Let's play Sacrifice (Completed)

[Azira]

Next time people, remember the

!

 

[spekkio]

Stratos once more:

Elmekia <--- Link

Shakti shows up with some of her units:

Once again, we have a dialogue choice here:

Since I didn't want her to wander around and build her manaliths over free mana fountains, I ordered her to stay in the kitchen:

She teleports away. Zyzyx introduces our new unit:

Ed creates first manalith plus some units and moves in the direction of second mana fountain:

When suddenly... cutscene mode kicks in!

"I could scarcely describe the horror of what came next"

Why have you come?

Our bargain is incomplete. Your rivals have fallen, but our reckoning is not yet fulfilled.

As for you, little imp, I will not forget your role in all of this.

He disappears.

Nay. We will do something to stop him this time.

So it looks like Ed and Zyzyx were not the only survivors of their world's catastrophe...
Anyway, let's continue with our mission:

Ed creates two manaliths and encounters some non-hostile peasants just in time to save them from Acheron's units:

It's time to put our Storm Giants into use:

That was fast:

6 new souls for Ed. Enemy altar is visible:

In the distance, we can see Shakti's trolls (green) and Acheron's troops (pink) fighting.

Let's join the fun:

That's another nekomancer working for Charnel - Acheron:

Ed pwns him fast, creates another manalith and moves to Acheron's final manalith and altar:

Ed destroys the manalith and creates a new structure atop the freed mana fountain - a temple:

It works similar to the altar - sac doctors can convert enemy souls here.
Creating 1-2 temples on a map is a good idea, especially on bigger ones. Thanks to that, sac-doctors won't have to go all the way back to the altar with the souls.

Acheron counterattacks, but he and his pathetic army is pwnd within seconds.

It looks like I was simply too fast for poor bastard - I stopped his attack on the peasants, and helped Shakti against him, so... He didn't get any new souls.



The problem is - I didn't get them either.



To obtain 24 souls (requirement for Secondary Objective) I would probably have to kill all peasants, some of my units and probably some of Shakti's units too...
Oh, well, fuck this boon shit - let's end this!

Ed sacrifices a Sylph on Acheron's altar, he shows up:

But dies fast:

"After my victory, Persephone was convicted Elmekia could be entrusted to Stratos' guardianship."

"And what did you decide?"

"Power. I would need more power."

Interlude - The Wanderer's Tale <--- Link

Next scene is going on in the "present" again (between Mission 09 and La Grande Finale). So...

It's mindfuck time!

It's Ed, Zyzyx and Mithars during the Armageddon again.

A tyrant more like. You would have thought me an evil man.

Most people did.

There were others. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. I vied with them for power.

A part of the land behind Mithras crumbles:

We were headed further south anyway.

Please, continue your tale. I will follow the sound of your voice.

They continue their journey through the post-apoc wasteland:

But I was not as well loved as he had been.

But their dull-witted prejudice would not destroy what I had labored so long to build.

Aye, but the demon was too powerful. I could not control it.

And then?

[/mindfuck]

Allegiance <--- Link

"What did you tell the gods of Marduk?"

If Marduk is a demon, it is likely that he was brought here through the portal in Golgotha.

Oh, no. Charnel's too strong. We can't attack Golgotha now.

There are secret paths through Empyrea leading deep into the lands of Stygia. Abraxus would know the way.

Maybe so, but there are other things we ought to do something about. A lot of my followers have been carted off to Pyroborea, for one.

True enough. Efforts should be made to hinder Pyro before he can employ these new slaves.

Hmm. Pyro and Charnel were awfully quiet this time...

Another weird thing - their altars don't have portals:

Ed tries to move closer, but:

So, it looks like the choice will be easier this time...

Level 5: All of the gods except for Charnel get their bomber unit at this stage (Charnel got his at level three), so if you want a bomber and didn't take the blight, now is the time to pick one. The spells of this level are all offensive spells.

Persephone

New creature:

Gremlin

Type: Air
Passive Abilities: None
Active Ability: Web Pull – Ensnares an enemy in a sticky web, allowing it to be dragged towards the Gremlin. A useful method for trapping enemy wizards and pulling them away from the blue souls they desperately need on the battlefield.

Gremlin (3 Souls): The gremlin is Persephone's bomber unit. "Web Pull" is the gremlin's special ability. When Web Pull is used, the gremlin shoots a spider web around the target with a cord attached to the gremlin. The gremlin then pulls in the unit and attacks it. After one attack from the gremlin, the unit is free, but usually in the air. Web Pull is good for getting wizards, manahoars, and retreating units.

New spell:

Rain of Frogs

A cloud appears over the target area and frogs rain down from the sky. The frogs hop towards the nearest unit, friend or foe, and latch on. For each frog on a unit, the unit is slowed. After a little bit of time, latched on frogs explode for minor damage.

Mission 05:

James

New creature:

Ikarus

Type: Air
Passive Abilities: None
Active Ability: Stickbomb – Slows enemy units down with thick glue.

Ikarus (3 Souls): The ikarus is James' bomber, and has "Sticky Bomb" for its special ability. Sticky Bomb throws glue at an area, seriously slowing whatever enemy units get hit for a while.

New spell:

Halo of Earth

This spell causes multiple rocks to rise from the ground and hover above the wizard's head. Whenever an enemy gets within range, a rock flies after it and does about the same damage as a Rock spell. Once one hits, if the unit is still in range, another rock will fly after it.

Mission 05:

Stratos

New creature:

Seraph

Type: Air
Passive Abilities: None
Active Ability: Cage Pull – Causes the Seraph to snare an enemy in a cage of pure energy. While ensnared, an enemy creature can be pulled towards the Seraph.

Seraph (3 Souls): The seraph has the special ability "Cage Pull", which is just like the Web Pull of the Gremlin. Use this bomber just like a gremlin.

New spell:

Soul Wind

With Soul Wind, you target a blue soul (like with Soul Mole) and a mini-tornado goes and grabs it and brings it back to you. While on the way to and from the soul, the whirlwind shoots one lightning bolt at each enemy within range, which knocks down the enemy and deals some damage. For further info about speed, making the soul blue to everyone, etc., see the Soul Mole description.

Mission 05:

Pyro

New creature:

Pyrodactyl

Type: Air
Passive Abilities: None
Active Ability: Viscous Oil – This attack blinds enemy units and makes them more flammable to fire attacks. They provide the oil, you provide the match! Blinded units will lose their given orders and will remain useless until the blindness passes.

Pyrodactyl (3 Souls): The bomber of Pyro, Pyrodactyls have "Viscous Oil" for a special ability. Viscous Oil lobs a glob of oil at the enemy. If the oil hits, the enemy is blinded and loses its current orders (which is very nice) and if any fire-based attack hits the oiled creature within the oil's duration (good length) then the creature is ignited and takes damage over time.

New spell:

Explosion

Five tiny balls of fire around the target grow to a large size and then explode, dealing damage to and flinging nearby units away or into the air.

Mission 05:

Charnel

New creature:

Deadeye

Type: Ranged
Passive Abilities: Replenishes life when attacking, poisons its victims, making them less accurate. Also prevents the target’s regeneration of life and mana.
Active Ability: None

Deadeye (2 Souls): An undead gnome, the deadeye shoots poison needles at enemies at long range. If the needle hits, the target takes damage, has decreased ranged accuracy, loses mana, and can't regenerate mana or life, all during the poison time. I love these guys, but remember that they need extra damage-dealing backup.

New spell:

Demonic Rift

When cast, a portal to a demonic realm opens up underneath the wizard and pink demons shoot at any enemy units within range for a short period of time. Once a demon has locked on, there's no escaping it, and a unit can only be targeted once per rift.

Mission 05:

Anyway:

The Tits, a Worm or an Airhead?

DISCUSS!

 

[lightbane]

James, Halo of Earth is awesome.

 

[Azira]

Rain of Frogs... Seriously?

At this point, Stratos seems to have the most useful spell, even if the exploding frogs sound amusing..

I'll let a few other folks vote before I throw mine in.

 

[Jaedar]

Persephone. As I recall, rain of frogs is awesome, whereas soul wind is kind of sucky, and the units are about equal(and awesome, pulling enemy wizards and powerful melee units into the air is incredibly useful)

 

[Erebus]

I'm voting for James, because it takes balls to defy gravity the way his Ickarus do.

 

[Redshirt #42]

Too bad you can't get Charnel's Deadeyes. They're probably the best sniper units. I'd like to know if the Halo of Earth spell is as good as it sounds though I'm not sure if you'll be able to do missions for Stratos later if you won't work for him now. Anyway, my vote goes to James.

 

[Fafnir]

Girl Titties. To much man boobs so far!

 

[lightbane]

Too bad you can't get Charnel's Deadeyes. They're probably the best sniper units. I'd like to know if the Halo of Earth spell is as good as it sounds though I'm not sure if you'll be able to do missions for Stratos later if you won't work for him now. Anyway, my vote goes to James.

Bullshit, James has probably the best snipers/ranged units, I do not remember the unit's name but

Spoiler

These motherfuckers attacking throwing 3 rocks at once, being able to hit 3 different units or attacking a single unit for triple damage. Truly devastating in groups.

 

[Redshirt #42]

Too bad you can't get Charnel's Deadeyes. They're probably the best sniper units. I'd like to know if the Halo of Earth spell is as good as it sounds though I'm not sure if you'll be able to do missions for Stratos later if you won't work for him now. Anyway, my vote goes to James.

Bullshit, James has probably the best snipers/ranged units, I do not remember the unit's name but

Spoiler

These motherfuckers attacking throwing 3 rocks at once, being able to hit 3 different units or attacking a single unit for triple damage. Truly devastating in groups.

I think that would be the Boulderdash. I've always thought that it is James's artillery unit but you're correct (it classifies as a sniper unit, even though it costs 4 souls).

 

[ghostdog]

To obtain 24 souls (requirement for Secondary Objective) I would probably have to kill all peasants, some of my units and probably some of Shakti's units too...
Oh, well, fuck this boon shit - let's end this!

acted like a true evil sorcerer/tyrant



















The Tits !

 

[marooned]

Persephone

 

[Reject_666_6]

James.

 

[Excommunicator]

soul wind is kind of sucky

Soul Wind can be one of the best in the game actually. Fast recharge, unlimited targets and simultaneously hits all creatures within range, killing low level fliers in one shot.

But we won't vote Stratos again. It's too bad the other two are locked out.

I'll vote for James I think. The fliers are all pretty similar but Halo is powerful

 

[spekkio]

I'll let a few other folks vote before I throw mine in.

Right. 10 votes should be enough this time...

Score:

4 votes

6 votes

0 votes

So:

 

[Cenobyte]

Damn, I wanted to vote for the Tits

and btw, could you upload your vids to a website that doesn't require quicktime? I cannot watch those vids because I don't have the necessary Firefox plugin

 

[spekkio]

These are not videos.
Click the file name to download the audio clip (~300 KB):

 

[Cenobyte]

These are not videos.
Click the file name to download the audio clip (~300 KB):

Yeah, sometimes you forget to check the most obvious. Allright and thanks.

 

[spekkio]

The mighty worm awaits...

Cindercrag <--- Link

I hate to say it, but destroy that thing before it starts doing whatever it does. That'll spare them some misery at least.

Zyzyx introduces new units:

First SERIOUS mission in the game, IMO.
Pyro is powerful and his wizard acts not-retarded this time.

Ed creates some units

Attacks small group of marauders

And tests his new spell (notice rocks above his head):

It's super-effective!

Unfortunately, we don't have time to convert enemy souls or create 2nd manalith - some motherfucker is desecrating our altar!



Ed is having a hard time:

It's Buta! Ed chases enemy sac-doctors away, but:

"Do" what?

Oh, that.

Yeah. While the dynamo is operational, a godamned volcano will erupt in random places from time to time...
Ed rebuilds his destroyed manalith:

Buta attacks again

We win. Barely.

From now on (until we get our hands on some more powerful spells), the game goes on like this:

1. enemy wizard attacks, using 10-20 units,
2. our wizard defends himself, having 10-20 units as well,
3. our army kills all enemy units, but due to casualties and enemy wizard being more and more powerful with each mission, is not able to kill him,
4. he picks up all souls of his soldiers, withdraws, rebuilds his army and attacks again,
5. see point #1

That's what killed this game for "casual" players: you have to use all possible spells and creatures' abilities to prevent enemy wizards from harvesting souls, or each mission may take forever.

The A.I. is very good, too good for my liking. I found some of the battles to go one forever (meaning 4-6 hours) without any sort of advancement. The game was so balanced that the scales never tipped either way. This hampered all of the other great factors going for the game (graphics).

But as time went on and the battles became more involved, the complexity of control became a significant hindrance for me. Also, I started getting really annoyed at situations where logically I should have no problem winning the battle but somehow (and I never figure out why) all of a sudden all of my creatures are dead and I'm being overrun. I'm sure some folks reading this will say that I'm just a sore loser, but I really felt that the battle logic didn't make sense in these situations and after it happened to me about 4 or 5 times I stopped playing. I've had much greater (and funner) challenges with Warcraft III or AOEII where logic prevails and your strategic competence is rewarded by victory.

Of course destroying enemy manaliths is the best idea, since it prevents enemy wizards from rebuilding their armies and casting powerful spells.
But that's exactly why enemy wizards start using guardians to protect their buildings from this mission onward...

And due to your shitty voting, we don't have any good ranged units to attack guardians from a distance.



Plus, in this mission our enemy has some "weapon of mass destruction" at his disposal.

tl;dr

You can't win in this mission without some serious

Ed goes back to the un-harvested enemy souls

Of course Buta attacks 30 seconds after that.
Since Ed spent his mana on converting / creating new units, he can't teleport to the altar and has to go back on foot.

He desperately tries to hit one of the sac-doctors, but...

Loading time. Ed stays near his altar this time, pwns Buta:

And rebuilds his army

In the meantime, Buta harvest all souls of the enemies that we killed earlier

Ed tries to stop him on his own but Buta just grabs all souls of his dead soldiers and withdraws.

Ed builds second manalith and protects it with a guardian

We attack Buta, killing most of his army

And continue close to the area where dynamo is. Here we pwn some marauders and create a temple to quickly convert their souls (you can see the dynamo in the distance):

Of course that's a perfect time for Buta to attack our altar again... But he fails horribly this time:

Suddenly, a motherfuckin' volcano erupts right below our asses!

This stuff happened so fast, that Ed wasn't able to teleport his units away or do anything to be honest.
ALL units die, including Ed:

While Ed awaits his resurrection, Buta attacks again:

Ed resurrects, grabs some souls (notice the crater's size)

Stops another desecration attempt

And pwns all remaining enemies singlehandedly (Buta withdrawed).
He survives with ONE units alive (Gammel)

I hate this game...

Ed rebuilds his army

And attacks another Buta's manalith. Fucker build it close to Charlotte's altar.

She is nowhere to be found and he didn't desecrate the altar. WTF is going on here?

Ed pwns Buta (loosing most of his army):

Builds another manalith and rebuilds the army

Our orders are clear:

But there's some other thing that I really want to do first:

Feeling that his end is near, Buta attacks

Too bad that he mostly creates Pyrodactyls, and Halo of Earth can kill all of them easily:

His final (?) manalith is heavily guarded (I would do the same if I was him).

In most cases I would simply attack his altar from the direction opposite to the manalith (3-4 guardians can kill 15-20 units easily).
But due to my metagaming knowledge, I know that banishing him after loosing a part of my army (and that's inevitable) is not a wise idea.
Let's destroy all his manaliths and prepare a big army before ending him.

Ed waits till Buta moves away from the manalith (he went after our new manalith near Charlotte's altar) and attacks:

He loses most of his army, but Buta should be out of mana soon.
Ed creates another temple and orders a huge converting ritual:

Buta shows up and grabs some of his souls

Notice that we cannot target him with slowing spells while he's shielded - and computer-controlled wizards are ALWAYS shielded
It looks like he has one more manalith left:

Not for long

Ed creates another manalith and converts more souls. Buta is waiting next to his altar:

Ed creates more units, and:

Buta shows up to defend his altar, but he's gangraped within seconds

Pyro contacts Ed:

That's right, bitches!

Should we continue working for the good guys:

Or maybe we should switch to the "other side":

The Worm:

Or The Master Builder:

DISCUSS!

 

[Drakron]

Stay.

 

[silver crowaxe]

I rejected Pyro's offer.

 

[Excommunicator]

Switch.

We need more awesome firepower which you mostly lack atm as your suckiness in this level proved

Pyro or Charnel will give you the firepower you need spekk

 

[lightbane]

Stay.

 

[Lumpy]

Switch. Pyro is a lot more interesting than a lousy worm.

 

[Cenobyte]

Stay