Posted August 15, 2018
Just wanted to share a few "tricks" to beating the Keanor mission.
At the very beginning of the level, take your two heroes up to the bridges and have them attack them (has to be done manually as it is a neutral structure). The first time I tried it I just had Ghiron up there attacking it and using lightning when he was recharged. He ended up getting one bridge done and half of the next before enemies started disrupting things. The next time I took no chances and sent him up with Woolin and 4 knights that I whipped up real quick. Destroyed both bridges easily without an enemy coming down.
Advantage:
Can reap all the resources and don't have to rebuild anything over in Keanor.
Disadvantage:
Due to how the level is designed, there is no simple way to get troops across the water without the bridges, and you have to defeat the red army to win.
The only solution is to dump your troops on the east side of the red's camp. Some will get stuck behind a ridge (level design intending to keep red from building harbors), but most will make it across. Really hinders progress. You have to keep pummeling them until you can get a decent foothold with some peasants to spring up some quick guard towers. Then you can keep advancing and eventually starve them out as they run low on resources (they'll have pretty much stripped the land of almost all resources by the time you arrive).
Another piece of advice is to have a station of longbowmen at the south of the red camp, and eventually stone towers when you can get them built without risk of destruction. Red will occasionally send someone too close and lose a knight, pikeman, longbowman, or siege weapon. All of those are great because it will slowly dwindle their gold and wood, which will make seiging later go much quicker.
As far as Keanor, I dealt with that all before attacking red. I used another little cheap trick. I built triple thick stone wall with about a dozen stone towers around it, right where I knew the purple would enter on the right side of the screen. I left the wall open in a bottle neck pattern for some troops to come out in the waiting arms of my army. Longbowmen stationed to the outside. A lot more ended up purple spawning outside my trap than I expected, but I still won a pretty good victory. The bottleneck wall ultimately gave me enough freedom to send troops north or south depending on where the most help was needed.
At the very beginning of the level, take your two heroes up to the bridges and have them attack them (has to be done manually as it is a neutral structure). The first time I tried it I just had Ghiron up there attacking it and using lightning when he was recharged. He ended up getting one bridge done and half of the next before enemies started disrupting things. The next time I took no chances and sent him up with Woolin and 4 knights that I whipped up real quick. Destroyed both bridges easily without an enemy coming down.
Advantage:
Can reap all the resources and don't have to rebuild anything over in Keanor.
Disadvantage:
Due to how the level is designed, there is no simple way to get troops across the water without the bridges, and you have to defeat the red army to win.
The only solution is to dump your troops on the east side of the red's camp. Some will get stuck behind a ridge (level design intending to keep red from building harbors), but most will make it across. Really hinders progress. You have to keep pummeling them until you can get a decent foothold with some peasants to spring up some quick guard towers. Then you can keep advancing and eventually starve them out as they run low on resources (they'll have pretty much stripped the land of almost all resources by the time you arrive).
Another piece of advice is to have a station of longbowmen at the south of the red camp, and eventually stone towers when you can get them built without risk of destruction. Red will occasionally send someone too close and lose a knight, pikeman, longbowman, or siege weapon. All of those are great because it will slowly dwindle their gold and wood, which will make seiging later go much quicker.
As far as Keanor, I dealt with that all before attacking red. I used another little cheap trick. I built triple thick stone wall with about a dozen stone towers around it, right where I knew the purple would enter on the right side of the screen. I left the wall open in a bottle neck pattern for some troops to come out in the waiting arms of my army. Longbowmen stationed to the outside. A lot more ended up purple spawning outside my trap than I expected, but I still won a pretty good victory. The bottleneck wall ultimately gave me enough freedom to send troops north or south depending on where the most help was needed.