What are your top 3 stradegies?

[axelle]

I am currently a level 20 mage on impossible. only like 1/3 way through the game but i am loving it!

so far, some of my my favorite strategies are:

1, DoT (damage over time) spam (poison skull, fire arrow etc)

the most powerful spells in my opinion are the ones with a dot effect, because those dots kill a certain percentage, and when the enemy has a troop with like 1400 units in it, a poison skull tick + a fire arrow tick can take away up to 20% of it. so sometimes it's funny to see a 600-initial-damage fire arrow skull does 6000 damage ticks on those poor ents...to abuse dots, invisibility + 1 high initiate+high speed troop is highly effective, i usually use green dragon for non-living enemy like undead, and ancient vampire for the living ones. with some careful kiting, i unlocked montero with only 21 ancient empires at level 16, i also killed 4572 skeleton archers + 3558 skeletons with just 2 green dragon.

2, early in the game, when you are still on the starting island, 4 single inquisitors + 1 royal thorn can get through most fights, and even later on, after you learn resurrection, one main troop + 4 single inquisitors is a very good way to level your dragon pet, 1 inquisitor can only resurrect 7 health, but that's enough to resurrect 1 inquisitor...so, let them all die, and at the end of the fight, you simply resurrect one and he can resurrect one, and that one can resurrect another one and so on, let them spam holy anger (that's 12 holy anger, which means, on average 6.5*12 = 78 rage points!) let your dragon dig up treasure, build walls or just simply create mana balls and get your mana back to full.

3, stack those percentage-based resistance items and spells . stone skin(40)+twinkling boots(15)+leather dress(5), my ancient vampire is sitting at 60% physical resistance, throw on a level 3 magic spring (+15 defense), find a cell where there is only 1 or 2 adjacent cells, with the help of no retaliation and drain life, you can tank ridiculously amount of enemies, i killed 4*105 black unicorns at level 19 with just 30 ancient vampires.

honorable mention: 2 repair droids healing each other. repair droids are so awesome when used properly, i am actually thinking that my end game set up will be 2 repair droids + 1 guard droid + 1 ancient vampire + 1 royal thorn, with royal thorn and ancient vampire in my 2 reserve spots in case i lose some and don't have mana to sacrifice droids to get them back.

i know i will probably discover more strategies as i advance through the game, but anyways, what are your favorite strategies?

[DGDobrev]

1. Mage, Single Black Dragon, Flaming Arrow + Posion skull for damage and DoT.

2. Pure Human Army with good physical resistance. Works with any class.

3. Single BK stack with +3 morale. Works with Warrior and Mage best.

[axelle]

1. Mage, Single Black Dragon, Flaming Arrow + Posion skull for damage and DoT.

but you wouldn't be able to cast invisibility or heal your black dragon? i am sure i am missing some point, please clarify, thanks:)

[KongMysen]

You can acquire an item from Moro, a companion. This Splinter of Darkness adds 10 to att on BK's and grants them unlimited retaliations. Add Frenzy to that, and they will kill everything.
Also the very importent spell Evlin, which is mostly used as a ressurection spell for undead troops helaing up to 30% of the initial troop. A very used and abused tactis by most players in here.

Edit: Forget what I wrote. I completely misread your post.


Black Dragons are just very endurable. I never tried this strat, so I wouldn't know why Red Dragons wouldn't do better than a black, except for the reason that you can't keep it alive during boss battles as well as the BD

[N3MES1S]

The only different thing betwenn BD and RD are that u can heal and resurrect red dragons with normal heal and resurrect spells, black dragons can be only resurrected by demonologists, but BD are a bit stronger than red dragons. Red Dragons special ability is maybe more useful in some cases that BD one.

[DGDobrev]

but you wouldn't be able to cast invisibility or heal your black dragon? i am sure i am missing some point, please clarify, thanks:)

This tactic works till about lvl 45 or so :) Impy has shown that it may work even further, as he got almost all enemies with it. So I usually use the single black/red or whatever dragon I get as fast as I can, simply flying away from the enemies while applying DoT from the cheapest spells (flaming arrow and poison skull) on the enemies all the time. I even beat elenhel's army that way :)

I also keep 2 stacks in reserve to complement the black dragon stack - 1 Paladins, 1 Knights. They're good enough to beat almost enything on their own.

[aurora2]

My best strategy is that i don't have one :-)

[Sandsai]

3. Single BK stack with +3 morale. Works with Warrior and Mage best.

I think it works good with a pally due to the res skill. At 3/3 you res 100% at the end of the battle which means that you can spam Armageddon and not have to worry about losses, unless of course you are going for no losses. With enough mana and pet dragon you can armageddon the first round of combat to get everyone on fire and then timeback the BKs or just dispell the DOT. Although this strat makes the game way too easy imo, even on hard or the impossible difficulties. I figure the hard part is getting Moro's power of darkness down to get the BK stone.

[kcwong]

1. Fear with level 4 and 5 units. If I have a low level summon (e.g. Royal Griffin's summon), then I have a free Target spell cast. The low level summon can then lead the enemies around.

2. Manipulate AI. Make my summoned creatures more attractive targets for the AI, so my real troops can deal damage and stay safe.

3. High level units with Stoneskin/Divine Armor. Especially trolls and dragons. You can do a lot with Trolls, even during the day.

[Zeizei]

At some point killing bosses may get pretty tricky when playing on impossible level. Figured out something and this works on normal battles as well.

Anyway, Driller, Ktahu, Zilgadis (Mirror Tower) were doable in 5-10 rounds with 2 stacks:

- decent sized paladin stack
- some huge stack created from eggs in inventory

For example i had 1450 fireflies eggs = 7500 fireflies (damage was around 10-20k/hit on boss, Gremlion could not even hit flies, dont know why)

Just throw invisibility on paladins because whatever the overstack its not controllable with current leadership. Anyway, it will wipe out bosses and everything else. When enemy is done, they come for you. Whatever you may desire but using level 3 phantom for healing real stack works well. So, its up to you to deal with the rest.

[Moonheart]

My best strategy so far is a Turn back time one, done with a single-stack of units:



On odd rounds:
- If rage is > 55, cast Calm rage III, otherwise cast Magic spring III on the stack
- Attack with the stack or use one of its ability, if any interesting enough

On even rounds:
- Make the stack wait the end of turn
- Cast Turn back time on it
- If it can attack something without loosing a single unit, attack, otherwise, defend




The only weaknesses of this strategy are:
- you must not lose control of your stack, or this will prevent you to cast spells and recover your lost units
- you must be careful to not expose your stack to a threat that can kill all its units in two turns

For those reasons, level 5 units are best suited for this strategy, since they are naturaly immune to control spells.
Green Dragons are imho the best troop for this strategy, since they can restore your mana allowing you to cast more some attack spells from time to time even without the use of Higher Magic
However, against some bosses, it can be dangerous to get close as they strike really hard and Red Dragons could do a better job with their Fire Flood


Edit: You can also use this strategy with a full army, if you include a stack of resiliant units having a ressurection ability and use Turn back time on it. The danger to have such troops controlled is countered by the fact you have more than one stack and unless every of them are controlled (unlikely), you can still can your spells.
Paladins are the best troops for this strategy, but Necromancers providing you have full-undead army and the other stacks doesn't go above 60% of your total leadership are fun too (you kill your damaged troops, then you raise them again with necromancers, again, and again, and again)
However, overall, I find the single stack variation more reliable (at end of the game, even a full stack of paladins can be easily destroyed in two turns) and easier to manage.

[ShuiMienLung]

Necromancers providing you have full-undead army and the other stacks doesn't go above 60% of your total leadership are fun too (you kill your damaged troops, then you raise them again with necromancers, again, and again, and again)
However, overall, I find the single stack variation more reliable (at end of the game, even a full stack of paladins can be easily destroyed in two turns) and easier to manage.

Do you know, it never even occurred to me to take short-stacks of undead in, COUNT on them getting killed off, and using Necromancers' ability to bring them back in full. What an awesome idea!

(I'd been using Necromancers' ability to animate enemy stacks that I've killed off, giving me Meat Shields to put in front of my stacks that I'm trying to protect from injury.)

[Moonheart]

It is a fun strategy, but it doesn't work for no loss games alone.
Even if you can loop-resurrect a stack with nercromancer, the lost unit still count as killed.

You have, before the end of the battle, made it killed again and use Eviln to resurrect it definitivly.

[TheTuna]

Lvl 32 mage, imposible...

1- High intelect, red dragons and Oil Mist + Fire Rain with an a ocasional geyser its getting me fast and easy no loss victory right now.

I also use Royal griffin (for the summon to eat retaliations), Royal snakes, paladins and demonologist.


2- Royal griffins + Stone Skin + Magic shield from archamages allow me to get trough the scary mid game without losses.

Algo use paladins (+ phantom for resurrection), inquisitors and royal snakes.


3- Royal griffins + Archers + Hunters + Elf + Precision + Dragon Arrows + Trigger (companion).

After Cheer from RG archers will desintegrate everything (except bone and lizardman, for those use the dragon arrows), at the time i was using virgin set and those crappy elf get to 70 attack with nearly 70% crit rate. Was someting like 21 (base) + 12 (hero) + 7 (virgin set) * 1.3 (morale) * 1.5 (cheer). And without ANY archers items (telescope, elven bow, arbatror, etc, none apear)

Also using paladins for resurrection.


4- Single stack Paladins + Inquisitor blade + Banner of Faith + Stone skin + Divine armor, for boss fights (divine not nedded with 25% resist from gear agains Frog or the lizardmand boss).

I usually use the spell resurrection (30 mana for 2.5k resurrection) because pallys gets surrounded fast and gost was unable to be cast.



With my lvl 40 paly, normal.

1- Just Armageddon with single Archdemon stack... I did´nt care for no loss in that time, and Resurrection just bring them all back so its was a piece of cake in every none boss fight.


2- Target someting let it be crush to death (even use sacrifice to resurrect other troops) then Resurrention bring it back.


Sorry for bad english :D-

[ncknck]

On impossible, with 2 repair druids, 1 guard droid, 1 bone dragon, 1 necromancer or black knight plus magic resists gear i dont need a strategy. Everything dies. Most fights end on turn 7.

Mass Haste, charge-in with the dragon, do the poison nova, timeback him back in round 2. Mop-up the rest and rez losses with Eviln at the end. Droids repair themselves. I dont even bother to cast stoneskin.


edit: oh and the best thing this party is immune to morale and control spells. The only way to stop them is to kill them.