hey so I was happily cruising through the game until I hit the Ophelia stage battle and she wiped the floor with me a bunch of times. So I thought I would start a thread where people could share their best battle tactics to help people like me who probably spend too much time running about with an axe.

which unit types work well together? what's the best way to crush your enemies, drive their armies before you and hear the lamentations of their women?

I am currently stuck on that same battle, but I admit to doing a bit of googling to try and find a tactic which has worked for others as I was getting pretty frustrated, spending a good amount of time building my army and pushing forward only to eventually get wiped out, like 4 times. So the sequence I am going to be trying next is after destroying the 2 towers, continuing to use that on the rest of their army and hopefully destroying almost everything, then going in and using the solo which stops them from producing more troops. In my previous attempts I had always backed the tank thing out after destroying the towers rather than pushing forward with it. Hopefully it works this time, I actually am all set up to go in and destroy the towers, have had it paused for a few hours busy with other stuff.

****, failed again. Christ this part is hard, I am honestly sick of it because it takes so long to redo and it's like once they destroy most of my units at the front, even if i spawn more they start marching on my base rather than staying on the bridge and it's futile.

...In my previous attempts I had always backed the tank thing out after destroying the towers rather than pushing forward with it. Hopefully it works this time...

yeah, she starts out slow. I usually claim the two fan geysers in the middle of the battleground before I see any troops from Ophelia. Last time I marched my troops down destroyed one of her merch booths in front of her stage and then told everyone to trash the stage. They were all killed pretty quickly when Ophelia turned up and then she set about wiping everything else out.

I'm thinking that much of my problem is not using the right units to do things. Next time I'm going to build a couple of sets of roadies and use them to knock down merch booths. The rest of the units will just protect them and help them march/sneak up the arena.

Also, I have to learn how to fight better. As much as it is disturbing to admit, Ophelia kicks my ass at the moment and hacking at her with an electrified axe is not -scuse the pun- cutting it. What combos are people using to hammer the bosses?

Well a good move is to summon the beast, now start to move some troops to the west(from the stage) to attack a fan geyser that is block AFTER you have done the fan tribute getting the first two that are next to you. Ophelia is going to be more focus on the center fan geyser(or first one) the key to winning the battle here is going to be either upgrading or(depending on if you found it) the block of summoning. I believe she will or won't have this as well if you have it. Now that is the key to beating her the first time. With her distracted with the bit of troop that came about the side the summon beast(I had the electric horse or the Hexidon) attack her stage till destroyed. The second time you will have to first focus on upgrades and collect/defending fan gyserys to pay for the upgrade for the one that brings down a giant sword to the ground. It is needed to take out the electric towers and does the best for taking out Ophilia and troops in the balloon deal.

...Ophelia is going to be more focus on the center fan geyser(or first one) the key to winning the battle here is going to be either upgrading or(depending on if you found it) the block of summoning. I believe she will or won't have this as well if you have it. Now that is the key to beating her the first time. With her distracted with the bit of troop that came about the side the summon beast(I had the electric horse or the Hexidon) attack her stage till destroyed...

well, I just beat her and what I did was very similar to what you describe. I didn't have the block summoning song so I held her off as I upgraded and then made some roadies. The trick I found was that Ophelia will march about with her army when they go out for an attack but will recall them immediately to defend her stage. If however they are say about to attack your stage when you begin you attack on her she has a long march ahead of her. She wont make it back before you've trashed the place.

Once you have a decent little army with some roadies send a small group of headbangers off to attack a geyser and draw her to the other side of the central battleground. After she commits herself to the defence, move the headbangers back to your stage. Ophelia will continue to press the attack and when she does, run your army down to her stage and finish the battle.

Just rush it. Create some razor girls, summon your flag, pick it up and go straight for the merch-booth on the right, double-teaming one of the girls. Keep building razor girls with maybe the odd kill-master for good measure, head straight for the stage. From that point on you should either be soloing or double-teaming razor girls as you attack the stage. It helps if you've got the rock-block and a good beast on the call-of-the-wild summon, but some well-placed face melters should be good enough really. Oh, and If you need to call in any more units and you're nearly done, fire barons will get to you quick.

My strategies are (mostly)
- Try and stay out of the air, be on the ground double-teaming (Razor girls!).
- Carry the flag with you most of the time.
- Be aggressive, not defensive.
- Time your solos well - try and get as many face-melters in as possible, preferably while you're utterly surrounded.
- Oh, you get fans for killing the enemy hero too.

If you're struggling, you can always do the hunter challenges until you can summon a hexadon, and the hunter gives you an awesome axe too. If you're on the second drowning doom battle, you are in a position to find all of the solos too, some of which are very handy. There are some guitar strings specifically designed to help solo cooldown, too. Get those.

i think to be fair the biggest problem i found is some enemies seemingly taking loads of damage to die. so i did a few ai practice matches to see what works best to kill what. i found out the frightwigs (really do me head in), brood and other drowning doom vehicles seem to die pretty fast if ya spam the shocker attack at them. leave your guys to tackle the normal infantry and focus you own attacks on getting rid of them. oh and those fools with the rats. they can wreck your infantry pretty quick so if ya see them about make them a priority. think the shocker works well on them also. i find in this one usually its worth making your units keep them on the back foot. if ya find someone has snuck behind ya try and fly back and thin the troops and youll find theyll usually pull back to defend the stage. i think in this battle more than most as its so big you can get lured into wasting alot of time running your troops up and down so try and do it as little as possible.

I'm stuck in the same level but how do I destroy the towers? I tried like a 1000 times but it doesn't work...

the towers at the stage??? well usually if ya use the normal attack (up on the d pad) they just flock to the stage and ignore all else, so ya gotta hold lb and move the light over the towers. then hit right on the dpad and theyll sort them first. if ya take out the towers there it wrecks the other armies chance of defending themselves and usually youll walk all over them after that.

euhm, I don't quite understand... d pad? I'm playing it on the ps3, everytime I send my troops to the other stage they get killed by the forcefield of the towers, it says I have 2 do a rock crusher double team(or something like that) but it won't work, I have tried it with almost every thing I can spawn, from the headbangers 2 the bladestone(or bladehenge, it's been a couple of days...) thing... it won't work(pardon for my english, I'm from belgium)

ahh ive mistaken which stage battle you on about. em get in the rock crusher and drive near the towers (try not to get too close or the units sitting near will attack you) then hit the button to the do the double team (its a for me cause im on the 360) itll bring up a target. put that over the tower and wail away. might take a few whacks but if ya dont go too close ya should just be able to take your time and repeat. once those towers are out of the way you should have a good army waiting. march them over and kick ass

ok thx, will try it 2 night

ahh ive mistaken which stage battle you on about. em get in the rock crusher and drive near the towers (try not to get too close or the units sitting near will attack you) then hit the button to the do the double team (its a for me cause im on the 360) itll bring up a target. put that over the tower and wail away. might take a few whacks but if ya dont go too close ya should just be able to take your time and repeat. once those towers are out of the way you should have a good army waiting. march them over and kick ass

hey man, thx again, I got thru en kicked her ass after an epic fight of 1.5hours, hehe, up 2 the next stage :-)

I got soundly destroyed by this one too initially. I think the problem mainly is that there are too many new things all at once (first time facing a non-symmetrical opponent in a full-on Stage vs Stage battle, several new enemy units, etc).

In the end I found Schafer's blog post of tips (http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/battle_time/) very helpful. Particularly:

1) USE DOUBLE TEAM! + solos

2) Don't split your army.

[my caveat: except to send out cloaked roadies to take down enemy towers]

3) Be aggressive.

I found leaving troops behind to defend a point never really worked, as they would just get clobbered as soon as Ophelia dropped by... so rather than try to hold geysers I made sure I was constantly taking a new one, drawing her focus away from my base.

Also useful: strategically advancing your Summon Flag to be as close to the front as possible (and preferably near choke points).

So basically my approach was: build some troops, take them to the nearest enemy tower, claim geyser and plant summon flag - all the while building new troops and upgrading my stage - Next tower.

Well if your really having trouble,you can always go down a diffriculty.But what works for me is to have lots of Razor girls to take down the leeches and build your booths(remember to double team!it takes less than 5 DT shots to take out a leech)
constantly build razor girls,and maybe a bassist or 2 and keep upgrading your stage
after you get every geyser on your side of the sea,you should just guard your end of the bridge until you can get a rock crusher.when you do,take out the drowning doom troops in the middle of the bridge with your bladehenge assault double team,itll completely destroy them.this leaves the towers open for your crusher

by this time,you should have 1-2 bassists,quite a few packs of girls and a rock crusher.this is enough for you to rush her stage,remember to use the face melter and bring it on home solos.if you take out all her troops on the bridge before hand,you shouldnt even need to rock block her.

if you think you should take out her booths before rushing,do so because this will guarantee your victory.remember to use the rock crusher's double team when attacking the towers.

this works for me every time on brutal diffriculty,but if it doesnt work for you maybe its just not your style.hope this helps!

i got the best guide..Fly to ophelias stage and kill the army she creates she make drave diggers brides in start..and se will only make the weak ones if she cant get more fans..so keep kill while you make a big army

I also trapped in this level,hard to success,any ideas

When S**t starts lookin' real bad FACEMELTER. Saved my bacon more times than I care to remember