Pains of Glory (H4 Scenario)

Pains of Glory is an H4 Scenaio in the Contest Maps Folder.

I played on Expert and automaically got a Haven town and corresponding hero. The description made it obvious I would have a Death enemy. The Scenario should have been named Pataince, Pataince, Pataince! Slow going!

My starting hero was a knight. I would normally chose an Order Lord first and the a priest week 2 but I but I reversed this time and took the priest first. The visible sawmill and ore pit were lightly guarded and would fall to crossbowmen and squires early on. My intention was to take Order Lords every week but after two weeks I had to detour again. By the beginning of week three I was still unable to take any of the other 5 mines with my small army of squires, crossbowmen, pikemen and monks without losing most of them, but it seemed that if I had 2 heroes that could cast Song of Peace, I would be able to buy enough time to win many of those battles with very low casualties, so I took a second priest. It worked.

There were two nearby Learning Stones so the Order Lords were earning 240 gold a day quickly. They paid for themselves in 5 days. I got a good draw in the Seminary and all three of my heroes bought Order Magiic (with Precision) and the knight also got Life Magic (with Bless). Those spells really pumped the shooters! It still took until the middle of M2W2 to capture the gold mine. By the end of M2W3 I had cleared everything except the 4 huge neutral armies, one each on the cave entrances and two guarding the Royal Treasury.

The first I had to beat had 20+ Hydras and about 30 Efreeti. Once again, I couldn't win without giving up my whole army, but I could hit and run with my heroes, trouble was the only damage I could do was with 36 point Magic Fist spells. My first attempt I killed 3 Efreeti before I had to retreat, but I had nothing else to do anyway. I tried adding in 4 Order Lords to absorb punishment and that helped a bit, but the problem it created was that I got 2 stacks of Efreeti instead of 1 and both stacks could knock out any hero in one attack. I went back to just the three main heroes and eventually got the Efreeti. On 2,4,7, I brought back 3 angels, 49 monks, 79 pikemen and 259 crossbowmen and polished off the 22 hydras easily. The next day I attcked the 23 frenzied gnashers and won without casualties but it was tough. That opened the Royal Treasury and one of the stacks guarding a cave abandoned their post!

Waiting at the bottom of the stairs was the largest Red army. It included 24 devils and an assassin. Luckily they weren't close enough to start a battle with any army that came down the stairs. I started sending Order Lords down to explore and steal mines while my other heroes looted the Royal Treasury and ran back home to get some extra spells. When my main army attacked the main Red army I was disappointed. The assassin would cancel the immortality on one of my heroes and the devils would teleport over and kill him before he could do anything. I tried casting Song of Peace on the Devils but they had 50% Life MR and I struck out! Reload. Lucky for me this army never moved unless another army ended up in its zone. Red had another medium sized army and a small army guarding the city and I was able to take them out without ever fighting the big army.

Won at 3,2,3. I had 7 L3 Order Lords earning 1800 gold per day. My other three heroes were Level 12, 12 and 10.