Fourth mission loth campaign

[-Tau-]

Damn that mission is fuu... hard, send me a smoke signal if it gets balanced and i will gladly come back

[Stepfan]

Originally posted by LexGeneralis:

Originally posted by Stepfan:

On the 4th lolth map just go north and take Barya big town. Around 50 turns or so you should be able to

Made it somehow even earlier and gathering now new strength, go for more research, more production and level up wielders. Once that is done, I'll make my move for Rana.

If you got 2 towns producing units and giving 8k gold for you the map is in the bag, the AI has half gold/units. Keep a hero in each garrison with some troops so you don't loose it. One hero should be main fighter with a tutor skill maxed(preferably) after he gains xp you share the xp with your secondary ones. I finished the map at level 24 on my main. Hope it helps.

[Neutrino]

I've done the whole campaign over on worthy (and finished it this time, hooray), this time I've worked to have every hero level 14 for the last mission (which helps a bit), one of the heroes had +500 income (which helps a lot) and one had the tutor +75% (which is also quite useful).

To balance this map a bit more I would suggest adding like 20 more free skeletons at the encounter south to the first village, because it really isn't an envidence that you can take over the big city to the north west at that moment.
So often what you do is going to the north, taking the village and then you need 10-15 more turns (at least) to build up anough to take over the big city (since you won't stay without doing something you will lose your army progressively).

I would also lower the repop speed of Rana, because it's clearly insane how fast he's doing that (in the end he only had a village left and he still kept buying all his heroes back every 2-3 turns).

[Kumamonenko]

The 4th misson for Loth is IMPOSSIBLE, even on fair, you can beat Baria, but frogs just destroying you. Even with full packs of strongest units and strongest wielder it is not even close.
Is this ever was playtasted by anyone? I really glad to find so many people also facing this problem.

[godfather101]

Originally posted by Anders:

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

I am playing on Fair (yes, I play relaxed), and even though teh Arleon and Rana Mission 4s gave me a challenge, they did not frustrate me to the point the Loth Mission 4 does.
I am not averse to a challenge, specially in the end of a campaign, but the Loth one does not actually seem "Fair".

Well that does sound like we need to calm things down a bit, thank you so much for getting back to us!!

+1 what jonoliveira said!
I also play it on fair and can't get through the rana masses. The Baryans were hard (and perhaps, at least on "fair" they could also be cut back a little more so it is, well, a little more fair ^^) but the rana are unbeatable for me. I played Songs of Conquest on the newest version (if that is important) and am really struggeling.

One thing, that could be important too is, for those who were able to beat the 4th Loth Mission, how long did it take. Because sitting on 1 mission for multiple hours, failing and failing again can be REALLY depressing. even if i manage to beat the mission, it still doesn't feel good (at least for me) that i needed 4-8 hours to achieve this. :)

[Naruto0408]

gotta save every so often tbh because that can really be a time saver on not having to restart missions from the beginning but rather doing so from 10, 20, 25, 35, etc. rounds in

[LexGeneralis]

My gosh. I've done it, but without being able to defeat Rana. Was more of a cat and mouse game with high losses on my side just to claim beacons and let the time run out. Will begin to upload the final videos today.

[Polaris2013]

I beat this mission before the game had achievements (late 2023), and while it was tough, the difficulty didn't seem disproportionate to me.

After reading this topic I'm starting it again, to see how different it is now. Posting back later with results.

[Polaris2013]

To be completely honest, I actually found it extremely easy on the replay, not nearly as hard as I remembered it. And once I recognized the map, I chose all different paths so that I could minimize my preparedness for what was coming.

Here are the highlights of my journey (Worthy difficulty):

EARLY GAME
Day 6 - Chose Hillar as main. Razed Starting Town (i.e. did not convert). Sent Secondary hero west to claim undefended resources.
Day 8 - Captured Celestial Ore Mine E of starting town
Day 10 - Returned home for resupply via beacon NW of Celestial Ore Mine. I'm switching to Quick Combat for remainder of the map to save time, except for key battles against major enemy commanders will be fought manually.
Day 12 - Captured Amber Mine S of starting town. A noticeable shortage of Glimmerweave is preventing town upgrades at this point
Day 15 - Captured large town W of starter using the "Occupy with Main->Convert with Secondary" tactic. Gonna call this one Home Base. Still looking for that Glimmer.
Day 16 - Finally found Glimmer. Immediately max out starting town with Rat Warren, Sanctum, and Croft, upgrades for all
Day 18 - Main hero reaches Lv 15 and Command 8. Other skills are Cunning 3, Destruction 3, Arcana 3, and Rigor 1. All Artifacts are carried over from previous scenario and net result is 47 Offense, 56 Defense, 21 Move and +4 Essence from amulets. Figured I should mention my build at some point and just got around to it now.
Day 18 - Home Base finished converting. Immediately upgrade to Tier 4 and trade 3000 gold to start Economy Research building. I forgot if Loth gets Glimmerweave production, but I hope they do.
Day 20 - Ambertina spawns. Main hero razes small settlement north from home town. Secondary sells excess artifacts at merchant. This writeup is going to be less detailed now that we're past the start.

MID GAME
Day 25 - Main hero captured Small Settlement a little north of center of map. Decided to start using my strongest Secondary wielder as another main that will be attacking NE of starting town. Lv10 Magnolia, 38 Offense, 38 Defense, 18 Movement, Command 7, Taxes 2, Archery 1, Order 2, Farsight 1.
Day 28 - Heavy casualties taken by Main razing another nearby Rana settlement further north and defeating a major Rana commander. Fought that battle without Quick Combat. I'm up to 5 towns owned now, with no pressure from opposing players yet.
Day 30 - Main returns home after finding another beacon to teleport from. Union of the 3 wielders at starting town allows me to optimize artifacts for everyone's role and sell off the rest.
Hillar - primary army
Magnolia - secondary army (will launch a few days after Hillar has left and attack a different place on the map)
Ambertina - supply line
Day 44 - Finally found a large Rana Settlement with Hillar (but not their home base). Threat Level - Insignificant. I convert it because I'm no longer concerned with enemies and it will give me the last large research building. Magnolia is exploring Fae territory in South, collecting artifacts. Ambertina is just about ready to field a 3rd army for sniping straggling commanders.
Day 48 - AI capitalized on Hillar being out of commission. Tinkers sent 2 strong attacks to home base. Ambertina was able to stop 1 and the other got deterred converting the small town just north of the home, giving Magnolia time to come home, refill, and kill them. Hillar is continuing to wreck the Rana back lines.

LATE GAME
Day 55 - By this point, 3x Tinker commanders and 2x Rana commanders have been defeated. I control about 2/3 of the map except for 2x sneaky Rana that are hiding out of my line of sight and tagging places where none of my commanders are close to. I control 4-5 beacons, depending on what the sneaks are doing.
Day 57 - Hillar begins converting the Rana home base. Magnolia finds the Tinker home base but has to pull back because her army is flagging. Ambertina has her first army since she stopped the home base assault on Day 48 and she's ready to hunt the Rana sneaks.
Day 62 - Claimed 7th beacon. Magnolia got refilled and is ready to take down Barya home base.
Day 65 - Victory. Despite dropping down to 6 beacons for 2 days (due to the last Rana sneak), it still registered the victory condition on Day 65.

POST MORTEM
The main difficulty here was being limited to 3 commanders on a map that requires heavy multitasking. My guess is that people who are having trouble are not using the teleporter network efficiently, which I don't think was described clearly in the game. It's also possible they didn't get enough movement upgrades in the previous scenarios; those things really snowball in the campaigns.

A final comment, the map just has a lot more dialog than it did the first time I played it. Here's the thing: NO dialog is better than BAD dialog, and there is a lot of bad dialog in this. The new campaign design is suffering from serious Diablo 3 Azmodan syndrome-- too much time is spent trying to make minutiae of the gameplay unique, but the net result is not that the player is more engrossed, but rather that we are slogging thru a bunch of junk story that is much less interesting than the game that it interrupts.

[Jack Blaze]

Originally posted by Polaris2013:

To be completely honest, I actually found it extremely easy on the replay, not nearly as hard as I remembered it. And once I recognized the map, I chose all different paths so that I could minimize my preparedness for what was coming.

Here are the highlights of my journey (Worthy difficulty):

POST MORTEM
The main difficulty here was being limited to 3 commanders on a map that requires heavy multitasking. My guess is that people who are having trouble are not using the teleporter network efficiently, which I don't think was described clearly in the game. It's also possible they didn't get enough movement upgrades in the previous scenarios; those things really snowball in the campaigns.

A final comment, the map just has a lot more dialog than it did the first time I played it. Here's the thing: NO dialog is better than BAD dialog, and there is a lot of bad dialog in this. The new campaign design is suffering from serious Diablo 3 Azmodan syndrome-- too much time is spent trying to make minutiae of the gameplay unique, but the net result is not that the player is more engrossed, but rather that we are slogging thru a bunch of junk story that is much less interesting than the game that it interrupts.

Say, any chance you can replay it on Overwhelming? I'm curious to see if it'd be as easy for you as it was for me on a second go. Mainly because replaying all of the campaigns on Overwhelming felt very underwhelming and anti-climatic for nearly all of the missions and I wanna see if someone else on my apparent level of skill or above it would have a similar experience for any of those missions

That said, I myself didn't really do that kind of big multitasking you did in my own replay (partly because I want to let the enemy be an actual challenge, partly because I'd find it a bit of hassle and partly cuz I prefer not to divvy up my army in more than one place when I can get away with it). I simply bulldozed through almost everything with Hillar and did most of the actual pickups with Magnolia and Ambertina - that was about it far as multitasking went on my end. That let me progress through the various areas of the mission pretty quickly, if not as quick as I assume you did

The general pathway I took in clearing things was clearing all the neutral armies in my area besides the ones guarding the paths into Rana territory (and technically Faey territory too, I guess) and then proceeding up towards claiming all of the Barya bases.

And just as I'd finished doing that, the two main Rana heroes were barely starting to near the entry points into mine and Barya territory while I was changing course to start hitting Rana through the Barya entry points. Neither of the two main Rana armies were particularly big threats to Hillar so it was just a matter of slogging through the much larger Rana territory to dog all of down.

It also didn't help that mine and Barya's beacons totaled like 4-5 in number, so I couldn't capture that many Rana ones on the way since I wanted to get all 7 after I'd captured all the Rana territories first

I still found the mission pretty easy while playing that way. If I'd hard focused on just the Beacons after Barya, I'd have probably won around somewhere between turn 70-80, instead of on turn 120 like I did on this replay

Big agree on the movement points, those snowball very hard in general and especially in the campaigns. I disagree on the story part some though, having bits and pieces of it scattered around on different parts of the map was a bit annoying when it came to getting all the ones in Rana territory, but that wasn't anything a quick reload or two didn't fix. The bits of story themselves weren't anything I'd classify as bad.

[LexGeneralis]

Originally posted by Jack Blaze:

Say, any chance you can replay it on Overwhelming? [...] and I wanna see if someone else on my apparent level of skill or above it would have a similar experience for any of those missions

Maybe Polaris can post his, too. For now, here is my attempt. I probably could have done better, but beaten is beaten.

https://youtu.be/rZUDKfN8pMg?si=UND-mQuGKtW1JXWp

https://youtu.be/7Nrp94ocPDw?si=aDbdyCkNWaCZP2fa

https://youtu.be/oqB3qHYqTBY?si=_lCplvg2DdxxSMFm

https://youtu.be/bIWeILFMViU?si=EyiI-49hRZus-aQx

[Jack Blaze]

Originally posted by LexGeneralis:

Maybe Polaris can post his, too. For now, here is my attempt. I probably could have done better, but beaten is beaten.

https://youtu.be/rZUDKfN8pMg?si=UND-mQuGKtW1JXWp

https://youtu.be/7Nrp94ocPDw?si=aDbdyCkNWaCZP2fa

https://youtu.be/oqB3qHYqTBY?si=_lCplvg2DdxxSMFm

https://youtu.be/bIWeILFMViU?si=EyiI-49hRZus-aQx

Watched just the first vid and I'd say it's overall pretty good work man

There're only a few/couple of things I'd note as major enough to talk about and the rest is just minor stuff that'd mean you'd snowball a smidgen quicker if you bother going that extra mile in efficiency

[LexGeneralis]

Originally posted by Jack Blaze:

Watched just the first vid and I'd say it's overall pretty good work man

There're only a few/couple of things I'd note as major enough to talk about and the rest is just minor stuff that'd mean you'd snowball a smidgen quicker if you bother going that extra mile in efficiency

Haha thank you. The first part was the smoothest though. But it's getting worse in the next three. Had to go back for some saves a few times and got punched really bad in the last one.

[Polaris2013]

I don't think the strategy I used would have worked on Overwhelming. The way I sped the game up only works on lower difficulties.

I used multiple armies because I noticed the AI was keeping its distance from my main, which led me to conclude that my army was "strong enough." That's what enabled my usage of additional armies.

From my experience with skirmish maps in this game, one does not reach that "strong enough" plateau on higher difficulties, so you have to invest everything in one wielder of mega-death, as per your experience.

[Jack Blaze]

Originally posted by LexGeneralis:

Haha thank you. The first part was the smoothest though. But it's getting worse in the next three. Had to go back for some saves a few times and got punched really bad in the last one.

You're welcome mate

I have a feeling you likely faced that difficulty in the later part of the mission because of those few things I considered major enough to talk about in regards to the early game shown in that first vid. Because, at least in my experience, still struggling throughout the mid game and especially if I'm still doing it in the late game is nearly always a sign that I've ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up something important in the early game that stopped me from snowballing hard enough for the mid game and beyond.

Originally posted by Polaris2013:

I don't think the strategy I used would have worked on Overwhelming. The way I sped the game up only works on lower difficulties.

I used multiple armies because I noticed the AI was keeping its distance from my main, which led me to conclude that my army was "strong enough." That's what enabled my usage of additional armies.

From my experience with skirmish maps in this game, one does not reach that "strong enough" plateau on higher difficulties, so you have to invest everything in one wielder of mega-death, as per your experience.

Hmm, I'd say there's likely a way to make it work still even on Overwhelming but it's probably going to be a lot more of a hassle compared to just grouping up everything in the main wielder

Anyways, I wasn't asking if the strat would would work on Overwhelming but more just simple curiosity how playing the mission on that difficulty would go for you for the reasons I mentioned earlier

If the AI Wielder's threat rating is at Fair or bellow compared to the Wielder you've got near them, it would start avoiding that particular Wielder of yours to the best of its ability (the coward) - I would assume that's why it started avoiding your main Wielder in your replay. It's a pretty nifty thing to take advantage of in the bigger Skirmish maps on the lower difficulties (Used to be simple enough to do even on the previous highest difficulty before the revamp but that thing ain't got nothing on Deadly now)

Definitely, the higher you up the difficulty in the current Skirmishes, the more evident it becomes that it's either doomstack and übermensch a single Wielder or get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard. The current Skirmish high difficulties actually feel like such compared to the previous ones and I love that - made me actually start trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong in my usual strategies and improve them

[Slowpork]

Just completed that pain in the ass mission. Thanks LexGeneralis for some useful tips and videos.

Rushing Barya is the key, I believe. Frogs don't leave their marsh and are pretty passive tbh. I fought them only once in 60+ turns. Poor dragons didn't help them.