Half-Dead → Eater of Children

[Wheeler Dealer]

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/196

[Wheeler Dealer]

I played on advanced, when I reached the fight with the vampires (on day 4), there were 4 and I could only kill 3. I had to take a more conventional approach, taking the two orange towns and building them up. Most of the game my army was harpies, centaurs, skeletons and ghosts. Eventually I was able to add vampires and cyclopes and at the end I had 4 thunderburds, a dozen cyclopes and vampires, 80 harpies and 120 skeletons. The last battle was stil very difficult though I might have done better with a second try, giving those 350 haflings lots more respect.



I think my most important decision was to take a second nature skill fairly early, making Gauldoth a demonologist who eventually could summon 80 imps at a time! I never beat the fairy dragons or the two huge stacks of bone dragons! I did hire some order lords for growth and gold but never hired a hero to help Gauldoth fight.

[Phate]

Contrary to the walkthrough, it's quite a simple matter to take out the first orange town with minimal losses, and is almost certainly a necessity when play Expert or higher as the neutral stacks of Berzerkers and Vampires will be too large for you to take on with just your starting forces.



Split off 3 stacks of 1 skeleton each and use them to absorb the centaurs' ranged shots. Have Gauldoth summon sprites every turn, don't worry about mana as there is a well nearby. Position the sprites to take the last 1-2 ranged shots. Now you can simply wait, attack centaurs, retreat, repeat with the sprites and take 0 losses. After that clean up the berzerkers and hero with the sprites + Gauldoth.



Now you'll want to flag the ore/wood mines and focus on building a citadel + harpy dwelling ASAP (take gold from chests). Head west straight away and defeat the stack of centaurs (use single-stack skels + gauldoth to take ranged hits + retaliations, if you curse them they can take up to 3 ranged shots to kill a single skeleton, force them into melee). Flag the gem/gold building then follow the road to the next orange town. If you moved swiftly he will probably just have a single level 1 hero.



Flag the town and wood/ore mines. Build City Hall -> Fort -> Centaur Dwelling -> Berzerker Dwelling -> Citadel -> Harpy Dwelling. You probably wont have the resources for cyclopses, but you shouldn't need them at all.



Now head back to your first town, flagging the harpy and nomad dwellings and recruiting all the troops on the way. Pick up the crest of valor now too. Build an Arena of Honor + Wrestling pits in your first town before Gauldoth gets there.



Recruit all the troops you can from your town + undead dwellings. Use berzerkers in your army instead of centaurs as you fight the neutral berzerkers east of your town, and use them as fodder. Your Berzerkers, Zombies, Nomads and Gauldoth can take the retaliation strikes, and you should win with acceptable losses (i.e. all your 'zerkers).



Now swap any remaining berzerkers with centaurs and head underground to take on the neutral vampires. It doesn't matter how many Nomads or Zombies you lose, so try to soak the damage with them. If the vampires decide to mob your harpies, reload. Use whatever death spells you have to weaken them + summon sprites as additional distractions. I still lost a few harpies, but the reward is well worth it.



If you did all the above in short order with minimal losses, the hard part of this map is well over. There were ~7 vamps available when I arrived, make sure to recruit them all before you leave the underground. You can clear out the rest of the underground aside from the venom spawn without them while you wait for gold, learning a heap of death spells in the process.



With a solid stack of 7-8 vamps in your army, you can take out most of the neutrals on your side of the river. Just fly them straight into the enemy, with curse and help from your harpies they will recover more health than they lose. Clear everything except the cyclopses, ogres and thunderbirds (the behemoths should be possible). Then visit the Western town to gather troops (I used Berzerkers, Centaurs, Harpies, Vampires, Skeletons and Ghosts) and head back east. Get a caravan in your starting town and ship all troops to it.



Now attack the cyclopses guarding the ferry. I used just Gauldoth + Vampires to avoid losses, but you need to have spec'd into combat for this. Taking a few losses shouldn't hurt too much. Around this time Blue invaded from the Western portal, but you can simply ignore him.



Taking the Green town should be a piece of cake with vamps + harpies. Visit the sacred fountain then head north to the unicorns and kill them using the vampire-damage-sponge technique. Visit the blue keymaster tent.



At this point you should be very close to level 12, if not already there. Kill whatever neutral stacks necessary to hit level cap, then march through the border guard to blue's town. In my playthrough, blue had just taken my first might town, leaving a modest defending force and an easy victory. it is possible that blue has just stayed put and has a much larger single army. However, this means you have 3 towns to his 1 and outproduce him heavily, as well as having a more developed hero and a brain (that Heroes IV AI). In this scenario, just wait it out until you feel you have enough to take him. He can only exit his area to the south, and if he does that just sweep in from the east and take the town while he's out for a simple victory.

[Wheeler Dealer]

Great tip Phate, I took the first Orange town on day one! Playing on Champion the next 63 centaurs weren't so easy.

[Wheeler Dealer]

Played on Champion this time. May have been easier. I think the bigger neutral stacks are more of a problem for the AI than for me.

Gauldoth easily reached L12 and I hired him a helper who reached L9, Xp is not a priority in the long run.

Took the Orange town on day one. Worked my way west to take the second Orange town on 1,2,2. Then about 6 H&R attacks on the berserkers opened the underground.

My tactics for living troops was to take in a few single stacks of ghosts to age the opponent so my ranged or summoned, faster troops could win without further casualties (didn't work against the nomads).

I took the easiest battles and built until Week 5 when I was building Cyclops and harpies in both towns. Now I could defeat the Thunderbirds, Mage Tower and the 16 Vampires preventing me from recruiting my own Vampires. I never lost a Vampire and had 16 at the end.

Passed on the two battles with dozens of Bone Dragons and the one with dozens of Faerie Dragons. Contrary to my post from 2009 the final battle was trivial (3,2,7). I had Cyclops and Vampires, a helper Death Knight and miscellaneous others.

[MudElemental]

Playing on Equilibris mod, conquered the first town on the day 2.

Interesting glitch occured, the Greed player wasn't eliminated until I cleared some Griffins nearby Nature castle, even though I'm pretty sure they were neutral army.

[trucklegryffe]

Even if TOE is installed, try installing the most recent Heroes V patch. I used Phate's advice and took the first Orange town on the first day.