Post your feedback for this scenario here.

Scenario seems extremely crash-prone, but haven't been able to find any reason for it. Playing as Illians. Civ4 usually crashes for me only if the game has been running for several hours and/or there's been a lot of alt+tabbing in and out of the game. Blood of Angels has been crashing every 3-4 turns for me since after early game. The other scenarios I've tried so far (Grand Menagerie, The Momus, Return of Winter, Against the Wall and Gift of Kylorin) have not suffered from crashing.

This is my third and current scenario I'm playing. I found the twist with the Bannor really interesting. Cassiel is just not in a fun spot though. I have to admit I am going to cheat in Worldbuilder a little bit because I only have access to Galleys and they have no chance against Man O' Wars. If only I used the Settler I got from the event to settle along the cost things would have been in my favor against his boats. I could always take out the rest of Hannah so I could get iron to my costal city but that would take a really long time and I just want to wrap this scenario up at this point.

It is a good scenario and I played it the whole evening without it crashing. I feel kind of bad going against Cassiel with the intent to kill him. I didn't feel bad about trying to kill Sabathiel but I will feel sad if Cassiel does die at my hands.

I created wilboman and discovered that bannors capitol is on a desert tile :( then hannah the irin launched a stack of boarding parties and killed Mahala, i gave up and placed a AA next to Midgar :D

I started the scenario, then got I got a message that the Lanun and Illians have been defeated, Sabathiel and I had 10000 points each, and Sabathiel had won a conquest victory(though at the bottom of the screen it said barbarians have won a conquest victory).

EDIT: Here's the auto-save.

:lol: I was playing as the Doviello and after annihilating the Bannor and the Lanun and when Auric asked me to besiege Midgar to kill Cassiel for an Archangel's blood, I was tempted to slap him silly and just ask him to find Brigit since my War Machine was already level 15 :crazyeye:

I have the exact same issue as petcarcharodon had.
And trying to load again from the autosave makes the game crash.

Thanks for the saves folks. I think whats happening here is the random resources is placing a mana on a plot that is abotu to become a city. So when the game coes to place the city its not allowed to, the script halts and ends up with only a few cities placed (sabathiel gets through since hes the westmost player and the script places from west to east).

I put a check in for that in patch "b". We will see if it works.

Yeah game crashed the 2nd time I started it.

As the Doviello, I'm conquering the Bannor and when I capture a city it keeps asking me to join the Bannor. :lol: Seems somewhat strange considering we are in a state of constant war. :lol:

repeatable CTD save included:

197966

I have looked around in world builder and there is a red blob in the Bannor capital. If I delete it the game doesn't crash. I think it is supposed to be an archer...

I have looked around in world builder and there is a red blob in the Bannor capital. If I delete it the game doesn't crash. I think it is supposed to be an archer...

Same with the red blob...

Also severely disappointed that the Blood of Angels track didn't play once in the scenario.

The thing with Hanna and Auric not spawning happened again. I do have the latest patch.

Well I finished off Sabathiel and Hannah, and sent a suicide frigate over with an invisible assasin to find their capital, and what do I find? Midgar is resting behind a wall of mountains with two choke point locations, and their entire land is covered in immortal musketmen (or whatever their called). How can I beat this without resorting to WB?

Yeah, the scenario was awesome until i got to the point where Auric tells me to kill Cassiel. That was both morally disturbing and a huge hassle because of the damn ocean. I don't know how you would be supposed to make it better though. Maybe some event when you destroy Lanun, which gives you a couple of Frigates or something.

I almost hate you guys for what happened to Cassiel :(:(:(:(:(

Something better then frigates, i wasted alot of tiem using hordes of frigates to take down your 13 strength ships, and i wonder if that's when they got blood of the phoienix

Well, with the last patch you said you weakened the Grigori, but I didn't expect that much of a nerf, lol, maybe I just thought it was because of over-preporation. I went down a difficulty level, took out the bannor and Lanun, then waited for the war machine and man'o'wars. Not only that, I created an armada that would put Spain and England to shame. So MAYBE I just expected too much, but over-all I think i enjoyed it more.

I was sad to hear of Cassiel's death, but since I am not as humanist as most people seem to be on these forums, I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

Apparently, the good ol' twincasting worldspells is making a comeback.

Raging Seas hit me twice. So it said in the Event Log.

Only a third of my invasion force just about ready to go after Cassiel survived.

This was already a couple of patches ago. I excel at procrastinating.

I'm getting the txt_key's missing for defeating Saba and Hannah. Otherwise very much enjoying this scenario so far

cheers

When playing this scenario, does Cassiel have some sort of 'Sanctuary-esque' spell that kicks out invaders back to their own borders?

Twice now, my stack has been advancing on Midgar and once getting there and once halfway there, they got kicked back to the Costa del Sol, the Grigori coastal city I captured.

(Patch E or F, not sure which.)

I'm getting the txt_key's missing for defeating Saba and Hannah. Otherwise very much enjoying this scenario so far

cheers

Thanks, it will be fixed in patch "i".

Patch G - the text keys were missing.

I played as the Doviello on Monarch, Normal speed. I had no metal at all so I chose Kilmorph and generated a Great Engineer for a fast Mines of Galdur. That enabled an easy mopping up of the Bannor. Prior to that, the Bannor almost beat me in the field until they threw two large axeman stacks into a mutated Javelin Thrower on a hill city across a river.

Spent 50 turns wondering about looking for Cassiel, gave up and conquered the Lanun about turn 250, whipped out some high capacity tririmes but was against Frigates. I used a Great Bard culture boost to make a crossing over the ocean, lead the Frigate stacks away with decoys and invaded the Grigori. Finished about turn 290. Grigori was full of highly promoted iron Dragon Slayers.

I'm not convinced the naval section added much to the scenario. I would have preferred capturing a gunpowder cache from the Lanun such that I was able to destroy that pesky mountain someone used to block me from Grigori territory!

When researching a religion as Doviello, the Illian ally didn't research anything at all. Most likely they can't research and so they sit around not researching anything.

After having captured the Bannor Capitol Torrolerial, when gifting it to your team member the message for capturing Torrolerial is displayed a second time.

Cassiel needs to better appreciate the significance of his capital in this. Once I finished the Lanun I started planning my attack on the Grigori. And saw 20+ dragon slayers hanging out in his coastal city. 5 or 6 guys sitting around most of his other cities. Except Midgar. I dropped a transport of Mobile Commando's, got around his SoD's, and took Midgar from the whopping TWO guys defending it. I couldn't have held it, of course. But I didn't need to.



This goes for a lot of the scenarios, but I saw it most here-The difficulty seems a lot different depending on your civ at the high levels. As the Illians on Emperor things would seem bad, I'm at war with guys who get a bunch of exp, produce units quick, etc. But I had the Doviello as my shield. They were quickly producing high level units to keep the Bannor and Lanun away.

When the AI is the farther away civ and you are the one next to the enemies, they really squander their bonuses. Using their SoD's on stupid suicide attacks rather than helping defend you from the enemies. Spending the entire scenario settling unoccupied lands. Building wonders that have no use for the task at hand, etc.

Sadness in my heart, spirituality was sacrificed,
Troubles in my head, with it awareness died,
Tears in my eyes, stubborns want to freeze,
Fools seek ascendancy to cure their disease.

The Grigori were really hard to beat. Only reason I managed to defeat them was that I destroyed big part of their army at Costa del Sol using Tsunami. Then I hold this city, slowly losing units (I invaded with around 35 units in first wave and before reinforcments came I had Saverous, Lucian, 2 Beastmaster, 2 Zealots, 2 Shamans and 5 catapults) and weakening coming groups with Tsunami again. (If they had came together as one stack I was crushed into dust easily) Not complaining though, I am happy it was no easy run to next scenario.

Illians were quite useless. I left Bannor with two cities (pop 11 and 2) and Illians took them as late as I was taking down Grigori. Also they captured barbarian city to the east with 45 XP Javelin thrower and they left him there for the rest of game only upgrading him into horse archer. Shouldn't they use him more? And is there some reason why, when I captured Lanun capital I was asked to return it to Illians its rightful owner? They never were in possesion of city.


And I really hate that stupid to-be-god now. How dare he to act like that. I nearly wished to be defeated by Grigori.
Also in other scenarios is there some explanation where Sabathiel is?

Sabathiel went back to Junil's Heaven. The Bannor priests had been willfully misinterpreting and misstating his orders for a long time, so he decided there was no point in sticking around to give them orders anyway. The corrupt priests had begun actively persecuting those (like Valin Phanuel) who still honestly served Junil and cared more for justice than for doing what they were told.

:lol:

Upgraded to version m. Went to start this scenario and lost, without firing a shot.:D

Edit: Must of been a fluke. Second try started OK.

Patch o, upon start, as soon as I click close on the story, Hannah and Auric are deafeted, mine and Sabatheials scores are 10000, and the Barbs win a conquest Victory.

patch q, starting the scenario as Mahala, I have the already mentioned issue of hannah and auric getting destroyed at turn 0 and barbarians winning a conquest victory :\

I 'cheated' a bit by taking the barbarian city near the coast and using it to launch ships, bypassing needed to confront the Lanun. I played the Illians and used the 3 Priests of Winter to attack with the ice elementals. I research blitzed towards Theology, and got it free by building the Infernal Grimoire (Doviello was nice enough to research Infernal Pact for me). With 3 High priests of Winter I tore though all the Horse Archers that Cassiel built (Snowfall is extremely powerful at reducing enemy forces).

Playing Mahala, Monarch difficulty; I really, really liked this scenario! I took a barb city near the Bannor and held it until I had catapults and Fire Mages with me. Bannor attacked and their hero (Valin) got screwed by fireballs while tracking around in a forest, I then went ahead and conquered their empire. Got 2nd part of the quest...

The game needs to tell you where to find the Grigori! I eventually figured out because I thought I would need ships, so I took Hannahs cities and saw Grigori culture. I then built Frigates, sailed across with my army of Battlemasters and Mages (and Lucian ofc), and took Costa Del Sol. I spent my around 4.000 gold on Mercenaries and then walked into Midgar and won!

Now, if any criticism is needed;
Negative: It's hard to get to Grigori lands! AND they use way too many assassins.

Positive: I really, really like the lorish parts, especially the ending.

Other: Perhaps introducing a reward consisting of a couple of boats for taking a Lanun city would be nice.
And I think you should give the Doviello the Agnostic trait in this scenario. I did well without ever using Divine units, on Monarch, so it is definately doable. And as of now, OO is simply too easy a solution coupled with Frigates with Fire Mages.

SPOILERS Included

It was enjoyable. I played on Emperor (my normal level) with Mahala, and in retrospect did everything wrong. There were three barbarian cities between my area and the Bannor. Usually, I'm very deliberate, I take everything in the way before advancing. But I saw I had an advantage over Torrelial (sp) and I bee-lined. This was a mistake. As I funneled in reinforcements, they were attacked. So I took only one of the barbarian cities.

I had about a 20 - 30 turn siege, perhaps my longest ever in FfH. I had catapults and Lucian was a monster. I had gone AV and had a powerhouse Rosier. But the Bannor kept on slipping troops in. All of the sudden, a horseman kills my top guy without a hit. How? Oh no, it is Valin.

Here I got some bad luck. I suicided two guys against him, and wore him down. Then I beat him in three combats and he escapes all three times, finally into the city!

After about a 30 turn siege, I'm finally ready to attack. Rosier has a 66% attack against Valin. Too low, but this is to win the game. I get lucky, take the city, and .....

Spoilers

I'm now at war with the Grigori, Lanun, and still tough Bannor. My strategy is to try to take out the Bannor, and have a one front war. I've beaten up the Bannor army, but I'm not in great shape either.

Oh no, the Lanun have a big army. I have to march the main army back. I had the ability to cast haste, so I left my three surviving catapults on defense in Bannor lands and hasted the main army back with Rosier moving at top speed.

This was the critical period of the game. While marching back, the Bannor attacked the area of the original conquest. I thought I was toast. I was saved by ... my world spell! Even though the wolves are weak, they were able to slow down and nip away at the attacking armies. I beat back the Lanun army, and move East again to fight the Bannor.

The key now was to beat the Bannor before the counter-attack. I found a few choke points. Now, I'm starting to get ritualists and the like. It does take a bit to subdue the Bannor; indeed, I take most of their cities before handling another Lanun attack. I found that my Ilian allies fortunately turned the Lanun attack back. I then beat the Bannor. At his point,the game was no longer in doubt.

Then, the rest is pretty mechanical. I beat up the Lanun, take their cities. I now have 3 - 4 times the Grigori production and research. His army is much bigger, he is building too many troops. I patiently built up my money, tech, got magic users and the like, while I built a fleet. I get pretty much all of the wonders. (I can be VERY patient). When my infrastructure is done, I just build tons of troops. With about 30 ships I move over the main army over and easily defeat the Grigori, it wasn't a contest.


It was a very exciting game, especially in the beginning. Was it too easy? After all, I played at my normal level, and won, after doing everything (in retrospect) wrong. However, the key to my win is that I did get lucky, especially with Lucian. After reviewing the game, I realized that I won about 10 fights with odds between 80 - 95 without him getting killed; I got him to about 120 XP's. Even though this may not 'appear' to be lucky, the odds that you win 10 attacks between 80 % and 95% is pretty low. Rosier also won some close fights, not the least the epic fight with Valin. The Doviello were well suited to the strategy. I did lose a lot of troops, but I would capture workers or slaves, and then cheaply upgrade them in the field - no one does this like the Doveillo!

So, I do think the scenario is well done. Of course, the surprise is part of the scenario. I got caught in a bad state. Because I won a lot of key fights and got two heroes to being very strong, I recovered. My world spell was timely and my usually useless allies actually helped, maybe even saved my bacon. So I got lucky so I won pretty easily.

Spoiler

Needless to say, if you want to win and you know what is coming, it is much easier to stay at peace with the Lanun and Grigori, take the Bannor and barbarian cities besides the Bannor capital, and then capture the capital. Then the Bannor are destroyed nd the game would be easy.


Best wishes,

Breunor

Great feedback Breunor. I always like seeing that you replied to a scenario post! :goodjob:

Great feedback Breunor. I always like seeing that you replied to a scenario post! :goodjob:

Wow, thanks! A compliment from the supreme being of Mods!! :)

Best wishes,

Breunor

I see that a lot of people had problems finding the Grigori. I guess I lucked out. The Grigori showed up early (not sure how contact was established) and offered to trade maps with me. I hadn't even started my push into Bannor lands when I uncovered most of the map.

I liked this scenario up until the point that I had to sail to take out the Grigori. The idea posted earlier that a mountain could be removed by an event to allow a single choke point into Grigori lands seems spot on. In the current implementation, the Grigori are not much of a threat, just a hurdle to overcome to get the end game text box. If a choke point opened up on a land route to the north of the Bannor lands, then the Grigori units would be free to invade the player controled territory and pose a real threat.

The choke point at the south of the Bannor lands was well designed. Having to take a well defended city on a hill surrounded by mountains made for a nice early game challenge.

In my game, I lost two or three good sized stacks to get my foothold in Grigori lands. Once I established a foothold, I just marched straight to their capital to finish the game. The Grigori were never really a threat to my empire, even with their huge stacks of troops. Once the Bannor are finished, this scenario is won...it just takes patience to finish. Having a threat and the ability to lose all the way to the end would make it more enjoyable.

Well, you can't say it is a dull scenario. Played it as the Illians. I've made the huge mistake by taking my sweet time to siege Torrolerial.
Firstly, Hannah tore down mine and Mahala's cities closest to her borders. My main army made it to the rescue when the Doviello were down to one city. Hannah prepared a great army while I was at peace with her and enjoying doing the Illian rituals, I guess.
Conquering Lanun lands after defeating their expeditionary forces was ok. They already had berserkers and surely used'em to take down big ol' Wilboman. No matter.
Now the Grigori... oh, boy. Got a glimpse of their lands and army by sending a hawk to the peaks west of their territory. They must've extracted every saltpeter they could find in their mines 'cause I'd never seen so much arquebusiers in any game like this!
Dominating the seas wasn't hard. Getting a foothold and keeping things together was the real challenge. Got ahold of one of their coastal cities and cramped it with crossbowmen and arquebusiers of mine.
Then they came in waves over and over again (they had the Blood of the Phoenix ritual worked on). Not only arquebusiers but knights, berserkers, phalanxes and the real Immortals swarming all over (not to mention Adventurers). Arcane Barges helped me out a lot. Didn't see many Dragon Slayers.
Old story cut short: stood my ground till they started to leave longer gaps between waves and conquered a city closer to the capitol. Stood my ground there too and marched to Midgar, defended by 10 arquebusiers and some other units.

In the Grigori Stage I sent a large army far away from Migdar and then sent in the High Priests as a crack team are captured Migdar easily (It only had two crossbowmen and an archer)

I think it would be nice if the Ring of Carcer was located in a remote part of this map, and if freeing Brigit (to sacrifice her and use her blood instead of Sabathiel or Cassiel's) were an alternate victory condition instead of having to defeat the Grigori.

I was thinking freeing Brigit would be cool, especially as I got the Leaves' hero Kyriel past level 15. Don't ask me why I thought Doviello + Leaves was a good idea (I'm a Noob), but the Leaves' heroes almost clinched a victory in the last few turns.

All in all, this is a pretty nice scenario, and the map design made it work well (choke points, unobviously impassible areas, nasty man o'wars but still a nice fjord present) and presented lots of options thanks to terrain and scarcity of resources. Main complaint is that it's possible to waste too much time trying to explore the map; My first time through was a fail due to the turn time limit.

I didn't experience any crashes. EDIT: There is a minor bug with city capture text though. If you capture the Bannor city, then say trade it to your allies, the text shows up again that instant you trade it (I guess it is triggered whether your or your ally captures the city).

Currently playing this, just invading the Grigori and have found that by lumping a stack of 6-7 enchanted, iron wielding, longbowmen on the hill to the North of Costa Del sol, the Grigori steadily whittle away their Dragon Slayer stack of Doom. Then, ably assisted by multiple Maelstrom, Ice Summons and the Slow spell, a mixture of Catapults, Champions and Assassins picked of the stack in the city.

Sending single Ice Summons into tiles on their own also provides a few easy targets as the AI attacks them, leaving weakened units to pick off.

Really enjoyed this, although it's been a long ride so far. It's now only a matter of time, as the Girgori effectively suicided their army. Would like to see the addition of - upon defeating the Lanun - that Astronomy and perhaps even a couple of frigates/Queen of the Line be given to both Illians and Dov as an event as there is a bit of a lull as you first need to build up a fleet that can carry a stack to the Grigori lands. Thats either a lot of Galleys/Triremes, which have minimal carry loads - and are at risk from the Grigori Caravels - or a bit of a hefty research project.

Played as Illian's, Immortal level, won at turn 289.
Not a bad scenario, until you hit the little speed bump. The key choke point's enabled me to move up a level from Emperor and still handle it relatively comfortably. All good, no major bug's etc, except for the very minor one already mentioned....

I played as the Illian's and find you get a prime start. I never really fully appreciated their affinity for snow until playing this scenario. The 2 starting cities are just powerhouse's with the initial civic option's available. I took over a barbarian city to the north, between the Lanun and I. Although this was initially a 'nothing city' deep in thick jungle, after quickly spreading it's culture and building a Temple of the Hand, it instantly become another monster of a city. I now had 3 powerhouse cities, which apart from later taking Lanun cities to make boat's, are all you need to attain victory. I never bothered with the barbarian cities in the desert region directly to your east; just blocked them off with a couple of unit's. I traded with the amicable Lanun.

While I had 3 pumping cities, the poor Doviello still had their 2 starting cities on pop 2 & 3 and were just spamming Son's of Asena and getting nowhere. I managed to stumble upon a barbarian city that had popped up to their west, so they were ultimately gifted it. I never bothered risking the Samhain ritual, as the situation was too fragile, and my allies and I were in the prime location where they'd turn up. I forces were too focused on the enemy to be side-tracked with pillaging Frostling's etc. When I completed The Deepening ritual, tundra was randomly spread throughout their land's, giving my struggling Doviello allies a truly massive boost! They spammed harder, but I noticed Lucian stayed at home all game. They created Gibbon, but he was sent south of their capital to stare at some mountain's for the entire game.....

While I fortified a few blocking unit's on the hill's outside of Vallus, I also set up a small specialist force to block the two 1 tile chokepoint's leading to the Lanun peninsula. Once secured, I continued building up a force to break through the tough Bannor defence and hopefully expose the gooey insides. The Doviello were suiciding into them with a trickle of small stack's. I was getting nervous about the enemy receiving too much XP, but The 3 Stooges, backed up with axes, quickly dispelled all my fear. There were some heavy loses though, with Larry getting impaled through the eye by Valin the Bastard! The Doviello, suddenly awakened by my success, emptied the excess unit's from their cities and helped me take out the rest of the Bannor. I gifted them all of the cities, as the maintenance bill did not appeal to me.

I got the bulk of my army running back toward's the Lanun by road before the last Bannor city fell. When it did, and war was auto-declared on everyone, I was just outside the chokepoint's I had earlier cemented to bottle up the Lanun. From here I cast my World Spell and rolled in. I found the bulk of the Lanun army were Archer's which were just getting upgraded to Longbowmen. They had a few melee troop's, but must have squandered a lot of resource's on trying to dominate the sea during our time of peace. I basically caught them on the hop, with my Stasis spell robbing them of any more upgrading or reinforcement's. They were efficiently dealt to by Priest's of Winter backed up with giant club's, axe's and fireball's!

Conquered them to find it will take me 31 turn's to discover Astronomy.....

A Hawk quickly establishes a view of the Grigory city of Costa del Sol. I've caught them at the upgrade to Longbowmen stage also! Stasis has just worn off too.

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/5038/bloodofangels.jpg (http://img268.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bloodofangels.jpg)

I thought about just building Caravel's with expanded hull's to get my stack across. But after seeing how many Grigory Caravel's were appearing from the darkness to the west, I thought it safer to wait to get the better ship's so I didn't lose any valuable, promoted troop's. By the time I got across the Grigory had upgraded to a lot of Longbowmen, not knowing my focus was only their lightly defended capital. I landed the stack 2 tile's to the east of Costa del Sol. I used a Hawk to spot their capital and just bee-lined to it via the line of tree's offered to give you safer passage. The Grigory tried to shadow and pester my stack with heap's of troop's, but were never going to prevent the inevitable and crush me. Their capital just had 2 Longbowmen, a Chariot and an Axeman guarding it! They should at least have a 'held' Crossbowman....or 3!!!

It was like the Grigori had pumped out so many unit's that they crashed their economy early on and had never truly recovered. Lot's of quantity, but little to no quality....:crazyeye:

I liked the twisted storyline........as per usual! :goodjob:


p.s (an option to speed up the 'boat lag' phase)

When the Lanun are down to their last city you get a pop-up. There is a mad OO worshipping hunchback in a cave on a small island who could help you in your quest. You get the option to spare the Lanun's last city and receive a free Queen of the Line (with them reverting to allies), or ignoring their offer and taking the last city.
With the ship, you can sail to a 1 tile island to the east of the Lanun coast (I'd clear all that strategically useless land-locked area near the centre of the extreme right hand side of the map, to make room). Land a unit on the island and you are told by the OO hermit that if you play him in a game of Somnium, and win, he will reveal a magical 1 tile wide landbridge that span's from the Lanun to Grigori coast. Can then march troop's over and speed thing's up. Would greatly help the Doviello troop's as well, so they can get involved in the wound feast. Add's a bit of fantasy and grandeur too! If you lose the game, the unit on the island will lose some XP, but will be able to play the hermit again. If the losing unit has no XP, he dies......

Heh, Order Mahala.

Yeah, the traitor changed to it once I gifted the former Bannor city that founded the heathen religion to them! By then, the scenario dictated I had no further uses for my pet wolves anyway.... :(

This scenario is kinda hard with all the barbarians rushing in with axemen/wolfriders so soon.

Takes to long building enough sons of Arsena to hold them back (think the barbs are building their units much faster than the player aswell)

Guess I should just reduce the dificulty from monarch that I usually play.

I still think that The Ring of Carcer should be on this map and freeing Brigit (to kill her) an alternate victory condition.

I still think that The Ring of Carcer should be on this map and freeing Brigit (to kill her) an alternate victory condition.

Obviously. Part of me doesn't want to accept the fact that Cassiel was killed, and that's part of the FfH canon. You would think he would have been able to kill Auric. I mean come on, he is an archangel.

I did not have the energy to fight the Grigori so I build only assissins after capturing the lanun city then sneak to the Grigori capital and captured it.

Started this last night playing as Illians and finished it today. "Winning" made me feel like I had lost. The ending is really well-written; it's just that what happens is so awful. :(

I tend towards pacifism in Civ generally, so the FfH scenarios force me outside my comfort zones. I still was much too conservative in my playstyle here, though, as the Lanun and Grigori were extremely advanced by the time I got around to having to fight them. (I took time to conquer all the barbarian cities between the Illian starting point and the Bannor, but due to city number and distance my commerce took a nosedive; I needed time to get them back up and running in order to have decent troops to take down the Bannor. In the end, when I traded with Cassiel for his world map just before finally attacking Torrolerial, the whole thing was revealed; he must have had Omniscience at that point.) Accordingly, taking down the Lanun was difficult. (But first let me say that it was a big surprise that Sabathiel had deserted the Bannor; considering how one can play "as" him in a standard game, this had never even occurred to me.) Anyway, I had never allowed the Lanun past my borders because I was paranoid about having them so close and knowing my map. I set up two citadels at the mountain gaps leading into their lands with lots of good defending units fortified on top of them. Even still, the Lanun took down one stack completely. Luckily, their heroes died attacking one of my barbarian-conquered cities, and rest of their boarding parties could be mopped up over time (the Slow spell helping to control the huge attacking stacks). Then I conquered their cities and built a fleet; it took perhaps sixty turns to do a little last research for the really good units and put together (or upgrade) a suitable naval invasion. I did a little recon to see which coastal Grigori city was least defended but not too far from Midgar. Costa del Sol had hundreds of units, so I went for the city to the west of it (can't remember the name right now), took that quickly, and then let the Grigori suicide their stacks from CdS against my new city. I think a better strategy on their part would have been to shift the entire stack of doom to Midgar, as what my people had done to the Bannor should have clued them in to the fact that Auric wanted Cassiel. Anyhoo, once that was done, Midgar wasn't too hard to take. :( But I feel like a bad person now. I honestly would have preferred to be defeated.