Oh, I forgot about your post on dragons. I even printed it. Sorry about that.
OK. I'm finished! I had to fight Haas four times in order to win, and managed to do it without any losses and just using the traditional Ressing spell, not "Animate Dead". The first two battles, Haas killed me! I wasn't too surprised--he had 137 Dragons, 25 Ancient Ents, and 20 Giants. The two Elven Bows had to go. The winning combination turned out to be a Dragon Slayer Sword and Rahha's Shield. Turn 1 was Mass Battle Cry and Mass Dragon Slayer. I managed to clear out one stack and whittle down the others. In Round 2, I think I used Time Back, and cast Mass Precision, but I'm forgetting the other spell. It might have been Dispel. By the end of this round, I'd cleared all but the Giants and Ancient Ents. After that, it was just a matter of eating a couple of Armageddons, and summoning my Ancient Phoenix for the Ancient Ent to spew wasps at (luckily, he didn't target my other units), and waiting for Haas to run out of mana and slowing Ressing everyone back.
So, I'm pretty shocked, but I could have done this modded game without losses if I'd done your minimalist approach of the Plugens fight, Turtle, Bogacho, and kiting every open area, and if I'd had the patience. I take that back about needing Animate Dead to make it with no losses, too.
That is because, just for kicks, I went back to an old save and booted up the copy of KBTL on my HD that is unedited, loaded my save with Feanora not giving a Morale or Initiative bonus, and even with her normal equipment slots, no buffed Phoenix etc. and I managed to beat those two Ultrax battles and Xeona with no losses.
The caveat with Xeona is that I forgot that I'd opened Sacred Anger to the Mage, and had it at level 3, so I had +15 Attack on the Demons. Plus, it was utterly impractical to beat her or attempt beating the game with no losses with this army, as it took me 2 hours to beat her with no losses due to how depleted my Mana got by having to make a wall of Demon Portals and then sit there with a stack of Scoffer Imps kicking my demon summons with Magic Spring on them. I kept using Rage Draining endlessly and had Chargers at max.
Without Sacred Anger, I might not have been able to beat her, but I think I could have substituted Dragon Arrows to make up the difference. Regardless, even with optimal equipment and the game I selected only because of the incredible base 25 Int, and the evidence of beating the Dragon battles and Xeona, I don't think an unmodded no-losses game with Archers is possible. I'd have to do more testing which I'm not interested in right now--I'm thinking of all Dwarves next--as I can't remember if Soaring creatures can fly over Demon Portals to replace the Phoenix tank. I think some of the battle arenas are just too small to set up the necessary Demon Portal and Zerock's Wall choke points to keep the melee stacks at bay. Plus, it would be difficult to make up for being able to send the Phoenix tank to park in front of a ranged enemy stack or two to avoid the damage from them. I don't really know. Before playing this, I thought the Archers couldn't even beat the game. After going back and winning that Ultrax battle and Xeona, I think there's a slim chance of it, provided you give yourself optimal equipment.
That said, as a summary of this game: with 40+ Int and the Elven Bows for all but a few Hero battles, the Archers are as deadly as any army setup. Mass Precision adding 50% to their damage is devastating. Adding another 50+% with Mass Dragon or Demon Slayer plus the Ale Barrel and Telescopic Sight is a massacre when adding in the Critical Chance bonus. But this army has to have Mage support to get those huge spell boosts plus 3 double casting turns. (Interestingly, I didn't realize that Hypnosis was based off your Leadership, not Int, so it is a better choice as a distraction for a Warrior or a Paladin instead.)
Since I modded my game, rather than posting a ton of messages with screenshots, I've made a tree part zip file of shots that shows the fight with Bagud, Haas, the final game stats (my score sucks because I couldn't copy over the number of quests I completed), and everything about my character, Feanora, and the babies I edited. I'm going to remove a few bonuses from what I dubbed two super babies, since the 50% base Int boost ended up 13 instead of the 8 max I had expected. I also added 1 Mind Rune per level up for the Mage to be able to have a chance to get Sacred Anger.
(Since I introduced some mods to my game, I guess this topic should be in the mods forum now :p)
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