Ah, chapter 4... The infamous chapter whose difficulty has pushed many players to complain ever since it was available.
Let's be honest, this chapter is a huge time sink to beat without cheating, because you often have to progress bit by bit. And, if you don't use the correct strategies, you're bound to suffer. But it's not that hard.
And I actually appreciated the fact that there was no hero at all in my troops. This made for a different experience, and certainly not a worse one than those missions where there is too much heroes and base units feel useless.
Once again in this campaign, the early moves are simple : more workers for wood, doing all upgrades useful for the units you will use.
I stayed at low upkeep during the early parts of the mission, and had a main group of melee units, along with a secondary group of healers and a third group of crossbowmen.
You soon won't have enough wood inside your base. I built a lumber mill to the east between my base and the ironfist base, and a wall of towers south of it to prevent utter destruction by the traitors attacks which will sometimes target it.
For the base defences, I built additional towers, but the fact that the base is up a hill is as much an inconvenience that in it is a defensive help, in my experience, because the cliffs hurt tower placement potential and unit movements.
It is very important to be aware that you've 5 zero-food units : the 4 elites from the start, and Zed.
You don't want them to die. The fact that they don't count for upkeep and for max army size make them extremely precious. Pull them back each time it is needed. When your knight dies, replace them by executors. They are more food-effective than elites anyway, and it will avoid you the trouble of confusion and having a zero-food elite dying.
Attacks from the Rohir Nexus (light blue undead) will target the western entrance of your base, while human traitors (orange) will target the eastern entrance and the lumber mill base. I placed my melee units between the two entrances to be able to help both. Towers weren't very solid but they did help.
Attacks also come from a dark blue undead base, which will target either the north-western entrance or the south-western entrance. Their attacks with aerial units are the most annoying of all in my experience, as your melee units are powerless to help and the wyrm can freeze towers. Having some crossbowmen helps a lot.
So far, I've only talked about the defence.
Let's talk about the attack !
The latest version, with low upkeep at 8 gold instead of 7 gold, makes low upkeep less punitive. Hence from this point onward, I tried to stay at max low upkeep.
However, while this is a help, this part of the mission is not fundamentally different from how it was when I played a much earlier version of the campaign.
You first need to get rid of the dark blue western undead base, and charging head on with even a full army would have been a terrible idea.
It's time to make use of the shadow stalkers lent by the shadowy man. I trained several of them and made them in a control group. Now, I'm sure some players having said this mission is impossible also tried this before discovering that the shadow stalkers are still attacked by the enemy - which can understandably be infuriating.
Remember what I wrote for chapter 3 ? "The
arcane towers are doing wonders in this mission (
as in most missions where they are available !)"
Using the reveal ability of an arcane tower will allow to instantly understand why the shadow stalker are attacked : there are invisible shades who can spot other invisible units... But if you just rush a shade while the arcane tower power show it, you can kill it before having lost your shadow stalkers to enemy attacks, and the enemy is now blind... The shadow stalkers can keep attacking units and buildings around them.
Now, there are several shades waiting to spot you further inside the base, but the same basic process apply : spot with arcane tower and destroy.
It is possible to do a regular attack on the south of the undead base to distract the bulk of the enemy army to have an easier time killing shades, but it is not required at all. I preferred keeping my units in defence, as the attacks by the light blue and orange base were quite strong.
Once the shadow stalker reach the core of the enemy base, they can kill adepts and destroy the necropolis. Be patient and kill any adept which try to rebuild a necropolis. Once you're confident you've killed all of them, the enemy can't rebuild any building. I went on destroying the unit production building, then killing the units. The arcane towers can also reveal the crypt fiend who try to hide into the soil to heal, don't forget to finish them off so that they don't later attack your workers.
Once the base was properly cleaned up, the shadow stalkers went on destroying the useless grey undead building in the front of Toran's capital city while my workers built an extension in the west. It doesn't need to be defended, enemy attack waves will target your main base.
With the shadow stalkers, I slowly killed all of the land units and towers guarding the trebuchets of the side quest (honestly, I think the amount of these units is overdone, it's trivially easy to kill them, it just take a long while. It forces to be able to defend the main base longer, but if the player is still alive at that point, he's able to defend decently). It seems that the shade which was near the trebuchets in early version is not here anymore, but the arcane tower trick would have allowed to deal with them.
Now, Rushing on destroying the trebuchets is good, but finishing off the aerial units guarding them (which allows to get your own trebuchet) is not the best idea in my opinion, because it forces to commit soldiers to defend them which can't defend the main base.
I had noticeable trouble when trying to send a bunch of crossbowmen along with some priests to wait on the stairs towards the trebuchet.
With my shadow stalkers, I slowly destroyed the human towers south-west of the westernmost entrance to the city. I had to retrain some new stalkers, but in the end I got access to the very annoying light blue undead base. The arcane tower reveal + rush shade tactic works too here, even though it's tricky. Once you've finally eliminated this base, things get much better. You only have one enemy base to face, the orange one, and you can organize a proper attack.
I eliminated the aerial units and took control of the trebuchet and moved the bulk of my forces to the south of it. I had some fights with the enemy army and the elven hero south of the road leading to the trebuchet, and I suffered significant losses, but I had more than enough gold to train replacements and to slowly push further. The attacks of the ironfist allied base actually helped at this stage, as they focused attention away from my units and helped to kill more enemies.
It took a while, and I got the trebuchets destroyed by an enemy incursion (I didn't find them very effective and had no defence) but after a while, my executors, free food units, healers, crossbowmen and catapults won.
Because I was careless (and didn't want to reload an earlier save), I had lost both Zed and one of my four free-food elite. This is a bad thing for the end of the chapter, but it's not disastrous either.
After the orange base was wiped out, I built new bases (I had 3 goldmines exploited at the same time, as the main base gold mine was almost empty I transferred its workers to one of the new bases). There are a few abominations and a mega-abomination "hero" guarding an entrance south-east of the old teal undead base, I took care of them (some trebuchets attacked my units from the south but it was not a major issue).
I destroyed the gates towards the souther part of the city, and I was told that Shadow Stalkers would be taken from me as I don't need them anymore. Indeed, those I had disappeared and the option to train them from the arcane sanctum disappeared, but those I had which were in the process of training finished and I could use them. Bug,
@Shar Dundred ?
I use those stalker to kill the guards of the trebuchets, destroy the trebuchet, kill the guards of the imprisoned elites... But this can all be done with normal units if you're ready for a few losses.
The 6 imprisoned elites are zero-food units, which make them amazing and very precious. I put them in a special control group with my remaining zero-food units. I destroyed the elite corrupt guard buildings, and sent a few workers to build my own. My crossbowmen destroyed the destructors which guarded the outside of Mayor Kent's place, but they didn't approach further. The ironfist attacked now and then, I let them do while I was busy building a town hall, two barracks, a sanctum, and a lot of towers (mix of all types, with many arcane one) north and south of the paved road.
By the way, there is a hidden message on the rock in one of the nearby areas visible with reveal
My stalkers could kill Kent's guards without issue, and only when Kent was almost alone did I sent my units to destroy the remaining destructors and finish off the despicable traitor.
At this stage, it becomes possible to attack towards the east to liberate Gardon.
You receive the shadowy man as a hero. You can send him take the glyph of fortification in the southwestern most spot of the map still outside of the city walls, but it's not very useful. More useful is buying him a few items. His spells are a stun, an excellent ability which make enemy attack miss in a decent area (I recommend upgrading it), reducing a lot damages inflicted on friendly unit. He has the same lifesteal bonus as Gardon, and his ultimate is the summoning of permanent shadow monster from corpses. This ultimate is very good (much better than the old version which split Brian) and its auto-cast should be enabled.
Now onto the attack.
There is a bunch of traitors and undead in the room just east, so I sent my army lure them, before going back to the safety of my towers. I repeated the process, and sometimes fought longer inside the room and on the outskirt of the main base area eastwards.
My zero-food units stayed behind the whole time, I kept them as a reserve to overwhelm the enemy, and this was not the right time to do so, the defences were still too solid.
There are two towers, two huge undead golems and many units guarding access of the next part of the city, and they inflicted a lot of damage on my troops. I had to retrain most of my units more than once (Brian also died once then, and once later in the battle) before a decisive attack with Brian+executors, crossbowmen and healers could break through. The catapults I had at the beginning were not replaced once destroyed.
There are two enemies : grey human traitors, and the pink fallen mage guild full of undeads. The key is to destroy the grey base.
After one more attacks where I fought a bloody battle and I had to retreat, and after which a wave of undead spirits crashed on my towers, I went all in : my refreshed regular troops plus my reserve zero-food elites.
The pink base couldn't come to support the grey base as fast, and I could finally take a big chunk of that base defences. I was nonetheless overwhelmed once more and had a few elites die as I was retreating. However, this weakening had been useful and on the following attack (which happened very soon because I also used some unit training buildings further north to replace losses quicker) I completely overwhelmed the grey base.
I quickly sent peasants to begin build towers and new unit production buildings south-west of the grey base, but in the end I barely used them. Pink troops alone where not enough to kill my army, and I slowly but surely destroyed every single building they had to liberate Gardon.
Approved
