u/RandomGuy-4-

Got him randomly while playing regularly. He's my first shiny ever (on legit hardware at least haha) and would like to get some use out of him in the late game so he earns his right to be on the final photo.

He's got pretty decent phys/sp defense IVs and mid IVs for everything else but his nature is awful (Quiet) and looks like the elite 4 in this game is really tough even for better bug pokemon.

I think everything checks out, but posting to get an expert opinion. Got it two years ago and I've always had the doubt in the back of my mind because of it being a USA cart that somehow ended up in Spain.

Hi there.

I completed the Joan d'Arc campaign on hard just now. I had seen the 6th mission get mentioned in multiple threads about the hardest misions in the game, so I was kinda scared that I would get stuck on it (for reference, I am the guy that posted about thinking that Montezuma 3 was quite hard early this week). And, my fear was kind of right. The first time I played the mission I got demolished by a three pronged attack right after I took over the central Burgundy base. If I was a better player that doesn't lose half their units to random mangonel shots, I might have tried grinding out this method until I won, but in my case I'm terrible at the game, so I tried to get creative.

The strat I figured out and ended up beating the mission with makes the mision way easier than any of the strats I saw mentioned online I checked the wiki and reddit threads (after the I completed the mision. I did it fully blind aside from resigning to see the map) to see if someone did the same as I did and I was surprised to find no mentions of the exact same strat. Some parts of it are mentioned, as well as other more difficult strats, but not this one, so I thought I'd write this post in case some hardstuck players have no luck with the other strats.

So here's how it goes (TL;DR at the bottom if you don't want to read about it in detail):

At the start, imediately put all of your army but the cavalry into the little pocket of forest area that the cart with the flag. Put your paladins in front of the exit and the arbalests behind them in case some random cavalier unit goes around there, but for now these units can just chill for a few minutes.

Take all of your cavalry (hero units, paladins and hussars, all of it) and immediately send it for the southern burgundy base. Unlike the base in the middle of the map that the scenario really wants you to lose half your army to at the start, this southern base, which functions as Burgundy's base once you kick them from the center one, starts with just a few building and villagers and has no walls, castles or units protecting it. You can just run under the TC and tank the arrows till it dies. Make sure to kill all the villagers you see. This will make Burgundy functionally defeated, or even get them to surrender after you destroy their other TC at the main base.

If you are good at the game and can do two things at the same time, now could be a good moment to start attacking the central base with the rest of our army. In my case, I left that for later and sent our cavalry on their second adventure: defeating Shrewsbury (orange).

Yep, they can also be defeated at the very start with just our starting cavalry units. What you want to do is head for their base, but make sure to skirt as far away from the central burgundy base as you can so that you don't aggro the Burgundian army. If you aggro it, they will chase you to the end of the universe. Once you make it to the Shrewsbury base's gate, give it a love tap so that his cavaliers aggro to you, including some that will be inside. Don't worry, your cavalry army can take them on and just lose a unit or two (for reference, after that small fight I had 14 units of cav at this point). The important part is that you need to run into his base when one of the cavaliers opens the gate. England might send some longbowmen after you, but your cav will shred them without an issue.

Once you deal with the annoyances, head straight for the TC. One of the corners of the tc isn't in range of the castle, so just stand there. Once the tc is down, start picking off the villagers. They will keep trying to garrison into the castle but will come out as soon as you step away a bit, so you can easily take bites at them until they are all dead which will cause shrewsbury to surrender (or if you are like me, you can get distracted for a second and lose half your cav to the castle I guess). Some of the vills at the start are outside chopping wood, but they came into the town when I was hitting other villagers. If that's not the case then you might have to break the gate to go kill them. Either way, this completely knocks out this AI and we get a nice empty base with huge gold mines that can be of use later.

At this point the game is practically almost won, as long as you don't fumble the third step (like I did once): taking the center base and killing Burgundy for good. The easiest way to do this is to hit one of the towers that you can trb from the place where the flag cart is at the start of the mission. You just need to hit the tower once, then pack the treb and put it in the corner so it doesn't die to the enemy trebs that will come out. This will make the entire burgundian army make a bee line to your trebuchet, so you can easily kill it by patroling your champs and handgunners and microing the arbalests to kill the monks and mangonels. It's better to leave the BBCs on no fire stance and put them in a corner so that they don't kill your own troops. Use the hero canon unit to snipe the trebs that will try to range yours across the forest.

In my case, the english AI also attacked right after I was done with the burgundian army, but they just have a few longbows and trebs, which you can easily deal with as long as you didn't lose many arbalests and paladins to their mangonels. Once the attacks are done, all you have to do to fully kill Burgundy is to destroy his TC at the central base. In my case, I destroyed the keeps and then cut through the forest using the treb so that my army never had to leave the forest chokepoint in case the English AI attacked again. After the TC goes down, move all of your units into their new home. Try to not destroy any of the houses because they will become yours and you will be like 15 units deep into being housed.

If you reach this point, the map is basically 90% won. Depending on how many units you have left after the previous steps, the first english attacks could be very dangerous (if you were as slow as me, they will attack once immediately after you blow up the Burgundy TC. They have a trigger that I think requires a certain ammout of time to have passed AND the burg TC to be destroyed to trigger). To survive this attack, again, focus on their siege units using your arbalests and cavalry and then clean up the longbows.

After the initial attack and with your TC up, you can start pumping out vills. All you need is just enough wood for a few houses and a stable and you can send all the other vills into food and gold. Start pumping out knights. Once you have a few start getting their blacksmish upgrades and such.

At this point the map is basically GG. The English AI is a total pushover against knights since it only ever makes longbows, some siege and some cavaliers. Their base is still super fortified so you might have to take it slowly, but there's basically no reason you can lose at this point unless you go AFK or stop queing knights. After you have a solid group of 20-30 or so knights with a few upgrades, you can start moving vills to stone, get a castle, go to imp and start making trebs and slowly just roll over England will your paladins and trebs.

The strat to go for the killshot on Shresbury and to make the burgundy army do a conga line are on the wiki, but surprisingly I didn't see any mention of also going for the killshot on Burgundy's southern base at the start. Make sure to save after you destroy each TC as a lot of things can go wrong before you get to your unlosable position, but overall if you are a bit cautious and know the map this can be done without needing to reload.

So that's how a semi lobotomized person with the APM of a grandpa's clock's pendulum beat this mission quite easily. Did anyone else do the same?

TL;DR: Rush burgundy's southern base with your cav and kill the TC and vills. Rush Shrewsbury's base with your cav and kill TC and vills (Shrewsbury will surrender). Kill central Burg base and take it over (Burg will either surrender of have 1 useless vill stay alive doing nothing). Survive 1 England push. Easily kill England with knights/paladins and trebs like on the rest of missions in this campaign.