The Queen → The Fall of the King

[dirkformica]

Another little fun side project for this mission can be taking over the enemy base on the map. Normally you have to walk through a gate that is guarded by literally thousands of enemy creatures (it's funny to see 2k as the number of monsters during battle mode,) however, if you use the short range teleportation spell, you can cross the gate and attack the main base. You can give yourself a little early training on using some of the demonic forces. It's also just fun to have Arch Angels and Arch Devils in the same party.



Just a word of caution, you can only enter and exit that town using the teleport spell, so no heroes you buy at the demon town can actually leave from my experience.
Edited on Tue, Jun 06 2006, 16:15 by dirkformica

[ledge]

When you free Isabel you get a cutscene where she says to fight in the open, while Godric tries to convince her to bunk down in town. If you fight agrael in the open with Isabel and win, you get another cutscene, which I didnt get when I fought him in Dunmoor.



Just a fyi, if you like cutscenes.

[NickMP]

Certainly the hardest scenario so far (still working through the Haven campaign as I'm a bit busy). It's tempting to send Godric exploring underground, but if an enemy force comes after him you'll be lucky to escape. My respect for the AI has inched up.

[Bandobras Took]

You may want to mention for people going through for the first time that giving Godric Logistics is a remarkably bad idea. It makes it next to impossible to defeat the first map of the Inferno Campaign, or at least it did when I played the demo. Does anybody know if this has changed?

[Alkand]

The first mission of the Inferno Campaign is very easy.

You need to take the boots near the place where start Agrael to go faster. The artifact is only protected by one pack of creatures.
Edited on Tue, Jun 20 2006, 09:00 by Alkand

[Bandobras Took]

The first mission of the Inferno Campaign is very easy.

You need to take the boots near the place where start Agrael to go faster. The artifact is only protected by one pack of creatures.
Edited on Tue, Jun 20 2006, 09:00 by Alkand

Had you given Godric expert Logistics and Pathfinding in map 5 of the previous Campaign?

[Alkand]

Godric had Advanced logistic not pathfinding and it works very well

[Bandobras Took]

Godric had Advanced logistic not pathfinding and it works very well

I'll see; just to double check, I've given Godric Expert Logistics and Pathfinding. We'll see if he can cross half the map like he did in the demo . . .

Edit: Played it through -- they must have slowed Godric down between the Demo and the Release. Though the tree of Logistics they added helped quite a bit, too. It is possible to beat the map when Godric has Expert Logistics, but it's much, much harder.

[csarmi]

1) It's a very bad idea to recruit the griffins and priests from the dwelling: you'll lose one or two days till you can upgrade your hall.

2) You should kill the pit lords first, and make Isabel go for the town. The Pit Lords fight is easy if you can put your army elsewhere. (you can't, unless you gor for the town 1st but that's a big mistake: costs you a full turn)

a) send in only the imperial griffins divided into two groups, you will lose a few

b) send in 4 imperial griffins (4 groups) and 3 peasants (3 groups)... griffins dive out of the screen and pit lords use their mana on the peasants, after that you just stay alive tillyour hero finished all the Pit Lords (I used this tactics against the other pit lord stack guarding some crystals)

3) The gold mine fight (and any fight against large monsters) is an easy one: send in all your champions and 6*1 peasants. Protect your champions with the peasants when necessary

4) Casters like Arch Magi are tough, but only if you don't have imperials. If you do, just dive them to death.

5) The 266 Skeleton Archers guarding the middle obelisk are defeated easily with 3*3 champions and 4*1 squires. Just watch your HP:

[Shad0WeN]

When I played this map there was no 2nd Haven Military Post to the east of Dunmoor as seen in the surface screen shot. There was a Sanctuary there instead. This is the US 1.1 version of the game.

[NickMP]

Well, this is embarassing - coming back to finish it after a pause, I've found the 3 obelisks, explored all the surface map outside the inferno area (pretty much what is shown in the walkthrough) and I can't recognise the Tears location at all. Seems to have some huge place to its north with hexagonal pillars flanking it. Where is it???

While frantically searching around, I find (on Hard) that powerful enemy armies continue to appear every 6-8 turns, as well as the trivial ones, contrary to the suggestion below that the later demon armies are only a minor threat.

[LordErtz]

Well, this is embarassing - coming back to finish it after a pause, I've found the 3 obelisks, explored all the surface map outside the inferno area (pretty much what is shown in the walkthrough) and I can't recognise the Tears location at all. Seems to have some huge place to its north with hexagonal pillars flanking it. Where is it???

While frantically searching around, I find (on Hard) that powerful enemy armies continue to appear every 6-8 turns, as well as the trivial ones, contrary to the suggestion below that the later demon armies are only a minor threat.

Make sure your camera is facing NORTH. Also, it SHOULD be somewhere in the middle. It was in the same place twice when I played it. Try looking near the shrine with a book. Also, try putting your hero movement around the map, it will show on your exposed puzzle piece, so when you see your movement line, you know where it is.

[NickMP]

OK, the Tears weren't in the middle, but putting down hero tracks did the trick. Still don't recognise the map! Thanks for your help.



Completing the scenario, I see the walkthrough misses one final twist in the situation I was in. I used Isabel to clear the garrison, then sent Godric through. Nicolai duly appeared, and then I got a new objective, to send a message to Nicolai (as opposed to sending Godric). Isabel met Nicolai (no special effects) then rode to the mapedge herself. Nicolai then engaged Agrael, with the ending that you'll all have seen.

[yehuda]

but where are the tears?

[LordErtz]

but where are the tears?

in the dirt, you have to dig for them.

[maltz]

I just read about some guy beat the garrison with less than 300 Imperial G! The key was to have:

1. Lots of knowledge points (even better, inteliigence). Step on the 2X mana fountain to survive the initial 250 mana drain from the 1K imps.

2. Dark (frenzy / blind work wonders)

3. Summoning (duplicate the Imperial G. who battle dives and thus does not get counter attack.)

4. Separate out six 1-unit armies to soak up insane attacks.



And this guy made it and posted a screen shot. Really nice work and got to love Dark Magic.



Unfortunately he did it before Instant Travel was taken out (post patch 1.1), so he could develop his force with incomes from both cities, and no need to worry about the red heroes.



p.s. After patch 1.1, the Haven troop post NE of the town has been replaced by a chapel.
Edited on Wed, Jul 26 2006, 09:06 by maltz

[joerginger]

It seems there were some changes to this scenario in patch 1.2. At least on heroic the enemy attacks don't stop at all until Godric disappears, the intervalls between the appearances of the red heroes also seem quite a lot shorter. For me this meant that I couldn't dare to explore the underground as I had done before this patch since I never had enough troops to support three heroes, in particular because the neutral stacks were already huge when I entered the underground (about 400 assassins at the northeast entrance). Isabell eventually had to escort Godric, I didn't want to send him away with a lot of troups and because of the following mission I had tried not to develop him at all. But I guess this doesn't really matter, since after Godric's departure the mission is over for the player.

Anyway, I can't remember being under permanent pressure before patch 1.2, after a handful of attacks I had been able to explore the map at my leisure. This doesn't seem to be possible anymore.
Edited on Thu, Aug 03 2006, 20:43 by joerginger

[maltz]

I had done this one on 1.2 heroic.



I don't feel the red heroes are spawned in shorter intervals (about weekly); however, the red heroes from their own city has a more effective AI that enables them to hire and gather untis. At 1.1 I even had a run that the AI didn't build at all. But now they know what they are doing. I've also seen AI combining two weeks worth of full production, making it much more effective. And since 1.1 there is no more instant travel, so we had to bear with the castle AI forever. I've never seen the red hero stopped spawning even on previous patches.



Also, since you've probably played this map at least once before, you can make a good guess of where the tear is. I digged it up when I only saw one obelisk.



It is not as hard as you might have imagined. Isabel was more than capable of handling all of the heroes on her own, if you don't give her crap skills. Godric, on the other hand, can be given most melee units and sent to explore the map, especially after learning the summon creature spell.



Edited for patch 1.3: Er... nothing changes in patch 1.3. The AI heroes are still quite capable of pooling armies together. The initial assault by Agrael is always very weak (like 5 devils, 16 imps and 2 pit fiends).
Edited on Mon, Sep 25 2006, 22:28 by maltz

[godlyatheist]

on 1.3 heroic red spawns a new hero the day after the previous one gets crushed. so i get a siege every 2-3 days. i can fought them off while building up units(divine guidiance + resurrection). The thing that pisses me off is the computer reuses defeated hero, this is just gay. If Nival continues to cheat and be gay then i will ditch Heroes all together.

[Grail Quest]

Playing v1.5 now. I played the demo long ago, and boy what a surprise that you can't eliminate Red with that garrison! Drat.



Annoying resource shortage, too, unless you accept early losses and take some of the mines, especially the gem and mercury ones. Even sacrificing cash very early on to build the Resource Silo was okay as the combined resources coming in meant I could have started recruiting Angels by around near the end of week 3. Happily I didn't lose too many troops, although one incarnation of the game had Druids guarding the Mercury factory, and it was ugly.



If you don't hire anything other than a few monks from the fort in the first couple of weeks, even if you give Godric the 20 Griffins so he can also wander the map and use Battle Dive to defeat stacks, Isabel can handle all Red heroes on the field without resorting to hiding in town.

(Sometimes, hiding in a town proved more costly troop-wise than fighting out in the open, but I think that is because I didn't want to expose troops to melee, and waiting for the Devils to teleport in usually resulted in them having first strike.)

If you skimp on hiring troops, you can quickly build your town for a Capital, Cavaliers, and Angels by around the end of the first month.



*



Since Freyda appeared in the intro cut scene, I think it would have been nice if we could start with her as well. Ah well...