Battle Isle 2 Titan Legacy walkthrough and strategy guide

 

Release history:

 

General strategy tips:

 

Once you damage a units that's on "defense", it is likely to retreat to get repaired (3 boxes may be a trigger, 2 or 1 almost always will be). Then the AI will treat it as one of its newly procuded units, i.e. it will send it at you as parts of of its rush strategy. You can use this strategy to ruin its defense lines, even if you cannot destroy units in them outright. This will however not work if AI has Sinuses/Monoliths that can repair the "defense" unit before it moves.

 

AI loves to capture buildings, and ignores the possibility they will be captured back. This allows you to use them to lure down enemy Rangers and infantry (when you feel like capturing chaff).

 

On the subject of units capture, if a valuable enemy unit is within range of a capturable building, consider letting it retreat for repairs, then capture it. It's always a good turn if you capture a Zenith battleship or a Sinus repair unit :)

 

AI will prioritize targeting flag units, so keep your Rangers safe, and use infantry as chaff to draw the fire away from more valuable targets.

 

Howevcrafts attacking from water are treated as water units; i.e. quite a few land units cannot shoot back.

 

Transport units (but not Snakes) can capture mines, saving you the trouble of shooting them.

 

Ammo vehicles make decent light tanks.

 

Ammo trucks restore one another's supplies. An ammo and fuel unit will fully restore the supplies of a Sinus repair unit. Such a mobile field depot's usefulness cannot be overestimated.

 

Best units in the game: Buggy

 

Units overview:

 

Land:

Dragon infantry: cannon fodder. Use to draw enemy fire.

 

Troll infantry: cannon fodder with powerful two shot bazookas that can also hurt air units. Kill at range or use to blunt enemy armor.

 

Ranger: very fast, very lightly armored, can retreat after attack. Use to capture buildings, occasionally to attack defenceless targets (artillery) and kill units that are almost dead.

 

Buggy: one of the best units in the game; learn to love them. Very fast, with range 2 rockets, can retreat after attack. Make sure they have ammo supply to return to, and keep them in the second or third line to avoid losing them. Properly trained, they will be your true mobile artillery, striking deep into enemy ranks, killing his artillery, and weakening whatever you need to. Have trouble operating in snow and mud.

 

Technotrax: light tank. Pros: fast, can enter most difficult terrain. Cons: no anti-air weaponry. Don't expect them to face up and win against heavy armor.

 

Comet: anti-air tank, in fact, another light tank. Compared to 'trax, trades of some armor and power to be able to hurt airborne targets. Unfortunately, it is weak enough that it will get hurt in response. Do not expect them to survive in the front ranks, but they make good screening/deep strike force. Preferably use them to finish things off rather then to start any fights.

 

Snake: APC. Can engage air targets. Slightly weaker then Comet, so keep that in mind. Can transport infantry - if you lack Rangers, use them as your replacement for quick building captures.

 

Samurai 2/3: heavy tanks. Good units, medium speed.

 

Imperator Mobile Fortress: super heavy tank. Slow. Range 2 cannons and range 2-4 anti-air rockets are useful, but it speed means it will quickly be left behind in any kind of offense.

 

Nashorns: assault cannons .Can't fire after moving, slow but heavily armored, so they are best suited for defense. Let AI attack them instead of the other way around.

 

Genom - air cannon fodder. It cannot engage land units (but can be engaged by them, making it a favorite target practice of Comet drivers) hurts, so does its inability to engage units on higher altitude.

 

For another good unit overview, incorporating units from Battle Isle 2200 / Battle Isle 3, see http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/565272-battle-isle-2220/faqs/21663

 

Mission walkthrough:

 

Mission 1: DIE HELL Code: HOLLEKO

 

An interesting, if simple, mission. Escape to the left, you want to capture a neutral city on the west coast. The city will have some units in it, not enough to take over the map (at least, not in any reasonable amount of time). Your next goal is the another neutral town, on a tiny island to the south-west, just under the main land mass. It has transpot choppers. You will use those to capture the (revelead) port in the south-west, using the transport submarine to capture your final goal. If you can, take some extra troops - the last island is packed with Medusas, blocking your way.

 

The problem is that there is a Hydra destroyer nearby. Your speedboats are two weak to sink it. You can try a suicidal run with the infantry-packed hovercrafts, aiming to capture the town before Hydra sinks the crafts, or you can try to lure Hydra to your troops. If you plant an infantry unit one hex away from the shore, it may be in a position that your ground units can engage it; at the very least the Buggy should.

 

I have not checked if you need the Ranger unit to capture the last town. I did it just because it makes sense for the story.

 

Mission 2: THE BRIDGEHEAD Code: BROCKEN

 

Your Orange allies and the Red enemy fleet should mostly annihilate one another. Keep your fleet out of that meatgrinder and in reserve for now, use infantry units to lure any Red remains into the range of your Ionstar and artillery, mope up the rest. Once the Orange player has exhausted all of his resources, take over the port. If you are lucky you may end up capturing a Polaris he retreated for repairs (that's what happened to me). The Dragon copter may help out as well. If you need to, save up resources and buy another Hydra for cleanup, two Hydras, a Polaris and a Dragon should be enough for that. But frankly, since the landmass is protected by Ionstars and Escaliburs, winning the sea battle will not help you much here; the coastal defenses will still outrange your Polaris. The map has to be won over on the land.

 

The land defense is very tough to crack, multiple lines of heavy artillery (including 8-range train mounted artillery), plus multiple repair vehicles. Make sure not to enter their line of fire; pick what you can with your artillery and buggies (gotta love them). Once your buggies manage to deal with some Medusas, you can use your Dragon copter to accelerate cracking the defenses, but mind the fuel (it cannot land and refuel in the ATC outpost, you need to go back to the town). Note that Red has two Sinuses and two Monolith repair trains, so don't bother much with damaging anything before you can kill them.

 

Mission 3 BATTLE FOR GEFET Code: AMGEFIN

 

A tough mission. Gefet mountain features an Ionstar that reaches all to but one of the southern hexes in one line. You may try taking it out with the infantry units at the slopes, but it is backed by a Skull and Archimedes artilleries in the north-west. I chose to retreat beyond its range, dealt with the grinding assault - you may loose some junk units like Nashorns and Spring. The enemy has Buggies and Stings, so be carefull with the positioning of your Archimedes and Sinus (mine lost all but one boxes...). He will also have a Sinus or two, so untill you destroy them, make sure you focus on killing things (almost always a good strategy, anyway). Once you deal with the onrush (the difficult part of this mission), what remains is mopping up the dug in remains. The defenses are rather weak here, you can destroy the Ionstar much easier from the north and north-west, but to get there, it is much easier to go through the north-west first.

 

Mission 4 THE PORT IN THE SOUTH Code: HASENOL

 

You will face an average onslaught from the north (Red), and a sporadic one from the south (Green). There is decent room for maneuvers in the west and center, but an Ionstar has a range on your north-eastern positions (where the Supervirus mine and Technotrax tanks are). You may want to put exchange the Tecnotrax with a Samurai so the Ionstar doesn't eat too much of it; keep some infantry near the front lines as a bait for Stings - you don't want them shooting up your artillery (and you cannot repair the Skull; this is also why you want something in front of it - so it doesn't get nibbled by direct assaults).

 

Land wise, build a Pulsar or two in the factory. There is weekly defended Green city in the south west; you can either destroy or try to capture the Troll unit guarding it once they retreat after taking some damage, with some forethought you may be able to use it to lure and capture more of Green infantry. Then advance your units to the south; there is a Green factory in the south-center (if you play it well you should be able to capture the Orion and Elixir near it). Once the Green has exhausted his dangerous units attacking from the south-west (2 Buggies, a Sting), it's a question of when you can spare your single Buggy and some armor to break through his meger defenses. Oh, two things of note: use your middle city as a bait for Green Ranger (it is the only Ranger you'll get on this map), and also don't defend the Orange city. Once Green captures it (likely with an infantry unit), you get to recapture it without triggering Orange to switch sides. There is no way to take his south-east city, though - so just forget about it.

 

There are two things slowing you on this map. First is the lack of decent artillery (one Buggy, three junk-Quasars, and whatever Pulsars you produce). Remember - Pulsars are slow, this is why you have the Atlas. I produced one Pulsar and left it at the factory, it saw plenty of use. If you can produce the second one and move it to center or west, I am sure it will be useful, too. Second is the lack of a Sinus repair vehicle - you will have to repair all damage in the cities, your energy income is low and you face hard choices - save for the new Pulsar, or repair frontline units. Once you survive the initial rush, it's the question or rebuilding, mopping down Green in the south, then breaking through the Red lines. I found them easiest to crack from the East, close to where the Third Armor Division asks for your help.

 

Ah, the Third Armor. Do not use them early on; they will get slaughtered for little effect. Instead, retreat them all to the north; they will be out of AI's range (or programmed concern). Over the next few turns, AI will weaken some of its defenses there, in particular, secondary ones - your units in the south are much more suited to survive them, anyway, so there is no reason to use the Third to draw them off. Saving them also make sense, story wise :) Once you are ready to push the Red, you can reactive the Third, they should be able to deal with their opponents (I ended up loosing the Troll, Quasar and one 'trax, and saving the rest). Repair them and use them in your final push, which at this point should be easy - AI is very inactive; advance, snipe, crush, the regular. There is no heavy artiller in the east, which helps immensly, too. Your target city is in the north-eastt, and you'll end up mopping the board before you get to it.

 

The situation on the sea is interesting. Red has a big advantage (Hydra, two Polaris cruisers and a Zenith battleship) versus your meager Hydra and scout junk. No worriers, though, there are two ways to handle it. One - retreat (to the south or the port), wait several turns, and Orange will get an event giving them 6 Orca subs, which will take care of the Red's fleet. I prefer my solution; though. The Red will not attack you with his own fleet, not unless you provoke him by moving something onto the water he can see. Retreat your units - move the speedbout south for scouting, others into the Port; if you used your Hydra well in the previous scenario, you will even have time and opportunity to train it. Anyway, use your artillery to deal with the Red naval forces, and the infantry to draw its fire. First, the lone Hydra - will go for infantry (or artillery), and you'll sink it next turn. Two Polarises are tougher - one took a potshot at my Skull, taking it down one peg (couldn't figure out how to reasonably prevent it - it was  the only thing in the Polaris range that turn). Remember - smart positioning of suicide infantry is the key in drawing them close; at this point you may also want to use mines to control the opponent movement (AI will retreat from the mines, and will only rarely engage them). Once the Red fleets is shooting the infantry, they are also likely to ignore your Hydra (they may however go after junk Patrixes, and they deal pitful enough damage anyway that you don't need to worry too much about them, unless you really need them as sacrifices for something). Your hovercrafts may be used to deliver finishing blows to the cruisers and the battleship, but here is my favourite part: Operation Capture Battleship. Don't move anything into Zenith's range before it moves (a turn or so after the cruisers move). Hydra should be able to take 2 of its boxes a turn, infantry should keep it dumb and happy till it is low, and depending on its positioning, howevercrafts may be able to help near the end. Aim to leave it at 1 box; it will then retreat to its port. Use one of your armed howevercafts to capture the port; if fully repaired it should even survive the shelling from three Ionstars. I ended up even saving my infantry (Red had nothing to recapture the port in a turn), and I was laughing when Orange subs arrived to "save the day" - at that time Red had no fleet left and I had a new battleship :) Primary targets for the Battleship - Ionstar, Pulsars. Once those are down, you should be able to start pushing from the East, in addition to the West.

 

If the water freeze, don't move your land units on it. AI of course will disregard this advice, and will end up loosing a bunch of units. Sigh.

 

Mission 5 WORB IN SIGHT Code: WORINGA

 

Use the battleship and some support to wreck the Ionstars. Have fun shelling the surfaced sub (all level changing units start the game on the medium level). Use the Nautilus sub to capture the Green port, after their cruser had docked for repairs (on turn 2). The small enemy fleet (3 Hydras remaining) will not last long, but a larger one will aproach. Use infantry on the shores as decoys to draw away surface fire, but expect to take some losses from the horde of subs (mine: Polaris, Nautiuls, Rex). Nautilus is junk anyway, and the two remaining Rexes are plenty.

 

Don't let 4 enemy Genom fighters cost you an air unit; wait till you destroy Genoms before using your planes offensively.

 

Don't expect your units in the south-west, mixed with Orange, to do more than to survive and do some damage to nearby Red forces. There are just to few of them.

 

Once you've captured the island near your base, move your forces east. The island in the north has 4 cities - grab them for energy (defense consists of 1 Ionstar, 2 Medusas and some chaff). The small island below it has only the airport. Use Cruxes to capture them; the Ranger goes north. Might as well load the Cruxes full now; drop some stuff in one of the Rexes if you need. On the corner coast of the main land mass in the center there is a Red factory, defended by two Ionstars and lots of chaff. Makes for many turn of of naval bombardment. Expect a sub and a Hydra in the center-east, and one of everything in the south-east, near a port. Have a Crux ready for port capture, and if you time it right, you'll get a cruiser and a battleship :) Mind you, there is a lot of nasty stuff on the land around (2 Ionstars, 2 Skulls, 3 Medusas, Archimedes, etc.).

 

The crash site in the east, at the very south, contains a Vision recon drone, which is nice, but not that useful near the end of the map., which is probably when you reach it. Try to capture more Rangers in that area :) The target cities are in the south-east and south-west.

 

Mission 6 WHO RESCUES BRIT? Code: BRITIGI

 

Interesting if easy map. Law tides causes a lot of river hexes to become land every two turns. Great tactical opportunity? Perhaps, but it's almost sad seeing AI sink all of its units in the river :) After the AI sinks mosts of its units, advance. Use the howevercrafts to take out the coastal Ionstars in the East, capture the Green Sinus repair vehicle in the central coastal city if you can.

 

Mission 7 THE COUNTERBLOW Code:

 

Build an ammo transport to supply your western UX-2. Some infantry screen will make sure Red's UX-2 will waste itself on it; don't lose your Ranger. Keep your air units covered - you don't want to use them to the AI's range 2 fighter-drones. They make good training for your air defences and the Vision drone. Nothing too complex in this mission.

 

Mission 8 THE ATTACK Code:

 

Be prepared to deal with a lot of artillery - more then a dozen. Draw them in, take them out with your units, at some point an armor push will decimate what's left. Frankly, the main problem here was not the artillery but the flood of ammo transports that were blocking my way.

 

UX-2 missiles will arrive on turn 30 (yeah, "soon" my shiny metal... :D)... everything will be much easier from then on, but frankly, it should be possible to finish this even without them.

 

Mission 9: DRAG Code:

 

A and easy simple mission. Capture the undefended Green city to the south-east and the neutral city to the north-west. After you repel the initial Green push, take the northern city, then do a final push at the center - take down Pulsar with the Sting, and you should be able to crush the Ionstar with the armor. Rest is mopping up.

 

The special in this mission is that after few turns a bridge will be build from the Red island to the main one. No biggie - just the thing for those slow Quasars and Buggies, backed with one or two armor units to crush.

 

Mission 10: THE DOCUMENTS Code:

 

Can you figure out how to take down the Red Vision drone? It took me a while :) It can be done. If you cannot figure out how, read on. Yes, nothing you can that can touch it can approach it. Rugged terrain. But... you have Platinum road construction vehicles. Platinum, Snake, drone goes bye-bye.

 

Send Snake with infantry to capture the city in the south. Refuel, capture the factory in the south-west since Orange cannot do it. Build an ammo transport and a Buggy per turn; this should take care of the situation while the Orange tries to suicide its units, including the damn Spring tank you are supposed to protect. Try to slow it down by blocking its path.

 

The central town is hard to defend; I recommend a retreat few hexes south for most of the units there; you should not have units above the city after the second turn. Fortunately, Red has no units to capture it quickly, and if you take them out as they approach it you should be able to use it as a repair depo for a while.

 

One you repel the initial rush, focus on the north-east. You actually don't need to capture the heavily defended north-west island - your targets are in the north-west, and anyway, the sooner you eleminate the resistance there, the sooner you'll not have to worry about that Spring tank.

 

Mission 11: Durag and Dengh Code: DURDERO

 

You may be able to capture two crystal nearest to the northern part of your positions (not that they are worth much).

 

Use the infantry to feed to the UX-2 rocket.

 

On turn 11, the dam river will flood. I tried two approaches here.

 

1. Defensive: Make sure your units are secure on the few tiles that will not flood (borders will flood). Once it has flooded, you'll be mostly relying on your hovercrafts, copters - and bridge building with Planiums (at the end of this mission I had build about 10). First push north. If you managed to take out some Skulls and nearby defences before the flood, good. Push through that; the UX-2 rocket is near the central-western corner of the map. Use howevers to transport some 'traxes nearby, it is not well defended.

 

2. Offensive: from the first turns, push north, probably north-east. Leave a few units to defend your factory, and send all you can to take out the weekly defended north-east gate (two Skulls, Pulsar, 'trax). The west has no Pulsar but there are more AI rush units there - it should be possible to break through them, too, but why not let the flood take care of them for you? Just make sure to have a supply of infantry to feed to the UX-2 until you can elimnate it.

 

Either way, expand in the north, there are many nice cities. One Ionstar can be taken out with a Buggy. Make sure the AI will not see your Rangers before you kill UX-2, as they will be prioritized over infantry (one of the few good decisions AI makes).

 

The south will require more effort. You should be able to shell outermost defences, you can start cracking them from the north-west or south-east, where the Ionstars have no range. Once you land in the north, take the town, use Dragon copters to take down Ionstars and artillery, buggies to take down anti-air emplacement, and start chowing through the defences. Taking the airport and the factory will give you a flood of units (at that point AI's shouldn't know what to do with units, as it cannot move them anywhere, so it will fill the factories capacity for you - ripe for capturing). You should have plenty of energy saved, so go crazy with the airport and buld a lot of air units to speed things up.

 

BUG NOTE: I run into a bug on this map - it seems that AI has managed to move two units OFF the map - into the hexes surrounding it (in this case, it moved two Alcors to hexes south of the factory in the south-east corner). The problem is further compacted by the fact that you cannot attack them, as they are off the map, so the units in range will get the attack option (fist), but you cannot chose to target off-map units.The solution, once I figured that out, was to move my units outside the "see range" and then send some units into "ambush" (triggered when you walk next to a square containing enemy unit you don't see that can shoot at you).

 

Mission 12: Free Hallwa! Code: WALHAKI

 

Time to turn the tide. There are two theatres here: west and north. West, send your troops south at top speed, you want to capture two neutral cities between you and red. Then, I stopped, allowed the Red and Beige to overrun the Orange, and recaptured the buldings that Orange lost before AI could strenghten itself. The usual "capture the factory with AI produced units" worked well. That said, the Beige defences to the east are tough, and you don't need to break through them to end the battle. You could as well save yourself some time and just defend the mountain path, but where's the fun in that?

 

The northern theatre is the key one. Capture and  hold the central city Tengwan - it is a major energy producer, hardly worth trading for anything but Ranger units. I don't think you can reasonably capture and hold Hallwa Gent (eastern city under the airport), so don't worry about it. On the other hand, AI will send infatry units north to capture the airport - let it, then be ready to recapture it with the AI production inside :>

 

Be careful with air units, at least early when AI still has some Thunder drones left.

 

Missile Factory can produce UX-2s, and I highly advice producing three as soon as you can.

 

Push down when you can, AI defences are tough but they will crack. Don't forget to feed infantry to AI's UX-2. I used the transport planes to drop some units near AIs airport later in the game.

 

The AI's communique about some ultimate weapon is just fluff (or if it triggers something, it happens after I finished the mission).

 

Mission 13: Holner-Island Code: HOLININ

 

You'd think that if you are winning you'd be given more troops. Sigh. Focus your heavy units on slowly pushing the Beige to the north. The fast units should capture as much of the neutral buildings on the main island as possible. The Zenith is a pain (and cannot be captured, as the map has no ports); but a series of airstrikes and amphibous assaults by your hovers should take it down. Use the hovers to transport capture units to take the airport north of Attrikas (the first capturable town on the big island). Use road building vehicles to build a road there, or you can use the airpower to take down the Red mine and artillery making the central path annoyingly dangerous. If you move quickly,  you may be able to capture the units in the central factory, although holding it that early is probably not possible (or very hard). Once you secure the units, build up air power - it will give you the map. When AI's naval reinforcement appear later (it my case, it was the turn after I wiped out everything on the main map), your airpower should be able to sink and shoot down everything in a turn or two.

 

Oh, there is an AI unit and a building in the very south-western part of the map (annoyingly camouflaged as a encampment). The infantry unit did the same bug trick to me as I described in Mission 11 (went off the map), and had to be killed by repated suprise encounters.

 

Mission 14: General Dengh's Return Code: SEFLUXA

 

Big and easy map, the only difficult part is early on when you don't want to sacrifice your units with bombing capacity, and naval units (not that they are that useful later on). Capture neutral sites to the west and north-west (there is an airport just above your single infantry unit), but don't send too much forces there - there is no connection between west and east of the map other than the one you see early on. Also, other than one lightly defended Red airport in the center, there is not much there to demand much attention.

 

Push north, enjoy your heavy artillery on trains, and it shouldn't take you long to finish this map.

 

Mission 15: The Industrial Area: Code: INDUSOL

 

Send a light unit (Ranger) to capture one neutral town in the north-east; there is nothing else in that area to warrnat much attention. On the main map, expand capture neutral builngs, build up, push north. Nothing really new or suprising here.