Wow... very intense scenario!
Like others, I had no idea where the city was, and I incorrectly assumed that the reason I couldn't move further West was because that's where the infernals were coming from. Fortunately, with a couple of Eyes (all my mages cast Eye the first turn) I quickly discovered the city.
As soon as possible, I made sure every unit had a move of 2. That's standard practice for me, and to be fair it didn't help that much in this scenario (so much forest!) but in some key moments it was really crucial.
Also, I had all my units move to the middle to get the Loyalty buff from one of my mages (lasts the whole scenario!) then move back into a loose N-S line of defense.
I sent out the Arcane Barges early for exploration (standard practice) and quickly found Basterdam and Capria. I parked them there and weakened (or killed) passing infernals with lobbed fireballs. Never did see any Iras there, so I guess I got lucky.
There were way too many holes in the defense... I couldn't see any nice chokepoints that couldn't be just avoided. And the infernals just walk around you most of the time anyways... so I decided to fully exploit that in many cases.
For instance I had a lone hunter in the NE corner (on a fort) that the big guys (including Beast of Agares) would just walk right by and ignore. But then the Hunter would see a 2-stack of Riders or Warriors and so he'd poach one of them off, but since there were 2 targets in the stack (and hence 1 remaining) the Hunter didn't move from his Fort.
I ended up with 3 main stacks on defense: north, middle, south. In hindsight I guess they correspond to the 3 Hyborem cities.
I eventually got the quest for Capria, and with the Archmage, 2 Boarding Parties, and 2 mages it was pretty quick. An Immortal spawned in the city just before I got there, but 1 Maelstrom, a Water elemental, and 2 fireballs later he was really weak and easy to kill.
The confessor is awesome, and I took him back to the defense line. I couldn't take all the Swordsmen back though, and they died soon after (though they did at least kill a couple more units for me).
Eventually I started to see Wraiths -- they scared the heck out of me, but they seemed to avoid the stacks of defenders. I used Guy to attack a damaged one, and promptly got withered (I'm still learning the game). That really hurt.
(I've discovered that I really, really hate Wraiths now, especially when they have Move 4)
Soon afterwards I finished the "100 kill" quest. I wasn't all that surprised to see there was more to it (seems to be a common trend in FFH2 scenarios
), but it's still a bit of a shock in such a hard scenario.
I realized I could now move West, and I had two troops (my back row to pick off any stragglers that managed to make it past my defense) move into the city. That's when I realized I didn't have to worry about defending the city anymore. Wow... that's a lot of really powerful angels!
But the stream of Infernals got a *lot* harder. Fortunately, I clued in fairly early that the southern stream was easier than the middle and north stream of infernals.
Since I started clumping up my troops into fewer stacks at this point, I had the liberty of using the Eyes more. I saw two Manticores to the South (which I carefully avoided), and eventually found the Despero city. Not seeing Hyborem in the city I moved north a bit, and soon found Dis with my Eyes.
And unlike Despero (which had ~20 defenders) the city of Dis was barely defended! I did have one stack that was moving from the middle of the map straight to Dis, but I quickly realized that wasn't going to work... the infernals were just getting too strong. No sense in fighting them (the Angels would take care of that), so I had them skirt around from the South as well, and I was finally able to have all my units in one mega-Stack of Doom.
Attacking Dis from the South seems like the way to go. The infernals ignore you almost completely, and Dis itself is lightly defended.
Once I reached Dis it was just a matter of using Maelstrom, a Fire Elemental, two more fireballs, and then Guy (now cured from the Confessor) to finish off Hyborem.
Feedback/Suggestions:
* Loved the quests, and the twists!
* Liked the ending! Very cool. I hope the daughter who can see spirits/angels shows up in future scenarios.
* I echo what others say about making the Mercurian city initially visible, even if it's greyed-out due to fog of war (I don't think we need to Permanent Alliance). I don't really need to see it as much as know where it is.
* I was little disappointed that my Hunters had no Eagles, but I guess perhaps that would have given us too much Visibility. Still, would have been nice to have at least 1 eagle -- otherwise the Hunters are kind of blind.
* I wouldn't give the liches
Spell Mobility 2 -- the Wraiths are bad enough, but with a move of 4 they're really hard to control.
* I didn't have problems with Iras, but I may have just been very lucky. I did spot a stack of 6-10 of them just West of Dis in a little lake, but they never seemed to move.