A good army to beat Karador on impossible with a paladin?

[DGDobrev]

I was wondering what kind of an army + spell setup could beat karador on impossible without getting wiped out easily. I personally consider karador to be one of the toughest battles around, mainly because you start at a serious disadvantage - behind a barricade, with a cursed cross to cripple your army and with enough space for the bone dragons to harass you and a nice crystal that casts necro call once every turn.

In a battle like this I see how the superior leadership of the warrior or the 2x cast per turn of the mage here will make it a lot easier. My spirits are level 19-23, which is a generally normal level at this point in the game. A warrior would have them at higher level I guess.

Right now I'm lvl 24, close to 25 at day 7 (yeah, I'm a bit slow, I know), about to tackle Karador, and I'm hitting the brick wall.

Stats:
Attk: 19
Def: 32
Int: 15
Rage: 64
Mana: 78
Ldrshp: 17092

I also have pretty much every useful spell in my book - spring, resurrection, gift, target, sacrifice, etc. No teleport though... Not a single spell of that kind in my game so far.

I've mastered pretty much everything and went almost all the way down through all the trees - lvl 3 onslaught, own inquisitors, runic stone, lvl 3 archmage/bowmen for more recruits. No destroyer yet, but I can take it, I just don't see much of a point since I'm not using offensive spells at all, and besides, I consider the paladin to perform better as a fighter than a caster.

So...

For starters, the barricade is 500 HP, so even a high-level shoal can't destroy it, as it's 450 max.

2x archer + inquisitor + archmage + green dragon as tank doesn't seem to work very well because the bone dragons easily break through any thorns/walls or whatever I use to slow them down and start harassing the archers.

The ultra power girl party isn't working well either. You must waste a turn to destroy the barricade which allows the enemy to get quite a bit of free hits at your frail army, and the thorns aren't doing much good either. I tried using demonesses to swap the units and give me tactical advantage, but karador uses fear all the time - usually after all my units have moved and I can't cope with dispelling that all the time.

I also tried using a power party of lvl 4-5 units - to not that good effect either. Those 110 Black knights, 800 zombies, about 1500 skelies and 1700 skel archers are a pain in the butt.

I can actually see a way out - get the power girl party back to darion, travel through the mines and go get more XP and a few more levels in Demonis. It won't be hard hard at all, because I can easily own even overpowering enemies with thorns or tank strategy (alternating between the two, depending on the battle), but I hoped to save a few days worth traveling :)

So I'm just looking for some opinions from the hardcore players who have beaten impossible before I pack my bags and go on my merry way to demonis and/or the islands to get anga's ruby and a few more levels + Xeona :)

[Ryastar]

Sorry, but why are you breaking the barricades? I consider them to be one of the big advantages you get at the start. Them plus some ice thorns means that it will take several turns for their melee troops to get to you, meaning that you have plenty of time to whittle away at their troops. Essential troops include:

Dryads (you NEED the thorns to stand on dead corpses/spawn more thorns to prevent necro calling.)
Inquisitors (bonus undead damage + holy rage + res)

The rest is up to you, but I would advise two more range + one tank, though steer clear of arrow-wielding troops since they do less damage to bone dragons and skellis. Consider things like evil beholders or cannoneers, both of which do decent damage and can survive fairly well. As for the tank, red dragons work amazingly well. Many undead troops are vulnerable to fire (and none of them are strong against it), and you can easily work it so that you hit and run at the beginning and then switch to tanking.

Other advice:
1. necro call before he does (you DO have necro call, right, I mean it's a guaranteed spell).
2. A dead stack can be necro called, but a severely damaged one can't. A handful of skelli archers or necromancers can't do a whole lot.
3. I've mentioned this already, but make sure that you block corpses. Stone wall and ice thorns can even be used in a pinch.
4. Leave the crystal to last. So long as he doesn't have any troops, Karador can't cast spells, and all the crystal can do is res one stack, which can easily be killed. You can use this time to res your losses, and end up with none.

[Vilk]

Yes Dryad are a big plus in this fight, I didn't try but Royal Thorn could do the trick too and both could be nice for this fight.

The necro call can be found in a quest item, the book of the lost city.

[DGDobrev]

Interesting, Vilk, I may have missed that scroll. I did almost all quests available (I think only the red dragon eggs is not done yet) and didn't see this one. Are you referring to "The wayward book" quest, taken from necromancer kvorum?

As for the tank, all I have available now is emerald and black dragons. Black dragons are nice, but I can't cast target on them, and even though they're wickedly powerful, those black knights and zombies prove to be a bit too much if I leave them in the line of fire too much.

I only try to drop the barricades if I need any units to get out and fight. Sprites and faeries can't do a great deal sitting behind them, because Karador loves to cast fear them, and the same goes for any dryads you might have. I did try that thorn tactic.

Well, I will try a few more army setups and see what happens. I'm sort of limited in terms of army selection in ellinia... Even some sea dogs with their three-pronged attack would have been nice to use with some time back.

EDIT: Updated. I tried doing a strategy with inquisitors + canoneers + dryads + giants (or dragons) as tanks and hunters. I tried setting a wall in the 3 free hexes there are and summoned a thorn on the free spot after the dragon went on tanking. In that case karador casts fear on the dryads and one of the necromancers uses his attack to destroy both the barricade and the wall. The ghosts and the black knights charge in and... you can imagine the rest :)

EDIT 2: Tried using ice thorns, hunter thorns and a book of evil on the free spot. To not that good effect either... the following few turns I managed to buy weren't enough to drop karador's party down to a reasonable amount of troops.

I guess I will try going to demonis and get a few more levels and a few more units. I can remember how easy this battle was with this tactic on normal and hard - but I guess impossible is another matter :) The AI plays very strongly and takes out your important units with spells and debuffs first. I don't recall having that much trouble on the other 2 difficulties... But it's normal. With the XP I have, I would have been lvl 26 on hard (meaning I can get even more troops, because it means + 1300 leadership) or lvl 28 on normal (that's even more troops, because it's +2700 leadership)... or level 30 on easy, LOL :D

[Vilk]

The book is the book of the Necromancer lost city. Magic School offer this quest then you have to ask to the old which that throws you to a tomb magically sealed in the swamp cemetery. In this book when you use it you get the Necromancer scroll.

EDIT: I also agree that it's one of the easy fight once you get it in the right way. I haven't tried yet in impossible (still polishing my play during previous parts for a better time record) but I suspect it will be still a fight more easy than other.

EDIT2: About fear, if the enemy hero lost time to cast this that's not a bad point for you, just cast dispel right before it will the turn of feared unit. Anyway Dryads aren't useful during first parts of the fight but more later. With Royal Thorn you won't have this problem... At this point of the game Royal Thorn suck a little but that is true too for Dryads in the area.

[DGDobrev]

Oh, Vilk :)

That quest reward is completely random. In my case the reward there was some stupid spell like berserk or something. I remember it clearly, because up until the islands I had only healing and resurrection as useful spells. No gift, no sacrifice, no magic spring, no nothing.

I disagree about fear though. If the enemy breaks through the barricade, your dryad/sprite goes to charge any skeleton group she sees, even if it's not within the fighting range. That's a severe problem, because you don't want to have weak units run into the middle of the enemy lines just like that. They get minced in just one turn by the zombies and the black knights, and on impossible, karador's units just LOVE to crit - especially the black knights who even have it as a skill.

BTW, the battle is very different from normal and hard difficulties. On normal and hard you can do it with a powerpuff girl army just because you'll have a serious strength in numbers and your spirits will be leveled beyond 25 at this stage, and you will be 26+ level in any case.

[Vilk]

Lol ok that's weird but I always get this spell here! At least 4 times when I didn't forget and never something else. Well I saw in another post someone mentioning that this spell was one of the non random item of the game, so if it's not with this quest item then it's with something else I guess.

Are you using the 1.7 version? That could depend of the version.

About tactics in this fight I forgot mention points I'm using too:

Take care don't kill enemy stacks but only reduce them.
Necromancers aren't the priority at the very beginning of the game.
Before starting finish killing stacks lowering Necromancers very low is the point to do.
Mass magic chain is nice for first round if you have it.


EDIT: Well for sure it's quite tougher in impossible mode but other fights too!

EDIT2: I bet you are wrong about the necromancer spell, it is always in the book, I just start a new game and did the quest and get it one more time and the text quote the spell when you get it. It's a book about Necromancer, there's logic to get that spell in particular. All of that isn't a proof but a high suspicion that this isn't a random spell, very low chance that I always get it if it's random. Perhaps it's dependent of the game version.

EDIT3: I see the confusion, it's not the quest reward but in the item quest, you have to use it to get the spell.

[Calinda]

On Karador try to use the AOE from his necromancers against him (with Target spell), also dont kill the stacks, just reduce all of them evenly, and when they are all low, kill all of them fast in a turn or 2. This way you prevent him from raising too much stuff.

[Vilk]

Nice the target thing is interesting, at level 3 it attracts attack of level 4 enemy units?

[Calinda]

Nice the target thing is interesting, at level 3 it attracts attack of level 4 enemy units?

You can bet on it ;)

[DGDobrev]

On Karador try to use the AOE from his necromancers against him (with Target spell), also dont kill the stacks, just reduce all of them evenly, and when they are all low, kill all of them fast in a turn or 2. This way you prevent him from raising too much stuff.

I was thinking about that, but the only tank I can get easily into their lines and cast target on it, is an emerald dragon and they aren't the best tankers vs. physical damage dealers. For instance, the black knights just love to crit them for over 1.4k damage (with a shield from the mages!!!) and that 2 dragons out of 10 down in a hit. I was a bit unlucky with the creature setup in ellinia. First of all, no hunters whatsoever (save for the 37 hunters that join you when you break the siege), so I had to do quite a bit of sacrificing to up their number. No ancient ents either. The non-ellinia based creature dwellings provided some cannoneers (good), and barbarians, human archers, royal thorns, guardsmen and swordsmen (bad). There were some griffins and I tried using them, but to no avail - as soon as the stack dropped to 140 (which happened in a few rounds, even though I was using shield from the mages, resurrection and time back), karador just used hypnotize after all my units have moved (since I generally have a better initiative) and BB griffins, because even if I wait and dispel, he would just hypnotize them the next turn and it's BB again :)

So I had to tuck my tail between my legs, go level up and prepare a better party setup. One of the best tanks vs. physical damage dealers that are most of Karador's army is the Knight. If I find archdemons in demonis I won't pass on them either since as a high-level Paladin I have tolerance. Horsemen may also cut it, since they have 20% physical and 20% fire resistance. We'll see. I have to go to Demonis first, and Demonis is a big place with a lot of XP roaming there.

One thing's for certain. The double battles with the powerpuff girl army (as sector24 called it) are a piece of cake. Open with mass haste, Inquisitors build rage, dryads cast lullaby, the sprites and fairies kill the lvl 4 unit (the orc shaman in my case). The next turn everything waits, dryad summons thorns and then time back on the dryads. Now you have lullaby and thorns again. Then it's easy. The future double had some units left after both lullaby's (turn 5), so cast target on one of the summoned thorns and it's GG :)

BTW, Vilk, you may have been right about necro call. The good question is where did I put that spell and did I sell it by mistake. If I did, it's my noobish mistake then :)

EDIT: I lied in this post :P There are hunters in my game. There are 2.4k hunters in a tower in the absolute backside of Demonis :D Now who would look for them here, surrounded by red and black dragons?!

[DGDobrev]

Sorry for the double post... I hate to do it, but it has to be done :)

Karador bit the big one tonight. The party that dropped him consisted of:

Horsemen
Demons (furious skill, always retaliates, better than a griffin)
Inquisitors
Priests
Archmages

I put the priests and the inquisitors in one corner and used them to gradually reduce the numbers of the enemy. I may have accidentally sold necro call, but xeona's castle had that spell and it was pivotal in this battle. As soon as an enemy dies, use the spell and get yourself an ally. You don't really need to level it up a lot - a simple lvl 1 will do. At lvl 1 you get 2 bone dragons from the fallen stack, which is enough. You're not counting on the raised undead to win the battle for you - just to stop the crystal from summoning.

The silver rapier helps a lot here with it's 30% attack vs. undead and it's a rather common item. Good matches for this battle are: horsemen vs. black knights (good resistance) and demons vs. everything else. The priests and inquisitors help to drop the enemy stacks to non-lethal sizes and the battle is won :)

After everything is cleared out, poison cloud over the bone dragons, magic spring on them and get resurrecting. I left the poison cloud at lvl 1 (doing 20-40 poison damage for 10 attacks) and the bone dragons were taking only 3-6 damage from the cloud and giving back a lot of mana. Sweet.

There is one word of caution here. If you're going for the no losses win, you should be extra careful. If you lose a stack, as I did, and the crystal summons something from it, as it happened in my battle, it counts as a loss of the entire stack. That's how my losses count went up a whopping 432 up :P

[Calinda]

Gratz on your victory :)

[Metathron]

Can you use target and invisibility on the same unit? :rolleyes:

[DGDobrev]

I doubt that, but I didn't use target at all in my battle. Besides, being a paladin I can't try that out in the same turn :) I used necro call mainly, because I accepted the battle in my own corner of the map. Blind was for the enemy necromancers and necro call was available as soon as their unit went down.

Probably blind would have been a good complement to the necro call. Keeping the enemy necros at bay will be a rather good asset to the final victory with minimum losses.

And of course - thanks, Calinda. I can see how a pure human party with the marshal's baton and a few other good artifacts can easily win the day and I can see how did you manage to do it so well and so early on in the game. I'm absolutely confident that this can be done with a paladin as well. Looking at your save game with ambrosius, your skill build-up isn't much different than mine at this level. The only severe difference is the fact that the warrior can hold his rage awhile longer :)

[Vilk]

In fact the rage decrease seems to be a percentage decrease so the higher it is the faster it decreases. If your rage is higher for a same elapse time you end with a higher rage but not much.

[BB Shockwave]

Things to remember when fighting him:

-If you manage to completely kill one of his stacks, he will ALWAYS use Necro call on the stack. This is a GOOD thing. You'd rather have him resurrect a unit (that can only act next round) then for him to pepper you with chain lightning, hypnotize your troops or cast mass curse...

-Ice Shards. Use them first round! The dumb Death Knight spent 5 rounds just getting to me, hacking at the crystals.

-Kill Spiders and Bone Dragons fast. Spiders are a pain at that size, and Dragons are simply easy to kill and they'll be blocking you.

Units I used:

-Royal Snakes (with Feona and Snake ring, even the 50% poison res. of the Undead won't matter...)
-Black Dragons (sneak around the map, in the mountains you're sure to find a place to recruit them, even if you cannot fight the guards, just lure them away).
-Shamen (your only source to heal your dragons, plus use totems + ice shards to block his troops/block bodies. They make surprisinglx)
-Griffin (your meatshields. Go for the Necromancers and Skeleton Archers with them, never mind the losses, they can be resurrected easily).
-Originally I use Evil Beholders as fifth, but they are mostly useless against undead. So, I switched to Black Unicrons. They deal extra 50% damage to undead, are relatively tough and fast, plus resistant to magic. You can get them on the Grey Wasteland from the 'evil' druid after you do his quest.

As someone said above, the key to no losses is to:

1: prevent Karador from casting damage/hypnotize spells
2: leave the crystal and one minor troop intact that you kill every round
3: use Rage Taking+Chargers to get mana back, and resurrect your troops. You need to have Rage Taking on a high level for this, for me it was +45 Rage each time used.

It will take a lot of rounds, and pray that the game doesn't freeze or you don't get a blackout during the battle! :)

[Elwin]

How you have healed dragon with dancing axes on undead? -.-

[iregev]

Sorry for the double post... I hate to do it, but it has to be done :)

Karador bit the big one tonight. The party that dropped him consisted of:

Horsemen
Demons (furious skill, always retaliates, better than a griffin)
Inquisitors
Priests
Archmages

I put the priests and the inquisitors in one corner and used them to gradually reduce the numbers of the enemy. I may have accidentally sold necro call, but xeona's castle had that spell and it was pivotal in this battle. As soon as an enemy dies, use the spell and get yourself an ally. You don't really need to level it up a lot - a simple lvl 1 will do. At lvl 1 you get 2 bone dragons from the fallen stack, which is enough. You're not counting on the raised undead to win the battle for you - just to stop the crystal from summoning.

The silver rapier helps a lot here with it's 30% attack vs. undead and it's a rather common item. Good matches for this battle are: horsemen vs. black knights (good resistance) and demons vs. everything else. The priests and inquisitors help to drop the enemy stacks to non-lethal sizes and the battle is won :)

After everything is cleared out, poison cloud over the bone dragons, magic spring on them and get resurrecting. I left the poison cloud at lvl 1 (doing 20-40 poison damage for 10 attacks) and the bone dragons were taking only 3-6 damage from the cloud and giving back a lot of mana. Sweet.

There is one word of caution here. If you're going for the no losses win, you should be extra careful. If you lose a stack, as I did, and the crystal summons something from it, as it happened in my battle, it counts as a loss of the entire stack. That's how my losses count went up a whopping 432 up :P
How can you resurrect Demons ?
Does the inquistor spell works on them ?

[Vilk]

It isn't the reverse? Ie Inquisitor refuse to resurrect Demons but you can with your resurrect spell? I don't remember well.

About Karador battle my last try took me many attempt before to succeed but it's weird I end in using an overall strategy close to my previous game.

Joined bellow a funny snapshot after few rounds. Notice where are the Death Knight, lead there by a common use of Ice Thorn and very mobile target with Red Dragon.
The second snaphot is some round later, still all army but Red Dragons at start place and Death Knights still wandering around the place. :grin:

This attempt had been a nightmare until I decided three things:

Use Red Dragon as a very mobile target.
Take care to have a unit with the higher initiative that cannot be hypnotized (Red Dragon instead of royal snake).
Take care to always cancel a Karador negative spell on my units and keep my High Magic opportunities more for that.


Other more standard points was:

Drayd with summoned Thorn to avoid Necro call.
Reduce enemy stack before killing some.
Use Ice Thorns to slow down enemy stacks.
Use slow to control some stacks dangerous for my target.
When killing a stack take care of initiative to be sure to have right after the death a Thorn ready to summon Thorn or a unit to walk apon the dead stack.
Use few targets to reduce Necromancer stacks.

[DGDobrev]

The demons can be ressed by the resurrection spell. Still, that was a battle I didn't plan on winning without losses, although for a little while it looked that it can be done. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that karador used necro call on my fallen stack of priests (they were supposed to be a scapegoat and die) just before I had to get a turn and ress them with the inquisitors (I had no mana for ress lvl 1 spell at that time).

Besides, I already planned to go on and replace some of the armies in that line-up with fairies, and since I had to return to the elven lands through the book and stack up on more appropriate troops.

With any luck, and with the setup I proposed, Karador can be beaten without a loss, provided you're patient. I may not have lost 400+ priests if I replayed the battle, but since those priests were expendable, and I did not plan on beating the game without losses, I let them die.

[Vilk]

You can resurrect a fully dead stack? I'm not sully sure but I don't think so.

[McSwan]

I started with copying the dryads and making both dryads summon thorns, then your starting area is jammed up and the bone dragon can't attack you initially, and instead they kill the walls.

Also, all the undead units get jammed up and fire rain can kill quite a lot. It was very easy battle with my mage, I suspect it would be more difficult as a paladin though.

[Vilk]

It was in impossible mode? The problem with this approach are the two stacks of Necromancers, they'll do heavy mass damages to your troops, that's why I was using Red Dragon they make the whole difference. Also the bones dragon are the weaker stack and not really a problem.

[Vilk]

After everything is cleared out, poison cloud over the bone dragons, magic spring on them and get resurrecting. I left the poison cloud at lvl 1 (doing 20-40 poison damage for 10 attacks) and the bone dragons were taking only 3-6 damage from the cloud and giving back a lot of mana. Sweet.

I tried multiple time to use a similar trick even if poison cloud wasn't at level 1. I got many problems because the cloud is moving to reach enemy.

I noticed few cases where the cloud didn't move but it's not fully clear when this happen.

It seems that if the cloud won't be able to reach opponent before exhausting then it won't move. Also in case of Karador fight if you end with the crystal the cloud won't move as it doesn't consider the crystal as an enemy.

It seems that some obstacle can block the cloud but it's not clear what obstacles.

When trying to see if the cloud could reach the enemy and then will move I think, not sure, that I have to count the number of attack of the could + 2 from the square I cast the cloud and including this square. That's also a reason to not improve the cloud because it will move on a longer distance.

I was wondering if you have quoted other characteristics that allow to identify when it's fine to use it or not.

[DGDobrev]

Right.

Do not destroy the crystal at all until you're satisfied with all the resurrecting done. Leaving it alive allows for free ress turns. By using necro call or positioning your own troop above a dead body, you will prevent the crystal from summoning, so it will just skip the turn (provided karador has 0 mana already).

Necro call indeed helps a lot here - even lvl 1 of it. Summon every time you can to prevent the crystal from doing that and to give yourself some scapegoats to take the hits and get free ones in turn without retaliation. After everything's down and you have a bunch of summoned troops already, set the bone dragons on a hex for from your army and start with the poison cloud trick.

If I recall correctly, I ended up this battle at about turn 80 or 90 :) If would've been more if I had to ress all the priests, but... Whatever :P

BTW, this trick doesn't fit in every situation. The cloud must be really far away, or it will try to attack an enemy. Try the farthermost hex from the enemy itself and pray it works :)

[McSwan]

My archers shot up the necro's till there was only a couple left. I thought the battle was going to be hard so I cleared out the whole elf area and undead before tackling him, so was fairly high level.

[iregev]

Has any paladin beat korador with no losses on impossible/would be intresting to see how

[DGDobrev]

I gave you the tactic, iregev :)

The lineup I used is enough to beat him on impossible without losses, provided you ress (or use time back when their numbers dwindle too much) your scapegoat priests as soon as they die, so that Karador doesn't ress them as undead, in which case they will count as lost.

Also, in my eyes, priests are better than archers for that battle, because they do extra damage to undead, which dramatically improves their damage, which is very important on higher difficulties.

[iregev]

Yes you did DGDobrev and more but:
I want to finish impossible with no losses on all 3 classes but struggling with the paladin (this my 2nd rerun in paladin in that battle and no avail - either no artifacts no skills or just pure strategy)
Funny how the mage can finish this battle in 2 minutes with red dragons (tripple armagedon and Necro call is too easy)
I was wondering if you have a same game from your fight against him - would love to see what skills you took and what equipement you have

The thing is I don;t have a problem with any other fight in the game - this one is a tough pickle for me

[DGDobrev]

Hmm, sadly, I don't. I have the REALLY bad habbit of saving everything onto 1 or 2 save game slots (+ the extra quicksaves), which are pretty close to the finish of the game, maybe just after I used the tactics treatise exploit I was talking about in the other threads and hit lvl 31. If that will suffice, I can attach it.

EDIT: Or was it just before I did the treatise bug... I'm not sure :(

EDIT 2: Actually, I can save you the trouble of loading a save game. It was just before I used the treatise bug and finished the game. This is how my char looked like at that point:

[iregev]

Korador died last night after 8 turns of chaging blows and 31 turns of resurction to no losses..... :rolleyes:
Priests, Inquistor, horseman and archmage - all with +2 morale from the item + sword of light (insane Vs undead) + sword that adds 30% to attack Vs undead
The 5th unit was sprites which was probably wrong match for the battle - knights would have been better.

DGDobrev - Priests are so great for this battle !!! especially with morale, even though he cast fear on them they just shot the skellies and spiders down. + 2 morale is huge.

Demonis - here I come....

[DGDobrev]

That was the basic idea for picking both Priests and Inquisitors. On impossible, karador's skel archer stack may go as far as 2000, and it's imperative to bring their numbers down before they start dropping your stacks like crazy.

You are lucky to have the sword of light. It is indeed a great item in this battle :)

[Vilk]

For a quote +2 morale brings:

+20% of base attack/defense of unit, that's not that much for a low level unit like priest but it's still a good gain when effects are multiplied by 2 against undead.
It increase the critical chance of unit of 50% (ie for a priest the base chance is 5% without rage bonus, it becomes 7.5% without rage bonus. But that base chance includes items improving critical chance).

Also another quote, even 2000 Skeleton archer will do ridiculous damages to Cursed Ghost with Stone Skin level 3 and Archmage shield. But this isn't useful in this battle because of that two Necormancers stacks that are hard to close contact both.

[Vilk]

Korador died last night after 8 turns of chaging blows...
Rather impressive, is Karador don't cast any more spells if you killed all and none can be call from death?

[iregev]

I killed all his units by turn 8 and left the crystal for later - He actually had 26 mana with no units to spare so he couldn't cast anymore.

[Vilk]

It's a point I never quote in this battle.

So if I understand what you mean is if there is no more enemy then the crystal doesn't use Necro call and Karador anyway never use this spell but will also won't use any other like hypnotize because it has no more units?

EDIT: And I don't understand how you managed Necro call, could you explain a little?

EDIT2: The last time I played this battle, for some reason one Karador stack I had killed and Necro Call myself then killed by Karador unit didn't get Necro call by the crystal. Is there special rules about Necro call from the crystal?

[DGDobrev]

The AI analyzes the situation and works in a specific manner. In some turns it may not cast necro call, especially if the target it can call back is not "good enough". For example, the AI prefers to Necro Call the Bone dragons in this fight, then Necromancers, then Vampires. That's the thing one can exploit in this battle. That is also something you can work with - use necro call on the stack that AI values the most and force it to call back weaker units or cast other spells.

EDIT: When the battle is lost and the AI has no units and no mana, it usually stops doing anything as long as there is nothing of relevance to use necro call on. Then it's all about ressing your fallen troops :)

[Vilk]

I believed there was necro call from necromancers but also a necro call of crystal and this one does only that but once at each turn. Next time I'll look more closely the log to see what happen.

Until now only strategy that counter necro call was working otherwise I had feeling to get the same stack restored next turn.

I'm still curious to know how iregev managed necro call, pure force power working in this fight surprise me.

[iregev]

by turn 8 I had finished all his army and had either raised all the corpses using my Necro call spell or covered them with units/ice thorns.
I did pull it off with rather pure force since I was level 26/27 with +2K of leadership itesm and sword of light. Also I have been building this charchther sfrom startup specifically for this battle - equipement and skills see the "poor preist"example:

priest base attack 10
morale bonus +2
my attack ~ +8 (don't remeber)
sword of light +10
Holy anger + 10
total of 40 attack with double damage to undead and that's before the frenzy bonuses kick in (and he killed allot because of the summoing)

The horseman starts this battle with 29(base)+6 (morale)+ 8 (att) + 10 (sword) +10 (anger) = 63

the inquistor had ~ 50 attack

[Vilk]

Your description of this battle is strange at my eyes because Necromancers and Necro Call management are always my main problems and seems just a detail not worthing to mention for you. :)

Yes the Holy Anger and Sword of light bring a nice bonus.