Ukrainian Mission #1

By Krud139

Part One – Survival

At the start of the mission you are given 24 Serdiuks, and a message is displayed to head to the west in order to meet with the leader of the village under attack. From the beginning strategy is important, it is essential that your starting men survive for a while as they are going to be needed later. First send one man about half of a screen to the west, you will see 5 Spakhs and one tartar heading your direction. Then you will get the warning message that the leader is going to bring more men. The Spakhs will immediately head for your single man while the others have a chance to pick off the rest of the Spakhs before they can do any major damage. The best you can probably do here is loosing 2 to 4 men. Immediately after the Spakhs are dead, head to the west for there is going to be a small column of light infantry heading your way. On the way west a few of your men may be picked off, but don’t worry, you need only about 13-15 men from now on. Once you reach the gates, pass through and lock them as soon as all of your men are in for there will be more units attacking the paling wall. Head further to the west and after hearing what the headman has to say follow him to the west, but leave one man behind just incase you loose all of your men in the defense of the head man. Once you reach the western village with the headman there will be a small volley of Spakh Calvary which wont be incredibly too hard to fight off with your 12-14 men. Once the headman has told you to retreat, try to save your men from the tartar attack, but if you cant you still have your man that you left behind to keep the quest going. Once you reach the northern village, the village and its peasants are turned over to your command, immediately build three barracks and start creating men. Queue a few villagers in the town hall at this time. Of the 12 original villagers you were given, send six down to the paling wall, they will be needed later. At this time make sure that you shut your southern and western gates, so that tartars don’t start pouring in. Of the men that were from your original party, only a few are left. At this time create 3 or 4 priests from your church and send them to where the villagers are at the southern wall. There is an eastern hill overlooking the pass you came to to get to your village. There is a good spot for placing 10 or 12 men to shoot down and kill a few enemies there. Now, since you have men being created, send them down to where the villagers are behind the wall. Send any villagers being created at the town hall to farm or chop wood. Keep sending all of your created soldiers to the southern wall. Once you have about 20 men there open up the gate, the enemy, seeing that the gate is open will try to attack, once you have picked off a few, close the gate, and the enemy will retreat. If any of your men are wounded, your powerful priests will heal them. After a little while, a good amount of Spakhs will attack. Your Serdiuks will defend from behind the wall, but in the meantime, use your six villagers to repair the wall that they are trying to knock down. Once they are dead you will have about 45-60 men created and in position at the southern wall. The next attack is when the wall is going to go no matter what. There will be a large column of grenadiers coming for you, they are going to kill the wall, but they will all be dead before they hurt any of your men. Once the grenadiers are dead, that column of tartars is going to follow in. They shouldn’t be too hard to handle simply because of your priests and superior (hopefully) numbers, use those villagers to set up a small wall of human flesh if need be. Remember, Ukrainian villagers are tough.

Part 2 – Rescue

By now you will have seen a message telling you that there are some Cossacks being held captive to the south, and that there are mines to the east. Create a small force of about 30 men to take those mines to the west. Along with those 30 men, send 2 priests with them. Once you get relatively close, you will notice those howitzers. How Fortuitous! Decent weapons to capture. Send one man close to the howitzers as bait and, once both of the howitzers have fired move in and capture them, as well as the mines, 2 birds with one stone. Of course, now, send 20 villagers over to populate those mines quickly, time is essential. Make sure that you research the next mine upgrade for both gold and coal because with only five villagers running each, you will easily run out. Now, continue to create more Serdiuks constantly. During this next part, cut your across the steppe to the south using the large hill in the center of the map as a good spot for your howitzers. You will inevitably have to face off against a column of Spakhs so make sure that you have a lot of men. You have a good twenty minutes to cut your way across the country to get to the prisoners before they’re shipped out and you loose. From this point on, once you have conquered the large hill in the center of the map and place your artillery there for use in the advantageous positions, you should have enough time for smooth sailing throughout the rest of the mission. Once you rescue the men from the rather weakly defended outpost you win. You need only 30 men if that to take the outpost from the weak garrison.