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[Parsely]

This mission is impossible. It must be more than 20 attempts now.

Objective: Kill all enemies on the map within the time limit.

Your Forces (125 units + 1 ram)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

6 Crossbowmen
19 Archers (one is at half health)
69 Spearmen
18 Macemen
5 Tunnelers
6 Laddermen
1 Battering Ram (2 engineers inside)

Enemy Forces (76 units)

Spoiler: Pig's Castle (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Front Courtyard (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Rear Courtyard (click to show/hide)

35 Archers
22 Crossbowmen
6 Macemen
 - These guys don't matter because they sally forth at the start of the mission and you can easily kill them by massing your archers and crossbowmen. http://i.imgur.com/f1I7mSC.png
13 Pikemen

Let's try a frontal attack with no careful tactics: They roll up the drawbridge as soon as they see you coming. By the time you fill in the moat and knock down the gatehouse with your siege ram, half your men are dead, and now the archers on the middle wall can see you. Obviously this is suicide but it must be established that the conventional way of attacking definitely doesn't succeed.

I've had the best luck with the tactics we see in these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5cZjiFGNSs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLn4UmnG8F8

But I still just can't quite pull it off. The archery range exploit doesn't quite work most of the time, plus it's damn finnicky to move your archers forward one tile at a time. One tile too close and the enemy starts shooting. Too far and your archers fire into the ground. And it takes SO much time to do it right sometimes I actually run out of time to do the mission.

When attacking the upper side (from the perspective you see in my screenshots) of the castle I've been able to enter the castle with more troops even than you see in those videos where the player succeeds, but somehow I still can't manage to win! I just don't understand. My macemen never last long enough to finish off the front courtyard. Those pikemen are really really strong.

I have over an hour of footage of me failing at this mission. This game is driving me insane. This can't be the way the developers intended the mission to be played. I just want to beat this mission on Very Hard, but I don't even know anyone else who owns this game and has tried playing that mission on Very Hard.

[Mech#4]

I remember that mission being a huge pain as well. I can't remember what difficulty I played on.

From what I remember I moved my forces towards the bottom left and used my archers to pick off as many of their troops on the walls and towers as possible. I eventually wore down the defenders enough that I could move my guys (possibly the spearmen) up to the wall between the two towers that leads into the rear courtyard by filling in the moat. From there I used some of my guys to move along the walls and clear up archers while the rest went to kill the king while the enemy archers were busy. I kept the macemen back because those were the ones I used to defeat the enemy king.

It did take many tries and I think I still won it due to luck with enemy guys being in the right place to get killed by mine.

[Parsely]

I remember that mission being a huge pain as well. I can't remember what difficulty I played on.

From what I remember I moved my forces towards the bottom left and used my archers to pick off as many of their troops on the walls and towers as possible. I eventually wore down the defenders enough that I could move my guys (possibly the spearmen) up to the wall between the two towers that leads into the rear courtyard by filling in the moat. From there I used some of my guys to move along the walls and clear up archers while the rest went to kill the king while the enemy archers were busy. I kept the macemen back because those were the ones I used to defeat the enemy king.

It did take many tries and I think I still won it due to luck with enemy guys being in the right place to get killed by mine.

There is no enemy lord on this level. You have to kill all of his units in order to win.

[Shadowlord]

I... only ever played multiplayer. (Also, only stronghold crusader, and it was years ago)

Is there some reason you can't use siege engines, or assassins? (Maybe assassins are S:C only)

[Ozyton]

Because in these types of missions you only get a set number of units, like in Myth

[Mech#4]

I remember that mission being a huge pain as well. I can't remember what difficulty I played on.

From what I remember I moved my forces towards the bottom left and used my archers to pick off as many of their troops on the walls and towers as possible. I eventually wore down the defenders enough that I could move my guys (possibly the spearmen) up to the wall between the two towers that leads into the rear courtyard by filling in the moat. From there I used some of my guys to move along the walls and clear up archers while the rest went to kill the king while the enemy archers were busy. I kept the macemen back because those were the ones I used to defeat the enemy king.

It did take many tries and I think I still won it due to luck with enemy guys being in the right place to get killed by mine.

There is no enemy lord on this level. You have to kill all of his units in order to win.

I... er... well. Anyway, besides that minor detail the rest is what I'm pretty sure I did.

I remember using the battering ram, once I had broken through the outer wall where I mentioned above, to break into the forward courtyard. At the wall to the south-east of the grain farm in the picture.

[WealthyRadish]

When I did this (on hard, not very hard), I attacked the lower left corner of the castle, and didn't use the range exploits. The pikemen shouldn't be fought in melee at all, they're way too tough. You really need to utilize the laddermen (of all things) effectively, to get macemen and your own ranged units up on their walls killing the crossbowmen and archers, and trigger the oil around the leader's tower as quickly as possible. I found it was easier to break down their outer wall and then use the laddermen to climb up the inner wall. They'll die quickly, so it needs to be a very coordinated push to get enough of your best units on the walls, and kill their crossbowmen as soon as possible. If most or all of their ranged units are dead, your ranged units will be able to utilize their walls against the pikemen and such.

Spoiler: Painstakingly crafted stratego-tactical battlemaster guide (click to show/hide)

[Parsely]

I... only ever played multiplayer. (Also, only stronghold crusader, and it was years ago)

Is there some reason you can't use siege engines, or assassins? (Maybe assassins are S:C only)

You can't make units in this mission. You can only use the units provided. Also yeah, assassins are only in Crusader.

When I did this (on hard, not very hard), I attacked the lower left corner of the castle, and didn't use the range exploits. The pikemen shouldn't be fought in melee at all, they're way too tough. You really need to utilize the laddermen (of all things) effectively, to get macemen and your own ranged units up on their walls killing the crossbowmen and archers, and trigger the oil around the leader's tower as quickly as possible. I found it was easier to break down their outer wall and then use the laddermen to climb up the inner wall. They'll die quickly, so it needs to be a very coordinated push to get enough of your best units on the walls, and kill their crossbowmen as soon as possible. If most or all of their ranged units are dead, your ranged units will be able to utilize their walls against the pikemen and such.

Spoiler: Painstakingly crafted stratego-tactical battlemaster guide (click to show/hide)

Well if I did kill the ranged units on the walls on the left side of the castle I could use the ladders to climb onto the outer wall from the outside (since there's one tile of ground you can walk on), but I think the pikes would climb the stairs and slaughter my ranged units.

Macemen though... I think they could rush those ranged units. Use my ladders to get half on the middle wall and half on the front wall, which leaves only the archers on the rear and right side of the castle. If the macemen can do it on their own then the rest of my spearmen can rush the remaining towers and the keep. To be really safe, then I could use my ram to destroy the stairs and put my archers in a tower using ladders to finish off the pikes and xbows in the keep and the pikes in the courtyard.

The problem is being coordinated enough to murder all those towers on the left wall using my archers, and still having enough time to try that plan.

[Mech#4]

Have you tried splitting the macemen and spearmen up into several small groups to go hunting archers at the same time? Maybe about groups of about 8.

[Parsely]

Have you tried splitting the macemen and spearmen up into several small groups to go hunting archers at the same time? Maybe about groups of about 8.

I haven't. The issue I was having before is that I couldn't think of a way to engage the archers without engaging the pikemen, but maybe if I take advantage of ladders I can avoid having to fight the pikes in melee. But shooting them to death might take too much time, especially if I've lost archers, and will only be effective if all of the enemy archers are dead first.

If I do beat this there will for sure be a recording of it.