Burning Of Tatalia

The final scenario in the Playing with Fire campaign is Burning of Tatalia. It's a massive jungle map featuring four strong allied enemy factions, a slew of hidden ambushes, maze like architecture, and very tough AI.

The undead Lord Haart has burned his way into the inner jungles of Tatalia. Only Adrienne can save her people from the undead menace.

In the intro cutscene, we finally get a glimpse of the newly resurrected Lord Haart. He looks kind of like the old Lord Haart, but decked out in evil looking armor and sitting in a room filled with bone architecture. What is it about undead lords and their macabre decorations?

I seem to recall that Arthas from Warcraft III had the same problem. Once his mind was corrupted by the Lich King, he started putting skulls all over his armor. Why?

I guess man has always had a fascination with death. My friend Ryan went to Czechoslovakia last year and returned with pictures of a chilling landmark called the Bone Church. Yes, it's a church decorated with bones. Chandeliers... altars... everything. I imagine religious ceremonies there take on an extra layer of spookiness.

If you've been playing along with me, I sincerely hope you managed to level up all of your heroes in the two previous scenarios. If not, you're in for a very long battle.

I found it incredibly important to begin the map with the maximum number of heroes allowed at the highest level possible. That's because I needed them to spread across the map and secure as many fortresses as possible. By doing so, I obtained enough gold to fund the rest of my war effort. If I moved too slow, the enemy would attack my cities and overwhelm my heroes, forcing me to restart the map.

Near the starting area, there is a subterranean gate that will lead the the first necropolis city. Since this necropolis is isolated from the others, the enemy won't try to recapture it until late in the game. So I made sure to capture it as early as possible to use its City Hall and obtain extra gold.

After defeating some bone dragons west of the starting fortress, I gained access to a stone lith. It transported me to an inaccessible jungle area and a lone fortress. I discovered that the enemy rarely goes through the lith to attack this hidden fortress. I decided to build my Capitol here to avoid the pain of continually shelling out 10,000 gold to rebuild it later.

I also noticed that there were many red garrisons on the map with allied troops. Luckily, the troops can actually be taken out of the garrisons and placed in your army. So I immediately headed toward the garrisons to bolster my army.

If you leave the troops in the garrison, they'll quickly be defeated. But if you put them in your army, their fighting ability can double/triple/quadruple thanks to the combat bonuses granted by your high level heroes. Unfortunately, when I was playing, the enemy did managed to overtake some of the garrisons before I could rescue them.

In previous maps, I complained that there was no way to learn Town Portal. As a result, scenarios dragged on longer than necessary. This map finally grants you the spell. However, you can only obtain it by completing a short quest.

In the middle of the map, near the shore, there is a seer hut requesting the Armor of Wonder. I obtained the artifact (quite accidentally) by fighting the hydras next door. The seer then traded me the Tome of Earth Magic for the Armor of Wonder.

With the Tome of Earth Magic on hand, I was now able to cast every Earth Magic spell in the game, including Town Portal. I can't tell you how great this made me feel.

I gave the artifact to Adrienne and appointed her my official town defender. The other benefit of Town Portal is that it allowed Adrienne to escape defeat if Lord Haart or another high level enemy hero came knocking on the door. Discretion is the better part of valor, especially when the scenario is programmed to end in defeat if Adrienne ever runs, surrenders, or falls in combat.

There are many ambushes on the map, often featuring nasty configurations of bone dragons and vampires. If you're not careful, a powerful hero can be instantly wiped out, just for exploring!

Thankfully, not all scripted events work in the enemy's favor. Eventually, Tatalia will rise up and flock to Adrienne's aid, populating your key cities with fresh recruits. Just make sure Lord Haart doesn't take them before you do.

Lord Haart flies the blue banner and is pretty easy to spot. He's the one with the massive army of death. If this were Heroes V, he would leave a huge, fiery trail wherever he went.

I encountered him several times on the map. Every time, he swarmed me with summoned elementals and then retreated. However, I finally defeated him in the end by capturing all of his cities so he had no place to run.

All in all, I found this map incredibly infuriating. The enemy heroes are fast and coordinated. They combine their forces and attack relentlessly. It's important to understand the layout of the map and target the enemy one color at a time, rather than rushing foolishly into battle.

The Tome of Earth Magic is crucial for the defense of cities. Without it, the map is nearly impossible.

I also found it critical to leave secondary heroes near subterranean gates to serve as 'sentries.' Their job was to prevent stragglers from secretly capturing your cities. Because most of your cities are wide open (meaning they are situated next to a gate or ocean) it's very easy for a far away enemy to suddenly recapture them.

That being said, the map is the ultimate test of micromanagement and multitasking ability. If you complete this scenario, you can pretty much complete anything else the game throws at you. It doesn't get any tougher than this.

March Of The Undead

March of the Undead is a huge pain in the ass. The scenario requires you to flag every creature generator within a specific number of months. Unfortunately, there are literally hundreds of creature generators spread out across two levels of an extra-large map.

The time limit isn't really a problem. However, the abundance of half-obscured dwellings is compounded by a near useless minimap on an extra-large map size. Enjoy spending weeks searching the map Where's Waldo-style for elusive unflagged dwellings. I hated every moment of it.

The scenario also makes you wish your heroes had the ability to quickly move from city to city. Eight heroes is not enough to put together an effective offense/defense strategy on a map of this size. Therefore, I often had to resort to guerrilla tactics to survive. The computer was relentless in its attack and sent heroes with huge armies at my doorstep. The only solution in those cases was to run from battle and sacrifice a city in hopes of recapturing it later.

I suppose it's possible to play the scenario in such a way that I flagged dwellings without first destroying the enemy team. But I never had the guts to do it. I wonder if that's how the map designer intended the map to be played? Perhaps the map was like a puzzle that requires finesse and I've been trying to solve it by brute force all along?

In any case, I'll talk about my 'brute force' method. The key to surviving this map appears to be 'speed.' If you dawdle too long, the enemy will overwhelm your cities and destroy your heroes.

I actually had to replay this map after getting my butt kicked the first time around. On my second playthrough, I sent two heroes (including Adrienne) immediately to the east to capture the three abandoned Fortress cities (Team A). The first time around, I wasted time and failed to capture the second and third Fortresses. That was my downfall.

The other two heroes (Team B) ventured north to flag dwellings and recruit creatures. The purpose of Team B was to keep the enemy busy via cat and mouse games so that I could upgrade my Fortress cities.

There is a purple border guard north of the southeastern Fortress city. You should never allow this border to be opened without a fight. The border guard is the only thing protecting your cities from a quick invasion at the hands of three high level death knights with moderate to large sized armies.

In fact, the purple border guard is so critical that the enemy will try to reach the purple tent by sea and open the border guard for itself! Prevent this from happening as long as possible. Once the flood gates are open, the map difficulty ramps up significantly.

I also want to mention that there are quest huts littered across the map. They grant rewards for vanquishing certain non-undead creatures on the map (e.g. diamond golems, fire elementals, and water elementals). The rewards aren't that great. Also, the required battles are taxing on your heroes' armies and spell points. I skipped the side-quests entirely.

One of the most time consuming aspects of this map is exploring the entirety of the underworld and flagging the dwellings within. Many of these creature dwellings belong to higher level creatures such as hydras and gorgons and require tedious battles to capture. I recommend enabling Quick Combat in the options to skip through the monotony.

After you've explored most of the map and destroyed the enemy, be sure take a look at the overall map layout. Pretty cool huh? According to the story, Lord Haart's undead company burned its way through Tatalia. However, as Adrienne mentions early in the scenario, the swamps are resilient and have already begun to regenerate.

This is reflected in the map's visual design. You can trace Lord Haart's path of destruction (dirt terrain) from the southwest corner to the northeast. However, the dirt is slowly being reintegrated into the swamps.

I also think the campaign introduces us to its villain in a very effective manner. First we only hear rumblings of a stirring evil. Then, we start to see the destruction that the villain has left behind. Finally, we engage the villain on the field of battle in a no-holds barred brawl. I only wish the Armageddon's Blade campaign had followed this progression and given us a glorious and epic final battle against Lucifer Kreegan.

My only complaint about Adrienne's campaign is that the villain lacks a truly compelling reason for invading Tatalia. (Other than the fact that he's a death knight who wants to destroy life.) The point is, the campaign would feel more important to the overall lore of Antagarich if Tatalia had something important that Lord Haart wanted... rather than it just acting as a source of fresh corpses.

Nevertheless, getting closure to Lord Haart's character arc is better than no closure at all. And in terms of the Heroes series, there are certainly far worse examples of storytelling.

Stay tuned for the final scenario.

Farming Towns

The first scenario in Adrienne's campaign is called Farming Towns. After a grim introductory cutscene swarming with festering undead, our brooding heroine is thrown right into the action.

I briefly mentioned in my previous post that the maps in the Playing With Fire campaign are extra large. As a result of this, it takes an eternity for your hero to explore everything. The abundance of swampland makes exploration extra painful because hero movement diminishes until you obtain Expert Pathfinding.

The scenario takes place at the border of Erathia and Tatalia. Therefore, the map is appropriately divided between swampland (western half of the map) and grassland (eastern half of the map). Three garrisons separate Erathia from Tatalia, all reinforced by moderate undead regiments. The enemy consists of Necropolis heroes squatting in Fortresses. Tamika is usually their leader.

Adrienne begins the scenario in the lower right corner of the map and within a day's walk of town. The first step is to upgrade the town into a Castle.

The large map size means there are many cities to capture and defend. In total, there are four Castles and four Fortresses. But while you'll mostly be utilizing Castle creatures in this scenario, you shouldn't hire any clerics and knights to lead them.

The best hero choices are actually Fortress (witch/beastmaster) and Necropolis (necromancer/death knight). That's because the scenario allows you to bring three of Adrienne's strongest allies with her to the next scenario. Castle heroes are significantly less useful in Map 2 and 3 because you won't hire a single Castle unit. Map 2 is all-Fortress. Map 3 features a mix of Fortress and Necropolis cities.

I ended up hiring two beastmasters and one witch to have a balanced (2 might, 2 magic) team. I like balance.

In the northeast corner of the map, there's a vampire infestation. Clearing this area granted my hero access to several stat enhancers. I also rescued a hero named Sir Michael (who has the same portrait as Christian) from a prison near the 'boss' vampires. However, I soon discovered that Sir Michael was useless. So I elected to move him to a nearby Castle and appointed him commander of the garrison.

Why was Sir Michael useless, despite starting at level 11? For starters, he is completely maxed out on useless skills. He cannot learn Wisdom (and cannot learn the best spells in the game) and lacks Logistics and Pathfinding (making him a liability in swampland).

Since heroes are capped at the 12th level, it's clear that the map designer inserted Sir Michael into the scenario to artificially increase the campaign's difficulty. What seems like a reward is actually a terrible punishment. However, Sir Michael starts at level 11. This means you must not let him level up.

If you allow your other heroes to reach level 12, they will follow Adrienne to the next scenario in place of Sir Michael. Engineering this feat will require you spread the wealth of experience around all of your heroes. Also, don't approach any Trees of Knowledge (+1 level) with low level heroes. Wait until your heroes are past level 10 or so to enjoy a nice compounding effect.

The only reason to break Sir Michael out of prison is to make sure the enemy doesn't rescue him first.

Since the next two maps are incredibly long, difficult, and time limited, I wanted to make sure that I completely maxed out my four main heroes' stats. There are numerous mercenary camps, marletto towers, and schools of magic to be found on the map. But one stat enhancer that is often overlooked is the Cage of Warlords structure that can be found inside captured Fortresses. Don't forget it.

Also, remember that it's not necessary to defeat all enemies to complete the scenario. All you need to do is flag every creature dwelling. At one point, I accidentally flagged all of the dwellings and ended the game. I had to reload an earlier save to give my heroes more time to level up and build their stats.

I had hoped to learn Town Portal to make the next scenario easier. However, neither the Fortress nor the Castle can upgrade their mage guilds to level 5. Bummer.

One interesting observation about this map is that every enemy stack is undead. I didn't notice this the first time around, but it's actually kind of cool.