Who'd you try?
 

I remember it being harder, but I don't think I had any problem with Xeona as my wife with her Demon troops.

What kind of troops did you use before you resorted to the Cyclops?

Matt

A human army plus elves and dwarves. Consisting on something along the lines of Archmages, Horseman, Inquisitors, Elves and Dwarves.

Then I left archmages, dwarves and inquisitors and switch to Black Dragons, Unicorns and Cannoners. And finally discarded dragons in favour of cyclops. Regardless the army composition, all units were slaughtered except the cyclops, who ended the battle with 200 attack.

How were you losing?
 

So can you tell me more about how you were losing?

For example, were you being overrun by the Dark Crystal summons or were the dead stacks being reanimated causing problems or was there some other issue?

Were you using your Phoenix, Ice Ball, etc.?

There is actually a strategy to this one and based on how you were losing, I could probably give you some tips...

Matt

Totally overwhelmed by the enemies which were there already. The zombies and necromancers were specially mean. That's why I tried to counter effect with unicorns, whose increase magic resistance and horn of light could made a difference.

Yep, I used Ice Ball a few times. And Phantom. Not the best cannon fodder this time. Both were destroyed by a single skeletons attack. Same as Black Dragons.

Ice Ball proved to be useful later on, though. When my cyclops were agonizing, less units kept alive and the distance between them were larger.

My Mature Phoenix wasn't powerful enough to endure the fight.

Also employed traps and teleport to no avail.

Sigh. Now I'm struggling against Bagu. Any tip? It seems I cannot cope with his three spells per turn.

My army consist of Inquisitors, Black Dragons, Cyclops, Elves, Horsemen, Knights and Guardsmen. Two of them in reserve, obviously.

I cast Target on Horsemen (they have unlimited retaliation due to my son), but Bagu turns them into sheep or make them weaker through Pigmy. Things get worse when the orc boost his troops with Phantom or Berserk.

It seems key to get some of his units out of play, make them irrelevant. I try to do so through Ice Ball and Phantom, but haven't been very lucky so far.

I did it!! I defeated the bastard on my own!! Epic.

My tactic was to maximize damage output by using repetidaly Cloud of Poison, Black Hole even when such strategy implied sacrify some of my units. And put meanwhile the rest of my last troops at safe positions, boosting them with Enchanted Hero and Gizmo, and using Ice Ball as both a distraction and a weapon.

Wow - you've had some epic fights!
 

Glad you did it!

I think you're playing warrior, right?

Enchanted Hero is a very important spell to cast due to its autocast capability.

Could you not afford the Ancient Phoenix? What about getting your Evil Book to Level 3 or Summon Demon?

Glad Poison Could worked! I made that ability significantly better than the original. Also, I think Zerock's Wall can work really good for a Warrior as well as Lina's Ice Thorns for blocking troops, returning damage, etc. I'm glad Gizmo bailed you out.

As far as Karrador is concerned, it is important not to destroy his original stacks, but weaken them significantly so that the Dark Crystal summons new Undead troops that don't have the difficulty level bonuses applied to them; otherwise, if you destroy the original stacks, the Dark Crystal will just reanimate them.

Back to Bagud, I've never really had any trouble with him, either.

It is possible that since I like to end the game with Xeona and her Demon troops that they are just more powerful than some of the other troops. The ArchDemons are really potent with their Amalgamation ability and no retaliation and then Demons are really good with their summon and unlimited retaliation.

I actually haven't tried any other troop combinations since I like to cycle through each wife, having the 4 kids and then immediately moving on to the next wife (this works great for debugging, too). I find that when you can get each wife, that the troops she gives bonuses to are well suited to the area of the game you are going through.

My most difficult fight (where I usually can't do no loss) is fighting Xeona with Neoka's Elves. I find that Elves vs Demons is a poor matchup due to the fire vulnerability of the Elven Troops, but usually I have enough Ancient Ents to push through and since I'm about to switch to Xeona's troops, I don't necessarily mind losing most of my Elven troops during that battle.

Hey, by the way, did you run into any of the issues @SlickDragon mentioned, especially with the spell casting. I've been going through some of the code and I've never seen any issues before, but it is possible that there are some bugs lurking in there still.

Let me know how your fight with Haas goes! Also, what is your Hero Level and Spirit Levels now that you're at the end of the game?

Matt

Yeah, I beat Hass yesterday night with the warrior. Another epic fight, although surprisingly a bit easier than the others thanks to two factors: one, the sword you get from defeating Dreddho the Dragon in the tournament (+50% attack vs dragons); second, troops I bought specially designed to exploit Cloud of Poison. I purchased Royal Snakes and Shamans, to pair them with the cyclops and cast Cloud of Poison upon them when surrounded by dragons. He he, devastating.

And of course Enchanted hero, Gizmo, and the Reaper power to kill X% units from a troop (don't remember its name) were key again. First I went for the Ogres, then the dragons (tons of them) and finally face the Ancient ents (another +30 stack)

Finished the game with a level 30 character, 41 Zerock , 33 Sleem, 39 Lina and 47 Reaper.

Honestly I don't know if suffered all the bugs that Slick Dragon mentioned, I'm just certain about the archmages inability to shock and the weird critical percent calculations. I mean, some skills stated your troops would receive +30% to inflict a critical but only shown little increments in their related fields (tooltips)

Now started Armored Princess. =P I want to go with a ranged specialist this time, with Alchemists, Archmages and so on. What class would suit me better? =P I guess you didn't designed another version of your mod to AP, right?

Wow! That's pretty awesome! You got your spirits pretty high - for some reason, I try really hard to even out their levels.

That +50% attack vs dragons weapon is pretty awesome (I think you always get that from beating Dreddho, if memory serves).

I also presume you weren't able to do no loss - is that right or were you able to do no loss?

Yah, I've fixed the Archmages problem - I biffed the implementation of a parameter when I added the Blue Dragons.

I also messed up the Priests / Inquisitors - they couldn't use their Bless / Holy Rage skills and I've now fixed that, too.

I have some other fixes coming, too.

I haven't made a new release, yet, but I want to try to play a little and see if I can discover if @SlickDragon's bugs that I haven't been able to find, yet are real. I don't know if I have the time or inclination to play all the way through, but if I can at least play and double check all the bugs he's mentioned then I can feel better about putting up a new release (not that anyone's playing anymore).

Also, I think the Critical Hit issues are with the descriptions not being clear. I need to go back through them and ensure that they are clearer. Typically a lot of them work off of base and so one might say +30% Critical Hit, but it doesn't mean that it adds, but rather increases it 30%, and usually to its base. If the base is only 5% than it will only increase it 2% (rounding up). So I think that's where the confusion lies. I think when I first created those bonuses, I didn't realize how low some of the unit's Critical Hit chances were and so bonuses seem small, but I do remember comparing them to other stock TL Critical Hit bonuses and a lot of them worked the same way.

In the expansions, they are pretty stingy on Critical Hit bonuses like +3% and stuff like that.

Alas, I ran into a snag when I was working on my Tomes where I hit the limit of items that you can have in the game. With all the additional items they've added in the expansions, I don't have room for my additional stuff and so that took the wind out of my sails. Now I have no desire to spend a year plus working on a mod to that or any of the other expansions, because there is too much work play testing, etc. to iron out all the bugs.

There are still bugs in my H3B mod, apparently, and I've been working on that since 2010! 7 years is a long time, although I did take the last 3 years off away from King's Bounty.

I am going to try to see what I can do about fixing the current issues and would like to make things a little bit tougher for the Hard and Impossible difficultly levels.

Anyway, have fun with AP - I think it has a better engine than TL, but I still find that TL is my favorite!

Matt

No, happily I couldn't. The mana and rage gain limitations work great against it. You really have to take money and supplies into account.

Such are great news! Now that you're at it, perhaps might rethink about Gizmo. Its resurrection feature is really needed versus enemy heroes, but overpowered against regular armies. Remember it is even able to resurrect black dragons, cyclops and so on. (I hope this was intended!) :)

Yes, that was my impression, too. The target of the bonuses is not clear enough. Where it goes and how applies. The way it works in practical terms. Hence the confusion.

Balance out a mod like this is never easy. There're so many novelties and modifications to keep in mind. Bug fixing also requires unusual playtesting, as sometimes some bugs only appear under x circumstances, where x is not your usual playing route.