I've had AOW for many years now, although I don't think I've ever totally finished the campaign, or played all the scenarios. Some scenarios are fairly easy, others are more challenging, and some are hard. But Rocky Hollow has stumped me. I've been playing it for about 5 hours a day for a week now, and I can't beat it.
Rocky Hollow is the scenario where you and 4 other CPU players start with a size 3 city in the corners of the map. In the middle is the Undead, and they *start* off being about literally 10 times stronger than any of the other players. And their power only increases from then on. Every time I've played it I can manage to get about 3 or four cities going, but then the Undead start expanding and stomping out the other players. I've tried recruiting troops but they get killed off pretty quickly, so it always ends up with me having 2 or 3 heroes on the map struggling for survival. I've maxed out their movement to 50 in the hope of having a force capable of rapidly capturing cities. I've given them grass concealment and mountaneering too so they can lurk and pounce on enemy troops when needed. I've had my leader at Level 30 and 1 or 2 other heroes at level 20 or so at maximun speed capturing and recapturing cities. The problem is though that as the heroes gain levels they need more gold and I can never seem to recapture enough cities quickly enough to pay for my heroes, let alone troops. So my heroes almost always leave me because I can't pay for them.
And anytime I try to get a city to produce troops, the Undead send over troops to capture the city. I've tried the Ash Cloud spell to try to conceal the city, but the Undead still manage to see that I have a city producing troops and stomp it out.
I've tried razing Undead cities too in a sort of scorched earth policy, but then if I do that I myself have no way of attaining gold.
So by day 400 or so, I usually end up having a super fast leader running around the map briefly capturing cities, before they're recaptured.
Basically in this scenario the Undead seem to be an unstoppable juggernaut. The post game graph is ridiculous looking too. The Undead line goes up at about 45 degrees and then levels out when it shows it's about 50 times more powerful than me!
Any help would be much appreciated!
Rocky Hollow is the scenario where you and 4 other CPU players start with a size 3 city in the corners of the map. In the middle is the Undead, and they *start* off being about literally 10 times stronger than any of the other players. And their power only increases from then on. Every time I've played it I can manage to get about 3 or four cities going, but then the Undead start expanding and stomping out the other players. I've tried recruiting troops but they get killed off pretty quickly, so it always ends up with me having 2 or 3 heroes on the map struggling for survival. I've maxed out their movement to 50 in the hope of having a force capable of rapidly capturing cities. I've given them grass concealment and mountaneering too so they can lurk and pounce on enemy troops when needed. I've had my leader at Level 30 and 1 or 2 other heroes at level 20 or so at maximun speed capturing and recapturing cities. The problem is though that as the heroes gain levels they need more gold and I can never seem to recapture enough cities quickly enough to pay for my heroes, let alone troops. So my heroes almost always leave me because I can't pay for them.
And anytime I try to get a city to produce troops, the Undead send over troops to capture the city. I've tried the Ash Cloud spell to try to conceal the city, but the Undead still manage to see that I have a city producing troops and stomp it out.
I've tried razing Undead cities too in a sort of scorched earth policy, but then if I do that I myself have no way of attaining gold.
So by day 400 or so, I usually end up having a super fast leader running around the map briefly capturing cities, before they're recaptured.
Basically in this scenario the Undead seem to be an unstoppable juggernaut. The post game graph is ridiculous looking too. The Undead line goes up at about 45 degrees and then levels out when it shows it's about 50 times more powerful than me!
Any help would be much appreciated!