Without buying units
 

Having finished the game on impossible with warrior and paladin, I thought I'd try something new to make it challenging with mage. The idea is that I won't buy any units. I wonder if anyone else tried that.
I'll miss Sleem, because I can't buy the snakes for him. I'll miss dryads as well. I hope playing mage is really that much easier than the other 2 to compensate. I think if I find some green dragon eggs I'll be fine.
I'm up to level 10 with full stack of vampires, ancient vampires, griffons, and sea dogs, thanks to sacrifice. Sadly, the first time I couldn't find sacrifice anywhere, not even in Demonis, so I had to restart, even though I had canoneers joining me. This time it was miners only. At the beginning I also restarted a lot of times until I found some ancient vampires in the cementery. There are about 10 sarcophagus and each has a slim chance to have them.
I also found a neat trick to get through the turtle boss easily, by chain casting mana spring and last hero on a sprite, which stood front of it. In theory a simple sprite could take out the turtle in 5000 turns :)

There were threads on this forum about this option of gameplay, but mostly theoretical discussions, if or not it is possible. (It should be possible... )
But I do not remember someone finishing the game on impossible with this scenario... Most of the "unit containers" are for sell as well... So if the griffing king would have 30 griffing eggs... you would buy them or not?

Also I suggest to buy the spiders/snakes for sleem, as you won't using them in combat, it seems fine... I believe the point is not using bought units in combat... true?

It doesn't really make a difference, so I decided not to buy eggs and whatnot. With sacrifice you really need just one egg, and I just stole it from their nest.

With Sleem the infinite mana loop is too easy, as described in the zero loss strategy, and also very boring. I'll stick to the stricter rules and not buy his food :)
I will also not rely on invisibility or repetitive surrender from battles to stack up on sprites. Neat tricks though :)

Well, still you need a lot of luck to get sacrifice... only if you would restart the game only for sake of getting sacrifice in the nearest cities... I actually remember getting sacrifice in hadar first... but I also believe that the mage academy has unlimited random generator, so it could contain sacrifice, if I am right...

So, you can get plants, fire dragonflies, spiders, snakes, skells and vamps... later on its griffins, ents... and even dragons... I could imagine playing like this max on normal... so if you go for impossible, good luck!

I finished an impossible game with no buying strategy as a mage because you get one awesome unit - Sprite - to start with. I only consume those eggs/units containers that are picked up along the road. So no purchase of those items whatsoever. The only items I ever used are Red/Black Dragon eggs and coffins.

The moot point in my game is that I use invisibility which is against your intention. So good luck.

Edit:
1. In my version, you can activate Sleem using the electric charger like you did with Lina.

2. I forgot that I did end up buying Cyclop/Snakes to finished the Magic School rare animal quest so I guess it is not a true "no buying" game. Unless those scrolls are really attractive, you can just pass on the quest.

I'm at level 16 and spoke with Sleem, just asked what he wants, hoping he mentions those electric chargers. It said it's already at 116/100%, and ready to follow my orders. Maybe it fed on the corpses of the slain snakes, I'm not complaining.

By the way my army is still Sea Dogs (they don't actually do anything, I wonder why I keep them around), Griffins (just got Time Back for level 1-3, they are finally useful), vampires, ancient vampires and 5 red dragons. I'm not a fan of sprites :)

I still haven't found Resurrect, but Sacrifice on vampires was good enough until now, and now with time back it's even easier.

Finally, someone else than me realized how handy vampires + sacrifice are.. sad you can't get demons for "free".. (can you?) ...

@Gatts

I don't recall any free roaming demon-type stack so I guess it is impossible to get demons for free.

@fable
You gonna invest into Tolerance 1? There is the Elves/Hunters stack outside castle Orinoko that you may consider to replace your seadogs.

Hunters this time :) I was looking forward to have them, but Skeleton Archers do about twice as much damage. Tolerance would be about 17 mind runes with the prerequisites, far too much, so I'm fine with the skeletons for now. They're a big help against black dragons: I've invested in tactics, place the vampires and the red dragons in a triangle, and the black dragons would attack this bunch, they think they're clever to get double-hits. Red dragons are almost immune to fire, the vampires can feed on other living stuff as long as they survive. The skeleton archers with Dragon Arrows take out 3-5 per turn.
The Dead Lands will be though, vampires are no use. I found a full stack worth of black dragon eggs, so that's also an option. We'll see :)

I realized I have never seen green dragon eggs, even in my previous games. Do they exist at all?

Neither did I come across any green dragon eggs. Anyone else?

See if you can find the Rahha's shield. It always begins with an Emerald green dragon.

really like games like kings bounty or heroes of might and magic
can someone suggest more similar games
thanks

I found a neat trick with griffins and time back. Let's say your leadership allows 100 griffins. Enter an easy battle with 66 griffins, split them and use time back. That way you'll have 66+33=99 griffins, and you will still have that many after the battle is over. A lot easier than using sacrifice.

I'm considering including black dragons. I believe I can heal them with the quested AE heal Life Light, I have 5 eggs already, and if I learn the diplomacy skill I can get more of them. Vampires and skeleton archers are not good against the undead, dragons will be good replacement. The skill is a bit expensive though.

I wonder how hard would it be to play without sacrifice in addition to not buying units. Maybe it's also possible even on "impossible". At least if you find "resurrect" early enough :) and allowing buying unit containers could get you a solid starting army.

No, life light doesn't heal black dragons. The ONLY way to heal them is with gizmo.

AND Shaman's Axe. Why do people keep forgetting that?

Thanks fable for the neat trick. Wow, that's awesome! I assume you cast time back on the original stack, i.e. the one that did not move?

what is time back? is this a spell or a rage spirit power?

and what does it do exactly? I keep hearing it referred to in combos

Rage spirit ability. You'll have it soon :) It restores a unit to its state at the beginning of the previous turn.

@jwallstone: you can only use it on the original stack, the other did not exist back then.

Really? I could have sworn that i had tried that, and not had it work. My mistake :)

Finished the game now. I've skipped almost everything from the elven lands, killed the undead General with only 17 griffins and 13 ancient vampires left (I left a unit from every type in castles around and a full stack of griffins, so recovery was easy)
Dragons were a bad choice after this point, because I was casting Armageddon and they barely survive. Lower level, better hp/leadership ratio worked better, like dwarves.
I only found resurrect at the very end, but I never missed it. I was very lucky to have the griffin banner, it turned out to be the most important item in the game.
Highlights: Level 21 / impossible / Day 11 / 72 quests completed / 15475 leadership. Score is only 1304.
I hoped that on the combat statistics screen the numbers at the corner of the units will all be blank, but it counts joining units and from eggs as well.

All in all, it wasn't really different than a non-restricted game, except for the lack of dryads. The splitting griffins + time back combo is almost as powerful in combat.

Congratulations on finishing this game without invisibility.

About the combat statistics, you will find that all creatures you get from sacrifice don't count. There is also double posting, sort of, for transformable creatures such as vampires. The damage dealt by vampires and vampires (bat) is separated.

Thanks!

Vampires (bat) really is a different creature, you can recruit those and normal vampires at the same time, but both will go out of control if you transform either one. I've only seen "bat" type for sale once in Demonis.