Necromancer Campaign Bugs

[Bedivere]

These are probably old news by now, but hopefully someone can help. I read in the walkthrough (too late to save me some frustration) that there is a bug on the first scenario with the eastern patrol stopping in the narrow corridor. Frustrating, but I restarted and got past it.

However, 4 times in a row I've gotten my ass handed to me on the second scenario, when one of the orange heroes comes down and lands by my castle day 4 of week one and attacks my town before I can even build a fort. The handy walkthrough has informed me that orange will not come down for 3 weeks. This is of little consolation when the frickin' enemy wizard takes out two stacks of my starting army with a fireball. Any ideas how to avoid this fate?

[xoham]

As I recall, in order to have them show up so early, you need to stay FAR away from the coast. If they "see" you, they make a beeline for the shore and get you before you managed to grab the available undead in the area.

When I stayed away from the coast for a while, I was able to get much more time to get the undead, wood, and ore mines.

[Wolfsburg]

If you are playing on heroic like I do, they will always show up too early and ruin your party, no matter what precautions you take.

After getting beat over and over I developed a plan.

My strategy was mostly a "gambiarra". Thats a beautiful word used by brazilians to describe solutions that are not beautiful or ideal but that are effective nonetheless.

In this mission I concentrated all my troops on Markals army (just beacause I love necros). The AI in this mission is aware that if your main heroes die or surrender, you lose, so they go desperatly and stupidly after them.

At the same time, if you built your troops up nicely, and gathered them under the command of your stronger hero (being Markal or Godric), the badass wizard will be unwilling to face them and will avoid direct combat.

What did I do?

1 - I just used this one hero (the stronger one, with all troops), in a narrow part of the path, to block the passage to my castle and kept Godric and my other heroes on the right part of the map, exploiting the goodies.

2 - That means the stupid AI, being blocked from reaching the feeble Godric, returned the problem-wizard to his boat in order to wait for a better moment to attack.

3 - Then I moved my stronger hero to somewhere else nearby, creating the false impression of an opportunity to reach my weak hero (Godric). The stupid wizard will come running back to get him. He will lose his round to get off the boat. Then you calmly move your stronger hero to block the path AGAIN. Which leads to (guess?) the wizard running back to his boat!

4 - If you repeat this process over and over, you buy yourself huge amounts of time to built up troops comfortably and take the wizard out without dropping a sweat.

I know it isnt the cleanest way to play, but in a dirty game, playing dirty is clean!

This worked like a charm with me, hope it works for you as well!:-D

W.

[Grail Quest]

As I recall, in order to have them show up so early, you need to stay FAR away from the coast. If they "see" you, they make a beeline for the shore and get you before you managed to grab the available undead in the area.

When I stayed away from the coast for a while, I was able to get much more time to get the undead, wood, and ore mines.

This is possible, although my experience has been it is generally a glitch that the AI comes. Even so, if you have been undisturbed by about late week 3 or early week 4, you can handle maybe one of the larger forces. Go to a nearby island to pick up more troops and you may be able to clear the other ships. That's how I managed it on my most recent run on Heroic. I concentrated on getting wights and wraiths, and if I remember correctly got a nice stack of 29 (including the free joins on the east) and that really helped. Can't remember if that was before or after visiting one of the nearby islands. Cleared all the ships, then headed for the mainland where I was completely undisturbed.

[Bedivere]

Thanks all. All right – stay away from the coast and go for the wights. I’ll give it a try.

The AI behavior did seem like a glitch - there was no chance of defending against the AI, even combining the meager starting armies. There wasn't even enough time to build a fort.