Campaign – Lord Ironfist

[DavidN]

#1041

I honestly didn’t expect it when I started out, but I’m actually getting quite into this! Definitely a triumph for playing a DOS game that I ordinarily would have avoided.

The first level of the campaign with Lord Ironfist is unexpectedly much easier than the mission you’re given for the tutorial in the manual – you just have to build up a small army and go off to defeat a dragon, rather than totally conquer a map. Well, I remember I tried this mission when I first installed the game and instantly died because I had no idea what I was doing, but this time, using what I’d learned by following the tutorial, the game began to make a surprising amount of sense and I began to feel proud of my strategic planning 🙂

If there’s something that hasn’t quite clicked for me yet, it’s that I feel I spend an awful lot of time in the game waiting around – you only get drip-fed new units every seven turns, and I often have heroes standing around in castles so that I can buy a few more units from the available stock every turn (the game acts surprised when you ask it to end your turn when you still have movement points available, making me feel I should be doing something differently). Even with the amount of income available in the tutorial, it felt like I never had nearly enough to balance the budget of building up the castle and hiring new units – I tended to concentrate on just one hero as my main one even though I had four running around.

[Tijn]

#1044

So cool you’re getting into this while at first you thought you wouldn’t like it. That’s really what the club is about, finding those hidden gems you otherwise would have overlooked! 😀

Now I can tell you, I’ve been playing this game since forever and I’ve got the same experience as you, David. I mostly have 1 or 2 main heroes and some other ones for guarding cities. I’ve grown used to the popup asking whether I’m sure that I want to forfeit some of my movement points, but UX-wise it would be nice to be able to shut it off.

It doesn’t feel like I’m really waiting around a lot though. The flow for me typically is that I explore a lot in the beginning of the game, which is quite interesting. In the meantime, units build up in the towns I’m conquering. Then at some point, some enemies will pop-up and I’ll require reinforcements. What I often do is that I buy a “transport hero” in my most remote town and he will pick up units along the way until he reaches my main hero. He drops off the reinforcements and heads back home, and the main hero can continue his conquest.

[Tijn]

#1045

By the way – there really is only 1 campaign in the game. The only difference is your starting hero/town, but the maps & goals are the same between all the different lords you choose from the beginning.

I’m trying to beat the campaign using Lord Alamar (the warlock). I’m currently on mission 5 and it’s getting really quite challenging, so I’m not sure I’m actually able to finish the game. But I’m giving it my all!

[DavidN]

#1046

This game is absolutely wrecking my week. I’m supposed to get up in about six hours and drive to daycare and I’m absolutely hooked on finishing this second scenario (good to know that the others are just the same maps played on different starting points, by the way – that’ll save a bit of time.) I think I’m quite close! I think I’d mistakenly thought this game was an RPG before, where it’s really more like Civilization (especially in the temptation to take “just one more turn” about fifty times in a row). My weakness is definitely in defence – it’s only recently that I’ve thought to actually leave troops behind to defend a castle and keep a hero around specifically to keep my flags planted on the mines, rather than just leaving things alone and hope nobody barges in.

After struggling back and forth a bit, there seems to be a point where you reach critical mass with your castles and income (currently 10,500 gold pieces a day) and can just buy up everything, after which the game gets a lot easier… having a hero act as a taxi had occurred to me as well, to ferry troops out to the combat zones instead of returning to heal up, interesting to know it’s a viable strategy 🙂

[Tijn]

#1049

It’s definitely one of those “just one more turn” games where it’s suddenly 4 am and you don’t know what happened 😀

Did you manage to beat level 2?

I did beat level 5 yesterday and I’ve played a little bit of level 6. It’s tough as nails though, so I’ll probably have to restart it a few times to get a good one going. So far I’m just exploring the map, but I’m already getting beaten up quite badly by the other guy, who seems to send strong heroes to my home town right from the start 🙁

[DavidN]

#1050

Finished level 2 now (had to leave it for that night, but I was only a couple of turns away from discovering the last enemy castle) and have gone through 3 as well where the objective is to find the buried treasure! I spent a while conquering the east side of the map where I started, then recognized the location of the treasure before I’d really uncovered the X by finding enough obelisks, and just diverted all my attention to excavating the whole place for it as the enemies went on a shopping spree through my undefended castles (I found it on the sixth turn).

It’s nice that so far, the missions alternate between having a specific objective and just a fight to the death – it keeps them interesting.

[Tijn]

#1051

Oooh, nice! Level 3 can actually be quite tricky, depending on how it unfolds. You might think you’re doing well and then one of the AIs suddenly finds the treasure and it’s game over. Good job on beating it!

Yeah, the different objectives are nice, but I think it’s just fighting to the death from here on out though, haha.

I believe there are 8 levels in total, in case you were wondering.

[dollarone]

#1057

only gripe I have is that the game can be quite cruel at times. e.g. throwing a super-fat hero at you just after your main hero killed some dragons or whatever.

also they do tend to know when your castle is undefended, grr

[dr_st]

#1076

When I played the campaign, I felt that the level that puts you up against the Barbarian, Lord Slayer, is the hardest, because the Barbarians start sending powerful heroes to attack your castles almost immediately, and with the ‘no movement penalty on rough terrain’ they can cross the desert and be at your door step within 2-3 weeks, making it tough to survive the initial onslaughts. But if you do, it gets easier.

You can avoid this level entirely if you choose the Barbarians to play the campaign to begin with. 🙂

[Tijn]

#1080

Yeah, I’m currently playing that very level and it is indeed very challenging. I’m regretting my decision to play with the warlock now.

[DavidN]

#1091

I think I may have hit my wall on level 4! I’m pretty much stuck in a siege where I own the three rightmost castles on the map – I have just about enough forces on hand to fend off the armies of ten Cyclopses that keep coming my way, but not enough to make any headway in forming a counterattack.

[Tijn]

#1092

Yeah, the difficulty ramps up pretty hard. I hope you can find a breach, David!

Meanwhile, I’m proud to say I’ve managed to beat level 6, whoohoo!

[Tijn]

#1093

Ok, after struggling somewhat with level 5 and 6, I can tell you level 7 is a walk in the park. I don’t think they’ve tested this particular level much, because I can’t see how it really poses a challenge at all, haha.

[Tijn]

#1105

I’ve been trying and retrying the final level forever now. It’s incredibly hard, because all of the other 3 players are attacking only you, not each other.

I’m not saying I’m giving up, but… I’m feeling quite hopeless about this.

[DavidN]

#1123

Well, I downloaded a save game editor to get past the fourth mission! It’s interesting that the computer players change their behaviour and try to avoid fighting you if you suddenly have, say, a stack of 999 phoenixes.

[Tijn]

#1138

Haha, hax0r!