any tips for act 2?

[Legs0fSteel]

so i've made to act 2 4 times now but the same thing happens everytime wich is...

the red capitol builds an army even julius cesar would surrender to and transports to my capitol and takes it and i lose

it dosn't matter if i go for the isalnds or the main land first outcome is the same

so.. does anyone have any tips or solutions for this problem?

[Stabbey]

This is one of the game's annoying moves. I have something that'll help, though.

Research Ironclads in Act 1, then as soon as you get to Act 2, buy a few. Place them on the water around the enemy island. Ironclads kill Transports in auto-resolve. The enemy won't make it to your shore.

Of course, you still won't be able to kill him yet because of the huge army. You'll have to kill the others and save him for last.

I am going to see about an alternate strategy, though: Invade with a strategically calculated force, enter RTS mode, and let him break his attack on me, or go straight for his capital and hope I have enough damage to destroy it before losing everything.

[SaintDante]

What I did is during the battle I bottleneck their forces in front of the mortar turret and I just set my mortar turret on a constant barrage in one location. Eventually I was able to just wipe out his hordes of enemies and go on a counter offensive with hunters and shamans.

[Lucifer]

Before advancing to the second chapter build up some taverns and research everything you can in the first chapter before taking the capital. when youre finally ready to move on you should have a decent amount of mercenary cards to spam at larger armies and a good starting base of funds and research points for the next chapter. But yeah blockade that guy with ironclads is pretty much the key concept

[Thirdhawk]

I was having the same troubles, do what Stabbey suggested in his comment and it should all work out. I was able to keep them on that one island throughout all act 2 while taking their other islands with ease.

[MountTai]

I just went for the mainland to the west with 1 transport and 1 trooper, left the rest of the units on the island and that was enough defence for every invade.... Since the main land has a war factory there on the first piece of land and some neutral units to take over you won't have trouble getting atleast 4 or 5 pieces of land there and then you can get the islands above after. Then just turtle for a couple of turns to build up an army and build some buildings. Works for me. Also always handy to have some mercenary cards ready to turn the tide around if needed.

[Komnenos]

Yeah, Act 2 definitely has me discouraged. Nothing will drive me away from a game faster than constant losing. Anyway, the problem I have in Act 2 is even when I take that capital on the Undead island right away, one or both of the other two factions get so big that I can't contest them. It seems like if I expand too slowly the AI's win the research/resource war, and if I expand too rapidly they do end runs and retake provinces in my rear areas. I can think of few things more annoying in a game than having to go back and fight for the same real estate more than once. :(

[VaeSapiens]

Well I didn't hoar research and went to act II as soon as I can on Hard just to challange myself a little. And I don't see the problem.

Take a little force to the mainland. Get some ships, command every battle you see is below 50% and you are golden. And Ironclads. You need Ironclads.

[somebodynobody10]

This is the way I went with it, take the advice with a word of salt as our popularity ratings might be different.

1) In act 1, research all the tech available.
2) Immediately send a transport to the imp lands when act 2 comes around and snatch that factory over there (or take the darwen lands if your popularity is better there.
3) Research devastators and zeppelings as quickly as you can. Researching siege mode for the devastators also recommended.
4) Researhs the cloaking ability of the zeppelings that can mask other units in the range, not just the zeppelings.
5) Build a force of devastators and 1-2 zeppelings as you capture lands of opportunity.
6) build a sufficient seaforce to burst through enemy blockades, then invade the island capital with your army.

The devastators in siege mode coupled with zeppelings make any land force aiming at you die before they reach you. Hold up while protecting your main base + at least a single expansion recruitment citadel. Use the cloaking when the enemy reaches you to preserve your units.
Turtling for the win.

Having juggernauts optional (recommended). Having ironclads is optional (recommended). Recommend either large groups of grenadiers or hunters with rocket pod-upgrade to face enemy bomber balloons, unless you have had enough time to research/use a card that allows imp fighter production on the spot.

In the case of loosing in the sea, no biggie as long as you make personally sure (dragon mode raiding) that the enemy doesn't manage to build too many juggernauts.
To this effect, remember that your dragons fire breath is actually a gattling gun: if you simply hold the trigger you get lousy 1 fireball per second, quicly tap the mouse and you will have 3-4 fireballs a sec coming out.
Overheating a risk.
Use the dragons jetpack to run away after shooting out a volley: you will face ultimate missile spam. Return to your army, heal and repeat as ordered.
Use dragon cards if you feel they can give you enough firepower to one-shot enemy forces, like the "Eye of the patriach."

Let me be perfectly clear: at all times of that battle, you will be outnumbered, no way around that. You need to keep the kill/death ratio as optimal as possible.

Remember to have at least the hunters as an anti-cloack unit, as you will be warlock-spammed.


I hope this will help you in your campaign.

[Legs0fSteel]

Originally posted by somebodynobody10:

This is the way I went with it, take the advice with a word of salt as our popularity ratings might be different.

1) In act 1, research all the tech available.
2) Immediately send a transport to the imp lands when act 2 comes around and snatch that factory over there (or take the darwen lands if your popularity is better there.
3) Research devastators and zeppelings as quickly as you can. Researching siege mode for the devastators also recommended.
4) Researhs the cloaking ability of the zeppelings that can mask other units in the range, not just the zeppelings.
5) Build a force of devastators and 1-2 zeppelings as you capture lands of opportunity.
6) build a sufficient seaforce to burst through enemy blockades, then invade the island capital with your army.

The devastators in siege mode coupled with zeppelings make any land force aiming at you die before they reach you. Hold up while protecting your main base + at least a single expansion recruitment citadel. Use the cloaking when the enemy reaches you to preserve your units.
Turtling for the win.

Having juggernauts optional (recommended). Having ironclads is optional (recommended). Recommend either large groups of grenadiers or hunters with rocket pod-upgrade to face enemy bomber balloons, unless you have had enough time to research/use a card that allows imp fighter production on the spot.

In the case of loosing in the sea, no biggie as long as you make personally sure (dragon mode raiding) that the enemy doesn't manage to build too many juggernauts.
To this effect, remember that your dragons fire breath is actually a gattling gun: if you simply hold the trigger you get lousy 1 fireball per second, quicly tap the mouse and you will have 3-4 fireballs a sec coming out.
Overheating a risk.
Use the dragons jetpack to run away after shooting out a volley: you will face ultimate missile spam. Return to your army, heal and repeat as ordered.
Use dragon cards if you feel they can give you enough firepower to one-shot enemy forces, like the "Eye of the patriach."

Let me be perfectly clear: at all times of that battle, you will be outnumbered, no way around that. You need to keep the kill/death ratio as optimal as possible.


I hope this will help you in your campaign.

wow that was deep as all hell i'm sure i get something out ofthere :)

one more question how can you see wich race owns wich land?

[Stabbey]

The countries are both colour-coded, have the portrait of a member of the race on them, and if you mouse over them, you see which race owns then in the diamond-shaped window of the mouse-over stats.

I just took on Karthan's capital on Hard. I did have a lot of Undead support, so my cap was good.

I used a -75% Naval unit discount plus a lot of saved gold to build 11 Juggernauts, which helped soften up the enemy a lot.

Sieged Devastators worked wonders. People dismiss the Unit Advantage/Unit Subversion cards because they're not as tangible as more mercenaries, but they really are helpful. I boosted my Devastator's speed and firing rate, and cut the range of the enemy's Hunters (of which he had about 30 thanks to Entrenchment) by 75%, making them almost melee units, easy prey to wander into range of my Shamans' Cripple, letting the Devastators crush them easily.

[Legs0fSteel]

Originally posted by Stabbey:

The countries are both colour-coded, have the portrait of a member of the race on them, and if you mouse over them, you see which race owns then in the diamond-shaped window of the mouse-over stats.

I just took on Karthan's capital on Hard. I did have a lot of Undead support, so my cap was good.

I used a -75% Naval unit discount plus a lot of saved gold to build 11 Juggernauts, which helped soften up the enemy a lot.

Sieged Devastators worked wonders. People dismiss the Unit Advantage/Unit Subversion cards because they're not as tangible as more mercenaries, but they really are helpful. I boosted my Devastator's speed and firing rate, and cut the range of the enemy's Hunters (of which he had about 30 thanks to Entrenchment) by 75%, making them almost melee units, easy prey to wander into range of my Shamans' Cripple, letting the Devastators crush them easily.

thabks a lot man your and the others advice is pure gold

this game just gets deeper and deeper i initially bought it because of the story mode and the political dialogue and the characters and always used auto-resolve

but no i am legit starting to enjoy the RTS part of it as well this is really the first game that stopped me rom playing dark souls

this might ver well be my game of the year(i make youtube videos so thats why i say that)

again thanks a lot all of you here