Academy mission 2, 1.3 Heroic

[Rainalkar]

If anyone has tried to play this campaign as fast as possible (minimum number of days), I could use some advice. I finished the first mission in 6 days and ended up with Adv Log/Adv War, First Aid., etc. Waiting for Mage Guild 5 is out of the question; it takes you five or four days minimum, and on heroic likely much more, so Phoenix has to wait.

Now, the second mission is nasty in a way that there are two islands you need to conquer. I was thinking going first to Al-Safir (by NW portal) - this should take a week or so and wil not be a problem, than take the southern town; my secondary wil take the NW town, but I am still thinking how to take the lower island - to continue with Zehir, or send a secondary...? Anyway, it is likely that I won't have the luxury to wait five days for Mage Guild 5 in Al-Safir, so would you recommend taking a second school of magic at all? If not, what would you recommend, considering that a must skill are Summoning, Logistics, War Machines, Attack (for Flaming Arrows mostly) + Artificier? Or, if you have some nice solution how to get Ressurection/Summon Phoenix/Pupper Master/Frenzy by not wasting time, advise me.

[maltz]

For your information, patch 1.3 put a maximum mage guild in your starting town -- lv 2. If there is no mage vault on the map then it is impossible to learn phoenix in this map. (except the moment you take the last town, but the game simply dumbs down 10X from there anyways.)

Al Zafir is guarded by quite a huge army to start with... I wonder whether you can take it that early. You can try, of course.

[Rainalkar]

ok, thanks maltz.

[NuWorld]

Al Zafir is guarded by quite a huge army to start with... I wonder whether you can take it that early. You can try, of course.

I tried with 3-week troops on heroic, lost just a handfull of gremlins on the way there, no chance to beat it, maybe with frenzy spell but I didn't have it at that point. For some sort of rush, I would first conquer 2 towns on that same island, built them and first weaken Al-Safir defenses with some necro hero. Regarding southernmost towns, you could conqer those with second hero but you need Instant Travel to "jump" over those Cavaliers/Wraiths.

[Rainalkar]

Managed to do it. Day 5 week 1. It actualy was rather simple, when you figure out the right tactic .