Trouble with mission four - Stoutheart campaign? Read this!

[Lavapotion]

We are currently re-balancing the difficulty curve of the Stoutheart campaign and will nerf the enemies slightly in mission four. We will also introduce a difficulty option for the campaigns in an upcoming patch (I can't guarantee when it will be out, but hopefully within a few weeks!).

If you want to beat the mission now, you probably can with the help of this strategy guide our Game Designer have created. We are sorry for the poor audio quality, but we wanted to get the video out sooner rather than re-record it!

https://youtu.be/K5yjeYbvlRw

I also want to provide some context: We have been in an Alpha testing phase for around a year. Over time the testers have gotten very good at the game! We've been told that we needed to increase the difficulty levels all around. So we did! This is not an excuse for the poor experience this has caused new players, but we are working hard to fix it!

[Papa Pasda' Ⓢ]

Played this map smoothly and captured an undead city after defeating their hero. Felt like everything was going smoothly.

Then amberina came to me, Cecilia was lvl 16 with 7/8 troops full stacked, amberina lvl 16 too with 7 troops. At the first turn she sent sooooo many spell, buffing all her troops and one shoting some of my stack, nothing could be done, little help was the ballista and milicia.
There's certainly something about difficulty that's off. How could the AI start the battle with more than 10 essences and cast so many spells ?

How to have essences at the begining of the fight guys ?

[FreezeZ]

Through skills, items, technology, buildings and pickups

[ruxolitinib]

I don't know what I am doing wrong. After beating two full stacked armies, this third one immediately arrives. Have 3 settlements, turn 28:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2807120277

Any ideas how to beat it? Or with what?

[Cpt.ButtHurt]

Same. You just do not have time to collect anything on this map (1 company 4 mission), when the enemy Hero comes with a huge army and no matter what you have, he just demolishes you without straining. On the previous maps, I gathered all the possible, lvl up`s to the maximum possible... all the same. On this map, you don't have as much gold and mines to constantly hire someone. The enemy comes very quickly, capturing all your buildings... You can't physically do anything.

[Razzlie]

I'm also stalled in this mission. After going through mission 3 I had a hunch that I should expect to have a hard time, so from the very start I was exploring with all 3 heroes aggressively, working as quickly as I could manage to expand, get resources and so on. Everyone is well geared, leveled up, have decent skills and unit loadouts, I think I have pretty good income. Have been consistently minimizing losses while clearing the map, usually losing nothing in most battles through careful tactics.

Now, I'm at a stage where I've had to repel like 3 or 4 armies every few to couple turns coming from the north, big ones. And even though I've usually managed to fight them very cleanly, they spam apocalypse (?) and other high-damage spells, especially when they've already lost the battle and are just getting cleaned up. Which unpreventably causes some losses, and the attrition simply can't be stopped because I only have so many recruitment buildings and only so much income compared to the constant onslaught.

2 turns after the last battle, I see another army coming, go check it out and see there's 60 (!) legions in there, and I just closed the game because I felt like I was kind of done. I don't think I have any answer to that kind of doomstack, no matter what I would try. If I'm doing something wrong, I don't know what it is, so even if I reloaded my save from the very first turn of this mission, I don't have any reason to believe I'd do things any differently or better than I had already, at least to a degree where I'd be able to beat it.

If anyone has actually beat the mission, I'd love to know how they pulled it off.

[Godwin]

Tbh it's nice to know it's not too easy.. now they just need to tone it down a bit, maybe keep this as a difficulty setting for those who really want it hardcore.

[Razzlie]

Автор сообщения: Lionel23

I've spent the past 2 days (replied in another thread about Mission 4) and I'm running into the same issue. I just cannot get past this and I'm no noob when it comes to games like this. I LOVED playing high difficulty on XCOM2 or Warhammer Total War, Company of Heroes and Age of Empires, etc.

I've tried focusing with the heroes, trying different 'Large Building' strats like Armory or Academy and building relevant forces, and the big issue is the AI has a HUGE economy leg up compared to you and more lords. While you're able to beat the AI with some difficulty initially, they can restore and recruit their armies way faster than the player can, who has several dead turns in the forest. I had one attempt where I got the 1st Starting Large Town, the 2 Smaller towns beyond it and attempted to rush the SW Large Town in the undead area, and the AI was already past it clearing with the 160+ rat doomstacks and other units... at like turn 40 or less? And they just clear out so much of the wild and treasure and leave nothing for you. My best attempt ended just now after killing their lords like over 12 times, but now it's giant stacks of golems and other super high tier stuff that just decimates my forces, in addition to their magic being way more powerful than Order's (the AOE one is crazy powerful especially and Order/Good forces don't have an equivalent skill.. or even a heal to mitigate some of this damage!).

I think I'm just going to take a break from this game for awhile until they tune this mission, as I can't even proceed in the campaign and there is no difficulty slider just to skip this mission, it's really brutal and depressingly crushing for a good player like me, I can't imagine someone who isn't a hardcore gamer like my dad NOT getting super frustrated with this Mission XD

I'm in the same boat, I beat Xcom on Legendary/Ironman, TWW1 on Legendary a bunch of times, and so on. I'm not some HoMM master despite playing the games since literally from 1996 but I have a good enough grasp where I think I should be able to do the mission, but I just can't, and have no clue if I am doing anything wrong in it, assuming that is even the case. I'm thinking I might just go play some skirmish maps for a while and let people sort out this mission in the meantime. Either there's some kind of specific strat to making it beatable, or the devs have overtuned it to their in-house players who probably have hundreds of hours in the game and know exactly how everything works so as to be able to min-max way more efficiently.

[alden.monzon]

Автор сообщения: Lionel23

I wouldn't say the AI is cheating per say, but I think it's not fair the AI is building up while you run through the 'intro path' on Mission 4. I've spent the last 2 days on this mission and I consider myself a very good gamer when it comes to RTS (Company of Heroes, Age of Empires 4, XCOM2, etc).

I have to agree with a lot of people the difficulty tuning is incredibly out of scale compared to the other missions. 1 and 2 were nice for starting out, was worried it was too easy. The 'surprise' on Mission 3 took me off-guard but I was able to overcome it... then go into Mission 4 and like someone else said earlier, I'm able to beat off the AI but they have vast map control and a HUGE starting army compared to the player who starts with no income and limited large towns to compete against Loth's forces.

I even went back and redid Mission 3 to farm as much as I could and get ALL the treasures for a complete map clear and went back and spent the entire day TODAY re-attempting Mission 4. I was able to hold off Loth's lords multiple times but they just come back with the same doomstacks, and their magic is incredibly OP compared to Order's magic (multiple AOE spells, buffs to ranged and magic gather rate, etc) as well as those wizard guys who even when moving just destroy you. I had to 're-level' my heroes to focus on Ranged Defense and 50-75% Magic Resistance but the damage they do in incredible despite these bonuses.

I'm at the point they are now throwing the upgraded golems at me constantly with 2-3 armies over and over, and I even lost all my towns and had to hide in the woods pillaging and using neutral buildings, but they eventually forced me out and killed Stoutheart and company. The garrisons aren't strong enough to deal with their forces and most of the time I had to hunker down in the town to even have a chance with the walls and not having to fight on an open field.

Lastly, I have tried this mission with both the Academy (using mass numbers) and the Armory (fewer troops but more buffs), using mainly Order or the Faey forces and they just can't compete with how overtuned Loth's forces are. I've made beelines for treasures or grabbing the nearest 'large' town after the starter in the SW, but they have a 'suicide' level army already at that point that just chases me to my capital and burns it down with Stoutheart inside (btw Devs, losing Stoutheart when you can rez other lords should not be a game over condition, as I will illustrate in my next point below).

Unlike Mission 3, killing a lord doesn't make them go away, they respawn SUPER fast from the towns they capture from you and come with very large forces again, while if I did the same thing I barely get 2-3 troops per pool a turn. I wish there was a difficulty slider JUST for this mission but alas there is none.

I really love what this game has going on, but I'm definitely frustrated enough now with Mission 4 that I just can't and won't play this anymore until a patch is done to tone down this Mission so I can proceed with the campaign. =/

The AI IS cheating, plain and simple. There's no way it could produce enough units nor have the resources to immediately have the same army size after you defeat 2 or 3 of their wielders.

[Lionel23]

Автор сообщения: alden.monzon

Автор сообщения: Lionel23

I wouldn't say the AI is cheating per say, but I think it's not fair the AI is building up while you run through the 'intro path' on Mission 4. I've spent the last 2 days on this mission and I consider myself a very good gamer when it comes to RTS (Company of Heroes, Age of Empires 4, XCOM2, etc).

I have to agree with a lot of people the difficulty tuning is incredibly out of scale compared to the other missions. 1 and 2 were nice for starting out, was worried it was too easy. The 'surprise' on Mission 3 took me off-guard but I was able to overcome it... then go into Mission 4 and like someone else said earlier, I'm able to beat off the AI but they have vast map control and a HUGE starting army compared to the player who starts with no income and limited large towns to compete against Loth's forces.

I even went back and redid Mission 3 to farm as much as I could and get ALL the treasures for a complete map clear and went back and spent the entire day TODAY re-attempting Mission 4. I was able to hold off Loth's lords multiple times but they just come back with the same doomstacks, and their magic is incredibly OP compared to Order's magic (multiple AOE spells, buffs to ranged and magic gather rate, etc) as well as those wizard guys who even when moving just destroy you. I had to 're-level' my heroes to focus on Ranged Defense and 50-75% Magic Resistance but the damage they do in incredible despite these bonuses.

I'm at the point they are now throwing the upgraded golems at me constantly with 2-3 armies over and over, and I even lost all my towns and had to hide in the woods pillaging and using neutral buildings, but they eventually forced me out and killed Stoutheart and company. The garrisons aren't strong enough to deal with their forces and most of the time I had to hunker down in the town to even have a chance with the walls and not having to fight on an open field.

Lastly, I have tried this mission with both the Academy (using mass numbers) and the Armory (fewer troops but more buffs), using mainly Order or the Faey forces and they just can't compete with how overtuned Loth's forces are. I've made beelines for treasures or grabbing the nearest 'large' town after the starter in the SW, but they have a 'suicide' level army already at that point that just chases me to my capital and burns it down with Stoutheart inside (btw Devs, losing Stoutheart when you can rez other lords should not be a game over condition, as I will illustrate in my next point below).

Unlike Mission 3, killing a lord doesn't make them go away, they respawn SUPER fast from the towns they capture from you and come with very large forces again, while if I did the same thing I barely get 2-3 troops per pool a turn. I wish there was a difficulty slider JUST for this mission but alas there is none.

I really love what this game has going on, but I'm definitely frustrated enough now with Mission 4 that I just can't and won't play this anymore until a patch is done to tone down this Mission so I can proceed with the campaign. =/

The AI IS cheating, plain and simple. There's no way it could produce enough units nor have the resources to immediately have the same army size after you defeat 2 or 3 of their wielders.

I think you're right, was in another thread, I just couldn't be sure if it was or wasn't because I can't look at their cities and see their armies respawn with troops until my last battle when he was respawning from my city he captured with the doomstacks shortly after being killed by me. Definitely some work needs to be done on this for sure!

[Alexandro]

4 chapter really hard(great game btw 10/10)

Well cpu alwause have 3 huge armies and kill me all the time cant defend city.

[KantiranRhodan]

Alright, I finally managed to beat it.

So from what I can tell the enemy doesn't cheat, it "just" has an extreme advantage over you at the beginning of the game.

Here is how I beat it (it's probably not the optimal strategy and took me over 120 turns but it worked for me):

Because the enemy has such a crushing advantage early on I essentially treated the stage as a "stealth mission" I sent Cecilia northwest pretty much immediatly after taking your starting city. I used the other heroes (the ones you get at the beginning of the mission) to gather other troops and ressources. It seems that in the early stages the enemy is rather passive so you have some time to do it.

I got to an enemy village near to heavenly ore mines. BUT I didn't capture those but immediatly went for the village and pillaged it. Afterwards I went south and captured a major city.

At that point the enemy started coming but I managed to evade them and sneak north from my starting position and capured their fortress (the enemy doesn't seem to value defending cities highly so I was able to take the fortress pretty easily). Then I built up my forces a bit and captured the fortress directly north of it.

From then on it was more or less a typical power struggle where I was slowly able to gain the upper hand. I did have to reload a couple of times though. It was important for me to capture and convert everything whenever there was an opening. It seems the AI prioritizes going to the nearest thing you capture so I could bait it a bit. and disctract it from my cities.

It also seems to be important to capture the essence towers. If you get those I think the enemy can't use that many spells.

Again this isn't a foolproof or optimal strategy but it worked for me.

EDIT: prioritize capturing gold mines and silk webs, I found the upgraded fey units more effective than the knights (which I only started to focus a bit later).

[sherlouk]

Help

How did you pass mission 4 ??

[JODEGAFUN]

Автор сообщения: Drukaris

okay guys i am talking about this specific battle
i kinda have a feeling we are not talking about the same thing

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2806740652

and this is what the start of the mission looks like

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2806745015

First i saw why in the hell are you only lv 9? I was 15 as i did this battle. An true it is the hardest battle so far. Finish of the rats first, then the ghost, ignore the skeletons until rats and ghost are dead. Shot+ meele attack from knights finsh of a rat stack, try not to take the first attack. The battle is hard but you can win it whit the right position.

[Drukaris]

i was level 9 because i did mission 3 pretty much only with the other hero
he also had the nice gear and stuff
and then he was gone in mission 4 ... and i was stuck with underleveled cecilia and no gear

trust me i tried all the strats
it came down to "do i get max damage roll 3 times in a row or not?"
and i didnt

[cifrelettere]

Yeah Stoutheart mission 4 has two initial battles that are extremely hard. The first one is pretty doable, but if you take more than minor losses the next one is nearly impossible.

I pointed this out too and hopefully they scale it back a bit because it's extremely hard and relies a lot on luck (which map you get, etc.).