units-specific power items choice (HELP!!!)

[loreangelicus]

Yeah, I know, another item choice thread, but I REALLY need some help here. This is really a more of items-units choice, as you will see below.

I haven't run across any general power items (aside from the Gladiator Sword and Ancient Amulet at the starting buildings) but I have the following unit-specific boosting items and units available to them:

1) the snakes ring and snakes boots, and I have royal snakes available (as well as all the other snakes)

2) cloak of shadow and vampire ring, and I have vampires and ancient vampires

3) demon trident lowering leadership for demons, and I have all the demon types available except for archdemon

4) banner for griffin lowering their leadership by 30%, and griffins available

5) crown of blackthorn that allows double DAMAGE by thorns, and I have royal thorns and dryads available

6) issara's whip (quest item) and assassin's dagger, and I have dryads, lake fairies and sprites avaialable

7) inquisitors and shamans, and of course you could lower their leadership by 20% using magic skill Archmage

Paladin game on impossible, and trying to do a no casualties run, so lake fairies and sprites just might be out of the equation.

But this still leaves me with tough choices. I have Sacrifice, Phantom, Magic Spring, Resurrection, etc support spells, so the amount of troops available is of no consequence.

Right now I'm leaning towards this for the late game:

dryads, demoness, demon, inquisitors, shamans

Xeona as wife, Issara's Whip OR Assassin's Dagger, demon trident, Gladiator Sword (from startin castle), might still go for the Crown of Blackthorns for the thorn summons or just get the Tournament Helm (+3 defense, +400 leadership). Will definitely go for Anga's Ruby.

Any suggestions?

[iregev]

you can make a super thorn archerwith the crown and poison dagger and whip - it will be devestating archer against everything and if you keep high RAGE during battles and have dryads available for morale it will crit very often and do ~40K criticals by the time you have ~20K leadrship this is something you definately want......
you will have to be carefull around dragons.:evil:

Thorn hunter can be replaced with skelleton archers for those battles where you must have dragon arrows. you can go with both of them but you will need to make sure 2 units not get hit at all for no loss games
this is not that hard because you have target, gloth armor, timeback and most times you just charge ahead with the sprites )

For 95% of the battles I would go with thorns, dryads, sprites, Inquistors and hunter/elves. keeping royal snakes in backup and skellies or imps.
This setup will work great aginst everything except korador, dragons and the final battle

For Korador battle I would go with
Griffins as the meat sheild (target on them on round 2 and all the time till the battle is over)
Inquistors and priests with 20% leadership bonus (double against undead)
Black unicron or horseman (which ever you prefare)
Royal snakes with the ring or shamans or demons if you have tolerance level 2

for dragons trategies search the forum
for final battle:
1 - make sure you have gift scribed
2 - bring shamans and inquistors
3 - survive
4 - keep one giant alive busy hitting your ice ball.
5 - place a lifetotem and cast mana spring when you need mana
6 - the giant will do earthquake every other turn it will not kill anyone
-> you get mana-> inquistor resurect and you cast gift and use timeback.

[loreangelicus]

For 95% of the battles I would go with thorns, dryads, sprites, Inquistors and hunter/elves. keeping royal snakes in backup and skellies or imps.
This setup will work great aginst everything except korador, dragons and the final battle

I'm assuming by thorns you mean Royal Thorns, right? Royal Thorns could generate thorns worth approx. 53% of its leadership value in the 1st turn, and every 4 turns thereafter. Dryads generate approx. 47%, and can do that every 3 turns.

Your setup is a very good high damage per turn team, but I think for most battles this is really overkill in terms of firepower. :) The problem I have with Royal Thorns is that Inqusitors and Resurrect can't bring them back, which leaves only Time Back to restore lost units (you could Sacrifice something, but that is inefficient). Fire vulnerability also makes them priority targets for dragons; the same could be said with Sprites, and they do magic damage, weak against Black Dragons (95% magic resistance).

To make a no casualty run less of a headache, I think all units need to be Resurrect-able, via the spell or via Inquisitors or both.

But what do I know, I haven't finished a game yet. :) Thanks for the reply, I'll keep your ideas in mind as I progress through the game. Aside from a no casualty run on impossible with a paladin, I'm trying to go for at least level 30, and a Day 7 finish WITH Anga's Ruby/all quests completed.

[iregev]

I don't mean royal thorn I mean the yellow thorn warrior (level 1)
with your set of items it's damage increases from 1-3 to 4-8 on average
so basically it's 0.75 damage for every1 leadership the highest damage/leadership rate possible.

Dragons fights are tricky indead and you'll need onslaughst to be the first to start. but I have do have to be honest, on my no kills paladin game there were some battles with dragons I skipped over.

good luck

[loreangelicus]

I guess you mean the archer version then, the Thorn-Hunter.

Aside from no casualties, I'm trying to go for a high score, thus skipping battles might take a hit on my level. I do have Tactics Treatise though, so maybe I could skip some battles if it comes to that.

I believe Onslaught is only on the 1st turn. I was thinking of a more permanent solution, that is why I was going for Demoness + Anga's Ruby; that should give me initiative on every turn on every battle (I think). The setup I had is more of a "sit back and relax" kind of team, what with the Demoness-Demon-Phantom combo to send the phantom-ed Demon (level 3 Phantom nets a 50% stack of the original Demon stack) into the heart of the enemy ranks while the rest of your team (including the original Demon stack) beats up on the lone enemy unit in your midst. I haven't tried it on an all Black Dragon enemy though... maybe if the battle map is big enough (like that one in Demonis) then the other blackies might decide to just beat up on the phantomed Demon instead of trying to reach the rest of my army.

Against most enemies, that phantomed Demon stack almost always lasts until the spell expires (Demons have a pretty high HP-per-leadership ratio); with fire resistance to boot, I'm hoping it would last just as long against blackies.