|
|
19 - A Date with History
|
Author |
File Description |
Stratego |
Posted on 10/28/04 @ 12:00 AM (updated 11/07/04)
Mission 19 - A Date with History
Once again, you will face one single opponent in this mission: the Wolf and he will be a “hard nut to crack”. It isn’t your biggest problem to repulse his attacks, but to conquer his impressive fortress. The Wolf has optimal starting conditions (40.000 Gold!), multiple well-saved resources, and many green oases’ areas. You soon will notice that he will use his advantageous position for a well-functioning economic structure. However, you need not to complain of your own start conditions on the north eastern corner. Therefore, you are in a position to build up your settlement very quickly by applying the following sequence:
1 granary, 6 stockpiles, 3 woodcutters, 3 apple orchards, 3 dairy farms on the northern oasis, 1 market place, 1 mercenary post, 1 barrack, 2 huts and 2 quarries along with 4 ox tethers on the western stone deposit nearby. Later on 1 hops farm, 2 breweries and 2 inns, a few churches and 1 cathedral for a raising popularity.
You have to enclose and to seal off your position very early by a thick wall. Integrate four or five square towers manned by ballistas and crossbowmen. At the beginning you should buy in about 20 leather arms and 20 crossbows on the market place. Additionally put in a strong gatehouse and protect your standard walls by crenelated walls. Use the iron resources outside of your castle and place as much iron mines as possible. Massive hostile attacks will be improbable, because your strong fortifications will deter the Wolf from overrunning you.
Produce at least 200 (or more) leather arms, crossbows, swords and armours for the offensive. The siege indeed will become something for long and cold winter nights.
Your first offensive targets are those adverse quarries east of the central range of sand hills in the midst of the map. First of all, this area has to be occupied. Repeatedly you have to order hordes of crossbowmen to this strategic position by strengthening your siege frontline. Erect numerous trebuchets there, aiming at the Eastern parts of the Wolf’s castle, especially his “pesky” towers that he permanently will try to rebuild. It’s necessary to install a second siege frontline advancing from the north towards the Wolf’s fortress by disturbing and destroying his food and iron production (with knights, trebuchets, crossbowmen and fire ballistas). See to it that the opponent’s lines of production should succumb in the course of time.
It must be your principal objective to force the Wolf’s bankruptcy. You’ll merely achieve this task continuously disturbing and finally destroying the Wolf’s outside located production lines. Steadily move forward with your two siege frontlines until you will be able to make a breach. Finally, your swordsmen and pikemen will have little trouble to take the Wolf’s castle by storm. Don’t try to use siege towers and believe me, this effort for entering the castle will be in vain. I promise you lots of fun with this primarily siege mission and you always will be busy, but you will need a good dose of patience and persistence to manage it. The key to success is to muster as many crossbowmen as possible both for defense and offensive. Don’t relax sending waves of troops against the Wolf’s castle…
…good luck!
|
Pages: [1] 2 3 » Last » | Author | Comments ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
---|
Gerin |
Posted on 01/04/05 @ 12:00 AM
I want to differ with the walkthrough guide to Mission 19. I read the walkthrough after completing the mission, just to see which strategy worked better. I haven't played Crusader for very long so I don't consider myself an expert. So imagine my amazement when I read the walkthrough's recommendation, which made the mission seem about 90 times harder than it was for me. Build 200 crossbows? Attack from the north and east on two fronts? Try to bankrupt the enemy by continually wearing him down with wave after wave of troops?
All I did was build a not extremely large army, which I didn't write down but I think it had 8 cavalry, a little over 50 crossbowmen, 25 macemen, and some 40-odd swordsmen, plus a few catapults. I marched this army across the top of the map, way west beyond the iron deposits on that side. I took it step by step:
1) Send in 4 cavalry to destroy an enemy artillery piece that was outside the wall. Get them in and out as fast as possible because they were gonna take heavy fire.
2) Move three catapults into position to destroy the wall on the SW corner, then the two catapults behind it. Actually they were in between two sections of wall, on the ground in an unreachable location. I didn't want to take any chances that they could hit my infantry from in there so they had to go.
3) Advance the crossbowmen until they were within range of the enemy's westernmost tower-mounted ballista, then shoot it to pieces. Unfortunately this part of my plan failed, so when the infantry went in it was still operational.
4) Send in cavalry and macemen to destroy the trebuchet in the outer ward.
5) Send in the rams to take out the gatehouse in the curtain wall.
6) Advance all remaining troops into the inner ward, giving the order to move to the keep's roof.
Whenever possibe, after enclosing my keep I like to build an outer defense, usually five towers connected by a wall. Towers 1, 3, and 5 are lookout towers and towers 2 and 4 are round towers. I pack them all with as many ballistas, archers, and crossbowmen as I can. Doing this usually stops any attack before it reaches my castle wall, it gives me an economic advantage because its field of fire covers farmland and/or mineral resources, and it sometimes protects my expeditionary army a bit by covering its advance. Building this outer defense worked well in this mission because it not only stopped every attack very effectively, it also prevented the enemy from accessing the stone and iron in the middle. My attack went around way north so it did nothing for my army this time.
Attacking the east and north would make this a very tough nut to crack. Don't do it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Royal Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things |
Madhatter2 |
Posted on 03/07/05 @ 12:00 AM
I found this level incredibly easy. I knew the Wolf likes using heavily armered slowwer units. I slowed the game speed to lowest to get started.I made my stockpile bigger and built a marketplace followed by woodcutter huts and farms. I suggest apple of whatever they are. I placed my graneries just below the oasis and then walled myself in with 1 thick wall leaving 4 thick gaps in back of castle and front. I bought an armory and barracks and placed about 20-30 crossbowman on a tower along with a balista and the archers i got in the beggining. I bought a little wood and stone to build quaries and got that going so i could eventually wall myself in about 5 think with fortified wall along the outside. I put a mercenary post at the far west just east of the iron ore and hired as many horse archers as money would allow. I started producing pikes and metal armors so i could build a surplus of pikemen. i slowly built pikemen till i had about 100 and about 200 horsearchers over the coars of about 10 minutes. By this time i have turned the speed up so i can do this. i built 40 or so happy things to increase my troops ability in battle. I bought 10 assasins. I marched my horse archers right out above his castle so they could clear the walls. i sent my pikemen right next to the gatehouse. I chose that gatehouse becasue it was the only one between me and him witouhgt a moat or 2 gatehouses stopping me. I then told my assasins to scale the wall and open the gatehouse. After it was open i sent my guys in to clear up the Wolf and his men. |
Gerin |
Posted on 03/11/05 @ 12:00 AM
This was one of the easiest missions in quite a while. I don't know why the above walkthroughs aren't more aggressive. I rushed the first three and probably could have rushed a fourth (or more). I just decided to give my macemen a rest, and that maybe the other rats had completed their walls, which would make a rush more difficult. After the three rushes it was cake because I had the whole western half of the map to myself, including trees, stone, and farmland. The only thing I lacked the rest of thew way was iron, but that's not too necessary on this map because only spearmen and archers have to be dealt with. Macemen, archers, crossbowmen, and a couple of catapults are enough.
So, first I bought 30 maces and leather, ordered 15 macemen to attack each of the two closest rats, then made 15 more and ordered them, plus all survivors of the other two strikes, to attack the next closest one. After that I consolidated and built my walls and my economy, then built an army that wouldn't have been big enough in the last mission but was overkill in this one. |
player45999 |
Posted on 03/26/05 @ 12:00 AM
Beware if you take out the wolfs mangonels or ballistae he will replace them almost immediatley so try to destroy his towers to a state of ruin but this is an easy level if you control more iron and stone than him. |
Skasian |
Posted on 06/17/05 @ 10:06 PM
Really easy, no one should have trouble with this one. The one key unit to this stage is CROSSBOWMEN. Its basically all you need for offense and defense.
For defense: Few Towers with Ballistas and LOTS of Crossbowmen
For Offense: Depending which direction your looking at the map but in the view above on the guide its the south of his base, on the standard view you attack at the top of his base. Send about 150 crossbowmen and 1 siege tower. Send siege tower first and once its on the walls, walk ur 150 crossbowmen onto his walls and, 'bobs ur uncle', its as simple as that, 100 crossbows will kill a lord in around 30 seconds. Too easy, no skill required! |
KJH |
Posted on 08/09/05 @ 04:39 PM
I enjoyed this one. The attacks from the Wolf were easily repelled with a few towers and bowmen. The Wolf uses thick walls and as stated above is quick to repair any towers knocked down by seige engines. However he has a small amount of open peasants. So even though walls and towers were being fixed fairly rapidly I found one flaw. Using archers (20 to 30) I assaulted the quarry on the east side of the fortress and did the same on the west side with his food supply. I then knocked down several towers along the northwest section of the fortress with about a half dozen trebuchets. While these were rebuilt fairly rapidly because of the loss of manpower on the quarry and farms his fatal flaw is he is slow to man the towers once rebuilt. This left the side open to attacks from about a dozen assassins that scaled the wall and went to the west gate and opened it. I had a dozen cavalry knights(maybe more 16 or 20) and arabian horseman (two dozen or so) pound through the open gate into the wolfs lair. A few traps were set but not enough that it mattered. Two dozen pikemen and another two dozen foot knights were able to finish off the wolf despite his amazing amount of cash resources. |
unknownk |
Posted on 12/15/05 @ 10:55 AM
this level ifound was one of the easiet levels on the first trail. all i did was buil 4 stock piles, a granary, 7 wood cutters huts near the lion hearts keep built 4 armourys, a barraks, 5 hovels, a marketplace and 1 quarry with 2 ox tethers then i built 2 square towers as close to the wolf as i could. i bouht about 34 archers and divided them in the 2 towers and put 1 magonel and 1 bilistae in them. with the mangonel aiming at the wolfs keep and the bilistae taking care of his attacking men....i tokk my 24 swordsmen and attacked.(i also asked the lionheart to attack so he would weaken the wolfs wall and men) i won the game on the 1st year in may |
cedric_forum |
Posted on 12/15/05 @ 07:17 PM
I just took advantage of the hole on the left side of his castle right next to his quarry. It's so odd that like 95% of his castle is completely inaccessable without oodles of seige strategy, yet this spot is defended by but one small gatehouse. All it took was an army of 115 macemen, and in the end, half of them had survived. |
crusadermacenite |
Posted on 03/06/06 @ 10:51 PM
40 horsemen to destroy the gatehouse east of his catle, then take your favorite troops
(macemen, footmen, or pikemen, about 80 of each except for macemen make about 120 of them to survive and kill the lord)And take about 50 crossbowmen for a distraction near the opening to the moat to take some fire away from your invading troops so they can last longer, also the crossbowmen can maybe take some troops out before their death.
Also I'm not even tothismission but when it was me and lionheart against him lionheart was a complete wuss so it as up to me to kill him. |
erraunt |
Posted on 03/22/06 @ 10:29 AM
I found this level pretty straightforward as well. Although I'll admit I didn't take it too seriously and it took me some time to work through it the "solution" I arrived at eventually was pretty straight up.
The "end game" first. I built a force of 40 mace, 35 archers, 20 crossbows, a few engineers and laddermen (the latter I never used to much effect), and another mixed group of about 30 pike and 10 swords.
I sent this bunch around the far side of the Wolf's castle put up a couple of catapults aimed at the inner gate house and sent the maces against the wall with the archers and crossbows close enough to take out what little was on and behind the walls.
I had enough extra maces that I stomped the pitch rigs, fields and the annoying dribble the Wolf sent outside the walls. Eventually there was a hole in the wall and I sent the maces toward the gatehouse with the pikes and swords close behind.
The inner gate came down in short order and sent everyone after the Wolf in the keep bringing the archers in to take care of the archers and crossbows of the enemy on the walls.
Ultimately I didn't need attrition that much at all. I tend to go for overkill on farms and other resources. So what brought me to that endgame was this.
My habit is to follow the necessary grainery and stockpile expansion with two Apples and a Wheat. Since there were hunters in this one I put out a few of those too. And several woodcutters to clear more field in the oasis behind my castle.
Next, scanning about stone looked like my primary resource so I built two quarries and then turned to barracks, armory and three bowyers (two on crossbows).
Wolf was already building an iron mine in the nearest patch of ore. I sent out spears to stop him and bought bows and set up a round tower at the extreme limit of my building zone overlooking the mines that I set up next.
Wolf never mounted a serious assault and that one far tower with a ballista and eventually a number of crossbows was plenty.
I tend to like end runs, so (can't remember the directions on the map, but facing the Wolf's castle from mine I'll use "flanks") I build Knights and started raiding and sent a mixed force to my far left and started working at the right flank of his castle.
Three trebuchets suppressed his mangonels. And I had the clever idea of putting archers in one of the outwork towers. For whatever reason they would not occupy the tower but kept getting "stuck" on the ladder. After many attempts I finally put some maces up there just as an experiment and they got there fine, but still couldn't get the archers to go. Maybe there is an update I need to try.
I razed the his right end several times but would always wind up fairly spent and have flames all over.
So in frustration I sent slaves after his right end, torched everything and kept it burning and built up the force of maces I initially described and went at his rear.
That is one thing I've noticed with most maps: usually the rear of most castles while physically strong is all but unmanned. The AI doesn't seem to react to where your force is and move defenders in response. Usually you can either run a force back there -- you'll take some losses but not much usually and then have at the walls with something as mundane as a band of macemen. Occasionally I've found the configuration tough enough to thin my force too much. 40 crossbows, shields, and two catapults usually clear a section of wall pretty quick and you advance. |
Pages: [1] 2 3 » Last » |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 1,234 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 998.71 KB |
Added: | 10/28/04 |
Updated: | 11/07/04 |
|