Island Hopping

Difficulty: hard

STORY

The elves discovered only a patch of mud and rubble where their sacred Runestone once stood.  They are furious at this destruction and have volunteered to use their forces to destroy the few remaining orcish bases on Quel'Thalas.
As the elves are taking care of the Quel'Thalas situation, Lord Teneas has a new mission for you.  The powerful Orcish Navy has been raiding the coast of Lordaeron for many months.  This must be stopped.  You are to build ships of war and destroy whatever orcish naval forces you can find in the Great Sea.  

for HINTS press page down twice

























HINTS
This, like most naval battles, can be very difficult.  The suggestions below apply to most naval battles.
1.  If you don't see many enemy zepplins, build subs.  They can decimate an enemy navy.
2.  If the enemy does have alot of fliers, don't bother building subs.  Instead build battleships, and at your Foundry get both armor and both weapon upgrades as soon as possible. 
3.  Always keep a flying machine near your ships so enemy subs can be destroyed.
4.  If enemy ships come up to your coast, use ballistas to destroy them.  Don't ever use ships to destroy an enemy ship that is close enough for a ballista to hit.  Ballistas have 1 space farther range than battleships, so you can destroy them without any damage to yourself.
5. The mage Blizzard spell is good against groups of ships.  Fireball and Slow can also help a little.
SOME HINTS SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS LEVEL:
1.  Use the oil patch to that is diagonally left of your island first.  It is the only patch with no ships guarding it, but it doesn't have much oil so you'll need to get another oil patch later on.
2.  Subs work well on this level in certain places, but for your main attacks you'll probably want to use battleships.
3.  Your mine only has 40000gold.  When you start to get low you should use a troop transport to land some peasants, a ballista, and 2 demolition squads on the island on the left with the gold mine.  First take out the towers with the ballista.  Then use the demolition squads to blow up the trees at the top part of the island so you have room to build a town hall.
4.  Take out the enemy oil patches first.  There are so many enemy shipyards that taking them all out is more difficult than just destroying the 2 oil rigs.  Use subs to attack first (get any enemy subs right away so other ships can't see your subs). If your subs get killed, send in battleships.