Why Steadwick's Fall Is Too Difficult

I've long enjoyed the Heroes and Might and Magic series, and consider the third game to be the high point of the series. It continued the improvements started in the second game, while still staying true to the fundamentals of the series- turn-based combat with RPG elements for the heroes who lead your armies. The campaigns are largely enjoyable, but have their share of problems, such as rapidly increasing difficulty early on. Steadwick's Fall, an early mission, is unusually difficult compared to the others, and this entry will discuss why that poses a problem.

Context

For starters, let's provide some details as to where Steadwick's Fall is in the campaign. The campaign mode allows you to start with one of three campaigns- Long Live the Queen, Spoils of War and Dungeons and Devil- and you must complete all three campaigns before you can access the next two. The player must then complete the next two campaigns- Liberation and Long Live the King- to unlock the last campaign, Song for the Father, which is required for the secret campaign, Seeds of Discontent. As you can see, Steadwick's Fall is both early on in the campaign and required to progress further.

Steadwick's Fall is the third and final scenario in Dungeons and Devils, the first evil campaign, and is accessed after playing the first two missions- A Devilish Plan and Tunnels and Troglodytes- in any order. The former has you play as the nation of Nighon (Dungeon town) and the latter has you play as the Kreegans of Eeofol(Inferno town), facing off against Erathian(primarily Castle town) forces. The former requires you to kill a neutral Gold Dragon unit in an underground area, which is easier than it sounds, while the latter simply requires you to defeat all your enemies.  Both missions involve you facing enemies who are at a severe handicap, and cannot produce their highest level units. There is no option to change the difficulty setting for the campaign, but since the difficulty is set to Easy, and you get a significant resource advantage, the first two missions are easy to complete.

Steadwick's Fall

Let's start with the basic facts of the mission.

• The objective of the mission is to capture Steadwick. Capturing specific cities is a common objective, and those cities tend to be well-defended.
• There are three ways to lose all the mission. The first two are standard- lose all your towns and heroes, or lose all your towns and fail to capture a town within seven days. The third is failing to capture Steadwick by the start of the fourth month; three months of four weeks each leaves you 84 days.
• The difficulty is set to Normal. Since it's the second-easiest out of the five settings (Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert and Impossible), it isn't much more difficult than the first two scenarios.
• The last factor is the campaign bonus, which gives you a choice between several perks, such as extra resources, an artifact or additional units. This time, you can choose between your strongest heroes from A Devilish Plan, and those from Tunnels and Troglodytes. Unfortunately, this means that you won't have any additional help save for a somewhat high-level hero.
• You begin with three towns- a Dungeon and an Inferno that are decently developed, and a Castle that mainly serves as a source of extra gold.

The map itself isn't too hard. Neutral enemies of varying strength are scattered around the map, guarding various items of interest. The enemy isn't very aggressive, since it won't come after you until you start making forays into its territory, and won't pick fights it doesn't think it can win. The problem, however, is taking Steadwick.

Seizing Steadwick

Steadwick itself is near the center of the map. The shortest route there involves bypassing another Castle city, and breaking through a Garrison that has Royal Griffins, Zealots and Champions as guards (Castle Tier 3, 5 and 6 units, all upgraded), which is a challenging battle, but nothing overly difficult. The real challenge comes when you reach Steadwick itself.

The city of Steadwick has a massive army defending it, with dozens if not hundreds of each Castle unit except for the Angels (the Castle's Tier 7 unit). Creature dwellings nearby augment the town's unit production, which means that Steadwick will likely be able to produce units faster than you can.

Then there's the hero defending the town, Gen. Kendal. The strength of a hero helps increase the strength of an army, with their contributions coming from four stats- Offense and Defense increase the units' respective statistics, Power increases spells' potency or duration and Knowledge increases mana. Gen. Kendal's statistics are likely to be much higher than those of your heroes, so his armies will be at an overwhelming advantage in battle. You'll be hard-pressed to match him at the start of the scenario, and the gap will likely only grow wider as time goes by and the deadline draws nearer. The best solution is to approach Steadwick when Gen. Kendal is outside, then rush in and capture the city, as I did when I completed the map.

Why This Is A Problem

I can understand why the mission would be difficult, since it involves capturing Erathia's capital city, but that still doesn't justify the difficulty. From a gameplay perspective, the mission is too difficult in comparison to the ones that came before it. From a narrative perspective, Erathia has become vulnerable after the death of King Gryphonheart, which is why Nighon and Eeofol are invading, 

Perhaps part of the problem lies in that it can be difficult to set the difficulty curve in games in less linear games that have multiple parts that must be completed. In some cases, the parts may be of roughly equal difficulty, but the next part of the game will be much more difficult. In other cases, the player must be able to guess which parts are the easiest ones, and tackle those first.

As I mentioned above, it's possible to finish the scenario by sneaking into Steadwick while Gen. Kendal is not guarding the city. Normally, it is good to reward players for thinking outside the box, but this tactic largely relies on luck. Gen. Kendal's AI is smart enough that he will not challenge a hero outside the city unless he is reasonably sure he can win and the opponent is close enough for him to return to Steadwick after the battle, so it is generally not possible to use a hero to lure him out while another hero sneaks in.

Perhaps one of a few things could have been done to reduce the difficulty of this mission.

1. Remove the three-month time limit. The game scores you based on the difficulty of the map or campaign, as well as how long you take, so you are already being penalized for taking more time. The in-universe justification for the time limit is Catherine advancing to reinforce Steadwick, but none of the other missions in the first three campaigns have time limits.
2. Reduce Gen. Kendal's statistics. Not only does Gen. Kendal have a large army, but his troops hit even harder because of his high Offense, inflicting casualties is even more difficult due to their high Defense, and his vast repertoire of spells makes it easy for him to enhance his units' capabilities while hindering yours. Some of his power comes from his artifacts, such as the Sword of Judgment (a hefty +6 to all statistics), so without those, he would be easier to defeat.
3. Give Gen. Kendal a large garrison but limit his capacity to recruit more troops. This would essentially make it a race against time, with the player being forced to field an army capable of facing Gen. Kendal's as soon as possible, but would make it less likely for him to outproduce the player.

Conclusion

Steadwick's Fall is a good example of a mission that's too difficult for its- or the game's- own good. Video games should be challenging, but they should also be fair, and provide a good difficulty curve. As such, a mission this challenging would have been better off retooled or moved to later on in the campaign.