Ericridge

Join Date 02/2012

+27

Iron Shortage

So about after 200 hours of playing FE:LH, I actually managed to run into unique problem.. Iron shortage. yeah.

Normally I'm swimming in iron. So I cranked out lots of light plate armor soldiers with no worries, I didn't even look at iron at all because I have thousands and thousands.

But.. Iron shortage.

It has led to various situations like.

That big nasty Fire Drake guarding the only Iron resource near me, and all other iron resources is too faraway, so I suicided lots of Militia armies just to get at that sweet sweet iron just to upgrade the weapons. I mass like ten armies of militia and auto resolve them all. After they all done suiciding I send in my bestest armies on same turn and attempt to finish the drake off, it usually succeeds. yeah, those militia only had wooden clubs and clothes. They died for greater good.

Silly battles like,

Obsidian golems showing up when I still can't upgrade to boar spears cuz of Iron shortage. But Obsidian Golems always lose because I outlast them via heal spam while whittling them down with spears.

And Yithril, I dunno how they do it but sometimes they occasionally bum rush me before I even research Blacksmithing and I'm forced to fight their Plate armored with just spears. Never before I have felt the difference in armor so clearly. Problem is, Yithril just sends one army and fail instead of maybe 2 more to seal the deal after their plate armored soldiers die off. I see armor values like 40, or 80, I forgot Can't remember atm. Huzzah for swarming bonuses

And Once, I couldn't even get a single Iron Mine up and running until I had like Armorer tech completely researched because my land had none but I was swimming in crystals at least. Mages aplenty! I managed to forcibly acquire iron mines from other factions. And then the only Iron mine that was actually in my territory that I finally got it dug up from bazillions of monsters protecting it, because there was so many monsters, I neglected to explore deeply in that direction due to the monsters being powerful. Thus even when there was iron there, I won't be able to mine it anyways due to powerful monsters. lol

I like the Iron shortage, it has forced me to come up with a leather armor design spearman which can be spammed when I'm low on the iron instead of spamming light plate armor spearmen all the time. Thus I don't have to stop producing troops when I don't want to.

Made me play differently from usual, its entertaining.

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I agree shortages can make for interesting games. However, when faced with iron shortages, I use clubs. Even a maul, the best club, doesn't use any iron.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Really? How long did it take to produce all those militia? It seems like such a waste...

Anyway, keep writing war stories like this one. They are cool to read!

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Quoting Fallenchar,

reply 2

Really? How long did it take to produce all those militia? It seems like such a waste...

Anyway, keep writing war stories like this one. They are cool to read!

2-3 turns per militia unit. I had every single city spamming them. Didnt keep track of turns. It was either kill that drake or die to AI factions just because I can't use boar spears. I had five cities with one of them a fortress.

When put in that way, those militias wasn't wasted but instead, used for greater good. I lucked out that most of the AIs was trying to murder each other instead of taking me out, seems like they didn't notice my lack of iron.

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hmm interesting. i actually don't find iron shortage that crippling. leather armor isn't that bad compared to chain and the hammer/mace weapons don't need iron anyway, so even without any iron you can still build some decent troops and don't really have to rely on suicide militia. shortbows also require no iron, so if you can at least get a decent fortress up and running, you can build a solid combined arms force without iron. lack of higher tier armor can be offset to some extent by using frontline troops with defense traits (even leather armor & wood shield defenders have ~30 defense in guard stance, and later on some bit more when you add some +def from the essence enchant and the forge line of buildings. certainly good enough to deal with the majority of monster types and many of the AI unit designs.

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I love my spearmen, but they are horrible in iron shortages.

The archers and great hammers traits can help you get less screwed by a bad start because they help the weapons that don't need iron or make bows not need iron.

I like taking the traits that help make sure I don't get screwed. Master Scouts helps in case I start out in the middle of a swamp, etc.

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Borg999

Join Date 02/2006

+59

I have on rare occasions, had random maps generate an iron-less world.

Makes it easier in that you don't have to worry about fighting champs and units with 70+ defense...

I hate crystal shortage and crystal-less maps, because they are such a big part of the game.

I have never every seen a shortage of clay pits though.

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Quoting Borg999,

reply 6

I have never every seen a shortage of clay pits though.

The first three LH games I played I encountered zero clay pits until the game was won (didn't check to make sure there weren't any off-screen in fog of war though.)

Yay for isolated data points!

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Back in FE, I thought the Gold Mine was only available in the scenario. I never once encountered it, until my most recent LH game.

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Made me play differently from usual, its entertaining.

Just play with "Archers" ability and you don't need metal at all.

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Quoting webusver,

reply 9

Made me play differently from usual, its entertaining.

Just play with "Archers" ability and you don't need metal at all.

And then you get to have fun watching your archers die horribly in melee unless they're quite high lvl

Or am i mistaken?

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You need maybe three blockers, but as long as you have troops who you can put on defend while your archers take the enemy down it should be fine. Make troops with leather armour, wooden shields, swords, Ironskin, Defender, Constitution, you should do fine.

Summoned troops are also a possibility. Lightbringers, skeleton horde, Cragspawn (cause stinking mud for one tile radius), Earth Elementals, all make good blockers.

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Quoting Ericridge,

reply 10

And then you get to have fun watching your archers die horribly in melee unless they're quite high lvl

Or am i mistaken?

Usually my archers are quicker than melee enemies. They also are mounted, capable to move quickly to a safe location and shoot at enemies. They also have fire/cold attack, so they smite even heavily armored enemies. Ram Horn makes it even easier. But now I test my mod with boosted AI - every battle ends in a mad melee. Thus the earlier tactics doesn't work anymore.

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