Is the Necropolis campaign even POSSIBLE?

[elandryl]

Hi people.
I played all the Heroes of Might & Magic games. Finished a few of them. Enjoyed most of it.

But right now, I feel like I've bought the most frustrating game in the history. Just after the tutorial campaign, I went to play with what has always been my favorite faction in the saga: The Necropolis.

Well, I tried the first mission of the Necropolis campaign. Four or five times. I spent litteraly 5 or 6 hours on it. Well, it's hard to confess, but boy, I CAN'T EVEN FINISH THE FIRST BLOODY MISSION. It's simply too hard. The inquisition begins the map with three cities and three forts, and they're just more numerous, more powerful, with higher rank units. Each time you take a fort, they send an army to take back another one, in a manner that you can't intercept the army, and they ALWAYS suceed to capture it at the seventh day of the week, using it to build units the next turn. You can't produce enough units to hold two fronts, And if you try to wait several weeks in one of your city to build a strong army, weel, they build a stronger one, with higher ranks units, in their capitol. When I tried to attack the city in the south east, there were 200 griffins in it, no way to win the damn battle. So yes, Time is of the essence, but I don't see any flaws in the bloody defense. And I'm just playing in "normal" mode. Man, are ALL the missions THAT hard??? 'cause it reminds me of the worst missions in Heroes III, and that's not a praise.

[Xitones]

Yes, i remeber that mission, took me days playing to get that map cleaned, its VERY hard...

[Athos]

It's very winnable. But you have to spec your hero correctly and absolutely minimize your losses. You shouldn't be losing hardly any troops at all until you fight opposing heroes. And by that time you should have your altar of eternal servitude built so you can just repurchase all your losses. Make sure you have all the abilities to raise dead in battle, including regeneration, life drain and of course use necromancy. That's the basis of an undead army.

[Rizvanbeg]

Necro campaign is hardest one, if you think 1st mission is hard wait till 4th (final one) which is near impossible(still doable though).

Try using portals to quick transport your army to town/fort that is going to be attacked.Chasing AI army is like playing whack-a-mole since there is no FoW for AI.

And yeah, AI armies are scripted , so diff level doesn't mean anything for spawning their army.It's same size on Easy and on Hard

Try this guide or check Youtube for more detailed help:

http://guides.gamepressure.com/mightandmagicheroesvi/guide.asp?ID=12651

P.S. and everything what Athos said :)

[Imperium]

Hehe, yeah it takes a bit of time to figure it all out, the best strategy is to pick your fights and lose the least ammount of troops as poosible, there is no way to dwindle down the enemy troops, since once you kill AI hero it will respawn with its full army!...stupid but hey if your hero is build properly and got a good dynasty weapon you will kill them so easy it becomes laughable. Speed is another factor, the quicker = easier, as ai collects rediculous ammounts of troops way quicker then you, so if you spend 3 hours on a single mission its likely the AI has ammassed such army it wont be possible to win, or at least not likely.

Follow those tips and you will have an easy time :)

[xBleedingSoulx]

Necro missions are the easiest ones, if you think they're hard, I'd suggest not playing the game or you're going to rage.

The thing with Necro that makes them easy is the ability buy back all dead troops with the special building, makes them unstoppable, aslong as you have that building, you'll have no problems.

[Samalot]

Originally posted by elandryl:

Man, are ALL the missions THAT hard??? 'cause it reminds me of the worst missions in Heroes III, and that's not a praise.

Are you talking about the Danse Macabre Adventure Pack missions?? That's what i've been trying because the rest of the game is horribly broken and I agree - they seem completely impossible. Everything I do just leads to the enemy smashing me with a huge army.

[Ashra]

im stock at the very end of second mission lol....

[elandryl]

Well, thanks for the answers. Now that I see the one good strategy, I can see I wasn't too far from it... But boy, where's the fun in that? It's so frustrating... Scripted armies are the worst joke in the whole Heroes saga...

[elandryl]

Ah, no, now I've discovered there's actually a WORSE joke: the boss fight. Seriously, I hate that game.

[Scrysis]

I know this is a bit of a necro-thread (pun partly intended, don't kill me), but I got M&M recently myself (after I discovered Shades of Darkness was just an expansion), and initially had the same problem until I found some helpful advice elsewhere (That I've also added to.). I'll take the beating if the following advice helps someone else out.

1) First, don't worry about time. The opposing armies will always be big and scary. Your job is to make sure that your army keeps pace with their same rate of growth.

2) You need to spec Anastasia very specifically to get through the boss battle at the end. On the plus side, the spec will help you out on the next map.
********* Spec: Drain Life, Mass Drain Life, Rejuvenation, Mass Rejuvenation, Archery, Archery 2. Additional recommendations: Storm Arrows, Stone Skin, and the two talents in the prime magic tree that increase mana, and mana regeneration (they're almost dead center of that giant block of talents.). Stone skin is absurdly awesome. What you need to realize is that your hero isn't there to fight the battle; your hero is there to support the army. Remember that, and all is good (I know, I took all the fun talents first time through and had to replay the entire map in order to get it right.)

3) Mimimize fights and replay any that you must do to get either no losses or minimal losses before your first Tower of Eternal Servitude. This is probably a key thing. You will have to take out the guys guarding the first ore mine and lumber mill, in addition to the hero wandering around that first area and the town itself. Once you do that, you can sit around and twiddle your thumbs for a week or two until you can get it.

4) Upgrade your first town ASAP. What you really want to do is get Market -> Town 2 -> Town 3 - > Altar of Eternal Servitude -> Fortification 1 -> Fortification 2. After that, get the production buildings. You can safely ignore the hero buildings until the second town, and just get the first portal level for the first town, not the second. Once you clear the hero from this area on normal difficulty, you won't have to worry about armies coming to take over this town from you.

5) BUY BACK ALL OF YOUR DEAD TROOPS USING THE ALTAR. This is the key to winning this map. This is also why you severely limit fights until you both have an altar and the money to use it. Don't worry about gold; you'll be swimming in it at the end. Troops here are the most valuable asset on the map. When you get "gifted" new units from visiting the mass graves, send them back into town using your second hero and upgrade them then. Or let them die and have them resurrect as upgraded. Just don't leave them dead.

6) Use portals and advanced portal on your second and third bases to keep enemy heroes from taking them over. You can't really afford to leave your army at home, so this really helps. Also, once you take over the second and third bases AND clear off any heroes that are wandering around the map, you won't have to worry about them any more.

7) You only need ONE extra hero. Don't use him for fighting. That's just silly. Use the second hero to shuttle more troops to your main army and for scouting out sections of the map so that you can see where enemy heroes are. If he dies, you can just resurrect him for free, provided you have the hero-base upgrade in at least one town.

8) You can sell unused artifacts and buy cool ones at THEIR bases BEFORE you upgrade them. How? Go to their market, then find the little button on the top that says "Sell Artifacts". It will take you to a section that you don't have available on your markets. (The Jerks!) You should be swimming in gold, so take what you want, and sell what you can't use.

8) Feel free to collect ALL the goodies on the map if you feel like it. If you've done everything so far, your army will be keeping pace with theirs.

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Boss Battle
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How I got through the boss battle (you can do it differently, if you want):

Groups: One giant group of skeleton spearmen, two very large groups of spectres, one very large group of ghouls.

Use Mass Rejuvenation first -- you'll offset the unavoidable fireball and crossbowmen damage at the start.

First things first: You need to position your spearmen in the very top or very bottom corner. You want the corner CLOSEST to the arbalests/crossbowmen (more on that in a second). Next, place one of your spectre groups on a square right next to, but at a diagonal to the spearmen that goes closer to the center of the map. If you've done it correctly, the spearmen are in the top or bottom left-most corner with a group of spectres right next to them, with a square touching the spearmen to either side of the spectre. AND the arbalests will only be able to hit one at a time. Okay, so why did I forfeit one round of damage from my spearmen? By doing this, you've just made your spearmen immune to gryphon attacks (until the spectre dies). Gryphons have this nasty tendency of sitting right next to your ranged units and making them useless. Their hit-box is a 2x2, so this tactic means that the spectre is protecting your spearmen since they now can't be reached (and you can keep shooting!)

Have the spectres wait until the last part of every turn (that way, you can heal extra damage, or finish off things, if you're lucky.)

Waltz your ghoul up to the front gates and start attacking them.

General strategy from here: Priority targets for spearmen: Arbalests/crossbowmen - Radiant Glories, then Vestals- Gryphons. Vestals can only heal twice before they're useless (not to mention Salvatore bubbles them 90% of the time), so focus on hard-hitting Glories and bowmen evenly. You're not aiming to finish off stacks just yet; you just want to whittle them down so they don't hurt as much. When you aren't keeping your ghoul stack alive, use storm arrows on these guys so that they hit really hard.

Ghoul targets: Hit anything that comes into melee that isn't a gryphon, but do it from a side that Praetorians can't retaliate from, and that also "lures" the melee away from your spearmen. Gryphons can't get to them, but everything else can. I found in MANY replays of this fight, most everything chases after this single ghoul stack, so you MUST keep it alive. Stone skin needs to be up every round, as well as the GOOD regeneration and Life Drain (the single versions give greater benefit). You'll be splitting your necromancy between this stack, and your spearmen (when the ghoul stack is doing okay).

Spectre targets: Your ghoul stack. You need to WAIT though, before using Wail. It will be VERY tempting to use it early, but wait until the gates are down and the ghoul is surrounded by enemies. Not only will you kill a lot of units, but you'll also revive an ungodly number of ghouls in addition. If a spectre is out of wails AND is not protecting your spearmen from gryphons, feel free to start attacking with it; just no gryphons. Try to hit stacks that your ghoul has already hit. JUST DO NOT MOVE THE STACK NEXT TO THE SPEARMEN. (You'll be pissed if you move that set of spectres and then have gryphons waltz in and make your spearmen useless.

Do not wait to use your necromancy. Use it at somepoint before every turn, before the unit you're using it on attacks. This allows life drain to work much better and to do more damage to the army (seems obvious, but it isn't.)

Note on gryphons: Gryphons hit hard, but the endless retaliation means that they're putting out a lot more damage than you can afford to deal with. They were the very last things I killed in my boss battle; just hit them with ranged to periodically reduce the damage they do.

Once you've won, convert the town and barracks, revive all your troops, wait a week for your new liches, and then go through the portal. Hope this helps someone.

[Freelancer]

Yes this game can be pretty difficult. Vampirism in conjunction with the faction ability are the key to preserving units as necro. Summoned elementals are a great way to soak up damage. The darkness ele is especially good. Just drop him beside the most damaging enemy ranged unit at the start of fights. You should be finishing most of your fights with zero losses. Otherwise you will be overwhelmed in the end.

Most missions have a rediculous boss fight at the end, so if you find yourself just barely crawling towards the finishline.. youll be put down at the very last fight every time.

[Chazztizer]

Or use the Celestial Heavens site for tips on how to build hero

[Deathman.Kenshi]

Its not only possible, its possible easiest of all campaings :)

[Freelancer]

Are you playing the one with anastasia?

[ErrolBrown]

thx scrysis! Got so frustrated at my first botched attempt if it wasn't for your efforts to help those who stumbled at the first attempt I may not have gone back to it for some time!
Viva