help - dwarf3 - bridge

[ane]

I need help with a 3rd quest - bridge. I can't manage to kill any enemy statue before the enemy build a necromant, and then I came to an endless circle: damage-restore, damage-restore....
Which statue should I attack, the left one, the right one or one in the middle? And only with strikers and smiths?
Help, couse they're making me crazy!

[Ming]

Don't worry about killing the statues in the beginning (the advice was somewhat misleading). Build snipers/smiths/tanks to stop the AI's attack. Make sure you occupy the river bank squares outside the range of the statues so that AI units can only fly over in very small numbers. Once you have enough tanks, cross the bridge and overwhelm the AI units.

[PhilD]

Yeah, like Ming says: just build enough Snipers that anything that tries to cross the river dies quickly. Camp high-influence units on gold mines, and the AI will simply waste its resources on pointless attacks while you build up a large force of tanks. Then charge in.

Hint: a Tank with a Smith in range can kill a Vampire in one hit. Don't do this to too many tanks, though, as they need speed for the attack.

[ane]

Thanks to both of you! I did it! but now I have a new problem - arcatta3 - the winding walley. Any sugestions here?

[Hiro_Antagonist]

I just played through it on Legendary (since I haven't played in a while =), and here are some things that helped me:

-Move the Apprentice you start with to the gold mine in the upper-right corner. Try to keep it safe there, because it will represent a sizable increase in your income.
-When possible, try to move a unit onto an open enemy city. You won't be able to convert the city, but you will prevent them from building there. In fact, your goal should be to units on all 3 enemy cities as soon as humanly possible, because once you do that, they won't be able to build any more units!
-Make sure to hit snipers at least once each, which will substantially reduce their offensive abilities.
-If at all possible, try to trap tanks by moving units adject to them, pinning them against non-grassy terrain. That will prevent them from moving or attacking you, and you can whittle them down at your leisure.
-Lastly you have to deal with the Archers guarding the city on the bottom-right. You have a few options here -- you can either focus fire on one archer at a time until you kill one, then the other. Or you can just suck it up and move onto the city and try to take the city before the archers kill you. If you do this, try to do it by moving a Sorceress or an Archmage onto the SW city, and have (at the very least) another Archmage buffing that unit, and an Apprentice to heal it. Worst case, you should take the city on the 2rd or 3rd turn of having a unit on it.

This helped me beat it on turn 18, so hopefully these tips will help you beat it by turn 22, especially with the extra Initiate that you get in the Standard campaign.

[Ming]

Ane,

Just a few points to add to Hiro's very comprehensive list:

1. Move next to a sniper when attacking it. This guarantees that it cannot hit back the following turn.

2. Moving past the statues to capture the target city is much faster than destroying the statues. I used 3 Apprentices. Place the Apprentice next to one of the statues so than only one statue can shoot any apprentice on any turn. The Apprentices can heal each other and survive until the city is captured.

3. The above group can move towards the target city before all the dwarf cities are occupied or all dwarf units are destroyed.

I completed the scenario on T15 at Legendary level. Would have done it on T14 if I had used the Archmage which travelled with my group of Apprentices to influence the target city instead of an Apprentice (had not thought of that until I saw Hiro's tips).

[PhilD]

Wow - turn 15! I never really tried to finish as fast as possible (I tend to be on the extra safe side, occupying cities before any attempt on the target), but that looks pretty good.