How do you beat City guard 3 crossbows in hill cities?

[akatosh]

I'm on the last campaign scenario, Mulcarn Reborn using Tholal's on Emperor difficulty. In pretty good shape, Mahala, Volanna and one of the Illians dead. Rhoanna has like 30 cities, Falamar has 10-15, and Capria has 10-15. In the cleanup phase now...

...but I am still having trouble cracking these hill cities with highly promoted crossbowmen. They have a defensive strength of ~40 even after all cultural defenses have been reduced to 0 and multiple Maelstroms have hit. How are you supposed to kill these guys? I have been able to kill some of them using a Combat 5, Heroic Attack 2, CR3 Guybrush Threepwood but even then it's a matter of time before Guybrush dies in a 95%+ fight. Fireballs seem to do almost no damage to these guys. My Shadows/Assassins can cut off the entire bottom of the stack but they can't kill the top stack defender.

When the map switches me to Capria, I have even less luck because the AI has her with RoK heroes (and Rhoanna is using Order, go figure.) I'd switch to Empyrean and get Chalid, but my team has already teched Honor and Capria doesn't have Empyrean in any of her cities. It would be nice if Rhoanna would spread Empyrean to a Bannor city, but the AI doesn't seem interested and Rhoanna's so far ahead in score after my one 40-turn round with her that I'll never be able to switch back to Hippus.

 

[Calavente]

my working on it would be :
-lots of catapults ?
-sending big number of sacrifying units: sacrifying summoned units or champions or horsearchers.
(horsearchers are good because they negate FS)
start with sending the weaker units first, in a huge wave. (weak or mid str unit all have 0.1% chance... so all are equal, and weaker one are easier to replace).
What you hope is educe those guys str to a reasonnable level.

use dance of blade AND shadow 1 on your sacrified units (so they get all edge they can).

use all offensive spells before the attack (even things like Entropy III is good (it gives -10%str) or rust (entropy 1) if they have metal weapons at beginning of turn.
so : 2-3 maelstormn then rust, then entropy (damage cap at 60%¨instead of 30%), dance of blade, shadow 1. summon all you can, send the summons (in order of weaker to stronger), send weak units, send flanking units (horsearchers), send medium sacrificed champions... then mope up.
use your assassin/marksmen to kill the wounded, your top-notch units to kill the resisting ones once they are attainable.

(oh...and you NEED to have enough units, sacrificed ones and regular... to take the whole city in 1 turn (or at least kill all the crossbows in one turn.. otherwise they heal up)

and you'll slowly use these guys up.

other solutions would be :
-convert to AV, use ring of fire (2-4 times).
-convert to OO, use tsunami if near coast (2-+4 times)
both have a high damage cap than maelstorm (40% and 60%iirc instead of 30%)
-get a RoK priest upgrade to druid.. (or get a RoK high-priest (profane?) : earthquake is very useful to remove 25% defensive str to the guys : it un-fortities units)
-convert to Empy and get chalid

other means might also exist.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

horse archers with flanking promos are probably your best friend here. other good promos for this situation are cover and city raider.

 

[akatosh]

Thanks for the tips. I have been using Blur and Dance of Blades--haven't tried Rust/Earthquake yet.

I think I'll go with horse archers. I can get them to Flanking 1 easily, which will give a 55% withdraw chance. A pile of those should be good enough. (The Illians have 1-2 crossbows in each city and then a bunch of javelin throwers. I can deal with the latter, just having issues with the former.)

 

[Calavente]

as said gekko..
(however, getting CRIII or even Cover II or flanking II or III is hard, especially if you need it on unit that risk to die.; that's why I proposed ways to fight with 0xpunits..)
but with all xp-boosts, + the wonder for 10xp for mounted, you should be able to give flankingII + combatI + coverI to newborn horsearchers

flanking maxed out, then drill, then cover or CR might be the way to go for those horsearchers that survive the most)

 

[BobCW]

You could also try throwing summons at them. If your summons die, nobody cares (unless you're using Tigers).


In addition to the spells already mentioned, you could also try Wither (Entropy III), which will give the X-bows -10% strength. Not really a crippling penalty, but every bit helps.


Alternatively, just waste a bunch of troops throwing huge piles of whatever you can scrounge up at the problem- you're in the end-game, so it doesn't matter much if you take a lot of losses wrapping things up

 

[Calavente]

(and, as I mentioned, entropy III (that I forgot to name) can damage up to 60% instead of 30% for maelstorm (and is harder to counter IIRC)
(same : rust removes the metal weapons... AND give a little -10 or -15% str)

 

[Doug Piranha]

Metamagic II (Dispel Magic) can come in very handy if you're fighting against magically buffed units (Bless, Shield of Faith, Enchanted Blade, Blur, etc.). As far as I can tell, there is no resistance roll and one casting of Dispel Magic will remove all magic buffs.

An addendum to BobCW's remark about summons: stack up the affinity. Strength 3 Spectres are pretty weak against endgame units; Strength 10 or 15 Spectres with Empower V are pretty effective. Note that temporary summons do not give war weariness when they die.

 

[Nor'easter]

Also, remember that the game treats Fireballs as units, so any unit that survives a Fireball attack will gain XP and (at some point) additional promotions. So it's best to use Fireballs when you know (or are reasonably sure) that you can follow up with attacks on the same turn to wipe out the enemy stack. Otherwise, the surviving enemy units will often emerge stronger and harder to kill.

 

[Folket]

I would stack the friendly buffs.

Shadow walk, blur, dance of blades, enchant weapon, shield of faith, bless and cover promoted champions. My guess is that you will need five of them for each champion. But 1 or 2 might be enough to get Guybrush or some other very strong unit to 99%.

By this time you should have strong phalanxes or immortals.

Knight with withdraw 3 is also very strong.

It is unclear from your post what end game units you have.

 

[Folket]

Mind 3 domination is very strong. Especially if you have metamagic 3 and tower of alternation.

 

[akatosh]

Thanks everyone for the responses. So I managed to wrap that game up and finish the campaign. I never got a chance to try any of these strategies, as in the very late game my foolish allies Rhoanna and Falamar finally decided to do something with their armies. Falamar sacked a bunch of cities on the Illians' periphery, including one of the CGIII crossbow hill cities. Rhoanna wiped out the other, along with Drifa in the Illian capital.