You are not forced to use Viking Units....
 

There is this idea that the game somehow forces you to play with the Viking Race for the first island(s). This is quite simply not true. We have other units that we can use and they are quite good. I'll give some examples : There are bears, ancient bears, snakes, spiders, wolfs... as you can see there's many units to choose from on the first island.

I even tested to see if I can complete the first island with other units then Viking Units and I can confirm that it can be done!

So no, we're not forced to use viking units. :-)

I'd like to know if somebody else tried this. It seems a fun thing to do and it's more varied then using just Vikings.

ahhh this is the logic u have making the game more balanced by using weaker units ahh i understand now


Why would anyone want to use a animal army (unless just pure for fooling around)

AFAIK ANIMALS don't get any morale bonusses unless u get up higher in the spirit tree or have items that boost it

swamp snakes and normal snakes are just horrible units LOW HP low speed and low INIT The only snake that is worth mentioning is the royal snake(the only snake that is fast and has no retal)
and yes u have snake strike that tries to remove how weak they are

as for wolves they would be quite decent to have in your army, but only if you were facing NON-undea/non-mind immunity creatures)

as for bears sweet little level2 tank unit(but slow on speed and slow init) it tottaly sucks vs ranged attacks

ancient bears well they have decent HP and more def than the beserker and can regenerate health that would be the only pick i would take from starting island


and ofcourse thorns
their low hp and low damage is pretty much useless vs the undead on the bright side they do have good pos resistance but due to their low hp just plainly useless they die way to fast and without a demonologist or w/e u cannot revive them

and hyena's would be a good unit but not vs undead sure they have a nice crit but after that they just get steamrolled cause of their low hp their speed and init it pretty nice though


All of the animals mentioned above are just WEAKER than the viking units(maybe save for the ancient bear the only one worth mentioning really)

on top of that if you used all those units then you have one SLOW init SLOW SPEED army which would have to take a crapload of damage vs archers before they can even reach them (so LOSSES are MANDATORY)


so if this is your way of helping the community out with your logic wow i am impressed:)

or show me some vid where u beat the first island with this army
i'm anxious to see

without any reviving and maybe no healing if u get unlucky
i really doubt if u would get past the first island

just think about one ghost blade/poison skull killing one of your stacks and it's unrevivable since no soothsayer

ahh the JOY the BALANCE

:-P

while there are non-viking units on the first island there are only 5 of them, meaning you have exactly one army that is non-viking?


honestly this isn't much of a problem imo, most KB games start off with few choices, the real problem is that on islands 2 and 3 you only get another ~4-5 units to choose from and maybe 1-3~ more on island 4 then on "island 5" you suddenly can choose from like 30 new units :-p this curve could've been more drawn out and even

Basically irrelevant since the soothsayer can barely ressurect anything with his very poor ability :).

So soothsayer or no soothsayer you still don't need any ressurection on the first island. Bears are lvl 3 btw.. they also have high hp and good damage potential.

LOL, you're joking, right? Thorns deal more damage then Black Dragons, per leadership of course. :grin:

You can always mix and match the best units of neutrals/vikings with the cost of losing morale bonuses (which is usually worth losing early on).

Some of the units are pretty indispensable but probably doable without. Especially if you can tolerate some losses since animals are quite plentiful.

I used Ancient Bears because super early on they can tank a nerfed ranged shot from afar then heal up. I wouldn't have been able to minimize losses without the hibernation (only 4 healing scrolls, and as a Viking/Warrior, so I can't just heal willy nilly). They also gain morale bonuses from Maidens (no maidens for my soothsayer run yet, but my Viking did get some).

Plus you have the -15% bear/wolf leadership trainer jacket from the end of the first island which is guaranteed (but by then I'd rather not use bears, but it is probably possible as that is a HUGE boost early on).

<shrugs> in all of my "minimal" or nearly no loss runs, I had to hatch the snakes to throw off the AI. I'm surprised I was able to no-loss Uladar with it.

Yes on paper, but consider att/def and resistances ratio of you and targeted enemy unit.
Expl : 1 black dragon and 315 thorn warriors attacking knight stack. BD will make 110-130 fire dmg with 70att so to knight with 27 def and 30% fire res it goes to average 120*(1+(70-27)*3,33%[this is increase of 133% for att-def])*0,7[this is 30% fire resistance]=204 dmg + possible burning effect
On other side 315 thorns 4 att, 1-3 physical dmg will do to same target 315*2(average dmg)*(1+(4-27)*3,33%[this is reduction for lower att then knight def])*0,7[this is reduction for 30% physical dmg]=280 dmg.

So thorn do make more dmg, but considering if knight stack retaliate they will kill some thorns, but hardly BD and next turn BD make same dmg, while thorns make less caused to loss on retaliation. And so on... Crit% is also factor here, but also is fact if you have 4999 leadership you can have 625 thorns, but still only 1 BD and then thorn will make much bigger difference in dmg uotput. Pure dmg/leadership ratio isnt only thing to consider in planing your army.

Yeah you need ~100% crit and >60 attack over the enemy defense. This is easily achieved with helplessness and/or plague, but at a minimum you need 60 attack (ideally more since helplessness and plague dont' drop the defense to 0).

If defense is already 0, you use pygmy/plague.

This is also why the Viking/Warrior tends to be the best equipped for this -- at least in Armored Princess.

Because of Skald's higher leadership (I wish I knew by HOW much more), they might become the "defacto" master of certain builds.

Thankfully the Viking/Warrior's berseker and bonus to crit damage bonus is INSANE and probably dwarves any leadership bonus the Skald/Paladin gets. I don't know for sure though.

Yes, if you really, REALLY want to make it harder for yourself and be forced into something like 8 different units, you don't have to use Vikings. That's still not a good situation though. Armored Princess gave you dozens and dozens of options on the first islands other than just human units, it was much better.

It's a 1/.75/.50 relation between Skald/Viking/Soothsayer based on pure levelup bonuses. Other bonuses are either % based (which won't change the ratios at all) or additive bonuses (which will improve the viking and soothsayer's ratio vs skald). At low levels the additive bonuses of the strategy medal and Valkyrie will greatly impact this distribution, expect it to be closer to a 1/.80/.60 ratio (this is based off my soothsayer's additive bonuses on my save right before the spider boss, which is about the point where they will have the greatest effect). So you can assume that Skalds have between 25% and 33% more units than Vikings at most times.

AFAIK isn't the scaling on att/def linear, and so the effective damage ratio is always the same unless resistances come into play or the enemy defence is more than +-60 your units?

Should really include crits in your calculations. Crits are huge.

Also important to consider is equipment and spells. Consider that Bless will improve non-crit damage by 50% on Thorns but only 8% on the Dragons. Crits improve damage by 300% on Thorns but only 62.5% on Dragons. Equipment that adds +1 damage will add 33% damage to Thorns but less than 1% damage on Dragons.

@Loopy
That`s why said many things come into consideration regarding dmg/lds ratio to units.
As you said when you reach +60 att on enemy def there is no more need for frenzy and bonus att, then pugmy/plague means much more then +att item, or using +dmg items instead some pure +att equipment.

All of these things assume that you've got a polite opponent (and that you the player is similarly polite) who'll let 2 units just attack each-other each turn. That doesn't happen.

Thorns have to get across the battlefield to do anything. And they can and should be inhibited by cold, slow, traps, ice shards and anything else. Dragons will attack first turn. Dragons can hit 2 targets at once, or anywhere up to what, 7 with its special. Dragons reduce the defence of each stack they hit and kill 6.5-13% of the stack per turn. Dragons can hit fire- or magic-damage stacks and basically ignore the retal.

In nearly every practical scenario, dragons will outdamage thorns.