Suggestions for Heir to the Throne walkthrough

Share and discuss strategies for playing the game, and get help and tips from other players.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Suggestions for Heir to the Throne walkthrough

Post by Kirdan »

Warning: For those who cares... this may contain spoilers for HttT #1-6


From what I have experienced and read. Siege of Elensefar and Crossroads seem to give people trouble. Here's my way of arriving at Crossroads (medium difficulty) with >$200 and an army with champion, avengers, sharpshooters, red and white mage, hero, druid. It contains some ideas which I don't see in the walkthrough. Please evaluate (ask for replay if you want):
  • Main idea is to get to MMP in scenario #5 and not IotD. I simply don't see how you can get enough money out of IotD. There basicly no XP. So you have to kill the land Orch in BoP (#4).
  • This (BoP) can probably be done with the land army, but I've experienced that there alway some stupid troll which puts its ZOC the wrong place in the last turn and getting there earlier than turn 22 is really hard. So you need to win the sea battle and most likely also kill the sea Orch. This can be done with clever use of mermen becoming tritons.
Here it goes:
  • Scenario 1 (Elves besieged)
    Recruit a scout, an archer, a fighter, a shaman and an extra unit. Now let the scout take a few villages in the south while the rest of the force runs west. The goal is to gain as much XP as possible and take as many cities (also from your allies ... afterall they take your XP :) ). Be sure to get the last kill when ever a reasonable safe chance comes up. Finish early.
  • Scenario 2(Blackwater port)
    This has one goal: Get XP. Level the shaman to Druid if at all possible. There's no chance at arriving at Isle of Anduin with more than $100 anyway, so just go for XP.
  • Scenario 3(Isle of Anduin)
    This scenario seems to be key to further success. You have to win with as much money as possible. But you start slow. So to gain time recruit 4 scouts and two fighters (all your money). Send two scouts south and two west with the fighters. Take as many villages as the can. The southern scouts will probably be killed, save if you can, but it can also be very useful to use it to tie up some Grunts in the southern forest. They have a very long way back to battle. Now use your income to build up two armies and keep an eye on the orch movement so you don't get surprised on one front. Lure troops to the east, so you can keep the northern villages.
  • Scenario 4(Bay of Pearls)
    You have to kill the land orch which allows you to go to Muff Malal's Peninsula. Apart from what the walkthrough says. I have these comments. Leave a merman on each of the 3 water-villages north of the island. They will become a real pain for the nagas/bats to kill and will most likely take a few with them. Also, they will distract the Trolls to give your land army time. Try to lure the remaining bats/nagas north by sending a wounded merman back home to recover. Bats make great Mage XP. The island should now be deserted so you can kill the sea leader and hopefully make a merman (with trident?) Triton. Now can recover your mermen and become superior at sea - make another Triton or two if possible and head south to help kill the land leader. Mermen can also be used to get the Trolls onto the beach for an easy kill by the land army.
  • Scenario 5(Muff Malal's Peninsula)
    This is easy. You should get from here with an relative early victory, lots of money and a lot of XP. You just have to avoid a few pitfalls: Don't ever put a valuable unit where it can be reached by for than 3-4 walking corpses. Else they will just die and another one will take its place until you die. For this to easy you have to make the opponent spread out the corpses. This means split your forces in 4 groups which each can move safely: Two Tritons in the south west to lure walking corpses into the sea. One small force through the central valley and one each way around the island. The necromancer seems to be stupid enough to come out and get killed for en early finish.
  • Scenario 6(Siege of Elensefar)
    You should now have >$250 and an advanced army. You should have been working on getting good mages since Isle of Anduin, because skeletons doesn't really care about Elves. Magic on the other hand will zap them as sunlight to vampires. Now... I've discovered a tactic which makes this an relative easy scenario. Apart from sending 2-3 horsemen south to assassinate the necromancer, send Konrad out as bait to the norhtwest. This will get almost the entire orch army and some skeletons to rush to the northwest corner so you can easily beat your way through to the eastern forest (and you get to keep the northeastern villages for a long time). Defend in that forest during night and when the first daybreak arrives which gives you a good chance of killing the Orch leader, go for it. If your lucky, most of the orch/skeleton army will not even have arrived yet and you get a very early finish. The Thieves can be used to delay the assassins.
Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by Kirdan »

Btw...one thing I haven't tried is to go to IotD, advance some thughs and footpads and use the "Konrad as bait" strategy in SoE, with a much smaller army (since not much gold at IotD), but with some skeleton crushing chaotic impact units.... it could be a possibility, but I guess, I'd rather have my advanced elwish army.
Dacyn
Posts: 1855
Joined: May 1st, 2004, 9:34 am
Location: Texas

Post by Dacyn »

I had about 800 gold after defeating all enemy leaders in IotD... :)
Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by Kirdan »

Dacyn wrote:I had about 800 gold after defeating all enemy leaders in IotD... :)
:shock: ... ok... I must be calculating something wrong then... IotD has about 20 villages of which you can't hope to hold more than 15 for the main part of the game giving you what? .. $200... so the rest must be early finish bonus. (30/turn) ... that's about turn 4 ?!!??
Do you have a replay?
Fortify
Posts: 73
Joined: August 16th, 2004, 2:46 am
Location: Canada

Leadership in HttR

Post by Fortify »

Another idea is that take the first two elvish fighters that advance and promote them to captain, best if they have LOYAL they can then help Konrad significantly in boosting your other units to advance. Even better when you have two Loyal Elvish Marshalls later in the campaign.

Cheers
Fortify
The shovel saves more lives than the sword.
Dacyn
Posts: 1855
Joined: May 1st, 2004, 9:34 am
Location: Texas

Post by Dacyn »

Kirdan wrote:I must be calculating something wrong then...
er, I meant that at the beginning of SoE I had 800 gold. Some of it was from BoP...
Kirdan wrote:Do you have a replay?
No; it is corrupt with 0.8.5.
Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by Kirdan »

Dacyn wrote:er, I meant that at the beginning of SoE I had 800 gold. Some of it was from BoP...
Hmm... I can see that this might be possible, but with 0.8.5 I would say this requires an early finish in BoP... which means good use of the mermen to kill both leaders... so why choose to go to IotD, when you could get even more at MMP?
Dacyn
Posts: 1855
Joined: May 1st, 2004, 9:34 am
Location: Texas

Post by Dacyn »

Kirdan wrote:why choose to go to IotD
Moremirmu :)
Kirdan wrote:when you could get even more at MMP?
IotD=858
MMP=884
only 26 more gold... not much of a difference
Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by Kirdan »

Dacyn wrote:IotD=858
MMP=884
This cannot be possible in either scenario alone (0.8.5). You have to have a lot saved from BoP, which means a very early finish. My experience is that the mermen can have a hard time killing the land orch with out some rest to recover from the sea battle. There's always some troll who gets in the way.


Anyway... I've seen that Crossroads has been balanced. It was a hard scenario, but I found a way to get through it relative easy. Learn the value of cannonfodder. Recall some healing units and let the rest be elvish fighters. Orchs have the tendency to go after the weak.. so they'll try to kill fighters before your valuable units and they flee at daybreak even though they could win an attack. So a single fighter can keep many orch a long way from your elite group rushing to kill the leader. IMHO crossroads was not harder than other scenarios as long as you have the money to recruit 15-18 fighters.

IMHO the princess battle ground is actually harder. Not to win, but to win early. I need the money for the Valey of the dead, which seems to be winable only you can recruit mermen for two days. :)
silene
Posts: 1109
Joined: August 28th, 2004, 10:02 pm

Post by silene »

Kirdan wrote:I need the money for the Valey of the dead, which seems to be winable only you can recruit mermen for two days. :)
Rushing for the lower left castle works quite well (whatever the difficulty level). Once you have obliterated this leader, you are safe, since you can just have a single front line: no need to be protected from all the sides at once. And the zombies will soon stack upon your front line, preventing the units from the upper left castle to reach your armies. You just have to idle until the game ends.
Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by Kirdan »

silene wrote:Rushing for the lower left castle works quite well
Yes... that seems viable...just tried it. I think I just needed a little more firepower and healing to more reliable crush the souther undead army. ... btw. ... I'm a little uncertain about the holy water. If I rush out and let my two Champions take it, they become unbelievable powerful, but if there's too many walking corpses, it seems dangerous to kill them, because a new will just take its place until your dead.
Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by Kirdan »

silene wrote:Rushing for the lower left castle works quite well
Yes... that seems viable...just tried it. I think I just needed a little more firepower and healing to more reliable crush the souther undead army. ... btw. ... I'm a little uncertain about the holy water. If I rush out and let my two Champions take it, they become unbelievable powerful, but if there's too many walking corpses, it seems dangerous to kill them, because a new will just take its place until your dead.
Dacyn
Posts: 1855
Joined: May 1st, 2004, 9:34 am
Location: Texas

Post by Dacyn »

Kirdan wrote:My experience is that the mermen can have a hard time killing the land orch with out some rest to recover from the sea battle. There's always some troll who gets in the way.
Actually I just used the mermen from the bottom cage, which I hadn't freed until the end of the sea battle :) I finished on turn 15...
strider44
Posts: 4
Joined: November 11th, 2004, 1:05 am

Post by strider44 »

Some more suggestions from me

(Probably contains spoilers. I've put it in quotes so it can easily be skipped without accidentely reading it)
Gryphon Mountain: Magicians I've found are really good for killing the mother gryphon. They have pretty good defensive ability so you can sneak them in, kill the gryphon and either stake out in the mountains (killing anything that happens to attack) or run away. Make sure you bring a healer as well.

The Ford of Abez: As I said in another thread, an alternate tactic is to get a couple of knights (preferably paladins, if you don't have any you'll need a healer) and some Mermen (so you have enough time to get to the island, and to protect your own men) and stake out the island, making sure you stick to the right eastern shore. If you do this the sea creatures will attack the attacking force and kill themselves and the attacking force doing it. For some reason the two attacking forces will attack eachother as well!
However using this tactic you need to bait the sea creatures carefully with mermen, trying to get half to go up and half to go down. Also if the humans recruit too many duelists this tactic may fail.

Northern Winter: A nice tactic I found, and I might post another thread asking for critique :) is to recruit a few archers and elvish warriors and move them to the centre in the forest to stop the scouts getting through and taking the villages, then bringing horsemen around the middle quickly to assassinate the upper leader. A gryphon can be used to get the villages in the bottom right. I brought my leader up and to the left, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake, so it's probably better to move him to the left enough to draw out the orcish army, then move him with the archers.

Mountain Pass: A gryphon is a huge advantage in this one - one of the main problems I had originally is the lack of sight, and trolls sometimes came out of nowhere. A grypon can see quite far off and makes sure there's no surprises.
Kirdan
Posts: 104
Joined: October 25th, 2004, 11:44 am

Post by Kirdan »

strider44 wrote:The Ford of Abez: As I said in another thread, an alternate tactic is to get a couple of knights (preferably paladins, if you don't have any you'll need a healer) and some Mermen (so you have enough time to get to the island, and to protect your own men) and stake out the island, making sure you stick to the right eastern shore.
IMHO there's a lot easier way to play this scenario (of course, this assumes a resonable experienced Konrad and Kalenz):
Recruit 2 Gryphons, recall your Tritons and mermen with XP and recruit mermen to fill the castle. On turn two reqruite a few mermen more as you think you need. Then let Konrad, Delfador and Kalenz go straight into the water taking the most eastern path possible as close to the deep water. Let a Triton go for the storm trident, but rush it back. Forget the island, just run and let the mermen protect a corridor through the water by guarding the western flank. You should be able to reach the other side in a minimal number of turns. Li'sar troops will never reach you, but probably be eaten by the sea monsters. Maybe you can trick some squids to attack the orcs going into the water. Use the Gryphons to confuse the orchs. Try to get them advanced to masters. They will come in really handy in the next scenario.
Northern Winter: A nice tactic I found, and I might post another thread asking for critique :) is to recruit a few archers and elvish warriors and move them to the centre in the forest to stop the scouts getting through and taking the villages, then bringing horsemen around the middle quickly to assassinate the upper leader. A gryphon can be used to get the villages in the bottom right. I brought my leader up and to the left, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake, so it's probably better to move him to the left enough to draw out the orcish army, then move him with the archers.
Yes... pretty much like that. I haven't tried the horsemen assassination though. You can rule the center forest with some rangers/avengers and a healer. Gryphons take care of the lower right corner.
A part of my tactic was to use the snow falling in turn 12 to get the orchs to attack my units in cities, while they them self were on ice.
Mountain Pass: A gryphon is a huge advantage in this one - one of the main problems I had originally is the lack of sight, and trolls sometimes came out of nowhere. A grypon can see quite far off and makes sure there's no surprises.
I found this one difficult. I have some really precious units which I will not loose :) ... But these Trolls can - if the decide to do it - pretty easily kill a great mage. - and if they do not succed, there's always an enemy Gryphon coming in to do the kill.
I try to get some Trolls attention with some elves in forest south of their castle. Then I make a run for the bridge protected by Dwarfs and Champions backed up by healers. If you get to the bridge you are pretty much safe. The occasional red mage coming to meet you will be sorry he was born. If you get into trouble - kill the enymy Gryphons. They are the one who makes it difficult to defend.

Btw... in general I've found little use for mounted troops. I used scouts on Anduin, Horsemen in SoE and a Horsemen escort in "Dwarven doors" (just make a run for it). But I've never really had any use for my knight or any other advanced riders. Though I hope the Knight will make Palladin some day. White mages are soooo slow.
Post Reply