Stuck at Verona...

[TemjinGold]

Originally Posted by basis

Hi all, playing my first game in KB:AP.

Playing normal difficulty, mage, leadership about 3.2K
army setup: normal bears, polar bears, 15 or 16 black beholders, 1 dragon (black? the first dragon unit we find I think on Bolo island), 2 cyclops.

I think my attack is 1, defense is 5 and intel is about 9. I know it is pretty crappy stats. my pet dragon is level 16. I cannot remember my level.

I cleared most of Rusty except for 2 units, Zig-zag and a group of Thorns that are guarding some treasure. When I right-click on Zig-Zag it says Lethal to me. And the Thorns that guard the treasure on Rusty is also Lethal.

I can go to Verona, but the units there are also Lethal to Invincible as well. I think I cleared most of the Strong units in Verona, but they town is protected by Very Strong or Lethal units.

I didn't know about map kiting until I read about it in this forum, but is there any other way to defeat those units on Rusty Island? Or advise me what I maybe doing wrong. Or should I be learning some spell that I may have missed? I have Order at lvl 2, Distortion at lvl 1 and Chaos at lvl 1.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I can't speak for normal as I've only played impossible but as a mage, you generally need to get used to facing stacks that are Lethal or tougher. Mages aren't about brute force so you're not supposed to have equal numbers to begin with. Therefore, how you built your character is far more important for a mage than it is for the other two classes. What did you spend your talent runes on in each tree and what spells do you have?

For my current mage, the key spells I use are:

Demon Portal
Fear
Stone Skin
Mana Spring
Trap
Phantom
Calm Rage
Fire Arrow (because it stays cheap)

I use more than that (Doom, Slow, and Avenging Angel come to mind along with others) but those are the ones I keep coming back to.

Spells I don't even scribe and just sell:

Call of Nature (worthless due to how small the stacks are)
Bless
Precision
(that spell that gives your unit fire damage; can't remember name)

There are probably more, I just can't think of them now.

Warriors and Paladins are about a lot of brute force and crushing the enemy directly. Mages are all about position and tactics. WHERE your guys are standing are often more important than how tough they are. For example, my L22 mage just took out Peter Drayn (on impossible, he is a L34 hero with two stacks of 56 demonesses and roughly 7000 total peasants in 3 stacks; Peter also has 250 mana and casts Ancient Phoenix and Demon Portal like a madman) on Verona with her 1-troll army (1 stack of 1 troll and no other units) in daylight (so the troll can't even regen.) Didn't need to be a troll. In fact, any stack of L5 units could accomplish it with no loss (I have 4 trolls but only use one in most fights to maximize dragon level.) That obviously cannot be done on brute force even with spells (Peter very quickly has like 10-12 stacks or more total on the board. Even with Higher Magic, which I have at L2, it is impossible to keep up with him on numbers.)

Planning, precision (err... not the spell of course!), and positioning is key when playing a mage. I find it strange that so many people say the mage is the hardest to play on impossible but I guess it boils down to play style. I've tried a warrior and frankly was bored with how "straightforward" her play style was.

[fable]

Originally Posted by TemjinGold

For example, my L22 mage just took out Peter Drayn (on impossible, he is a L34 hero with two stacks of 56 demonesses and roughly 7000 total peasants in 3 stacks; Peter also has 250 mana and casts Ancient Phoenix and Demon Portal like a madman) on Verona with her 1-troll army (1 stack of 1 troll and no other units) in daylight (so the troll can't even regen.) Didn't need to be a troll. In fact, any stack of L5 units could accomplish it with no loss (I have 4 trolls but only use one in most fights to maximize dragon level.) That obviously cannot be done on brute force even with spells (Peter very quickly has like 10-12 stacks or more total on the board. Even with Higher Magic, which I have at L2, it is impossible to keep up with him on numbers.)

Wow... how?

[TemjinGold]

It's difficult to explain in words but it's mostly understanding positioning (I'd make a vid clip of such a fight for you if I knew how.) Before every fight, I never make a move before studying the battlefield first. How are our units arranged from the start? Where will my opponent likely move? How many ways can his units reach mine? How can I stop/alter their progress towards me? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself.

The key on impossible is to use the terrain to your advantage by dividing and conquering. Find ways to splinter your opponents forces or impede them from reaching you (Demon Portals and Traps are great for this because they can't move past one.)

A good analogy to this is a game of chess: It's not about how many pieces you have, it's about how many DEVELOPED pieces you have in useful positions on the board. In AP, my opponent might outnumber me 5 to 1 but if my units create a "chokepoint" such that he can only reach me with 2 of his stacks, then his "advantage" is moot. If I can place my units and spells in such a way that the AI is forced to traverse a set path (not because of shoddy AI but because it's the only way to get to me) then numerical advantage is more or less moot. This is the thing I love about AP more than HOMM or any other so-called "strategy game." Strategy is not about having more units and running him over. It should be about creative use of few resources to overcome impossible odds. And that's exactly what AP on impossible with a mage allows me to do.

[lauvhk]

So the demoness never use infernal exchange in the battle?

[TemjinGold]

Nope. Both demoness stacks stepped on traps in their first turn. Once the 2nd turn rolled around, my demon portal stack was deemed the much larger threat.

Right now, my mage has wiped out every stack from Debir to Rusty. On Verona, there are 3 fights left that are too tough for me to crack--Demenion, Marquis, and the Champion. Every other stack on Verona, heroes or not, have fallen to either the 1-troll army or the 2-black dragon army. The champion I'm pretty sure I can take if I can start the fight with full rage. When I tried him to see what he was like (with no rage), I only killed half his army before he killed 1 of my two dragons.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by TemjinGold

Nope. Both demoness stacks stepped on traps in their first turn. Once the 2nd turn rolled around, my demon portal stack was deemed the much larger threat.

Right now, my mage has wiped out every stack from Debir to Rusty. On Verona, there are 3 fights left that are too tough for me to crack--Demenion, Marquis, and the Champion. Every other stack on Verona, heroes or not, have fallen to either the 1-troll army or the 2-black dragon army. The champion I'm pretty sure I can take if I can start the fight with full rage. When I tried him to see what he was like (with no rage), I only killed half his army before he killed 1 of my two dragons.

How many turns on average do the battles last using this type of strategy?

[TemjinGold]

Surprisingly, not many. For most of the Verona fights, I can win by turn 5-6 (especially if my portal yields demons/executioners as being surrounded usually means they attack as many as 4 times per round not counting retaliation!) I usually drag it out to 10 tho as I don't have Fire Mage L3 yet (by spamming Oil Mist.) The tough hero fights though, such as Peter, can take upwards of 20 turns.

The trouble most people have with mages is that they are filling out all 5 slots with troops. That actually makes the fights HARDER since my spells do most of the damage rather than my units, so I only use one stack of units that simply won't die as easy. Generally, I only need to keep my units alive 1 turn before the AI's attention to turned to where I place my portals as the summoned stack is always exponentially larger leadership-wise than my actual units. For the really tough fights, I pull out the troll because I can cast Invisibility on him first turn before throwing up the portal.