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Old 26-02-2023, 05:54 PM   #553
twillight
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Default V.O.T.E.R. Golem

Gen, mission 1, The conflict: escort the Blood Shark to the base in 20 days
Briefing: When Debagh gave the blueprints of the Golem to Borghal, the legitimate leader of the Gens, his brother, Gracznogh tried to hinder him. Three months ago Gracznogh let someone steal the blueprints, and made the engineers who were in charge of building the Golem his confidantes. Since then the unity of the Gens has evaporated, because many commanders-in-chief and fleet-captains have switched to the side of the traitor.
Borghal was extremly upset. Despite all his efforts, including the threat of brutal force, he could not win back his old confidantes. The only solution, Borghal says, is to eliminate Gracznogh in order to unite the Gens again. As his closest confidante Vorghal has chosen you to help him to do this. He has given you a small fleet, and sent you to the Sea of Smurgh, that is been occupied by the followers of Gracznogh. Your mission is to cross the enemy's lines, and reach a friendly base in the northeast with the prototype of a Blood Shark. You will get new troops there to continue the fight against Gracznogh. Good luck, you will need it.
You don't need to worry about the time-limit, worry instead about the lack of firepower. So just stick to the border of the map. You need to bring the big, obvious ship to the port, which the enemy won't capture by the way, so don't bother.

Gen, mission 2, teaching a lesson: build a new fortification, and eliminate all the enemies and conquere their city! (aka. destroy everything)
Briefing: When you arrive at the base, all your troops are together again. With these reinforcements you have to fight against the superiority of the enemy Gens in sector 23. Borghal demands you build a fortification in Sector 23 to start the production of war ships. It is extremly important to put the fast-sailing units of Grecznogh's fleet out of action, so that we can overtake the enemy's harbour. To do so, you first need to destroy the city's defence-walls, and to conquere the harbour with a Watus Constructus. One of Gracznoogh's confidants, Smirghol, the mayor, is in the base. Arrest him! We can put Gracznogh under pressure in order to unite the Gens again for the fight against the United Clans and the Cytex!
I feel a wee bit of broken english slipped through in the briefing. Also, the Gens notoriously name everything "Watus". Remember: their regeneration worth like nothing.
You should do scouting with your dragonflies, as the map is small and giving directions to all the mines... But note this: you are resource-poor, it is essential to get the NE sulphur mine. Actualy, start going west until you hit a mine, than aim the NE corner, and along the way you'll find another mine too. And there is yet one more to the west and just a bit to the south from the NE mine. further west from there is a merchant guild - quit far, but maybe worth trying to utilize it. Still be your first job to build the market, and intensvely buy sulphur, which you use instead of wood now.
Also, the units are quit the same attack and statwise, so you know what you are after (the air-unit that can shoot).
Because of your resource-stravation you should know, you need 10 sulphur in stroe to build a mine, and need 10 more to build fortifications on 'em. So it's quit problematic.
Also because of your lack of raw material, I'd go for the healer building - costs less than making new units, and you'll definitely have to hold out for a while.
Oh, news: you only have 1 autosave, and it does not care what race you are playing, keep that in mind.
Also: archive dot org has a copy that windows don't like that much, but has all the movies. The movies can be seen from the "replay intro" menu, and all of them for the race you play unlock when you win the last map of the campaign of the current race, so definitely make an archive-save. The movies will not stay unlocked, you have to end those maps every time you want to watch the movies. Uncomfortable, but it works.
Note: the dragonflies suck, they don't keep distance. Base your power on submarines instead, with some flier support.

Gen, mission 3, Taking over: eliminate the enemies, conquere their city, and all resources within 70 days!
Briefing: By arresting Smirghol you have completed a coup! The connection between Gracznogh and the northeast territories has been cut. Borghal is satisfied with your work. It's time to eliminate the traitor. Gracznogh's fortress is far west of Sector 27. This area is extremly important to Borghal, as the resources in these waters are needed for the production and develpoment of the enemy's fleet. Eliminate Gracznogh, and secure the waters by conquering all mines, and fortifying them with walls. Hurry - and bring Gracznogh's head with you. This should be sufficient to win back the disloyal Gens to our cause.
It seems the key to this map is a secure access to the merchant guild in the middle, so going for the mines which you can see is begginers' mistake. Telling where the mines are are naturaly too comlicated, will uploed the map somewhere. Well, ok, so let's go west, and a bit south. Then SE until you get 2 mines. Then come back, and capture 3-4 mines around your city. The enemy will still have a heckload of mines, and 70 days is anything, but, but do what you can. With intensive trading it should be ok. I mean this is early 2nd difficulty, how though can it be, right?
Though you start with no research, only sucker, lowest level ships, not even merch ships, plus you are kinda resource-starved at the start, so you can't even build forts to all your mines. So constantly watch over the map - and don't mind flying scout units, only war units and constructors. Building a second constructor will help you capturing more mines, starving the enemy sooner. And given the small size of the map, and your supply-and research-proble in light of the time-restriction, you want to do as little fighting as possible.
This mission teaches to trade for trading sake, then trade your goods at the market if the Guild does not supply you with what you actualy want.
NOTE: the game literaly asks you to capture all mining-sites, EVEN if the AI did not capture it, until that the game will not end. The mine in the exact SE corner is hard to notice.

Gen, mission 4, the lost blueprints: find the lost blueprints in one of the eagle-rocks!
Briefing: Gracznogh is dead, the betrayal is nullified, and the advisers of the traitor are out of action! Now we can concentrate on what is really important: the Golem. One of our captain has found blueprints of a new warship in Gracznogh's fortress. It is an enchanced model of the Watus Atakus that is supposed to become a death-delivering war-unit through its complicated mutations. But you are still missing some important details to build this Watus Imposus, as your engineers call it. The missing blueprints are said to be hidden in one of the rocks, where the eagles nest on the Archepilago of the Kings. Find them, and we will have an effective weapon against the enemies. But watch for the cytex ships: we are not the only ones who know of the existence of these blueprints.
This is a quicky if you want it. I don't think the enemy hase a base, there are no mines, and the eagle islands are all marked as "already visited" despite don't, so your task actualy is to find that exact one. It is in the middle. Of course it is protected by a large group of enemies, but your scout ship is capable enough to slip through and touch it - and that fulfills the mission objective!

Gen, mission 5, the metamorphosis: destroy all enemy unit and city! (aka. destroy everything)
Briefing: After disvovering the blueprints in the Archepilago of the Kings, your engineers have started constructing the Watus Imposus, and now there is an opportunity to test these units in a battle for the first time. The Cytex have build a base at the border of our territories. This is unacceptable. Borghal has ordered you to drive our enemies from our territory, so that our shamans can continue transforming our land. The changes of the earth's surface will enable us to control the power of the earth. The Cytex are interrupting this work, and must be eliminated, so that we can continue the metamorphosis.
Surprisingly, this is another very quick one. You get a pretty large army (that watus imposus isn't very imposing by the way, it is just another ship), head on NW, to the center of the map, where the enemy city is. thatŰ's the single object on the map aside a moderate amount of enemy ship. Capture it, and just as it happens, you get another bunch of troops, so you are really kinda invincible, even if you just started to explore the map in whatever direction, and attack what comes in sight manualy.

Gen, mission 6, Atlantis: destroy all enemy units and capture their city! (aka. destroy everything - well, mabye not the mines?)
Briefing: That should be a lesson to the Cytex! Reports from our spies say, that the United Clans have discovered important parts of the Golem in the sunken city of Atlantis, and that they already started recovering it. Borghal orders you to conquere the Clan's base, and to drive the enemies out. As soon as the waters around Atlantis are free, engineers can start collecting the parts of the Golem. Remember that this mission has the highest priority, and you must be successful.
The good thing is, for this and the previous mission the connection/overlap with the United Clan missions is pretty clear. Sadly, I fail to see the Gens winning anything, they don't even seem building their own Golem, just trying to go after the fact.
This is an interresting map, though I hate the fact you don't start cwith a city, don't even see a place to build a city. the AI though is programmed in the way to not capture any city if you don't do it for a long while, so cudos for that. The fog of war removed though the map ofers 3 possible scenarios for you: capture the mines you see, and hold the north portion of the map, or try to cut the map by capturing most mines, or go straight just for the cities, which there are 3 city-places, plus the enemy city on the border, in the middle of the south. Capturing the city straight to west is a "good idea", as that is next to the Merchant Guild.
There are also 3 eagle islands, each containing 3 advanced airships, so right at the begginning you want to send a ship S-SW, one to the SW corner, and one W-NW.
Important thing is, you start with TWO constructors, so if you manage to not overspend the budget, you'll steamroll this map. Things will be of course more complicated, because the AI reacts to what you are doing, so no "capture all cities", but you'll still be able to capture most things, thus gain hugh advantage over the enemy if you know the map.
The map has a flaw though: while you have clear air-superiority, and economic dominance, you have nothing to deal with submarines. So it's a lot of standing around developing technology (the 2nd submarine is already fine, can attack fortifications from out of range, change the production as you develop new ones) and producing units.
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Last edited by twillight; 05-03-2023 at 02:05 PM.
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