Ashen War on Normal

[Råb!d]

So, I'm trying to play Ashen War. I have an alliance with 3 of the 6 dragons and yet one of them sets its sights on me.

They all seem to start with absurdly powerful advantages, so any war mid-game is an immediate loss as I am about to be steamrolled. I don't see any sign of my supposed alliance coming to the rescue.

What is the point of Ashen War?
Why is the balance of the game so far off? This is supposed to be "Normal"!

[Terrkas]

Normal difficulty is not medium difficulty. Especially if you pick a presence realm with 6 powerfull rulers. It will be hard or very hard on normal, becsuse they start with a strong ability and big armies. With the player in the middle all ais might pick you as a target, since you are close to all.

Ais also dont really help you defending. They usually attack close enemies. Which might mean they could intercept one of your aggressors, but they usually wont.

[Pantagruel]

Presence traits ignore map difficulty settings.

[IlluminaZero]

Aren’t presence rulers also locked at hard AI?

I also wonder if it’s as ridiculous as the Noctus challenge map. The default rule set basically halves your armies and allows Noctus to cast > 20 spells at combat start with > 20 stacks of cascading power.

If you’re not ready Noctus doesn’t really need an army to kill you despite likely outnumbering you 4to1 lol

But basically these ARE challenge maps. It shouldn’t be surprising that it’s asymmetrical in favor of the AI.

[Zoggy]

its supposed to be a complex challenge map (tier 4 for base scenario) are some threads with tips - its a little grindy but do-able -stick with your alliance- and focus on 1 opponent at a time- try and get some momentum going.

(presence rulers are not same as the normal ai difficulty rulers so might be a jump in difficulty - might be worth doing a custom map 1st give your self some handicaps)

The dragon lords start at a high level so need to level heroes up/ pike swarm them etc. (avoid the chaos one early if possible very strong melee( if good aligned))

( generally each dragon is an affinity type/culture type so you try find a counter strategy for each type initially) Its a lot more challenging than you would think.
When we get giant rulers i might revisit it.

[IlluminaZero]

If you aren't already I find it can be very useful to use the Bounty system with an alliance. Otherwise the Alliance can be very hit or miss...

Like in my last game my alliance kept ignoring a hostile faction between myself and my two allies in favor of crossing the entire map to... Frankly oftentimes steal territories from me in my back and forth with Noctus. It was becoming a problem since the "middle" hostile faction was actually slowly starting to grow via conquering their vassals.

Once I set bounties on that middle kingdom my allies killed them within ~10 turns. Which finally allowed me to relax on my northern front and allowed them to PROPERLY reinforce me without getting killed by middle empire guy.

So basically - Bounties to influence alliance AI is very good. Otherwise I would be wary of alliances dragging you into unnecessary wars as this game allows you to maintain peace with hostile factions - Which may be very important with presence rulers in particular.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

Aren’t presence rulers also locked at hard AI?

I also wonder if it’s as ridiculous as the Noctus challenge map. The default rule set basically halves your armies and allows Noctus to cast > 20 spells at combat start with > 20 stacks of cascading power.

If you’re not ready Noctus doesn’t really need an army to kill you despite likely outnumbering you 4to1 lol

But basically these ARE challenge maps. It shouldn’t be surprising that it’s asymmetrical in favor of the AI.

They are locked in difficulty. Some are hard some are very hard. But you can kinda cheat by applying a global disadvantage on all AI, then the presence rulers will get that.

[Pantagruel]

It would be nice if they'd make presence trait rulers scale with map difficulty. It's not like there's any content or achievements locked behind beating them, so no reason they can't be made as easy or difficult as the player wants them to be.

[DearSaintMary]

I have started this map 3 times before I figured out what's going on. First I tried rapid development and overwhelking tactis, but quickly got slapped in my face. Then I found out that all the opponents are pretty close to me and rapid expansion is very dangerous.
In the end, turtle tactic with sticking heroes together and roaming around my kingdom helped to get enough experience to become a mighty army.
But I guess it was more luck than my skills in the end that helped me win the first 50 days of war.

[Rumors]

I recently did this map on Hard against all six Dragons because I was cocky and arrogant. Ended up having to fight tooth and nail for every scrap of land I got. I settled my three cities close to one another so I could reinforce either expansion within two rounds from my capital and then focused on turting and building up. I was playing an primary order, secondary shadow, tertiary chaos morale debuff build and it mostly helped me punch above my weight. Watching the dragon rulers flee in terror shortly after jumping into the middle of my army was hilarious.

But as I said, mostly.

Materium dragon was kind of annoying when he decided to sic golems on me. But the real pain in the butt was the Shadow dragon. Not only were they rather resistant to morale debuffs, but their heroes just vomit out skeletons and a battle against three stacks with four heroes was more like fighting against five stacks at once. I didn't have any good AoE either (probably shoulda grabbed Pyromancers or something) and my only saving grace was having a bit of Spirit damage. But otherwise I had to fight those hordes of undead straight up and that was a hell of a slog.

On the bright side, same dragon murked the Spirit Dragon before I ever met those armies and also sneakily sniped the Nature Dragon too when nobody was looking. Poor Nature Dragon had four stacks running towards my capital who all evaporated into thin air before I could meet them in battle.

But yeah. It's definitely one of the harder challenge maps. Go in with a build you're comfortable with because I don't think you can counter all six dragons with just one build like how you can counter most other presence rulers with the right set-up.