what is with the difficulty ramp?

[Muttley]

I'm on the 4 mission, the one where you need the gildercoil. And it's just an absolute nightmare of a time. I keep running into moments where I'm curbstomped by the AI with such massive armies that there's no hope of even thinking of winning. It's on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy as well.

[Sifer2]

With only 5 missions they didn't have much time to implement a smooth difficulty curve. Weird though I though mission 4 was easy compared to 3, and 5. If AI armies are bigger than yours on Easy then you maybe need to work on your economy differently. Focus on Production/Gold generation.

[TyborPL]

If you are talking about the Crimson Caldera mission, just use the special spell to reveal enemy weaknesses. Then do the quest quickly. This will break them.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by TyborPL:

If you are talking about the Crimson Caldera mission, just use the special spell to reveal enemy weaknesses. Then do the quest quickly. This will break them.

That's interesting, though that's the third mission.

[Socrates Jackson]

Originally posted by TyborPL:

If you are talking about the Crimson Caldera mission, just use the special spell to reveal enemy weaknesses. Then do the quest quickly. This will break them.

Well, the two quests I've gotten so far involve securing multiple magical materials that are nowhere near me and fighting a full army of tier 3-4 monsters. It is turn 20. A level 8 faction leader (who I did manage to kill once, at the cost of most of my sorry-ass army) is right next to me, so any time I leave to chase those magical whats-its he moves in with like 9 units.

What I'm saying is those quests are too hard for the time they're given. I'll keep playing and see how it goes.

UPDATE: Tybor was right, throw everything you have at those quests and it all falls into place. I fed a few armies into the meat grinder and got an outrageously overpowered new hero that is cleaning up the rest of the map. It's balance, of a sort.

[Socrates Jackson]

Lololololol, nevermind. Turns out making progress of any kind infuriates the AI and makes them send, let's see, 5 full armies at you.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by Socrates Jackson:

Lololololol, nevermind. Turns out making progress of any kind infuriates the AI and makes them send, let's see, 5 full armies at you.

What difficulty are you playing on?

[Cindeerella]

I’m at 4 mission aswell, but playing on normal (While I’m playing skirmish on Brutal I’m not daring to play Scenario missions on hard because it will be just SUPER tedious on such big maps). So far yes, enemies have huge armies, but thankfully they’re undead, so either pick Chaos Dragon Lord with tons of fire elementals, or craft fire/holy weapons with Undead Slayer trait. But AI is super stupid on normal, I can easily fight their triple stacks with only two of mine.
But if you’re playing hard that’s different thing.

[Blanch Warren]

I need to get around to playing this scenario, but undead bone piles for instance are only strong in the beginning, they're not a particularly strong setup, let alone skeletons.

[TyborPL]

You can always try a counteroffensive. Just keep a small contingent in a forward outpost or city and let the enemy lay siege to it. They tend to split off to loot afterwards, leaving only the necessary army to besiege. Then you can send reinforcements and pick them off one by one. Repeated strategic spells like Lightning Torrent also work wonders, causing massive enemy attrition.

However, you will need strong defenses to withstand a few turns of siege.

I've done every story mission on hard. This strategy works for most crazy missions like Grexolis.

[Janthis]

Originally posted by Socrates Jackson:

Lololololol, nevermind. Turns out making progress of any kind infuriates the AI and makes them send, let's see, 5 full armies at you.

Heh, reminds me of playing the Pretender Kings scenario and declaring war on one of the brothers to see him pull 7 army stacks out of his ass on the next turn.

[Pantagruel]

You can seriously exploit the all units berserk on crimson caldera. Just send a single cheap unit in, hang back, wait for the berserk pulse to hit and enemy army starts killing itself. Doesn't work if the enemy army has control immunity and might be blocked by spell jammer, but it's plenty to weaken those giant stacks to the point where you can kill them.

[brightwanderer]

For Crimsons Caldera: try playing as Melenis or another character with the Undead/Shadow combo. I won a lot of risky and high risk battles by using the various options to raise dead (resurrecting units, creating zombies) and you can use the souls currency to supplement your armies with Bone Horrors (which turn into a squad of skeletons when killed). The "Mark of the Sword" racial trait is fantastic on this level because you're at war with everyone all the time.

I think you always spawn with Cinren and Karissa closest to you. Prioritise finding the materials to complete Cinren's mind control quest (Astral Dew and Silvertongue Fruit) - build outposts right next to them and claim the resources, it doesn't matter if you lose the outposts later and you don't need to turn them into cities. Defeating him gives you breathing room and he becomes a hero unit with a fantastic weapon. You can take out the 6 units for Karissa's quest early if you pump a couple of stacks of low to mid tier units, send all your heroes in etc. She will also become a recruitable hero and is also a tank and very useful.

Bear in mind that everyone is angry all the time on this map. Don't try to make peace with free cities (even the ones that are released by the AI players on defeat), just conquer them one by one and vassalise or raze so you're steadily expanding. Trigger Frikka's quest but then ignore it for a bit - there's a good chance the AI will help you by attacking the ritual circles. Meshara, like Karissa, can be defeated fairly easily if you know you need to build towards taking out the 6 unit stack.

The hostile free cities will send raiding parties at you constantly and it's annoying, but it's also free XP, plus gold and hero items once you have the crypt/prison and can execute/sell remains. A lot of the random events and location quests give good bonuses if you embrace the evil alignment choices.

Khir is the biggest threat and he is an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but sitting back and making him come to your well-defended cities is a good way to whittle his forces down. Again, I won a lot of "risky" or higher battles with him by using raise zombies and later on the battlefield resurrection spell with undead race transformation (so all my units would be brought back).