A few questions from a new player [Archive] - Official Fulqrum Publishing forum

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Loopy

03-17-2011, 05:45 PM

So I started my first playthrough on impossible. It was fairly hard (understatement of the month I'm sure). Thankfully, after seeing the huge leadership bonuses my mage would get, I had the good sense to immediately go for no loss battles early on (except for the few times my inquisitor only revived 1/2 dead troops, which made me bang my head on the wall). That really kept me afloat. Then I got engineers/guard droids/repair droids from Bolo and its almost been a cakewalk ever since. Which is part of my problem.

Is it actually possible to beat the harder difficulties with a balanced army (and not needing to run back and buy units every other battle)? Exploiting 90% physical resistance on the guard droids and teleporting them right into the enemy lines is getting old fast, and it looks like half the strategies for no-loss or minimum-loss games revolve around stuff like that or other equally boring to perform strategies. But as soon as I get outside the holy trinity of repair droid/guard droid/engineer I get absolutely demolished, no contest at all. I go from needing 1 or 2 rounds to revive lost units to 75% losses or a complete wipe. For reference, I've attached a screenshot of my current character. In addition to whats shown, I have a bit of focus on Prayer in the mind line and Anger in the Might line. I don't think my build is bad at all, but tell me if I'm missing anything obvious.

Can anyone tell me how to use KBScanner to locate a resurrect scroll? I can't seem to get it to work with any scrolls. I'm searched most of Verona/Montero/Tekron ingame and found none of them. Not having resurrect seems to be one of my main weaknesses, I can only rely on 1 use per battle resurrects that only bring back 1 or 2 units, then I have to spam Phantom just for the res. One horrible battle took 20 turns of nothing but phantom ressing.

Are there any re-balance mods that would make things better? Something that would fix ridiculous resistance level abuse (make them stack multiplicatively I guess) while buffing much weaker units up to par?

A few unrelated questions:

How useful is focusing on your pet long-term? Not being able to use the him during boss battles seriously sucks. I enjoy spamming dragon dive every other round :(. This would also seem to screw over warriors...

Is there any way to carry over medals to a new playthrough, or otherwise mod the requirements to be much lower? Specifically the bottom row ones are horribly grindy, the top row ones seem good and balanced.

How the f**k do you deal with goblin shamans? Here I am taking on lethal/impossible enemy armies without a scratch, then a "slightly stronger" orc mob with shamans takes out an entire stack of units or more on the first round. Is there some trick to them or did whomever was behind the balancing of crossworlds have absolutely no sense of game balance at all?

Sir Whiskers

03-17-2011, 10:17 PM

Nothing carries over to a new game, however you can modify the Medals.txt file to change the requirements, and even which class-specific medal a character can earn.

To change the requirements, open medals.txt and look for something like the following:

max1=10
max2=30
max3=50

Just change the numbers, and you've changed the requirements. Be sure to change the numbers for all three levels of the medal you're changing.

To change class, look for the following:

medclass=-1

Then update to match the class you want.

I *think* the values are as follows:

-1 = all classes
0 = Warrior
1 = Paladin
2 = Mage

Concerning tth pet, even though it can't be used in boss battles, it's very, very useful. I don't recommend getting more than one level of the skill which boosts the pet's experience (and then only to get to the skill immediately below it), but YMMV.

Pet experience increases if the opponenet army is greater in total leadership than your army, and it's dynamic - as you kill enemy units, their total leadership declines, so you get less xp for your dragon at that point. Typically, you'll get more xp earlier in the battle, so plan accordingly. Simply fighting many fights with a smaller army than your max leadership allows will make a big difference (just be sure to bring enough troops to win the battle :))

BTW, I know some folks really like Dragon Dive, but in the mid to late game, Ball Lightning will be really useful. And I like Fiery Phantom for area damage.

For mods, check the Mods threads. There are a number of them available, some of which are interesting (all troops on Debir, for instance).

For strategies, search the forums. Pretty much anything you're running into has been seen and discussed before, including goblin shamans and optimal strategies for impossible games.

Good luck!

ckdamascus

03-17-2011, 11:31 PM

Is it actually possible to beat the harder difficulties with a balanced army (and not needing to run back and buy units every other battle)? Exploiting 90% physical resistance on the guard droids and teleporting them right into the enemy lines is getting old fast, and it looks like half the strategies for no-loss or minimum-loss games revolve around stuff like that or other equally boring to perform strategies. But as soon as I get outside the holy trinity of repair droid/guard droid/engineer I get absolutely demolished, no contest at all. I go from needing 1 or 2 rounds to revive lost units to 75% losses or a complete wipe. For reference, I've attached a screenshot of my current character. In addition to whats shown, I have a bit of focus on Prayer in the mind line and Anger in the Might line. I don't think my build is bad at all, but tell me if I'm missing anything obvious.

It is possible.

I've done the "Shrek" army build (warrior), uses Ogre, Ogre Chieftain, Trolls, Rune Mage, and Black Dragons.

Goblin build (warrior) uses goblin, catapults, paladin, royal griffins, and goblin shaman.

Mega summon build (mage) relies heavily on Dragon of Chaos and Ancient Phoenix summons. Secondary units are rune mages, demonologist, and black dragons.

Battles are usually brisk without any mindnumbing 60 round battles. Boss battles, I try to win without resorting to solo Black Knight stacks, but sometimes I have to use the Black Knights.

Definitely scour the forums here, there are tons of strategies. Feel free to look at the Armored Princess ones too, since most of the rules apply in Crossworlds.

Loopy

03-18-2011, 01:19 AM

ckdamascus

03-18-2011, 03:53 AM

Thanks for the responses guys.

Regarding the pet: is there any way to affect the upgrades available when the dragon levels? Is it completely random or does it change based on what you use most? Ball lightning seemed really useless early on since it just didn't have the initial "wow" factor of killing off 1/3rd of the enemy troops instantly, but I can see how % based damage to a stack would get ridiculously powerful late game when you could be facing an ungodly stack size. Trouble is, I don't think I've seen the option to upgrade it for a long time.

As a side note, I've noticed the extra XP for lower armies and have exploited it a bit. Notice how my pet is several levels ahead of me :grin:. It seems odd though that the class which is supposed to have the most pet-focused build (warrior) is also the one whose pet levels the slowest because they have the largest army.

ckdamascus, does your goblin build work with mages? Or should I save that for another playthrough with warrior? Being able to abuse the shamans myself would be a nice change.

Unfortunately, the only information on beating shamans I can find on the forums here seems to boil down to "hope you incapacitate them or kill them before their first round or you die", which isn't exactly inspiring advice. I can't imagine how overpowered they must have been BEFORE the patch that nerfed them, just how high was whoever created them? For the damage they put out it seems as if their leadership requirement should be at least doubled if not tripled.

Also I've figured out how to search for scrolls, and apparently there are no resurrect scrolls in my game :(. Is this really unlucky or fairly normal? How good are my chances of digging one up?

It is pseudo-random I believe. I also think some skills require you to be a certain level to even see them. e.g. you aren't going to see Lava Call at level 2.

Yeah but Warrior can use the Pet farrr more often thanks to his Bloodlust ability and the fact that he usually has a higher base rage and a bigger army (which affects your rage generation).

Dragon Dive also generates a lot of Pet Dragon XP; perhaps the most out of all the skills. You have to level up the skill though to get more Pet Dragon XP.

Regarding the shooter army with a mage? Generally, no. Perhaps if you are extra clever, but it doesn't have nearly the same sick power. "All-ranged" works best with warriors since Quick Draw and the higher leadership enables you to do so much potential damage in the first round, there won't be much left to fight back :)

Goblin shaman? Use Target. Or, you can hope Phantom works well enough on a high profile target. Sheep, Blind, etc. A lot of debiliation is available.

Actually, Phantom is better than resurrection. :) Phantom Paladins are generally more mana efficient for reviving units (or Phantom Rune Mages).

However, you need to max Summoner Skill to level 3 (which you did not do), as this also affects the power of Phantom.

Jah

03-18-2011, 06:48 AM

Unfortunately, the only information on beating shamans I can find on the forums here seems to boil down to "hope you incapacitate them or kill them before their first round or you die", which isn't exactly inspiring advice. I can't imagine how overpowered they must have been BEFORE the patch that nerfed them, just how high was whoever created them?

I was under the impression that the patch affected orc shamans and maybe blood shamans (?), but the goblin shamans were NOT nerfed, which is why they remain so overpowered. I'd say it must have been an oversight.

Loopy

03-18-2011, 01:06 PM

Summoner affects Phantom? Ahh, didn't think of that for some reason. Messing around with cheats I see that Intellect also improves Phantom a bit, which I definitely didn't expect considering it says it only affects damage spells. I was pretty much ignoring Intellect in my game since I was mostly buffing/debuffing the entire battle. I suppose the standard strategy is to take advantage of transmute with Phantoms by summoning duplicates of creatures that summon things themselves, then send everything into the grinder for free mana?

Yeah but Warrior can use the Pet farrr more often thanks to his Bloodlust ability and the fact that he usually has a higher base rage and a bigger army (which affects your rage generation).

I can't say I was having problems spamming his stuff, and my dragon dive cost 40 rage to use. Treasure hunter/Dragon Dive/Treasure Hunter/Dragon Dive repeat until you run out of treasure then go for mana. It probably helps a lot that I had the +5 rage from the red dragon though, as well as 2 ranks of Anger, were those not good choices? Also, I thought that the more you were outnumbered the greater your rage?

Fatt_Shade

03-18-2011, 04:10 PM

Nice to read that some ppl still play this game :-)
It seems you started game with great combo mechanic/droids, mechanics set droid modules and such, or -leadreship % items for dwarf race, which are great and fun to play with (you got them, but you were lucky for it :-D
I dont like fact that you cant change much strategy which you decide during game, cause if you lets say want summoner supporter there arent enough runes for might skills and boost up your army, or if with warrior you decide to go full undead/archer army your stuck with it. So i think maybe 2 basic army lineups are what you can get without much traveling for troops, and losing time on it. I say this for your `holy trinity` reference, cause there are so much ideas and tactics other players found, so try some of them if you want :
1) Ancient ent, Faun, Dryad, Paladin and last of your picking some Fairy (oblivion is sick ability), or Rune mage. Strategy - great morale, control with dryad 1-3 lvl units with sleep, illusion, sleep again etc, fauns heal is imba for ents, and rune mage overall great support.
2) Full archer army with Trigger, and his almost 100% crit for archers. My lineup here was Goblins, Goblin shamans, Catapults, Orcs/Blood shamans and Paladins. Very high dmg output and initiative, 2 times second wind with paladin and orc, or blood shaman goblin rage, with some luck goblin will get some more turns from unstoppable and devastate enemy troops with ease, and get insane attack bonus from zeroing in. And all units low lvl so easy to resurrect. Problem is fear spell is useless here, and also enemy dryad`s beholders sleep, but since you`ll play before them, they wont make much troubles.
3) Shreck build as `ckdamascus` said. It fun also, but i dont like for every dead unit, you need 1 illusion cast to revive it (or more), so it could turn into illusions frenzy on arena. I`m not going for no loss, as you said before thats not your plan, but for sake of preserving troops, that are hard to come by (in my last game there was no Orc chieftans anywhere, not a single 1, i had to carry that stupid officers patent to get trophy`s for upgrading Orc veterans, to their older brothers :-( )
4) All undead build. Strategy : Black knight. End of strategy :-D
With undead commander, and frenzy it`s so easy (if you go warrior, there is no need for Moro dark and Splinter of darkness item, cause counter strike skill).It`s boring 1 stack army all time, but it`s also so much fun to see 80k+ critical`s flying around arena :-) And with so small army, all exp going to your pet dragon, would be higher cause diference in leadership difference you/enemy.

There are so much more great tactics, and different army builds, just look a bit here on forum, same goes for mods. I personally liked this one http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?p=233215#post233215

About your dragon cub, it depends for what you use him/her :-)
Early digging chests, and mystic egg are great, later dive/fiery spirits/ball are nice to use, but not comparing to direct dmg spells from mage, so i guess you`ll use him most for support, then direct dmg. This is what bugs me : no matter what class you go pet dragon is same, i got same skills and dmg from Mage and Warrior classes, but considering spells, no class can compare to Mage, it`s not ok to have Warrior who is mostly for pure fighting and Rage, and end up with same dragon as any whimpy Mage :-)
For medals i agree, they are mostly nice add, but Guardian angel, and class specific are pure grinding, 600 casting for fire mage, OMG :-( and all that for just 15 mana. When you get medal on 3 lvl, 15 mana is next to nothing.

And last but not least by far, your problem with Goblin shamans, and their so nicely balanced 2 ability :-P If you go high lvl army, fear them away, for 4 turns it`s imba spell for low lvl units. On other side, with mixed up army and some other idea, they are only 3 lvl unit blind/sheep, or go for faun/dryad sleep, or some other disable Necromancers shackles, Beholders paralyze ray cause those ability`s arent dependent to leadership, which could be problematic for your Mage hero.

Is it just me or all new units are just to overpowered ? Rune mage and his 37% revive, Faun and 52% heal plants, which is reloadable !!! only resurrect skill that have cool down ( i dont include Orc trackers healer ability here cause it`s useless with no adrenaline, and at end of battle, when you want to revive your animals, they maybe have no enough adrenaline, and s..t luck for you :-(

And about Summoner skill, it boost all summoning ability for units : Rune mage, Royal griffin, Orc tracker, so it`s great skill to spen runes on for meat fodder. For some reason it doesnt effect Demonologist summon, no idea why (or is it just bug with mine game). If boost demon portal spell, why not summon for demonologist ?

Zechnophobe

03-18-2011, 05:00 PM

Thanks for the responses guys.

Regarding the pet: is there any way to affect the upgrades available when the dragon levels? Is it completely random or does it change based on what you use most? Ball lightning seemed really useless early on since it just didn't have the initial "wow" factor of killing off 1/3rd of the enemy troops instantly, but I can see how % based damage to a stack would get ridiculously powerful late game when you could be facing an ungodly stack size. Trouble is, I don't think I've seen the option to upgrade it for a long time.

As a side note, I've noticed the extra XP for lower armies and have exploited it a bit. Notice how my pet is several levels ahead of me :grin:. It seems odd though that the class which is supposed to have the most pet-focused build (warrior) is also the one whose pet levels the slowest because they have the largest army.

ckdamascus, does your goblin build work with mages? Or should I save that for another playthrough with warrior? Being able to abuse the shamans myself would be a nice change.

Unfortunately, the only information on beating shamans I can find on the forums here seems to boil down to "hope you incapacitate them or kill them before their first round or you die", which isn't exactly inspiring advice. I can't imagine how overpowered they must have been BEFORE the patch that nerfed them, just how high was whoever created them? For the damage they put out it seems as if their leadership requirement should be at least doubled if not tripled.

Also I've figured out how to search for scrolls, and apparently there are no resurrect scrolls in my game :(. Is this really unlucky or fairly normal? How good are my chances of digging one up?

The top tier spells are not consistently available in the game:

Distortion doesn't always have timeback (I think that is the only super rare spell here actually)
Chaos doesn't always have Death star or Armageddon
Life doesn't always have resurrection or Call Phoenix

It is conceivable that most any spell can be missing from the game (sometimes Trap or even Target can be missing) but those are much less likely to be not found.

You will get most or all in most games. But now and then, one goes missing. Kinda like Cyclopses on Bolo :(.

Loopy

03-18-2011, 05:22 PM

Summoner doesn't seem to be affecting the summons of any of my units. Demonologists don't get stronger demons, Engineers don't make stronger droids, and Rune Mages don't summon stronger Illusions. Demonologists have already been mentioned to be bugged, and I can understand if Engineers don't get the buff since they are building a droid, not summoning it, but are rune mages not supposed to be affected? Or does the Talent description not show the summoner bonus even though it works in battle?

I was actually considering going for a high crit build with trigger since I already had about +25% crit, but he didn't have the right item slots and I would have had to dump one of my lovely -% leadership items to take him. :(

EDIT: Some testing. No troops showed a higher summoning limit on the talent description with a summoning skill, but demonologists seem to get a buff (4.5k leadership demon summoned when talent card says 1.5-3k) while Engineers and Rune Mages don't. Going by the skill description this makes sense because Rune Mages and Engineers "create" units while Demonologists "Summon" units and the Summoner skill says it only improves summoned units, but now I'm confused as to why I've read so many people saying that rune mages are great with summoner while Demonologists aren't :confused:. Has the effect of summoner been constantly changing over game versions or something? Or are they just referring to phantomed rune mage + resurrecting things?

Sir Whiskers

03-18-2011, 08:00 PM

Summoner doesn't seem to be affecting the summons of any of my units. Demonologists don't get stronger demons, Engineers don't make stronger droids, and Rune Mages don't summon stronger Illusions...

EDIT: Some testing. No troops showed a higher summoning limit on the talent description with a summoning skill, but demonologists seem to get a buff (4.5k leadership demon summoned when talent card says 1.5-3k)...

Yep, the description for the Summoner skill isn't quite accurate. It doesn't really make units stronger, but it does increase the leadership amount that is summoned, as well as the % that the Phantom spell creates.

Fatt_Shade

03-18-2011, 10:21 PM

Hm . . . it could be bug in your game, but i`m sure Summoner skill from Magic tree boost any summoning ability from units. I know it odes for Rune mages, Royal griffins, and Orc trackers, i just finished game with some of tohse units.
If you haven`t already get 3 lvl summoner, save game and check before and after lvling it checking some unit`s ability.
For droid making with mechanic you can boost up with Neatness skill, in Mind tree, it`s nice boost for them, but only effects 1 unit in game, so think before investing runes.
As for max critical you have 2 choices, as many ppl wrote on this forum, all orc army + paladin for resurrection, or human/elf mix, with royal grifins for +morale and distracting enemy with summons. 3 lvl distortion magic, and precision is a must for both lineups. Human/elf have bonus morale, on other hand goblin lineup have some ridiculous dmg, Aoe from catapults, unstoppable for goblins and lets not forget astral attack for goblin shamans (and they give you new units after every battle-commander talent, so less need to run around islands to restock army).

Loopy

03-18-2011, 11:37 PM

Without summoner:

28 Demonologists summon 26 Cerberus (Cerberi?), 26x90 = 2340 leadership, talent says 1470-2940 so its correct.
3 rune mages with maxed magic runes summon 60 Angelic Guard, 60x60 = 3600 leadership just as talent says.
16 Engineers summon 16 Guard droids, 16x120= 1920 leadership, talent says 1600-1920 so its correct.

With summoner it is all the same except demonologists summon around 4.5k of units, which is actually slightly higher than they should but I suppose the game rounds up. Yes, I made sure that I had enough mind runes after buying 3 ranks of summoner so the rune mage's power didn't go down.

Perhaps it was a patch change? Rune Mages seem overpowered as it is. If summoner were to affect them then they would be able to summon the Phantom Gyphons with about 90% physical resistance after all my + items and they would be making about 7.2k leadership worth of them even as my personal leadership is only 6k. All that would be ludacrisly overpowered, without summoner its only about 4.8k worth of summons which is at least a sane number even if it is still really strong. As the person who just started playing this week, I hate to call you guys wrong, but maybe you should re-test on your own game to see if it still works? I'm at patch level 1.3.1, tell me if you are using a different patch. As I said before, going by a strict reading of the skill it makes some sense. Rune Mages don't summon units, they create them, so it shouldn't affect them. It might have even been a bug before.

Fatt_Shade

03-19-2011, 01:03 AM

No prob man, no said you call us wrong it`s just diferent ppl have diferent problems and situations. I just now say perma sheep on osme paladins, some1 going with 120 sheep`s, which were paladins with turn back time casted on them, while in sheep form :-)
On this topic, i say in my game Summoner boost Royal grifins, Orc trackers, all Thorns (warrior, archer and king), Dryads first skill, Demon summon skill. But doesnt effect Demonologist or Rune mage (here is my bad in earlier post). Rune mages are already overpowered with 1.31 patch, i had idea to change rune bonuses for other units, but got lost in trying :-(
As for mechanic look into Neatness skill, nice bonus, and if you plan on destroying bunch of items you dont use later in the game, for crystals/runes not bad investment.

ckdamascus

03-19-2011, 01:25 AM

A lot of answers are in the ultimate manual.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=18453

Something gets lost in the translation, but basically the summoner skill affects these abilities.

"""Operates on spells Natural Call, Necromancer’s Call, Portal of Demons, Phantom and on talents of beings
Give birth Gobots, Heavenly Guards, Appeal of Demons, Demonic Creatures, to Call Thorns, to Call the
Bear, to Lift Undead, Budding and Sowing.
"""

Rune Mages are not listed though since the manual was written before rune mages existed.

Same with the engineers. It is possible they do not consider them in the group, or it is a bug.

Loopy

03-19-2011, 02:17 AM

Zechnophobe

03-22-2011, 12:19 AM

Ahh, so Demonologists are supposed to benefit it seems (assuming that Demonic Beasts = Demonic Creatures). It must just be a bug in the displayed leadership value, which is a total lie.

I saw that thread before, but didn't realize it was actually an expanded guide to the game. At first glance it sounded just like the standard manual with a few corrections to the mistakes that seem to be in every game's manual these days.

Looks to me like they have to special case each 'summon' effect, and so the new Crossworlds units didn't get in there. Both Rune Mages and Engineers are new in Orcs on the March, and probably got left off. Sad, really. Rune Mages needed the help.

ckdamascus

03-22-2011, 01:50 AM

Looks to me like they have to special case each 'summon' effect, and so the new Crossworlds units didn't get in there. Both Rune Mages and Engineers are new in Orcs on the March, and probably got left off. Sad, really. Rune Mages needed the help.

Yeah, you are right. It makes sense that they "forgot" since both units are new.

The rune mages are still semi-strong though. The 1.3.1 patch does let them get a little more juice compared to 1.3.0.

Fatt_Shade

03-23-2011, 04:31 AM

They didnt `forget` Orc tracker with summoning skill, he gets boost from it and is new unit in CW expansion. Instead developers made some weird decisions with Rune mage and mechanic instead, but it`s already done and finished. I hope they fix that mistake in brand new and almost piblished KB 2-The Wedding of Amelie&Bill :-)
On serious side every game have some problems, it`s our job as players to find htem , and inform ppl in charge to fix them in future (hopefully).

Zechnophobe

03-30-2011, 12:18 AM