TheSouthGuard - Revision history

Mal Shubertal: /* The Tides of War */

2022-03-30T23:54:40Z

‎The Tides of War

Mal Shubertal: /* Pebbles in the Flood */

2022-03-30T23:36:18Z

‎Pebbles in the Flood

Mal Shubertal: /* Long March */

2022-03-30T23:22:03Z

‎Long March

Mal Shubertal: /* Vengeance */

2022-03-30T22:07:10Z

‎Vengeance

Mal Shubertal: /* Return to Kerlath */

2022-03-30T22:02:39Z

‎Return to Kerlath

Mal Shubertal: /* Diverging campaign path - Elf branch */

2022-03-30T21:57:58Z

‎Diverging campaign path - Elf branch

Mal Shubertal: /* Choice In The Fog */

2022-03-30T20:59:48Z

‎Choice In The Fog

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Mal Shubertal: /* Choice In The Fog */

2022-03-30T20:20:41Z

‎Choice In The Fog

Mal Shubertal: /* Choice In The Fog */

2022-03-30T19:19:20Z

‎Choice In The Fog

Mal Shubertal: /* Choice In The Fog */

2022-03-30T18:18:42Z

‎Choice In The Fog

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 With Gerrick and his band of defenders defeated, the undead arrive at Westin. Deoran has fortified the city and recruited some defenders (how much of both depends on the previous scenario). Minister Hylas has summoned the Council of Westin. The Council consists of a Silver Mage, a Red Mage, two White Mages and an Arch Mage. The Silver Mage, Minister Mefel arrives at the beginning. Depending on how well you did in the last level, the rest of the Council may or may not be with him.
-This level is not that difficult and is easy once the Council arrives. Recruit fodder Footpad after fodder Footpad. Secure the two crossings. Note that Draugs are Level 3, so killing a single one can almost level up an intelligent Footpad on its own. When the Council arrives, push towards Mal M'Brin. All the heroes except Deoran can die.
+There is a wide river south of your keep, with one enemy lich in a keep right on the opposite bank, and another on the south edge of the map. The nearer lich will mostly recruit ghouls, bats, and zombies, while the farther one will focus on lvl 2 skeletons, skeleton archers, and chocobones. The only bridge across the river is on the far eastern side of the map, and that is separated from your keep by another icy river running north-south.
-Try and keep your Silver Mage alive. Also when the Red Mage levels up, turn it into a Silver Mage. They will be very helpful when the time comes to kill Mal M'Brin who, as an Ancient Lich, is quite robust.
+There is no time limit on this level, so don't rush. Spend the first few turns tagging villages, fighting bats, and positioning your troops. Due to the ice and water to the east of your keep, it takes significantly longer for your troops to get to the eastern river crossing than the western river bank. The undead will cross along the entire length of the river but it makes sense to send all your early recruits east and put off recruiting western defenders until the last possible moment. Pick defensible terrain and hold out through the first wave. Note that, for most of your troops, their mobility and defense on ice is exactly the same as in shallow water, meaning that it is pointless to defend the literal water's edge. Instead, set your defensive lines in areas where your troops can all be on flat or other higher defense terrain. Once you finish off the first wave and the city council arrives, you can cross the river both at the eastern bridge and across the water on the west side.
 [[Category:Campaigns - The South Guard]]
 [[Category:Campaigns - Walkthroughs]]

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 The longer you hold out, the better the set up is in the next scenario. The milestones are lasting 6, 22, or 24 turns. The following table describes these benefits; the column on the right explains your reward for holding the undead for at least the number of turns in the left column.
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-In addition to this, one of the key elements for the next scenario is the help you receive from the ''Council of Westin'', composed by an Arch Mage, a Red Mage, a Silver Mage and two White Mages. If you happen to maintain Sir Gerrick alive for 24 turns here, the full Council will be with you from the start. Otherwise, you will start with just the Silver Mage, and the rest of the Council will arrive in turn number (25 - number_of_turns_lasted).
+In addition to this, one of the key elements for the next scenario is the help you receive from the ''Council of Westin'', composed by an Arch Mage, a Red Mage, a Silver Mage and two White Mages. If you happen to maintain Sir Gerrick alive for 24 turns here, the full Council will be with you from the start. Otherwise, you will start with just the Silver Mage, and the rest of the Council will arrive in turn number (25 - number_of_turns_lasted). (NOTE: This equation is no longer accurate as of version 1.16)
 Unlocking all the benefits can be quite a challenge (at least on ''Normal'' and ''Hard'' difficulties), but with some effort it shouldn't be too hard to hold out for at least 12 turns, which gives you those two extra Castle locations. They are quite useful to start recruiting in larger numbers from the beginning.
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 You will be fighting all undead, so recruit Footpads and Thugs. You can't recall any units (they are all with Deoran, not Gerrick).
 === The Tides of War ===

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 * Starting units: Deoran, Sir Gerrick, Minister Hylas, Afalas and Jarek
-Just follow Urza Afalas for a standard scenario unless you want a challenge, in which case head north and fight. The end result is the same.
+The forest appears solid, but at the beginning of each turn the portion of the path within Urza's line of sight is revealed and becomes flat ground.
-Actually, the above is a matter of opinion.  In earlier versions, following the suggestion of the Urza would allow you to sneak around the edges of the map with relatively few contacts with the enemy.  As of version 1.3.14 and above, many users find that this scenario is so hard that they end up going back to "Choice in the Fog" and choosing to side with the elves.  In the newer versions, the amount and level of enemies that come hunting you down will provide plenty of challenge even if all your important characters are fully leveled up.  For starters, this scenario resembles "Crossroads" from the Heir to the Throne campaign in that every time you step off the path you are likely to create several new elves to harass you.  Staying on the path makes you an easy target for the hordes of undead and elves that each want your blood.  The only reprieve you'll have is that the elves and undead are equally willing to destroy each other, though in my experience this rarely worked in my favor.
+Various forest hexes are occupied by elves who function as if they all have the Ambush ability, meaning that they are invisible until one of your units moves adjacent to them, at which point the elf is revealed and your unit ends its movement.
-The good thing is that the victory condition is fairly simple: Deoran is the only unit that needs to cross the river.  I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to let you know that only a Naga awaits you on the South bank of the river, so it's perfectly okay to send him out alone once you've dealt with it.  At this point, it would be better if the rest of your team hunker down together in a classic hedgehog defense.  The less you move, the fewer elves attack you.  Also, you may want to avoid the valley with the three villages in it - setting foot in there summons a large Elven ambush.  Actually, the northmost of the three villages is safe to rest in.
+Despite the elves, the turn limit would give you plenty of time to get across the river to the north, but starting on turn 4 an ever-increasing stream of undead start spawning at the southern edge of the map and chasing you.
-There are some elves that will come out even if you keep to the path. The ambushes happen when you stray. You can use this to your advantage by recruiting a Peasant or two. Have them hang back behind the party. When you start to see undead, have the peasants sprint south into the forest/off the path. They will trigger an ambush. Since the undead are south and the triggered ambush is south, hopefully the elves and undead will attack one another (or at least ZOC each other). Besides that, stay to the path. The elves you encounter on the path are weaker than the elves who ambush you.
+Urza moves quickly and it is tempting to move him forward as quickly as possible, but he doesn't have that many hitpoints and will get beat up quickly if he triggers every ambush. So a slightly more cautious method of leading with more sturdy units and bringing urza right up behind them works better.
 === Pebbles in the Flood ===

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 === Vengeance ===
-* Objectives: Keep the elves from sacking Westin, then move Ethiliel to the Great Tree
+* Objectives: Survive until end of turns
-* Lose if: Deoran or Ethiliel die or turns run out
+* Lose if: Deoran or Ethiliel die
-* Turns: No limit
+* Turns: 14
 * Base Starting Gold: 125/100/80
 * Starting Units: Deoran, Minister Hylas, Sir Gerrick and Ethiliel and several defenders
-Another simple mission, once you know how to play it.  Spam fodder units to screen Ethiliel.  It's even easier to do this if she's a Shyde by now, since she can flank north through the hills at full speed.  Do not kill the enemy Elves - it will just cause more, stronger Elves to appear near the Great Tree, exactly where you do not want them.
+Another cakewalk. Resist the urge to fight the elves. Every time you kill one, several more spawn at the western edge of the map. Instead, just turtle up on the ring of castle tiles near your starting keep, focus on slowing as many of the attacking units as possible, don't attack at all otherwise, rotate your units periodically to heal, and run out the clock.
 == Diverging campaign path - Bandit branch ==

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 * Starting Units: Deoran, Minister Hylas, and Ethiliel
-This is a straightforward level, a walk in the park to put it simply.  Recall your high-level units, and then slaughter the bandits.  They are relatively strung out and have only first-level units interspersed with a few level twos. They should be easy pickings for your army by this point.
+This is a straightforward level, a walk in the park to put it simply. Use it to level up some replacements for the high level units you lost in the last scenario. The elves will only attack you once they see you and will stay still until then, so you can take them on at your own pace. The only way to lose is to send Deoran way out front on his own to be jumped by a bunch of elvish archers.
-Just keep moving Deoran north, and level any units that still need a bit more experience.  When you cross the bridge and meet the Wesnoth lieutenant, you win.
+Ethiliel requests that you "fight to subdue" rather than killing the enemy. It is unclear whether that means that when you kill a unit in this scenario it's merely being 'subdued', but there seems to be no consequence either way.
 === Vengeance ===

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 * Starting Units: Deoran, Minister Hylas, and Ethiliel
-One of the few genuinely tough scenarios in this campaign, mainly because you're fighting underground with Loyalist humans and Elves.  The Loyalists are lawful and get -25% damage penalties, and the Elves get very poor evasion and are heavily slowed down.  Recall your blade-armed units, like Royal Guards, at the start, along with any other loyal troops, and then maybe some Elvish Fighters for fodder and a Shaman or two for healing/slowing support.  Avoid Cavalry - they completely suck in caves.  Also, try for units with 6 moves (ones with the 'quick' trait), as they'll be able to cover an extra hex every turn through the caves compared to 5-move units.  If you've leveled Minister Hylas into a Mage of Light, he'll be very useful here, supporting your lawful human troops with his Illumination ability and blasting Undead with his boosted Lightbeams.
+One of the few genuinely tough scenarios in this campaign, mainly because you're fighting underground with Loyalist humans and Elves.  The Loyalists are lawful and get -25% damage penalties because underground always counts as "night" time of day, and the Elves have very low defense and movement on cave tiles.
-At the start, you face an "Eyestalk" creature with a powerful draining ranged attack, and a regular Revenant nearby.  The Eyestalk is difficult and dangerous to take down using ranged attackers, but it is easily dispatched by blade-armed units, as it is weak against them.  The reason I advised bringing blades down here is simple: they're the most useful damage type you have in this dungeon.  Although far inferior to impact when facing Skeletons and Ghouls, it is nevertheless a good deal better than piercing damage, which is your only other option.  Your archers are still relatively useful against Ghost-type Undead, though.
+This scenario is a long dungeon crawl. You follow a fairly narrow cave east, then south, then back west, and fight 3 increasingly difficult undead leaders. Managing your recruitment and upkeep is important here. Recruiting 50 units from your starting keep is not any better than recruiting 10, because they would just all pile up behind each other in the bottlenecks, and the upkeep would bankrupt you while they were standing around. Instead, you want to recruit just 1-2 keeps worth of units at the start, and then replenish your forces as necessary every time you get to a new keep.
-You will encounter a fork soon, one heading south and the other continuing east, with skeletons and ghouls pressing from both sides.  Heading south will bring you into contact with the Trolls, and you may try to form an alliance with them. You also gain access to a bridge that gives you a shorter route to Mal M'Brin's castle than the fork going east.
+One way to open up these bottlenecks is to use merfolk. The path from your starting keep to the first enemy leader has multiple 1-2 hex wide bottlenecks and is mostly cave terrain type, meaning your ground forces will move slowly and have a hard time pushing through tough units like Necrophages. On the other hand, there is a parallel water route from your starting keep to the first enemy keep that the enemy completely ignores. The first enemy leader is a Lvl 1 Soulless, which means you can probably take him down with a well-timed surprise attack by just 3-4 mermen. Even if they don't finish him off on their own, they will force him to divert forces to defend against them, which will allow your ground troops to break through the bottlenecks faster.
-If you choose to offer gold to the Trolls (you're required to pay 100/150/200 gold on easy/medium/hard, respectively), they ally with you and also grant you a shortcut to Mal M'Brin's castle.  The scenario is extremely easy if you fight alongside the Trolls.  Once you've paid, simply move your army towards the bomb and let the Trolls duke it out against the pursuing Undead.  Take their villages if you want.  Then, once you reach the bomb, detonate it and storm into Mal M'Brin's chamber.  He'll have some Undead and Dark Adepts in the region, but you ought to be able to fight them off without much trouble.  When that's done, take out M'Brin, and you win.
+When selecting your ground units, focus on quality over quantity. To get through the bottlenecks, you want units with high and reliable damage output, like Ethiliel's bodyguards, Elvish Sorceresses, Swordsmen, etc. Also prioritize recalling units with at least 6 movement points, as this can be the difference between moving 2 and 3 spaces on cave terrain. Use leadership and Illumination to optimize your damage output whenever possible.
-If you want to try to fight the trolls, offer them freedom. They don't want that. They'll turn it down, and you can barrage them with Elvish Fighters. However, fighting against the Trolls is not advisable - even if you don't have enough gold to buy their help, offer them gold anyway and you can pay later once you collect that amount. Or even if you don't pay them at all, you still keep them neutrally aligned and none of your business, instead of turning them against yourself.
+The first wave of enemies will be mostly ghouls, necrophages, and bats, so total damage output is more important than damage type at this point.
-''Alt strategy'': Another possible strategy is ''not'' to recall any Loyalist troops but spam Elvish Fighters. By now you should have two healers (one of which is a white mage), keep them behind the fighters. The elves will level up quickly and you will not waste lvl 3 human units who are extremely vulnerable in caves.
+Send one quick unit to walk directly along the southern wall of the cave, and he will discover a hidden passage to some friendly trolls who will join you against the undead. You can't take any of them with you after this scenario, but it can still be very useful to level them up, because there are some very tough skeletal undead coming and you are short on high-damage impact attacks. Surprisingly, trolls move better in water than any of your other troops, so they can be useful to support your mermen later on. The troll cave exits just southwest of the first leader's keep, so they can join your main forces there and help hold off the second wave from the south.
-The white mage will come handy to give the ''coupe de grâce'' to bosses (especially liches), while a few bowmen will take care of any bats. Attack the second lich from the three possible sides (main, side and water), otherwise you will find yourself wasting turns in a bottleneck.
+The second wave will reach the first undead keep at about turn 10. If at all possible, try to get Deoran there first, so he can recruit reinforcements on the spot. The second wave is mostly more ghouls and necrophages, along with some dark adepts and some lvl 1 and 2 skeletal undead. But, the second leader is another lich, so it can be useful to recruit a few expendable shamans to walk along behind your main troops until it's time to suicide attack him to make sure he's slowed before your valuable troops take him out.
-With the help of trolls you should be able to win with ease even at higher difficulty levels, and your tough spearmen will be available in the next battle unscatched.
+The cave now turns south from the first undead keep to the second. The layout is similar: a land route with a lot of cave tiles and bottlenecks that make a large force impractical, and a parallel and relatively undefended water route that converges on the keep. This time, the occasional unit will come up the waterway, which should be easy for your trolls and mermen to take out. As with the last lich you faced, send in some sacrificial shamans to slow him and then try to take him down ASAP with arcane and impact attacks.
 === Return to Kerlath ===

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 Some definition of terms: "Shroud" is the totally black portions of the map where you can't see anything. "Fog of War" is the portions of the map that look sort of hazy, where you can see the terrain but not the units. Shroud and fog are both removed by Line of Sight. A unit's line of sight is every hex that it could reach with a full turn of movement points from its current position. This is affected by terrain. So, a cavalryman might only "see" through 2 or 3 hexes of forest, but an elf would see through 5 or 6. When all of your units move away from an area, so that it is no longer in any of their Line of Sight, the fog of war returns but the shroud does not.
-As the title says, this scenario gives you an important choice that divides the rest of the campaign into 2 different branches. You must choose to either side with the bandits or the elves. This choice will not be revealed to Deoran until several turns into the scenario. So, some players choose to "roleplay" this scenario, playing the first turns as if they did not know the choice was coming. However, you can get better outcomes by making your choice ahead of time and playing with that gameplan in mind from the beginning. In particular, if you are planning to side with the bandits, you would obviously do better by not recruiting elves early on.
+As the title says, this scenario gives you an important choice that divides the rest of the campaign into 2 different branches. You must choose to either side with the bandits or the elves. This choice will not be revealed to Deoran until several turns into the scenario. So, some players choose to "roleplay" this scenario, playing the first turns as if they did not know the map or the choice that is coming. However, you can get better outcomes by making your choice ahead of time and playing with that gameplan in mind from the beginning. In particular, if you are planning to side with the bandits, you would obviously do better by not recruiting elves early on.
-The choice is triggered when one of your units has the bandit leader within their line of sight. Before this point, any bandits or undead that you encounter will be hostile toward you. If you choose to side with the elves, the only thing that changes is that your victory conditions change to specify that you must defeat both bandits and undead. If you choose to side with the bandits, the changes are dramatic. All of your elf units, including Ethiliel and her bodyguards, will disappear forever. All of the bandits on the map, including the bandit leader, will come under your control, and you will be able to recruit thugs and footpads from now on. Your objective will now be to only defeat the undead. Choosing the bandit path will also remove all the shroud from the map, although fog will remain everywhere outside of your units' line of sight.
+The choice is triggered when one of your units has the bandit leader within their line of sight. Before this point, any bandits or undead that you encounter will be hostile toward you. If you choose to side with the elves, the only thing that changes is that your victory conditions change to specify that you must defeat both bandits and undead. If you choose to side with the bandits, the changes are dramatic. All of your elf units, including Ethiliel and her bodyguards, will disappear forever. All of the bandits on the map, including the bandit leader, will join your team, and you will be able to recruit thugs and footpads from now on. Your objective will now be to only defeat the undead. Choosing the bandit path will also remove all the shroud from the map, although fog will remain everywhere outside of your units' line of sight.
 Either of these choices dramatically improves your fighting ability against the undead for the rest of the campaign. Thugs and footpads give you access to plentiful and cheap impact attacks. On the other hand, elvish shamans offer impact attacks, the Slow ability, and can eventually upgrade into units with Arcane attacks as well. The downside of the shamans relative to thugs/footpads is that they are less mobile and much more fragile.
-Campaign-wise, these choices offer a trade off between long and short term thinking. This scenario itself is significantly easier if you take the bandit path, since you instantly eliminate a bunch of enemies AND gain a bunch of new units for free. On the other hand, the last scenario of the bandit path is much harder than the last scenario of the elf path. There's a moral here, living your life like a bandit is easy in the short run but you pay a price in the end!
+Campaign-wise, this choice offers a trade off between long and short term thinking. This scenario itself is significantly easier if you take the bandit path, since you instantly eliminate a bunch of enemies AND gain a bunch of new units for free. On the other hand, the last scenario of the bandit path is much harder than the last scenario of the elf path. There's a moral here, living your life like a bandit is easy in the short run but you pay for it in the end!
 A river cuts this map into 3 main sections: a strip of land across the northern map edge, an L-shaped section along the western and southern edges, and an island/peninsula in the east-central region. There are bridges connecting these landmasses. You start on the northwestern corner, the bandit keep is on the eastern landmass near the center of the map, and there are 2 undead keeps in the southwestern and southeastern corners.
-From your starting keep, the most obvious path is to take a bridge straight south to the southwestern landmass. The terrain is rough, with lots of hills and forests that will obscure both movement and line of sight. You will encounter the bandits and undead fighting each other around the bridge between the eastern landmass and the one you're on. The undead from this nearer keep are mostly zombies and ghouls. You can't see it, but the further away undead keep is producing various skeletal undead, including lvl 2 units, and sending them toward the bandit keep from the east. If you weren't involved, the natural course of the battle would be that the bandits will push southwest toward the first undead keep, with most of their units slowly succumbing to poison, and then their leader will be taken out by the stream of more powerful undead from the east.
+From your starting keep, the most obvious path is to take a bridge straight south to the southwestern landmass. The terrain is rough, with lots of hills and forests that will obscure both movement and line of sight. You will encounter the bandits and undead fighting each other around the bridge between the central landmass and the one you're on. The undead from this nearer keep are mostly zombies and ghouls. You can't see it, but the further away undead keep is producing various skeletal undead, including lvl 2 units, and sending them toward the bandit keep from the east. If you weren't involved, the natural course of the battle would be that the bandits will push southwest toward the first undead keep, with most of their units slowly succumbing to poison, and then their leader will be taken out by the stream of more powerful undead from the east.

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:19, 30 March 2022
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	From your starting keep, the most obvious path is to take a bridge straight south to the southwestern landmass. The terrain is rough, with lots of hills and forests that will obscure both movement and line of sight. You will encounter the bandits and undead fighting each other around the bridge between the eastern landmass and the one you're on. The undead from this nearer keep are mostly zombies and ghouls. You can't see it, but the further away undead keep is producing various skeletal undead, including lvl 2 units, and sending them toward the bandit keep from the east. If you weren't involved, the natural course of the battle would be that the bandits will push southwest toward the first undead keep, with most of their units slowly succumbing to poison, and then their leader will be taken out by the stream of more powerful undead from the east.		From your starting keep, the most obvious path is to take a bridge straight south to the southwestern landmass. The terrain is rough, with lots of hills and forests that will obscure both movement and line of sight. You will encounter the bandits and undead fighting each other around the bridge between the eastern landmass and the one you're on. The undead from this nearer keep are mostly zombies and ghouls. You can't see it, but the further away undead keep is producing various skeletal undead, including lvl 2 units, and sending them toward the bandit keep from the east. If you weren't involved, the natural course of the battle would be that the bandits will push southwest toward the first undead keep, with most of their units slowly succumbing to poison, and then their leader will be taken out by the stream of more powerful undead from the east.

−	If you are planning on taking the bandit choice,	+	If you are planning on taking the bandit path, it's important to control when you trigger the choice. If you meet him before he finishes using up all of his starting gold, then that excess gold just disappears, and you will miss out on all the other units he might have recruited. If you meet him too late, you might be forced to actually fight and kill some of his units, or he might get them killed with unnecessarily aggressive attacks against the undead. The optimal time to meet him is Turn 6, which is right when he finishes spending all of his starting gold. You can use a merfolk unit or Ethiliel to hover west of his keep, just outside of line of sight with him, until triggering the choice on turn 6.
		+
		+	If you are planning to take the elf path, you can make it easier on yourself by letting the bandits and undead fight each other for as long as possible before you intervene. There is a little waterway on the far west side of the map, and a line of mountains just north of the undead keep. The mountains are useful because they block line of sight. You can recruit 2 keeps worth of elves and take them and all of your units down the narrow corridor between the waterway and the mountains, thus staying out of sight of the bandits and undead fighting, and attack the undead keep from the northwest without engaging with the bandits at all. After that, you can pick off the remaining, mostly poisoned, bandits and proceed north across the river to the bandit keep and then east to the second undead keep.
		+
		+	For either path, don't over-recruit at your starting keep. Every unit takes upkeep, and having a big mass of units walking for several turns before fighting anyone is a waste. Recruit 1-2 keeps worth of either humans or elves and then get Deoran moving. He can recruit again at either the first undead keep, the bandit keep, or a small empty keep that is between them on the bank of the river. If you take the bandit path, this allows you to save your starting gold to spend on thugs and poachers rather than wasting it on too many units with non-impact attacks.