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View Full Version : What do you guys mean by "no losses"?


CyberGuy
11-24-2009, 05:22 PM
I keep seeing a lot of threads about "no loss" this and "no loss" that. Does it mean that you guys go into battle without a single loss of unit throughout the game? I find this to be impossible. For instance, if you have 10 units of knights in your party and at the end of the battle encounter, you still have all 10 units and absolutely no single loss to any of your other units?

Or do you guys mean that "no loss" meaning that you don't lose the battle. Losing a battle means that you have to instantly start back at the castle where you are giving a certain number of troops and gold?

Kathos
11-24-2009, 05:31 PM
A No-Loss campaign means that throughout the game at the end of a battle you have 0 units lost, you leave with the exact same amount that you walked in with. Summons do not count as they are not permanent creatures, and resurrecting units in the battle (paladins, inquisitors, ressurection order magic) is a viable and actually necessary to complete. If you check the high scores and look at battle statistics one of the stats shown is units lost in battle. The objective of a No-Loss Impossible campaign is to have a 0 by the time you finish the game. It is not impossible, but it is very hard at times and requires some innovative thinking as some battles, typically with heroes, can be quite frustrating.

Urbz
11-24-2009, 05:35 PM
A No-Loss campaign means that throughout the game at the end of a battle you have 0 units lost, you leave with the exact same amount that you walked in with. Summons do not count as they are not permanent creatures, and resurrecting units in the battle (paladins, inquisitors, ressurection order magic) is a viable and actually necessary to complete. If you check the high scores and look at battle statistics one of the stats shown is units lost in battle. The objective of a No-Loss Impossible campaign is to have a 0 by the time you finish the game. It is not impossible, but it is very hard at times and requires some innovative thinking as some battles, typically with heroes, can be quite frustrating.

Well said, one side-note I quite like the demonologists's "thread of life" skill for ressurecting.

Tianx
11-24-2009, 05:53 PM
In most of the battles, I am able to finish without any losses but I find it very difficult against any heroes since they tend to use flame arrows on one or more troops. You can of course saved the game before going into combat and then reload but to me, that's a bit over-kill :)

Kathos
11-24-2009, 06:05 PM
There's a trick to fighting enemy heroes though that I discovered pretty quickly. More often than not they will actually fire their spells based on certain conditions. For example, I had picked up cyclops on Bolo island before clearing the level 5 castle (excessive I know) on Debir. I had my inquisitors in the far right position at the start of battle, I hasted my snakes to get into lunge range and would always kill the first stack of skeleton archers. However whenever I did this, he would cast phoenix and it would always attack my royal thorns/bears and would do insane damage (partially because of -fire resist, and the burning that followed) making it impossible for me to resurrection multiple stacks with just inquisitors. After this failed 3 times, I switched it up. I didn't rush my snakes up and just waited, ancient vampires get the next turn and he casts poison skull on my inquisitors. Now that wasn't particularily the problem, what was the problem was the following turns of spell casting that killed a different stack. So I moved my army around putting the Cyclops where the inquisitors were. Now when I waited my snakes, he wouldn't cast poison skull on my cyclops, but on the royal thorns that were right next to them. As you should know, plants are highly resistant to poison spells so I suffered very little damage and I was ready for the next round of spells, and to my luck he cast it on my cyclops which obviously did very little damage.
Thats just one example, even though a hero may be casting something like flaming arrow that burns a high life unit for tons of damage on several different mobs making it impossible to ressurect both stacks without paladins or if you aren't quite so lucky enough, resurrection magic, there are ways to outsmart them. Remember this is just simple AI, they are coded to do certain things in certain situations so experiment! If you have some patience and don't mind reloading the same fight 10+ times (like I have done in some cases) then you will eventually find a solution. You can't win every fight right away either, run around and look for another army that might be heavily melee oriented if you have the control spells (slow, dragon kick, etc) and ranged damage/tanks to deal with it.

Hento
11-24-2009, 06:37 PM
I keep seeing a lot of threads about "no loss" this and "no loss" that. Does it mean that you guys go into battle without a single loss of unit throughout the game? I find this to be impossible.

Nonsense, I completed original on hard with knight and mage with zero losses.

Also completed Starcraft campaign with zero losses, Tiberium Wars etc. etc.

Shield
11-24-2009, 07:14 PM
With 2 kids, wife, full time job there's no way I could do a "zero" loss game, as it'd take me hours just to replay certain battles over and over. I'd go nuts!
But if I had the time I'd try!

What I want to know is - has anyone beaten KB:AP with 0 losses on IMPOSSIBLE difficulty?

Kathos
11-24-2009, 07:35 PM
I believe there have been a couple people to pull it off, somebody with a warrior was one of the threads a few days ago. Currently I'm working on a paladin, island 4 =)

elkston
11-24-2009, 07:51 PM
There is no way I'd have the patience to attempt a "no loss" game. I am happy playing on Normal and being mildly frustrated SOMETIMES.

I prefer to simply find battles I can win within certian loss parameters. If that can't be met, I walk away and come back when I have a larger army.

Shield
11-24-2009, 08:01 PM
There is no way I'd have the patience to attempt a "no loss" game. I am happy playing on Normal and being mildly frustrated SOMETIMES.

I prefer to simply find battles I can win within certian loss parameters. If that can't be met, I walk away and come back when I have a larger army.

I'm like you - if I lose a few and get through it, I'm happy.

A 0 loss game is impressive on any difficulty. What I'd like to hear is anyone beating the game without reloading a battle or using the save/reload function other that to stop playing the game for work/school/food/sleep. In other words, you can't ever lose a battle. Imagine how hard that'd be!

travelingoz
11-24-2009, 08:13 PM
Do you mean a straight through play with no reloads and without any losses on impossible? That would be a feat indeed!
However if you weren't worried about actual battlefield casualties, it would be a snap with a Paladin. :grin:

Kathos
11-24-2009, 08:30 PM
I'm like you - if I lose a few and get through it, I'm happy.

A 0 loss game is impressive on any difficulty. What I'd like to hear is anyone beating the game without reloading a battle or using the save/reload function other that to stop playing the game for work/school/food/sleep. In other words, you can't ever lose a battle. Imagine how hard that'd be!

Honestly I don't think it would be possible without ever reloading a battle. Randomness puts a huge kink in that idea as you won't always get the same starting units, artifacts, treasure digs, and dragon upgrades. As well as in battles, sometimes the enemy just gets lucky and crits/dodges constantly and burns/poisons the right unit with a really high roll.

Zechnophobe
11-24-2009, 08:34 PM
No load would only really be hard your first time through. I think I've loaded, on my first game, like 5 or 6 times, maybe 7 or 8 times, and most of them are due to me not knowing I was going to fight something, or not knowing what an opponent did. My first battle with driller for instance, or the spider, or before making the elemental axe to know what each does. I've never actually LOST a fight that I intended to start, so not saving/loading doesn't seem that scary.

Urbz
11-24-2009, 08:46 PM
No load would only really be hard your first time through. I think I've loaded, on my first game, like 5 or 6 times, maybe 7 or 8 times, and most of them are due to me not knowing I was going to fight something, or not knowing what an opponent did. My first battle with driller for instance, or the spider, or before making the elemental axe to know what each does. I've never actually LOST a fight that I intended to start, so not saving/loading doesn't seem that scary.

Heh, Hardcore mode for the win!
People who play(ed) Diablo2 for example will know what this means, makes games alot more challenging for sure. :rolleyes:

Zhuangzi
11-24-2009, 10:46 PM
Yep, an Ironman mode would be cool - no reloads for the whole game. It'd be a different kind of challenge to the no losses challenge.

And to those who say that no losses is impossible, I used to think the same until I kept reading about all these guys achieving no losses playing KB:TL, so I thought I'd better try it to. It's surprisingly not as hard as you think - you just get into a different mindset where each fight is a challenge of its own, instead of trying to rip through the game quickly.

DGDobrev
11-24-2009, 11:20 PM
My thougths exactly. In addition to that, a no-loss challenge forces you to think about every single simple move you make - not playing a battle like you didn't care. You get used to your troops, you babysit them, you work at them. This helps you to figure out to the best of your ability their strengths, weaknesses and how to use them in the end for better results.

For example, I sorely underestimated the Tirexes. Now I can't do a battle without them. They are the ultimate tank against opponents that inflict physical damage. I knew the paladins were good, but these take the cake. I never lose even 1 tirex even against invincible opponents that spam geyser every turn.

Zechnophobe
11-24-2009, 11:31 PM
I don't... really agree there actually. I mean, the goal of most battles in this game is to suffer as few casualties as possible, so trying to do it perfectly is just the normal taken to the extreme.

What I'd really like to see is a high gold, extremely high difficulty setting. Basically where you can easily replenish troops, but battles are brutal and will require you to focus more on effective victory, than on whatever cheese tactics fools the computer into giving you infinite mana for resurrection.

Kathos
11-24-2009, 11:34 PM
I don't... really agree there actually. I mean, the goal of most battles in this game is to suffer as few casualties as possible, so trying to do it perfectly is just the normal taken to the extreme.

What I'd really like to see is a high gold, extremely high difficulty setting. Basically where you can easily replenish troops, but battles are brutal and will require you to focus more on effective victory, than on whatever cheese tactics fools the computer into giving you infinite mana for resurrection.

Lol, guilty of that one. Use to do it all the time in KBTL, didn't really have to worry about losing much cause I could resurrect like crazy.

Zechnophobe
11-24-2009, 11:39 PM
The mana spring on a troop adjacent to imps trick? That was a good one for most of Demonis. The last 14 little imps would slowly smack you, and you'd just get more and more mana, recasting as necessary, until you could resurrect your entire force!

But aren't the 'hard' fights that actually get your troops hands dirty more satisfying? When you are trying your best to just do the best damage you can, because this is an actual combat? I really like those fights. But we are groomed throughout the duration of the game to focus just on less losses.. instead of sweet sweet victory.

DGDobrev
11-24-2009, 11:41 PM
I don't... really agree there actually. I mean, the goal of most battles in this game is to suffer as few casualties as possible, so trying to do it perfectly is just the normal taken to the extreme.

What I'd really like to see is a high gold, extremely high difficulty setting. Basically where you can easily replenish troops, but battles are brutal and will require you to focus more on effective victory, than on whatever cheese tactics fools the computer into giving you infinite mana for resurrection.

There is a way. Start a mage on impossible, do not use higher magic and cheat in the gold and some might runes to compensate. You will be low on leadership all the time, meaning the fights will be brutal all the time, but it will feel as if you're playing a warrior.

Besides, you can always replenish your stacks using the stack doubling cheat.

Since this will be a playthrough for fun cheating is allowed :) On a hardcore games like the no-loss, it isn't. Besides, if you're doing no loss victories all the time, there nothing to cheat for :P You'll be full of cash all the time.

Tibster
11-25-2009, 01:42 AM
Or u can mod the game.
Like hero.txt and logic.txt

TemjinGold
11-30-2009, 01:38 AM
I just had to say that trolls are freakin' insane at night and underground. All of the fights that I had trouble doing no-loss (Impossible) I managed to wipe easily with just 1 stack of 1 troll (Verona only had 1 for sale unfortunately.) At Level 10-12 (started at 10), my mage took out:

Richard the Cruel (okay, I've had the L3 trapper medal since fight 28 and his ogre offed itself on one of the preplaced traps; the rest of his army is a joke.)
That R-14 Robot boss guy in Bolo
Skip (the L20 guy guarding Rob Cuttlefish's stuff)
All the boat heroes on Scarlett and Rusty

Just Stone Skin and spam Mystic Eggs. Don't even need my other spells. As long as the enemy can't do 780 damage in 1 turn (the highest damage spell I faced so far was 225 from R-14), you can't lose. That's with my mage having 2 attack and 0 defense. I can't even imagine what would happen if I had a warrior. In fact, the only fight I couldn't do with just the 1 troll is the dragon trap cave one (several thousand dragonflies hurt...)

I know this won't work nearly as well later on but for those having trouble with zero-loss on the early fights, trolls are amazing if you are lucky enough to find one.