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I went south almost right away. Don't forget to summon a few units. Find Tannah in the open fields and try to take out as much units as possible - im gonna assume you know tactical combat and can do it without losses. Her city can be a challenge, so you might have to wait around. Kill independents to train up your troops. Its never long before she makes a mistake that allows you to swoop in.
- Summon units. You're a sorc, use it. Phatasms are awesome for clearing, and they're useful in the siege and against all non-blight troops.
- Do not pause for Tannah. Keep on the diplomacy with the town, and keep on exploring. You need to grow, and you need to do it fast.
In general, you should be good with the mechanics of this game in particular if you want to do the campaigns on hard. Not just games like this.
-Yes, my heroes were all level 5 coming into this map, and both have a few epic or legendary weapons or items.
-In my 8th attempt I was lucky enough to take the initial elf town immediately, and complete a quest that made a nearby town a vassal to me. I then took over the nearby fort, and had Tannath completely boxed into her only city- her capital.
-Tannath then made the mistake of leaving her castle walls with two stacks of 6, and I managed to defeat her with my army, taking only 2 casualties and moderate wounds to the rest of my remaining army of 10. I quickly went down to her only city , and laid a blockade while my forces healed and a 3 unit reinforcement army made its way down to the her city. Her city only had 3 stacks of 3 so I was excited by the prospect of defeating it with my level 5 heroes once the reinforcements arrived!
Instead, EACH of her stacks gained a unit over the next three turns it took my reinforcements to arrive. So in three turns her army went from 9 to 18 in three turns in one city. AND she started casting some form of overland spell that wreaked havok with army. EVERY.SINGLE.TURN. Oh, and somehow Tannath was back despite the fact that I had defeated her on the field. (I'm assuming the leader doesnt die until their final city is taken.)
I have no problem giving the AI extra resources at higher levels, but to jump from 9 units in 3 turns, and cast overland spells at twice my speed is absurd.
I know I can go down to normal difficulty, but I pride myself on suceeding at hard in these types of games.
You should then NOT wait for the town to be absorbed, but use your initial troops + summons (keep everyone alive! Avoid casualties. Reload and retry battles if you have to.) to expand further.
Secondly, scout. There's a Geographer's Tent near where you start, which should point you to the next town, which I conquered by turn 4. (i.e. before I'd even finished absorbing my first town.) There's also mana and such lying around, which you can pick up with your cavalry and use to cast summoning spells.
Later on, when you have established yourself and are in a strong position, make sure to use the Invoke Extraordinary Mount spell to create a bunch of good mounts for your heroes, including a spare for future heroes that will join you. You'll thank yourself in the future. I'm not sure you can get the very best ones from the spells (I've never gotten a Manticore. Perhaps they don't hatch from eggs?) but look out for King Gryphons, Gold Wyverns and Cockatrices. (The latter don't fly, but are very powerful anyway.)
Also make sure to explore and loot all treasure sites and give your heroes the best equipment you can. Especially Edward, since he's present in all scenarios.
All in all, I'd actually advice you to start with random scenarios instead of the campaigns. The random maps are much better to learn the game with, and indeed the best way to experience AoW3 in general.
Random maps don't force you to rely on heroes so much, they don't force you to rush, and they can still be very challenging on higher levels of AI, especially with hard roaming units and hard cosmic events (if you have the expansions) enabled.
Finally, the campaigns just aren't that good, or at least the original ones aren't. The ones in the expansions are shorter, very challenging, and much more interesting from both a map-design and a story-based perspective. They make a great diversion from playing random maps, but are still best appreciated once you know what the game's all about.
EDIT:
Didn't see your reply, so adding this in.
Lots of people have completed the map on hard. I have. It requires you to be good at tactical combat and win without casualties even when you're outnumbered, and it may require you to reload the game a bunch of times to undo mistakes, but it can certainly be done. You don't need to rely on random events at all, but you do need to know the ins and outs of gameplay.
I just gave the mission a try on hard. (Thankfully the game keeps autosaves for all campaign scenarios.) And I beat Tanna Boslarf on turn 8 using my starting army and 1 summoned wisp. Could have done it earlier and it would have been even easier.
Seeker Enchantment on apprentices, Summon Siege Engine on Edward, very careful play... and the fact that the AI is dumb and I could fight the siege of her capital city in two stages. I couldn't have beaten all 13 defenders in one go with my 5 units (I'd taken some casualties) but I could win 2 sieges against 6/7 units.
I now have 3 cities and a fort and a lot of income. Werlac isn't going to be a problem.
So yeah, it can be done.
I reccomend trying some random maps first, to get a good feel of tactical combat and all it's complicated depth. It's really a hard campaign, and going for it on Hard right away is probably a bridge to far even for experienced strategy gamers.
I ended up beating her on turn 34. I captured two cities, and vacated most of the units from one, and stashed them off in the woods. She split her forces, and I then attacked her capital while much of her force was away. She ended up taking my "bait" town, but I rushed up with my occupation forces and took it back.
The key there was I didn't let my forces fully recover. They went into the second battle beaten up, so I needed to be judicious with an overland spell, and then careful tactics in the seige.
However, the campaigns are a much more extreme situation than the normal maps: in a campaign scenario, the AI typically starts with many towns and armies, whilst you start with just a few heroes and one stack of troops, and one town if you're lucky.
However, you will start with high level heroes, which gives you an initial combat advantage over the AI's starting forces... but that advantage disappears quickly as the AI researchs upgrades and starts building high-tier armies. So you need to leverage your hero-advantage to the utmost if you are to stand a chance.
This only gets more extreme as you progress through the campaign, as enemies get stronger and stronger, but your heroes likewise get stronger.
(Again, it's not nearly as bad in the expansion campaigns, which are a] shorter and b] better designed.)
Still, even on random maps turtling is a poor strategy, even on lower but particularly on higher difficulties. Unlike Civ, there is no such thing as building "tall" empires. The only advantage of having a small empire is that it's easier to defend. More cities = more resources = bigger armies = victory.
If you hang back to research, your heroes will be underlevelled, your troops will be inexperienced, and your income will be so low that by the time you have a high-quality army, the enemy will have 10. Not to mention that as time progresses, random events get harder and wandering neutral armies get bigger and tougher, to the point where new players end up losing without even encountering the AI.
In random maps, you don't need to blitzkrieg, but you must definitely expand. The better you are at expanding, the easier it will be to keep pace with the AI.
In general, you'll do much better if you play this game like it's Starcraft than if you play it like it's Civilisation.
Anyway, good job beating the goblin. Sacrificing cities like that can indeed be a very effective trick. You do take an empire-wide morale hit if you lose a city, though, so it's best employed in desperate situations only.
I've never seen "Summon siege engine" in my list of spells to research. What category is it under? I also seem to be more unlucky than you. When you got to Tannah's city (prabaly on turn 3?) you saw only 13 enemies? Under my saved game there are 17, and I don't have access to siege weapons unless I am researching improperly.
Anyway, it is back to the drawing baord for me. I have 6 cities now, but on turn 81 I have a stack of 12 mostly elite fighters, but Werlac just ambled up to my frontier city....with 26 units, many of whom are elite, and none are below veteran
I never really experienced Werlac a threat on that level. I had it over by turn 50-something, IIRC.
Trick is, if you have any army, it's gotta be doing something. Exploring, clearing sites, that sort of thing. An army just standing in a city is an army that's on it's way to losing you the game.
Summon Siege Engine is a dreadnought spell. You can get it as Hero Upgrade for Edward.
6 cities and 12 fighters isn't nearly enough by turn 81. By that time, you should have dozens of units, mostly tier 2-3 and some tier 4, and many more cities. I think I had 19 at that point.
For cities: don't forget that you can build settlers and Builders, and that Goblins are cheap and experience fast population growth. Find spots with mines, magma forges, mana nodes, or treasure sites, and get some settlers over there. Also, never underestimate the humble Builder. It can put down roads whereever you go and create cheap forts that can claim territory for you. If you put a fort near a pair of goldmines, it'll earn its cost back in just 5 turns. There aren't too many great spots to settle cities on this map, compared to random ones, but there are a good few.
As for armies: Both you and Werlac are sorcerers, commanding Goblins. Goblins deal a lot of blight damage, but are also resistant to it, whilst sorcerer summons tend to be vulnerable to blight damage.
It's a good idea to build some Goblin Blight Doctors, who both deal blight damage and can lower resistance to it. Also, a sorcerer, all your support units (including Blight Doctors) will eventually learn to stun enemies, which is a huge boon. Because of this, a healthy portion of all your armies should consist of Blight Doctors and Apprentices. You can support these with summoned Phantom Warriors, Goblin Butchers (an excellent unit, much stronger than other races' pikemen) and stronger Sorcerer summons like Node Serpents and Eldritch Horrors.
Also, don't be too intimidated by huge AI armies. If you keep your forces together in groups of 3 stacks in triangle formation, they can never be attacked by more than 4 stacks at once, i.e. 24 units. 18 vs. 24 is pretty easily won against the AI, since the AI tends to include fodder in its armies and makes mistakes.
Besides, the AI tends to make errors. If you keep your cool and don't expose your armies to attack, you can often gang up on 1 or 2 AI stacks at the time and whittle their giant army down to nothing in a few key battles, as long as you avoid taking more than a few casualties of your own.
(If you can't win tactical battles against even or slightly better numbers without taking casualties, you may have to tone down the game difficulty after all. The AI doesn't get combat bonuses even on hard, or at least not against you, but they will field huge armies thanks to income and morale boosts.
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if you struggled here. Tactical combat is the most involved, most fun, but also the most complicated of AoW3's systems to master, and even though I was well experienced with 4X games in general and the AoW series in particular, it took me months before I stopped making costly mistakes like getting my heroes killed. I still screw up on occasion.)