Great post, Impy!
Without comparing notes it is hard to tell for certain, but for the most part, it sounds like your strategies were similar to mine. I didn't use any of the cheat methods to look ahead, but I did mention that I ended up going back to my Atrixus save when I first got to the shelter as I realized that I should try harder to complete the Demon child quest, focus my skill tree on improving Trap since it was pivotal to dealing damage early for Demoness with the limited troop availability, and I also wanted to defeat that big spider stack in the Catacombs.
I think you could probably do the big Catacombs spider stack if you wanted, but as you said, it is not important at this stage of the game (except for having a little more experience - and maybe bragging rights
).
Quote:
Originally Posted by impy
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.
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I'd agree with you that the first Whitehill stack I faced was easier (at least it seemed, anyway) to the Shelter fights I had just done; however, those fights (and the big Catacombs spider stack) had "trained" me for the Whitehill fights in what tactics to use, etc. and so I actually think the Whitehill fights are fairly tough, for no loss anyway, but they seem easier because we are just better players by that time.
It is interesting that they changed it from all 3 to just 1 of the Whitehill fights as your stack was weaker than my final stack (although I'm guessing you were level 5 when you fought them and I was level 6 with 3 more Imps / Scoffer Imps for the 2nd and 3rd Whitehill stacks). Using your stack as the baseline, here are the relative strengths of the stacks I faced compared to yours (this is based on stack leadership):
Stack 1: 70.0%
Stack 2: 81.5%
Stack 3: 111%
So I wonder if this is just variability or a change to make them tougher since you only had to defeat 1 of them. Of course, leadership is not the only gauge for how hard a stack is, but you'll note that when comparing all the stacks, they all have 3 shooters and 2 melee troops, and the Inquisitors tend to use their res ability on turn 1 so they are not as big of a problem as Bowmen or the Priests of Light (at least on round 1 anyway).
At any rate, I think between your and my posts people now should see what the difference in variability is and how possible no loss is comparing against these stacks.
I really think that once you get the strategy down that you can handle quite a bit of variability in stack size with these troops because they all have essentially the same structure of troop types. It is just as easy for your Demoness to swap a stack of 40 Swordsmen or 28. As long as these concepts sink in, no lossing these stacks shouldn't be a problem if you're persistent.
/C\/C\