Impossible, Mage - No unit loss.

[Chase]

So here we go again, hope you still bare with me on this . In the end Im going for Impossible Warrior with no unit losses (with all the horror that will cause).

Having recently finished "Paladin hard - No unit losses" I had planned to take it to Impossible with paladin, but decided on trying mage as Ive never played mage before.

I decided not to scout the map prior to doing this, so I would take the map as the game decided it would be. While I do not think it is cheating to scout the map, I know it would take away part of the challenge for me. Hopefully the dice will be kind to me down the road.

Here goes:

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I started out by scouting just to lay my initial strategy based on what units were available. In short, 60ish Inqs, no griffins and no royal snakes.

I went for Horsemen as tanks with Archers, archmages, priests and inqs as support. Archers went for Alchemists and soon priests will yield for Royal thorns of which I found 2 (yay).

At level 4 I had a really hard time however as I dident have the unit power to kill anything without taking huge losses. I solved this by taking on the turtle with Horsemen as tank and mage shield on him all the time. Then I would just use my own healing to keep him topped on hp. I went to freedom island shortly after and picked up everything there was. This gave me enough leadership to clean out most of darian. Excpet the usual "to hard" stuff.

I had some luck with my artifacts. And so far I got Ancient Amulet and Prismatic Helmet worth mentioning.

As for spells I havent had that much luck. Having resurrection would help me so much, but I havent found it anywhere so far. I have scouted a Ice Snake however on Freedom Island and that should help me alot. I also went straight for higher magic and put 1 point in everything on the path there. Just put my 2nd point in Chaos so I have some decent Fireball burst, but some fights require a dual slow to boot.

Going well thus far.

[fld88]

You're out of mind! Surely it cannot be possible?

[Razorflame]

it sure can
with alot of patience
^^

[Vilk]

With Gift spell probably but without Sacrifice that will be quite a nightmare if he didn't get enough inquisitors. Also soon he will run out of Horsemen and the difficulty will rise. Cursed Ghosts can replace very well Horsemen but won't work for a no loss without Sacrifice.

[Razorflame]

cursed ghost can be a pain in the ass when they get above your maximum leadership

[Vilk]

Not really it's just that you need take care of this. They can take care of so many thing that it's not a problem to lost one attack from another of your units to drop down their number.

Additionally with experience there's many possibilities to exploit this in combat maps that aren't too small. For example the cursed ghost is thrown far to enemy lines near enemy archer and you let them do the job when you take care not have your units in range of the cursed ghost. Another excellent application is using Target on them, particularely with some stoneskin or other.

And again you have many tools to manage this problem like move the ghost in middle of a pack of enemy and not attack but defend or wait. To use or not protection spell on them. You can even use Holy Anger to weaken them, and slow on an uncontrolled cursed ghost to keep them out of range from your troops or teleport to move them out of range or even use slow on a controlled cursed ghost that you think it will be uncontrolled after their attack.

One important point to take care of is related to initiative, for example a cursed ghost close to become uncontrolled it's very dangerous to wait end of turn to let them attack if they have the best initiative so next round will have them act without to let you a chance to do something. To avoid that you could use another troop to wait until the cursed ghost has act. And stoneskin, battle cry, speed and slow that all change initiative are tool to help manage this.

I don't say it's easy to always control but with experience that's much more easy and with target + stoneskin + Magic Shield they are an amazing tool against numerous enemy long range. In fact they are quite better than horsemen for this sort of tactic expect when enemy has many priests/cardinals. For any other archer enemy Cursed Ghost are better.

With mage with High Magic in a combat with many enemy long range it's extremely powerful to start the fight with target and stoneskin on the cursed ghost and from this base there's many variation depending of enemy army. And using Archimage with them is a total must.

EDIT: And there's few objects that lower undead moral it's quite good use them with cursed ghost because they'll lower significantly critical attack chance making more easy to control them.

[Ryastar]

They are a terrible idea if you are trying to go for no unit losses, though, which is kinda the whole point of this thread.

[Vilk]

Lol I agree it's hard to unsure no Cursed Ghost lost in all fights even if minimal. It's much more easy to ensure your cursed ghosts will do no damages to your own troops. I bet you under evaluate this point because you didn't use them enough.

But without Sacrifice you'll suffer with your horses when you'll won't have anymore enough of them. The penalty of a weaker stack will become more and more a problem and apart cursed ghosts I don't see anything to replace them until later in the game.

But ok use them will certainly be quite rude anyway for a no loss.

[Razorflame]

shamans are the shit for no losses
^^

[Vilk]

If there's Shaman they are probably a better choice, I just forgot them. But at the game point Chase was he was far to have done the Orc Embassy battle.