The Keymasters

[atma6]

Has anyone played this not knowing how much of a huge advantage the enemy has?

Oh well I did, on hard, playing everyone's favorite faction the Academy. After two somewhat early defeats I learned the lay of the land and was able to form a decent early stratagy. So I've decided to post my experience with hope that people might look at my experience, laugh at how bad I am, and do better.

I started out with Nur, ugh, but I got lucky and had a gremlin dwelling next to me. I was able to flag the ore and wood mines no problem. I chose to build gargoyles instead of golems (you really have to pick one as the ore requirement is too high, and gargoyles are more numerous and are better defenders when split to protect my lone gremlin stack in the corner). I prioritized creature dwellings over money because of the money sack you can get early one.

With mages four stacks of gargoyles and gremlins I went to take mines. I first took the gold mine and the crystal mine then I got lucky and found that Havez was in the tavern. I got him to give his gremlins to Nur as she continued to take mines. I got to the sulfur mine before green decided to make its first attack.

I got lucky, because it was a secondary hero that came out first, and it was a demon lord so all of the Haven troops were suffering bad moral. At this point my Nur had advanced light magic, luck, sorcery and basic enlightenment, and (I think I might have gotten it after the battle) basic leadership. My worthwhile spells were haste and mass endurance.

I was able to defeat him and I gained a couple of levels and I felt pretty good about my self (usually I was caught off guard and brutally slaughtered). I finished flaging the mines and obtained both rani's and collossi. Green attacked again now with a larger force. I was able to defeat them again, losing my collossus and one rani.

Green almost immediately sent two more full armies against me and I had no chance of winning against either of them. I retreated to my town, which now had a castle and access to titans. I was held up there for two weeks as green plundered my territory, hope was lost. Green then made a grab for my castle (I now had raja's and golems) with its main force while the others went and wasted their time underground. I somehow made it out alive, losing all of my troops minus my titans who were untouched (Yay).

I finished off the week and recruited new troops, and I hired Jhora. I began to reflag my mines and Nur defeated two full armies with little casulties. Jhora after flaging the sulfur pit was destroyed by one of the large forces that emerged from the underground. Nur, with the additon of reinforcements was now more of a match. I had expert light, luck, and sorcery, advanced leadership, and enlightenment, and basic artificier.

I defeated their army losing most of my troops, but maintaining a good supply of titans and a few rajas. I got galib in the town and he went to flag the rest of my mines while Nur waits for reinforcements. I then realized that I couldn't activate the obelisks and therefore green had the tear of Asha...oh well its hard they already have next to unlimited resources anyway, but the extra troops were worrying.

I sent Galib to find the last keymaster and it took him about two weeks as I took the wrong turn. In this time I outfitted my titans, rajas, and gremlins with artifacts....oh and I finally built the Djinn lair. Green had stopped attacking and were held up in their towns. I went over with the angel wings and saw two towns. One with lots of archs and one with a pack of archs...guess which one I fought.

I beat them with surprisingly few casulties and reallized that this town had the tear building in it so...go me. I started flaging mines with green held up in their fortresses (and I hired lazlo to help).

I now got annoyed at what an advantage the green had. THREE towns, FOUR peasant building and TWO barracks and archer's towers. Damn no wonder I was on the ropes the whole time.

Nur was about level 20 and I sent her home to gain more troops, and build EXTREMELY POWERFUL artifacts, +3 speed, +33 initiative +8 attack titans, yes please! Lazlo then visited all of the dwellings for two weeks to get all of the troops (the enemy had hordes of paladins, inquisitioners, lots of angels, and swarms of everything else. I was in no position to win at this point with my 17 titan army).

With the huge money I was making I made a dummy army of a thousand marksmen, a hundred and thirty inquisitioners, fifteen angels (yes I waited awhile, but three a week), thirty palys and one hundred footmen.

I used this army to attack the center town (I had the right town) and I lost (of course....37 archangels!), but I took out all of their troops minus 200 inquisitioners and 400 footmen. Nur then came in and destroyed them losing 16 Djinn sultans. Oh and with this town I finally got ressurect (Damn word of light was in both towns). So with mass endurance, mass righteous might, mass haste, and ressurect I was in good shape.

I repeated the previous steps building a Haven army while Nur waited at home. I had 50 rajas and 33 titans before I proceeded. Oh and the Haven army was about the same size as before as I didn't have enough money to train anything other than the peasants.

I attacked the last castle and lost (once again 42 archangels!), but like last time Nur completely ripped them to pieces winning me the match.

Well that was really difficult and I wouldn't have won if green had combined their forces at any time instead of attacking in repeated waves. I was also lucky that I eliminated their more powerful heroes early on. And finally the fact that they stewed in their castles at the end allowed me to build my forces enought to take them.

Oh well I hope this helped someone reading it and it wasn't just a source of amusement because of my skill level or lack therof, but if it was well at least someone got a good laugh out of it.

[Sir_Toejam]

everyone's favorite faction the Academy

LOL

[wayne]

I don't know about the others, but Academy certainly isn't my favourite faction

[alavris]

It's funny... Academy is the only faction I haven't seriously tried playing yet

[Sir_Toejam]

I just finished playing ashes and sand with academy.

It's great if you use all the mods i made for it.

-I added hps to the djinn (both types +20%)
-changed resource requirements for buildings (overall still the same, but shifted around to reduce bottlenecks - this was done for all factions)
-reduced the cost of "minifacts" by 2 for each resource.
-made all the ultimate specials easier to get (can get them usually by level 20).

makes playing academy much more enjoyable.

arcane omniscience is actually a great special if you can get it early enough.

[Sir Alock]

Mod note: huge block of quoted text removed. GC

atma6: Nice job with the details in regards to Keymasters. I, like you have tried several ways to beat this map & I can't! I spent 5-6 hours last night playing Necropolis & built up a nice army w/ all upgraded units with the exception of Dragons (Bone Only)

The problems lies with the Green Academy AI. His Attack & Defense skills are fairly tough @ 8/13. He had a stack of 485 Archers plus a decent amount of other troops & I simply got crushed. Looks like I'll try on Normal AI & see where that gets me. If & when I beat this map I'll be more then pleased with myself!

Alex

[atma6]

Yeah I'm starting to believe that mapmakers are designing maps for normal difficulty, but giving the AI such an advantage it will be more challenging. Fury of the elements was like this too when I played it. This is good though as I hate the fact that we need to give the AI practically unlimitted resources in order to have a challenge.