Rana Campaign - The Marsh Expands. Too Hard?

[T_POT]

Hello there. As someone who is thoroughly enjoying the game I have run into bit of a roadblock. I played most missions on the second highest difficulty, but for the last mission of the frog men "The Marsh Expands" I simply cannot get through.

I've tried multiple times on the lowest difficulty (Fair) and I even tried stacking a fully upgraded dragon army to fend off against the Baryans. Their use of cannons and big giant men with clubs simply destroy me every time, and the Welder just absolutely crushes my stacks with their use of magic.

Am I just turbo bad at the game or is this mission badly balanced?

[LexGeneralis]

It's for sure doable as I did it twice on hardest. I can only guess you didn't understand some crucial game mechanics and maybe leveled Rasc not the way you like to play with him through the other three missions.

That's impossible to tell without any insight.

[Slowpork]

Two things are essential in campaigns - high initiative (so you won't get obliterated on the first turn) and Magic resistance. Everything else is a nice addition.

Initiative is not an issue for Rana as they have plenty of upgrades and you can probably find some Artifacts that can boost it as well.

Magic resistance can be tricky as sometimes RNGesus hates you and refuses to drop the skill. But on some maps you can find Cobra statues which give +10%MR or some anti-magic items.

[Will be deleted]

No the mission is fine. A fully upgraded dragon army should absolutly destroy them from my experience so I can't tell what went wrong for you.

[Sly_Boots]

For me, the key to this one was not only recruiting a load of elder dragons, it was also using the research buildings to double the size of their stacks to 6 and also buffing their offense, damage, initiative etc. The dragons are classed as Rana, so any research to improve Rana also improves your dragon units. When I had Rasc with 9 stacks of 6 elder dragons, it was possible to beat and then push back the enemy units with the AOE mortar cannons.

[Shotdown]

Was looking to see if I was the only one, just got stomped with almost full elder dragon army and had some (but not all) of their upgrades. Those cannons are absolute BS. Don't even want to play the game anymore after getting wrecked that hard.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Shotdown:

Was looking to see if I was the only one, just got stomped with almost full elder dragon army and had some (but not all) of their upgrades. Those cannons are absolute BS. Don't even want to play the game anymore after getting wrecked that hard.

Yeah, the Cannon stacks are insane if you take long to progress through the map. This is further compounded by the Baryan Wielders typically have high initiative due to artifacts/skills. So their entire squad gets to go first and nuke everyone.

For me, on Overwhelming, I basically tried rushing(without proc'ing Lolth) and ended up having to dance around luring their primary wielder while I use my other wielder to cap their towns and then immediately raze them. If you do it right, the AI will want to double back and save their town, letting your bait wielder get away while your primary wielder runs to cap another town. Rinse repeat until you've razed their towns. Then it's a matter of buying time/scorched earth until you can actually attack them and win. As long as Rasc doesn't lose, you can effectively sacrifice your other wielders to soften them and take them out with Rasc.

Overall, I'd say it is a very imbalanced map in the sense that you can easily become overwhelmed or completely outpaced due to the extreme logistic advantage Barya has.

[Ail]

I also finished it on Overwhelming yesterday and it was actually the only mission in the Rana-campaign where I didn't have to restart/reload at any point.

I think what many people don't realize is that the difficulty of the enemy wielders scales with time. As in: The slower you are, the stronger they are when you meet them.

I think a mistake many players make is doing stuff like waiting for more units, waiting for upgrades etc. The AI doesn't just twiddle their thumbs and does nothing while you do so. And if you wait while still having a worse economy then them, you'll lose in the long run. There's a lot of settlements to take over which is necessary to make your economy better than theirs.

To me the key was to push into the map as quickly as possible while also being conservative with my units. I used very basic units most and just upgraded them. So mostly stormguards. Later I added more Riders. The composition should fit what you specced Rasc into.

With 5 markets I got the rare resources needed for all the upgrades for the troops I had and that made me strong enough to fight the enemy wielders head-on.

Going for dragons imho loses too much tempo.

Note that relying on magic on this map isn't that great because the enemy has quite a bit of resistence.

[Sheldon666]

This map was difficult but fun. Did it on "fair" on my first run.
I primarily relied on Protectors. They can "run" to the cannons quickly with their ability.
Same with Riders of the swamp even though they die easy.
After I got some bloody noses with my Dragons bc of the justice spell, I started building EthDra and ignoring Dragons.
From then on I tried to hurry, take as many towns as possible. It is doable.

[div.ide]

Originally posted by Ail:

I also finished it on Overwhelming yesterday and it was actually the only mission in the Rana-campaign where I didn't have to restart/reload at any point.

I think what many people don't realize is that the difficulty of the enemy wielders scales with time. As in: The slower you are, the stronger they are when you meet them.

I think a mistake many players make is doing stuff like waiting for more units, waiting for upgrades etc. The AI doesn't just twiddle their thumbs and does nothing while you do so. And if you wait while still having a worse economy then them, you'll lose in the long run. There's a lot of settlements to take over which is necessary to make your economy better than theirs.

To me the key was to push into the map as quickly as possible while also being conservative with my units. I used very basic units most and just upgraded them. So mostly stormguards. Later I added more Riders. The composition should fit what you specced Rasc into.

With 5 markets I got the rare resources needed for all the upgrades for the troops I had and that made me strong enough to fight the enemy wielders head-on.

Going for dragons imho loses too much tempo.

Note that relying on magic on this map isn't that great because the enemy has quite a bit of resistence.

I think you hit the nail on the head on most points except of last one, which is largely dependant on how you build around it and which spells you utilise, as there is plenty non-damage spells that can completely swing fights.

Point in case, in a pure stroke of RNG, a mystic hermit on Rana 2 gave me chaos magic for Rasc and Cheekham, and having that leveled up to 3 alongside Talisman of Chaos from Rana 3 and essence burst 1 unlocked some extra cheesy strats. Primarily Blind hatred - it's SO GOOD against hellbreaths (AI brutes love to hug them.... to death; it also takes off essence shield on up to 6 troops) it won me a deadly fight vs Huma Rosewater (I had almost no army, and he had essence shield 2). It's such an OP spell, and it flies under the radar because none of the factions we currently have specialises in arcana + chaos. But this is anecdotical, soooo... moving on.

You're absolutely right about early expansion and keeping up the tempo. You can make rapid progress towards the middle of the map with a barely a skeleton crew and take control of a lot of territory. At the same time, take the large settlement south and fend off Merkoth but don't venture south just yet, Loth won't go out too far of their way to invade you and can be dealt with after you reinforce your main army in the middle. This map is super friendly for rushing early tech and once you hit 5 markets and your upgrades start trickling down you can steamroll with extremely efficient midgame armies. Barya starts with at least a lv5 and a lv3 settlement and gains several more small ones soon. If you sit back and twiddle your thumbs for too long, they'll probably just outscale you on the basis of better economy.

Dragons are a trap. Barya, of all factions, has the most abundand order+destruction generators and tanking justice costs too much. On top of that, they get online so late you have to sacrifice tempo to get them running. I kind of just won before I could bring them to the frontline on both my original run on worthy and recent redo on ovewhelming.

I've seen a letsplayer on youtube try grinding Soughtfor out with green dragons, Guardians and and Chelun elders and it looked like a horrible, gruelling slaughterfest. First I was wondering how is he struggling so much, then I saw it was somewhere around turn 70 and he still wasn't halfway through with teching it up so there's that. He won, eventually, on the basis of controlling more territory, but it looked like a chore. I've experienced reverse of this on Barya 4 - while Loth armies were actually engaging and causing major losses, once I made enough headway in army size to have spare to push north with Bhigli, Rana were a cakewalk and their dragons kept faliing like autumn leaves, unable to leave even a dent.

My way of doing it was probably the same as yours - start off with Storm guards with a few Tremors for mana generation and initiative advantage, then transition to mass Riders (while rolling out tech upgrades). They're super mobile, scale extremely well with their tech tree double-dip (both Rand AND Beast), generate up to 4 essence, have extra synergy with Rasc's specialisation and kinda just steamroll everything with minimal losses, if you bother to protect and enhance them with magic. Re-run on overwhelming ended on turn 44 and I had to legitimetely double-check if I didn't do fair by accident. Maybe the difficulties are swapped.

I think the hardest map of the whole campaign was 2nd scenario. That opening is brutally barren in resources and after slog of a start, when you finally break out of initial area, Sanaz is waiting right outside to rain on your parade. After that 2nd settlement was mine, map was wide open, and it was smooth sailing.

[Thefatwizard]

I pretty much lose every battle against the bombards on the first turn before I can act. Their damage is unreal. Enemy wielder casting fireball just to rub salt in the wound.