War | Chapter 4 - "The Bull in the Borderlands"

By Mathew Steel

Mission 1:

Win - Complete all tasks

1. Rescue holy relic

2. Destroy outlaw camp

3. Rescue Sir Grey

Win - Kill "The Bull"

Lose - Sir Grey dies

Lose - Your lord dies

Your tasks here are many. However, they conveniently assist one another. Doing these three tasks in the order intended will assist your completion. Let’s begin by building a strong and stable economy. These guides are written with the expectation you will learn more from each mission. For the sake of clarity and pace, I will not guide you through every tiny step. The image below shows a good economical start. You will need a granary, hovels, a stockpile, an armoury, a barracks, a treasury, apple farms, stone quarries, woodcutter carts, and oxen transporters. You may also want to add some hunter posts to increase your honour. Set the treasury taxes to “High” and the granary rations to “Double”. Next, you should have a good amount of gold. Build 4 fletcher workshops, and 2 poleturner workshops. This will allow the production of spears and bows to raise your army. This will be the basis of your army for the entirety of this chapter.

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Begin producing your army as you begin production for other good. Edwin will send you some units during this time. Once you have about 10 archers and 10 spearmen, you can begin the first task. To rescue the holy relic, you must reach the monks in the top-right corner of the map. There will be packs of wolves blocking your path. Use the archers to shoot at the wolves from a distance and place your spearmen in front of your archers as cannon-fodder. Continue this, going along the right-side path, until you arrive at the holy relic.

This task is not as simple as it seems. This chapter requires you to focus on multiple events at the same time. As your small group of men make their way to the monks, you need to ensure the outlaws cannot cause too much issue for your economy. Raise a small army of archers and place them on the barracks to repel the small early attacks from the outlaws.

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Once you have completed the first task, select your newly acquired warrior monks, along with any surviving units from the original group, and command them to return to the keep. By now, your quarries will have produced a sizeable amount of stone. Build a watchtower to the left of your territory and place 8 archers on top. This will be the start of your defence against the outlaws.

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Continue recruiting archers and spearmen. In the meantime, you can build a Lord’s Kitchen, along with a few pig farms and eel ponds to acquire large amounts of honour quickly. By now, you will need to start growing the economy further. You will likely notice the hunter posts are not doing much in terms of rations. You can remove these and replace the production of meat with bread. This change will not be significant, but it will help. You can place more apple farms in the meantime, to allow bread production to catch up. It is very likely many outlaws will begin breaking past this one watchtower. With the stone you have, build a few more in a vertical line, along with a two-thick wall connecting the towers. Place 8 archers in each tower. A total of 3 towers, with 24 archers should be enough for the task at hand.

With the extra archers and the newly acquired melee units, you can now siege the outlaw camp. The elevated hill adjacent to the camp is a perfect opportunity for a height advantage. Select about 20 archers and place them on top of the hill. They will clear a good majority of the outlaws. Then, use your melee units to kill any stragglers and then destroy the outlaw camp.

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Destroying the camp will award you with a sizeable amount of gold. Use this gold to increase weapon production. Personally, I had 8 fletcher workshops, and 4 poleturner workshops. You can adjust this number if you wish. Finally, let’s rescue Sir Grey.

Raise another army of spearmen and archers. You can use rally points to speed up this task. In the image below, you can see how I used them.

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About 50 archers and 30 spearmen will do the job just fine. However, a small change in numbers shouldn’t cause you any issues. Whilst raising this army, it would be wise to begin a horizontal defence to the north of your territory. Rescuing Sir Grey upsets certain individuals, and you will need to repel a counter-offensive. Copy the same design as before, although, the north attack will require a few more towers and archers. You should have plenty of time to rescue Sir Grey, so don’t feel rushed into completing the task immediately. Ensure your defence is strong first.

Once you’re ready, move your units towards Sir Grey’s castle. Using the same spearmen defence method as we have many times, attack the camp outside. Allow your melee units to take the brunt of the archers and use your own archers to kill the enemy units whilst they are distracted. The task shouldn’t be too difficult, but it is likely you will lose many of your units just because of the number of archers in the siege.

Finally, you are on the last part of this chapter. It is not long before the two armies lay siege on your castle. In the images below, you can see how the defences we have set up are small, but efficient in quickly demolishing enemy attacks.

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If you find yourself struggling, simply recruit more archers and spearmen, and charge up on the enemy using the spearmen defence method. It is very unlikely any enemy units will get far into your territory, even with an open-walled defence. Of course, closing off any entry points will ensure a safer castle; however, it isn’t needed for this chapter.

Now to kill The Bull. Before anything, build an Engineer’s Guild. This will allow you to produce catapults. Use rally points to automatically send new recruits to the top of the map, where you will prepare to attack The Bull.

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From this point onwards, you will not need to defend your lands. This means you can focus all your resources and attention to the final siege. In reality, archers will be your key units for this siege, as you will not actually get to kill The Bull, as he is scripted to flee the map area after a certain point. About 60 archers will do the trick. Recruit some ladder-men and some catapults and begin. Move the archers close to the front of the large gatehouse, then command the ladder-men to scale the walls, as your catapults close in to give support. Once the east-wall is clear, move your archers on top, and make your way along to the south-wall. You can use your spearmen to assist your archers in clearing the walls. Finally, move your units up to the keep. You will notice The Bull has fled.

However, sometimes The Bull will get stuck in place in the top-left corner of the map. Moving your units towards him will often re-trigger the event, allowing you to complete the mission. If not, remember, you can download a save-game of this mission via SHN download central.

You did it! Well done!