Mid-game apathy/fatigue

[Metathron]

I'm a level 25 warrior on impossible, and am currently kind of bored with my game. My army consists of ogres, trolls, paladins, archmages and shaman. This lineup was very exciting up until about the early twenties. But now all the enemies around me are either absurdly easy (1st four islands) or too tough and the trial and error battles with strong (and above) enemies have become tedious due to the frequent need to reload because of losses (still some 20 battles to attain Grand strategy).

So, has anyone experienced something like that? What (if anything) did you do to make things interesting again, change your troops, your strategy, something else?

[Zechnophobe]

Hmm, it is not a good thing that you are level 25 and still don't have grand strategy yet.

You are probably working on Verona/Montero right now right? Are they really that hard for you at this point? Are your stacks small? I'm a little surprised you've petered out here, and not about 7 or 8 levels ago. Just a bit odd.

[TemjinGold]

I think the problem with your army is synergy. The units most likely to take hits and die are your ogres and trolls. While the shamans can heal them, the paladins can't res them. If you are charging with them, that means the paladins are basically worthless in that lineup as they are too slow to join the battle and not able to ressurect after the fact. The archmages can put on a shield but can't really do anything else once they do.

I find shamans work better with archer armies than melee ones as the totems draw aggro while the archers kill unmolested.

[ckdamascus]

A few possible things.

Need to remix your army with the current islands for a better / stronger strategy.

Do you have any physical resist items? Stoneskin? Target? Try to throw these in the mix if possible.

You need to try to sneak onto harder islands for a game breaker item or a key unit to breathe more life into your army into you hit the wall again.

You really needed to max out the pet dragon sooner.

Can you give us an example of an enemy stack that is beating you? Sometimes the strategy to beat them with no-losses is not obvious.

Sadly, in impossible games, I play no-loss not as a "challenge" to show off, but because if I do not, I don't have enough money or things like grand strategy when I really need it.

First time I played the game on impossible, I hit the wall so fast I was like WTF? No money, no troops, no victory == restart. :(

Before you say "hey, I don't like sneaking around via kiting or juking enemy heroes to get items/chests", I say, it is designed into the game. One key point on how it was intentional, why are you allowed to buy boats? :)

In case you sneak your way through the far side of the island, and you can't get back to your original boat. I balked at the high prices in the later games though and I never used it as it is too cost prohibitive. But it is there just in case! Just like you can run away if your army takes MASSIVE losses, and you get more money from the king if you do. I don't suggest doing the latter due to the loss of the score though.

Why are enemies early on sooo much easier to kit than later on? Why are some enemies un-kitable, and others not?

In my last impossible mage game, the random game generated in such a way, it was impossible for me to kit my way to Elon (to get the items and troops I really needed). After sneaking around in the montero mines, I found turn back time that helped me win one of the two only "forced fight" battles to procure the Elon map and continue the game. Whew.

They don't call it an impossible game for nothing. :)