This game forces you to change your strategy!

[stupidface]

What she-fighters are there besides the Sprites?

[Kolorabi]

I discovered the phantom image spell yesterday, and have been using it heavily ever since. I've mainly used it on my griffins (also very good movement, and extremely good initiative, meaning they're almost always the first unit to move on the battlefield), and in addition to extra damage, there are basically two very nice things that I accomplish with it.

First, I put the phantom units in harm's way, and make them more tempting targets for the enemies. They disappear anyway, and each phantom unit killed is a real unit saved from death. Second, I use them as to attack targets that have dangerous retaliation strikes. When they've retaliated on my phantom units, I bring in my real units to hit them hard, without fear of retaliation.

[ThyrsaM]

Nice story so far Zhuangzi, can't wait to hear how you will fare with the attack on the necormancer's castle. Looks like you don't use dragons?

[Zhuangzi]

I did it! I beat the Necromancer, first time too.

I can't believe I won - the fight was nuts, too much stuff going on for me to be in control of. I just had the idea that if I kept grinding them down with Evil Shoal and Underground Spikes, as well as Phantom images, then I might have a chance. Even so, it looked like I was a goner when I was down to 100 Black Knights, with the obelisk still with 17,000 health.

But I had whittled down most of the Necromancer's forces, and he was out of mana for casting. So I hasted my Black Knights and charged. Can you imagine my surprise when I saw that the Knights (now down to 60 or so) were doing 3000 damage to the obelisk per turn?

I won with 44 Black Knights to spare. I love this game. It's starting to look like I will be able to win on Hard in the next few days

[Shd]

Gratz!

Though your looses was heavy.

Anyway, most important, you did it

What army was in Necro castle (on hard)?

In impossible enemy had (as i remember) 2 stacks of 1.5k skeleton archers, 2 stacks of 5 bone dragons, 25 necromancers (i was surprised about such weak stack), about 140 old vampires and large stacks of undead spiders and skeletons. Edited: Ahh, remembered, about 180 death knights too.

My army was 4 female and inquisitors (leadership about 17k-18k). I played as mage.

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by Shd

Gratz!

Though your looses was heavy.

Anyway, most important, you did it

What army was in Necro castle (on hard)?

In impossible enemy had (as i remember) 2 stacks of 1.5k skeleton archers, 2 stacks of 5 bone dragons, 25 necromancers (i was surprised about such weak stack), about 140 old vampires and large stacks of undead spiders and skeletons. Edited: Ahh, remembered, about 180 death knights too.

My army was 4 female and inquisitors (leadership about 17k-18k). I played as mage.

I can't remember exactly what was in the stacks, but it was similar to as you describe. Looking at it, I thought the fight looked surprisingly easy. I think there were about 50 Necromancers summoning things plus 200 mana from the global enemy. So there is much more to kill than it appears. Plus there are those annoying wooden boards in front of you which stop you from engaging the enemy straight away. I could probably do better a second time around, but I am just happy to have won. Plenty of money for a new team, plus I had a second stack of Demonesses in reserve.

[ThyrsaM]

Nice nice well done, it is great to rad these stories, can't wait to back into action too tonight.

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

I can't remember exactly what was in the stacks, but it was similar to as you describe. Looking at it, I thought the fight looked surprisingly easy. I think there were about 50 Necromancers summoning things plus 200 mana from the global enemy. So there is much more to kill than it appears. Plus there are those annoying wooden boards in front of you which stop you from engaging the enemy straight away. I could probably do better a second time around, but I am just happy to have won. Plenty of money for a new team, plus I had a second stack of Demonesses in reserve.

Hmm. I wonder, as it was possible to recruit both black and red dragons (to be honest I didn't want to lose them in this battle, but rather save them for later on, but honeslty, later on are more and more dragons, so I used dragons agains undead castle, but undead army gainst dragons)

Why?
Red Dragon can from the first round bombard the necro castle dark crystal + damaging the barriers and everything in the way, while the black dragon will risk a little bit and fly over the armies (sadly that this skills needs reload time )
Undead army has no special mass damage effects (necromancers use their turns for casting plague or death call, and if they fire, it is not so much damaging)
I tried to fill up my army with archers/shooters first, then Imps (no retaliation + 2 fireballs was something I wanted to try on the undead scum) but after all the best combination was PLANTS Royal thorn summons normal thorns, and the ents deal like huge damage - all are resistant to poison and vamps nor ghosties can not steal their lives My losses were the lowest with this combo.

On the other hand - when fighting enemy dragons - they are scattered all over, any tactics like hide your archers behing strong units or walls is not working, and even strong units suffer (as the game end leaves you far away from castles) this way one will grow weaker an weaker, so what to do?
take vamps and ghosties : wamps are fast and strong, so any damage thay may suffer at the start of the combat, they can replenish ending with zero/nada losses. Ghosties are much weaker, but their numbers are the trick: when you are on your way, you fight not only super strong armies but even matching (or weaker on lower difficulty level) so this are opportunities to suck over your leadership level cap ghosts in you army (in my rest-slot where I stored the over-cap ghosts I had like 20x more than my leadership cap was, so anytime I lost some or all ghosts in difficult battles, I replenished it right after the combat from my own repository and yes - I used more then filled at the end of game, but still I didn't used it up fully) - just keep some less then max in you active army- this way you have control at the first one or two rounds over the ghosts, then you don't need to care what thay do - as if they don't attack they will suck their losses back in counterattack. (Best point is that they are mind immune what gives them great advantage.
This still keeps 3 slots empty - well, you can use here anything - even humans if you like sniping, there are plenty artifacts that will keep your morale up + one skill, whe all know which. I used Demon - is not specially good, but has Fire resistance, can summon and has Furious skill. I tried Necros and dragons (red, black, green and undead - are strong but hard to get)
Biggest minus of my strategy was that vamps and gosties don't have any fire resistance and when the enemy dragons had lucky criticals and I didn't do good job in the defence strategy, all can go down to vain. (Luckily there is at least one artefact that gives 20% FR)
Another minus is that undead can't be ressurected (call death works on DEAD stack and can raise random undead, not the type you had) and ressurection works of course only for living.
But good news is that DARK commander skill will have it's usefulness proven

[Shd]

At fights when there ir many stacks of dragons scattered around i used a bit cheat tactic, but from other side absolutely legal (and used it only when there was more than 2 large stacks of dragons).

I putted all my armies except dryads in garrison/reserve.
In 1st turn (because i have points in +init skill from warrior tree) i casted 2 armageddons. Dryads used summon. In second round black dragons went 1st, at dryads turn 1 or 2 armageddons then "wait" (to let them hit my dryads) and then skill "Time back" (3rd of 4th spirit skill). So situation at the end of 2nd turn was: my dryads ar absolutely unharmed and there is minimum 15-20 less dragons in each stack.

[kennec]

wait till u fight bhaal man

i tryed 3 times and he owns me every time on normal.

i have taken break to think out a strategy.

hint : he summons like loads of archdevils in your rear troops