Sylvan (elven) mission 2 campaign, help?

[DjDanee87]

I'm looking for some tips regarding the 2nd map of the elven campaign which starts with a sea combat and then we get Wysloth and Danan without a starting place vs the orcs who have at least 4.

Let me just start by saying i have played with the Homam series from the 2nd game, so i know what's going on. Already beaten the necromancer and the orc campaigns in VII and started the Sylvan today and i'm stuck at the 2nd map.

My problem is the AI's strength. I play on normal and my 1st time on the map i got killed before the 4th week. First i started by exploring and picking up stuff from the island our 2 heroes land on. That island took a little more than a week, then went north to grab the elven castle there. Started building it up and before i could get a decent army an enemy hero showed up with 60+ centaur archers, 400+ gnolls and a lot of melee units as well (250+ harpies). It was a slaugther, so i had to restart the map.

On my secondy try i've spent less time on the small starting island and rushed for the northern castle quicker to get my buildings and units rolling quicker. My other hero went on exporing the seas around the place, even grabbed a mine on a small island south. But then the computer showed up again with a force even bigger (mousing over it says deadly) even this time when i rushed to my starting base and started to get my army going quick. This time at least he didn't attack me, so i was able to get back to my base and reinforce some more while he captured the small southern island with the gold mine on it. I was catching up to him in army strength and when it said my chances are avarage i headed towards him. At that point 2 other heroes came from other castles from his empire and he merged his army. It was lethal again and this time he came after me and killed me.


Does anyone have a tip for this second elven campaign map? We get such a bad start vs the AI's 4 or maybe 5 castles that i just can't catch up. Even when i had some peaceful exploring with 1 hero while building up my stuff i run out of gold fairly quickly and half of the units remain unpurchased.

And a screenshot of the enemy's army at one point through my last try: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/383161437206905607/16DF74E9057C4652A24F86B4B76D9091F2E3046A/

[DjDanee87]

I might try to start over with the 1st map maybe. I didn't go for archery on the heroes. Started to tech them for their unique nature stuff which i didn't really like to be honest compared to orc and necro stuff. Might help to go more combat focused with the heroes.

But other than that, i was exploring, got i believe 2 pirates to help out, but compared to my normal army and to enemys army they were nothing helpful. My problem came from the enemy stacking up the army from all of his castles making 1 unbeatable one and coming to my only base early

[mreed2]

The most important thing to realize on this map is that the suggested strategy ("Be sneaky") isn't really all that viable -- two of the shrines that you need to access require walking past enemy held castles, and (short of lots of reloading and hiding in sanctuaries) it isn't a very viable strategy. Far easier to simply build up, conquer the map, and visit the shrines once everyone is dead. :)

The second most important thing to realize is that the NW and NE quadrants have unoccupied castles that can be easily taken, along with high level necro generators (this is the same general area that is revealed when you visit the blackfang guild building in the central area). Gather up all the resources that you can and pick one of these these two castles and hold it.

The final most important thing to realize on this map is that the heroes, while very strong compared to your starting forces (or anything that you are likely to gather before you are forced into a confrontation) will not be replaced once defeated. And they aren't very aggressive to begin with. Thus, you can afford to take 30-40% casualties defeating one of the heroes, as you'll have two weeks (or so) before the next one wanders by, time in which you can rebuild your forces and build up your castle.

In short:

1) Gather resources from the sea and central area in land
2) Only kill stacks that are blocking paths that you need to travel to (e.g. NE or NW quadrant) -- leaving the remaining stacks alone both distracts the AI and might cause some losses for the AI.
3) Don't be afraid of 50% losses -- you'll have time to rebuild, and the enemy hardly grows at all.