|
|
  |
59 - The Rapids
|
| Author |
File Description |
| Lord Michael I |
Posted on 04/28/08 @ 10:26 AM
Now that you got through the Delta, it’s time to take a fight in The Rapids. Here you will fight against a dangerously close Marshall, and an Abbot, that, as we will find out later, will be kind of easy to beat.
Both AI’s will be allied, with 8000 gold a piece. You will start with 2000 gold. This means the AI’s will also have much more starting troops than you, as well as goods.
If done correctly, this will be a pretty easy mission, so let’s get started.
As always, lower down your speed to 20, and start off with making a square shaped stockpile, and a granary, preferably behind your keep for space commodity. Place two woodcutters, one near the pack of trees to the north west of your keep, and another to the south west of your keep. Try to make your southern woodcutter close also to the river, as so:
The reason is because you will need this space for your farms, so you need all the green space you need. Sure, you have plenty of it to the north, but it is kind of dangerous at the beginning to place farms there. As you can also see in the image, you can not I had already placed a dairy farm, a Fletcher, and a tanner, so proceed on with that. Remember to put your Fletcher on crossbow production.
After this build a marketplace, and buy wood. If you have followed these steps, you will have around 44 woods left, so buy until you have 230 or more wood.
After that build 2 wheat farms, 1 hops farm (On the southern greenery, next to you Dairy Farm), one quarry with two oxen on the stone to the north, two iron mines, also to the north (Try to place the quarry and the iron mine near the river to the west, for them to be out of range of the Marshall’s Archers). Then, go to your small town and build two hovels, two bakeries and a mill. Try to build the bakeries and the mill near the Granary. Also try not to cram them too much. Always leave at least a bit of space between each building, or it will be harder for your workers to move around.
Now it’s time to complete your weapons industry. Proceed to build, near your Fletcher and tanner, a pole turner, set to pike production, and an armorer. Of course, place an armory near these buildings.
Now, build a barracks, far from your town for it to not interfere, and go to the market, and buy 5 stone. You will use these 5 stones to build a square tower near the river crossing that connects you with the Marshall’s castle. Build stairs and place a ballista on top of the tower. Send your starting archers there, and in order to man your ballistae, build an engineers guild and hire two engineers. Also make a mercenary post, and hire 3 more archers, and place them on your tower.
I suggest you don’t place your tower on the river crossing itself, put it a little to the left, for your archers to have a better range:
With the image above you can also note where I placed my Barracks, Mercenary Post and Engineers Guild (North Greenery). I have also encircled my three starting spearmen. Where they are placed is the recommended area on where o put your recruited pikemen. Archers kill what approaches your town, melee troops finish them off.
After you’ve set up your defenses, make another hovel. By this time you can speed up to your normal game play speed.
When peasants start to come in, hire two more engineers, and place it facing the stone and iron deposits to the west. The first time I played this mission I was freaked out because I thought I had to defend two fronts. It was later in the mission I noted that the western river crossing is not complete, thus the Abbot cannot attack you from there. He has to send his monks north though a longer path and will end up in the Marshall’s Castle. But even if the Abbot cannot attack you from there, he will sometimes place some annoying Archers there, so with a Fire Ballistae they will be gone. I played this mission various times, and not always the monks put some archers there, but just in case, build your fire ballistae.
By this time the Marshall probably started to build farms and iron mines in your extra space. Don’t worry. You don’t need to destroy them; they will probably never be manned at all!
If you are low on wood, you can buy some (20 is enough). Now it’s time to wait. At this moment you will be probably low on gold (At this stage I had only 45 gold left). If you have done everything as told so, probably wood will come along first, then the first iron ingots, and then stone. You can sell stone to support your troop production, but don’t sell the iron; you need them to make armor!
Next thing that will some is wheat. Wheat will be produced into flower that will stack up a lot. So, when you see that you need more bakeries, proceed on to make more of them until you are satisfied. I (Gradually), built four more bakeries. I first built two new ones, making four bakeries total, and then later I built two more.
Keep an eye on your hops production. Some time after your first wheat bundles are delivered, hops will come along. So save up some wood and make two breweries. Take a look on your iron production. It will be growing quickly, so you have permission to sell iron when you have more than 5 ingots. You always have to leave 1 ingot for your armorer.
When you have enough money, hire three engineers, and place a trebuchet, somewhere between the northern iron and stone deposits and your square tower. To build a trebuchet you need around 250 gold.
After building the treb, look at your stockpile. If you have ale, build two inns. You will probably not have enough gold or wood to build both immediately, so build just one inn, and build the second later. When the two inns are functional, set up taxes to -8, and build another hovel. If you need money to build the inn, you can also sell extra flour. Save up some more gold and wood, and make a second Fletcher, also set in crossbow production.
When the trebuchet is built, target the tower that is close to the Marshall’s keep, and then the tower that is left. I highly recommend you try and make these towers completely useless. Towers become useless when they look like a torn down tower. I don’t know why, but AI’s don’t seem to care, so they never replace the torn down tower. A useless towers looks like this:
A tower will look like this after the last blow. One more hit, and you will tear it completely, leaving space for the Marshall to build another tower. So, you have to keep an eye on your trebuchet when the tower is weak, and when it gets its last hit, quickly click on the cow icon on your trebuchet menu and target your treb elsewhere. This way you won’t risk the treb’s last shot may hit the tower, and tear it completely. If you completely destroy the tower, just wait for the Marshal to build a new one, and start again.
You can keep selling stone, but always leave some to feed you trebuchet. 10 Stone will be enough when your trebuchet gets empty. You can also go to the armory and sell extra leather and iron armor you have stocked.
By this moment your town will be hopefully complete:
Although it is not very visible, there are six bakeries and one mill near my granary (Behind keep), the weapons industry building on the other side, the breweries and inns in the middle, and my farms on the southern greenery. You can also note where I placed my stone and iron mines, barracks, and Mercenary posts, Markets, hovels, engineer’s guild and trebuchet.
Keep selling extra stone and recruiting soldiers. To boost your iron production, send your spearmen to destroy that annoying enemy iron mine and place one of yours. You can also make one more quarry and two more oxen. If you do, build one more hovel, to reach a population of 50 peasants. To boost even more your economy, you can stop crossbowmen production (When you have around 15), and concentrate on your pikemen production. You can sell the leather armor and crossbows produced for a profit, of course. For commodity, you can build a second granary, because it will probably get full. In fact, you can even sell extra bread, but always leaving some to feed your hard working people.
When you have more than 2000 gold saved, start making Horse Archers to assault the Abbot. In fact, let’s take a break and have a look on the Abbot’s castle.
If you haven’t noticed, the silly Abbot has made a big mistake. If you can’t see it, the Abbot has literally locked himself up with no exit. He built some boats behind his castle, thus, locking him up. The abbot will produce a lot of monks that he will never use because he can’t get them out of his castle… I don’t know if this mistake was intentional from Firefly Studios, because of that mistake one of your opponents will become useless, and, along with the Marshall, that is crippled himself, this mission will end up to be easy. When you get around 20 pikemen recruited, just send them over to visit the Marshall. The Marshall still hasn’t built one gatehouse, making his castle easily penetrable. You won’t need any attacking force: Just select your pikemen, target them to kill the Lord, and that’s it. His knights will hold off for a while, but they will be no match. What I do recommend is that you attack after you have destroyed both of the Marshall’s towers.
Once the Marshall is defeated, sell everything you got that you don’t need, replace your fallen pikemen, and continue recruiting Horse Archers. A force of 120 Horse Archers will be enough. You will also need some slaves, around 25 of them, since there will be some moat-digging. Send your Horse Archers; pikemen and slaves near the pitch deposits to the North of the Abbot’s castle. For a reference, I will paste an image later. Unman your siege equipment. You will have 7 engineers (Two from your Fire Ballistae and 3 from your Trebuchet, and two from your tower ballistae) Grab 6 of those engineers and send them over with your Horse Archers, slaves and pikemen. With the engineers you will make 2 trebuchets behind the rocks near the pitch deposits, as so:
The rocks will, hopefully, cover the two trebuchets. First build one as close as possible to the river, and the second one as close as possible to the first one. If you build the left trebuchet a little more to the left, it will be exposed and targeted by enemy ballistae. You can also note where I put my Horse Archers, Pikemen and Slaves on hold.
With the trebuchets target the tower on the left side of the Abbot’s castle, that is nearest to you (It is shown in the image above). With the trebuchets this is the only tower you can target, but this tower is important, since it has a ballistae hat can cause severe losses on your Horse Archers.
Once you destroy that tower, send in your Horse Archers. Clear the towers and destroy the tower mounted ballistae. Remember to keep your Horse Archers always in movement, for it to be harder for your enemy to kill them. Once you clear the towers, kill everyone that is in the keep. When the castle s cleared, send in your Slaves to dig up the moat, on the western side (Left side). Keep your Horse Archers close because once a breach is opened, swarms of monks will come out. I suggest that you place the Horse Archers near the tower you destroyed earlier, which is a good position for them to shoot at the Monk Warriors.
As you kill off the monk warriors, also keep an eye on the towers. The Abbot will keep building tower ballistae, so take them out before they get functional.
You can see how the monks are charging at me, but my Horse Archers are at a safe distance, where they can kill them off before they even get touched. After clearing the are, send in your pikemen to destroy the Gatehouse, and then, the Lord.
Congratulations! You have just beaten two AI’s despite the advantages they had! Good luck on the next mission! The downloadable save game has the Abbot still standing, but I have killed the Marshall. |
| Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
|---|
| TristanConqueror |
Posted on 05/05/08 @ 07:51 PM |
| manudan |
Posted on 07/28/09 @ 07:31 AM |
| manudan |
Posted on 07/29/09 @ 02:29 PM |
| Seabourch |
Posted on 01/03/12 @ 01:49 AM |
| vonSchluss |
Posted on 01/05/12 @ 05:18 PM
1) Set a square tower facing the Marshall and put a mangonel on it.Then let it bombarding the old guy's keep. After a short while he will give up and you can kill him with 15 mace-men.
2) Don't fear the Abbot, he will make the same "failure" as in the third mission and closes himself into his castle by digging moat around his back side. So he was not able to get anything in or out.
Since he could reach you only through the Marshall, he won't attack you any time before as well!
3) While attacking him move a siege tower near to his square tower and put your 35 crossbow-men up to it. Then collect all of your horse archers in a bit distant and wait until he shed his monks out. They will stream out on the siege tower -- and won't climb up to the tower, so your crossbow-men are safe. The only task is to let your archers to shoot them down.
But be aware! The Abbot will have about 400(!) monks to stream out. So let them some space...
4) One more observation: the fire-ballistae are not triggered by the approaching monks. So they are useless in this case!
Good luck! |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 852 |
| Favorites: [] | 1 |
| Size: | 658.25 KB |
| Added: | 04/28/08 |
|
