🚀 go-pugleaf

I've seen plenty of posts asking how to beat this level and thought I would
offer some tips that worked for me.  The only cheat I used was to occasionally
save the game during periods of relative peace.  I did go back to load a
saved game about 4 times after having all my troops wiped out by multiple
dragon or ogre attacks in the beginning.

Starting out, I sent my three ships to take out the northern most tower.
Send what's left to soften up the second tower in line.  They'll all
probably be sunk before they finish.  Next I sent all my footmen to
attack ogres and catapults on the northern part of the shore.  As soon
as that fight was joined, I sent the knights to finish off the second
tower.  After the tower is destroyed, have the knights help out the
footmen with the ogres and catapults.  DO NOT ATTACK THE SOUTHERN
TOWER.  Keep everyone out of range of that tower.

Land your ballistas to the north.  Have them wipe out the southern
tower from a safe range.  Bring everyone else over.  Have your ballistas
advance towards the southwestern gold mine with armor to the one side
and archers on the other.  Once you've secured the immediate area of the
gold mine (you should not have yet made it up to the ogre buildings), build
a keep (right name?), and lumber mill.  When you can, build a barracks
and start on farms.  Start mining and cutting down trees.

In the beginning, you'll need the archers to shoot down dragons (that's
why the archers were not involved in the initial assault).  The mage
fireballs can often be useful against dragons also.  When fighting
dragons, be careful none of your troops try to respond to movement
commands by going through ogre territory (thus bringing down all the
ogres).  I found that an easy way to keep away dragons early on was
to move my troop ships around.  The dragons kept following the troop
ships and, when the ships are moving, do little damage.

When you have enough farms going, make sure you have at least 6-8
archers to deal with dragons.  You may want to upgrade the archers
at the lumber mill.  Then start producing footmen.  When you have
at least 6-8, you can pick your time to move furthur north to
attack the ogres.  You may want to hold that off while you build
guard towers to help against dragons.  I built two towers side by side
to the east of my base.  Make sure there is plenty of room for your
archers to maneuver around these towers.  Keep the mages a ways back
between the towers and the forest.  When attacked by dragons, draw them
to the towers if they aren't there already.  Let the towers bear the
brunt of the assault.  Attack the dragons with archers and mages.  If the
dragons pay attention to the archers, have them run around avoiding fire
while the towers keep attacking.  Repair the towers between assaults.

Moving north...
I left behind about 4 archers to deal with possible dragon attacks.
I sent 6 footmen, 6 archers, and the ballistas slowly north.  I was
also continuing to produce footmen.  Keep the ballistas from attacking
buildings by continual short movement commands or stand commands.
The hope is to have the two ballistas take out at least one ogre on the
first shot.  Send the ballistas down south and use them as fodder for
ogres that come down the eastern side of the forest.  Let the footmen
engage the ogres while the archers attack from a safe distance.  Keep
bringing in replacement footmen as fast as you can.  When the ogres are
done with, destroy the ogre buildings.

Dealing with the early death knight assaults...
I built two guard towers side by side up near the northern mine.  With
a couple of archers as backup, they destroyed a lot of dragons.  Anyway,
the death knights like to ride out of the pass and attack the nearest
thing.  For me, that was my lumber mill which was the northeastern
most building in my original encampment.  As soon as that came under
attack, I would have my northern archers head for the north pass.  Then I would
direct my southern archers to head towards the pass from the south.
(I didn't have any footmen left at this stage).  The southern archers
would get the death knight to run away.   However, the pass should now
be guarded by a team of archers.  The death knight will typically kill
2 archers outright with magic, then mana depleated, he'll either run around
with the southern archers following and shooting or use what
little attack he's got and get mowed down before doing too much damage.
Sometimes they'll still try to get through the pass, but if you have
enough archers, there's little hope for them.

Once you've taken out enough dragons and death knights, you can build
up in peace and the level becomes the typical "destroy with overwhelming
force" senario.

Dan