Thanks for all the replies folks. I can see just by reading them all that there are various things to try - I've also started a paladin game on hard to try and redo the game more carefully and think about my approach more.

Cheers

I don't see the problem with that. I beated Zig-Zag with a single stack of Green Dragons. Unless you are doing a speed game, it's perfectly reasonable to scour later islands before doing boss battles in the first few islands.

I just want to share my experience with this game...
I want to say, this game is harder than "the legend"
All enemies are always strong, lethal overpowering :)
At least devs left the same freedom of lurking, stealing, sneaking :)
But, princess Amelia is not a royal treasure searcher, thats why she is almost like a beggar.Im having almost no gold to keep my army at full units.

Im level 19.. i use 5trex, a bunch of horsmen(those guys with spears, i forgot the name) demonologists, assasins, royal? griffins..
And i have a hard time improving my army, re suplying it..
I wanted to get dragons etc, but its impossible :) no gold.
Still i have one unexplored island.. :)
P.S. in armored princess game, all units have much more special abilities, that its hard to think of what units to get.And its hard to find ancient vampires, nekromancers, dragons etc..

if u got cash problems then u don't utilize your abilties well
and lose alot of armies during battles

step nr.1 for mass gold is 3x treasure searcher

step nr.2 is don't lose units or only a very small amount

i loose a couple of low level units rarely, mostly i never loose units.
Its not my problem thė game is tedious :( ( maybe because devs got a ton of complains about "the legend" being not challeging enough(for geeks :) so thats why they made a sequel a lot harder)
p.s. if you fight an ordinary battle, you loose one or two dragon or 3-5 low level units, for about the same amount of gold.2dragons ~ 25k gold.Its the same or more than the loot you get from the fight.
p.p.s. pls dont suggest for me to dig a chest each round...

What level are u playing, cuz if u are not playing hard or impossible, it is too easy not to run out of money on Armored Princess. On easy and normal i cant see a way for running out of money, seriously. If u lose only a couple of units on combat, u should not run out of money, its impossible. So u are doing something wrong. Wat units u using? for example in my actual game, im playing on impossible, just discover Reha and have about 1,4 million of gold. And i rarely lose units. If i were playing on normal, sure i will have about 3 million or more. And believe me, is too hard to lose just 1 dragon. Now that ive played toons of games, i am sure when i tell u that i never get 1 dragon killed. And yes, the treasure chest ability is a must if u see u cant raise your gold. It can give u more than 5000 gold per battle.

3x chest with an average of 1000~2000 gold

x 200 battles
do the math

2x chests, not 3.

I didnt mean the green dragon of the cave, i meant other level 5 units.

ok here is my strategy. Get all dragons (black,red,green, and bone) and an archdemon. that way you can cast fear on any unit who will kill anyone of your dragons or archdemon (archers mainly) and burn the rest with fire rain. Run away from all dangerous units who get close to you and make sure that you utilize the fear spell as much as possible. the dragons all have the rechargable abilities so you can run in and kill the enemies then run away again. Just make sure you dont attack any big groups with your normal attack unless of course its an archmage, priest, or inquisitor with your black dragon. Its that simple. you wont lose any units ever and you will constanly be making money by killing troops. dont waste your time with asassins or any units like that. any enemy hero who cast a lot of magic spell (geyser, fire rain, ect), put all your units into a castle but one stack of black dragons. Kill the archers asap while running away from all the other units and periodically using the dragons fire ability.