Exploit (Spoiler) - But I need advice

[WhiteMage]

Here is a major exploit for this game. This is so bad that I stopped playing:
Get a mage hero and focus on increasing intellect, mana, and leadership (in this priority order). Learn chaos magic and destroyer (level 3 each). Don’t let initial sprites die in your army. Get spell “Sacrifice” (level 3).
Get an army as follows: Inquisitors, sprites, barbarians, marauders. The fifth one can be almost anything with speed >1. I use evil beholders or royal snakes. Level up Lina to get “Charges” spell summoning 4 charges (2 mana and 2 rage) and lower its casting cost.
In most battles if there is at least 1 enemy with speed<3 which is not able to cause any damage to units that are 3 hexes away then single out this unit and keep it alive. Do not let it attack (use spell “slow” if necessary). Kill all other enemies as quickly as possible. I use fireball. At this point the single enemy unit can’t do anything since I am able to run around and around, while I use the inquisitors to get infinite rage over time, which gives infinite mana. Use this mana to sacrifice barbarians and marauders to get more units of the other 3. Use marauders and spell “phantom” to search all bodies. Use the extra rage to cast charges or other rage spells indefinitely, which earns experience for the members of the rage box. After about 200 rounds my army is very strong; mana, rage, experience, gold are high. Very boring to do, but this makes impossible level a piece of cake to win. There are obvious variations and can work even earlier in the game, with less efficiency. This is a fun killer.
Does anyone know if the King's Bounty: Armored Princess also suffers from this exploit?

[Vulture]

One use of the search function would've told you that your supernew and self-found exploit is a) not an exploit as it's working as intended b) at least a million years old c) discussed ad nauseam in this forum.

[WhiteMage]

Vulture, thank you for the quick, but not very helpful answer (again). I am still waiting for an answer for my previous question, which you also posted for, but did not answer well.
While I understand that you, as a senior member, maybe frustrated to see the same thing coming up over and over again from newbies like me, I could not use your posts.
First, I searched hours on the forums for keywords I thought would give a hit to my questions, but I did not find anything close enough, so I took the liberty to ask here. So please refer me to the correct thread for this issue, and I will read there.
Second, the game came out in 2008, so it can’t be a million years, but again, I understand your frustration.
Third, I still did not get answer for any of my questions.
Thanks,

[Fatt_Shade]

Hello fellow KB player :-)
As you stated `exploit` isn`t really bug or error in game mechanic, it`s only way to play battle for 1hour(or more) which isn`t interesting.
And it`s against AI so you can`t be all tough :-D
It`s only way to replanish mana/rage between battles. So question is why would you spend so much time on battle that is already over, 2-3 rounds bonus to get mana/rage and resurrect units OK, but anything else is pure waste of time. And later in game there are some sick enemy combinations so your exploit wont work very well against dragons,demons(archdemon, demoness), almost all elves(fairies,dryads,unicorns)...
I played original King`s Bounty some 2 years ago , but i`ll try to give you some useful information.
As you stated in conditions : mage hero, intellect,mana,lds, lina rage spirit with maxed charges. First about this you`ll need to be at least 15lvl (almost half game played), in dwarf lands and enough battles to lvlup Lina for that skill. So you`ll already play some time without this `exploit`. I personally never managed to kite there without fighting couple battles in underground pass to dwarf lands(so no low lvl lina spirit).
I tihnk chargers are landed random, so no sure way to stop enemy form using them. Also why barbarians ? As i remember they aren`t controllable (or at least in AP), so no way to stop them form killing last enemy unit.
And in the end, no AP dont have this exploit, because there are rage spirits, only pet dragon and his skills are different (which is shame, i miss rage spirits :-(
My advice is try CW (Crossworlds), just skip AP and get some of mods red sands is among best by my opinion. Many things are changed in AP/CW so some of things you use in KB-tL wont work in second game. Have fun with this great game :-)

[WhiteMage]

Fatt_Shade, thank you for your post.
1. I still believe that my finding is an exploit, regardless if it was intended or not. It is an easy way to beat mighty enemy armies on impossible difficulty level, it is repetitive, boring, and motivates players to do it if they want to get strong, and not lose army. There should be some penalty to do it in the game, such as game time penalty. I did not notice any penalty, only on my own time commitment for doing it. The way around this exploit to continue to enjoy the game: create self-made rules to play. For example: do not use inquisitors or do not use charges. Yet, even this does not solve the exploit completely.
2. No, it is not only good for replenishing mana and rage. Those are only icing on the cake. I also earn about 20,000 gold with the search function on all enemies. Plus I start with only 1 evil beholder and raise 49 with one casting of sacrifice. That is worth over 30,000 gold. Plus I end the battle with full army, since I use gift and resurrections. All the five slots are at full leadership, so my ending army is stronger than my beginning army in most of my battles. Plus, the more I use my rage box, the more experience they gain. So I kill the enemy slowly with rage box, not with units. Doing this even without mana and rage maxing is about 200 rounds, which is not 1 hour, but 5 hours (per battle). This is not only an exploit, but boring to a level to make my interest disappear for this otherwise great game.
3. Yes, it works best under circumstances I described earlier, but it already works with inquisitors and level 1 Lina, whom I have since my hero was level 10. Maybe I can get this earlier, which I don’t know since this is my second game (also the last). I lost my first game due to unknown castle defenders, which I posted in the other thread (another major weakness of this game).
4. This exploit also works against enemy shooters and no retaliation melee attackers, such as elf, hunter, sprite, lake fairy, imp, scoffer imp, etc. Of course, I may use poison skull or other spells to kill demons faster than with fireball.
5. Then the issue of charges landing randomly. Sure they do, but I press wait and try to force the enemy to move all units and then I lay charges. After that I pick them up quickly with 5 of my units, one of which is an initiative 8, speed 7 sprite (with Anga’s Ruby), but I would do just fine even without that. No need for a sure way to catch them all. I have a 99+% success rate in picking up and that is more than enough.
6. Barbarians are just an example, they are not essential. However, they are controllable, it is not the way as you stated. They have speed 3, which helps to evade slow enemy and pickup charges, they fight decently if necessary, and they are super-cheap and abundant to buy in case I sacrifice too many by accident. They also have mighty HP to feed sacrifice.
7. I hope you are right about Crossworlds. Based on your recommendation, I will give it a try, but I am not very optimistic, since all commercial games I know are too repetitive, primitive in AI, have bugs or exploits, and quickly become boring due to lack of challenge (at least the turn based strategy games, since I like those most). If you know a good turn based strategy game that is not like this, please inform me.
Thanks a lot,

[Fatt_Shade]

1) Every game ever created have some cheat in it, it`s just matter of time before some player find it, so it`s not fatal thing you found out. It`s just matter of why you do it ?
In KB-tL hero is limited to 30 lvl, so are rage spirits, so you can do this but only for some time before lvling up spirits. One other thing, spirit exp is determined by current enemy army on battlefield, so if you leave 1 tohrn hunter against your full army and spend 100+ turns to sacrifice units, resurrect, gather mana/rage no exp will come form all that time. And hero exp is already determined by starting enemy army, so it doesn`t matter if you start battle with 1 peasant or 100 black dragons, your heroexp will be same.
2) As i said above, you can start battle with only 1 unit, and then finish with full leadership army, but what then ? You dismiss all those units before starting another battle. And it`s as you say boring as f..k.
3) Hm . . . getting lina before 10lvl, i`m not sure it`s possible, but you need lucky james underground map for it. If you dont fight him, but pay him for map i guess it could be done at even lower lvl, and you`ll lose only 2000 or so exp, from battle with lucky james
5) Yea i get how it works, but it is easy against AI. With human opponent (as in HoMM hot seat, or any other multi player option this tactic wouldnt work 0.1% )
6) Ok, my bad, in KB-AP/CW barbarians are uncontrollable. As soon battle start, they just rush at enemy units and you cant do s...t to stop them, so no easy way to prolong battle and run around picking chests, or mana charges :-)
7) Try it, there are many interesting combo/builds in AP/CW. If you lik tL, you`ll like AP/CW also, it`s great game worked with allot of details, and there are great mods for it. Give it a go :-)

I just now checked lina.atom file. What mod you playing ? In original game file max lvl you use 45 rage, for 6 charges 3mana/3rage for 10 each, so you all time spend 45 rage to get 30 mana/rage from 3 charges. Later in battle your rage income is almost 0, so i dont think with only inquisitors you will be able to keep rage on max to do this for 200+ turns. Something in your game/data/data.kfs/lina.atom is changed, or you have file from some mod that changed lina`s skills.

[Vulture]

There is no "finding". It's years old. We've been discussing these tactics in 2008 during the beta already.

[WhiteMage]

In this case, quite a shame that no one took it seriously enough to make a patch for it over 3 years (worse, a million years in Vulture’s calendar).

[Elwin]

I have never really used sacrifice in AP. It has different OP combos, "exploits" from legend were nerfed bad in AP, and most of Legend tactics will not work there
However the game is not free from such things, they are just different. Many poeple comnsider map kiting a cheating for example.
In AP if u have proper army setup u can win almost any fight without spending 100 +turns on rezzing, making it much ennjoyable. I never bother to do no loss campaign ( 0 units lost in whole capaign) in Legend since its tiresomne and boring., But i did in AP. And it was fun.

[WhiteMage]

Fatt_Shade (and Elwin),
Based on your post here I bought and tried out Kings Bounty Crossworlds. I played the Orc campaign immediately on impossible level and it is again very easy to win and the game is full of exploits, although different ones. Here are but a few:
1. Rune mage exploit 1. Find a battle and single out a marauder enemy and don’t kill it (the larger the better). Use illusion repeatedly and search every dead body with your marauders. Let the enemy marauder kill your illusion marauders, which provides “infinite” gold to the hero. Again extremely boring and time consuming, but gold problem is solved.
2. Rune mage exploit 2. Find a battle with inquisitors enemy and use illusion on them repeatedly to earn “infinite” experience for your dragon and spend a large amount of rage to earn level 3 medal in dragon rage. Use resurrection and holy anger as needed. Boring, but dragon level and rage medal is solved.
3. Use stone wall repeatedly to spend little rage and earn 33% of it back by destroying it for 20 turns. Boring, but earns a lot of rage.
4. Most medals are boring to earn and time consuming and motivates player to drag out already won battles.
5. Mana recharge in numerous ways. Repetitive, boring.

My conclusion:
KB should be played by a long list of self made rules, such as no inquisitors, no rune mages, no emerald green dragons, no stone wall, and consider battle lost if I did not win in 15 turns, etc. These are in addition to my earlier rules, which are to play impossible and load game is only allowed to continue from the latest position saved. Must save immediately before quitting.

Overall, these KB games would have a potential to become a great game, but they suffer from major exploits now and are childish with virtually no challenge for even minimally experienced players, like me. I am yet to try out the mods, such as red sands, but I suspect that they suffer from similar problems. If you know a mod, which has no known exploit, please let me know. Thanks,

[Fatt_Shade]

@WhiteMage About your `exploits`:
1) no need for AP, in tL it`s doable with gift spell and since marauders are 2nd lvl unit, for only 10 mana you refresh their looter ability and good to go. I played warrior last game on Homm3 babies mod and by 14th lvl got about 2million gold with only 1 marauder. And before illusion spell didnt leave corpses in field which is normal since you `created` those units it`s normal they dissepear after 3 turns. And how do you control enemy marauder (cast slow and keep on 2 squares form them i guess), and second much more important question how much enemy marauders you weave alive so they can kill your illusions ? Again time and nerves consuming for no reason at all. If this game lacks something it`s no gold. Every playthrough i did finished with more gold then i need (4,5 million was smallest amount)with only option to spend was buying runes.
2) Seems you dont get exp gain facts - as battle last longer your pet exp/mana/rage inflow is less. So casting illusion on inquisitors by 20 turn will give you 3-9 rage for all 3 charges, not worth of wasting time. Pet exp depends on enemy/your army ratio, as you kill enemy unit less exp you get for pet just look at firs turn exp info before you use some rage skill, and compare it to exp you get for same skill in 4-5 battle turn. It should be at least 4 times less exp.
So i`ll say it again there is NO way to get `infinite`pet exp. Only possible scenario is against full range army and you using only pet skills that doesnt cause dmg and keep enemy army at full until some 100+ turns + keep your rage inflow at max because you dont attack so no rage from killing enemy + keep your army alive since they dont retaliate to enemy attacking them + by then mana will be on 0 so no resurrecting for you . . . Is this really worth it? Only gain from your exploit is maybe a bit boost to rage medal (i got it to 4th lvl even with mage hero with no prob, so it`s not that big deal). Also with normal playing every playthrough i got pet to 60 before my hero was 50th lvl (45-48 usually).
3) Again rage inflow drops during battle, so it`s not worth it. It`s changed since tL, in original game killing wall didnt give rage, since you spend rage to create it in first place it was logical. In AP/CW wall 12lvl for 40 rage gives only 52 exp, comparing this to dive that gives around 400+ exp, wall is useless for lvling up pet. It useful for protecting units/stopping enemy advancement not so much for exp gain.
4) Most medals are boring to earn and time consuming and motivates player to drag out already won battles.
You complain about spending turns in already won battle (only 10 turn max since after that spells casted doesnt count) to gain medal lvls (which are useful during all game), and on other side spend 100+ turns to lvlup pet dragon by meagre exp amount with rune mage illusion+inquisitors combo. You contradict yourself my friend.
And it not most medals, only 4 out of 10 medals are dependant on spells/rage so in not MOST is only 40%. Trapper 3lvl doable in 15 battles (4x1 inquisitor + EGD), guardian angel with mage 3lvl in 13 battles (5x1 archmage). Fire mage/blind rage i admit it takes time but that`s 2/10 medals not even by a long shot MOST medals are time consumable. Even if you depend on blind rage for crit% in late game, you did something very wrong in your build.
5) Again were back to mana/rage inflow. Ok in AP/CW we have rage for mana spell, but even that wont work much after 30-40 turns so it`s not infinite,and mana doesnt effect any medals directly (if you didnt use mana in first 10 turns to build medals, after that it doesnt count, so why waste time to recharge mana that you have no need to spend in later turns? Only way to exploit mana recharge is trapper medal since killed units by trap doesnt limit to first 10 turns. But that`s only way.
In tL we had chargers, in AP/CW mana recharger - similar, rage predator/mana well item in both games. Changes in later game are calm rage spell, transmutate skill. But why do you need so much mana ? If you only depend on mana to play game something is wrong. This is tactical game, you should use more approaches to it not only 1 way of playing.
When they release some kind of multiplayer for this game (i hope at least HotSeat) many of this exploits will be useful as peasant with 3lvl berserker spell.
All of what you said was found out long time ago, but if you wanted to give some contribution to new players at least explain it in a bit more detail : 1)how to keep your units alive with marauder combo, 2)how to keep enemy inquisitors from killing your weak units/target spell on rune mages, 3)why would you use wall if other pet skill bring 10x more exp then it, 4)think about medals before you say something completely untrue, 5)`infinite` mana when/how to use it since warrior doesnt need it, support mage also no use, only pure spell nuker mage have good use of it.

[WhiteMage]

Fatt_Shade,
Thanks for your quick reply. In your post you admitted that the game has exploits. One is too many, and there are more than one. In my view that is a weakness, which makes the game nearly impossible to enjoy for me. That’s why I made a post before and now. I am looking for a good strategy or tactical game and this one is just so close to be a good one, but not quite there.
Without an attempt to address each of your points I give a short response.
a. This game needs more patch or mod – badly.
b. Enemy marauders have speed 2 and is easy to stay away from them. I leave my illusion marauders in their 2 cell range and I do not retaliate. My other units stay away.
c. Regarding inquisitors, I leave a bunch alive so I get at least 1 experience for my dragon even for a wall. Since I have illusion inquisitors I can resurrect my units in case they die. Spells help too.
d. Regarding 4 out of 10 medals, how about grand strategy, battle academy, trapper, guardian angel, blind rage, and holy warrior? This is 6. My reported exploits should help each of these more or less.
e. I use wall because it has a low spend rage return rage ratio: I spend 6 and gain 2 by destroying it and it does not damage my enemy, so it is renewable.
f. Infinite mana is useful against long kept alive enemy inquisitors, for example.
I made my posts for 1 reason only: to ask for advice where to look for an exploit free game. Not to complain, start a debate, or to become some sort of hero in the community. A byproduct of my previous post came out as a recommendation for those players who are similar to me and like to play hard games and like challenge (I know that there are some). Since this game is not such a game, it becomes necessary to create self-made rules, to make some challenge. The other option is to move on to the next game and thereby support the game development industry in creating more so-so games, which you pay for and play once then forget about it, and go ahead to buy the next so-so game on the market. That is the end of story from my end. Thanks for your answers, but again, I am looking for a better game and that’s all. I am not interested in dragging this discussion out.

[Fatt_Shade]

@WhiteMage I`m not bitching about your posts, and exploits just stating facts. But if you dont like this game because bugs/errors/exploits name one game that is free of those things!!! Every game ever made was programed by man, and by definition not perfect and prone to finding loop holes by players (like you and many others that wants most for their money and i agree with that). But simple truth is this is game and it`s use is to spend some time on it for fun, not to break your brain finding problems.
a) b) c) Marauders/inquisitors exploit questions stays why would you do it? For more gold that you have nothing to buy with, or little pet dragon exp which you can get by 1 use of dragon dive in next battle,instead spending 50 turns against 1 stack of low lvl enemy units that you left alive for purpose of geting 1 exp per turn making pet wall
d) Your exploit is connected to getting gold/pet exp/mana in battle already won but prolonged for sole purpose of those things. How did you connect grand strategist with your exploits ? Or battle alchemy, you mentioned leaving marauders/inquisitors alive how do you poison/burn them for lvling up alchemy medal and leave them alive for 1 exp/turn for your pet dragon ??? Rest of medals you listed i already said are 4/10 you can lvlup by your exploits and that`s it. Other 6 medals are in NO way connected to battle length/rage used/spells cast whatsoever.

Not wanting to prolong this discussion ,after starting it ? You stated some problems in your view, now try to give some ideas how to fix some of those things. In other treads i stated some of my ideas/solutions and i think i helped other making their own mods ( att/def bonus similar to int stats bonus every 7 high dmg/every 15 longer spell duration, changing hp% in red sands mod, unit lvls in red sands mod . . . ). Giving yourself challenge/limitation in plays is 1 way to fix this exploits, but try to figure some permanent way for it. But what about solo black knight stack with shard of darkness build, or 100% crit archer army build, or astral resistance and sacrifice spell, or many other ideas players got in this game are those also exploits or simply ways to go through this game. So your statement this game needs patch, check this tread http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?p=377426#post377426
Matt there made mod that limits all your exploits simply making mana/rage inflow 0 after 20 turn (no matter how much dmg you make no rage gain, and no matter what item/skill you have 0/turn mana after 20 turns pass). There problem solved, send him PM and see if you can figure out how to transfer this to AP/CW and enjoy it without problems that bug you.

@Dennis8888 I Agree with all you said :-D

[Elwin]

Good point, players will always find exploits in EVERY game.
You are far from little expieirenced player, most of communiuty suffer at normal difficulty in crossowrld/ap. The game is challenging for most, if u found good ways to win fast means you are great player.
Actualyi used completly different things that u have posted ~~