Sylvan campaign Mission 2

[Gaussmini]

This map is proving to be a real pain in the ass like map 3 of the inferno campaign. I have restarted the map 3 times and I could never ever ever survive past month 2 week 2.

This is the period when the inferno hero come with an impossibly huge army like several devils, throngs of cereberi, hordes of succubi mistress and so on.

On my first try, I tried the standard build up which obviously failed because the enemy had 3 towns versus mine.

On my 2nd try, I stormed through the underground and captured the town in the middle only to have to rush back to protect my sylvan town because here he comes with his impossibly huge army. I can't fight him on open ground and he didnt engage my sylvan town. Instead he went ahead to recapture back my 1week old inferno town.

Ditto for the 3rd try.

Any advice for this? I have tried everything I know. It gets so frustrating having to come so far after completing 4 campaigns and not be able to finish this stupid map

[Marzhin]

First time I played that map I first captured the castle on the top island, and the big hero came from the underground to beat the crap out of me. Second time I captured the middle town first and rushed to the one in the bottom-left corner : for some reason he doesn't seem to spawn the huge army and I win after a tough, but fair, fight. Then I moved to the upper-right corner town and this one was just piece of cake.

[Pagan]

Lure the enemy heroes to your castle, and defeat him there, you should be able to make short work of him (the moat IS your best friend, as it will entangle your enemy, and continuously damage them), and stack up on Treant, because your hunters and druids will most likely die too fast to be useful.

After you have defeated the hero with the biggest stack, the rest of the mission is a cakewalk.

[Pitsu]

Played on heroic and the main problem were his imps who sucked all my mana, before I cast any spell :p. Anyway, the story went something like that: captured the middle inferno and used it only as a money source. When the big and bad came to sylvan I let him take it. went to sail and took his other inferno towns. So somewhere around month 3 the sides had switched - he had one sylvan and I had 3 infernos. After capturin sylvan he had been quite passive for a while. But after all three infernos fall, he woke up again and retook the one on central island. By that time, I had in parallel to remaining sylvan forces also a demon army in considerable size. Retook Sylvan when his main hero was away, and when he came back, used my demon army to soften him up and defended the castle (having dark magic and frenzy and being able to destroy his catapult helped a lot against the 100 nightmare, 80 pit lord etc army. ).

[Ctrlbnull]

I'm on the same mission.

Except the demons have two huge armies. Sometimes three.

Within the first month, I got attacked twice by demon armies with a throng of cerebus each. Then by month 3, I was regularly getting attacked by 3 armies every 2 weeks consiting of 16+ arch devils, swarms of imps and a throng of succubu mistresses. This went of for about 2 months before they stopped. Then as I left my castle with my secondary hero, I got trouned by 3 hero's again sporting massive armies that they shouldn't have had.


It is a painful mission

[Gaussmini]

This map is impossible to play defensive..

For some reason the computer is getting 7 devils per castle... Perhaps due to numerous flagged creature dwellings around each of the castle..

I have to restart for the 4th time now... Have to find a way to quickly take out not 1 but 2 of his towns

[Warlock]

God I am hating this one worse than Inferno 3. Best try so far was being able to capture the upper right inferno town. Then their hero comes by and stomps me -_-

[Nebs]

Hmm...I had no problems in my two times played. Bought another hero and sent him on sea first turn. With Findan went to gather mines (left alone gold one, succubus mistresses guarded it). Built lv.2 mage guild, returned scout home and waited a bit.

Enemy succubus hero summoned my boat, went to small island with obelisk. Same turn I've summoned boat back, bought all the army I could and went for north easter town. Succubus hero with nice army was stranded on that small island as as soon as Findan landed, summoned boat with another hero and went in.

Got to inferno territory, took fully built yet poorly defended Inferno town, and turn later got attacked by AI hero with great army (scripted? As was in area with nothing, nowhere to go, and haven's see it before). In fully built Inferno succesfully defended myself. Got all the mines there, and continued building my sylvan town.

Eventually succubus hero summoned another boat (guess AI finally bought one for themselves), and headed to my sylvan town. As it turns out, hero was crap, had nice army, but stats were awful. And didn't attacked me in town but went to my mines, even beat those succubus that were guarding gold mine (and slightly off-topic, AI seems to never lose much against neutrals). As it passed some time, and thanks to 4000+ from inferno, built most dwellings in sylvan town, and now bought troops and went for succubus hero with other hero. Didn't want it to escape underground.

In the mean time, other AI heroes came down by sea, but now Findan went in chase of them. With little help from Archdevils and Pit Lords.

Central AI town seems a bit scripted as well. If you uncovered the area to see it while traveling on sea, you can notice that it's empty, and as soon as you pass some point (think directly south of it), you can see bought hero, and some nasty troops. Though, might actually be some time script, still not sure.

Anyway, went for southwestern inferno town first. Some big battle, but not that much problems, and also had no problems with Imps, as Findan's speciality kills almost all of them before fight actually begun.

Bought all I could army from sylvan town, had couple of scouts to transport it, also bought devils and lords from inferno towns, and eventually went for central town. After you beat them, it's over. Now can actually fight for obelisks, or rather just build the dragon dwell and wait for 20 of them emeralds.

[Warlock]

I finally beat this one. I'm not even sure how. I took the NE Inferno town as soon as possible tho. That one was easy.

I think the key is to *let* them take the Sylvan town on the first attack. At that point, even if you have been very diligent and not lost many troops (and somehow had enough resources to build every turn), it's still a very difficult battle, which is why it's kind of better to just let them have it. Some of it kind of depends though. The very first time I played this map the CPU came at me with an army of something like 500 Imps, 400 Horned Demons, 80 Succubus Mistresses, 50 Pit Lords, 14 Arch-Devils, 90 Cerberuses, and 60 Nightmares. Which was pretty much impossible (I reloaded that several times - yay autosave - and I actually did manage to *almost* beat them once just because Treants are so freakin' great for meat shields, but didn't quite make it - the Imps are what screw you because they siphon all your mana at the start of the fight ). But other times the army was a lot more reasonable, something like 200 Imps, 300 Horned Demons, 40 Succubus Mistresses, 20 Pit Lords, and 60 Cerberuses (may have also had some Nightmares, I can't remember). This is still crazy but beatable (defending your town at least - most of these are melee and won't do crap until the walls are breached - the only problem is the 300 Horned Demons gating - that's quite annoying).

Either way, you can hop on a ship, let them take the town, then wait a couple turns and take it back. It usually takes a month or two before they even bother to try and take it back.

After that I took the middle town pretty easy and I think at some point I killed their main hero (I think he came back to Sylvan and I was able to go there to defend and wiped the floor with him that time). After that I just sort of layed low and avoided any remaining heroes. There was still one powerhouse left (from the SW town I guess) who was wandering around via ship. I actually hired a second hero in the NE Inferno town and loaded him up on Inferno troups. Sacrificing a ton of Horned Demons brought some awesome XP for him and I got him a couple fast levels right there. Eventually the last CPU hero went after my Inferno town. I tried to fight him once via boat (ironically our two armies were almost identical - we had the same number in most of the creature stacks). But he still won that one (was a non-Inferno hero, so no gating for me. Plus I think his hero was higher level). I reloaded and went back to town where I picked up a few more troops and wiped the floor with him. After that it was easy. SW town put up no resistance at all and then it was just a matter of running around collecting dragons