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john_crapper
09-27-2010, 04:13 PM
Posts about ways to utilize black knights are large and extensive. However They all seem to be directed at solo-ing with them. Solo-ing is kinda boring to me, as the appeal of the game is found in its variety of units and ways to synchronize their abilities and strengths.

However I cannot find a way to successfully integrate black knights into a full army. Too many races' morale goes down the drain. And at 35 level warrior, the attack/defense/crit penalty is really notice-able.

Cannoneers go from 63 A 32 D and 51% crit to 57/27, 38%

And thats just for 1 unit of morale. Orcs lose 2 and most other races lose at least 1.
Got the shard, got the eviln spell, all ready to go, but i cant find anything that goes well with black knights. Except dragons, but those arent easy to find in large quantities and on Impossible the verona dragon lair is guarded by 25 blacks, 35 reds and 40 greens, which given their immunity to "target" spell, makes them a costly battle.

Also the maybe more obvious answer to go full undead isnt applicable, because im playing for a high-score and running back and forth to replenish them isnt appealing to me.

So, any suggestions?

ckdamascus
09-27-2010, 04:26 PM
There are quite a few humans who will work with the undead.

Inquistor, (maybe priest), Paladins, Possibly archmage, and the Rune Mage as well.

They do not incur a morale penalty in doing so. You could use the paladin as a starter tank to take the first counter attack, then use the black knights to follow up, but I find this is hard to do without double-cast.

You can also use another army in the meantime (keep the black knights in reserve) until you do get to a sizable team of undead.

The biggest problem is the annoyance of using either resurrect and/or eviln.

You'd really rather use only one or the other. Not to mention, I find eviln sort of crappy since you can't eviln to revive AND fight in the same round, unlike resurrect.

Saiko Kila
09-27-2010, 04:42 PM
Unfortunately rune mages (and archmages, I believe) have morale hit when teamed with undead, including dark knights. It's possible to use items to offset that, or Persuasion skill.

john_crapper
09-27-2010, 04:51 PM
Paladins do not work well with black knights. They can neither resurrect them, nor use second wind, and its really pointless to use tank units when your game plan is to have the black knights tank with unlimited retaliation. At high levels inquisitor rage is not as useful as having a damaging unit in the army, and inquistors deal good damage only to undead.

Rune mages are useful, only if you have talent runes to spare. Archmages have always been in my games, since KBTL, because their shield is an awesome protective spell. And used in conjunction with paladins, they can cast shield on the first turn, then the paladins grant them second wind, and the archmages's fighting trance buf expires just when the magic shield is ready to be re-cast.

So thats the kind of synchronizing I'm looking for

And neutralizing morale penalties is not efficient, because you would otherwise have positive morale, which would be another reason not to have black knights.

loreangelicus
09-27-2010, 08:28 PM
Trim your list and zone in to units that are not affected morale-wise by undead. You could use a bunch of Neutrals, or even more undead. From Neutrals you have the 3 dragon types, then you just tank with BKs while they fly around doing massive damage. Same with Bone Dragons, great manueuverabilty, area poison damage, and like the BKs are easy to resurrect with Evlin. If you get S'Krassh shield and Jade Belt, then Undead Spiders could act as your DPS, while BKs act as tanks/DPS.

Or you could go with the team that I used for my impossible warrior high score run in KBAP: bone dragons, black knights, guard droids, repair droids (split into 2 stacks); a killer full 5 slots army, I'm sure you've heard about it since you made a comment regarding my post in the KBAP thread. :)

ckdamascus
09-27-2010, 10:55 PM
Paladins do not work well with black knights. They can neither ressurect them, nor use second wind, and its really pointless to use tank units when your game plan is to have the black knights tank with unlimited retaliation. At high levels inquisitor rage is not as useful as having a damaging unit in the army, and inquistors deal good damage only to undead.

Rune mages are useful, only if you have talent runes to spare. Archmages have always been in my games, since KBTL, because their shield is an awesome protective spell. And used in conjuction with paladins, they can cast shield on the first turn, then the paladins grant them second with, and the archmages's fighting trance buf expires just when the magic shield is ready to be re-cast.

So thats the kind of synchronizing I'm looking for

And neutralizing morale penalties is not efficient, because you would otherwise have positive morale, which would be another reason not to have black knights.

The best 'team sync' is the undead armies. :) And as pointed out, neutrals don't care much either way.

Although, I'm not sure how you get around reviving your neutrals easily without a paladin, if you are going for no-loss?

Resurrect + EvilN are horrifically expensive to use together, and Black Knights are usually pretty bad in the defense category (but awesome in the offense category).

So, I figured to wasting 3-4+ turns after the battle for evilN spamming, you could mitigate the damage a bit by using another tank.

Argh, I hate that droid build haha... but yes, that works too. :)

Oh yeah, or the old fashioned demonologists. Dunno. They are ok, but I just don't dig them anymore. Rune Mage has obsoleted them and they were always high priority targets for the enemy.

john_crapper
09-28-2010, 01:34 AM
Or you could go with the team that I used for my impossible warrior high score run in KBAP: bone dragons, black knights, guard droids, repair droids (split into 2 stacks); a killer full 5 slots army, I'm sure you've heard about it since you made a comment regarding my post in the KBAP thread. :)

I did indeed, but droids are too unappealing for me to use. My decision may have been made for me, since the item i got from the champion of teana was one I've never seen before - Dragon heart or something, Grants 1 morale to all dragons as well as -10% leadership. Im thinking of getting voice of the dragon and have max morale dragons in the army, and have reds tank for me, since the immense bonus to their defense would help. Also I may at one point start hoarding runes for Rune Mages as, they are capable of resurrecting even the black dragons.

When you play The droid tactic, do you use any specific items items/sets that work in conjunction with droids? Because from what i've seen as stats they are not impressive, and I dont see why you bother wasting 3 slots on healers + guard droid, when your target unit is the black knight? I suppose the fact that your whole army is immune to mind spells is a bonus, but I really cant place the droids strategically - their damage is mediocre and apart from being self-sustaining I fail to recognize their utility.

One thing i forgot to consider are royal snakes. In KBTL they were ridiculously powerful, because of the early 100% attack to snake wife and their no retaliation ability keeps them from painful retaliations while everything goes nuts on your "target"-ed unit. Assassins mirror the snake abilities very closely, but the damage-to-leadership math leans toward snakes. Although the one-time backstab is crippling, On Impossible boss battles require a more consistent source of damage. Plus, they cant be buffed.

Although I strive to play without any losses, I wont ever play a full no-loss game where I have to reload endlessly, or drag the battle 100 rounds to resurrect every unit. I once read somewhere that a guy went to 250 rounds with the spider boss or ktahu.

P.S and on that note I just had my most taxing battle so far: I attacked Demenion (46 lvl Impossible) with a 34 level warrior. All in All, I lost about a quarter of my army ( he had 5 stacks of 5 level units that couldnt be tanked with Target), but gained 29,968XP from the fight (20% talent+ 10% items and +50% ancient knowledge)


EDIT: What exactly does the warrior crossworlds skill "counter strike" do? More retaliations?

loreangelicus
09-28-2010, 04:08 AM
...
When you play The droid tactic, do you use any specific items items/sets that work in conjunction with droids? Because from what i've seen as stats they are not impressive, and I dont see why you bother wasting 3 slots on healers + guard droid, when your target unit is the black knight? I suppose the fact that your whole army is immune to mind spells is a bonus, but I really cant place the droids strategically - their damage is mediocre and apart from being self-sustaining I fail to recognize their utility.
...

Royal Hammer (+5 attack, -15% leadership dwarves), Engineer's Badge (+2 intellect, -20% leadership droids), and Horn of King Borg (+5 attack dwarves, -10% leadership dwarves) all add up to -45% leadership for droids; so you almost double your droid count, which effectively doubles their survivability and damage output.

They have 20% physical resistance and 80% poison resistance, high mobility (speed 5 and 3 for repair and guard droids respectively), and repair droids have a reload 3 repair ability that "resurrects" a massive 85% comparable leadership; Eviln level 3 at 30% stack resurrection looks pathetic in comparison, and that requires 35 mana. And don't even mention to me the Resurrection spell, not when I'm trying to resurrect a 45,000+ leadership stack that is being whacked on the head by three 70,000+ leadership enemy stacks on Impossible difficulty. :)

They draw aggro from enemies like moths to a fire. So long as your enemies can attack them, they will leave your black knights and bone dragons alone, sidestepping them to reach the droids if need be.

You guessed it, these self-sustaining near-impossible to kill droids will act as tanks for your team, allowing your bone dragons and black knights to concentrate on DPS.

Droid damage is mediocre? You must have only used repair droids. At half-stack (you normally split them into two stacks) I understand how their halved damage could indeed look mediocre. You should always use both guard and repair droids, or none at all. Let the full stack of guard droids take on ALL possible enemies it could draw aggro, then fly in your repair droids to repair it.

To bad I can't attach the Excel file I used to evaluate all units from all the races. Taking leadership, attack value and damage, repair droids' damage (0.11 Damage Per Leadership) is between that of a bowman (0.10 DPL) and hunter (0.12 DPL); guard droids' damage (0.18 DPL) is between that of swordsmen (0.17 DPL) and veteran orcs/decaying zombies (0.19 DPL). Royal Snakes are at (0.21 DPL) so not bad, though they are not as easy to resurrect as droids or undead. Black Knights actually just start off at 0.18 DPL (same as guard droids), though their special ability makes it a lot higher as they attack more.

john_crapper
09-28-2010, 04:42 AM
Royal Hammer (+5 attack, -15% leadership dwarves), Engineer's Badge (+2 intellect, -20% leadership droids), and Horn of King Borg (+5 attack dwarves, -10% leadership dwarves) all add up to -45% leadership for droids; so you almost double your droid count, which effectively doubles their survivability and damage output.


To bad I can't attach the Excel file I used to evaluate all units from all the races.


Do you KB Scan for all these first? And you can always upload the excel file anywhere.

ckdamascus
09-28-2010, 06:32 AM
I did indeed, but droids are too unappealing for me to use. My decision may have been made for me, since the item i got from the champion of teana was one I've never seen before - Dragon heart or something, Grants 1 morale to all dragons as well as -10% leadership. Im thinking of getting voice of the dragon and have max morale dragons in the army, and have reds tank for me, since the immense bonus to their defense would help. Also I may at one point start hoarding runes for Rune Mages as, they are capable of resurrecting even the black dragons.


Wow, I didn't realize Rune Mages could revive black dragons! Thanks a lot! I suppose this means they can also revive Cyclops... ugh. Time to go back and grab them.

Unfortunately, seems slow going with reviving though as even with 9 of them, I can only resurrect 2160 HP (and that is with the 20 mind rune minimum, too bad it doesn't keep scaling. I had up to 67 unused mind runes for a while. :) ).

Paladins with the resurrection skill get a bonus to this number. And, a warrior arguably will have about double the rune mages, but will probably not have a fun time doing phantom rune mages.

Looks like I might need to invest some points in the new Archmage skill which reduces the leadership costs (you can get about 50% more rune mages if you max it out) :)

I was using shaman to heal the black dragons instead. Maybe now I can switch some of my army out....

BB Shockwave
09-28-2010, 06:39 AM
Undead armies rock. I recently played through the Legend with one, so I can offer assistance.

Zombies stood in for the Black Knights until they are available, afterwards they will be your tanks. I see no fun going solo with any unit...

My line-up was: Bone Dragons (to be replaced with Greens in certain fights, like against other undead), Necromancers, Ancient Vampires, Black Knights, Cursed Ghosts/Skeleton archers. The latter two I switched sometimes, as tactics required it.

I also used Werewolves early on, and Black Unicrons in some anti-undead fights.

loreangelicus
09-28-2010, 03:44 PM
Do you KB Scan for all these first? And you can always upload the excel file anywhere.

I use the scanner primarily for Ancient Knowledge scrolls and other +XP items. Since I only play a campaign once (too little time to play) I can't leave to chance the existence (or lack thereof) of these items for a high score run.

In KBAP I didn't scan for these droid items as I didn't plan to take them from the get-go; I did scan for the Black Helmet and Eviln as I wanted to get Black Knights. :)

My KBAP unit evaluation Excel file in ZIP format attached; good thing ZIP is allowed here. As you can see, I called the repair droid "auto 1" and guard droid "auto 2" because I created this unit evaluation file even before I got my hands on KBAP.

john_crapper
09-28-2010, 07:43 PM
I use the scanner primarily for Ancient Knowledge scrolls and other +XP items. Since I only play a campaign once (too little time to play) I can't leave to chance the existence (or lack thereof) of these items for a high score run.

In KBAP I didn't scan for these droid items as I didn't plan to take them from the get-go; I did scan for the Black Helmet and Eviln as I wanted to get Black Knights. :)

My KBAP unit evaluation Excel file in ZIP format attached; good thing ZIP is allowed here. As you can see, I called the repair droid "auto 1" and guard droid "auto 2" because I created this unit evaluation file even before I got my hands on KBAP.

A legend would've been nice. Like what's LPL and why are some of the numbers blue/red/bald-ed. And what does the final score stand for.


(too little time to play)

Oh my Deity, If making such a spreadsheet just for the sake of statistical analysis is your idea of limited time to play, I pray you never go on a KB binge.

ckdamascus
09-28-2010, 08:21 PM
A legend would've been nice. Like what's LPL and why are some of the numbers blue/red/bald-ed. And what does the final score stand for.



Oh my Deity, If making such a spreadsheet just for the sake of statistical analysis is your idea of limited time to play, I pray you never go on a KB binge.

Lore goes all out when he does play. :) He gave me a run down on the best places to use Ancient Knowledge scrolls.

I did a lot of homework when planning for my 100% Critical Ranged Warrior build. I don't know about an extensive spreadsheet though.

It is worth it when it comes together. Killing nearly every boss in Impossible in about 10 rounds (some in 4, some in 12) - No loss is what I call... fun. :)

After I win with my Impossible Mage build, I want to try out an Impossible Paladin build using heavy melee. Not sure if I will hit 0 losses though on that one.

john_crapper
09-28-2010, 08:26 PM
Lore goes all out when he does play. :) He gave me a run down on the best places to use Ancient Knowledge scrolls.



And where might that be?

ckdamascus
09-28-2010, 08:33 PM
And where might that be?

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14356&highlight=ancient+knowledge

Buried in the thread somewhere. I just did a search for Ancient Knowledge and remembered it was in my "I got 9 AKs!" thread.

loreangelicus
09-28-2010, 09:04 PM
Hi ckdamascus! I actually did complete that game, and here's the link to the complete breakdown of that game:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14756

I created that post so that other people would try for a high score too, and not be intimidated and be armed with the necessary information to actually do a pretty good run. I personally believe this is what this forum is for: to help each other do better and get more enjoyment from the game by pushing it to it's limits.

Lol, as for creating that file, remember that this was after KBTL but before the English version of KBAP was released; I had some free time to play, but no game to play. :) And sorry for having no legends, it was meant as a personally file. You already know DPL as damage per leadership, I thought it was not hard to decipher LPL as life per leadership. Granted, I myself don't remember what the purpose of that last unlabeled column was (something to do with representing LPL differently). :) The blue highlight is to tag a stat as decent enough, then blue in bold is better, then red is better than that, with red in bold as the best. Note, this is just a straight-up evaluation of damage and life, not counting other factors.

And besides, doing a no-loss high score run for a campaign as long as KBTL and KBAP takes a lot of time. So it's better to spend some time planning first and then take on the task and do a decent job, than run head-long into it and do a half-baked attempt that makes you want to do it again. Just like in real life. :)

ckdamascus
09-28-2010, 09:14 PM
Hi ckdamascus! I actually did complete that game, and here's the link to the complete breakdown of that game:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14756

I created that post so that other people would try for a high score too, and not be intimidated and be armed with the necessary information to actually do a pretty good run. I personally believe this is what this forum is for: to help each other do better and get more enjoyment from the game by pushing it to it's limits.

Lol, as for creating that file, remember that this was after KBTL but before the English version of KBAP was released; I had some free time to play, but no game to play. :) And sorry for having no legends, it was meant as a personally file. You already know DPL as damage per leadership, I thought it was not hard to decipher LPL as life per leadership. Granted, I myself don't remember what the purpose of that last unlabeled column was (something to do with representing LPL differently). :)

And besides, doing a no-loss high score run for a campaign as long as KBTL and KBAP takes a lot of time. So it's better to spend some time planning first and then take on the task and do a decent job, than run head-long into it and do a half-baked attempt that makes you want to do it again. Just like in real life. :)

Ah yes, I remember that one. Fantastic job, by the way! I gave up on going for high scores, since everyone seems to have outdone me in some way. Just having fun with the new items and units. :) I hate super planning that far ahead of time or saving the heroes and stuff. It is sort of fun killing heroes that are higher level than you, but I didn't want to waste the Ancient Knowledge scroll prematurely.

I've won as a warrior and mage, but I never won as a paladin though, and now I'm not sure if I should.

I forgot that for my ultimate "melee monster team" I will need three weapons, and that means I have to pick warrior since there are no armor bearers who can hold two weapons. (Drill, Battle Axe, Ogre Club).

Ah well. :( So much for having the rune mages get a bonus due to my resurrection skill.

I suppose with that much melee the new "counterattack" ability is more worth while. I wonder how that works.

I wonder if the game manual is wrong; they mention Goblin Rakura as an armor bearer, yet NO ONE has mentioned him yet.

Aieee... I am sucked back into this evil game again. :)

john_crapper
09-28-2010, 09:32 PM
Yeah, 4 months is really too much fpor me to drag a game. S'why I dont play a strict no-loss game, although I accept casualties only in special cases. I figure that your score is the current highest in crossworlds? Im aiming for a score above 1550. Considering the irritating amounts of time and pre-calculation and scanning it would otherwise take, Im ok with it. Actually I havent finished crossworlds yet, so what is a good above-average score for an Impossible game there?

Wow, Canoneers have 0,07 DPL. And peasants have 0,3

loreangelicus
09-28-2010, 10:38 PM
Yeah, 4 months is really too much fpor me to drag a game. S'why I dont play a strict no-loss game, although I accept casualties only in special cases. I figure that your score is the current highest in crossworlds? Im aiming for a score above 1550. Considering the irritating amounts of time and pre-calculation and scanning it would otherwise take, Im ok with it. Actually I havent finished crossworlds yet, so what is a good above-average score for an Impossible game there?

Wow, Canoneers have 0,07 DPL. And peasants have 0,3

Aside from limited game time it wasn't the no-loss that made it a long game to finish (droids and undead are very easy to no-loss); it was the constant reloading of battles just to get a chance of digging up Ancient Knowledge scrolls. I actually hate the idea of AK scrolls (I'm fine with +XP items), but you gotta do what you gotta do...

Correction: highest in KBAP, not Crossworlds. I haven't even fired up OotM yet, though I have finished DotC:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=16416&page=4

Currently looking at CotA. :)

Note that OotM has 7 additional quests and possibly more enemies (even added one more boss, the Kraken), so OotM high scores should be higher than comparable KBAP high scores.

Yup, canoneers are big pushovers if you don't consider their triple-shot ability. And peasants have been king of DPL since KBTL. Too bad I can't seem to find my KBTL evaluation spreadsheet; all level 5 units were pathetic then in terms of DPL and LPL. :)

ckdamascus
11-20-2010, 06:20 PM
A legend would've been nice. Like what's LPL and why are some of the numbers blue/red/bald-ed. And what does the final score stand for.



Oh my Deity, If making such a spreadsheet just for the sake of statistical analysis is your idea of limited time to play, I pray you never go on a KB binge.

Color coding was just manual highlights to point out promising values.

The last value is a susceptibility to a high attack rating monster (specifically attack rating 56). So the value is the bonus damage the enemy has against you!

In other words, the lower the better. The lower values indict a significantly better tank with normal attacks, and abilities except for dancing axes, astral attacks, and poison axes.

It uses a base attack of 56 (enemy) and applies it against the unit's defense.

Hmmm I could probably re-work and re-use this sheet. I've been on a quest for more insane winning combinations. :)

rollems
11-22-2010, 06:32 PM
Black nights fit in very well with humans

checks this out it was ownage army with focus on high morale i used in AP
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14291&highlight=High+morale

You need Moro Dark as companion to do the trick ;)

ckdamascus
11-22-2010, 09:31 PM
Black nights fit in very well with humans

checks this out it was ownage army with focus on high morale i used in AP
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14291&highlight=High+morale

You need Moro Dark as companion to do the trick ;)

I would abuse them more if only they could eat an EvilN and still attack in the same round. Bleh. :(