Roadside Battle

Chapter 4 of Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance, Roadside Battle is considered the first somewhat difficult battle of the game.

Up until this point most of the battles, on Easy, Normal, and Hard, have all had few enemies and enemies of rather low level aswell. This battle however, most notably on Hard Mode (and Maniac in Japan), has a quite large amount of enemies and stronger enemies all around.

In this battle you can use, Titania, Shinon, Rhys, Gatrie and Soren aswell as the main character Ike. This is the first battle where you will be able to use Soren, but more on him later.

The enemy units in this battle are set up in waves. From right to left across the map groups of units will be gathered together in wves that will reach the player's units at the same time. In this battle a few waves will advance on the player's units on their own, although the majority of enemy units will not attack until player controled units enter their range of attack.

Terrain
The battle field Roadside Battle takes place on is best descibed as uninteresting. The battle field is longer from east to west (right to left) then from north to south (up and down).

The only real notable characteristics of terrain that may come into a player's plan is that the top of the map, near the deployment area, has a cluster of thickets and some trees. In theory and practice this could be used in a defensive formation.

The consept is that if the enemy has to travel through the thickets their range is decresed, meaning less enemies can charage the player's units in one turn. If a player's unit (or enemy) is standing on a thicket when they attack or are attacked they also recive a +10 bonus to their Avo. which is their abillity to avoid attack. A player could use this to help their units gain the advantage over the attacking enemy units.

Strategy
In this battle most of the player's units will be able to hold their own and take multiple enemy attacks before they need healing. These units would be Titania, Shinon, Ike, and Gatrie. One of the biggest things to be wary of is Rhys and Soren.

Now in almost all battles survival comes before all else. If a character dies in a Fire Emblem game they are gone forever (save a few cercumstances outside of Path Of Radiance). In this battle you will have to be carful with Soren and Rhys, these two units are magic wielders, and thus have higher resistance as opposed to defense. They will also be at extremely low levels meaning in only one or two hits they can easily die.

Rhys is important as he is pretty much the only healer you will have early on in the game. Also when well trained, Soren can become a deadly weapon of mass magic destrution later in the game. So keeping these two alive is of utmost importance.

On Easy and Normal modes a player can slowly advance their troops without too much worry. They can easily keep a frontline of Titania, Shinon, Ike and Gatrie while Rhys stays behind healing major wounds and Soren can pick off enemies with only a few more Hit Points left to gain experience. Although Shinon is an archerer, he is very good at avoiding attacks and has quite decent defense, so the player need not worry about him being attacked, although he notably can not counter direct attacks.

On Hard (and Maniac) Mode the battle is drastically different. The player will be faced with an absolutly massive amount of enemy forces. After the realitively easy first few battles this could leave a player wondering how they could possibly win. Although the battle is difficult though it is very winable.

As mentioned earlier in the Terrian section the upper part of the map has a series of Thickets and Trees that can be used tactically. In the harder modes it is suggested that a player uses these features of the map to play the first few turns defensively.

A player can set up a phalandex formation in the thickets and trees with Gatrie, Ike, Titinia, and Shinon on the perimeter and Soren and Rhys inside. Using this system the player can wait as the first few waves of enemies advance on their positions. The enmy forces, their movement limeted by the thickets and trees will then slowly be diminished in number as they attack the player's units.

Once all of the advancing units are killed there should be considerably less enemy units left to battle. The player can then slowly advance on the Boss and the remaining forces. The last of the enemy units can be 'baited' by puting a player controled unit within their range and letting them charge up and attack them. Using this it should not take long to defeat the few remaining enemy units.

New Units
In this battle you will gain control of Soren. Soren is the Griel Mercenaire's Tatician and a Magic weilding Mage. Soren is the first magic using unit you will receive in the game and thus is a valuable unit to have on hand.

Soren is also considered to be one of if not the most powerful Mage/Sage in Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance. If trained to his maximum level (whitch you have 25 chapters to do) he can, with a bit of luck, easily max out his speed, skill, magic and resistance stats. This fact alone makes him a powerful unit to have on board. Also upon promotion to Sage, Soren can gain the ability to use Staves or Knives, (although Staves is suggested).

Soren will require some special attension when he is first recieved. He comes at level 1, a ways behind the egg-ball. He can easily be trained though if the player allows him to finish off foes that have already been lowered to low HP. When first received he, being a Mage, will easily die in only one or two physical attacks so he will require protection from such attacks. Later on though he will be able to easily dodge and survive most attacks.