[kcwong]

I tried again and this time it went much much better on the first island. I avoided the hero fights, since their spells mean it is very likely to suffer losses, but I cleared the whole island with just one battle - the snake basement - losing two wolves.

The biggest difference I think are using Inquisitor's skill to boost rage. This alone kicked my army's offensive power up to a new level (pun intended).

The second biggest change is my choice of troops... I accidentally used an exploit - I left my starting army in the castle, taking just one peasant to the tutorial. When I completed it the game doubled my starting army for me.

With that I chose the Forest Fairies... something I've never done before. I fully expect them to die like flies - with their pitiful defense and 9HP, but it seems the AI ignores them for the most part (and I used them very defensively).

I used to go with Bowman, Guardsman, Priest, Inquisitor and Thorns/Devifish/Royal Snake. This time I went with Bowman, Guardsman, Inquisitor, Forest Fairy and Wolf. Wolf turns out to be completely useless, as there were very few level 1 enemies - just a few stacks of peasants. They are now replaced by Royal Snakes. I paid the 6K for the Snake Boots to make them more effective.

Skill-wise I chose: Glory 1, Linguistic 1, Distortion 1, Order 1, Transmute 1.

I went to Bolo first and picked up some flags as N3MES1S suggested. My army still wasn't as large as I wanted, but I guess it's not as bad as before. I'll see how I do on Scarlet Winds next session...