Help! Arcatta 3 The Winding Valley

Pinbot · #1 April 5th, 2008, 01:43 AM

Has anybody beat this with the latest patch? I'm beginning to think it is impossible. I understand that I have to block the Dwarf cities to keep them from producing units, but snipers kill Initiates with one shot, even in the woods. By the time I have enough cash to buy strong units to march on the cities, Evil has a wall of snipers and a couple of tanks. If I touch a city, The unit dies in the same turn.

I've been stuck dead for a week and a half now! Please Help!

Hiro_Antagonist · #2 April 6th, 2008, 03:40 AM

I haven't played it in a while, but from what I recall, there are a few things you can do to help a lot:

1) Move your starting Apprentice to the gold mine in the upper-right of the screen and leave it there. You'll need the money.

2) Put cheap units on the enemy cities. You can't take those cities over, but you can prevent the enemy from building there. If you can plug up all 3 cities, the computer won't be able to build any more units at all!

3) The Living Statue Archers are tough. You can either take them out with brute force or you can just take over the city while taking fire. If you do this, try to use an Archmage with another Archmage giving him Stone Skin. If you do this, the Archers can each only do 2 pts of damage each turn. Since you can take over the city in 2 turns, that should be fine. Another option is to take an Initiate along to heal your Archmage.

4) Don't forget, if the computer makes a sniper, damage the sniper. A damaged sniper can often be so ineffective that it can be ignored entirely. Killing other units should be a higher priority than killing damaged snipers.

5) Initiates are great units for plugging up enemy cities (once they're not under threat of dying) or even for hanging back and giving newly-produced units levitation to quickly fly into the mountains for defensive bonuses.

Pinbot · #3 April 6th, 2008, 03:01 PM

Great game! Thanks for creating it.

Thanks for the help. I've still got problems though.

You can't hold cities with Initiates because they still only have 4 hit points. An injured Sniper still has an attack of 4. Also, you need at least two Initiate attacks against a Sniper in a city to keep him from bouncing right back with a full heal. It's a bloodbath! If the AI ever can spare a shot, he damages the Apprentice on the mine reducing the cash flow. So, I'm operating under the assumption that I need to get a second one out there ASAP. If I try and build up an invasion force closer to the two cities, the AI gets a lot of shots at the Apprentice(s)

By turn 7 things are looking ugly. By turn 10 I'm out-numbered to the point where it's hopeless. No matter what, the AI still earns money on all his properties. Even if manage to hold the two north-most cities, he still manages to squeeze out a few tanks and stash a couple of snipers in the woods. It really seems impossible to me. I just can't get units (that can survive) out in the field fast enough.

Hiro_Antagonist · #4 April 7th, 2008, 02:26 AM

Well, until I have a chance to give the mission another go, all I can say is that it definitely is beatable.

I know a couple of people who just beat the entire campaign -- I'll ask them if they have any tips.

Pinbot · #5 April 7th, 2008, 10:14 PM

Thanks. I really appreciate it.

Hiro_Antagonist · #6 April 8th, 2008, 05:35 PM

Here's what one of my friends sent me about this mission:

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well, after playing that mission a few times, my advice would be not make any iniates at all ever, skip the first turn and make an archmage, then make an apprentice the next turn, get your original apprentice up to the goldmine (he stays there all game), then attack! keeping a couple apprentices around at all times to heal your guys (concentration). By turn 7 I had the northern most city covered and by turn 10 I had all 3 cities covered and no enemy units whatsoever around

Pinbot · #7 April 9th, 2008, 01:29 AM

Wow! That made all the difference. I guess I had a couple of mental blocks regarding putting out units as fast as possible and trying to hold the mine one turn too early. By not giving evil a target, I managed to keep both the starting units alive for the whole mission. Just trying to stop up the cities over all was a losing proposition. Slaughtering the enemy's high value units and then stopping up the cities worked like a charm. I won on turn 19!!! Thanks a lot guys!

You know, this game is a lot deeper than I had initially thought. The interesting variety of skills and spells for each unit really takes it beyond something more generic, like Advance Wars. I liked the demo a lot, but the full game has so much more. Every race is completely different.

I've got to ask: Are you going to do a sequel? You know, if you added city building in the tradition of Civilization, and had huge maps, you might be able to leverage your "lunchbreak" gameplay into an epic 4X game. Don't get me wrong, I love this game as it is, but I think there might be more potential in your excellent design than you realize.

Hiro_Antagonist · #8 April 9th, 2008, 02:04 AM

I appreciate the kind words!

At this point, nothing formal is planned. Nobody would like to see more come from this rules set than me, but only time will tell if that will actually happen.