Guide for Barbarian Campaign

[bibotot1995]

I have beaten the original campaign in General (Hard) mode with Iron Maiden On and Enemy Scaling Off.

Here is some specific advice I should share with you.

Maps:

+ Knowing the layout of the map, including the positions of loot and enemies will help a lot. You need to play through the game without Iron Maiden to find them all.

+ In missions where you can deploy at multiple places, it's generally better to pool all your units in one place. Of course, this is not always possible. Again, you need to play through the whole thing first to know the optimal units for each deployment site.

Heroes:

+ Heroes don't do that much damage. Instead, use them for tanking. When a hero is injured, pull them back and have another take their place.

+ Alisa should focus on summoning. These units are extremely good and fully expandable. They are also flying, so can capture ruins and camps with haste. They cannot be used to raze down settlements, however.

+ Get the ability to put wounded enemies out of their misery and gain mana from Dolos. It's super important in maps without a Mana Pool.

Units:

+ Younglings: Get 1 or 2 Thanes for buffing. The rest upgrade to Thunderers. Armored Slingers suck in the late game.

+ Maiden: At least 2 Stag Skirmisher. 1 Wolf Mother early is optional.

+ Lizardmen: All are underwhelming.

+ Trolls: 3 units of Siege Trolls and 3 units of Armored Trolls. Both branches are very good.

+ Eagle: 4 units of Monster Hunters can be used to snipe enemy leaders, especially Witch Doctors and Generals on dragons.

+ Imperial: You can't hire them. Instead, they are found in camps. All upgrade to Fire Archers. These guys are hands down the best unit in the game. They shred undead like crazy. Have as many of them in your army as possible.

Trainings:

+ Give all units All Terrain to travel faster.

+ Prioritize Slayer to Monster Hunters, followed by Fire Archers.

+ Bonus HP and less likelihood of death is also a decent upgrade on multi-model units.

+ If you have extra Liquified Mana, you can spend on giving more Mana at the beginning of the mission so that Alisa can start summoning units right away.

[Ronnie]

Ill have to go back try the original campaign again in the future I always liked to try legend difficulty the highest. I have been trying the General difficulty for the Empire as the Legend one is extremely tough but I have some ideas to change in my future army setup for Legend in the future as I want to see how it plays out in General first.

Mainly I want to get 4 longbowman to be Fire Longbowman asap before getting a knight and mainly use other cash for buying mercs to be meatshields instead of buying core meat shields of whom can die this way the fire longbowman keep leveling up and stay safe. Eventually Ill work to get a few knights as well as they are really good but I think the more Fire Longbowman you have the easier you can pick stuff off to even win even on the Legend difficulty.

Mainly my strategy is to mainly focus on skeli melee units to summon tier 2 and just let my fire longbowman be the range units. I think this could work but I would need a lot of skeletons to keep the enemy forces occupied to protect my fire longbowman.

So far this method seems to be working good will know for sure once I get deeper in the campaign for the empire.

In the past I used to keep a balance between melee and range and the hoards of flyers is what usually spelled doom for me so the above army setup I think might be better. For every 4 range u get you get 2 melee units might be a good ratio to use for your army.

The Melee tier 1 & 2 skeletons will compensate for having less core melee units.

[Kaysoky]

I played on Legendary, Iron Maiden, and Enemy scaling, and I think there are some other options you can take.

Originally posted by bibotot1995:

+ In missions where you can deploy at multiple places, it's generally better to pool all your units in one place. Of course, this is not always possible. Again, you need to play through the whole thing first to know the optimal units for each deployment site.

I disagree here. Since you're up against a timer, you sometimes need to take a risk and split your army to maximize loot gain. In the early campaign, I would often split into 2 unequal groups.
My main army would go straight for the objective, with Tir Angry-Earth, an archer or two, and a Tracker going around the map for loot.

Later on, when Ailsa got summoning skills, I put her into the side group, since she could explode in power given enough time. I also got a Conjurer in the early game for this very reason (undead seemed more mana-efficient than ancestors at that point).

Originally posted by bibotot1995:

+ Younglings: Get 1 or 2 Thanes for buffing. The rest upgrade to Thunderers. Armored Slingers suck in the late game.

Disagree here too. Instead, I would prioritize Trackers.

I played the entire game with no Thanes. They were too squishy, and I could get a sufficient buff with the correct items. My first two Younglings were upgraded into Axemen and Trackers. Trackers can stand on their own, and having an invisible unit scouting means you can play maps without prior knowledge, and still get some prior warning.

I would recommend 2 Trackers, and Medred's Knives (free unit from a loot item) by the end of the game. One for each army group you have. In the Sunken Lands, Trackers make lizardmen ambushes much less likely and are vital for heavily forested areas too.

For other upgrade paths, the only one I stayed away from were Cleavers and Thanes. Armored Slingers deal tons of damage and you can actually place them in melee range in a pinch, since they have Point Blank. Armored Axemen are some of the tankiest units of infantry available for cheap. Werebears are also very tanky.

Originally posted by bibotot1995:

+ Trolls: 3 units of Siege Trolls and 3 units of Armored Trolls. Both branches are very good.

Siege Trolls are very good, but Armored Trolls are a bit more questionable. I would argue that you'd get better value from 2 infantry than 1 more Troll. But I did not get any Armored Trolls in my playthrough, so I don't know if they would be any good.

Originally posted by bibotot1995:

+ Imperial: You can't hire them. Instead, they are found in camps. All upgrade to Fire Archers. These guys are hands down the best unit in the game. They shred undead like crazy. Have as many of them in your army as possible.

I actually only hired 3 units in my playthrough (2 Trolls, 1 Eagle). All other units were from camps. I would suggest getting Death Dealers and a small number of Armored Archers in addition to Fire Archers. Death Dealers in particular are near invulnerable to undead.

Also, if you can get Wolfhounds, upgrade them to Great Spirit Wolves. These are even better against undead. Giving this unit a Statue of Hondola, Corm's Armor, or a Ring of Rejuvenation makes then hardy. Dolos' training for a second relic slot can make this unit even stronger; I had one with Dragonscale armor and the Statue of Hondola, giving it 80% resistance to physical damage ( :D ) and 30% to magic damage. This was my MVP unit, as it could hold back entire armies of melee compositions by itself.

[Shorogyth]

I wonder if Iron Man/Maiden modes changes the overall approach you need to take to the beat the game...

Anyway, OP good choice of highlights for a guide. Two things are worth mentioning though:

(1) One thing that is just suboptimal to take are thanes. I go into detail in my guide but the short version is that they are bad-to-horrible at everything except carrying buffs, are expensive and cannot be trained (the last bit willl probably be patched out at some point).
(2) You do not mention Winged Maidens? Even now after the buff? Now they are arguably the best 1-supply unit in the game (I am still in camp Fire Archer but...) and they blow pretty much all other melee units out of the water (except for specific use cases like solo-defense of caputred shrines with 100% magic resistance or to light up ambushes).

About the stuff Kaysoki brings up: you do not need Spirit Wolves at all. If you keep wolves you want them because of their aura which the Spirit Wolves loose. I go into detail elsewhere but with Iron Man/Maiden active I am not sure wether you want/neet to focus as much on speed as I normaly would...

[Dunadd]

OP seems reasonable except I'd have chosen berserkers over thanes any day, as berserkers can be upgraded to cleavers with magic weapons, and have high morale, that isn't reduced by casualties, so they slaughter undead and are resistant to magical attacks by transmuters and lizardmen too. (Have berserkers been renamed slayers and cleavers renamed monster hunters?)

And the heavy spearmen units are good for tanking as they also get an ability that provides some protection to adjacent friendly nits.

[Virgil-SKY]

Originally posted by dmcf:

Have berserkers been renamed slayers and cleavers renamed monster hunters?

Slayer is a trait of berserker units, the one deals +50% vs Large and Hero. Monster Hunters is an aerial unit in the Giant Eagle upgradetree.

Cleavers suffer from no protection agains physical attacks, Death Dealers would be better if you want to fight hordes of undeads, and they do lose morale when suffering casualties themselves, or when nearby allies are. Only Immune to Psychology units won't lose morale.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by bibotot1995:

I have beaten the original campaign in General (Hard) mode with Iron Maiden On and Enemy Scaling Off.

Here is some specific advice I should share with you.

Maps:

+ Knowing the layout of the map, including the positions of loot and enemies will help a lot. You need to play through the game without Iron Maiden to find them all.

+ In missions where you can deploy at multiple places, it's generally better to pool all your units in one place. Of course, this is not always possible. Again, you need to play through the whole thing first to know the optimal units for each deployment site.

Heroes:

+ Heroes don't do that much damage. Instead, use them for tanking. When a hero is injured, pull them back and have another take their place.

+ Alisa should focus on summoning. These units are extremely good and fully expandable. They are also flying, so can capture ruins and camps with haste. They cannot be used to raze down settlements, however.

+ Get the ability to put wounded enemies out of their misery and gain mana from Dolos. It's super important in maps without a Mana Pool.

Units:

+ Younglings: Get 1 or 2 Thanes for buffing. The rest upgrade to Thunderers. Armored Slingers suck in the late game.

+ Maiden: At least 2 Stag Skirmisher. 1 Wolf Mother early is optional.

+ Lizardmen: All are underwhelming.

+ Trolls: 3 units of Siege Trolls and 3 units of Armored Trolls. Both branches are very good.

+ Eagle: 4 units of Monster Hunters can be used to snipe enemy leaders, especially Witch Doctors and Generals on dragons.

+ Imperial: You can't hire them. Instead, they are found in camps. All upgrade to Fire Archers. These guys are hands down the best unit in the game. They shred undead like crazy. Have as many of them in your army as possible.

Trainings:

+ Give all units All Terrain to travel faster.

+ Prioritize Slayer to Monster Hunters, followed by Fire Archers.

+ Bonus HP and less likelihood of death is also a decent upgrade on multi-model units.

+ If you have extra Liquified Mana, you can spend on giving more Mana at the beginning of the mission so that Alisa can start summoning units right away.

Edit: Oops. I had already seen this a few days ago! Still a good thread! ;)