Strategy vs (black) dragons?

[JorisS]

Hey all,

wondering if you guys have come up with some good tactics for fights vs the (black) dragons? I'm a mage at level 24, with an army of unicorns, horsemen, orc shamans, hunters and ents. Pretty high intellect stats (around 30 - highest I've had so far at least). Most fights I manage quite well, but vs dragons the problem is that they always get to move first thing in a combat, and at that point I'm taking huge damage as my attack and defense ratings aren't that impressive.

Any advice? I'm currently in the grey valley of death or what it's called, there's a zone with black dragons and a dragons cave there which I'm dreading :eek:

[Tuplis]

This never really became a problem for me because I was able to max out onslaught around the time I started fighting black dragons (played paladin). If you can't do that, try to at least find one type of monster that has higher init that the dragons so you can start the fight by casting the spell that raises the init of all your units by 3. If all else fails, you can sometimes move your troops out of the dragons' range using the tactics skill.

[JorisS]

Allright, will give that a go :)

[jigoku]

Find/recruit Black dragons Yourself :) This way You'll be starting fights.
Get knights to Your army (they have dragon slayer as their characteristic by default), add maybe giants, horsemen etc.
Now cast mass haste 'cause kinghts & giants are really slow. Use fire rain/cold snakes etc. to destroy other enemies. :)
Ancient vampires + sacrifice helps a lot btw ;) (better combo than using resurrection)

[PHJF]

Remember that while dragons are immune to Spells, they aren't immune to Rage. Soul drain, Gizmo, and Black Hole are effective.

Green Dragons are probably the best unit for countering Blacks, as they have fire resistance and deal large physical damage.

[Gatts]

I wonder if sacrifice works on CLONE or on magically be-friended enemies.

Anyway - I have two ways how to deal with zounds of dragons:
1. (my favourite) Undead army - Vamps + Ancient Vamps + Ghosts + Cursed Ghosts (when I am warrior - as this works only if your defence / attack is huge, otherwise this is not the best scenario, as normal ghosts and vamps can be slain in first round... when I had 150 ghosts, and the dragons decided to target them, well, I was screwed ... actually the ghosts were :) )

2. Demon army (all have 50% fire resistance) + ressurection works on them. The weakest - imps can die very fast, but on the other hand can attack w/o retaliation... so if you manage to take a strategy so the enemy army will not mark them for attacks they are quite handy.

[milo]

Best unit against black dragons is emerald dragons, dragon fire attack is very weak against dragons. Emerald dragons have a melee attack so do far more damage comparatively. What I like to do is lay down a trap between emerald dragon and black dragon and use their special ability to drag the black dragon onto the trap.

[Gatts]

I had only one problem with emerald dragons - can't be ressurected
but on the other hand I haven't know about sacrifice real power :(
(but that would mean I would lose other units, and using to regain them I would have to use ressurection - to help me with ressurecting I could use inquisitors, but I had these inquisitors in my army and guess which army was attacked first by black/red dragons?... and my mana would probably be not sufficient for sacrifice + ressurection more than once per battle... )

[JorisS]

Unfortunately I haven't encountered the Resurrection spell yet :(
Is it available in a fixed location/quest? Or completely random?

I've recruited black dragons now, and learned the 'onslaught' so I get to at least start each battle. The green dragon tactics sound interesting as well though!


In answer to one of the above questions:

I wonder if sacrifice works on CLONE or on magically be-friended enemies.

The answer is NO and YES - clones cannot be sacrificed, but if you hypnotize an enemy unit you can sacrifice it. Quite nice, but requires a lot of mana. I'm currently at level 26 (mage) but I 'only' have 134 mana atm (could buff it up with another 20 with another item, but instead I chose to have some more defense/attack stats for my army).