Game is hard

[Kalenden]

Hello, I'm playing the standard AP campaign with Crossworlds ( March of the orcs it is called I think ) and I'm finding the game rather difficult.

I'm a Paladin, lvl 5, developing my character trying to reach resurrection first. I've cleared out the first island (completely), have got 800 leadership ( 12 Royal Snakes, 10 Ancient Bears, 12+- Archers, 8 Inquisitors and 16 priests ) and I'm finding the second island ( Scarlet Wind I think ) too hard.

I basically tried my standard tactic of first clearing all the reachable weak units from the map and looting a little bit (I'd rather not kite) and then pass on to the stronger ones. Problem is, the stronger ones are a lot stronger. I'm trying to do this without incurring any losses, but if I want to fight new units I will incur a lot of losses since they have a lot more units than me. I am keeping off from buying any items to help me (saving for something that gives +10 mind runes after 50 victories) but that shouldn't be a problem.

So, any advice on how to deal with the situation? Also, any advice on how to develop my Paladin is also appreciated.

[BB Shockwave]

Are you playing on Hard or Normal?

My advice - ditch the priests... you have Inquisitors, they are better in all regards. Try to get your "Holy Warrior" medal to increase their damage even more (just cast Healing as often as you can).

Instead of Priests, I recommend you get some tough melee units that can take a beating, bears are OK but they are not the best. I recon you already got Jimmy Kraud, try to recruit Sea Dogs - their Evasion ability plus the increased speed given by Jimmy really helps. Then, explore Scarlet wind and Bolo, soon you will get the map to Rusty Anchor too. If you can, swap the bears for Paladins, Knights or Horsemen.

One other tactic you could try, as they are always available - the witch's hut on Debir always sells Royal Thorns and Fauns. These two work very well in unison.

[atlatea]

I guess unit setup is up to you, however for no kiting especially navigation map kiting, no loss and impossible difficulty, you need:

1. For unit setup: royal thorn, a tank, attacker like royal snake, inquisitor for rage gatherer and resurector, another 2 slot depend on your game randomize. For a tank, debir island have a nice one, like orc tracker.

If you don't have want to bring full 5 units with you, just those 4 is ok, but split inquisitor to 2 stack for quick rage gathering.

Well, if you bring full 5 units, consider bringing archmage from scarlet wind.

Archmage, inquisitor, royal snake, royal thorn, orcish tanker always spawn, it's not random.

Try to check wizard tower floor 1, sometimes they have nice spells for 0 gold, like target and stone skin.

If you have target, you can safely bring full 5 units without fear of losing against reasonable enemy, you cast target on your tank then archmage cast magic shield to your tank, and because enemies in early island are low lv, target lv 1 or lv 2 usually suffice.



2. Pet dragon build:
High lv pet dragon kick and treasure searcher (to search for call of colosus spell). Focus to lv your pet dragon skill untill it deal 400-500 damage and treasure searcher skill untill you can dig two treasure chests. You need call of colosus if you want very easy life in bolo and rusty anchor.



3. Paladin skill build:
Ignore resurrection at this point, focus on glory 3 (get it asap), then order magic 2 or 3 if you desperately need strong healing, then distortion magic 2 or 3 for better stone skin (distortion 2 usually suffice) and then chaos magic 1 (get it to lv 2 later) for fear spells.

You also need anger 1 from warrior skill tree, get it to lv 2 later.

After you have all of those, you can focus on getting resurection.


4. Get Grand strategy medal lv 2 asap. You need to have 2000 leadership by the end of scarlet wind island. Then buy rune mage at the place where you buy archmage.

Then before moving to bolo put all your units in ariana castle except rune mage, archmage and inquisitor. You can leave your inquisitor though.


5. By the time you arrive in bolo, try grabbing as many leadership flag as possible, you need to have 2500 leadership in this island.

Try to sneak your amelie to the droid seller. Buy both droids. Then proceed on killing enemies untill you reach 2500 leadership.

Then take advantage of the portal to underground catacomb there to get black dragon from your call of colosus spell. However if you already give up on reaching 2500 leadership, just try to get red dragon (need 2000 leadership) as soon as you arrive on bolo.

After you have either black or red dragon, all enemies suddenly become very easy for no loss, no navigation map kiting and impossible difficulty untill you reach verona.

The rest is up to you.


6. Additional info:
You can get 1 green dragon in rusty anchor island for 50 bowman, 50 pirate, 50 robber.

Bolo sometimes sell cyclop (a lv 5 unit).

Rusty anchor island sometimes sell lv 5 unit (can be troll, cyclop, or even black dragon!).

[Kalenden]

Thanks for the advice. I'm playing on Normal :oops:.

I'm not doing a no losses run, but just trying to prevent losses for the Medal and to avoid having to spend money.

I have met Jimmy Kraud and , after reading the info thread, have decided I will recruit him. However I won't hire "robber" types in my army since my other troops won't like that (I think, I'm not sure if all pirates have the same trait ).

On unit composition: A third melee guy? From KBTL I have always had a 3 Ranged and 2 Melee set up. However I will try the Royal Thorn.

On skills: Skip ressurection? Perhaps this is the best idea, since the lack of spells is really annoying. I will wait before I get it now.

[atlatea]

On skills: Skip ressurection? Perhaps this is the best idea, since the lack of spells is really annoying. I will wait before I get it now.

Yep, you need spells to use the full potential of resurection. Mostly spells that deal with control, like target, sheep, blind, fear, pygmy, slow, and other spells like them.

And the most important spells are target and stone skin or divine armor. I'm sure you already know why. Resurection skill resurect random units however it can be controlled, that is why you need target to make them focus fire only on one of your unit and stone skin / divine armor to help the focused unit survive the current battle , then your resurection will be guaranteed to resurect them because they are the only one that have casualties in their ranks.

I recomend getting resurection after you have order magic 2 and distortion magic 2. And have control spells.

[Kalenden]

Thanks for the advice.

The game is still hard as I am slowly progressing to order&distortion magic. I haven't reached it yet (although next level up I should, lvl 6 now ).

I've updated my army and bought a leadership item: 1100 Leadership, 9 Guardian Drones, 2 Engineers, 12 Royal Snakes, 20 Archers and 10 Inquisitors. I'm thinking about replacing the archers or snakes with Royal Thorns

Problem is, it is getting increasingly difficult to find mobs I can beat without losses and there are only a couple left that are under Strong (most are very strong too lethal).

The chance that I will reach 2000 leadership before I end this island is almost zero. I'm at 18/30 battles without losses and on Scarlet Wind I've got, at most, 10 battles left(that is including the ones that are unwinnable in the current state). There is a talking door too, maybe he contains a lot of enemies?

I don't know what to do since to beat the harder mobs I need leadership, but I can't get it because I need to beat them without losses first!
Any advice is appreciated.

[Elwin]

talking doors has one enemy

[Metathron]

talking doors has one enemy

Yes, a zombie pirate who will probably be impossible to beat at your level without losses because he keeps casting poison skull, usually poisoning the troop (and that's the problem). Anyhow, you can't access the door anyway before getting the password from the parrot on Rusty Anchor.

[atlatea]

Thanks for the advice.

The game is still hard as I am slowly progressing to order&distortion magic. I haven't reached it yet (although next level up I should, lvl 6 now ).

I've updated my army and bought a leadership item: 1100 Leadership, 9 Guardian Drones, 2 Engineers, 12 Royal Snakes, 20 Archers and 10 Inquisitors. I'm thinking about replacing the archers or snakes with Royal Thorns

Problem is, it is getting increasingly difficult to find mobs I can beat without losses and there are only a couple left that are under Strong (most are very strong too lethal).

The chance that I will reach 2000 leadership before I end this island is almost zero. I'm at 18/30 battles without losses and on Scarlet Wind I've got, at most, 10 battles left(that is including the ones that are unwinnable in the current state). There is a talking door too, maybe he contains a lot of enemies?

I don't know what to do since to beat the harder mobs I need leadership, but I can't get it because I need to beat them without losses first!
Any advice is appreciated.

Some advices and tips that doesn't depend on the random element of the game, which means this always work (This is for impossible no loss kiting is ok but no map kiting. And i suppose it will 100% work for lesser difficulty):

No loss = Low variety of troop choices. No matter the difficulty, it is always the first rule of no loss.

Don't be intimidated by enemy power label (lethal, very strong, etc).

The most important thing is enemy unit composition vs your unit composition + your spells + your pet dragon.

Strong to very strong is killable for no loss, as for lethal, some lethal is killable for no loss though it's very tricky, yet some are not. Avoid invincible, very few of them are doable for no loss, but you don't want to take rist at this moment.


I suggest to dump archer and engineer (reason? hard to resurect), as for droids, unless you have repair droids, dump it.

Early island, i mean in debir to scarlet wind, you rely on your pet dragon skill to do damage, inquisitor is important here, note that spliting inquisitor also means quicker rage gathering.

Recomended setup: royal snake, inquisitor, orc tracker/any tank as tough as him or tougher than him, 1 archmage (yes, just 1).

Sometimes you need to have use 4 unit so that you can split inquisitor to 2 stacks, which means faster rage increase to do dragon kick.

Without target, healing, dispel, slow, haste and stone skin are your best friend.

Those setup will work on clearing all scarlet island enemy without loss except the one on old castle.

By the time you reach scarlet, those setup still work, but you probably want to add 1 archmage to cover your tank.

I assure you, with those setup, you should be able to get Grand Strategy medal 2, which will provide you 2000 leadership by the end of scarlet wind island, thus allowing you to buy rune mage.

Don't forget a kraken boss which give you insane amount of experience for your level. It is easily killable that lethal enemy in scarlet wind. More level=more leadership.

Then dump all of your unit except rune mage, 1 archmage, inquisitor before you proceed to bolo.

At early stage of the game, you need to play your paladin as a mage than as a warrior, yep, 85% mage and 15% warrior, no paladin at all except for glory 3 skill.

In bolo, rely on droids and rune mage as your tank, archmage is also needed, so does inquisitor. Or if you have call of colosus spell, try getting red dragon or if you can wait till tou have 2500 leadership and get black dragon, forget archmage and inquisitor if you have dragons.

[Kalenden]

Thanks for the replies!


I've restarted my game (as a Paladin) and followed your advice. Much easier now! Thanks a lot.

[atlatea]

You're welcome.

I forgot something.

You should begin getting grand strategy medal from the very begining of the game, yep, even in the training offered by the king's knight in front of his castle you must already do a no loss till you get grand strategy medal 2. To do this, in case you do not know, just dump all your units to the castle garison, you'll be given paladin unit for free, just use this till you finished the training.

And in the begining, it's much easier to use 4 inquisitor split to 4 stacks, yep i mean using four 1 inquisitor, this will allow your pet dragon to lv up quicker than bringing full forces and easier no loss game. This stage of the game is also the best stage to get the increase damage to inquisitor and paladin medal, if you encounter enemy with ranged unit, kill most of them and left very few ranged unit, and then as you already know, keep using heal till you reach round 10. And don't forget to dig treasure chest. Don't worry to run out of mana, you have mana accelerator from pet dragon and four 1 inquisitor as rage gatherer.

Forgot to mention it, the best pet dragon is the blue one, reason? he/she has +1 initiative bonus.

Use that setup till most of enemies left there are not killable with that setup for no loss. Then switch to using full troops. Royal thorn, orc tracker and three 1 inquisitor is a good start, then you can add royal snake. As for hero battle, you need to finish them very quickly before they do nasty damage with their magic, maybe you need to use full 5 stacks of unit to finish them asap, just do what you deem best.

[Minecontrol]

I just did a noloss victory and i thought the Baal fight was disappointingly easy. Actually i had one loss in Baal fight, the enemy tricked me into killing his last two troops before i could ressurect, i didn't bother playing again because the Baal fight was so boring. I could get my paladins up to 95% phys res, with around 40 Att and Def Baal couldn't even kill one of them with his physical attack and every Demon stack was 1 hit killed - so i figured there is no point doing the last battle again to trick that no-loss because it would be trivial.

It is a shame they made Baal even weaker (he hardly summoned at all), it was only in the last fight i also realised the ridiculous power of the phantom spell now (i plowed my last few runes into Summoner 2 and 3 and noted the crazy improvement on phantom) which also made it trivial - i swear i think i could have used my phantomed 170 Paladins to give Bill Gilbert a No Loss victory in this fight as well!

Still aside from Baal there were a few nice challenges (Scrounger and the Eventus fights in particular) and it is well worth doing the AP Crossworlds campaign again.

[joasoz]

How is the Kraken so easy to kill? Does it have a special weakness?

[Metathron]

It's an early game boss, much much easier than the other bosses (few hit points).

[joasoz]

But so has my army at that point

[atlatea]

Just have good damage dealers especially magic damage dealers, your main priority is damage, forget defense.

And that kraken will fall easily (even in impossible difficulty).