Part 11

Update 11

Last time I found and conquered one of greens castles which used to belong to the sorceress faction. Meaning that once again I managed to save the barbarian castle for last. Let's get rid off the rest of them.

Day 40

In a surprise move the AI upgraded a village during their turn.


Remember the two heroes I ignored to take the sorceress castle? Those two heroes are on their way to attack my main castle. Falagar is “near” the one near the ore mine, but he has no chance of ever catching up with those slow as heck Hydras.

I’m not too worried, since Luna is back home and I have money to buy units.


So Falagar continues his journey to the enemy base...where ever it is. I decided that he would be best for the task, most armies I've seen so far consist of a lot of different units but in very low amounts making them prime hydra fodder.

Meanwhile Maximus scouts around for a bit.

Day 41

I’m not worried, just look at my defenses.


Falagar continues in the desert. Look another green village! All of these green villages are guarded, but usually by a single stack of something few.

Maximus looks around a bit more. I think I’ll have him approach the new knight castle. He may not have any shooters left, but he’s plenty strong. Yes I can buy him new shooters in my new castle, but I think I’ll need the money for my defenses in my own knight town.

Day 42

Maximus makes his move.


Fun times ahead for Luna.


"Get back to working the land!" I get rid of the single peasant to make room for real men.


I wonder if they’ll still attack. Neither of the green heroes has a very strong army, but it’s not like Luna is such a great hero.

Falagar makes little progress in the desert sands.


Here comes the first challenger. We’ll start with my specialty by doing absolutely nothing. The enemy can’t do anything until he gets the walls down so I don’t even bother casting spells.


Fortunately the catapult still sucks. He did cast lightning bolt on the paladins killing one. All lightning bolts are guaranteed to kill at least one paladin since the minimum damage for a lightning bolt is 50 and paladins only have 50 hp. Heroes 6 finally added magic defense to the creature stats to remedy some of their magic weakness.


Now he broke the wall, but I’m not worried...yet.


And here is why. I blinded the goblins and no one can get past them until they die or move to the side. My magic will last three turns. Meanwhile the tower sees them as low priority and I’m not in a hurry to kill them either.


His army is crippled by low morale quite often.


My spell wore off and the catapult knocked down the tower next to that wall making the hole big enough for two. No more waiting game.


Please keep freezing. My guys really feel the lack of heroic defense from Luna. Every hit hurts like falling down the stairs in full plate.


My archers are pivotal even if their damage output is lackluster.


So the cavalry died on the counter attack from the swordsmen and my paladins slide into their spot. They’re immediately blinded by the unicorn attack.


Time for the B-team to get to work.


No longer distracted by shiny gold armor the enemy makes a beeline for my archers. Well, he had like 3 arrows left so no big deal.


This please.


Not this please. The AI apparently visited a fountain because they’ve had a lot of lucky shots.


I’m winning!


Get back here and siege me!

Luna gets knowledge +1. That was a close victory, oh wait there’s another guy isn’t there. Maybe I've been overconfident.


Hello Ergon, come to get your revenge have you? He also had 5 orcs, but they evaporated thanks to the tower. Remember all those crap units I still had? The computer now uses them to resupply my army. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. In later games if you have units in the garrison the computer just puts you outside of the walls to fight leaving the others as a garrison. In this case I'm very happy Heroes 1 arranges it like this.

Those three Cyclops are dangerous, but I’ll wait them out.


“Do a little dance!”
The AI promptly wastes all their spells by first casting protection on the Cyclops and then casting bless the next round. Ergon only has 1 knowledge so he gets a single casting of each spell.


So the catapult breaks the wall and I miss casting blind on the Cyclops. I forgot that it’s the fastest unit on the field at the moment. Meh, those centaurs did like 4 damage per shot.


Defense!


Another breach and more defense. Casting slow on my swordsmen brings the AI nothing useful.


The archers are helping!


The three dwarves help out and the Cyclops die followed by the goblins.


Yes, I am aware that if I had been less lucky with the catapult I would’ve lost. +1 for spell power for Luna.

Day 43

I’ve found Dimitri again. He’s working for the enemy. Maximus heads back into the castle and with the threat to my other castle over he buys some druids.


Where is that barbarian castle?


It’s either in the desert or slightly to the left.

Day 43

I find another obelisk. Yes, the artifact is near where Falagar is now.


Finally found it.


Maximus follows Dimitri around.

Day 44

I’m reconsidering. While I’m happy to have found it I can see that they have lots of ogres and I haven’t encountered any ogres at all. So this could be all their ogres. Ogres are big slabs of meat who even one on one could almost beat a hydra. So if there are lots they’re more than a match for my pack of hydras. Not to mention the few Cyclops who can easily kill my gargoyles and griffons on their own. Further compounding the problem I only have one shooter who isn’t very durable and have to expect them to be halved or decimated in the first round. This army was meant to take on a lot of weak units, not a few stacks of lots of strong ones. Instead of cutting them off at the root I’ll just have to trim them like a tree until I can easily overpower this. Also, what is that green hero doing there? He’s not digging is he?


Stop digging for my artifacts!


Let’s try out our new trick, one to beam up!


The goblins do the smart thing and kill themselves, the orcs and a troll. Behold the true power of the hydra.


The griffins attack the Cyclops.


And I remember to check Thundax. I don’t think he’s found the artifact, otherwise he would have had a huge stat somewhere. This is good news.


I want the Hydras between the oddly stationary cyclops and the troll, but their crappy speed ensures that it takes them two turns to get there.


The Cyclops die and my gargoyles show off by flying backwards.


Why yes, casting slow on a unit who is already at the slowest speed will be sure to help you win.


Troll attack!


The centaurs get the winning kill.


These will come in handy, thank you.


So the AI really was digging for the artifact. I wonder if I should have Falagar hang around and dig some holes. Alright, let’s start pruning.


Maximus heads back one last time to cut off Agar. I’m going on the offensive after this.

Day 45

It’s a new week and…a new castle. Green is really aggressive.


Hey look, it’s Thundax and some other dude. Let’s check him out.


That’s the axe of dominion, a +2 to attack. With this I have a new friend for the sorceress units.

Luna heads to the water wheel.

Day 46
Luna gets the gold and runs back. Falagar targets the newest barbarian castle.


Maximus attacks the green knight castle.


Maybe I should stop with these screenshots where I just stand around until my catapult finally hits something.


Two turns later.


Lucky shot!


Keep it up!


Yes, no one can get in the castle due to the horrible placing of the holes and my swords/pikemen.


This was inevitable.


It is an army I suppose. I consider booting the centaurs to get the +1 morale that having only one type of unit provides. However I keep them on, extra archers are a sure extra hit as opposed to high morale boosts.

He moves around a bit to scout some more and I end turn. I just want a few extra units on him and then he’ll take over the other castles green has. Or hunt down heroes, whichever comes first.

Day 47

Much better.


Unfortunately I can’t teleport the hydras next to the wolves and the Cyclops. There’s no room. So I paralyze the Cyclops and attack the wolves.


Hurray!


With the wall down on the second turn. I cast haste on the hydras to conserve my valuable teleport spells.


Speedy hydras looks so silly since they also speed up their animations.


I probably should’ve blessed the hydras before having them attack.


Blessing them probably would’ve saved me some losses. Knowledge +1. The castle isn’t anything special, unless you count the 100 goblins and 64 orcs I could buy if Bitcoin existed in this world.

The barbarian city theme, finally a reason to post it.


The hydras need to be fed.


It’s fun watching the enemies line up to be eaten.


The real reason I attacked them was so I could reach this lamp. Time to get genies... tomorrow!

Day 47

Antoine moves to attack my castle!


Hey Dimitri, did you miss us? You remember your old pal Maximus right?


Let the rain come!


His archers also got a lucky shot. Defense +1 for Maximus.


With Dimitri no longer a threat to our sorceress castle, Barok decides to attack the green sorceress castle. I blind the sprites and the druids shoot the elves. The sprites are medium speed, as are the elves so chances are that after the unicorn had had its turn either of them would’ve attacked me. I want to minimize losses, because taking down those 10 ogres is going to take some time.


The sprites kill two ogres and the ogres can't retaliate. Unfortunately after that it's the ogres turn and I lose 45 sprites.


Protection on the elves as the walls aren’t down yet.


Stupid catapult also fails in round 3.


I hate you too!


I still hate you!





Victory at a price. I wish I had that human from the Warcraft 2 cinematic to man my catapults. He wouldn’t have missed like this. Anyway, Spell power +1.

Falagar buys two genies from the lamp after which he goes back to the castle. I thought I saw someone move just now but it happened too quick to determine where it was.

Day 48

Where are those guys coming from? Is there no end to them?

I buy Thundax back in that castle and whatever dwarves I can to build some defense. Antoine saw my new units in the warlock castle and ran away. I really want to kill these heroes so I can move more freely.


Barok attacks the one closest to him. It’s also the fastest of the two heroes since Agar is carrying peasants.


The troll strikes a pose, we are suitably impressed.


Fortunately for me the troll is only medium speed, so my unicorns will neuter them when it’s their turn.


I thought unicorns were fast, but they were medium speed as well so the trolls still got their turn. In my defense, unicorns become fast in Heroes2.


Victory!


Barok can’t reach the other guy, so he starts the trip back to the unguarded sorceress castle. I positioned Maximus above the knight castle so the enemy will encounter a hero wherever he decides to go.


Agar attacks the sorceress castle with Thundax. This looks pretty doable thanks to the tower and the walls. I blind their centaurs. There’s only one druid left and hopefully I can kill the gargoyles in the first round and shoot it with my archers.


You may notice my goblins are missing. That was a lightning bolt.


Orcs are Archers. Same HP, but (strangely for the Barbarian) lower attack and higher defense. Hilariously their close range attack sound like they're using a light saber. They do cost a whole less than archers, so at least the Barbarians can post on Something Awful...I suppose this does explain goons. They do have one problem though, whereas the knights only have the archers as ranged unit the orcs have to compete with the trolls for the position of archer if you only want to bring 1. They also have to compete with the goblins as they are decent enough to bring along in the army thanks to higher speed and growth. So basically orcs are bad. And then the worst thing, imagine marching miles through the desert with a guy whose boots sound like this. Yes, this is the orcish walking sound.


Everyone defend! I curse their ponies.


They attacked the dwarves and died. This battle is over.


Defense +1. Thundax is doing well.

Day 49

Barok goes scouting because I want to know where those guys came from. His warlock vision quickly spots them. Another castle.


Barok also found more map pieces! Oh right, maybe I should follow up on that.


Falagar bought some reinforcements at a nearby tent. Time to take that village.

Maximus buys some archers and moves to attack as well. The enemy Antoine found some gargoyles willing to join him and he’s on his way to the Warlock castle again.

Egads this map is taking long. If I can get rid of their heroes and that top castle, I can start an attempt to siege their main castle. Off screen I've been checking on them and they’ve been buying reinforcements there.

Next time I show you I have green thumbs. Green from greens blood! Maybe I'll remember to do some digging as well.