiently pumped up (troop-wise) it's time to take the fight to Teal. The easiest access to Teal's snow-bound territory is by fighting your way past a level 4 wandering stack due east of your second Stronghold town. In my game it was a stack of Titans, but this may be a random level 4 placement. But whatever the troops are, your two excellent heroes and a formidible stack of Phoenix's should do the trick. Once you're through, keep heading east (and south a little bit). You'll shortly come to your first Academy town. By the time I reached this castle it was only week 4 and there was basically no resistance here. But if you've dawdled in clearing out the left side, it may be better defended. But not so defended that your army can't handle it. Once you take this town, settle down a bit to re-coup Bohb's spell points and to mainly send out several single troop scouts to open up some of the snow areas. Just to the north of this new town you'll see several power-up locations that both heroes will want to visit as well as a gold mine and a few other goodies. And past all of those (about 2-3 days travel) you'll find your second Academy. This one's in the upper right hand corner of the map. This one was much better defended, but the defenders still dropped like flies and there wasn't even a hero to help defend them. *sigh* Apparently the AI heroes are out exploring while I scooping up their towns. Durnit! Anyway, after I'd taken this second Academy (and built up the mage guild / libraries / Universities .... in BOTH towns) I decided to head south from this second town. (I'd also shuttled some fresh Phoenix's via the caravan). At this point it's the middle of week 6 and I've yet to see a Teal hero. As I'm heading south, low and behold, I see the main Teal hero standing outside a small farming hamlet. He's just standing there. Well, who am I to pass up an easy target. I make a bee-line to this hero and mop the floor with him. And what do you know...he's got the Archmage's Hat equipped (well...he DID have it equipped). Scenario Done. Unfortunately it was rather anti-climactic, but that will tend to happen sometimes if you play as aggressively as I did this one. Oh well, they can't all be great maps. (but this one had the potential to be. Maybe I'll play it again...only slower. NAH! )

At the end of this one Bohb had reached level 18 and had Master Nature, Expert Order, Advanced Chaos, Death and Life magic. He also had Master Sorcery, herbalism, Expert meditation, and several other advanced & basic secondary magic skills. Violet on the other hand was also maxed out at level 18 and was nicely equipped with G.M. Combat, master archery, expert melee, advanced resistance. She also had a nice helping of tactics. Adv. Tactics, Expert offense and defense, and advanced leadership. I tried to develop the nobility skill but all I could get was basic nobility and advanced estates.


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