Shieldwall – How to Gold Medal Alesia (End of Act I)

This mission guide will tell you a way to get a gold medal in Alesia, the end of Act 1 in the campaign.

Guide to Gold Medal Alesia (End of Act I)

Siege of Alesia

This map is the hardest in the first act, the enemy is holed up tightly in a fortress on the hill with 2 capture points within their walls giving them plenty of money.

You begin with your 3 camps surrounding the east side of the town (no enemies or camps are on the west side, though there may be an amphora there, I didn’t check).

To add an extra complication, enemy reinforcements will periodically emerge from the forest BEHIND your camps and try to capture them.

So what’s a general to do?

As soon as you start, buy 1 camp guard and fill the rest of your squad with militia. Then rush toward your center camp (Camp A).

As you reach your center camp, you will probably meet the enemy there and have to defend your camp. Large squads of enemies will intermittently pour out of the city and almost always seem to go toward your central camp, for that reason, this is where you’ll spend most of your time.

An alert will soon pop up telling you the enemy has reinforcements. These reinforcements will emerge behind your lines and attack any of your three camps. When you see this alert, keep your eyes open so you can quickly see which camp they are at and react to them.

I recommend leaving at least 1 guard at each camp. He won’t be able to fight off the enemies himself, but as he is throwing pila at them, they will try to defend themselves with shields, slowing their advance and giving you time to arrive with your squad.

For your upgrades, you will probably want the squad size bonus, a standard, spearmen, and pila (throwing spear) as soon as possible. Take the hero respawn bonus to if you die often, as getting back in the fight is necessary to recruit troops and keep your forces strong.

So at this point you will be staging at your center camp and fighting off enemy squads to hold all of your camps. For my standard’s upgrades, the first few I took were for money. I wanted to catch up to the enemy’s money production and surpass it. This allowed me to purchase the rest of my upgrades more quickly. After I have enough income, I fully invested in extra attack power.

Once you have legionaries and all the upgrades you want, it is time to start thinking about breaking into the town. If you watch the gate carefully, you can see the enemy inside occasionally gets distracted. The secret is to time your entry just right, so that his forces are at the back of the fort when you break in, take out the defenders, and claim his first camp just inside the walls to the left. If you can do this, you have nearly won.

Over time, the enemy reinforcements get more and more powerful, so once you’ve broken into the fort, you have to move fast. Recruit your legionaries quickly and fight your way to the back of the fort to take the second camp as fast as you can, take too long and you risk losing your outside camps.

Once you control the fort, if you have not already won, just station a couple defenders by the gate (they will do a good job defending the fort while the gate is intact) and take your squad back outside to mop up the last enemy forces. Controlling the central camp is key to this, since it has the quickest response time in both directions. Wipe out the remaining enemies, reclaim any camps you may have lost, and victory, along with a gold medal if you did this in less than 45 minutes, is yours.