I had a tough time against them as a mage, but I beat them by using the phantom feed to buy enough cannon fodder for my army to slowly whittle them down.

Then I threw a Black Hole or two. I never used offensive magic in that game yet.

Yes, I could have definitely used Caution 3 and/or Holy Armor 3. :)

Astral attack does bypass ALL defense statistics, except Astral Resistance. Caution 3 and Holy Armor aren't the basic "defense" stat, that's why they work.

Blood shaman does astral attack too, normal orc shaman are just mere magic attack.

Right now I am rolling around with a very powerful orc team that is basically creaming everything until I run into goblin shaman.

I run into the goblin shaman team... somehow, not able to reach the 400 goblin shaman stack in time while killing the other stacks and and I lost my entire 85 Paladin stack in a SINGLE TURN, and take severe casualities across the board.

Of course, this time I didn't have the chaos crown or ghost armor yet, so I had to go on a mission to specifically look for these items. Mind you, even with them, I will still take severe losses unless I deal with that stack properly.

I don't know about you guys. I have never lost an entire stack that easily before in this game before.

My mage lost his stack of 10 black dragons IN A SINGLE TURN WITH 70% astral resistance.

That said, orcs ARE overpowered. Therefore, I shall abuse. :)

Orc Veterans are like the most ideal phantom units in the game now. Plus, with Adrenaline Level 3 and Moldok, they become some of the fastest and strongest no retaliation units in the game. I just killed Driller in 7 rounds, Impossible Mode - Warrior, No-Loss.

Paladin, Goblins, Orc Veterans. Goblins were indeed the main power house thanks to Zeroing In, but throwing in an extra 3-4K damage from teh Orc Veterans helped a ton.

The reason WHY orcs are strong is because of the way Adrenaline works. A lot of "cannon fodder" tactics end up feeding the enemy with more adrenaline, thus, they do more damage and gain far more insane abilities.

Goblin shaman do 20-25 Astral Damage per goblin, and they can attack up to 3 times if they have level 3 Adrenaline. The computer always starts with around level 2 adrenaline too. 400 Goblins * 20 = 8000 damage * 3 = 24000 damage in a single round if you have no astral resistance and that's the WORST case scenario. Afterwards they can still attack too, but that's nothing. :)

Yep

I don't know how both of you play your mage, but from my observation mage class is inclined towards using single stack unit. Most peoples play mage like that. Armies are for warrior and paladin.

And the best dragon for mage is emerald, not black nor red, emerald dragon + invisible works best with mage (that's one of cheap tactic beside eviln+BK or BD+spells), because mage has the highest mana, can cast more than 1 spell/turn, their offensive spells are the most dmg ing (due to having highest int), also must be remembered that high lv offensive spell need very high mana (again, it's mage expertise).

I don't know why your entire stack got killed by 24k astral dmg with 70% astral resistance, that 24k astral dmg should become a joke with 70% astral resistance coupled with caution 3 (any class can take it, all my mages always have caution 3), if you have holy armor 3 triggered, just laugh at their dmg.

Sorry, I was talking about two different armies. None of my mages have caution, as it costs too much for me normally and usually I have phantoms and such to tank, so I don't usually need caution.

I might add it in though, since it seems like that would help against Ktahu's first attack.

All of them have frenzy now though. :)

Normally, if I were going to do a solo stack build, like solo black dragon, then I would take caution as a mage.

Well, that's just ONE goblin stack. :) They still got the Blood shaman which also do astral damage.

So, my Warrior with 0% astral resistance and no caution, lost an entire stack to 24K damage.

My mage, with 70% astral resistance, no caution, lost most of my black dragons to the goblins, then it got finished off later on in the same turn by some other imbalanced orc unit. :)

Either way, pretty crazy stuff.

Yeah, I am not too big a fan of the single stack bit since it seems to lead to tedious and long battles. Although, with the emeralds, it might not be so bad due to the mana recovery trick.

I usually just play mega support as a mage. I really hate how no-loss impossible boss battles take so long for most people because they go with "single stack".

Well, for mage, single EGD is better than BD, faster battle, need no thought, just spam invisible, refill mana, and spam spell and pet dragon you deem necessary, one or two careless move(s) is ok, unlike with black dragon, not only you'll have longer battles, you must be extra careful too, lest no loss game. Though in early game, single BD is easier.

Well, i never a fan of single stack too, and i never use single stack againts bosses, not a fan of BK+eviln too (cheapest single stack tactic).

Paladin seems the best againts those shamans, not only it have caution 3, but holy armor 3 too. For me, Caution 3 is a must pick skill, even as mage.

Yeah, I think someone here used single Black Dragon as a challenge. Emerald is definitely a more practical single stack build for mages.

I always wanted to do a damage build mage, and now I have a way to do it. Thanks for the tip!

You mean blood shaman, right? I can take the Dancing Axe Shaman easily with the Chaos Crown and some miscelleneous magic resistance item.

I might incorporate Caution 3 in my future mage builds. Thanks for the info.


[edit]
To give you guys an idea of how insane the Orcs are in Impossible....

Just beat Rakush after procuring both the Crown of Chaos and Ghost Armor, conferring a 70% astral resistance, and I got Caution 3.

He has too many stacks of goblin shaman, and he probably out leaderships me as I am only level 37 for me to use Magic Shackles. He has about 800 Goblin Shaman total, but as 4 different stacks. I end up killing 200-300ish before they can act.

His Goblin Shaman was feeling genocidal and all aimed for my Super Goblin (tm) stack. I originally had 436.

I end up with 26 Goblins by the end of the first round. This is with nearly every possible defense known to the game. I have a leather dress, but come on, I hardly doubt 75% astral will do much vs 70%. (Plus, I like getting more trophies).

I use Turn Back Time and proceed to turn him into silly putty. Once my orcs get into range, nothing lasts for very long.

I hold back before doing the final punches, and use two more Turn Back Times with the paladins to undo all the damage.

But there was no way I could recover from a 410 goblin loss without Turn Back Time.

436 goblins... 70% astral resistance, 30% caution... 26 left. You guys be the judge.

We still debating whether Goblins are overpowered? :-P

Hmm, guess so. Though to me, they are not that overpowered as enemy, though it's different as ally.

edit: well, here's my story with rakush
My fight againts rakush was not that hard, i was paladin lv 45, and maybe because i use dryads (i don't know why, since KB TL these chicks always in my team), inquisitor, hunter, paladin, and black dragon (replacing inquisitor and hunter with faun and ancient ent also does the same results). Other things which are also a very big help are 70% astral resistance, adrenaline 3, holy armor 3, onslaught 3, caution 3, voice of dragon 3, and as for spells are sheep lv 3 and blind 3.

Well, at turn 1, no astral attack thanks to dryads (mass sleep), hunters and inquisitors (they shoot them to dead, about 350 ish goblin shamans dead, the rest 500 shamans are sleeping :)), while paladins are closing in (helping dryad got second turn so they can summon thorns), black dragon wait to get into position so that at turn 2 they can torch those shamans to oblivion, at the end of turn 1 i casted mass haste (so paladins and thorns can help the team, unfortunately they just took the leftover stacks).

At turn 2, about 200 ish shamans are sheeped, leaving the rest 300 dead due to black dragon + inquisitor + hunter, and the rest of the shamans didn't even have a chance to act in the next turn (dead in sheep form :)). The rest of the stacks are joke. The most dangerous threat of the battle was pretty much ended in turn 3 (all shamans dead), the rest just left me digging treasures and helping my pet dragon gain exp, mass resurecting was done once by paladins's prayer (no phantom, no time back).

I found Witch Hunters pretty usefull against all sort of shamans - one Magic Lock, and they are reduced to melee units for 3 rounds (save for the Goblins, who are still pretty strong ranged units).

If I were a Mage, with 2 casts per round, I'd start off with Magic Lock Level III. I doubt Scrounger can dispel.

Heh. I only wanted to prove 70% astral resistance and 30% caution doesn't work nearly as well as one would think. I forgot about dryads, as I have never used them before, and the computer usually uses thorns, not lullaby.

Lullaby probably won't work on level 4 blood shaman though, which basically does the same thing as goblin shaman. :)

If I had dryads, yes, I would have swept them quite easily as well. I will keep that in mind for next time though, as rakush was always one of the more annoying heroes for me.

As for scrounger, I think he out leadershipped my magic shackles and/or the army was too strong for me not to use like pygmy, phantom, etc.

Again, Impossible Mode. In hard mode, maybe a different story.