You said: as a side note, any advice to achieve this is using silly exploits like using multiple droid stacks, or drawing every battle out to 50 turns so u can replenish ur mana (as a mage) and use the ressurect spell, i dont need or want.
Good luck making a no-loss then
The only thing that comes to mind is a make a good army with enough units that can resurrect (Inquisitors, Paladins, Demonologists) or use 1 black dragon you will need to obtain from kiting - but I guess kiting also doesn't factor in your equation. So... dig every battle and see if you'll luck out with a call collosus scroll. If you manage to yield a troll or a dragon, you've hit the jackpot. If not...
At start, a lineup of inquisitors, rune magi and royal thorns should get you through Debir.
Then, bolo - hopefully you'll find some cyclopses and droids there... but waaait, you don't want droids either
Then another option is to try scarlet and kite Norbu away from the camp - hopefully there are some Paladins there.
BTW, why do you consider unit abilities an exploit? I can't quite understand that. The game is made in a way that allows everyone to play it the way they want. The fact that you deem a perfectly viable strategy an exploit is rather strange to me. Besides, if it was an exploit, the developers should have removed the droids by now.
Using your logic, these are also exploits:
- digging for call collosus spell by replaying a battle 100 times
- kiting for maps
- Paladins/Demonologists/Rune Magi + Phantom
- Rune Magi + Phantom
- Black Knights + Eviln (+ other undead units if you wish)
- Girl Power army + Rune Mage/Paladin/Demonologist + Phantom + Resurrection
- Single Black/Red Dragon stack + nuke spells
- Single Troll stack at night + spells if you wish
- Call Phoenix spell level 3
- any tough unit + target spell
Did I forget something?