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Hi there,
I think this scenario is really hard. Compared to the Momus, you have no time for breathing, and the hippus guys tech amazingly fast (LBows on turn 150). biggest problem i see is the rather bad starting position: Most of the resources visible a too far away from each other to get in a good capital fat cross and i got only one resource near the river site (and no floodplain either).
Probabely shouldn´t have started with 2 cities and bought more techs. this setup really was dragging me to a slow grind.
It would be nice to have copper guaranteed in the starting zone, because expansion is very hard (dangerous) and copper warriors are the only hope i see so far.
ok, enough whining. I better win this thingy now (went back to prince difficulty)

Most scenarios have random resources.

Okey, this one was a little harsh, wasn't it? (this was meant to be ironic;))

Hmm, I fear that I will be either go all the way down to warlord level (perhaps even settler) or do some WB cheat before I close this one:sad:

The increasing difficulty on this was insane, I had to scale down to noble to win this. Which wasn't as fun since I won before it hit Deity. When I started off at Prince level, I got schooled usually around 200nd turn. The lack of longbow hurts badly. I played this map many times, only a few times was there any copper or iron nearby.

Map feels... Very meh. Hard to defend, poor resources, not even all that good of city locations except VERY rarely.

Concept. I like. I actually had less trouble with the forces attacking me, and more finding a 5th city location even in best circumstances.

Havent beaten it yet, but should next try. Last attempt fell apart half way through the 100 count.

You REALLY want us to hate the hippus, don't you?

I'm working on this one now. I've got about 40 turns left to hold out, and it's turn 185 in the game. I think it's doable, even though the difficulty is at Immortal right now, as my stacks of Dwarven Slingers and copper Axemen on hills are pretty tough to crack. I'm starting to see iron Longbows and Champions, but I've yet to see a siege engine (thank the lords).

I started at Prince difficulty. I normally play on Monarch.

This was my first time ever using an advanced start, so I made some mistakes, but here's what I had: 1 Settler, Population 3, 1 Culture expansion, 1 Worker, a Winery, a scout and some warriors. I'm sure that many players who aren't familiar with advanced starts (like me) will make mistakes here.

I'll describe what I've done that has worked well, the lucky events I've had that have helped, and my thoughts.

First, with only one exception, I founded all of my cities on hills. The extra defense has certainly made a difference, and it complements the slingers well. The exception was a mistake, but it's virtually surrounded by rivers, so it has worked out for me.

Next, I teched for farms first, then God King, then Archery. I figured that I would want some rock-solid defenders for my hill cities, and I was right. The Dwarven Slingers have been awesome. The hawks from the Hunting pre-req have also been invaluable. In a normal game where I'm more concerned with the long game, I'll usually make the economy more of a priority, but I wanted the be able to defend my new cities with confidence, and I honestly had no idea what sort of opposition I would be facing. For my tech in this game, Education didn't come until after Archery, Bronzeworking, and Way of the Earthmother. Economy has come from Wineries, river-side farms and mines, Elder Councils, and Temples of Kilmorph.

I tried to found cities fairly quickly. I had my 5th city up and running by turn 125 or so. Starting with an extra settler helped here. If I had thought more about the increasing difficulty level, I probably could have gotten my 5th city up another 10-15 turns faster. It's not really clear from the scenario description, but I think speed in founding cities is a crucial part of winning the scenario.

I've had some lucky events, and I don't know if they were scripted or not, but they seemed to fit the scenario perfectly.

1. I popped Mining from a goody hut
2. I rescued a Thane of Kilmorph from a dungeon, and founded RoK about 40 turns earlier than I otherwise would have.
3. Other than the Thane, my luck with dungeons was abysmal. I probably lost 80% of my explorers to dungeons, due to powerful enemies and just plain "Your unit never returns".

Having said all that, here are some of my random observations and musings.

1. I initially had thoughts of building some forts and garrisoning them in strategic chokepoints. But I still haven't researched Construction, and there just seem to be too many avenues around the chokepoints. I haven't yet been able to justify splitting my forces enough to provide a meaningful garrison in all the places I would need a fort.

2. There doesn't seem to be a lot of variety in the resources. I have quite a few food resources, but very few happy resources. There's some cotton, but it was too far away to reasonably pursue. Thankfully I have gold from the palace, but I haven't seen gems, silk, sugar, or any of the other usual suspects anywhere.

3. The civ-spell (gold for mines) was very helpful for keeping my vaults full. I got 225 gold from it, and my vaults have been at least abundant most of the game.

4. Researching Knowledge of the Ether was a mistake. I thought I had Enchantment mana from the palace for some reason, so that's why I wanted Adepts. Unfortunately, it's Law, not Enchantment, and there's not really time to add a more useful mana type. I should have instead gone after Poisons. I haven't yet seen a siege engine, but if I see a stack of Catapults coming my way, I'm in deep doo-doo.

5. The Clan of Embers plays an interesting role. They start pretty close, and present a constant obstacle to expansion. If it weren't for the clan, there would be a lot more breathing room in the early game. I don't know if they are supposed to present an easy source of XP, but they have been quite a challenge so far. I razed on of their cities that encroached too close to me, and I entertained thoughts of launching a campaign against them, but the Hippus started showing up before I could act on it.

6. I really like all the hills in the starting area. I have tons of mines and my production has been very respectable.

7. Defensive strikes rock! They are a very nice addition to archery units, and it makes the Drill promotion much more worthwhile.

8. There's a level 6 iron champion from Tasunke wandering around. That makes me worried.

9. A dwarven slinger with Combat 1, Guerrila 1, and Drill 1 in a walled city on a hill makes me happy.

10. It might help if the scenario makes it more clear that enemies are growing rapidly in strength even while you are trying to found your cities. Being unfamiliar with how scenarios work, I wasn't sure if there were several large, fixed armies held back somewhere that would be triggered once I founded my 5th city, or if the whole scenario was a race against time. The description focuses on holding your 5 cities, not on founding them quickly, so it sort of encourages you not to found your 5th until you're in a position of strength.

So, with 40 turns left, I'm still not certain that I'll win, but I like where I'm sitting. My hawks tell me that there's no imminent stack of doom within 10-15 turns of me, and I'm about to finish researching Arete. After that, I'm still trying to decide whether to go after Poisons and Assassins, or to turn off science to jack up my vaults to stocked (for the +10% :hammers:s) and have money to upgrade my warriors. It could be a critical decision, as my forces aren't strong enough to counter-attack the champions and longbows that are common now, and I have no means to defeat a stack of catapults at the moment. My only worry is that even if I do go for Poisons, it would be too little too late.

All in all, I'd say it has been a fun, well-balanced scenario so far. I'll let you know if I still feel the same way 40 turns from now :)

I just got an event where I got a ceasefire offer from the Hippus, which ended the war that started again in less than a second. :lol:

I think the trick is to get your cities as quickly as possible. I bought three from square 1, and as soon as I could I settled the next two. I teched mining, agriculture, RoK, BW, and then arete and archery. Bronzed warriors and axes did a great job until I started seeing longbows, around turn 100. Then I got Mines of Gal-dur and it was smooth sailing from there on out. I had large stacks of slingers and axes in cities with around 90% boni. Eventually the AI didn't even try to attack them, once I got some guys with Guerilla 2. I never saw anything worse than longbows, and I won around turn 160. I thought this was a very fun scenario.

I manages to somehow survive this mad scenario. I think finishing off Barbarian Assault was the one that allowed me to survive (barely) for the requisite hundred turns. Never even got bronze working or archery; I survived via masses of warriors, palisades, and building all my cities on hills.
Ye gods, it was raining Hippus! Had to open up my soundtrack folder labeled "in case of emergency," to boot. Usually not even Auric earns that honor...

Giving yourself a few dragons makes this scenario a lot easier. That's the only way I've managed to finish it. :p

I did it by lower the difficulty to warlord, build my cities close to each other, didn't give a damn about tech besides mining and bronzeworking and then I built cannon fodder, or should it be called orc fodder, axe fodder. My economy was almost ruined at the end, but I managed.

I think the trick is to get your cities as quickly as possible. I bought three from square 1, and as soon as I could I settled the next two. I teched mining, agriculture, RoK, BW, and then arete and archery. Bronzed warriors and axes did a great job until I started seeing longbows, around turn 100. Then I got Mines of Gal-dur and it was smooth sailing from there on out. I had large stacks of slingers and axes in cities with around 90% boni. Eventually the AI didn't even try to attack them, once I got some guys with Guerilla 2. I never saw anything worse than longbows, and I won around turn 160. I thought this was a very fun scenario.

I think he is exactly right, but resources are another key; I reloaded a couple times until I had a decent city cross (Wine, Cattle, Corn, on a hill), but there was no Bronze even close enough for a second city.

I played on Normal/Noble, and thought I was making a pretty good run, but when the waves of Champions and Longbows were coming at all 5 cities, I could not build/upgrade Warriors fast enough to hold them off. I opted for using my Advanced Start to tech to Ancient Chants + Mysticism for God King, and I was able to keep my vaults at Abundant most of the game and no lower than Stocked for very briefly.

Overall it's a fun scenario with fairly good terrain albeit marginal resources. I would like a few more choke points and perhaps some scripted events to introduce some interesting possibilities (e.g. perhaps the possibility of an early truce with the Clan)

Not knowing the FFH lore so well, I never understood why everyone was attacking the Khazard in this scenario, maybe some kind of explanation behind it? The intro & ending doesn't' really tell you why.

Well...they're rich! Plus they aren't that used to defending themselves. Isn't that reason enough?

Agree that this one could really use some more scripted events to give it more flavor. Also I would appreciate some explanation of why everyone in the world has allied to kill you.

Agree that this one could really use some more scripted events to give it more flavor. Also I would appreciate some explanation of why everyone in the world has allied to kill you.

I definitely agree. I thought it was very odd that all the AI's were allied. Why were Hanna and Jonas allied? Why were Tasunke and Jonas allied? In fact, it might be fun if there were some way to turn Jonas against the others.

I'll also repeat myself that the initial description of the scenario really needs to point out that speed in founding your cities is just as important as holding onto them once you've founded them. In fact, it's probably the crucial strategic factor in determining how successful you are. Once you have 7 allied Deity-level AI's all at war with you, you won't last long.

I ended up finally winning my game. It was about turn 230 and the AI's had been Deity since turn 200 (I started on Prince). By the end, I was routinely seeing Mithril-backed Berserkers and Champions, and I was bleeding 30 gpt even with 100% taxes and markets and Temples of Kilmorph in every city. The AI hadn't come close to cracking one of my cities, but it was only a matter of time. Given how fast the AI was ramping up, I'd say I had another 30 or so turns left in me.

Final summary: Aside from a little more guidance on strategy, perhaps a few minor events for flavor, and some explanation for the AI alliance, it's a very nice scenario.

I just started this scenario. My fisrt feedback is that there is an bug.

My capitol did not start with a Dwarven Vault. This is a key feature of the Khazaad and it is missiong. I think it may be from the advanced start.

If I recall, dwarven vaults take a turn or two to be placed in any advanced start.

Wow...this one is tough.

The always war is bad enough.

Allied AI players make it worse.

The difficulty level going up makes it impossible to beat without (and very difficult with) cheating.

I manages to somehow survive this mad scenario. I think finishing off Barbarian Assault was the one that allowed me to survive (barely) for the requisite hundred turns. Never even got bronze working or archery; I survived via masses of warriors, palisades, and building all my cities on hills.
Ye gods, it was raining Hippus! Had to open up my soundtrack folder labeled "in case of emergency," to boot. Usually not even Auric earns that honor...

KillerClowns...I'm very interested in acquiring info on the contents of this so called "In case of emergency" soundtrack folder... It sounds like something I could use. 'Truth be told I'm convinced you only won because of that folder. Hmm I'll offer to buy information on the contents of that treasure chest for..say 40 gold? (already got it in Basleraph as that seems to be your favoured currency)

Surviving this terrifying heart-pounding ordeal felt like my Khazad were the victims of some kind of genocidal conspiracy against the dwarves as the Hippus were in league with the Clan and the Barbs, and they all seemed to be beyond fanatical in wiping out the Khazad (Why!? What did us Dwarves do to you people!?) The settings for my playthrough were. (emperor difficulty/normal speed) -yes that's right emperor. I rushed out 5 cities ASAP all on hills, palisades up ASAP, and then WARRIORS and more warriors. My rule of thumb was at the VERY least 20 warriors each city, 30 is more ideal. Once you've got a decent cultural territory cast motherlode as those hills will give you extra movement and slow down the enemy. Also, try to pack your cities together as tightly as possible all on hills.

My always on civic were God King+Religion+Apprenticeship+Conquest+no membership. My economy focused on hammers/gold and food entirely. Farms, farms, farms, and mines. You can forget about researching too since filling your vaults with gold is more important than filling your head with knowledge. The farms/conquest/apprentice/godking setup combined with dwarven vaults meant I was pumping out seasoned warriors very very very fast in multiple cities.

As for when you get axemen...about four or five per city will do. They will inevitably die, so therefore it is more effective to continue on warriorspamming mindlessly.
When faced with the option of building wonders...DON'T BUILD IT (unless you are sure you have the time/warriors to spare)! Warriors are more important. Remember it'll all be over as soon as those 100 turns are up and you won't last that long if you have a shortage of warriors due to wasting time on trying to build the great library...(why would you even desire such a thing!?) Yes this strategy allows you to withstand those pesky Hippus hordes on Emperor difficulty/normal speed.

And with the above strategy, your techrate will be so low it might cause you physical pain and it feels nothing like a regular FFH game. Khazad cities in Against the Wall are more like Forts training nothing but warriors. (but I don't blame 'em)

Finished this up with Runes supplying gold to keep my 10-15 unit per 3 major city army going. Had about 5-7 slingers and 5-7 iron axeman (Galdur) with all cities on hills and across rivers and 2 weaker cities up in the more barren north. I was kind of disappointed that will all the Hippus, about 95% of the attacking force was made up of Axeman/Longbow/Champions.

Whoa... this scenario really requires some good planning. I almost made it on my first try, I had settled all on hills and built all the defensive buildings , but I expanded too early and delayed Exploration so my vaults began to empty and I had to pull my slider down to 0% before I got Hunting. I lost one of my cities with only 10 turns left :mad:
so I tried it again and went pretty much straight for archery, and managed to fit in 6 cities thanks to an immigrant event. I pulled a victory out of that one pretty easily. I think once you get Dwarven Slingers the game's pretty much set. the first and defensive strikes really keep them alive and since they're not melee, the enemy champions don't get the 25% bonus vs them.
now time for me to go up the level!

on a side note, maybe the immigrant event should be disabled for this scenario as it is pretty game breaking, even if it does come later. an extra city planted in your territory can really save you

What I found was that if you tech too high, your score goes up, and so does the difficulty. I built my five cities right off the bat and teched to Bronze Working and Construction, cranking out enough Warriors and Axemen to stave off the Hippus and Clan. Once I had Construction, I built forts at all the chokepoints, stocked them with Axemen and some Trebuchets, and set my Science slider to 0% to support my army. I don't think my difficulty ever went higher than Monarch, despite me being able to handily defeat any force the enemy sent.

My first game went quite differently, with me trying to scramble up the tech ladder and facing ever-mounting hordes. I got wiped out before I even *built* the five cities.

Does the increasing difficulty setting require the player to be in the lead, or is it on a timer that goes up automatically after a certain number of turns regardless of score?

I belive this one has the increasing difficulty setting on (same one as in the epic game) so maybe it increases every 50 turns?
but then again it seems like it went up faster to me. so maybe it's flexible difficulty and since you have to have 5 cities you always in the top third?
or maybe Kael made a different system just to watch us get all confused over it :p

AArrghh !!! Till 85 turns to go, immortal foes, giant stacks everywhere... We will show them how real dwarves die !!!

Really enjoyed this one, some nice chokes a little bit out from your territory, so you can feed the AI to a killing zone fairly readily (I cut down the forests by the SE river and sat on the hills pummeling all comers).

Bought three cities and three scouts (one worker - maybe a mistake, as it took a while to get the techs to make him productive) to start. Scouts were nice as the map is pretty open early, and you need the gold from huts to fill your vault. Seemed like all the dungeons were bad news tho - only trigger those if my unit was surrounded and I wanted to open a stink bomb.

Waited to build 4th and 5th cities until vault was in good shape, by which I mean producing extra happiness and production bonuses.

One thing I think people are missing is that Thorne is Industrious. Build those cheap GodKing wonders. I went for Writing and the GL after the worker techs, and those two free Sages were golden while I was filling up my vault running 50% sci. Form of the Titan, Bone Palace, etc... are really nice. Had to build the Mines to get iron, and from then I was good.

I did go for Adepts with Necromancy for Rust to take the edge off all those iron weapons, but I don't know how important that was. By then I had a killing zone set up with Bambur and a random axe that got repair somehow keeping a stack of Trebs repaired every turn. Even at only ten percent Command chance, with enough Stonewardens, I did manage to put together a nice collection of Longbows and Horse Archers without ever researching Archery!

I just got an event where I got a ceasefire offer from the Hippus, which ended the war that started again in less than a second. :lol:

Same here. It also booted their units from my territory.

First I must I just loved this map and every second spent playing it, the lay out is absolutely brilliant.

The increasing difficulty makes it a very interesting game and I actually had to give it two tries before succeeding.

First game I had it on marathon game speed, not having read the scenario description thoroughly it didn't take long before the game went from emperor to deity making it a lot harder for me. An unexpected bonus were the 100 turns are a lot less on marathon, the AI didn't even manage to get champions up, but still found me overwhelmed fairly quickly.

My strategy of first going for agriculture to get plenty of food, and then mining and bronze working for some axemen. Cities on hills defended with axemen all promoted with guerrilla can take most the enemy threw at them.
However as noted early they were simply overrun by sheer numbers.

Second try was a lot easier, had better resources in my capitol and knowing I was relatively safe from any rush, the enemy starting too far away, I sent my starting units out scouting. A few goody huts later I found my vaults to be stocked and a free tech of mining. With my research well ahead I took the opportunity to found RoK religion, the extra culture and gold from the temples proved invaluable later on, and the wonder giving free iron made my Axemen capable of dealing with even the champions that came later on.
With a base strength of 6, at least 2 guerrilla upgrades for 100% a defensive bonus, a city placed on a hill with palisades, walls, archery range and some culture for another ~100% bonus they proved an unbreakable wall.

Trying to stop the enemy from pillaging the surrounding country side was the hardest challenge, I had placed my 4 other cities around my capitol so they usually never made into the center of my realm, so all my economy had to come from there. Trying to hold choke points without building a city there was almost pointless as the sheer numbers late game meant that it just didn't pay off. As noted with all my cities laying around my capitol having a strike force stationed there ready to answer any challenge saved my butt several times, though I actually had to "cheat" and reload an autosave a few turns earlier once as an army sneaked in and took one of my cities once.

Barbarians in this map is hardly a problem as the AI expand so quickly there is little space left for them in which to spawn. The clan being alone never managed to get much in the form of techs and their orcs proved to be excellent to level my newly build units on. Don't think the Lanun ever actually attacked even once but the Hippus were unrelenting, thank god they cant build siege weapons, it would have made this map impossible.

The resource placement is too random for my liking, you can start out with a godly place capitol or you can have access to absolutely nothing, and that can prove the difference between success and failure. Would it not be possible to either make it a semi-fixed setup were the player were guaranteed the resources if not their specific placement, or even a totally fixed setup to not make it random at all.

Has anyone completed this scenario on deity and if so how? I can't figure out a way to do it, by turn 150 (normal speed) the champions arrive along with a host of other units, 4-5 each turn all with at least three promotions...

Shouldn't the hippus use more horsemen to attack and try to pillage? Instead they send a big stack of champions, very out of character imo. The orcs are usually afraid to attack which paradoxically makes it more difficult; I'd rather have them attack anyways and give my units experience. Once you get a unit with guerilla II, that city is basically invincible, this promotion is way overpowered. Overall, my favorite scenario, though. I've always loved this kind of scenarios like the zerg attack scenario in starcraft.

Frankly I think this scenario is simply too hard. It's hard enough to just not be that much fun... either you cheat, or you get extremely lucky, or you lose. Those seem to be the options. From reading the thread I see that some people have won it... but I think it's likely that those who did were all either extremely lucky, or cheated.

To make it more reasonable, I'd put Hannah and Jonas on separate teams from the Hippus, and have one less Hippus civilization.

Regardless of that, though, the description should be altered to mention the increasing difficulty... first time I tried it I started on Monarch, and had a pretty good start, but quit when I started getting pounded hard enough that I knew I wasn't going to be able to recover fully. Then I started again and got further turn-wise... was doing pretty well with only a couple cities, trying to expand slowly (a mistake), thought I'd done pretty well at it... lots of gold, couple high level axemen, just built Bambur, working on Mines of Gal-Dur (no copper in site)... then a stack of 8 Champions, one of whom with strength 9, all of which with City Raider promotions, appeared. Wtf.

I think I'm going to do Barbarian Assault, and then try this again on Settler with a different strategy... I guess it's laudable that it's hard enough to make me really want to beat it, but the sheer frustration of thinking you're doing pretty well until a stack of units with double the strength of your defenders shows up makes me think that it really needs to be toned down.

Played it again and was a little disappointed because it wasn't hard this time... the pressure just never came. Built up crazy defences, had a good start and built strong, followed a good strategy and was geared up to take some intense attacks... but nothing. Couple piddly stacks that never posed any kind of real threat to any of my cities. Conquered Jonas before winning, went with "one more turn" to see if I could keep it up, and started to wipe out the Hippus, who didn't really put up much opposition.

Weirdest part? Never made contact with Hannah. Last time Hannah was attacking me from pretty early on, this time no contact at all.

Started it on Settler, that might've been the reason. Excessively easy, won on turn 201.

I'd say the difficulty thing is a flaw in the scenario. For one thing, it really doesn't add anything to it as far as I can see, mainly it just makes it so that however hard you want the game to be, it won't be at all what you wanted. That's not a good thing. Maybe if there was some text in the explanation saying "Highly recommended that you set the difficulty to Warlord" (or Noble, or whatever)... as is I don't really like it, the text doesn't tell you any of the stuff you need to know, and anyway the stuff that you need to know seems kind of pointless and irritating.

I won on turn 174 playing on Monarch/Normal.

I had 2-3 failed attempts first. The last few failed attempts I played on the same map (I loaded the initial save after I lost it). The resources were good, but not exceptional, but I had a hut that popped mining right next to my capitol that I popped once I put the city down. That gave me a nice early boost.

Initially I bought two cities, bought ancient chants, a worker, two warriors & a scout. Later I popped exploration from a hut with my scout before I lost him.

I went after mysticism first, and then right to archery. In my previous attempts my greatest struggle was with the economy. I was always running out of money due to the number of my troops. So going for God King & Elder Councils was a priority for me.

Archers helped A LOT. My first few attempts I tried to go with just warriors, but beelining archers made a big difference. I didn't even get bronze working till like 20 turns from the end of the game. After getting archery, I went for agriculture, calendar and festivals. Never got RoK.

I put all my cities at choke points (more or less).

Challenging but fun. :b:

I'm glad I read this thread before attempting :)

won in one, admittedly started at warlord.

Bambur, thane and some small change reduced Jonas to rubble (that is, he hid in some small town somewhere, c'est la vie) then kept the rest of the left side of the map mostly occupied, limiting my defense to the east. slingers + iron axemen meant survival was quite doable.

I won easily on Prince. It is pretty easy if you understand the special conditions of the scenario. I understand why people find this very difficult, you cannot win if you play as if it is standard game; teching, founding a religion, placing your cities optimally, getting a hero, etc are not the way to go. Because of the escalating difficulty setting, time is everything.
The key is to build 6 cities as quickly as possible. Early on, a single warrior in a city on a hill is enough to defeat 2-3 enemies. Also, remember that you are allowed to have more than 5 cities as insurance and you don't care how big they are. Expanding early will cause unhappiness per dwarwen vault rule but you don't care, doesn't matter how far you fall behind in tech, you are not required to capture a single enemy city anyways. Warriors are fine for the first half of the scenario, by then you should have reached slingers, who are perfectly fine to finish this scenario.

Just won on Prince without any copper :eek:.

A few tips:
- buy 3 cities at the beginning
- place all your cities on hills
- put all your expansion cities at chokepoints (once again, on hills by rivers)
- tech towards archery and festivals as early as possible
- get hill defense and first strike upgrades first
- get Runes after fortifying your cities
- cast your world spell when you have plenty of mines and want to upgrade old warriors to slingers

Easy!

This is the most challenging and entertaining scenario I have played so far. It took me a couple save reloads, but I finally got it. I did wipe out Jonas early, which eliminated an enemy and probably helped in the long run.

This is the first time I have ever built Pact of the Nilhorn. Surprised more people haven't mentioned it. Never went for Archery, but it sounds like I probably should have. Trebuchets really helped me decimate their stacks though, and citadels behind my lines gave my cities a useful defensive boost.

I like the central valley you start in. It gives you the option of cramming inside there and defending two main choke points (as the Hippus never seem to come through the north and south), or expanding outside to grab resources, giving you more points to defend.

A couple suggestions:

1) The map lacks that hand crafted feel. It seems like a regular highlands map, with maybe a couple manual modifications. It could use some TLC, imo. Also, the random resources in most of these scenarios doesn't do it for me. If you want randomization, at least fix the type (food/luxury/strategic) so the scenario author has more control over how the map plays out.

2) I was also disappointed at the lack of cavalry on the part of the Hippus. I faced more Axemen and Archers than anything else. I think I saw two Horse Archers the entire game (which was the most challenging battle I faced, so they would have benefited from building more of these). Maybe you can tweak the AI for this scenario (or Hippus AI in general) to get them to try to tech mounted units ASAP and have a preference for building them.


Also, what was the deal with the Lanun? I never saw them, but had magical contact with them (I suppose as soon as they allied with the Hippus or something similar). When I won, they did not show up on the replay either. I only saw the 4 Hippus areas, Jonas and myself.

I finally had time to play this again, and won (Noble). Domingo's tips are pretty solid, especially if you don't have access to copper. I teched Bronze Working also, and didn't pick up Archery until I started seeing Champions. I would also add that you should place your cities closer than you might normally do so, because this allows you to move emergency troops around more easily.

I also did something unusual with the Khazad and completely neglected the vaults until I had Runes. It basically meant that my cities had a very low happy cap, but because I was building Mines anyway, the cities had no shortage of production, which helped churn out quick Settlers, Warriors, and a couple Workers.

The most important tip is to not waste time getting your five cities up (and starting the 100 turn counter) because of the increasing difficulty.

Just won on Prince without any copper :eek:.

A few tips:
- buy 3 cities at the beginning
- place all your cities on hills
- put all your expansion cities at chokepoints (once again, on hills by rivers)
- tech towards archery and festivals as early as possible
- get hill defense and first strike upgrades first
- get Runes after fortifying your cities
- cast your world spell when you have plenty of mines and want to upgrade old warriors to slingers

Easy!

Also, Go Boks said:

1) The map lacks that hand crafted feel. It seems like a regular highlands map, with maybe a couple manual modifications. It could use some TLC, imo. Also, the random resources in most of these scenarios doesn't do it for me. If you want randomization, at least fix the type (food/luxury/strategic) so the scenario author has more control over how the map plays out.

I completely agree. The map is OK, but it could be much better. I'm split on the random resources; I don't like them, but they at least add replay value.

Wow, it was odd reading this thread. I had recently finished Barbarian Assault. I probably lost that about 7 - 10 times before winning (maybe partly because I reloaded the original save from turn 1 and had a bad location). I told my son, a better player than I, to try it, and he won easily the first time. I was so embarrassed!

Then we came to Against the Wall. My son tried it first, and had a very tough time; He is an Immortal/Emperor player, and moved down to starting on Monarch. He finally barely won.

And guess what -- I started on Emperor (my normal level) and won easily. Before reading this thread, I was ready to post, 'this scenario is too easy, especially relative to Barbarian Assault.'


Why did this happen? The simple answser is, I don't know. My suspicion is that the answer is simply that there are a lot of variables in FfH and scenarios, and I found it easy and others hard most likely because a chain of circumstances in our particular game attempts.


However, in comparing notes with my son, where it is VERY rare that I did better, we did notice a few things that may have been important. I'm not arrogant enough to say that these are tips for winning the scenario, I'm simply saying these may help.

1. As others have said, getting the cities out fast is really important. Buy 2 or three with the intiial start. My son got one and tried to build it up and that may be harder. You wan to get the 100 turn clock going as fast as you can.

1a. In my game, I won around turn 190, that is, I had my 5th city in about 90. In my son's win, it was a good 100 turns later. With the computer building troops at deity at that point, fast is really important.

1b. I was barely break-even on gold at a 0% slider by turn 190. Not only do the barbs get tougher, but you start losing too much money to build enough troops; they get deity rules, you don't!

Therefore, speed is probably my most important tip!

2, Don't worry about the fat cross or potential city development that much. Far more important is mutual defense, defensible terrain, and the first ring.

3 It is really important to get and guard resources that give gold early. It is real hard to de[end on cottages becuase they grow slowly and they are easy to plunder; gold mines are worth their weight in gold! (Uh, I guess that is obvious!)

4. I did get a great man, I built an elder council. I think he helped. I used him to get a golden age.

5. Don't mess around with beginning techs that won't directly help. I got agriculture, ancient chants, mysticism (God-king), crafting, mining.

6. I worked with melee units and archers. If you get a chance, construction is good. Your trebuchets are very strong, but the AI will build assassins. Therefore, hit them using your roads. Of course the Hippus are a pain since they use your roads, but a few trebuchets on defense can help late game.

6a. After getting these techs and archery, most others are optional, the gold may mean more.

7. After you get about 4-5 guys per city, maybe even fewer, build a palisade and walls.

7a. Since your cities are on hills, you gets hills + palisade + walls + big fortify. WIth axemen or warriors, consider guerilla 1; it adds 40% to the defense! Your defensive bonuses are really really high.

8. Archers and axemen should be mixed. Archers are real good for city defense, but axemen can be really good too. You will often counter-attack, especially withdrawing Hippus horsemen.

8a. Don't be afraid to counterattack those guys with 17 city raider pormotions. The AI is quite good at having its city raiders protected by guys with huge strength promotions. When the city raiders kill your guys, but the strength guys or longbowmen are killed by your defenders, counter-attack, especially if you have a trebuchet left to hit first.

9. I built one wonder, Form of the Titan. I had bronze of course. this one was real good, I doubt I would build anything else though.

When I was attacked by the Orcs, I thought I was reading The Hunter's Blade trilogy! I looked at my stats, I killed about 5:1 or 6:1. I didn't ahve Drizzt, though.

Believe it or not, the most dangerous foe for me was the Lanun! Why? They build catapults. Everyone else was banging against my huge defenses.



Best wishes,

Breunor

Where are the Lanun? I never saw them, and they didn't show up on my history replay (unless they were right next to the other blue Hippus player and I couldn't tell them apart).

Where are the Lanun? I never saw them, and they didn't show up on my history replay (unless they were right next to the other blue Hippus player and I couldn't tell them apart).

Maybe there is some randomness? I thought they were Lanun, they came at me from the NW.

Best wishes,

Breunor

I had contact with them, so they were in my game some where.

The blue Hippus player is to the west too, so they probably were next to each other and I couldn't tell them apart of the replay.

Building your cities on Hills is definitely the way to go. Hills + Slingers + Guerrilla = Dead Hippus. Lots of dead Hippus.
On my last game I did that and barely lost any troops. If you get your Slingers out early enough, they'll have lots of strength promo's by the time Champions arrive. The Drill line is also definitely worth pursuing. Defensive strikes are awesome.

The first two games I played on this I thought were IMPOSSIBLE!! But after reading this thread and founding 5 cities early and getting one city linking up copper the game was TOO EASY!! :p I didn't even need RoK or anything much. I was playing noble start on epic though. I only had a few axemen and scouts attack near the end of the game...

I finally got back to the scenarios and played this through a second time. Getting five cities early on really is the key. I started with a city and two additional Settlers from the Advanced Start. I built 4 warriors, 1 worker, and then 2 more Settlers. I slow played a bit so that my Vaults would not fall below the "stocked" level. In hind sight, this may have come close to costing me the game. The stacks were beginning to take out my defenders toward the end, but I had so many defenders that it didn't make a difference. Looking at the stats in the game recap, I only lost 10 Soldiers of Killmorph (my main units in the game) and I killed over 300 units combined between the AI opponents.

I have one comment on this scenario... I CAN'T DO IMMORTAL!

I got to around 28 turns left, when Rohanna sends an uber stack at me, somehow gets almost NO losses, and captures all of my cities.

I just lost my first attempt at this scenario and decided to read the thread. I've never played an advanced start before so I made some mistakes there. I think the instructions are clear enough. I gave it up with about 30 turns to go. The Hippus that came from the east had plenty of horse archers. Too many for me to handle. I like the increasing difficulty mechanism. It adds to the sense of urgency.

@Breunor: It's great that your son plays with you. Here at my place, everyone thinks I'm weird when they see me playing FfH.

I just lost my first attempt at this scenario and decided to read the thread. I've never played an advanced start before so I made some mistakes there. I think the instructions are clear enough. I gave it up with about 30 turns to go. The Hippus that came from the east had plenty of horse archers. Too many for me to handle. I like the increasing difficulty mechanism. It adds to the sense of urgency.

@Breunor: It's great that your son plays with you. Here at my place, everyone thinks I'm weird when they see me playing FfH.

Thanks Broken Hawk! I just wish I could OCCASIONALLY beat him! Every time I finish a scenario and win, I look at the board, and he has a higher score!

Best wishes,

Breunor

I thought this one was decent, but really it's just Defense with a focus on quick REXing. Without the increasing difficulty, it'd be dead boring at the end though.

Pretty much found every city on hill, rush for God-king, then Archery, then Education, then big stacks of slingers with hill promotions, followed by first strike promotions. Don't move any settlers without a stack of 4 warriors. Consider founding 6 cities as long as there's no chance of a army unit-strike. I'd also consider going for a religion for a healer, or warfare for garrison promotions, but research is pretty much impossible once you hit 5 cities, thanks to horse raiders ruining cottages..

Has anyone completed this scenario on deity and if so how? I can't figure out a way to do it, by turn 150 (normal speed) the champions arrive along with a host of other units, 4-5 each turn all with at least three promotions...

Just squeezed out a deity win start to finish. You see your first champion a little after turn 100, it was the assasins at the end that were most worrying. I wasn't going to last much longer. It was OK, but the scenario was too relentless. Not enough room for a creative response. The Black Tower is also very nasty at deity, but you can approach many ways. In the end it was just speed to five cities and lots of slingers.

Managed a very intense win on first attempt, Emperor, turn 167!

Advanced Start-up Purchases (510gp):
- 2 Cities (Settler's cost 220gp!)
- 2 Warrior's
- 2 Scout's
- 1 Worker
- 2 Palisade's (only 12gp each)
- 1 resource improvement (winery)
- 1 culture expansion (2nd city)

Had worker wait around 10 turn's before first tech (exploration or agriculture), then he went hard-out. I purchased him as I did'nt want to be diverted early on in the game with 2 cities, as other thing's may need to be prioritized.
The 2 Scout's paid for themselves with gold popped from tribal village's and a couple of 1st Lv Disciple unit's (one even stole a stack of 3 Worker's) before being slain in various horrific way's!
The capital got the 3 extra cities out ASAP. All 5 cites were built on hill's (at choke point's) with palisade's and wall's. Spoiler show's where you can place cities, with a few troop's completing nearly an entire block of the inner 'breadbasket' where all my improvement's were initially being built. Nothing could break this 'egg' to get at the gooey centre.....until much later on.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9476/againstwallg.jpg (http://img402.imageshack.us/my.php?image=againstwallg.jpg)

The AI (Artificial Incompetence) blatantly washed up against the defence's most strongly from the east and west, and weaker from the south. Next to nothing came from the north. Ended up slaying some 170 enemy; mainly Archer's, Axemen and Horse Archer's (at one stage there were 30+ stack's hitting simultaneously from the east and west). I was literally praying and counting the turn's down to victory when the Assassin's and Champion's were starting to grind me down!

I took Breunor's advice and built an Elder Council early on to pop a Great Scientist, which I used for a Golden Age. This allowed one of my cities to build Deruptus Brewery in 9 turn's, so I did, to help the happy cap. I also built Form of the Titan later, which helped near the end, as I was getting overrun. At this point, when the dam was bursting, I merely withdrew everything into my cities and just knuckled down to hold out, as the infidel's had broken through and started a pillaging binge. A nail biting time indeed! A very important thing was to mine all you safely could, then cast your Motherlode world spell. This money boost is vital, as the -2 unhappiness from the Vault was killing me!

All in all, another great defensive scenario with a tight finish. No bug's, only bloodshed! :goodjob:

p.s. Breunor, it is the Lanun indeed, to the north-west....

Good stuff Kiwi Tyrant!


Best wishes,

Breunor

I'm with the guy that said that this was easier than Barbarian Assault. At least you don't get a 22 strength ape thrown at you. *shudder*

Is there a 'reward' for completing this one? I haven't been able to find one, so I'm guessing that this and Gift of Kylorin are just in there for fun and not any real benefits for the main arcs.

The Lanun have only one city to the NW, the rest is on a separate island furhter west. In my first attempt I popped an Azer (I think, or 2?) from a hut, which destroyed it. I guess you could also try to rush them, that way the NW-N ist completely safe.

I hated this mapfrom the very start, horribly city building spots and an ever increasing difficulty. I started on settler one time and managed to wipe out some enemies quite quick by massing axemen. One enemy defended his cities with scouts. I still got wiped out by champions on monarch because i built my 5th city a bit late. After reading all these posts Im going to try again. I completely forgot about dwarven slingers.

Update:

I started with 3 cities all with 2 scouts in each. I ened up gettin 4 more settlers from tribal ruins, I had my 5th city on the 8th turn. I won by turn 108 and I was only being attacked by stacks of scouts. 1 slinger can kill 3 really really easy. It became too easy with 7 cities, at least 1 slinger in each with walls and being only attacked by warrior led scouts. I had a few siege pieces too. With soo many scouts I was able to get lots of free technology. I had to focus on making the first warriors in each city but that was the only real threat.

Bah diety is ruddy impossible (i know its supposed to be but still this is what i norms play at) oddly enough I got to turn 180 (promptly dying on 190) and hadn't seen hide nor hair of champions, and only one or two long bow men...

Difficulty: Deity
Speed: Epic

The main thing to understand about this scenario is that it is all about survival (= WARRIOR SPAM :lol:). You can forget stuff like technology, attacking and building actual troops.

I lost three times in a row before I understood how to play this, and in my experience this is what you need to do:

1. EARLY expansion. Start with as many cities as possible (=two at deity)
- Build only 1 warrior to protect your cities in the beginning and hope for the best; get those settlers out asap.
2. MASSING warriors.
- The only military unit that I built. You will not have the time/economy to research any real military techs.
3. SCOUTS.
- After getting cities from advanced start get scouts with the rest of your points and send them immediately out. The map has many huts and in my last game I got about tree techs out of them.
4. COTTAGES.
- You will need the cash, and there is no time for aristo-agr.
5. EDUCATION.
- The most useful tech you can get. Cottages will support your masses of warriors and with the apprenticeship civic you will get lvl 2 warriors (= Guerilla I).

When looking back on things I wonder if placing cities near chokepoints would allow me to get non-pillaged inner-areas; I built my cities fairly close to each other so sending reinforcements back and forth was easy. But building them close will open you up to pillage.

Not sure is there anything else to say; get 5 cities asap and fortify them with walls and warriors. From there on it will be a waiting game; attacking would be suicidal. As I stated before the biggest mistake you can make is think that this is a normal scenario: you will not have time for religion, teching, etc. Survival comes first.

Oh, and to all who are bothered by the increasing difficulty... play deity! It won't get harder :lol:

Hello,
OS: Win XP Pro SP3
i play 0.41 FFH2, with latest patch (n as far as i know)
I have installed the full mod from a file called "2009_05_16_FallfromHeaven2041d.exe", i.e. i play with the german translation.
i doubt it has something to do with the crash, but just to complete the info.
Now to the actual problem:
is there a known bug with the scenarios?
Everytime i try to start the one where you have to kill 100 Infernals ("Against the wall") the game crashes (CtD) and microsoft is annoying me with a error report message.
Relying on what the message says, the problem is caused by a file called "appcompat.txt" which is located in the \temp directory of windows.
I already completed a few other scenarios ("the great menagerie", the dungeon scenario, and that one where you fight the barbs (the orange civ)) without any problem occuring.
What could be problem? Could my againstthewall-savegame in the scenarios directory be damaged?
If so, could please someone upload the file?
Normally ffh2 runs very stable on my PC. Even on giant maps it never crashes.
Thanx for any help.
*Yvain*

Yvain,

Are you sure you are talking about 'Against the Wall'? I haven't played it in a while, I thought the idea was to survive, I don't remember killing 100 Infernals. Are you playing a different scenario?

Best wishes,

Breunor

Hi,
Yeah, i am sure.
But as i am not able to play it and the description is blank i tried to remember what the scenario was about.
So i might have mixed it up with another one.
Attatched you'll find a screenshot. Is it normal that the description of "Against the wall" is empty?
In case it isnt i think its pretty probable that my Againstthewall-savegame is damaged (it has 235kb by the way)
In that case, could someone upload it, so i can simply replace it?
I dont like the idea of reinstalling everything as apart from that scenario everything works perfectly fine.
mfg
*Yvain*

Yvain,

That is very odd. The screen you show is for 'Against the Wall', but the objective of killing 100 Infernals is from the Radiant Guard. The bug you are encountering is a known bug in The Radiant Guard when you kill Hyborem before killing 100 Infernals.

I'm wondering if there was some kind of switch when the German Translation was made?

Best wishes,

Breunor

Ok,
ive finished the Momus now.
Yes you are right. 100 Infernal + Hyborem killing is The Radiant Guard, which i am currently playing now.
The reason why i confused "Radiant Guard" with "Against the Wall" is because there is no description of "against the wall" (as you can see in the screenshot postet above), and i didnt watch all other scenario descriptions. If i had done the latter, i would have learned that kill 100 infernals is not "against the wall"
So, forget about that.
The problem still remains, though.
"Against the wall" still isnt working.
First question: Is it normal that there is no description of against the wall?
Second question: Can anyone post a working "Against the Wall.CivBeyondSwordWBSave"-file as i think mine may be broken.
thanks.
*Yvain*

There is a description in the English version.

There is a description in the English version.

well, as far as i know, the english text remains when there is no german translation already.
So, if it would work the way it should, i'm supposed to see the german or, at least, the english description.
This confirmes my assumption that somesthings wrong wrong my scenario file.
are the scenario itself and its description too different files, or is the description read out of the scenariofile itself?
*Yvain*

Again, i really would like to start the attempt to simply replace my scenariofile with a working one.
Worth a try, i think...

The scenario descriptions in FFH have nothing to do with the scenario file. They're completely separate.

Have you tried to load the scenario file manually? The scenario system in FFH is known to crash a lot, so CTDs are not an indication of a bad scenario file.

Again, i really would like to start the attempt to simply replace my scenariofile with a working one.
Worth a try, i think...
Just reinstall the whole damn thing :p I just took a (very) short look and I don't even know where the scenario files are located o_O

Fall From Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Scenarios

Have you tried to load the scenario file manually?

Nope, not until yesterday. And, to my surprise, it worked.
Every other scenario works when i load it from "Fall from heaven.scenarios".
But as long as this one also works even if i have to load it manually, so what.
Anyway, thanks for your help
*Yvain*