This game forces you to change your strategy!

[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.

[Bonar]

Clever use of the reaper "Time Back" skill I must say

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by 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.

That gives me a solution on "how to resurect undead troops" ... THANX!

[Zhuangzi]

Okay I have nearly finished the game now. I'm in Murok, which I presume is the end.

The demon lands were a breeze after beating the Necromancer. I defeated Bhaal losing about one quarter of my stacks, then did all the demon quests and closed the portal. The only issue I have in my game is money. I was getting quite worried during the labyrinth because I was down to under 200,000 k at one stage, with no end in sight. I find that I am spamming Phantom pretty much every turn, and using the Drain Soul rage spell (kills 40% of stack with 35 rage, with only 1 turn rest ) I'm sure there are better ways of doing this but it is working just well enough to win the game on Hard. I'm sure Impossible is another matter though - I've no idea how you Russian guys were able to win like this.

I think the Ragebox is capped at level 30? The red demon seems to have stalled there. Interestingly, my electricity demon is still on level 16 or something. I don't have much of a use for her at all (Gizmo is good, but too weak in the end game).

[Shd]

It is

Good luck with Haas (when i played last time, i hoped he will be stronger than he was)

Ragebox is capped at lvl 30. In middle of game Lina's spiked ball is nice ability. It works like cavalry (more places to speed up=more damage).

P.S Try at impossible, IMHO, its worth it. And if you are interested in "hardcore" game then try to complete all game at impossible without looses (there will be combat statistic screen when you will complete game (including how many units you loose)). Believe me, it is possible (completed in such way as mage. Now working as warrior). Hint: units ressurected by nercromancy talent(!!!) after fight counts as "killed". To achieve 0 looses you need that after every fight left side of casualties screen be empty

[Zhuangzi]

That sounds nuts, Shd. I might give Impossible a go, but I think I would like to play on Hard as a Mage first.

I just finished my first game on Hard. I didn't have too much trouble with the 7 manifestations of Haas, but the final battle was tough. In fact, I had to reload an earlier save and assemble a team full of dragons. My strategy of using Phantom on my Horsemen etc just didn't work for the final battle. So my final team was something like:

14 Green Dragons
12 Red Dragons
9 Black Dragons (these guys are the best )
130 Horsemen (I still love them)
14 Giants (cancels out the negative morale modifier for Green Dragons with a positive one of his own)

Even so I only had 8 Black Dragons and a few Horsemen left at the end. That final battle is tough, certainly it was the way I played it. I know that there are more efficient ways of playing, but my strategy was JUST good enough to finish the game on Hard. I say just good enough because I was really struggling to find enough money at the end. I must have wasted too much earlier on.

Here are my final statistics:

Hard Paladin
Level 29
49 days of game time
97 completed quests, 2 failed, 1 unfinished (the freaking find a Cyclops quest)
Leadership nearly 24,000
20 Attack, 22 Defense, 16 Intellect
464 Battles
427,000 enemy kills
37,000 my kills (better than a 10:1 ratio, nice )
Score 890

I think I could score over 1000 easily with a Mage, especially seeing as you lose points for taking too long. I think about 40 game days should be enough to do everything. Also, I could have killed more enemies but I ran out of money. I think I could have got to level 30 fairly easily, which is interesting because I only took 1 level of the extra experience thingy.

I played this game solidly for eleven days to finish it. And when I say solidly, I mean at least 4 and sometimes as much as 7-8 hours a day. So I would say that it certainly took 70 hours of my life away. Game duration was apparently 50 hours, 49 minutes.

If you haven't bought this game yet and are thinking about getting it, don't delay any longer. This is enormously enjoyable and addictive. No sooner that I have finished I am wondering whether to start my Hard Mage game yet or not.

[Darkhon]

I don't get why the game is so stingy with garrisons. They really should let me have:

FIVE SLOTS GARRISON, so I can trade my entire army in, so I can switch strategies without having to remember where the other two in that set are.

And back at King Mark's Castle, hey man..how about a Bank to leave some of my items...I'd really like to hang on to some things "Just in case". I won't have them in my investory for adventuring but I can travel home and get them.

[Zhuangzi]

Yeah, you should be able to garrison units in King Mark's castle. It is rather annoying that you can't even sell troops, simply disband them. The unit reserve helps a little, but not much. I found myself using unwanted troops as cannon fodder so that I could get a stack of something else, rather than simply disbanding them.

About garrisoning items, that'd be nice too, but you can just keep them in your inventory, so I'm not too bothered about that. What does bother me is that if you sell an item it seems to disappear from the game. That's annoying. It should stay wherever you sell it.

[ostwind]

One thing that pwns me more when i have crossbowmen or elf archers is that round 1 they focus everything on them so i lose about 30-40 before even starting. What should i do!