Something for true warriors..

[impy]

The introduction of runemage, which, without any saved runes, is more of overpowered level 4 unit rather than 5, got me thinking. With how many unused runes is one actually capable of finishing the game? This question can be transferred into - what is the lowest number of skills (=skill points) one must invest into in order to finish the game?

And the new challenge was born..
Conditions:
1) Impossible difficulty
2) No loss
3) No kiting
4) No level 5 units apart from runemage
5) No pet dragon digging - in order not to abusively raise number of gained runes
6) Finish the game with highest number of unused runes

Once again, choice is yours, but i will personally not use any of the known overpowered combos - droids, necro+elwin, 100%crit shooters etc. etc., i mentioned it all before in paladin ultimate thread.

The number of runes generated in the beggining of each playthrough & runes found in chests on battlefields may vary and therefore can affect the final figure,but I think it should not make much of difference, it will more about how many runes you spent on skills.
The character level will give extra runes, so it may be worth pursuing +%experience. Investing in Learning may not be the best, Learning 1 requires 23 runes to start. I have not done the precise calculations whether gain of extra runes through extra levels is worth it though, i leave it to the others. Also, no pet dragon digging should put a stop to abusive digging of +experience wanderer scrolls. That's fair.

I am currently level 21, see screenshot, with 278 unused runes. I only invested in Distorsion 1, and Linguistics 1 as a prerequisite, and Scouting 1, hoping to get as far as possible.
Warrior character is an obvious choice - with no benefits coming from skills, only warrior provides leadership advantage as he (she:rolleyes:) levels up.
Things are quite tough actually, it reminds me of my first kings bounty playthrough - running around to see what i can actually kill:)
Thanks for over 1000 views on paladin ultimate thread, hopefully this one will attract some fruitful discussion too.

[Metathron]

So, a rune mage will make use of however many runes you have available, it's not capped?

[Saiko Kila]

So, a rune mage will make use of however many runes you have available, it's not capped?

It's capped at 20 runes. Only Runic Armor is supposed to give an additional bonus if you have more than 20 runes, but it's the same whether you have 21 or 221.

[Voxfox]

It's capped at 20 runes. Only Runic Armor is supposed to give an additional bonus if you have more than 20 runes, but it's the same whether you have 21 or 221.

Saiko are you certain on that as I`m sure my mages powers increase the more runes I harvest (dont use) as in the summoned creatures stack increases etc
If its capped at 20 there is no real point in Impy`s challenge :(

[impy]

You can easily check it with cheat code, but just you know what to expect from runemage:
20 might runes - strength of destruction talent goes up to 90-150.
- standard damage goes up by +40 = 80-95 (game mistakenly only shows +20)

20 mind runes - strength of revive talent goes up to 240hp per runemage
- health of runemage goes up by 200 = from 450 to 650

20 magic runes - strength of illusion talent goes up to 1000hp summon/mage
- 30% probability of casting sheep on standard attack

Destruction talent looks nice, it is irresistible astral damage, but due to low basic runemage attack (30) it does not do that much damage unless buffed up. It is a far cry from dragons doing 300+damage.
650hp does not make it a strong level unit, but let's not forget it is a ranged unit like cyclop. The best perks come with saved magic runes. illusion talent is rechargable every 3turn - brilliant!, casting sheep is awesome.
Eventhough runemage is a human unit, it does not seem to be affected by royal griffin skill or Portrait of the knight - bug?
Saving so many runes weakens your overall army performance, question is whether it is worth it or not in regular game play. Answer is given by runemage leadership req - 2000, which is too much for middlegame. For endgame with important skills already maxed out, having f.e. 12 runemages summoning 12000hp meatshields (then cast target on it) every 3rounds is different cup of tea.
Let's say it is nice to see some fresh unit which is not another violet, yellow, pink dragon with slightly different statistics.

[impy]

Saiko are you certain on that as I`m sure my mages powers increase the more runes I harvest (dont use) as in the summoned creatures stack increases etc
If its capped at 20 there is no real point in Impy`s challenge :(

My challenge is not based on having (or not having) runemages with (or without) superstrong statistics/talents depending on creators setting limits to it or not.
Point is to finish the game with maximum unused runes left. Since runemage is a new unit and happens to benefit from saved runes, i thought - why not to include it in my challenge to see have it behaves? You can run around with orcs if you want, they are very strong or make your own challenge, thousands of options.
Hmm.. My challenges are usually not very funny, (unless your standard army setup does not include bottle of Jack by the pc table;) ) but difficult. Some people find it interesting this way. All the best

[Swindley]

I like challenges like this and will keep an eye on this thread, even if I wont try it myself:)

Oh and after some testing in my game, I've found the sheeping from the Rune Mages extremely usefull, and often have 2 stacks of powerfull enemy units sheeped, although with 30% chance it's abit random. The summoning is very usefull too, and I was surprised to find out they can heal and revive black dragons as well:D
________
ASIAN MOVIES (http://www.fucktube.com/categories/4/asian/videos/1)

[DGDobrev]

Well, I can confirm that there is a cap on the abilities of the rune mage. Destruction seems to be capped at +200%, which still provides a real nice damaging capabilities in a straight line.

[ckdamascus]

Well, I can confirm that there is a cap on the abilities of the rune mage. Destruction seems to be capped at +200%, which still provides a real nice damaging capabilities in a straight line.

Sorry, I mentioned this before. All of the abilities are capped at ~20 runes per discipline.

e.g. 19-20 might runes, 19-20 mind runes, 19-20 magic runes

at about 19-20 magic runes, your debilitating effect is "sheep".
mind runes max at about 140% power as well (20*7).

[onepiece]

Now we need to compare if the rune mages are really useful for that high lds and rune cost and price (I suppose it depends on your current strategy)

A more correct comparison would be: which is better: x rune mages or x red dragons? (since they have the same lds)

[ckdamascus]

Now we need to compare if the rune mages are really useful for that high lds and rune cost and price (I suppose it depends on your current strategy)

A more correct comparison would be: which is better: x rune mages or x red dragons? (since they have the same lds)

Of course it depends on your strategy. Technically speaking, rune mage is better. You can scale up 50% more of them with the Archmage skill (a new skill in the Magic tree, but it might only show up for Mages who complete the quest). The Archmage Hero Skill reduces the leadership requirements for all mages, including rune mages.

Rune mages can raise red dragons or black dragons. It means nearly every game where I have level 5 units in my team is going to require rune mages to smoothen the game play.

Rune mages can summon (like demonologist) can revive better than demonologists. They can randomly sheep enemies (this is like a free 40 mana spell).

Rune mages are pretty tanky (650 HP with 20 mind runes).

Just phantom the rune mages and you can increase the odds of sheeping and you can re-raise many level 5 units.

[impy]

Travel update.
level: 33. Unused runes: 465. Still going with Linguistics 1, Distorsion 1, Scouting 1. My ultimate goal is to get with only these skills all the way to k-tahu. Then one will have to probably boost Distorsion for stone skin & phantom purposes.

Difficulty has been somewhat lowered but it is still gruesome. The most difficult part was level 15-25, from entering Verona until I was strong enough to defeat continent scroll guardians. Now all maps opened, finally got Inquisitor blade. Torkve now comes with 20 runemages! Btw. apart from all those boosts for runemages coming from spare runes, they also get +10 to all resistances including astral, haven't checked precisely when.
No order magic hurts, since I cannot dispel burning/poisoning/sheep.
Before I embarked on this challenge I thought a lot how I am going to do it. Since there were no restrictions placed on pet dragon, he was going to be my main weapon. One has to play conservatively, since ressurection options are limited. Distorsion 1 gives cca 20% phantom on paladins, which was very little since i had only 30-70 paladins before acquiring Inq.blade, plus I had very little mana. Problem then was how to get a lot of rage for pet dragon with conservative play. So this is how I played : round 1 - royal griffins move 2 tiles forward and summon. Rune mages move 2 tiles forward and summon. Summons stay during battle mostly in the middle blocking the enemy. Not too close to my army in order not to get my main forces hit by incoming enemy, and not too close to enemy back rank , since it would be out of safe reach of royal snakes and paladins. Hero casts phantom on inquisitors. (Phantomed inqisitors are frequent target of the enemy range units, so it helps) Now inquisitors cast holy anger on melee units, paladins cast extra turn on summoned inqusitors, sum. inquisitors cast holy anger. Second round royal griffins cast cheer and after some skirmish there is more than enough rage for ball of lightning. If there is enough rage for another one, cast awaken dragon. Summoned units most of the time just reposition and defend in order to hold enemy for as long as possible.
Obviously it is preferable to have maxed rage when entering battle. For normal fights it is not that imortant, but for hero fights & scroll guardians it is crucial. I therefore always leave "pre-allocated" weaker wandering army close to main fight; in order to charge up once i am ready for big fight. Another interesting tactics (brute force) which makes army with high number of paladins pretty much indestructible is as follows: Upon starting the battle (or after some initial lightining balls) cast maxed out mana ball close to army and leave it. Continue doing the same every round until end of battle with only few enemy archers left. Now start colecting those mana balls giving you 100-200 or even more mana in total. Use mana for phantoming paladins and resurrecting. Adios
PS. whose brilliant idea it was to give already very very overpowered droid combo - extra skill and boost to repair coming from Neatness which is an excellent skill for all classes anyway:confused:. I can only think of marketing dept. - attracting new players by introducing smooth Impossible run which may appeal to some

[impy]

travel update.
level 44. unused runes 620. Only investments are still distorsion 1, linguistics 1, scouting 1.
Couple of interesting observations:
- when you have runemages in your army then fighting enemy army which has inquisitors is a guaranteed no loss win. Runemages rechargable talent Illusion creates a copy of 1-3lvl enemy, so if you at the end of the battle leave just some enemy inquisitors standing, you can bit by bit resurrect your whole army and get a full rage. This way fight with otherwise nasty Demenion is a pushover.
-inquisitors in my army are no longer for generating rage (I still have them because they resurrect cca 2000hit points and a considerable force due to inquisitors blade). Being the weakest part of my army they are a target of enemy melee & range units. Distorsion 1 gives Time Back spell for creatures up to level 3. You got the picture..
- Having inquisitors (or similar) might be the only way to fight those overpowered orcs. I tried other setups, having 95%magic res. and 70% astral but those blood shamans & goblin shamans are a menace. Great Uschuk killed 240 of my inquisitors in the first round! Time for time back:grin:
- one has to utilize the knowledge of kbap in order to proceed in the game. I occassionally had the employ the following
a) when there is a huge enemy single stack = gourguanas + dragon toy + lightning ball pretty much guarantee 50% reduction
b) 10+ clustered medium size enemy stacks (Shenobi, Hagni etc.) = pain skull + spear of rage x 1-2 + either dragon dive or fiery phantoms repeatedly, with massive rage generation
c) winter set (-1 to enemy speed) admittedly consisting of crappy parts is truly powerful. Enemy melee creatures with speed 2-3 become hopeless

[onepiece]

Eventhough runemage is a human unit, it does not seem to be affected by royal griffin skill or Portrait of the knight - bug?


It's affected by portrait of the knight (just checked it). Don't know about royal griffin skill (gotta check it later)

[ckdamascus]

travel update.
level 44. unused runes 620. Only investments are still distorsion 1, linguistics 1, scouting 1.
Couple of interesting observations:
- when you have runemages in your army then fighting enemy army which has inquisitors is a guaranteed no loss win. Runemages rechargable talent Illusion creates a copy of 1-3lvl enemy, so if you at the end of the battle leave just some enemy inquisitors standing, you can bit by bit resurrect your whole army and get a full rage. This way fight with otherwise nasty Demenion is a pushover.
-inquisitors in my army are no longer for generating rage (I still have them because they resurrect cca 2000hit points and a considerable force due to inquisitors blade). Being the weakest part of my army they are a target of enemy melee & range units. Distorsion 1 gives Time Back spell for creatures up to level 3. You got the picture..
- Having inquisitors (or similar) might be the only way to fight those overpowered orcs. I tried other setups, having 95%magic res. and 70% astral but those blood shamans & goblin shamans are a menace. Great Uschuk killed 240 of my inquisitors in the first round! Time for time back:grin:
- one has to utilize the knowledge of kbap in order to proceed in the game. I occassionally had the employ the following
a) when there is a huge enemy single stack = gourguanas + dragon toy + lightning ball pretty much guarantee 50% reduction
b) 10+ clustered medium size enemy stacks (Shenobi, Hagni etc.) = pain skull + spear of rage x 1-2 + either dragon dive or fiery phantoms repeatedly, with massive rage generation
c) winter set (-1 to enemy speed) admittedly consisting of crappy parts is truly powerful. Enemy melee creatures with speed 2-3 become hopeless

Great job so far! I rare go with dragon dive tactics when I use the mage, but I found it was incredibly helpful and gave me more experience points per round than any other ability.

That's what I love about this forum, you can learn so much even after playing this darn game for so long.

That said, I am REALLY curious on how you will beat Scrounger's RIDICULOUSLY overpowered army.

I barely beat it today with my mage. I had to actually use Black Hole (I have no idea who gave this scroll to me, but I thank them tons, as it is ridiculously overpowered, but not nearly as overpowered as the porc power. Yes, I said PORC power).

[impy]

Thanks.
here is a few more tips then (maybe well known by now, i on the other hand never read any tips about kbap strategies, it would spoil the fun for me, rather find them myself)
- use runemage sheep ability to your advantage; although it might not always work. Unless desperate, attack unit which size & overall threat is the biggest,rather than nearest threating unit or unit which will suffer the most from your standard damage. I'd rather shoot at 50 blood shamans in enemy back rank for measly damage than causing massive damage to his repair droids. Normally, killing blood shamans will take ages and cost casualities at some point, once sheep-ed, quickly bring in flyers to kick its ass. From my experience, sheep-ing probability is the same across level1,2,3,4 units unlike beholders put-to-sleep ability
-the same with runemage talent Illusion. Since it creates image from random enemy 1-3lvl unit, take out the weak ones during first 3 round so you can summon the ones you want in the round 4. Summoned for example droids will last much longer (20% phys.resistance) than thorns. Or kill all enemy 1-3lvl units quickly and go for 50% phys resist. angelic guards
-lighting ball is by far the best pet ability imho. True, in certain situations other spells can do more damage, but they are very costly. I value lightning ball very much for shocking ability too. I usually do not do the last +1 rest upgrade until hero level 40++, so i can spam it at least once every round without casting awaken dragon too often. Once you'll have 3-4 balls running it will seriously cripple and slow enemy forces. Bit of fighting + those balls in one round will generate enough rage for another ball, and by turn 5-6 battle is decided.
-sometimes it is preferable to cripple nasty enemy shooters with lightning ball rather than slow big melee stack. Example being 3000 skeletons archers just waiting to shoot that poison arrow, but the ball would choose by itself 50 trolls instead. Use to your advantage the fact that lightning ball can only travel limited distance in one turn, and therefore cast the ball 3-4 hexes from skleton archers in the opposite direction of trolls so it won't reach the trolls and goes after skeletons instead
-I already mentioned leaving pre-allocated wandering stacks close to enemy heroes or castles for the time when i'm ready and they will serve as top-up unit at some point. Another option is to buy in the shops upgradeable artifacts and carry them around. Apart from few nasty ones (pandemonic mask etc.) they are easy battles which you can use as a charge up battle for maxing out rage when needed. Always plan ahead. Don't choose an easy way out unless desperate. yes, you can drink those rage potions now in middle game, but what are you going to do once you are stuck in Reha without a chance to get a rage?
- use your allowance of scrolls you can carry. I usually carry scrolls which are mana expensive and would think twice to cast them in battle, but for free... Examples being Sheep scroll,turn back time, extra action points scrolls etc. Also, for tough end game battles you can carry phantom scrolls (for phantoming paladins..). In order to have as many available scrolls as possible do not pick wandering scrolls from ground if you have an access to area already, pick the scroll in the endgame when yuo really need them. You can find sage skull (+20 scrolls allowance), equip it, get scrolls, take it off, voila:)
-enemy forces mostly go after your weakest stack. So if you have an army of roughly equal level 4 or 5 units, once they kill a few of their main target they MIGHT move onto another one. On the other hand if you have a unit which defence/hit points/resistance/attack type.. is lower than rest of an army enemy will most probably stick to going after this unit until the end of the battle. I do not know the precise formula, but you can experiment until you know or find a unit that fits you. In my army in the screenshot it is inquisitors. Their defence & hit points are higher than royal snakes, but they are ranged and have no phys. resist. But i can tell you nearly every enemy goes after inquisitors like mad ignoring the snakes completely. Use this information to your advantage. I won quite a few battles just by comfortably sipping tea and casting 1-2 timebacks on inquisitors and after 4 rounds i have suffered hardly any damage to my overall army.
-general gameplay. I usually go after quests and heroes first leaving wandering stacks behind, even if it means lot of traveling and picking on enemies here and there. This is to get experience and levels quicker. Once stronger you can clean entire continent you left behind now comfortably in one clean sweep where every battle serves as an charge up battle for the next one.

That overpowered orc. Standard equipment might not work. I have been thinking of getting voodoo doll (-2 enemy initiative), armor that gives -30% enemy attack at night, helm giving you +20% attack at night, maybe the orc pipe you mentioned in another thread. Timeback strategy might help. Maybe gorguanas + balls to kill those trolls and melee orcs quickly.. one will need units which withstand plenty of punishment - paladins, knights..fast units to go after range units - horsemen (teleported snakes?)...summoners (griffins, demonologists, runemages, dryads, engineers)..plenty of phys., magic, astral, fire resist goes without saying. Might have to go fully charged with wanderer scrolls. we'll see:cool:

[impy]

Travel update.
level: 55. Unused runes: 723. Still going with Linguistics 1, Distorsion 1, Scouting 1.

So far the toughest challenge of all my humble contributions since the beginning. My core army still constists of runemages, royal griffins, inquisitors, paladins,royal snakes. Occassionally horsemen are called in when initiative is an issue. Neat trick : horsemen + mask of hate + portrait of dragon guarantees you get the first turn against any enemy (the only exception being combination of black dragons and archdemons in enemy army). Gourguanas come into play when huge enemy stack needs lightning ball + mark of blood. I have not used any boosting wanderer scrolls so far apart from those few ANcient Knowledge scrolls I found. 1st round of the battle these days goes like days : Royal Griffins need to go amongst the first (mask of hate if neccessary) and cast cheer. point is to make sure runemages with mediocre initiative (5) get their turn and summon thus creating meat shield. Reason to go first is also to unleash usually 2 x lightning ball straight away. Inquisitors shoot, royal snakes wait, paladins cast second turn on griffins. Griffins fly a tiny bit forward and summon.
I did not take this challenge lightly and have been saving scrolls which will be needed during ktahu & baal bosses - all phantom scrolls, calm rage scrolls, time back..and also dispel scrolls for fighting dragons etc.
All major battles in the game are done apart from a few forgotten wandering stacks and Scrounger, Arena battles, ktahu, Baal and wizard tower level 5 and beyond. The nastiest fight so far has been Samman, who loves to cast mass magic shackles in round 1 ruining all summoning etc, has 366 mana to play with and once he gets weaker casts armaggedon which ruins your resurrections and gives strong burning. Generally when you go no loss with paladin resurrections at the end of the battle strategy is as follows : leave the last few enemy ranged units standing and providing enemy hero spent all his mana, start happily phantoming paladins and resurrecting. When there are no ranged units in enemy army there are other more sophisticated methods
- from the start of the battle pick one level 1-3 stack (since you normally play with level 4-5 army) do not kill it and at the end of the battle cast fear. You can also carry some fear scrolls in backpack if mana is a problem.
- not killing that 1-3 level enemy stack also means do not let it come close to you if it is weak because you may kill it accidentally by retaliation. So start paying attention to this stack before battle is nearing its end. For example fighting dragon cave in Monero no loss is easy if there are some dragonflies. When dragonflies get closer (round 2) keep casting fear on them until the battle is done and then resurrect.
- if there are no ranged units, no 1-3level enemy stacks or mind immune stacks are present, you're up for an interesting battle. Then you have to pick one unit again to keep alive while you resurrect at the end of the battle. It should be a melee unit, since their manouvering is limited, slower the better.
a) Now keep slowing it (slow spell or lighning ball shock), trapping it, wear winter set etc, do anything neccessary to make it stay far away from where your resurrection party is taking place
b) sometimes everything mentioned above does not work to your liking, usually because it forces you to spend valuable mana and hero turn on repeatedly casting some silly spell on some unit left behind which does not take a decisive role in battle. Then, check the strengths of your summons - coming from royal griffins, runemages, dryads etc. Angelic guards are the best because of high phys. resist and mobility. Now evaluate and pick the enemy stack which is roughly the strength of one of your summons. The idea is that if these two equal stack get involved in skirmish, then their fight tend to last a while before it is resolved, unlike strong unit-weak unit skirmish. When ready cast slow on chosen enemy stack to make sure it stays behind enemy units rushing towards you. Now get to this unit with your summon. Since the enemy chosen unit speed has been lowered it will attack your summon, not getting closer to your main ranks. You just defend with your summon or even lure it further from your army. While they battle it out, it is your time to do your resurrections.
c) Things may get complicated when there is enemy hero present, so it is not just a wandering stack. That's why my fight with Samman got so messy. I ended up killing his archdemons quickly plus only roughly half of his army, so he does not start to cast armaggedon yet. Point was to make him feel secure and spend all his mana on other spells. Problem was while I waited turns and turns for him to spend all his mana, he did too much damage for resurrections to me, i only have limited mana and distorsion 1. So i ended up sticking royal snakes in the middle of his army for him to concentrate on. I kept casting mana balls and time back every second turn on snakes. Eventually it worked..So far, i can truly recommend this challenge to kbap veterans

[Jaedar]

You are quite possibly insane. But your travelogues are entertaining reads despite(or perhaps because of) this.

Basically, keep going :)

[ckdamascus]

They also let you see what the top strategies are. It pleases me that I figured out some of them before hand! :)

But I am always learning, so I am curious, even with a summon meat shield, when your royal snakes attack, doesn't the enemy retaliate against them later on? (not counter attack since they have no retaliation, but sometimes they don't take the bait/summon and go for your royals).

Do you just take the hit and resurrect later? If so, why royal snakes? They seem so fragile!

Or do you do the dance, where you hit after everyone attacked, then since they have the initiative bonus, you walk back one step, let the meat shields take the hit, then go back to hit again?

Although cheer only lasts for some time, and doesn't work on royals, does it?

I almost want to dump my assassins right now for similar reasons.

[impy]

You are quite possibly insane. But your travelogues are entertaining reads despite(or perhaps because of) this.

Basically, keep going :)

Thanks. Don't tell my employer;)

There are few reasons why i picked royal snakes.
1) Due to limited resurrection capabilities i wanted a unit which does huge amounts of damage without retaliation. You see, after initial paladin's resurrection, which is admittedly quite powerful i could only do cca 20% phantom on paladins because of distorsion 1 (investing in intelligence to boost it is weak), so i had to play conservatively throughout the whole game. I mentioned earlier that summons get fairly strictly positioned in the middle of the battlefield for blocking enemy melee from reaching my back ranks, but not far out of reach of paladins and fragile snakes. Yes, snakes always wait & hit & run. they stay 90% of times out of reach of enemy melee. If it comes to worst, you can always cast time back level 1 on them. Sometimes it meant skipping a turn with snakes completely. Snakes by themselves will eventually max out your battle alchemy medal, so they are in the middle of my setup and attack the biggest enemy incoming melee unit so they can poison it.
2) you can argue that i could have picked much stronger knights instead, which won't go down easily. They are slow, but would only have to walk to the middle of battlefield due to my strategy of holding enemy forces there with summons. Or versatile horsemen. The point i was trying to prove was the game can be beaten with fairly ordinary units. My setup may be decent, but not the most powerful. I could have picked demonologists as well etc. The same goes for equipment. Believe it or not i did not use scanner in order to have favorable start. Just started the game to see what I find and make it somehow. With scanner i would have been obsessed with getting the best
equipment, but i did not want it like this. Just out of curiosity - what equipment i am talking about? Definitely belt of the winner (+50%defence +1 speed), slippery cuirass, maybe scaly set, knight set,snake boots..My number of unused runes could be easily improved by 30, since i have not found any of +10runes/50victories items. And the same goes for wanderer scrolls. I was determined to get to k-tahu without using these boosts. And again, it goes the same for using of any kind of overpowered combos, level 5 units, or kiting.It is very challenging but that's how i like it. Each battle - Mistikus, Moro, Shenobi etc etc. have their own story and ministrategy.Sometimes i was waiting for the train from work, just standing there thinking how i am going to beat that stupid guy:grin:

[ckdamascus]

Actually, as I finished writing it, I remembered your distortion level 1 limitation and how turn back time only works on level 1-3 at level 1.

That alone is a huge reason to go with royal snakes. I was also just curious if you had to do hit and run since I actually find soft, but hard hitting no-retaliation units harder to use effectively (hit and run doesn't seem as efficient at times) than stronger tanks.

Yeah, I think I spent too much time thinking about this game too. Haha.

[hotfix666]

The introduction of runemage, which, without any saved runes, is more of overpowered level 4 unit rather than 5, got me thinking. With how many unused runes is one actually capable of finishing the game? This question can be transferred into - what is the lowest number of skills (=skill points) one must invest into in order to finish the game?

And the new challenge was born..
Conditions:
1) Impossible difficulty
2) No loss
3) No kiting
4) No level 5 units apart from runemage
5) No pet dragon digging - in order not to abusively raise number of gained runes
6) Finish the game with highest number of unused runes


7) Dont use save... only save when you shall sleep....

[impy]

how about :

- no sex until you finish the challenge?

then we would see the outburst of original strategies:grin:

[onepiece]

Play the game with your eyes closed and with auto battle ON!! (now that would be scary, not knowing what the **** is the AI doing with your troops)

[impy]

Travel update.
level 56. Unused runes:731. Still going with Linguistics 1, Distorsion 1, Scouting 1.

My goal to get to k-tahu with only distorsion 1 and without boosting wanderer scrolls (and obviously keeping all the conditions of the challenge in mind) has been completed.
I just finished off all the forgotten wandering stacks everywhere, done all the artifacts upgrading, killed dragons in Ultrax and Montero and guardians before k-tahu. Mind you, the fight with the first guardian was absolutely mental - see screenshot. I tried it with my standard setup many times with no success. This fight was difficult due to
- hayterans & gorguls initiative 7 & 8 meaning they get the first turn every turn.
- stack of 892 hayterans with leadership 133000+ is probably the biggest enemy stack i ever seen. Their critical attack or laying egg for 440+ hayterans is a nightmare
- size of the battlefield does not allow for hiding my units behind meatshields and prepare for incoming enemy. Also, hayterans can reach almost the whole battlefield
- difficult resurrection towards the end. Due to size of the battlefield it is difficult to keep last enemy unit at bay since many rounds of resurrections are needed whilst i have limited resources.
- summoning spell of enemy hero.
Just so you know how i tried it.
-reduce enemy initiative to 5, so runemages go before enemy forces and create meatshield. Also needed for using pet dragon first and repositiong of the army.Voodoo doll + mask of hate do the job. So royal griffins + runemages summon.
- reduce enemy attack. Cloak of shadows is superb armor for that. Fighting endgame heroes at night means usually 10+ reduction in enemy units attack
- reduce enemy big stacks immediately. 2 x lightning ball cast in round 1 with shocking.
- avoid gorguls 2 units attack. first round royal griffins move to the side, runemages move backwards, snakes forward.
- stick the royal snakes in front of enemy forces immediately so they soak up a lot of damage. time back at the end of second round, and so on.
It all looks lovely, doesn't it? Did it work? No..Difficulty was, that i had to keep the last enemy stack at bay and alive for 10+ turns in order to do those weak paladin phantoms + resurrections ( using also scrolls from backpack).
I also tried high phys. resistant + high defence combo - paladins + knights only, while casting quietly 2 x mystic eggs at the back in first round. paladins held up with maxed defence of 100+, but knights were dropping quickly especially due to critical attacks. Single paladins army did not work either. Hm...The only unit which could successfuly avoid hayterans critical attacks were ancient vampires. So i grabbed single stack of ancient vampires, stayed for few rounds in the middle of battlefied (out of reach of gorguls) so hayterans can use up their turn in unsuccessful beak attacks while i was casting lightning balls all the time. Eventually i hid in the corner and took them down as a bat.
Now if anyone wants to finish off this challenge with only k-tahu & baal fights left, i attached the save game, i never liked boss fights. (actually there are Scrounger and level5 wizard's tower left as well, too tough with my conditions and no wanderer scrolls). Save game also proves the pet dragon was not used for digging and wanderer scrolls were not abused.

Axelle mentioned in one of the Armored Princess threads the lowest level challenge - sounds interesting..

[ckdamascus]

Dude, you rock. You really push the game to the limits, and with it, I can see/spot new strategies that I never thought of to employ in my games, sans restrictions. :)

Yeah, I really don't think it is possible for you to beat scounger as it stands, but it is fantastically amazing how far you got.

In a weird way, you could say I try to specialize for very fast boss fights since my very first boss fight traumatized me to no end. Or at least I hope to build armies that can do both normal combat and boss fights fairly easily.

[onepiece]

I salute you impy!! Now that's what they call enthusiasm. If you beat the game like that, we'll need to do a party for you.

P.S: @ ckdamascus; what boss battle was your first that it traumatize you?

[ckdamascus]

I salute you impy!! Now that's what they call enthusiasm. If you beat the game like that, we'll need to do a party for you.

P.S: @ ckdamascus; what boss battle was your first that it traumatize you?

I never played King's Bounty: The Legend so I had no idea what to expect when I saw a boss.

Driller! I went through most of the game without losing anything, using "summons to soak counter attacks", etc.

Then, boom. Infinite counter attacks, no way to debuff the boss, no way to call the pet dragon, AoE damage. Mega losses. What the?!?!

;)

[onepiece]

@Ckdamascus; yeahhh The Driller. I remember reading to avoid stepping on the last row and guess what? I did it and 3 units were out half-way through the battle.
...
...
Re-Load please!

Some bosses on AP got some very strong abilities very thankfully they are easy to avoid ...once you experiment them XD