normal difficulty is really tough for campaign Golden Realms

[Davien]

advisable to play on Easy

played Normal difficulty for 1st mission Halflings, end up by turn 40 most of the enemy towns are already well equipped... sigh.

below is a screenshot of a small town:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=316396944

I've met another city just north of my starting position with a Tier 4 racial unit - Shrine of Smiting in it already. My best unit is only a Tier 3 Eagle Rider..was busy researching other useful skills/spells.

guess I didn't play fast enough... damn... gotta restart all over in Easy mode. Map is huge for a 1st mission too.. guess I underestimated it.. was thinking "1st mission, Normal should be ok".. NOT..

[24kfor]

Finished this mission yesterday on normal difficulty. It took me 129 turns to win :D
Probably need to rush, but I can't play like that. As a result every mission turns into an endless war for me ):

[Davien]

Will restart in easy mode. Don't wanna risk losing the game. I find it much more harder compare to when I first played the game pre DLC in Normal mode.. Guess maybe it's the map size too, huge for a starting mission!

[Davien]

Yea and the fact that many patches later, the AI has gotten smarter too.

[2LambBuna]

the AI has improved a lot since release, its now a fairly hard 4x

[Warlord]

Yeah the campaign is rough. Going against two factions at once on island map. I'm on turn 59 and one faction just pumps out troops while the other pumps out ships. It's also cheating knowing exactly where to fly a single unit to a specific unguarded city at the back of my empire, so now I have just mass units all over guarding.

And they have Nagas.......

Captured a city near the middle of the map and suddenly 6 stack lead by Archon titan immediately attacking now.

[Lavo]

try playing the first battles in manual combat to avoid casualties,after your heroes get a few lvls and pretty much your original army is almost champion, is all steamrolling from there... in my case, the nagas razed my main city new aldor... that was lame,so i had to retreat my two armies and rush a settler, after that,i decided to make a push to the north side first, and by that time start pumping higher tier units

the issue with ships... is that you can pretty much ignore them depending of your map awareness,if no ships close,cross the river... now that i think sea combat is something that really need to be improved

[Davien]

Originally posted by 2LambBuna:

the AI has improved a lot since release, its now a fairly hard 4x

i stopped playing after finishing the core campaigns.. after which patches after patches was released (still didn't went back to playing). And after this DLC is out, played the first expansion mission and got smacked in the face lol.

Gave it a thought last night, decided to push it and try it all out until the very end.. hopefully it will not go in vain. Restarting in easy will just waste all my earlier efforts.. i got a few nice artifacts already.

Originally posted by Warlord:

Yeah the campaign is rough. Going against two factions at once on island map. I'm on turn 59 and one faction just pumps out troops while the other pumps out ships. It's also cheating knowing exactly where to fly a single unit to a specific unguarded city at the back of my empire, so now I have just mass units all over guarding.

And they have Nagas.......

Captured a city near the middle of the map and suddenly 6 stack lead by Archon titan immediately attacking now.

that is normal? wow... 20 more turns and I guess I will be in a similar situation >.< I'm more worried about what lies ahead on the East side.. a lot of it are still unexplored.. wonders what I'm gonna uncover once I reach there.

Splitting my squad to 2.. one (with golems) heading north.. my main hero heading south. Hope I can manage to defeat and capture the cities.

Originally posted by Lavo:

try playing the first battles in manual combat to avoid casualties,after your heroes get a few lvls and pretty much your original army is almost champion, is all steamrolling from there... in my case, the nagas razed my main city new aldor... that was lame,so i had to retreat my two armies and rush a settler, after that,i decided to make a push to the north side first, and by that time start pumping higher tier units

the issue with ships... is that you can pretty much ignore them depending of your map awareness,if no ships close,cross the river... now that i think sea combat is something that really need to be improved

yeah that's what I did. Early game I bought a halfling bard, was all worth it as I managed to convert 3 Tier 3 units (a few saves and reloads, finally captured 2 flying serpents, one a Knight) before having the bard killed in combat (had to sacrifice her as the Epic artifact - a crown that can emit a dragon like "Fus Ro Dah" shout is just too good.. blame me for using Auto Combat in that dungeon Zzz).

I managed to keep most of my strong units alive: berserkers, knight, serpents, etc.

I have like 10 strong experienced units already.. just that as I progress it will not be easy.. enemy is researching new stuffs each turn and they already have Tier 4 racial units unlocked >.< I haven't even got my Tier 1 Dreadnaught unit researched yet.

[MattStriker]

One thing that helps a lot is that you can utterly destroy a city's morale with Dread Siege. Cast it, park some units in the city's domain and the enemy units inside should be dipping quite a bit into negative morale. If you've also managed to win a battle against that faction earlier, they're almost guaranteed to hit "Worst" morale and start deserting the moment you hit Next Turn.

And of course, against the Halfling leader, morale penalties are especially crippling.

[Davien]

Originally posted by MattStriker:

One thing that helps a lot is that you can utterly destroy a city's morale with Dread Siege. Cast it, park some units in the city's domain and the enemy units inside should be dipping quite a bit into negative morale. If you've also managed to win a battle against that faction earlier, they're almost guaranteed to hit "Worst" morale and start deserting the moment you hit Next Turn.

And of course, against the Halfling leader, morale penalties are especially crippling.

I shall try that in battle soon! thanks for the tip!

update: manage to capture 3 cities middle of the map, and 2 others on the north. Going for halfling throne city (just above my base) next.. he has 3 stacks of 6 units in it (1 is smithing Tier4). Gonna gather all the units nearby and cast Dread Siege (just finish researching this).

[Davien]

won the 1st mission! thanks for all the support and tips!

it's true dread siege is really OP if the enemy couldn't disjunct it... won over some really strong enemy units after they disbanded... that Tier 4 smiting? bought him over with 400 gold lol.

off to 2nd mission.. will play it in easy this time xD don't need that extra stress.

[sikbok]

Good job Dark Night.
GL HF on the next one : )>

[Davien]

Originally posted by sikbok:

Good job Dark Night.
GL HF on the next one : )>

Thanks sikbok.. gonna take a break for time being.. will be back to finish the 2nd one!

hope to see more content from you guys!

[jnpoint]

Nice to read aout the troubles you all have with the AI. I began to think that I was gotten more stupid :)

[sikbok]

No, we buffed AI a bit in patch.
Hope it's not IMBa now ; )>

[Lavo]

Originally posted by Dark Knight:

Originally posted by sikbok:

Good job Dark Night.
GL HF on the next one : )>

Thanks sikbok.. gonna take a break for time being.. will be back to finish the 2nd one!

hope to see more content from you guys!

That how i play, a hour and then I take a decent break, it help me a lot on clearing my mind xD