Well, hello everyone,I finally got the game and did some serious playing this weekend. I was hoping for open world right from the start, as in Legends or Armored Princess, which is great for various challenges once you feel saturated with standard gameplay. Here however are those compulsory fights (around 20) plus Portland offers very limited choices, but it is still a lot,lot lot better than Wotn. Game really opens once you defeat first scroll guardians on Portland.
I have done only 60 fights so far but I thought I summarize in detail what is a good approach to do early demoness no-loss impossible. Please, update it for future generations of gamers!
1) start a game and save. Now using old codes, which still work, for example - "doublearmy" or "leadership XXXXX" get some army in order to check what lies ahead. It will save you some frustration believe me. You want to check the following:
1a) check the position of volcano in fight against knight hero on Atrixus. First, everytime I checked this battle volcano was there, but I am cannot be 100% sure if this is permanent or random . Let's just say it is better if it is. You also want volcano preferably on enemy half of battlefield, not in the middle, and definitely not on your half. With volcano close to enemy, it will seriously cripple his units and it will be much easier battle.
1b) do only compulsory fights and get to Whitehill to see the strength of the weakest stack. I am talking hard learned lesson here. When I started this game, I did not want to check the forums and spoil the tactics for me. Once I arrived to Whitehill with more or less struggle no loss, I was taken aback by the strength of even the weakest stack. Honestly, it was brutal. I checked the forums to see if other people had hard time, but hardly any mention of this. And then on page 4 of this thread I see pictures MattCaspermeyer posted with these stacks. And the first picture , the weakest one is almost walk in a park! Compare it to what I had as the weakest stack. It means, there is some variation in starting leadership of those stacks, so in order to save yourself frustration, check this beforehand.
2) start the game properly now and defeat everything on Atrixus. Dismiss fire elementals, they are so weak it's not even funny, blood priestess are not good either.
3) invest in diversion skill asap and start trapping those enemy units. Seriously, if you have not trapped the unit in some easier battle, replay the battle. The idea is to have 10 trapped units by the time you hit Shelter battles, which gives extra trap plus 25% extra damage. By the time you're doing Whitehill, you should have Diversion 3 and 4 traps.
4) proceed to catacombs. Here you have to defeat everything but the strongest stack of spiders. The reason is, there are precisely 21 battles before you hit Whitehill battles, and 20 no loss battles give Grand Strategy medal = extra 200leadership. So big spider battle is optional, all others pretty much compulsory.
5) I cannot give precise tactics on some bigger spider/snake battles or Shelter battles. Some general ideas are:
5a) you don't have to furiously shoot down the biggest/fastest stack that is approaching you. Instead, concetrate on some smaller enemy which maybe got trapped at the back. Once big stack gets close to your units, swap it with weak stack at the back via demoness exchange skill. This can be used repeatedly in battle, and not just for swapping demon with archer/weak unit at the beginning.
5b) sometimes due to strength of enemy stacks you do not want to send demon to enemy ranks right away. In the other words, apart from sturdiness, demoness contribution is low, becasue she is slow. consider dropping her and create two stacks of scoffer imps and fool enemy with sneer skill.
5c) talking about sneer skill. My favourite use, (especially during Shelter battles, where battlefield is divided in half) is to block the passage to scoffer imps by my stacks right where 3hex gaps are on one side. You let enemy approach on the other side for 2-3 turns, and then casting sneer with blocked way will send enemy all the way back to go around.
6) once you arrive at Whitehill, you only need to defeat one stack. You get Blackie and by far the best skill to use (and later in Portland) is Jealousy. Start the battle with maxed rage via potion of rage and cast it close to biggest level2 melee stack. This stack will go around crippling or even destroying its own shooters etc. Go one hex forward with demoness and swap demon with archer unit. Move out of reach of this teleported unit with imps before you shoot. The idea is, so archer stack cannot move away and shoot, or hit weak imps, so it has to go for demoness. If you lucky, it will even miss. If battle is difficult, restart few times in order for Diversion skill to sabotage in the first round 2 stacks and the stacks you want. Ideally, it will incapacitate melee unit on one side and archer on the other side. You then swap demon with unaffected archer unit, and create summon with demon. Since melee unit on this side won't move in the first round, and melee attack of shooters is weak, your summon will survive round one.
Like I said, i only have done about sixty battles, but there is this idea for a challenge - good old - how far you can get with single black dragon (hmm, never heard of that one before
). You can get the dragon quite early actually. Once you reach Portland, develop Blackie in terms of Jealousy and Orc Strike only. Orc Strike will do some serious damage and combined with traps, you can defeat the black dragon.