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!

[Stalbon]

I don't know if I've hit the point where the 4th mission has been adjusted for balance (I did restart the mission), but I like the fact that with any failure, you can come back and look for new strategies in these games. However, as folks have stated, it feels like aggressive offense is simply the best way, to the point of 'stretching yourself too thin' is the only way to go.

I'm a Might & Magic veteran, and back in those days I used to think I sucked, because my defensive mindset meant the AI would come along with its super-improved stacks and simply overwhelm me. With this, I'm definitely using some of these discussion threads to help me out; my first try on the 3rd mission ended in failure, but after peeking a a thread and adjusting, I beat it and got into mission 4...and here I'm stalled like everyone else. Ambertina's units seem beatable until she simply launches 4 waves of spells at you in a single go. It's also insane how glass cannon-like everyone is; Faey Spirits can shred lesser units, but touch them and they die.

I like the map, I love the exploration, and I am hoping to continue adjusting tactics, but Loth's troops, especially the Necromancers, do seem either overstacked or overtuned. I want the mission to be exciting and challenging, just not crushingly so.

[Shockwave 006]

I miss the old days of these types of campaigns, think heroes of might and magic 2, that one was my favorite, most of the missions where like how skirmish maps play, this is where you start, this is where the enemy starts, have at each other. No scripted stacks of doom or massively cheating AI.. The AI in heroes 2 and 3 on normal did not cheat, even said so in the difficulty selection screen.

[TimVVvv88]

I like the exploring aspect of the game. But mission 4 is hard. I tried a couple of strategies, but everything eventual fails. The enemy - the quantity of the troops and spells of the necromancers - is too overwelming. Around turn 25/30 the invasion starts. I can beat two heroes, but the third wielder is too much. At that moment Stoutheart is lv 20. I've a full stack army, but my troops are suffering mayor losses because of magic. The enemy always hit at least 2-3 units with 50% losses. It's no fun.

[badger vortex]

Origineel geplaatst door Reddz:

That's a big difference, and if the ai behavior is that random then maybe that's what could use an adjustment. A scripted round for them to start attacking, like in mission 3, then have it all play out naturally. All I did was explore close to the first town, maybe if you go farther you aggro them sooner.

After playing more and testing different movement patterns I've noticed that a.i. seem to have an aggro radius (it's bigger than your vision radius though, even with +2 to map vision at least). So I must have gone too far West and "triggered" Ambertina to attack me. I suspect going North and East near the start will offer you a much easier time on this map and only go West to attack the main Fortress.

Origineel geplaatst door Reddz:

Still, I loaded my round 22 save to check what I had going on. 20 horned ones, 30 spirits, and 8 nobles, just because the map hurls free faey units at you right near the first town. 6 of the knights it starts you off with. In the base I had 18 shields of order, 20 archers, and 73 sappers available. That's enough to win a fight. Your faey buddies respawn as well, if your first enemy looks impossible you could soften it first with Gnaw or Stormspire. Stormspire has a 200 damage chain lightning too. I didn't do that but that's probably the whole reason the map gives them to you and lets them respawn. You have the tools to win.

I had just under 40 Queens Guard (lvl 2 horned ones) 90ish Sappers, 30 Spirits and some Archers but it's still not enough. On round 1 you pretty much lose a full stack and half from magic alone and it only gets worse in the next 2 rounds, the fact they have a giant rat stack to roadblock your melee units ties them up just enough that they can destroy your army from range and only a few of your Queens Guard will likely make it to the enemy (not enough by then to do much damage).

As for using Stormspire to "soften them up" I don't see that being a reliable strategy, if you fight the enemy with small stacks/amount of units you won't even get to cast a spell before the army is annihilated. You could put your entire army with them and perhaps that would work better? I'm not sure a Chain Lightning would be that effective since enemy army is all ranged and spread out. The campaign also teaches you not to use anyone but your main hero for combat because you are just wasting xp. obviously it doesn't matter for the last mission, but it's certainly counter-intuitive to use anyone but your main hero for important fights.

Origineel geplaatst door Reddz:

As for Ambertina, her spells are op, can't lie about that. But Stormspire is the same. Fights with her have more rng, you could get unlucky with her casting. But you could sweep her before she even casts. Knights and all Faey units after research have high movement, initiative, and of course, damage. My Gnaw also rolled a skill that reduces spell damage by 25%, but I took more command instead. And I found not 1 but 2 pairs of gloves that reduce spell damage by an additional 25%. Didn't use those either, went for the raw stats, but these things would help with her.

I can't remember if I had the gloves or not, but I certainly would have equipped them in that fight, I don't think expecting a player to pickup spell damage resistance as a level up perk is a reasonable thing coming into the map, only if you have prior knowledge before you level up your hero. After all none of the enemies up to that point had strong magic. If Stormspire is the key for making this map easier then that's just bad game design, it's completely counter-intuitive to the rest of the campaign where it was best to use your main hero.

Having gone through the 2nd campaign it feels much better designed/balanced overall though, there isn't so much being punished for taking certain routes on the map and there was no "gotcha" moments like in the 1st.

[granto]

The difficulty of mission 4 is a big discussion, but I feel like there are two really unnecessary things making it worse.

Losing Artifacts at the end of Missions on other Wielders

This is weird. Does it create interesting gameplay to make you do a big "Wielder Con" at the end of each mission, where you hoard your stuff to your main character? Putting a script in the game the game where Artifacts move into the Main Wielder's inventory during the win screen (beinhd the courtains) shouldn't be a challenge. If the inventory is getting filled up, the game already has a system where it can decide wich ones are better or worse.

Mission 3 ends abruptly with scripted AI behavior

It is mentioned at this discussion a lot of the time, that levelling up your main Wielder can really make the difference at Mission 4. The problem is that you do not really have control over the end of Mission 3. First time you play, you don't even know that that encounter will end the map. I really think that a player should be able to keep playing a map, if they wanted to, or at least know if the encounter will force the end of a mission. I also think that making necessary to come back to a mission with meta knowledge is not good mission design.
In Heroes III (even more in Chronicles) you always knew the end objective, so at the end of a map you could back the enemy into a corner with your secondary hero, and level up your main by exploring the stuff you missed during the pressure time. This was fun, it felt like you mastered your enemy, and had some adventurous downtime between the "hard stuff".
This sudden ending of a mission also makes my first pont worse. Even if I know that I lose my stuff on my secondary wielders, I did not give it to my main, because I didn't know that was the time I had to.

Bonus point: Making everyone happy

I get where everyody comes from. The end of a campaign should be hard, it should be a challenge of skill. But Mission 4 is a difficulty spike. I feel like a lot of players (myself included) go into Mission 4 unprepeared. How about a (maybe optional) Mission 3.5, where you ease players into playing the ways you (the devs) wanted them to play? Teach them how to be efficient with multiple wielders, how to keep multiple fronts at the same time. Let them level up a bit. Don't cut down the spike, create a ramp in front of it.

[OmegaBOOM]

Same here.

[Shepherd]

A few things that might help, once you're past the initial gauntlet and have your first town:

- play a game with the mission just exploring the map. The AI has three major towns; one north of your starting town, one northeast, and one northwest with a stationary hero that you need to kill to win. The closest one, directly north, makes a very good target for a rush if you can, and will even the odds a lot.

- every neutral Fae troop and some (not all) neutral human troops on the map will join your forces (if in doubt, quicksave before fighting them). You can quickly amass a quite large army just running up and recruiting all the neutral fae in the forests to the immediate north of your first town. There are also some dwellings up there that will let you hire fae troops. Use these to quickly push to the first enemy town.

- don't feel the need to use just your main starting hero. This is the last mission of the campaign after all. I had the most luck going all in on the male fae hero, whose unique bonus is huge with the big fae bruisers. Don't sweat him being level 9, he'll level up fast.

- the spellcasting enemy hero (the bald-headed one) is an absolute nuker. The key to beating her is to rapidly close the distance and beat her troops up ASAP so they stop generating mana. The haste and chaos step spells on melee beater fae really help here.

- the enemy will respawn their heroes quickly but not at full strength. You will have to play whack-a-mole, and when the bald-headed caster respawns she's a pain, but repeat your prior strategies. Occupy the north-east enemy town when you have a breather, then build a force kill the enemy hero in the north-west and win the mission.

[badger vortex]

I'm sorry but the video was not helpful at all, maybe there were a few complaining about killing neutral camps on mission 4, but the main problem is the power of some of the enemy wielders *cough* Ambertina. Also this comment from one of your Alpha testers could be why they did it easily.

Origineel geplaatst door Red Dragon:

I think here's what has happened: This mission was designed before the final re-balance pass and the spell upgrade and even some AI upgrades so it's probably significantly harder than when most of us initial playtesters actually played and beat it. I don't remember the enemy wielders crippling me with spells or anything like that, they just went "pew pew" and I laughed as I clobbered them with my stack of horned ones. I think back when I played it spells didn't even have tiers 1-3 yet and the magic power scaling was different.

Notice how he says the wielders didn't really do much damage with spells and spells worked differently (much weaker than now).

I'm not sure you need to create whole difficulty options when Rana campaign is fine, and it's mostly just mission 4 that is an issue due to your army being heavily damaged from range+ w.lots of damage spells before you can even reach the enemy,

[OmegaBOOM]

Mission 4 and a number of grievances

Mission 4 is way too hard. I like a challenge but does the developers think everyone spent the last 20 years playing HoMM on impossible? :D I will try one more time with being as expansionist as possible before the enemy wielders spawn.. but I think it will end with another slap in my face.

Grievances:
Spawning:
-Suddenly spawning enemy heroes/wielders isn't a fun mechanic IMO.

Wielder view ranges:
-Why are the viewing ranges so tiny? Combined with fog of war I get in situations where enemy wielders are 1-3 rounds from walking into my towns, while my wielders that can offer resistance are 4-6 rounds away. (I know, I should defend, but in the case of M4 I find it very hard to balance : building substantial army, and, exploring enough of the map to capture relevant towns, and, keeping towns defended)

Lookout towers:
-The lookout towers are useless? They hardly offer any better viewing range than what my wielder has. (She has the scouting / range skill, but still). The lookout towers are pretty underwhelming. Viewing range seems to be incredibly important in SoC. Would it be an idea to have a lookout tower available as a small town building? It would have a view range large enough to see an enemy wielder at least three or four rounds before they're at the gates. This would give some time to return wielders out on adventure. Alternative to this could be to generally increase viewing range of all towns and claimed buildings.

..The way the view ranges are set up currently makes the game feel a bit 'claustrophobic' to my taste..

..This post became a bit longer than intended.

Songs of Conquest is awesome and I'm sure it will evolve into a really great game!

[Bjoring]

The main issue with Mission 4 is the strength of the enemy wielders, not the first few fights. It's still great to hear that there are improvements incoming, though. I'm looking forward to it.

[Papa Pasda' Ⓢ]

Ambertina destroyed 250 of my units with only 25 on her side in autobattle, she was noted very easy and was 2 levels behind.
AI shouldn't have the spell boosters towers or artifacts in this mission.
The damages boost of mages' spells when they level up should be reduced a tad to

[Crystal]

Mission 4 difficulty spike? Any tips? (New to the genre)

So I'm kind of in an awkward point of the game.. I have my main, strongest force defending my big castle with 1 of each building inside it. I make 10k a turn, and I use that money to buy resources and troops whenever I can. I've killed many wielders.

And then in comes this absolute chad, and despite having 5 stacks of 10 Faey Queens, I am getting absolutely blasted by a 'suicidal' difficulty army. I'm clearly missing something about how to best approach this.

My first thought is maybe 'time' itself is a resource, and simply defending my castle isn't a good way to spend turns.. but I simply don't know how to defend while my main hero and force is away from the castle. It feels like troop regeneration is slow - it'd take like 20 turns for enough units to be ready to be recruited, so I never feel 'rested' enough to venture out. I always feel like I'm running on empty. This is why I was stacking faey queens; they have a low count but regenerate at the same rate as normal troops, so it was easier to get a full stack that was fairly powerful.

Whenever I do leave a settlement or castle, it gets taken over, so I then thought that since this is a hostile mission, I needed to play defensively and slowly expand across the map. My problem now is that if I run away from the suicidal army, I lose progress and I will have no way of bolstering my forces enough to retaliate.

Does anyone have any tips for how to survive? Maybe these tips will also help with skirmishes but it was my belief that the campaign served as a tutorial so I kind of want to learn to overcome this before I start skirmishing vs AI :)

Also thanks Lavapotion for the amazing game :)

[Crystal]

I just noticed the pinned post... I don't know why I didn't see it sooner :(

[Mentally Unstable]

Thank you for coming out to try and explain. Could you please share with us what sort of cheats/buffs the enemy has if any? That would provide some context as to the sort of "difficulty" the players are facing and would help clear misconceptions of what is going on in terms of it. It would also help form a starting point for discussion and suggestions otherwise we will all be doing so based on our own assumptions.

[Crystal]

My issue with mission 4 is the part that comes after this.. I'm really bad at these kinds of games, and I kind of want to know a strategy for how to actually make progress in the mission when you're up against really tough armies. I don't know if I need to defend, explore, go on the offensive or what.

I'd really value a tutorial that's the 'missing link' between the basics and average skirmishing tactics. Once you get the second wielder, the game kind of just leaves you alone, I kind of think the tutorials could do a bit better of explaining the ways you could use the other wielder. Same goes with multiple settlements; should you be building troop-production at other settlements or resource gatherers? When should I attack / defend, etc. These things are obviously subjective, but that's EXACTLY why they're difficult to learn. It'd be nice to be taught at least a single playstyle so that I have a base of knowledge to build off of.

I played skirmish with a friend yesterday and despite them starting the game from fresh, they were carrying me hard. It must be something that you gain from just playing strategy games in general and so it's not specific to your game. Saying that, I do think it would be nice if part of the first campaign was dedicated to presenting these challenges and allowing you to focus on overcoming them without the rest of the situation overwhelming you.