All "no-loss" strategies

[Moonheart]

Originally Posted by ShuiMienLung

- My recollection is that Transmute only gives +1 mana from summoned stacks (thorns, friendly gremlins, et cetera), so that could be a very time-consuming way to increase your mana.
+ Having a demonic or undead item suppression is a MUCH better way to do infinite loops since you can get +1 (or 2 or 3, if you have more ranks in the Mind skill) just for attacking an undead or demonic stack, as well as mana from Transmute for killing it.

*nods* In fact the best way to use this strategy is probbably to make an army with Demons, Demonologists and Red Dragons, and raise the mind ability "Holy Anger" to level 3.
This way, Red Dragons can use Fire Flood on the demons that Demons and Demonologists summons.

1- Those creatures are fire-resistant, so they will stay longer alive to provide mana
2- Each strike on them will provide you +3 rage and +3 mana... so assuming you build a full row of them (about 6-7), that's +18 rage and mana every turn.

[MaroonMaurader]

A lot of the cheesier no-loss strategies are two-part. Part one is an infinite-mana combo of some sort, while part-2 is a way of transforming that into infinite resurrection. Infinite mana combos usually rest on (ab)use of Mana Spring or getting infinite rage and transforming it into mana via Calm Rage or the Mana Accelerator. There's probably a dozen variations on a theme there, but most of them are fairly obvious. There's also a few creative ones involving summons and the Transmute and/or Holy Anger skills. If you've got infinite mana, Phantom, Sacrifice, Resurrection, and often Turn Back Time can all let you transform a Pyrrhic victory into a no-loss win.

The second big category of no-loss strategies relies on creating an invincible or near-invincible tank. Early in the game, Trolls at night will do this. You can combo items and spells on several level-4 and level-5 units to get 95% damage resist, then pair that with the Archmage shield and the Target spell (or just use the stack solo) to make a really tough tank. Invisible Emerald Green Dragons is a favorite of mine, although it takes a fair amount of leadership before you can get enough mana from them to keep re-casting Invisibility. A variant on this is the summoned meatshield. Royal Gryphons give you a nice summon for this purpose; early in the game, royal thorns can do well with this if you can get some.

The third major category of strategies is simply to not let them hit you. Whether it's using a high-level army and getting opposing units with Fear, using a solo stack that is very fast and just running away while you do your damage with spells, creative use of Trap, the Stone Wall, and other spells/abilities to stall the enemy, the Berserk spell... if the enemy isn't attacking you, you aren't taking losses.

There's a couple strategies that don't pigeon-hole neatly into these categories. Repair Droids are a unique and extremely powerful option for infinite resurrection, and a reasonably good combat unit as well. If you can get a high enough INT and enough Astral resistance (at least the Crown of Chaos from the Gift Bag), Armageddon becomes a terrifying spell to open up fights with. You can go from "badly outnumbered" to "where did everyone go" in just 2-3 turns. I suspect there's a few more in this group I've forgotten at the moment.

Fundamentally, all these tricks help, but they aren't enough by themselves. What will really swing things from "near-impossible" to "cakewalk" is careful thought and planning when you decide which items to equip. You want them to synergize... if you're going to equip some items that give physical resist, equip all the items you can that give physical resist. If you're going to get some +INT items, equip all the +INT items you can. If you're going to equip items that boost ranged units, equip all the items that boost ranged units. Equipping a few items boosting INT, a few items boosting resist, a few items boosting DEF, and so forth is just not as useful. You want your items to give you a strength, then play to that strength.

[dainbramage]

I don't think cheesy play is necessary in AP. I've done 3 impossible no-loss runs in it. One was black knights + eviln, one was nuking (a single cast of black hole could kill 70% of an enemy army in reha o.O). The other was a more standard 5-stack army (except for bosses). On the other hand I had to resort to double armageddon + time back a few times in KBTL.

Dragons are amazing early on, especially since you're guaranteed the free emerald one you get on scarlet wind. Throw stone skin on a green dragon and keep it healed and it can tank the entire enemy army until you get to verona. Once you can get them in reasonable numbers paladins take over as the best tank in the game... and on top of that they get an amazing resurrection and a free fit of energy. You don't even really need to worry about losing them. Cast magic spring on them, then run them into the enemy. Paladins take hits, you get mana, phantom paladins, paladins get resurrected.

[MaroonMaurader]

A strategy that lets you defeat an army with a higher-level hero and five times your leadership without losses is a cheesy strategy. Either you've abusing a game mechanic, or you're abusing AI stupidity. So yes, no-loss on impossible does require cheese.

[Moonheart]

Not even that, but any kind of infinite loop is a kind of cheese.

In this regard, Paladin + Phantom, Black Knight + Eviln or nuking doesn't seems to me less cheesy than anything else above, Dainbramage, simply because in the last boss fights, the amount of units you have to raise or the amount of direct damage you have to pull to end the fight costs above > 1000 mana.

Such a high amount of mana doesn't come without cheese. Never.

Mostly it's done using the insane bugged rage generation + Calm Rage and/or the IA stupidity in front of a single stack enchanted with Magic Spring, but still, it's a kind of cheese: you can win any fight when you go through infinite loop strategy, providing you make your units last long enough to exploit it.

The only non-infinite loop I see pass through Baal is the one I used at the last fight of my no-loss campaign:

Name: Curse of Ghosts
Type: Loss/Ressurection balancing
Works against: Normal troops, heroes, boss
Requierements:
- a army made with only one non-full stack of Cursed Ghosts
- the 25% physical resistance item
- full +defense oriented equipement
- Stoneskin spell
- Teleport spell
Optional enhancements:
- Eviln spell
- Lifeforce spell
Process:
- Before the fight you must balance the size of your stack to avoid the either to have it killed by not having enough regeneration power, or have it become wild by haveing too much. It's a difficult guess, but most often 75% of your leadership is a good mark.
- Keep your ghosts under Stoneskin to hit the 95% physical resistance mark. Teleport them close to units doing non-physical damage to kill them first.
- Use Eviln when the stack is running too low, and Lifeforce to damage it when it's running too high.
Failure conditions:
- Having the stack go out of control. It is a very difficult process in many fights: Of all the strategies I know able to reach a no-loss score, it is the one with the highest reload rate since you can loose by either by being too weak and being too strong, so a good calculation of your own strength versus opponents is requiered at almost every round of every fight to not mess up.

[dainbramage]

Against the bosses:

kraken and spider I used a 5 stack army
frog, driller, ktahu and baal I used knights + paladins
zilgadis I used paladins only


The knights weren't needed except against k'tahu, since the tirex fear will make you lose with one stack if it isn't immune to mind spells. I didn't need to cast calm rage at all in the boss fights. Frog didn't need any phantoms, driller one, k'tahu and baal 2, zilgadis 3 iirc. The kraken and spider didn't kill a single unit.

I had to cheese my way through a level of the tower of eventus since it kept crashing (the clone room, a single stack of peasants and killed his army with fiery phantoms first turn).

Other than that, I finished at level 60, 32att/25def/25 int, a bit over 44k leadership with inquisitor's blade and dragon heart for more paladins and dragons. Most commonly used army was rune mages/paladins/black dragons/red dragons/engineers. Most damaging units were black, red, paladins, rune mages, engineers, royal snakes, knights. No pre scout or save game scan, honestly it's about as cheese free as you could get. Battles were won through smart play and a good army composition. Spells like target and stoneskin are in the game for a reason, it's not cheese to use them.

[Moonheart]

Ok, I understand from your explanation why we have such a different view about the strategies.
From your sole leadership count and stats, I can guess you were playing warrior class, which is significiantly easier than the mage no-loss impossible run I did.

Under the mage class, you end the game near of level 55.
Your defense rating is lower, so your paladin stack takes about 10/15 loss EVERY turn against Baal despite of a high-ranked stonekin (70+ intelligence), meaning you just CAN'T keep it alive without casting Phantom almost every turn. Which requiers LOTS of mana you can't simply have without cheese.

Also, your attack rating is lower and you have 50% less units due to your leadership. Which means a boss like Baal have lots more rounds to live before you can reduce his hp to 0, and since his stacks increase of size at each summon, it leads to a point were archdemons simply starts to reach the leadership mark where the "halve" ability triggers... leading to 50+ losses in one strike.

Those facts put aside makes than your "you don't need cheese" point of view is understandable, but just not valid for everyone.
You can't expect to make a paladin stack survive boss runs when you're a mage without "cheesing". Because the paladins are nor as strong, nor as resilient than if you were a warrior so you have to make up for their "weakness" with spells... lots lots of spells.

As I said, the only way I know to not enter this logic, with a mage, is to use ghosts, which are both resilient to the most common attacks of enemy units and able to regenerate themselves without forcing you to use mana. Which leaves you free to not use infinite loopholes to regenerate it insanely... at least if you are able to keep the ghosts away from running wild.