Part 28: A Bridge to Success

Jostiband posted:

Can you do both, or is that out of the question?

When you see what I did this update, you'll see why I'd rather not do it twice. I'll think about doing another run in a bonus update, if I have absolutely nothing better to do over the weekend.

slayn posted:

I think it would also be interesting to see an army of castle units. Since you can purchase infinite, and they are so cheap, could you potentially make an army of tens of thousands of millitia? Or is there a cap of 9999?

Nope, no cap.



There is a cap on leadership, though.

Keyboard Fox posted:

Well, heck, want me to do you up a gametap sub-account?

Thanks for the offer, but it looks like Gametap won't run on OS X 10.3.9. I should probably just upgrade already, but eh.

Ardhanari posted:

I'd been looking for it for a while, but I finally found a copy of Heroes of Might and Magic: Quest for the Dragonbone Staff.

Thanks for mentioning this! I'd been meaning to talk a bit about the remake in this thread, but never got around to doing so. (Plus, I've never played it myself, so it's good to hear from someone who has.)

Anyway, Army A wins the vote! We'll be digging out our trusty old troops and building a high-morale ranged army of death.

A Bridge to Success

There are a number of reasonable ways to beat Arech Dragonbreath.

One way is to use Demons, attack Arech's strongest stack of Dragons, and hope for the best. Even if you halve his Dragons on the first attack, though, you still have a lot of powerful enemies to deal with, so I hope you brought along some backup armies that play well with Demons.

Another way is to take advantage of the fact that Castle troops come in unlimited numbers, and use all your reserves of gold to buy Knights and Resurrect spells. 500 or so Knights and a few dozen Resurrect spells should be enough.

If you're any class other than the Sorceress, one of these ways is probably your best bet.

Ignatia will not be using either of those ways. Instead, she will be using an entirely unreasonable method.

In today's update, Ignatia and I are going to show you all how to utterly humiliate Arech Dragonbreath in ten incredibly tedious steps.



Step 1: garrison our entire army except for one peasant.



Step 2: wait.

"Hey, Max, I'm here for my 15,000 gold weekly commission."

"By all means. I trust that you have been making good progress toward recovering the Sceptre?"

"Oh, sure, don't worry about it."



Step 3: ... wait some more.

"Far be it from me to question your competence, but you have been camping outside my castle for the last three months. I fail to see how this brings you any closer to finding the Sceptre of Order."

"Relax, would you? I know what I'm doing."



Ignatia is now a millionaire. In fact, she has so much money that it won't always display properly any more.

"When, pray tell, do you intend to return to your mission of recovering the Sceptre?"

"Eh, I'll get around to it."



"Take all the time you need. Never mind the fact that the fate of the kingdom is at stake."



"What am I still paying you for? Go and find the Sceptre!"



"Okay, I think I'm ready to go beat Arech now! Oh, and once I'm done with that I'll go fetch the Sceptre."

"... strength... fading..."



Step 4: restock on Time Stop.



Step 5: buy lots and lots of Clone spells.



Step 6: get our army back from where we garrisoned it.



We can't clone them up just yet, though. Our Archmages are already too numerous to control, and soon we're going to raise every one of those units far beyond the limits of Ignatia's normal leadership.



Step 7, therefore, is to use a bunch of Raise Control spells.



There's a hard cap on Leadership at 65000, and Raise Control is cheap and effective enough that we may as well hit the cap.



Step 8: use all those Clone spells, then go back, buy more, get into another fight and clone even more troops. Repeat until you either run out of money, run out of wandering monsters, or can't keep your eyes open any more.




Step 9: Castle Gate over to Arech's castle.



And finally, step 10.

"It's over, Arech. We've captured every one of your lackeys. Even if Maximus were to die now, what good will it do you when your chosen king rots in his dungeons? Surrender, before I take your castle by force."

"You and what army, human?"



"This army."

"... oh."



BLAMMO



KAPOW



CRASH



THUD



CRUNCH



ZAM



SIZZLE



WHACK




womp womp



SMASH



KABLOOIE



"... best two out of three?"



Before we garrison our army, let's take one last look at it in all its glory.



All of our units except the Barbarians cost so much money that the game can't handle it and it loops back around to zero, sometimes more than once. If you wanted, you could abuse this bug to have a massive army that only costs a few thousand gold a week by carefully managing the size of each unit, but with Time Stop you don't really need to bother.



Even after garrisoning her army, Ignatia still has well over half a million gold left from defeating Arech. It's too bad there's almost nothing left to spend it on.

"In fact, there's only one thing left to do..."



"Cover every single square of water on Continentia in bridges!"



"I always thought Hunterville needed a proper dock."



"I really have no excuse for this, though."



"Mission accomplished!"

Well, we probably should go fetch the Sceptre of Order, _{if only because the death of Maximus would make you the logical next person in line for the throne and God help us all if that happens}



Here's our complete map to the Sceptre. Oddly enough, it includes the bridges we've placed, despite the fact that we placed them long after the map was made. Must be a magic map.

So, you ask, where is the Sceptre?



Remember King's Haven, the first town that sold Town Gate? Just follow the coastline a short distance to the northwest, and you'll find the spot.



A failed search takes 10 days if you don't have Arech's piece of the map. (A successful search takes only one day in any case.)

"Archmages, it's time to start digging."

The search is a complete success, of course. We dig up the Sceptre with weeks to spare, and we're led to meet King Maximus on...

... wait for it...




... a bridge.



"Yay, a manor of my very own on a tropical island! But I wonder why it's five thousand miles away from the Four Continents..."

"Because I don't own any land ten thousand miles away."

Well, that's all, folks. Maximus and the Four Continents are saved, Continentia's fishing industry is ruined, Ignatia is rich, famous and a safe distance away from anything flammable, and the LP is done. Tune in next time for Let's Play Might & Magic 1, the game that made New World Computing famous. It'll start within a month, if not sooner.