3-rd dreaded mission in the Inferno Campain

[Bardolph]

I don't want to sound picky, but has anyone noticed that the 3-rd mission in the demon campaign is really, really, ridiculously HARD! I have wasted 2 hours than got vanquished by the eleven hero with 5 dragons and 100 master hunters and I couldn't build pit lords or demons!
Tried again and got smashed by another one with 17 treants and tons of other troops.
Maybe I'm overreacting but this seems way too hard for the normal setting. It's like Steadwick's Fall scenario in Heroes 3 for those of you who remember. That scenario was fixed by a patch, maybe there is a patch that fixes this?
Is the rest of the later missions this hard because if they are I don't want to continue to play this game.
Maybe I can't play this game? I finished the Haven campaign on hard (including the last mission). I honestly don't know if the problem is my play skills or the mission.
Please tell me if you know tips about this and if you have encountered another mission this hard.

[Gus]

well, there is a post about it, but yeah, you don't have much room to make mistakes, and you must take castles soon so that you can build up and avoid being attacked en masse.

if you're really tired of spending time on it, you can always cheat to get a good army. use it as a last resort though, cause it may ruin the game for you.

[Wolfshanze]

KILL ALL DRUIDS.

They are the ones making sylvans all over the map that end up in your enemy's armies.

Kill the druids as quick as you can, and this becomes a much simpler scenario.

[Bardolph]

KILL ALL DRUIDS.

You mean the ones sitting in the center of the map? I would like that but the problem is Gilraen likes to stroll over there. Odds are if I take the left road I'll meet some grouchy hero showing off his dragons.

[Metathron]

KILL ALL DRUIDS.

They are the ones making sylvans all over the map that end up in your enemy's armies.

Kill the druids as quick as you can, and this becomes a much simpler scenario.

On my second attempt at this map, I did try this, as soon as I could (which was not that soon), but lo and behold, Gilraen popped outta nowhere and made short work of my limited army. I quite enjoyed entering the cheat code and playing out a vendetta against him after that!

[nosfe]

build up a town to castle, get many archers and pathom forces; get the gilrean to follow you, and attack you in the castle; focus fire on the catapult, then dragon/archers/druids and its over; the rest of his units will just stand there; don't forget that the comp loves to attack your panthom units; master hunters usualy have enough initiative to atack once before it gets wiped(the panthom version)

[DaemianLucifer]

Act quickly,take the sylvan towns as soon as possible(a bit over a month is needed),and concentrate just on sylvan troops.Use your initial troops(dont buy any new demons)until all get killed,then switch them with sylvan troops that taged along with a secondary hero.Disregard the druids and concentrate on towns.Although,if you get an opening to destroy the druids with minimal losses,grab it!Use phantom forces and/or gating heavily.And be quick.Be very quick!

[wolf8t8t]

I swear I hate this map.... Here's the tear jerking story:

I was on fire, this map had guns, I had missles. day 3 I had the first elf town. Day 7 it was pretty much built up with some units. I had already cleared out most of the mines with my starter army. Got all of the elf units smashed the earth elementals. Took over the castle while it was still a cit mind you. Got treants. Had a lovely little castle going..... then I seriously think I pissed the game off...... That elven doosh came out with 5 dragons, 10 A. treants, 20 s unicorns, 30 deer druids, 60 super elves, 80 war dancers, 600 sprites....... never have I seen the computer move soooo far in 2 days since the days of playin WOG..... it was day 5 and they got to attack on day 7..... I'm in shock! (please note tho the numbers of the units are right, I might be off on the week) It was silly how badly he beat me..... like a red headed step child...... I think I now have shell shock and I need sleep

[BlueBlade]

This map is hell, I restarted it 3 times (or was it 4?!). I'm currently on the last campain, and it's the only map I ever needed to restart. The thing is, you really have to do it just right, especially if you're playing on Heroic difficulty.

If you do it right, Gilrael won't be a bother until you are able to deal with it. One thing, I don't think it's possible at all to do this map on Heroic (or maybe even on Normal or Hard) if you didn't get the Phantom Forces spell in the 2nd mission. Expert Logisics is also a must. If you didn't pick these up, I'm afraid you have to restart from there, cause you won't be able to do this one. Here's how I did it:

First, get some extra imps from the dwelling at the start, upgrade & hire all you can from castle, then go for the first elf town. This is the last time you touch the Inferno town, don't bother with it at all after that. The only thing you should bother with are the two gold mines near the town.

Upgrade the sprites you got to pixies right away, then go follow the forest path to the right of the town, the one with a Tree of Knowledge. Follow the road north to the 2nd elf town. If you do it right, you can take the 2nd elf town in the middle of week 2, meaning the town won't be fortified. Make sure to use Phantom Forces to keep from losing many troops.

As soon as you got the 2nd elf town, you head for the druids. If you don't lose any time, you will kill them in the 3rd week, before the scripted AI unleashes Gilrael.

If you do this right, you got two very early towns and you're rid of the druids before Gilrael even started towards you.

The only hard thing left is to get rid of Gilrael when he shows up. You can try to soften him up with another hero first, or whatever. The important thing is, with the druids gone, he won't be able to get any reinforcements, meaning you should be able to get him fairly easily through attrition.

This worked for me on Heroic settings, should be a tad bit easier if you're playing an easier difficulty, but basically this strat works very well. Good luck!

[Bardolph]

I did it! Indeed, if you focus on the sylvan towns and go to the druids quickly this mission is easy.
I don't know , if this is the inferno campaign, why do you develop Sylvan towns and raise armies of Sylvan creatures? For the sake of the story? This isn't Othello or anything. It shouldn't change gameplay that much, in my opinion.
Thanks to everyone who posted some advice.

[Romanov77]

Im waiting for the patch.

Im not going to script-abuse.

[Wolfshanze]

One thing that is sad about the Inferno campaign, you spend very little time actually getting to use an Inferno town (unlimited especially) in the entire campaign compared with other towns (Sylvan especially).

[Mirage]

If you do it right, Gilrael won't be a bother until you are able to deal with it. One thing, I don't think it's possible at all to do this map on Heroic (or maybe even on Normal or Hard) if you didn't get the Phantom Forces spell in the 2nd mission. Expert Logisics is also a must. If you didn't pick these up, I'm afraid you have to restart from there, cause you won't be able to do this one.

While I agree this would have probably been much easier with the conditions you mentioned I actually managed to beat the map on my first try on normal difficulty with no phantom forces and Agreal did no have Expert Logistics. However I do not recommend it because it took me an excrutiatingly long time to win. Stubborness > AI. It took me so long I leveled Agreal and a new Sylvan hero both up to 24 (cap) by the time I won. I noticed for some reason as long as I had NO troops in my castles Gilraen would not attack them and he never went after my inferno town or anywhere west of the southernmost sylvan town. Anyways eventually I won by owning 3/4 towns and building up the two sylvan towns until I outnumbered him by about 50% and lvl 24 Gilraen still put up a helluva fight. BTW I used my sylvan hero to win because she had alot of defense and half decent attack and when dealing with armies of 50+dragons etc. spells are seemed useless.

Anyway just wanted to share my experience, I'm sure it would have been a lot easier with Phantom forces and a rush tactic, but I just wouldn't give Gilraen the satisfaction of making me restart.

[Asjo]

Well, all my games where both the enemy and I had castles in campaign were really long. I only figured out the druid bit once I looked here on forums, so I actually solved that last (I'm not sure they appeared before I took my third castle actually). That was good, though, because once I amassed a big army I had once sylvan and one inferno hero. My sylvan army got insanely big from simply going around the map and having monsters either flee (to save time, I still got enough experience) or join my army. I mean, who can do anything against 1000 master hunters?

There goes a long story before that, though. The AI could have easily killed me the entire game, but like in all campaign missions, it didn't. I started off the game agressively, conquering as much last as possible and taking the sylvan town within a few turns. I kept on going and was distracted a big, so I was late to take the inferno town. It was that or restart, though, so after having lost what seemed like an invisible fight twice, things suddenly worked out the third time, and I won confortably. After a short time I had started building armies in both my castles, ready to defend once I saw how much bigger the opponent's army was. I think I experienced one big attack from one of the weaker heroes of my opponent at that point. In earlier campaign missions the AI had conveniently split up its armies, but in this mission, at least to begin with, its main army was feeding of all its castles.

I had to do so many saves because every turn was crucial. There was one point where a few moves of a hero decided the fate of half my army and my one castle. I discoved that as long as I stayed in the bottom left corner of the map, the enemy hero wouldn't follow me. I also found out that he wouldn't attack the sylvan castle as long as it was unprotected. Using this knowledge, I got by at the mercy of the green player. The problem was that it would take me endless time to build up a strong enough army to have the slightest chance of beating my opponent. I sacrificed a few heroes and saved a lot of games testing how far I could explore the map - which wasn't far. The areas near the enemy castles were fearcely guarded, and the second I got too close and stepped out of my "safe zone" on the bottom left corner, I was hunted as by killer dogs.

However, then suddenly one thing changed everything. In my quest to gain advantage I had been manipulating the movement of the AI as to make him recruit creates for his smaller armies and kill those when given the chance. Having spotted the enemy hero in the left side of the map, I took my chances. I had been getting logistics as a skill so I had a chance to make a run for it if the enemy main hero came. So, I took the right hand castle, and suddenly the game was mine. The main hero for some reason was stuck inside the left hand castle for the rest of the game. All I had to do was the kill a hero with a small army running around the map. He did have one other hero, but he only used it to get a wood mine once and then run back to the castle. I don't know if this was triggered by my capture or the fact that I moved a small hero of mine close to the left hand castle - a sort of defensive move. The AI had earlier attacked me when I tried to take the right hand castle, so I found it strange. All that was left for me was to gather an invicible army and go kill him. Took me some time, needless to say, but he didn't stand a chance. Oh, and yes, to kill those damned druids.

[Baduum]

Hello! My first post/reply on these forums. What really strikes me with this mission is how lucky i must have been.

When i did this mission, Gilraen just stayed in his second town in the top eastern corner until i went there and owned him. Everyone of my friends says that mission is a pain, guess i was just lucky.

Or maybe cause i played on normal?

Btw i did the druids last after all the other towns.

[Asjo]

Baduum, it seems our experience were somewhat similar, although not quite. What I described in my above post was from playing on normal difficulty. So, I guess you got quite lucky.

[Baduum]

Really strange then, cause i had no big problem with this map.. And i am not a good player.. yet perhaps Gilraen was to busy with the trees and whatnot.

Off topic: the one mission that has presented problems (cept from the bugs i have encountered) was necro mission 2.

[Othello]

Oh man, I've been playing this mission for 3 or 4 days now, I've restarted once. I haven't had a single problem with Gilraen, but his friends are another story. I'm going to have to start over again, because right now I'm at a point where all I can do is run around the map trying to flee from someone with 61 Emerald Dragons, 400 Master Hunters, 300 or so regular Hunters, 641 Pixies, ~400 War Dancers.... I usually like to take my time in these missions, massing a large army and exploring the map first, but it looks like there's no way I can outpace the growth of the CPU.

[DaemianLucifer]

Hello! My first post/reply on these forums. What really strikes me with this mission is how lucky i must have been.

When i did this mission, Gilraen just stayed in his second town in the top eastern corner until i went there and owned him. Everyone of my friends says that mission is a pain, guess i was just lucky.

Or maybe cause i played on normal?

Btw i did the druids last after all the other towns.

You got lucky.I played on hard,yet this map wasnt that hard to me,even though I had some unlucky events happening.

Oh man, I've been playing this mission for 3 or 4 days now, I've restarted once. I haven't had a single problem with Gilraen, but his friends are another story. I'm going to have to start over again, because right now I'm at a point where all I can do is run around the map trying to flee from someone with 61 Emerald Dragons, 400 Master Hunters, 300 or so regular Hunters, 641 Pixies, ~400 War Dancers.... I usually like to take my time in these missions, massing a large army and exploring the map first, but it looks like there's no way I can outpace the growth of the CPU.

This map is a classic HIII hardest difficulty.You have to act quick,and relly on small,yet quality armies,with minimal losses.

[tonym]

Mark me down as another one who beat this map the long way. The map isn't nearly as hard as it seems once you understand that the enemy heroes don't attack your cities. Once you understand that you have as much time as you need to finish the mission. My game plan (on Hard difficulty) went like this, its not as spectacular as the rush method but it worked:

1) Don't develop the Inferno city (except for Resource Silo and Money generating building), set up the southern Elven city as your main base.
2) Spend the first few weeks building up the troop production of your elf city, don't worry about the "upgrade unit" buildings until you've built all the base buildings to maximise your population growth.
3) Send your hero with his starting army to collect resources in the southern half of the map. This army will not have decent reinforcements for a month or so, so try to win every battle with zero casualties. Deploy you units in a compact formation in a corner, use gating and phantom forces to raise a screen to protect your real units to eliminate casualties. Some stacks that can't be beaten (without casualties) using this method can be beaten by deploying only 1 or 2 of you creatures and exploiting their special abilities or general speed and toughness.
4) Avoid any battle that results in unavoidable significant casualties (there aren't that many)
5) After a month or so your southern city will be maxed out and you can replace your starting units with an all elf force. About this time the enemy heroes will invade the south with superior numbers. Leave your city ungarrisoned and just make sure your hero doesn't get cornered. Don't worry if the enemy stacks keep getting bigger.
6) Travel north and take the NW then the NE cities, use secondary heroes to ferry troops to your main hero. Once your can afford it develop your inferno city to make a second army which you use to clear the path of spawned pixies/wardancers so your reinforcements can get through.
7) When you take all 3 cities Gilrean will try to recapture 1 city. Ideally he'll be in the south and recapture your first elf city, swapping your starting positions.
8) Keep ferrying troops to your hero. Eventually you'll get a big enough stack to stomp everything on the map.

Tony