I'm making this thread because there's absolutely no other thread, reddit page, or YouTube video that explains how to get through this level.

I imagine I'm probably just missing something super simple that I haven't noticed yet, but this map seems harder than even Caesar's Challenge, because no matter what I do I always get out-resourced very quickly, and when I try to pile up armies and rip through the AI's territories, it always counters with a large stack that obliterates my stacks of 40-50+, which I've never seen before (an AI as aggressive as this -- normally they wait or rush themselves into bigger stacks, not pile their entire supply to knock out mine).

I've tried grabbing the main land mass you start on first for the +15 bonus and securing the bridges, and my strategy up until now has been to take the surrounding bridges and push the AI back to the back lands so I can grab the territories elsewhere, but this doesn't seem to work when the AI always bashes my walls of 30s and 40s and breaks through. Out-resourced, there doesn't seem to be any other way of going about this.

Help? Thanks!

Hi,

I decided to give the level a stab to see how it played out, and won it on my first try.

A few tips:

-Expand as quickly as possible at the start.
-Don't try to defend here. Just accept that your bonuses will be broken by AI and clean up/try to retake after each break. This is more about breaking more of the AI's bonuses before the AI can break more of your bonuses.
-Bring the fight to the AI. The roads are really nice for this and you can break bonuses really easy using them.
-Don't stop expanding at the AI encounter. Each time you take a territory you are left with 2 armies, so I reccomend continuing to take by deploying 1 to each leftovers and working on the bonuses.
-Don't forget about your leftovers that might be deep inside your territory. They might not seem like much, but they do add up quickly, and with the roads they can be brought back into the fight/ to expand/ VERY quickly.
-Keep an eye out for wherever the ai tries to complete bonuses, if its adjacent to your bonus, just counter completions where you see them.

Most importantly, id try to get a grasp of the AI behavior. Watch what it does for a few turns. It has some randomness, but overall it is very predictable. The AI is VERY reactive, as it plays based off of what it sees on the board, NOT where you WILL play. So if you just keep adding to stacks it will likewise prefer the same and try to destroy them. But if there is no stack there it won't deploy much and it becomes much easiar to defend from it.

Also, another tendency is that the AI will not defend road territories very much, since they have no bonuses attached to them. Use this to your advantage to get as many borders on each AI bonus as possible. And try to break as many as possible using minimalistic attacks (ie, attacks of 3), as the ai has a habit of choosing 1 territory in a bonus to defend heavily and defend the others lightly.

Furthermore, don't worry if the AI is a little ahead on income, just stay aggressive. I was down 20 income at encounter, and still won easily since I know exactly how the AI tends to behave.

-Aura

Edited 6/21/2020 00:46:02