Battle for ardania - Third mission

[unmerged(167022)]

Name of the third mission - Fire wall

Hard as hell, i tryed 4 different strategies, with dwarfs, with no dwarfs, all attack, all defending,. but no, cant beat the map,.. i think it's bugged, because i save game when is safe for saving, then i lost after 10 minutes,.. then i load again, and then they attack me after 20 seconds, then i lost imediatly,.. wtf???

 

[sjoerd]

There is sometimes an issue with saving the game. It tends to trigger events programmed in maps. So when you figure out a good way to beat a map its actually better to not save the game at all... This problem is also described by some custom map makers on these forums and I had this issue with some missions as well...

Other then that, fire wall is mission where it's not really important what heroes you go for. Dwarves are usually a save bet, but you wont have to rush for them in this mission... More important is it to really secure the area of the ancient towers... clear creature dens in the area and put defense flags on the towers...

 

[skystormer]

I used this tactic.
Started with building:
All guilds except wizzards
Marketplace
Upgrade keep to level 2
Then put 100 flags on all nearby dens.
Try to clear asap the lower left area for the trading post, not needed to upgrade this 1.
Upgrade all guilds to level 2 and buy the upgrades, buy health pots and amulets.
Now work your way to the other keep.clearing dens on the way. Make sure to clear all dens. You should now have your heroes around level 10. Build your wizards guild.
Make sure your heroes don't discover the ancient towers directly north of you. You have no chance to build them with the minotaurs there. explore the most Southwest corner of the map. 2 towers are there, put an attackflag on the undead den there, and the serpent den directly north of it. This way both towers get build. Once you have this save. Build the trading post asap also north of the keep and upgrade it. Now you have to send a full force on the minotaur den. You will discover the towers, put defense flags on the right 1, some of your remaining heroes will go for the defense there. Try to explore the area immediately after that to destroy the remaining minotaur dens. Now explore the 2 towers north of the barons keep, this will make sure dragons will not get through. Now build up your forces till like day 60 and head for the dragons dens. This will give ya 10k. Now it can't go wrong anymore, just remember after 75 days this map ends. So clear everything before that,.

 

[BroodingMonarch]

I think heroes and their abilities are the thing to focus on in this one. Don't waste your money on the blacksmith upgrades. The most important thing is to make sure your heroes don't reveal any towers until you're prepared to protect them. Reconstructing one or more towers to the North first is essential because the minotaur attacks grow more frequent and stronger until eventually you'll be overrun. With one or more Northern towers restored you can take down the Minotaur Palace. After that it doesn't matter which towers you head for next as long as you do it swiftly. Remember the 75 day limit. I had to restart this multiple times and one of those times was because I didn't notice the time limit and I lost on the verge of victory. Frustrating.

This is just advice from my own experience. Skystormer's more precise explanation may prove more helpful.

 

[unmerged(232894)]

second.
the key is to sweep out the wild dens.
i used to take the time to build every possible hero. in this mission i just build about 2/3 of all.
about the bullmen in the north, if you want to do it, better do it earlier. or you wait until your force is strong enough. the ancient bulls aren't that horrible with a couple elf lead teams.

 

[Achab]

The dwarf settlement can research a spell which repairs buildings (eg. gives hps to them). I used it to turbo reconstruct the ancient towers, but it's true the cost of it is significant.

On a side note my heroes in that mission tend to ignore the treasure chests. Even rogues kill mosters and destroy buildings in a close vicinity of the chests but they show little interest in the chests themselves. Actually even a green bounty flag put on the chest doesn't guarentee that a hero opens it.

 

[MrCrush]

Actually, I found an interesting tactic and it worked like a charm, after having my b*tt kicked in this mission, I found an alternative option, this way I managed to get ALL guard towers built in 35 days (and if I didn't make as much mess ups as I did, then it would be in even less time).

Thing is, first you need to know where all towers are in the black map at start, at first build a Mages guild (VERY important), warriors, ranger and clerics guild, you may build a rogue's guild as well, since you don't nessecarily need the mages guild for recruitment.
It helps, when you're doing this to put the game at slowest speed since time at this point is of the essence.
Once you've laid down constructions for guild, market, blacksmith (blacksmith isn't even nessecary) then cast your spirit of kings at the 2 towers at the north (near the main minotaur temple, if you don't know where it is, start a game to scout locations and try to memorise the tower locations).
Now, the spirit will deal with them minotaurs, but you can only have him 50% of the time around, so what comes next is extremely important (really!).
Build one mage towers next to each ancient tower, only mage-towers work here since they will be ready the soonest, they may not be enough to kill the minitaurs, but they will keep the minitaurs from killing your workers (and if required, recast the spirit again if things get too rough), while doing this, it is offcource advicable you start clearing out the dens around the map.
the rest of the game mainly is a repeat for each set of towers, if the 2 ancient towers are close together, it will be sufficient to build one mage-tower between them.
It is best you should to them in a certain order though, going from upper left to upper right, to the lower right (since there's just one puny crypt behind that one)

The cool thing about this tactic is that you don't need your heroes to protect the towers, so in turn you can secure your turf more easily and additionally, you may be able to complete the towers BEFORE things get nasty

 

[crold]

This is the best map so far.

Build the SE, ENE (near the allied castle) and NE trade posts and burn down all monster lairs you spot (lvl 1 trade posts are just fine). Your heroes should be around lvl 5-10. Now explore the 2 ancient towers directly north of the starting point. Make sure the Spirit of Kings is not on cooldown and your guilds are all at lvl 2 with the appropriate improvements. Put an attack flag on one of the minotaurs (1200 gp should be ok) and summon the spirit of kings near another minotaur. Have around 500 gp ready for healing. This is the only difficult situation on this map. Try not to have more than 1 or 2 heroes get killed before the guard towers are completed and the pyramid is razed.

Don´t load a game. I´ve seen 6 minotaurs and 1 dragon charging me after loading.

That´s all. The other ancient guard houses need only be explored and have a blue flag around 500 gp on them (don´t forget attack flags on th 1-2 lairs nearby).

No temples are needed; I built a Dwarf and Elf guild because I was used to it, but there is no need.