Key To Success in Battle Field

[tabanli]

There are no easy way to win this map although there are some sure ways to loose. As you play along, you will realize that your mighty Barbarian is not so mighty anymore with a lot of units crossing the 50 barrier. Bunch of spiders in a citadel are 55, Gryphon becomes 60, Heavy Cavalry with Level 4 Horse Lord are 60 and Wolf Rider with a level 4 Ranger at Forest is 45 with 16% Ambush, Elements attacking with a level 4 Valkyrie are 54/3 and I am not even talking about level 5 heroes with Demons. As your high level leadership/chaos heroes are dwarfed by the Great Archon, your Assasin is not assasinating all that well with crusader+ranger or paladin warding.

So this game map requires a lot of maneuvering, holding key cities, vectoring, scouting, killing the enemy scouts, intelligent resource management, knowing where to attack when to attack etc. Besides the general rules of expanding in multiple directions and scouting early, holding the post cities, having hero presence at all the battle fronts, I really don't have a lot of suggestions, but I have a few remarks.

MAP:
The Map is divided in 4 classes of regions.
CLASS A: Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest these are the starting points and surrounding regions
CLASS B: At East and West there are elements cities. They are very important, easy to reach and easy to take down.
CLASS C: The power cities that are surrounding the center. They provide power unit production. They are harder to take down,
CLASS D: Cities and the ruins at the Central region.

Ignoring the center is one of the sure ways to loose this map. There are several moderately easy ways to take the center IF YOU ARE LEFT ALONE THERE. All you need to do is take down the defense on one ruin first. It will give you 4 elements and very good items that you can use to take down the other ruins and the cities. Or get the bless site first take the Shayatins Mask then proceed. However the problem is either you will loose a lot of troops to take it down or put your heroes to risk. If your enemy is near, and he should be, they can finish you off.

HEROES:
Every hero will work if used properly, no hero will work if not used properly. Know your heroes, know their strength and their weaknesses and don't expect too much from them.

UNITS:
There are plenty of two turn meat units that you will get when you occupy surrounding cities. Each of them are very useful. However there are two units that you have to train.
a) Devil: Although unicorn may work early in the game, there are plenty of moral and fear units. Elephant are the most popular choice, pegasi-medusa making occasional appearance but surely you will face the red dragon. Unless you receive lots of Devils as an ally, you have to produce them at some point.
b) Great Archon: Although Archon will be sufficient earlier, sooner or later you will be force to train one. as the heroes level up.

I think these are the two units that has no substitute. All the others has substitutes. Even elephants who are the most popular choice in this map has substitutes. You can go with Mammoth-Pegasi or gather some golds and use Green Dragon-Red Dragon combo for speed+moral. You need to produce most of the stack bonus units. At least one speed unit, one moral unit, one fear unit, one siege unit and possibly your ambush unit. You will also need city defenders and power hitters.

In a typical game I use all of the heroes and most of the stack bonus units.

[KGB]

A very good synopsis of how to play this map.

Three things to add:

1) You can use the Barbarian here for expansion. But as noted he has no mid to late game value since all units will have 50+ strength eventually. So understand he is a throw away hero only meant to capture cities quickly on his own. Once you meet the enemy you are best server by sending him in alone and hope he manages to raze a couple of cities before he is killed. And you definitely want him killed so he can be replaced by a L5 hero offer with allies.

2) There is GOBS of money from city income. So don't waste time searching ruins (I see a lot of players doing this on replays). The close ruin to your capitol on turn 2/3 is worth getting for a fast income boost. But the rest should be ignored during the expansion phase in favor of capturing neutral cities (you can lose the game by wasting time ruin searching instead of taking cities). You can always come back and search them later or fresh hero offers in the back lines can search ruins on the way to the front. The middle ruins of course are an exception but by the time you are there the expansion phase is mostly over anyway.

3) The Assassin is the best hero for capturing the middle. Those heavily defended sites/ruins/cities etc are easily conquered with a L5+ assassin and 7 cannon fodder armies. It's much harder to take them by pure combat because of all the Archons and other bonus units in the defenders.

KGB

[tabanli]

So don't waste time searching ruins
KGB

Even trying to capture some cities might be unnecessary earlier if you deviate from the straight path too much. KGB pointed that out earlier. You should either go towards the center, towards the elements cities or towards the enemy. Capture the cities and open the ruins on your way without deviating too much from your path. Space advantage and holding a post city near a enemy camp is very critical.

Those heavily defended sites/ruins/cities etc are easily conquered with a L5+ assassin and 7 cannon fodder armies.
KGB

Even if the L4-L5 Assassin provides the surest way to capture them, I think most common way is with some version of Battering ram, Devil, elements and two turn meat units. Be cause that's also a natural hero stack for most people with different hero choice.

You may put your Hero to increase your chance in battle, but you are also putting the hero at risk. Or you can take hero out of the battle but you will loose more army and miss the XP.

Hero-Battering Ram-Devil-Elements-Elements-2 Turn Meat Units (you can even try eagles as the last resort, they will probably fight with Great Archon/Red Dragon. Wizards are also great at that spot). Your Hero must be either Assassin, Valkyrie with 18 attacking leadership, Dread Knight with 18 Chaos, Ranger with anti-air, Barbarian(65-58 strength) or better yet a combo of the two heroes. Paladin and Horse Lord adds nothing if they don't have an item. Anti-air items are greatly appreciated. You may even try a version of pure Barbarian raid with Battering Ram-Devil-Barbarian (65)-Giant-Heavy Cavalry-Crusader-Wolf Rider. 4 Front unit kills the spiders and the devil, Barbarian kills the Great Archon and the Red Dragon. You may risk the barbarian to protect the battering ram and devil or put the barbarian as a last resort to increase safety. If you got the Gabriels Heart as an item, he can later go solo Battering Ram-Devil-Barbarian and take down everything. However those are all risky, you have about 90%-98% to win the battle. Sometimes the enemy just got lucky. Bring an extra giant, he may provide move bonus in a few spot.

[Moonknight]

Very good info guys, I have seen a Wizard deploy where the Wizard can get to your starting area in about 8 turns, so don't forget to guard some (or scout very well), or else that city that you just purchased Elephant production in to vector out might get razed.

[Zaque]

I would disagree the Barb is only good early. If you get him in the right stack toward the late game he is very effective. I like using barb, devil, unicorn, grand archon, and then either a catapult or a ram depending on how important speed is, and then putting in an elephant or a green dragon for the speed boost is nice.

[KGB]

Zaque,

The problem is that any reasonably competent player will have bought Wolfriders (for the woods) and/or Ghosts. Ghosts are especially useful on this map to take down stronger stacks without needing a hero. Just 1 Ghost or a couple of Wolfriders means your Barb is at huge risk (4 Ghosts+4 Wolfriders will kill between 4-7 units of your Barb stack and it's much cheaper/faster to accumulate those than it is to build the stack you describe).

KGB

[tabanli]

That is a fantastic stack for hitting non-ambush cities/stacks. I also use it frequently to get the items from L3 ruins and capturing those central cities.

But on the long run if you want to send him deep inside the enemy camp, where are you going to put your Barbarian in fight order? If you put him in front then any stack with a medusa will have 65% chance to kill him or a decent Ghost Wolf Rider combos as pointed by KGB. If you put him at the end then a simple Elephant + 7 L2 unit stack is going to kill everybody except the barbarian so you will be left solo again. That's why I always accompany him with another hero to protect not the barbarian but other stack bonus units. Usually Ranger with 20 forest leadership or HL with +25 leadership or Dread Knight with 12-15 chaos is good. So I hit with the Barbarian and get protected by Ranger/HL/DK.

[tabanli]

The main weakness of Barbarian is not its vulnerability to ambush. He is just as vulnerable to ambush as any other unit (except for a few). The main weakness is that it provides zero stack bonus.