Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Doing Act 1 too well can screw you over in Act 2.

After you end Act 1, you’re transported to Act 2, losing your research and gold income and having no way back. This is fine, as long as you made sure to research Ironclads, a unit you had no real use for in Act 1, and have a bunch of extra gold saved up. If you didn’t research Ironclads, you’re probably in trouble.

If you hurried through Act 1, though, you can enter Act 1 with only a few research points and things researched, and the odds are that you won’t have many useful mercenaries. You’re dumped into a map with a single territory that has 8 gold and 3 RP a turn, your only options to expand require you to get transports across the water and hope they don’t get intercepted. You won’t be able to reliably reinforce those territories from your mainland until you can counter the enemy navy. Those who breezed through Act 1 in a hurry can find themselves screwed and surrounded. It doesn’t help that the enemy capital, unlike every other map, is right next door.

I watched Swen’s review of the final build Twitch.tv cast, and so I knew that Act 2 starts you on an island and transports can get intercepted, so I made a point of researching Ironclads before leaving Act 1 the first time I entered Act 2, and my second time in Act 2, the extra time I needed to beat the chapter on Hard left me with the funds to get 6 Ironclads at once, which basically let me clear the seas of enemies.

But how is someone who didn't prepare supposed to know that?

I'm not a big fan of the Act II starting positions. If you don't have the resources to overwhelm Karthan immediately, he does nothing all game but mass units at his capital and ocassionally attack yours with them. Sure, it increases the difficulty, but not in a fun way in my opinion. The navy issue just adds to that because you have no need for anything but transports in act I (and you can do even without those honestly), so you likely won't be prepared the first time.

I was so much thrown into cold water O_o
I didn't have much technology and just focused on ground units.
So no ironclads for me.
And some of the enemies already had destroyers.
Geez.
I'm still fighting in act 2 but I made sure to harden my position but it's still really tough
But that's what makes the game really enjoyable.
I'm not really good at RTS games. No in fact I'm completeley sucking xD
But here comes a challange and I'll solve it.

Some people (like me) prefer to hold off on progressing if given the option so they may research as much as they can and build up an emergency bankroll to avoid getting caught with their pants down upon entry to the next stage.

However I'd say the default assumption is that such precautionary measures are optional. If they aren't, then the game should warn you to prepare yourself well before triggering the progression.

Thank you for the heads up though, it's good to know what to expect.

A little bug i noticed from act one to act teo that breaks the cap of 50 gold and 30 research for a turn. Posting so Larian can see it and fix if unintended and unwanted. If you take all the territories -1 and the capital and build as many fold mines/academies you want/can then take the capital, the cap is taken off but you get an extra turn in act one on account of there being a hostile territory left.

It far from game breaking at best you can come out with about ninity gold/fifty research into act two could prob get higher if you play your cards right.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Karthan's AI keeps all his troops on the island.

This seems to be a problem with the strategy map AI - it doesn't really know how to deal with starting on an island. I checked on the "Arena of Aurora" Custom Campaign, where everyone starts on an island, and two of the AI's pretty much didn't expand at all. They also built up troops on their islands and only occasionally moved out. The third AI landed, spread and used land-based war factories to capture half the continent by turn 10, meanwhile two other AI only had like 3 countries each not on their starting island.

I don't know a good way to fix the Karthan situation. If the AI is fixed so he uses transports more, he'll constantly invade your capital. If the status quo remains, it'll take a long, annoying buildup to beat him. I certainly remember the first time. I plopped about 20 transports onto it and learned that the models will shrink if there are too many units on a territory.



I didn't do that, but I took the capital and there was still an empty transport in open water, so I had an extra turn to kill it, and that also broke the cap. I entered Act 2 with 94 gold and 50 Research.

Not really a fix but it worked for me, i made sure the waters where clear so my transport didn't end up in combat with an ironclad or a Juggernaut, and dropped a single transport of units onto his capital. From there i just waited in base getting buildings up for the long fight to take him out but when dragon timer is up i wiped the floor with his army single handily in dragon form, was close cause the tip of his massive column was just about to reach my starting location, but nothing a bit of fiery splosions couldn't fix Trinculo would be proud. I was using both breaths (acid spray/breaching fire), devastation, scales of steel and blood leech as mountain dragon. Make sure you are always hitting something if you are tanking shots and aim where they are clustered for the AoE damage, blood leech gets life steal from the splash damage aswell. Costs a bit of research as apposed to gold, but it saves you units you can use pushing the front against green and yellow.



Yeah i hate transports randomly being around... bad experiance of me leaving one to opt in for a naval battle and it plonked a bunch of units in the middle of a undefended area of the map... T_T so now i murder them all.

So i know nothing about the programming but it seems the trigger for removing the cap is on occupying the capital, rather then entering act 2.

Well, I had time to waste while waiting to be able to play as well, so I caught mention here of researching everything available in Chapter I helping a lot in Chapter II. Therefore I took my time getting to the enemy capital, taking all but the top-left island (because I'd totally forgotten its existence after he had stopped producing units on it several turns prior) before it, but dallying further felt decidedly unfun.

That ended up fine, though, but transports getting intercepted screwed me out of two loads of valuable troops on the eastern coast early on.

And yeah, Karthan is nothing but a terrible nuisance to the player and Faran is hardly better as Sybille has been amassing (and rotating) a huge army nearly undisturbed while he served as a lousy buffer between me and her. Then again, at least they've been fighting each other *some*, unlike either of them and Karthan.

Also, you get way too few cards.

I'm not particularly optimistic I'll be able to beat it on my first try anymore.

*SPOILLERS* I'm sure by now maxos has introduced you to corvus, not sure if you followed up on that but Allowing him to devour in dreams or sacrificing your wife to him grants you high quality cars nine times out of ten. This dose how ever reduce your empires population by a % each time you allow him to devour, and its obvious the costs when you sacrifice your wife. Another way is to, although it is ruled by RNG Gods, is to plant down some Parliaments till you get a free emporium card aloowing you to buy cards out of a pool and then throw that down and swap out your parliaments to buildings of the card types you want.

Oh yeah, building my own buildings. Somehow I ended up forgetting all about that after not having had the money for that for the longest time and the AI chars constantly planting predominantly war factories almost everywhere leaving me with half my territories filled already, and making me see that practical sea of buildings (which still look way to similar for the most part at a quick glance) and wonder if they even still give cards at all whenever I did remember the possibility of building map structures.
Thanks for reminding me. XD

Lol, No worries, i completely forgot the first few times when i first bought into the beta to, also like with massing technology, you can plant buildings of choice in act one in all your territories, (or as many as the fifty gold cap will allow), and farm cards from them. I will warn you though, i have a suspicion given they only generate cards every 3 turns that you will run the Council/General events well dry.

Zeran, just so you know, we have a spoiler tag, so as to hide spoilers. It works like this: [spoiler ] [/ spoiler] only without the spaces.


Act's 1 and 3 are challenging in a good way, but I have to agree that Act 2 is not so much. Farhan doesn't seem to be very effective for some reason. There's also only the single undead country. If you look at the map when starting a custom campaign or multiplayer campaign, the map preview shows another continent that is missing in this version. I wonder why that is.

Thanks. Im used to some old school message boards or forums without features like that.

As for Farhan i did ONCE actually see him do something but it was only after i experimented with destroying the units in his capital then retreating. He created a transport + some units on the island to the south and then took the islands weest of there. Not sure if he would do anything from there on as i reloaded and continued as normal.