The Siege

Quest Background: The war with Borjin the Conqueror has progressed all the way to his stronghold. His defenses must be broken through or starved out.Objective: Destroy the Dark Palace, either directly by force or by cutting off its supply of gold by intercepting caravans. This is a very interesting quest because you're up against nearly a full-fleged computer-controlled kingdom that functions just like your own. The computer-controlled kingdom has peasants, tax collectors, and may cast sovereign spells and place reward flags just like like what you can do. The main deficiency of the computer is that it cannot build new buildings, so once an enemy structure falls it's gone for good. Worthy of note is that you cannot build wizards guilds in this quest. Several effective approaches are possible in winning this quest. A few will be discussed below.There are a few essential elements to this quest. The first is that a strong economy is absolutely essential. The easiest way to maintain a strong economy is to build multiple trading posts across the map. A reasonable goal is to eventually reach at least 4 trading posts on the edge of your side of the map, at least one fully upgraded market place, and a host of other revenue-generating buildings such as blacksmiths and inns. Replace any trading posts that go down. Chances are that the enemy will not do a very good job hunting your trading posts so don't worry if one of them falls. If you build rogues, make sure you make build some statues to increase loyalty or else they will target your own buildings! Initially, the computer will attack with warriors and elves. Surprisingly, the paladin which is often effective against monsters is not very effective in the beginning of this quest. Paladins are not able to defeat warriors fast enough before the computer heals them. Paladins tend to get swarmed by warriors who will level quickly by fighting the paladin and eventually defeat her. Until the enemy warriors guild is destroyed, the effective unit in dealing with warriors appears to be Solarii who have offensive spells which warriors cannot effectively resist. Furthermore, going with Helia (as opposed to Krolm or Lunord) gives two offensive spells to destroy caravans or enemy heroes. Another hero that is very effective against enemy heroes is the priestess, due to her ranged magic attack. However, using Kryta would be a huge gamble, since you'll have more expensive healing and resurrection spells and you'll need to demolish the temple to Agrela with which you begin. Healers are very capable support units since they rarely get killed on the battlefield. Once you have your economy set up to a reasonable extent, you can decide whether you want to win by starvation or by force. If by the former, the best approach is to locate the spawn points of the enemy caravans and place ballista towers in the area. If any get through, use your Helia spells to burn up the escaping caravans. As long as your heroes are holding the front against the enemy, you should eventually destroy enough caravans so that the enemy runs out of gold, at which point the Dark Palace collapses and you win.Alternatively, if you really want to have some fun, you can take your Solari right to the enemy's base and stage and epic fight. In this approach, a very strong economy is required to continually resurrect and heal heroes and cast offensive spells against the enemy. Therefore, you'll definitely need Elves if you follow this approach. With a powerhouse economy, you'll essentially be able to continually cast sun scorch (the second Helia spell) to keep his warriors down. An effective trick is to use earthquake on his base and then cast sun scorch on the peasants that try to repair. After long battles, the enemy will run out of money trying to keep up with hero recruitment or resurrection and the Dark Palace will collapse. Sadly, though, it is very difficult to actually destroy the palace with heroes because chances are that once you have enough heroes there, it will have already collapsed due to the draining of its treasury.