How to beat the 1st Necro Map?

[HellsChicken]

I'm stumped with the fight for the last city, guarded by Salvatore. I own the rest of the land, and am at max level. No matter how many weeks I let go by so I can buy more creatures, he always remains as "Deadly" and indeed is, with a good 3x my army size. Seems like I've hit a brick wall, there's no way to even catch up. Any ideas?

[Ell1e]

Starting with the obvious, have you converted and built every town?

What's his weekly growth compared to yours? (Just attack and retreat on the last and first day of a week to see)

[pacovf]

Note that on the first day of the week, since you play before him, he won't have a chance to recruit units before you do.

If you have more than one hero, you can make them camp on his resource buildings to hinder his resource earning a bit and boost yours. Especially useful for its creature dwellings, since he will probably earn enough money to recruit them all anyway.

If you have already reached the level cap, there's not much room for improvement. If you hadn't, some useful skills would be storm arrows (for your spearmen), (mass) life drain, (mass) regeneration, reinforcements, and archery. And don't use your specters' healing unless it will harm an enemy stack (and hopefully more than one). Even if Salvatore outnumbers you, with some superior tactics you may still win (attack the marksmen first, and don't get your stacks in a straight line!). The basic attack of Anastasya will also get you necromancy points if you kill the stack quickly afterwards. Be careful with Salvatore's glories, they will dispel the positive buffs (as life drain and regenerate) from your units.

You should have 3 cities and some forts churning core creatures (don't forget to convert the dwellings too!) to its single city (even though he gets some elites too), so you will eventually outgrow him. It might take a while, though... Don't forget to upgrade your dwellings, and build all your special buildings! Also, if you haven't converted a Haven city for whatever (bad?) reason, abuse its artifact shop to get the best ones, they get renewed every week (and every time you reload a save, if you are into that...). Check which artifacts you have, and equip the best ones. Don't forget your dinasty weapon (the one you get in this mission gives +5 initiative to your units at level 2, which is a great boost).

Also take into account that thanks to your altars of eternal servitude, if you are swimming in money, you can still suicide-attack Salvatore and not lose a single unit afterwards (and even resurrect Anastasya for free with extra stats if you have the corresponding building), you can wear him down that way. Remember to raise the lost units in the following day, or you will lose them. Note that Salvatore will gain some experience (though it should be negligible), and that he can raise vestals back, so don't prioritize them.

Hope that this will help!