The Triumvirate

[NickMP]

Another very helpful walkthrough. Note that oce Godric is released he can go and do something else (like explore the underworld) and the garrison will still surrender to Zehir instead, though you'll get a Godric cut-scene. However, be careful with Godric if he doesn't have significant forces - I sent him exploring the surface past the surrendering garrison, and he was pounced on an killed by an alert enemy hero.

That was on Easy, and a word of encouragement to peope who play like me - it's OK not to treat the game as a tremendous puzzle. If you want to enjoy the scenarios as a reasonable challenge but not get stuck because you can't figure out how to take town N before it gets a million titans defending it, a good trade-off is to play easy or Normal but avoid gamey AI-beating techniques of the kind mentioned in the walks-through - they're needed to win at Heroic, but for me they interfere with enjoying the game as a semi-realistic fantasy. Don't ansalyse it to death, just play as if you were really Zehir and let yourself make mistakes.

My main problem is that I like Markal and get very irritated by the jovial Zehir...

[NickMP]

Oh, one other point: the cutscene where Findan explains what needs to be done to defeat Markal confused me - I thought we had to find the things referred to on the map before tackling Markal's final hold-out. Thanks to the walkthrough for clarifying it!

[omnivore]

Thank you for all the walkthroughs, but I don't have such clear sailing. I get assaulted by a ridiculous army powered by Rutger, whether I get Godric fast or slow. This army does not defect to Godric, whether he is the attacker or defender, and mauls me every time.



It's very frustrating to be stuck on a mission this close to the end, especially when I thought it was going to be clear sailing.





(edit:) Never mind I think I've found the workaround. Instead of going to release Godric right away I used a spell I've never used in all this time of playing M&M V: Instant Travel. I bypassed the garrison and went to capture the first city. Rutger came but he had a much more manageable army. Even thought he wiped out most of my starting army I had enough left, with Phoenix and the judicious use of one stacks, to capture my town and started up my Haven army.



One caveat though: I think you have to rescue Godric before you try to rescue Findan, or the scripts don't work right.

Any advice?
Edited on Fri, Mar 21 2008, 19:20 by omnivore

[CatherineMcClarey]

A powerful Haven hero comes after Godric a few days after he recruits the teal garrison. In my recent replays of this scenario, I first had Irina attacking Godric (not so bad -- have him take the first town quickly and build the Fort & Citadel before Irina gets there; her idiotic army runs about IN the moat and does a lot of Godric's work for him). Completed the scenario that time, but restarted (because Zehir's build wasn't going to get him to Arcane Omniscience by the end of the next scenario, unless I redid this scenario) -- now I had Rutger's more powerful and much less stupid army coming after Godric instead. Having Zehir give Godric his peasants helped a bit, but if I tried having Godric recruit more peasants from the huts, Rutger would catch him in the open, without a town wall, moat or arrow tower to help. I might try 1 more time giving Godric Zehir's peasants, and then rushing to that first town, building Fort & Citadel, and upgrading the peasants to conscripts, but against Rutger it still may not be enough. If that's the case, I'll just have to restart the scenario from scratch, and hope that someone other than Rutger comes chasing after Godric instead.

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

Findan is the strongest hero among the three so better give fewer troops(eg 150 Marksmen,30 Inquisitors etc) to him.

[Grail Quest]

Started playing this campaign by taking the Haven towns and garrisons -- oops. On 1.5 Normal, there were only a couple of Teal heroes and the AI didn't recruit more. Also, I could only recruit one hero and no more.

[aynako15]

"The difficulty of this mission and the next hit a record low"

"Since there isn't any significant AI army out there...."

O.o?!?!



Im sorry, but there are two instantly respawning armies led by erina/ruther that beat the absolute !@#$ out of you during the mission. the garrison troops will not join you. they simply disband. When fighting ruther, he will lose no troops. how can you possibly do this mission?

[aynako15]

"The difficulty of this mission and the next hit a record low"

"Since there isn't any significant AI army out there...."

O.o?!?!



Im sorry, but there are two instantly respawning armies led by erina/ruther that beat the absolute !@#$ out of you during the mission. the garrison troops will not join you. they simply disband. When fighting ruther, he will lose no troops. how can you possibly do this mission?

[aynako15]

"The difficulty of this mission and the next hit a record low"

"Since there isn't any significant AI army out there...."

O.o?!?!



Im sorry, but there are two instantly respawning armies led by erina/ruther that beat the absolute !@#$ out of you during the mission. the garrison troops will not join you. they simply disband. When fighting ruther, he will lose no troops. how can you possibly do this mission?

[aynako15]

apparantly, everytime i refresh the page, i post again -.- so sry bout that

and yeh, the garrison does join. still, those armies of ruther and elina just keep on coming. anyone got any suggestions?

[Grail Quest]

Aynako: What version are you playing with? In my game, I rushed and got all the cities before freeing Godric. You're not supposed to do that because you're not supposed to be able to clear the garrisons that early and without help.



I think the map-builder's idea is to get Godric, which also gets you Findan, then have Godric convert the first garrison to his side, giving you troops to take the first town. Against the Haven heroes, you are probably supposed to use up Findan's and Zehir's armies while massing Haven units.

[aynako15]

I played on v1.6. I Just a question: what do you mean use up findan's and zehir's armies? cuz if they lose u fail the mission. But i finished the mission (and campaign) a couple days ago. I went for a strange kind of "rush": just take all their towns, dont allow them to get reinforcements.



To be precise, I took 7, then town 9, then 7 again (it was defenseless) then doubled back and took town 10, praying that they wouldnt attack me. When i got Findan, then i was finally able to beat them off for good. But it took me a good while to figure this mission out. hope this helps anyone in a similar situation.



P.S: here's something that helps. if they manage to take town 5 after u've taken it (and obviously skedaddled Godric in the direction of the peasant huts) u can lock an enemy army in place by waiting until he starts moving away from town 5, then moving godric to it. he will then head back to town. do the same with godric: head back to the peasant huts. he will then start moving away again. rinse and repeat. the ai didnt chase me past the garrison, though that may differ from difficulty to difficulty: really helps when there's one less big army after zehir



oh, and about those "instantly respawning armies": i was just fuming at this point, although i do wonder where they got those creatures from O.o
Edited on Tue, Aug 25 2009, 14:58 by aynako15

[Grail Quest]

By "use up", I mean to not worry about losses, or if you encounter too many unavoidable losses (not everyone will have a light-magic resurrection build, even though it's a strong tactical choice). Eventually the forces will be too small to be of any good, in which case you'd swap them out for just Haven units.

[aynako15]

i see. didnt think about that. although i never really recruited anything until i had all the towns, seeing as i was just running around taking towns at random but i can see that working too.

[kaptcatb]

1.6v

captupe teal town in weak 1 with Zehir . Then hire hero , hire army and send this new hero to Godric prsion . With Zehir captupe other towns - you just need 7 stacks in hero army ( for example - with 50-60 goblins and 24 archers i kill 3 weeks of grouth ) . If you have Phoenix , Resurecton , Mass haste this mission is joke

in battle with Markal - 400 peasants \ 300 marksman \ 100 grifin \ 40 knight \ 25 angels are enough . Dont waste your time | like me | i send a legion army - 150 angels , 250 paladins , 300 prest ..... waste time
Edited on Thu, Aug 27 2009, 07:41 by kaptcatb

[Abruzzi]

In this one, Zehir was even faster than Godric! The first Skill offered to me in the first lvl for Zehir was Pathfinding, hah, Ironic, seeing that all the four Main Heroes had Pathfinding, and that on the expert lvl.

[xiilus]

I inadvertently made the first 2 fights with Markal very difficult. I play with the ToE mod, and I gave Markal Last Stand. He just kept summoning up ghosts, and fights had a tendency to go like this: miss, miss, stack knocked down to 1 hp, miss, miss dead. In that time, he'd have summoned up 3 more stacks. In one attempt, he had over 20 stacks on the field.



Of course, I know I didn't need to fight the summons, but the main stacks proved problematic because he'd use raise dead. 2-5 attacks to kill one stack, just to have him raise it again and start all over. The sad thing is I rushed through the Necropolis campaign and Markal was only a fraction of the power he might have been. But that one ability in this fight makes it a nightmare.



Then there's the ultimate irony: My only hero with Word of Light was Findan, and in the 3rd fight, against the castle, Markal doesn't get the extra summoned units. Godric of course had Light magic, but somehow missed the one spell that would have made the fight a breeze. Zehir was Dark and Summoning, the former not much use versus undead, the latter with my Phoenix missing half the time due to incorporeal.

[eriktheguy]

Has this strategy changed since 1.6? When I take the teal town I will be attacked within a week by Rutger. He has 8 angels and 12+ knights before I even get production for those units up and going.

EDIT: normal difficulty



EDIT2: So I redid it teleporting past the barrier. You can take the castle in the first week and then hold off all attacking knights behind your walls with summoned elementals and firetraps.
Edited on Fri, Mar 08 2013, 05:36 by eriktheguy

[SteelPanther]

Just been playing this on 1.6 normal, also hit Rutger and another lvl21 hero - sent Zehir at both of them with some conscripts, gremlins and a dozen griffins. Using a phoenix and some puppet-master spells easily handled both. This gave Godric time to capture the cities.

[Wheeler Dealer]

1.6 Hard



The only battle that presented any challenge was when I first past the garrison and Rutger came after me.



I chose to explore the dungeon first, seemed more fun to follow the story line. When I got back topside and passed the garrison with Godric's now substantial army (I had collected all gold from chests and bought 40,000 gp worth of troops from that first military outpost before emerging. That plus the garrison troops gave Godric an impressive army.



I think I could have beaten Rutger with Godric but it looked like the casualties were going to be unacceptable, even though Godric knew Resurrection. I sent Zehir instead with his original troops plus some single peasants. I caught a break and the battlefield gave some good cover to help me keep me keep my little band alive. Using puppet master and frenzy I used Rutger's troops to fight for me. I don't think I ever got around to summoning my Phoenix.



I did have a lot of trouble with his Imperial Griffins. Had to restart a couple of time to deal with them. When they launched their battle dive I missed my chance to puppet master them and then they were in the middle of my troops so frenzy wasn't a good option.



From there I took my time to finish the map. I fought Markal the first week of month four. By then I had added over 100 Archangels and 144 Inquisitors and got Sandro's Cloak and the Unicorn Bow from the artifact merchant. The fights against Markel were trivial once I knew each hero had to fight.



I could have had a much bigger army, the towns were producing creatures much faster than I could buy them. I even had a couple thousand peasants chipping in as well and a bag of gold and a sack of gold. My daily income was about 19,000 gp per day and I still only bought Archangels and some of the shooters.



And what's with the advice about hiring another hero to go get Godric. I wasn't allowed to hire another hero at any point.