Best Class for Race-Based Games via Editor

[Helios]

Vulture, you were right there aren't 100 Dragons in any of the Ultrax battles. But there was 99 in this one! I had to slaughter them as fast as possible in order to achieve no losses. But again, this was before I realized I was using the uber Ressing spell. There's no way this battle could have been won with this army without major losses. It was fast and furious, so I took some screens of it. Mass Precision and Dragon Slayer in Round 1, then Ressing and Time Back to make up for the losses.

[Helios]

And there were 98 in another battle! I thought my run of no losses was doomed here with so many Black Dragons in this setup, but I managed to Ress everyone back due to a little luck (my Cannoneers didn't crit the last stack when they retaliated). More screens.

[Vulture]

The Xeona Battle must have been a pita. Did I see a 254 stack of Demonesses there ? Without myriads of Elven Bows and other knickknack I'd say there is no way you could have even won the battle ^^
Least of all the Dragon Battles there. Holy ****, 99 and 98. I've never had this many Dragons in Ultrax. I mean I've had huge stacks of 30+ but I really can't recall an overall count of 99. I'll pay attention this time in Ultrax and count them. Sadly, I barely have the time (and motivation) to play my mage game atm. I've arrived in Ellinia and it's incredibly boring because now that my Skull is upgraded I'm just way too overpowered. Enemy troops are match mostly and I annihilate them and I'm just playing around with my Spirits to level them equally. And of course I'm failing at that. Zerock is trailing behind so badly... narf.

[Helios]

A part of me wants to try a completed unmodded Archer game now and see if they can even survive these battles. But I'd probably end up angry and frustrated when I found out that they can't, which is why I modded the game in the first place! Btw, 2 Elven Bows isn't all that uncommon. I had it happen twice in the last five unedited games, and in one of those, there were 3!

Still, my Int is insane for this game 48 with the final upgrade, so I'm dealing out tremendous damage with Mass Dragon Slayer and Precision. The base for this game was 25 Int. I've never seen a base stat over 18 before.

I thought I had a similarly difficult Dragon battle on Ultrax with my Undeads. I must had somewhere over several hundred casualties even with the ridiculous Animate Dead spell mod.

Do you have any strategies for no losses when it's just a battle of that many Dragons? How do you distract the final stack to attack something else while you Ress your troops? Granted, you can Time Back a stack, and if you had Ancient and normal Vampires, you could suck blood to restore those, but it seems like with Dragons, the best way to avoid losses is to end the battle as quickly as possible. (Mine were 2 and 3 turns.)

The distance was the only thing that gave me a chance to win those battles with no losses, as just with Karador, being able to hit over a distance was invaluable.

Dragons close range so quickly that trying to distract them away with an Ice Ball or Totem hasn't ever worked for me--if I place one in the first turn, it gets ganged up on and killed too quickly, and later, the Dragons are in my face and would rather gobble one of my units instead.

Yes, that was over 250 Demonesses. Luckily, they can't evade Skeleton Archer attacks, and I got lucky with a few other shots connecting. One stack made it to my troops, but I was able to replenish the losses pretty easily with the spell and Xeona wasting her mana on Sheep.

I understand getting bored with your game. I was bored for awhile with how ridiculously easy some of the battles were until I got to Death Valley. You use Zerock often? I almost never use him unless I desperately need a wall to redirect the battlefield. It seems like I'm constantly using the Reaper and Lina with my Rage.

[Vulture]

No, I actually don't use Zerock. But this game I really want to get him and Sleem at least to level 27. I have actually never seen any of their spells upgraded to maximum. I would like to see a max level Underground Blades only once in my lifetime ^^ I gave up on thinking I could have a 4xlvl30 game. I just don't have the patience for that. It would require me to keep as many opponents alive as possible until I used each spirit at least once. Too much mana and too many losses to restore afterwards. If I did that in every battle I'd just play for 50 hours. I usually just use Chargers and time Back and by that point usually everything is dead and all I have to do is drop a poison rain over the last unit and put Demon Summons with Magic Spring next to them. Then just wait until mana is full while using Holy Anger everytime it's off reload. If necessary, Charm a male humanoid unit and magic spring them, too ^^

No losses strategies for Dragons I've put down repeatedly in thos forum. As long as you have two Vampires and Demons you basically cannot leave the battle without losses, provided you have some considerable amount of attack and/or a Dragon Slayer's Sword and/or the spell. Archers behind Icy Thorns, offer the Dragons a line of Demons and one Vampire kind at best and give them hell. Demons because of their insane Defense/ldr ratio and their fire resistance and you know why Vampires ^^ There's not much more you can do than to have superior damage and resilience. At least that's what it boils down to

With 5 archers you have none of these options which is why you will inevitably lose an unedited game in Ultrax at the very very very latest, if not earlier. Especially when there are no 48 (wtf?) int...

[Helios]

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)

[Vulture]

What have you actually not edited ? ^^ I completely lost track of everything and I have no way to put this in perspective anymore. But I'll say congratulations for finishing this huge task ^^

[Helios]

Thanks, Vulture. I suppose it was a lot in retrospect and somewhat comparing apples to oranges. I overdid the modding because I thought the Archers would suck far worse than they actually did. Here's an exhaustive list of all the changes:

In total, I modded the Phoenixes, the kids while leaving enough randomness that one might be mad they had a kid but not ruined (I got lucky this game--my next game with Gerda I've already checked and I got bad kids for all Dwarves, but I'm going to deal with the hand I was dealt and the decision to have three kids anyway), Feanora, the right hand of each hero to be able to hold a second weapon, the right side of each hero's body to allow for artifact/regalia, added 1 Mind rune per level (per the Sacred Anger boost which I'm now removing). I switched around the Mind skill tree so Reserve was no longer dependent on anything (I always thought it silly to bury it beneath such a worthless skill as Diplomacy), the same for Inquisition (which I thought silly to bury at the bottom of the skill tree to make you have to invest that much if there weren't many Inquisitors in the game)--neither of which I used, anyway. And I did the same for Onslaught and Higher Magic, but decided not to make use of the earlier access after all.

For all my future games, I am reverting the skill trees to normal except for the Reserve and Inquisition edits, and locking all the class skills again. I am debating how many bonuses a wife and baby should give, and have removed one from each of the super babies, with most babies giving 3 bonuses or less, and four super babies with 5 bonuses or less. That still may be too much, but given the randomness, my "Tank" baby that gives +7 Def and some other bonuses to defensive-related stats isn't great to have with all Archers, for example.

I'd planned on attaching a +1 morale bonus and/or a +1 Speed and Initiative to each wife for each of my playthroughs (if they didn't already have one), but I didn't realize how much just 1 extra morale makes in terms of critical hits. The Archers were insane with Feanora's +1 morale, in addition to the morale boosts from the Elven Crown, Ale Barrel, and the critical chance boost with the Archer set. They didn't need it. So, I'm reconsidering that on some of the wives like Mirabella giving +1 to Humans.

The Phoenix was the most important edit. I changed the Young Phoenix to 35 Atk, 30 Def, 6 Init, 6 Speed, 400 HP, and 80-110 damage. The Adult Phoenix to 50 Atk, 45 Def, 7 Init, 7 Speed, 800 HP, 120-140 damage. Both of these were worthless by the time of the pirate ship battles in the Islands of Freedom.

The Ancient Phoenix I got creative with. The base stats were 65 Atk, 60 Def, 10 added Def when defending, 8 Init, 8 Speed, 2000 HP, 150-300 damage. But I knew that Ancient Phoenix would be toast by the end game, so, since I don't know how to make a Phoenix that scaled based off your Int score, for every 10 Int points I had, I modded the atom file to add +5 Atk and Def, for every 5 Int +500 HP with a maximum of 5000 HP, and for every 10 Int +25 minimum and maximum damage.

Once I'm done with the other games, or bored, I may give the Archers another shot with a much more traditional game. I figure it will be a continual refining process with each game of the mods I want to include in the game and which are too much (I definitely want the kids to be of use--it's a worthless factor in the original game).

[Helios]

Dwarves are slow. I'm just realizing how key it is for the Dwarf and Miner units to be used close together so the Dwarf takes the hits, (as best as possible) and the Miners don't get retaliated on. I'm also pairing the Alchemist to the Giant stack for when the Alchemists need to run into the fray in turn 3. Messy.