Kind of stuck with lvl 11 hard/mage

[SchDerGrosse]

Hello there.

Years ago I played KB AP with a paladin on hard and got quite far ahead in the game but didnt finish it.

Now I begun a new campaign, this time with a Mage.

And Iam having a real hard time.. (compared to this, the paly was a breeze)

Iam level 11, have 2.600 leadership, 55 mana, 7 intellect, 14 rage

The problem is that magic does jackshit in terms of damage. Fireball deals 650 damage in the center and costs 20 mana. 2 of those, then Iam out.

I have cleared: the 1st island and scarlet wind.

Discowered: Bolo (almost cleared), Rusty Anchor and Verona.

And I have gotten to a point where each troop is either very hard (red) or above and could only make progress with extreme losses.

I really dont know what could be a way out of this as leveling up gives me a pathetic 100 leadership.

I have 3 chaos, 1 destruction. Trying to get more intellect, but still dont think that it would help me in any way if my fireball did 900 damage because i can fire only 2 of those.

Using: polar bears, royal snakes, beholders, guardsmen (dont have any better), Sea dogs (dont have any better)


any ideas??!
thanks

[Fatt_Shade]

Hello

Glad to still see ppl playing this great game.
First of : Enemy stacks labeling works in comparing total leadership worth of your and their army (if you lead 1 red dragon against 1 assassin, it will mark it as very weak 2500 lds>>100lds , but if you take 1 swordman vs same 1 assassin it will mark it as very hard since 35lds<<100lds. So you attack same enemy stack but depending of your army composition it changes difficulty level. And this system does not consider your items/skills/spells/rage in calculation, thus very hard enemy can be defeated easily using what you have at disposal.

Second : You took chaos/destruction too soon, and wasted runes lvling it early game. What does 50% more dmg mean to you when you dont have powerful spells, or high intellect for base dmg ? Early game you need in as much mana/intellect as possible to survive late to game when you`ll have Black hole/Death star and make 20K dmg per casting it. So that is already done, lets save what we can.
Change items in inventory at your disposal to get mana and/or intellect (drop anything +attack/rage etc you dont need it now). If you have some runes saved spend them on magic skill tree to get linguistics/thesis/concentration. At this point your strength isnt spell dmg, but spell control (trap, magic spring, stone skin ... and other spells that doesnt depend on hero intellect).

3) Units : drop guardsmen/sea dogs. Bears will be first line in attack/meat shields, snakes blitz dmg unit, beholder will do what they do best (evil beholders would be better), and take 1 (ONE) archmage to cast magic shield and move enemy units on traps (how are you doing on trapper medal ?), and out of way with telekinesis. Fifth unit take some controlling utility not mainly dmg choice (dryads would be perfect but to early in game for it). What was unit on Rusty anchor in tavern ? There usually players get some interesting picks from 4-5 lvl units early in game.

In end if you can post here save game file, i`ll look in to it, and get you some more ideas for what you have available.
Good luck