The Cultist → The Conquest

[Grail Quest]

Going into this scenario with Diplomacy helps you recruit the large cerebus stack near the sulfur mine. Going in with Mass Slow is essential for defeating the earth elementals with just sprites. Otherwise, if they split into 3 stacks, they can outmaneuver each stack of sprites one at a time.

[Thlypsis]

The random spawns of weekly creatures really helped me out. I captured the first sylvan town right away, and diplomacy allowed me to pick up 100 sprites at the beginning of week two. I was behind in xp from rushing through the previous scenarios, and picking off the sylvan spawns along my path really let me catch up. Nightmares, along with tactics, were ideal for rushing at hunters before they could get a shot off. At the gates of the NW town was a stack of 200 sprites, who joined me for 21000 gold. That made the next battle oh-so-easy. I ignored the druids in the center and made an exploratory beeline for the NE town, and a group of 300 sprites joined me. They made short work of Gilraen. I ended up winning on the first day of month 2. Also, phantasmal forces on a stack of hundreds of sprites will win any battle, except against towns and double-shooting hunters.
Edited on Sat, Sep 22 2007, 00:42 by Thlypsis

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

I found the mission not that hard on 1.0 Hard.I fought Gilrean at the castle in the NE,with 2 emeralds from NE(i still had green dragons@treants in NW),15 A treants,25 Silverunicorn,30 Elder Druid(they got killed by Mh),70 MH,and other units.He had 5 E dragons,,15 A treants,30 Silver Unicorns,30 Old druids,70 MH,250 Wardancers and !!!500 Sprites.Tip found in walkthrough for C3M2 ToE:kill first Catapult with Mh(enemy Master hunters don't target yours yet),then flyers and archers and maybe ballista.Also on 1.0 while you raise dead troops non-undead and while the enemy flees,they stay intact.This way,from my 10-frenzykilled Mh-s I obtained 40+ after the battle.

[Abruzzi]

I am trying to pass all Heroes 5 parts now on Heroic, and came to this Mission, and thank to the stupid PC, i made it. I think im on the newest version, 1.5 or so. took the second town ASAP, then when Gilraen came to "visit me", i saw he had a too big force, still, id won in a town siege, so i waited till he gets distracted by an demon hero, to rush to south, took a chance to run for his super town, took it 1 day before new week, and took many new troops, after that, Gilraen took my second town, and stayed forever in it. i got many troops in many weeks, and took the Druids out before taking the first town. So the mission was never written in the quest log, still, killed the Druids. Than, a combined force of two elven towns outgrew Gilraen, and i won. Now to my hated mission, the Ship...

[sansa]

Heroic, latest patch.

Bonus: 4 Nightmares

Starting skills : Power of Speed,

Teleport Assault

Basic Dark Magic



1. aim : Reach key to Inferno Military Post at least Day7 Week2 Month1



Pick familiars and take NO any damage from Gilrean, learn Basic Luck in Witch Hut. Before reach Rakshasas, get Soldier's Luck (for effective Nightmare's Fear) and Weakening Strike.

Try to avoid playing Demonlord with Sylvan creatures, so take S town at the very end of the game.. It will stay dormant, and the Druid astrologists won't claim every week of the Sylvan creatures.



Hire new hero and teach him Resourcefulness before he/she starts picking resources, meanwhile , let Agrael take mines in this order: Ore, Gold, Mercury, Gem, eventually Crystal, and than to the west of S town :Wood, Sulfur and Gold mine. Kill Golems, Ents guarding Red keymaster's tent, Dancers guarding random artifact and so on to sprites guarding Necklace of the Lion.

Kill Unicorns and and then attack Rakshasas. Battle is tough but with Nightmares' lucky Fear effect and Frightful aura and Agraels' Excruciating Weakening Strike the looses are small indeed.



Hire new hero to take the Inferno Military Post if Agrael can't reach it before the date of ordered aim. Post is not fixed, so you can get even all Tier4-7 theoretically.

Town is capped with level5 with no citadel, so nice is to get succubi and nightmares to boost dwelling. I got level 5 and 7.



Buy all army you can, take Ring of vitality guarded by Assassins and random magical staff guarded by Unicorns, and so on and on through to the eastern end of the road, where probably Gilraen broke killing Emerald Dragons. I took him Scroll of Frenzy in front of his nose and won him very easy, by that time already learned Swarming Gate and Master of Mind.

Took the empty NE town(hire guardian!), and turn back west to earth elementals ( better avoid Phoenixes) where you meet a hero with infernal reinfortsments. Visiting Hill Fort guarded by water elementals - as you want, but taking NW town now is just formality, meeting with the hero who came through northern road from NE town.



Now you are probably one level to reach cap, so learn Dark Renewal/Expert Luck in Syllana Ancient guarded by Ents in the middle of the map, check if you had pick all 6 boost ups, and enter triumphaly in the S town.



Its very nice play without all that sprites and Cornish pixies swarming around, and instead with bad morale suffering-Sylvans, using Gating, which is Demon Lords primal skill:-)



Recommends for next skills and abilities: Dead man's curse, Urgash Call, Leadership, Recruitment, Gate Master, Hellfire, Diplomacy (in this order).

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

I started Heroes 5 campaigns again,now on heroic and got to this mission.I retried this campaign a lot to give Agrael light magic (happened to get leadership,too) but missed luck however.Now I restarted the mission 3-4 times due to tactical reasons.I changed tactics this time,aiming for mage guild 5 along with expert light for ressurection.Happened to hire Grawl so I can get him to learn some tough Destruction spells to help me against some tough creeps,and got luck from my first level-up.I hope that ressurection will help me to get the magi and earth elemental stacks without too many losses(atleast to have enough to get 2nd Sylvan town).The rush against elementals is too costly for me,on my best try I got past them with 10 hell hounds and 8 succubi,using mark of the damned,but the sylvan heroes were too tough to defeat.

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

I finally did the mission after reloading a lot.Ths time,I avoided the S town(it doesn't do anything special,other than spawning countless Sylvans).In the first fight with Gilraen,I couldn't help but lose 30 familiars,my skills were quite mediocre,I didn't get luck until the end of the mission(got advanced luck after the final fight).



I had luck with a stack of skellie archers,~75,that helped later.I also hired Grawl for a mule.I took the important mines,killed all those stacks that are right before the large master hunter stack,then returned to go via the northern road.I let autocombat solve the magi battle,then headed towards earth elementals.



In the battle I used Mark of the Damned on each elemental stack in turn,gated en masse,and split Infernal troops for maximum effect,then unleashed all my attacks on the Marked guy to kill him due to Unlimited Retaliation..I barely got away with that.



Afterwards,I took over the NE town,and built it up to tier 5 with upgrades,6 and 7 withoyut upgrades,for a total of ~35 master hunters,4 dragons,13 treants,15 silver unicorns,20 elder druids and some low-tiers.At this time Gilraen showed up in the middle.By that time,I also had mage guild 5 with ressurection and Expert Light magic,so got it.I headed for Gilraen,which went for the S town,along with the NE hero that never got killed by me(she was scared by my might).



I fought the NW hero,and with ressurection I cut down on the losses,then had to fight Gilraen in quick combat(I had no idea on how to fight him with an inferior army and frankly mediocrized skill choices),then green turtled,I built up Hallin and recruited army from both castles,also killed druids in the week I got Hallin,and finally the enemy hero went out.I barely killed her with 5 Ancient treants left,them marched towards Ynthil to kill 2 more weak heroes,one with ~150 sprites,and one in town with 15 sprites.WIN!

[konzky]

I think it is more fun to play this mission as it was designed (played on hard).



So I conquered the S-town in the first week, Sylvan creatures started spawning, took the NW town in week 2, finished the Druids in week 3, spawning stopped. Gilraen gave me a hard time, but I always bought my castles empty before he conquered them. Then I reconquered them before the new week. Caught him gladly in the S town. After he was finished, the rest was just a matter of time.



The spawned creatures are part of the map concept, so just accept the challenge. It's more fun!

[osoviejo]

If you want to select the pit fiends as your bonus, the easiest way to keep them both past the initial encounter is to not deploy them. The primary target then becomes the imps, and if you're lucky you'll lose fewer than ten before he flees. Use both buff locations, upgrade the imps on your first day build, and grab the free troops before hitting the garrison. He bails quickly.

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

3rd time doing this mission,this is quite hard BUT not impossible.The key is to get your starting town to Hell Hounds.And,as always,exploit the AI.I didn't capture the S town just as in my last playthrough,but I got the gold @gem mines.The Mages are so-so if you still have a Nightmare/you have cerberi(only by week 2 tho) and happen to have Tactics;otherwise,expect t lose all but a pack of Familiars and 5-10 hell hounds(not Quick).Then Talanar came in front of me(courtesy of my good planning,he couldn't kill me outright) with a ton of army.I tried to attack him,LOSS.I went back to distract with my mule,FAIL.I attacked the Unicorns to run in a circle,this was the closest one.I recruited all I had from the Inferno,chained it to me,but I was somewhat weakened by the 24 unis blocking the way,and whilst Talanar stopped the chase by going in Hallin,the army in Firios was too tough to bear,with 2 weeks of no-wall production against my 20 skellies,10 zombies,8 succubi 25 HH 16 imps etc.

Only the last time did I succeed,I didn't attack the Unis,instead I backtracked and let Talanar enter Hallin.Same reinforcement routine,rush of Firios.However,the AI was too dumb to pool his armies into the castle,instead sent a half of it on the open field.Nonetheless my Phantom Forces saved the day and I lost only 8 familiars and 8 HH.The castle siege was harder but nothing unbearable,and I lost 15 pixies and some other crap like that.Now that the hardest part is over,I'm expecting a fried Gilraen soon.Cheers



EDIT:it took me a bvit of trial and error vs Gilraen,but I squeezed through.The key in this battle is to Phantom Force like mad your Master Hunters(I had only 25 though :/ ) and take all out with them.Sending the Dragons(I got 4 emeralds,green got none) to a tile from which they can attack the enemy Master Hunters and Sprites(I got good

Morale at this spot which almost turned it for me) is crucial.Use your hunters to wipe out half the enemy's Druids-my hunters had Warding proc too,and with 2 lucky shots they killed 10 of their druids.The Dragons will get killed by their melee but it doesn't matter.Send your(7) treants to block the door(blown up 1st turn unfortunately) and tangle the unicorns which will come soon.(That darn 11 Silver Uni stack killed in 2 lucky strikes both my Dancers and 9 Silver Unis!).Gilraen will cast Frenzy on your MH that's why you keep them in a corner,far from the Druids.They evewn Frenzied the Unis when they were near my MH's but Sprites have a cleanse,USE it.Druids bolt the enemy druids then attack whatever comes at the gate.When Agrael is almost out of mana slap a Righteous Might and attack their Ancient Treants non-stop.My Treants also tangled the Dancers until my Hunters finished them off.I limped out with 9 Hunters and 12 Druids,but heh,the battle was won,aye?
Edited on Sat, Dec 03 2011, 05:31 by VAMPSVSZOUNDS

[ShadowLiberal]

A word of advise, it's after 3 and a half weeks that Gilraen and the others bust through the dragons to the north and start to chase you around (on Heroic anyway).



I agree with what Grail Quest said earlier, who the hell play tested this stupid map? This is single handedly the hardest map in the game because of how poorly thought out it was.



1) Your inferno town is limited to just a town hall and a fort and up to tier 5 creatures WHY? That makes no sense, from a balance perspective or a story one. If Agrael has those limits from being a traitor to the demon sovereign then why do any of the devils continue to follow Agrael's orders?



2) Sansa is right that the Inferno troops you get the Inferno outpost are random. I thought things may have been finally going my way playing this map on Heroic after a lot of reloads when I finally got the key to the Inferno outpost. I claimed the Inferno outpost however, and had only sucubi's available for hire! I was expecting pit fiends and devils, not the weakest unit I'm randomly allowed to get. That randomness single handedly screwed me and my already slim odds over royally, how am I supposed to beat enemy armies with a dozen Treants and half a dozen dragons without any Tier 6 or 7 creatures?



3) Not being able to capture the southern town without causing every single week to be a week of Sylvan creatures is just plain nuts. If the Sylvan can just declare every single week their own week then why can't I and everyone else in the game who's defending their land do the same thing? This makes no sense from a story perspective. It also farther screws over your pitiful Inferno town by boosting the Sylvan troop production even more then the castles do that your inferno town lacks.



Raelag's mission #3 may have been really really difficult, but it was still quite fun, and didn't give you insane handicaps of no city hall or castle in any of your towns. Nor did the enemies decide to declare every single week the week of Dungeon Creatures.

[ShadowLiberal]

Just beat this mission in heroic after redoing the entire campaign.



The only way to really turn the tide is to go for a triple flaming ballista build on Agrael, and have it ready by the start of this mission. Demon Lords can have the strongest ballista thanks to their high attack and knowledge stats.



This is only available if you use the mods to have all heroes 5 campaigns available in TOTE.



I decided after that to focus on getting Urgash's Call, since I already had 1/3 of the requirements for it.

[Falconian]

Not sure why this desperation on using Sylvan troops etc. Your army is more than enough to complete this mission.



Simply put: don't take the first town to avoid triggering the thing, take everything you can and develop your city. Soon enough you'll have a good enough army to destroy the guy.



The battle requires knowledge of how to play Inferno properly against Sylvan... aka do NOT rush. If you rush you get owned.

He will play classic sylvan defensive shooter, which is a flawed strategy against an hero with +20% initiative like you.



First turn, gate everything and seduce their strongest units into killing archers; this should be enough to make them a lesser threat.

Kill the dragons easily with whatever you want; you could try with horses to get a lucky fear or just kill them with leap.

Now his strongest unit are the blade dancers: he had 500 in my game and they hit the hardest of anything.

The trick is to waste their retaliation with a gated stack, then focus them to death.

Next target is sprites, easy to kill but don't skip them as they deal a lot of damage (I think in my game he had like 700).

Now your units should all be alive for the most part, as you made him waste his attacks on the gated units.

He's pretty much food for Inferno now, continue to focus their units stack-by-stack until he's clearly hopeless and will retreat for good.



With my hero I went light magic. In this order, I casted: mass stoneskin, mass haste, mass righteous might.

But I think going with anything would have worked the same, if the previous missions weren't such a rush I'd have chosen dark probably.



It's dead easy guys. Learn to gate



Edit: Obviously this was on Heroic.
Edited on Sun, Mar 04 2012, 20:32 by Falconian

[Peredhil]

Even better,assuming you have Exp Logistics and Power of Speed(aiming for ultimate)- take first Sylvan in day 2,conquer NW Sylvan in day 8-the most difficult part is to defeat the mages,but an all-out assault will do.Gather more armies from NW Sylvan and defeat druids in W2D7.Voila,you rush,don't get owned,and after that defeating Gilraen is a piece of cake.If you are efficient with tactics,you'll keep all Inferno troops alive,except for demons and imps.

And no seducing involved if you use H5 1.6,obviously,on heroic.

[ShadowLiberal]

Falconian, the enemy will still have 3 towns to your 1. While one of the towns, the first one, never builds anything, the NE town starts fully built, and the NW town builds up fast.

With your town limited to just tier 5 creatures, the longer you wait the stronger the enemy will get. The more Tier 6 and 7 creatures you have to kill the longer your odds get.

To put it simply, you HAVE to strike in the first few weeks, otherwise the enemy heroes build up too big of an army for you to overcome, no matter how many creatures you gate in.

[ShadowLiberal]

Just ran through this mission again with the triple flaming ballista build, still had a LOT of trouble (such as a week of disease, RIGHT before Gilraen attacked me with an army outnumbering mine over 5 to 1), and have a few more tips for people who may still have trouble with this map.



1) Week #1, flag all mines you can, DO NOT conquer the first town yet until week #2, or maybe don't conquer it at all (I didn't try that, but you'll miss out on lots of relatively easy experience)



2) DO NOT fight your way up north towards Gilraen, he WILL slaughter you even with your triple flaming ballista.



3) DO NOT try to fight your way to the druids that keep on summoning more neutral stacks, you will get killed.



3) Instead, before Gilraen comes down, go north, then when you reach the dragons head towards the north west town, grabbing mines and unit spawners along the way, but make sure you seize the NW town by day 2 of the new week so you get a fresh week of growth



4) When you fight Gilraen make sure you're hiding in a castle. Take out the archers ASAP.



5) If you have the raise dead spell, then keep on using it the stacks Gilraen just killed (especially if Agrael gets his turn right before Gilraen). I managed to waste both most of Gilraen's turns, and one of his archer stacks, PLUS keep 3 of my 7 stacks alive without too much of a scratch on them. Before I ran through the same battle without raise dead and lost when Gilraen had just 1 freaking treant left.



6) Once Gilraen is dead things will be infinitely easier, just make sure to get a fresh week of troops before taking on other enemy heroes.

[Sunlover]

Wanted to put in my 2 cents...played this on Hard, patch 1.06 (latest).



I tried this with about 30 variants - following the guidelines here (now FAULTY - someone really needs to edit it out now!! :O ), with Enlightenment, Dark Magic, Light Magic, Dark and Light Magic, all 3 (on top of the obvious ones like Logistics, Destructive Magic and...I forget ). Every one of them ended in failure. Why? Because I inevitably, somewhere from the beginning of week 2 to the beginning of week 4, took the southernmost castle.



I finally resolved to not take the southernmost castle. I had a "conveyor" for the first 3 weeks (demon), and eventually picked up Talanar, sitting from where I'd killed him at level 13. He shuttled the NE castle's troops to me once and the NW castle's troops to me when Gilraen was breathing right in his face. I didn't do it as quickly as I believe I could have done it now, and for whatever reason, when I visited the NW castle the 1st time and a level 5 magic guild was there, it didn't give me Town Portal. It *weirdly* did the 2nd time (?!??!). As soon as I got that, the game was for all intents and purposes over...I also had Talanar darting back and forth in the SE corner, luring off Gilraen, who is a blithering idiot when that southern castle isn't taken..



I let the last hero hammer away at me a bit more than I needed to; whenever they got a lucky hit in and decimated nearly an entire stack with a relatively weak army, I'd just rez my Emerald Dragon corpses. They hated that. >:)



3 months, 3 weeks was what it took me...I think I could have done it now in 3 months, 2 weeks or even 1 week if I fine tuned it. Simply put, if you take that southern castle as this guide "recommends" (admittedly it was written X # of patches ago), you will die. Even if your army gets close to Gilraen's size, you will get your face slammed into the gravel with his godlike archers, crazy sprite #s and so on (I took him on once and he had over 1500 sprites...I had about 1100...it just didn't matter). Agrael was level 22 when he finished; but that's fine because there's plenty of room to catch up those levels on the next chapter, "The Ship".



(I don't even want to think how badly you'll be raped if you take the south castle on Heroic and try to win )

[stachnie]

Patch 1.06, Heroic. I have restarted this mission many times for two reasons. 1: I wanted to get certain skills at the witch hut (Light Magic or Enlightenment). 2: After taking S town I got jammed by huge stacks of Sylvan creatures. Theoretically it could hurt both sides but I noticed that they often joined Sylvan heroes.



The key to win this mission was to avoid town S - I flagged most of the mines, got reinforcements from the Inferno town (up to Succubi, plus upgrade to Cerberi) and I headed to the NW town. It was quite well developped (Fort, upgraded lvl 1-3, unupgraded lvl 5 and 6 but no Mage Guild). After I had built Capitol and Castle I had a very difficult defensive battle against Gilraen (I had to replay it a few times) - finally I lost almost everything apart from Horned Overseers and a few Succubi. I sent a hero with reinforcements (fortunately, Elves unlocked the Hill Fort), won one-two battles using Inferno troops and switched to Sylvan ones.



As soon as I felt strong enough, i started to clear the map: flagged some mines, took the armor from Archangels, Then I left remaining Sylvan troops in NW town and took Inferno ones instead, went to Inferno town, got big reinforcements and captured NE town. At this point the map was won: I killed the druids (I was surprised by ambush and I lost a lot of troops but I didn't care), switched to Sylvan troops again and there were no heroes or creatures that could stop me. I cleared almost entire map and attacked S town. It was surprisingly easy: they didn't even built the Fort!
Edited on Fri, Jul 04 2014, 13:39 by stachnie

[hprwhg12]

Heroic 1.6

It is difficult, (a fair bit of raping IS involved Sunlover...lol) but I eventually win, with many restarts for various reasons (in a sense me raping back) by taking the S town first. I always go for expert logistics and tactics asap in 1st scenario, mainly for the second and this scenario.



I choose the Nightmares. I hire 2 demon heroes to start (a lot of restarting) put all troops on Agreal and B-line for the gate. Attack. Finish his movement. Then have secondary hero meet with Agreal, switch troops and let him fight the pukes in Agreals way. Move Agreal a step ahead of him when finished. Then switch troops back to Agreal. Taking the S town on Day 2. Well Day 3 I am one step away from taking it on day 2. Giving you a full month to month 1/2 before Gilrean appears.



Next big restart is having wood and gems being the random resource, so trees and dragons can be purchased. I pay little attention to my hell town other than for money. I have never seen the AI attack the hell town and believe they can't cross the gate. I take over what mines I can (some are guarded very well) and the +1 moral necklace to help with mixed troops. Doing all of above with as little troop loss as possible obviously.



I save Day 1 month 1, to determine where/when Gilrean will come. Once that is determined I first see if he will attack Agreal in town with hopefully a castle but wood is a problem so citadel is usually what I have, if he does I usually win (trees are a BIG help,usually all I have left). Then the rest is a piece of cake. If he wont attack me while in town I reload save and then let him take over the town, having him fight the week worth of troops inside with secondary hero so he cant instantly buy more troops, as I make way for the NW town with Agreal. Then take over NE via the upper road or if Gilrean decides to go back to NE I go back to S town, but that is rare.



Sometime I deal with the druids in between NW and NE but usually don't have the time to waste. It can sometimes be a power struggle, going back and forth owning two then one sylvan town, but Gilrean does not seem to add many more troops to his army when visiting a town. Usually he leaves troops to defend from me coming again and runs off to take back what I took or hunt down a puke hero I have running around nearby. Where as I buy/use a hero and rush all troops to Agreal as best as I can, leaving towns empty, making me consistently stronger week by week while he gains very little.

[facanfutyulo]

Heroic 1.5
I write my solution becouse this map can give headache very Easily I have expert logistic and teleport assault (most important) and i follow the way to earn Urgash's Call. I have many restart to find this way

Choose the nightmares, but you lose at least 1 if Gilraen hit by his attack

-Restart the game till you got a good skills from the witch hut
-Fight good with the gated troops, split your troops to 7 and use mark of the damned ability and block the enemy creatures movement
-Don't attack the first castle, than you have a month to get some strenght so fight and grow your heroes as you can
-Save a lot becouse it needs to trick Gilraen
-Gilraen is come to his main castle cross the emerald dragons map (8)
-Save and place yourself to Gilraen as close as you can but he cant reach you
-In my game Gilraen dont pick up the frenzy scroll and rush over me
-Go to map (9) and fight all creatures who cross your way than run around the road and pick up the frenzy scroll map (8)
-then charge your main casle as fast as you can and make sure to reach his main casle before the new Week has started,
-the defensive army is very weak at the point (in my game 50 sprite-s and 50 peasants) so you can take the Sylvan main castle
-the main castle is lvl 34 so you are beyond the heaviest part, take some dragon hunter and druid and kill Gilraen
-Capture the remaning town, (dont need to kill the Druids on map (D) )
-and victory

I hope this can help some player