This game forces you to change your strategy!

[stupidface]

What she-fighters are there besides the Sprites?

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, I am gearing up for my assault on the Necromancer's castle. I decided that I needed some more female warriors to make use of Anga's Ring, but I had pretty much used up all the Sprites and Lake Fairies.

And then I remembered the Demonesses.

Really, Anga's Ring is probably overpowered. It gives +3 to Attack, Defense, Initiative, Movement and Morale. Basically, it turns your female units into death on legs. I went for a jaunt in Demonis, doing my best to avoid the enemies (which were listed as Very Strong or higher) and I got myself a stack of 130 Demonesses. Then I realised that you can have TWO stacks of them, providing that one is in reserve. Oh, I should say that you must have the Tolerance skill in the Mind tree before you do any of this.

There is a castle in Demonis where you can get a Demon wife providing you can defeat her army. I had been reluctant to divorce Mirabella because her kids were all providing leadership modifiers - this is how I had over 20,000 leadership already. But I gave Xeona a try and now I don't regret it. Even though my leadership went down to 16,000, Xeona could equip all sorts of nice stuff that had been sitting in my inventory. I had a special Dwarf axe (+4 attack) and an upgraded demon staff (another +4 attack) to give her. All of this leaves me with about 28 Attack, 28 Defense and maybe 8 Intellect.

Then I went back to Kordar to finish up a few small quests like the Map of Farndor quest (the one where you have to light up all the obelisks). I had been missing one obelisk for ages and it was driving me mad. Turned out I hadn't clicked the one next to the magic school in Greenwort.

So I got a Mithril shield from the Dwarven king, picked up a stack of Dryads in the elven lands (another female fighter), plus a stack of Black Knights. Now I'm clearing out the rest of the undead land in preparation for my assault. I'm up to level 25 now...

Edit - Female Fighters -

Lake Fairy
Sprite
Dryads
Demoness

Can't think of any more...

[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.

[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

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

...on Hard it does at least. How many games have I played where I genuinely had to think of new ways of doing things over the course of a game. Not many. Not many at all. An example:

After cleaning out most of Kordar and heading over the Elinia, I had a serious cash flow issue. My bank balance kept going down, from its high point at about 300,000 gold to as little as 33,000 at one stage. I was worried. I thought I might actually *lose* the game due to lack of money. This is a real issue on Hard because there are more enemies and less money. It's not enough to win fights, you need to win without losing many troops.

Prior to this I had been using an entirely dwarven team for some cool morale modifiers. I think I had a team of Cannoneers, Giants, Alchemists, Dwarves and Miners (like 700 of them). A pretty tough team but basically a direct fire team. They kept taking a pounding from all the nasty demons in the Underground Sea etc.

So I needed a new strategy.

I thought - 'how can I assemble a team that DOESN'T lose this many troops?'

This is where you have to use what is available to you. I had a couple of artifacts that I hadn't used at all - Anya's ring (which gives insane bonuses to 'she fighters') and a dwarven telescope thing (which gives 100% hit bonus to archers).

My new team looks like this, with about 15,000 leadership:

80 Horsemen
400 Swordsmen
210 Elven Archers
400 Archers
1800 Sprites

Sprites? WTF? Well, they're 'she fighters' which means that Anya's ring gives them +3 Attack, Defense, Morale and one other thing. They cost 20 gold each which means you can have a stack of 1800 at my level.

Then I made use of two spells I had rarely used before, Dragon Arrows and Phantom. At level 3, Phantom creates a stack 43% the size of the original that lasts for three turns. I had been having some luck with phantom horsemen (about 30 in a stack) but even better is the phantom stack of 800 Sprites. So you move the sprite forward a bit, create the phantom stack which runs straight toward the enemy. Meanwhile, you use sniper to take out the biggest threat on turn 1 with your elven archers, and on turn 2 you give him Dragon Arrows. Turn 3 you create another phantom stack of 800 Sprites, and turn 4 you do the same again. So you are fighting with Phantom troops and sniping with arrows at the same time. Meanwhile the original Sprites, plus the Swordsmen and Horsemen are hanging back waiting for an easy kill.

What do you think of my new strategy?

I agree it does. I was doing fine with my hypnotise level 2 characters then sacrifice them to make up for losses in my army (good way to get free units but it will cost you 50 Mana) and i've just arrived at the beautiful Elven part of the game so bought some ents and fairies plus Elven Archers and i'm thinking will I have to change my strategy? Might pop out and by some dragons next!

Excellent game with long playability value.

EDIT

Just finished reading the whole thread and that is what I love about this game. There are SO many different tactics/variations of troops you can use!

[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.