KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[aghiuta]

If you use the right army, meaning exploit a bit the new mechanics, the game gets real easy. I can frack up invincible armies without losses, even if they have 5-6 stacks of archers.
My setup now Archdemons, Dragon Riders, Demonologists, Shamans, Giants.
First 3 are used to summon block the enemy archers.
The shamans spam totems which the mobs seem to love to go after, so with the right placement among some traps you can kill the turn of several mobs.
Giants are great for the hit all skill which works great with half.
For rage use fiery passion skill from demoness to box the enemy if needed, or even jealousy, or just black hole/shield them for damage and maybe half.
For spells poison rain is extremely destructive, especially if you have 5 enemy mobs that you clustered together with black hole. Or use Blizzard for several, giving a nice frozen stats.
Take advantage of bleeding/burning/poisoned/frozen which can take out a lot of mobs, and add half to it and all fights become easy.

[zjazd18]

Yeah the game is pretty easy in mid/late game, in my play through i thought the halving was the main problem. This skill is so ridiculously overpowered it's not even funny, especially on impossible where stacks are huge. The damage from halving is absurd on big stacks, not to mention it also gives rage for the damage dealt. It's a single player game so i guess balance is not as important, as you can choose not to use overpowered tactics, and you won't feel like you are having disadvantage against other players. I'd shift some difficulty from early game into late game, especially on impossible. The pinnacle of difficulty are few earlygame battles, and i feel it should be other way around.

[DGDobrev]

True that. I keep on using my underpowered Paladins, Knights, Wizards, Demonologists, Amazons lineup. 4 of the troops are lagging hopelessly behind (meaning 30 or less on the total leadership stack), waiting for recruiter to fill them up

Neoline DG is 50 now, so I moved on to Galenirim. Fights are still a breeze

EDIT: Btw, I think wizards do better with halving than Giants. Giants are a level 5 unit, so you don't get any bonuses to halving (it is still leadership vs leadership), or any option to use the Second Wind skill. You need to wait till the ability recharges, while wizards can do it any second turn. Knights can boost Wizards in a way that they can do Battle trance 3 times in a row, meaning 3x 15% chance based on leadership between stacks. That halves enemy stacks like no tomorrow. Combine it with Jealousy and you have an easy fight to control. Regardless of what the enemy has to offer. maybe I should try Wizards + Giants. That would be wicked, but then again, I don't have the dark heal spell - I only found 1 (!) heal spell, which I have been using on Demonologists, Trolls, etc. So in essence, your mileage will always vary, depending on the game. And I need more to turn it into a darkie heal spell...

I also consider halving to be overpowered... This promotes using AOE units much more often now: Giants, Wizards, Archdemons, etc.

[RaulIgnat]

Anyone found anything good in that tree stump next to Clarissa`s hut ? I sometimes got Call of nature scrolls or some weak items but im just curious what else can you get from that place.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Great post, Impy!

Without comparing notes it is hard to tell for certain, but for the most part, it sounds like your strategies were similar to mine. I didn't use any of the cheat methods to look ahead, but I did mention that I ended up going back to my Atrixus save when I first got to the shelter as I realized that I should try harder to complete the Demon child quest, focus my skill tree on improving Trap since it was pivotal to dealing damage early for Demoness with the limited troop availability, and I also wanted to defeat that big spider stack in the Catacombs.

I think you could probably do the big Catacombs spider stack if you wanted, but as you said, it is not important at this stage of the game (except for having a little more experience - and maybe bragging rights ).

Originally Posted by impy

1b) do only compulsory fights and get to Whitehill to see the strength of the weakest stack. I am talking hard learned lesson here. When I started this game, I did not want to check the forums and spoil the tactics for me. Once I arrived to Whitehill with more or less struggle no loss, I was taken aback by the strength of even the weakest stack. Honestly, it was brutal. I checked the forums to see if other people had hard time, but hardly any mention of this. And then on page 4 of this thread I see pictures MattCaspermeyer posted with these stacks. And the first picture , the weakest one is almost walk in a park! Compare it to what I had as the weakest stack. It means, there is some variation in starting leadership of those stacks, so in order to save yourself frustration, check this beforehand.

I'd agree with you that the first Whitehill stack I faced was easier (at least it seemed, anyway) to the Shelter fights I had just done; however, those fights (and the big Catacombs spider stack) had "trained" me for the Whitehill fights in what tactics to use, etc. and so I actually think the Whitehill fights are fairly tough, for no loss anyway, but they seem easier because we are just better players by that time.

It is interesting that they changed it from all 3 to just 1 of the Whitehill fights as your stack was weaker than my final stack (although I'm guessing you were level 5 when you fought them and I was level 6 with 3 more Imps / Scoffer Imps for the 2nd and 3rd Whitehill stacks). Using your stack as the baseline, here are the relative strengths of the stacks I faced compared to yours (this is based on stack leadership):

Stack 1: 70.0%
Stack 2: 81.5%
Stack 3: 111%

So I wonder if this is just variability or a change to make them tougher since you only had to defeat 1 of them. Of course, leadership is not the only gauge for how hard a stack is, but you'll note that when comparing all the stacks, they all have 3 shooters and 2 melee troops, and the Inquisitors tend to use their res ability on turn 1 so they are not as big of a problem as Bowmen or the Priests of Light (at least on round 1 anyway).

At any rate, I think between your and my posts people now should see what the difference in variability is and how possible no loss is comparing against these stacks.

I really think that once you get the strategy down that you can handle quite a bit of variability in stack size with these troops because they all have essentially the same structure of troop types. It is just as easy for your Demoness to swap a stack of 40 Swordsmen or 28. As long as these concepts sink in, no lossing these stacks shouldn't be a problem if you're persistent.

/C\/C\

[DGDobrev]

Keep this going guys. I think that we are close to finding a good formula (spells + units) for a no-loss for a Vampire. It mustn't be too overpowered, yet it must still be a challenge. It is quite all right if it is a mod in my opinion, like an edited save. If someone did it, other can do it too. And then we can move on to the Orc.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Loremipsum1

I don't think Evil Book is sufficient to help the vampire PC. The fight with the elven Guardian of Light is too hard; the elf stack in that fight has higher initiative than any undead units, and it will kill at least one vampire (your tankiest units) on the first move of the first round. You could try picking up some Scoffer Imps from the shelter, which would allow you to cast one spell first, but I don't think that'll allow you to win with no losses.

What I did to make the vampire PC viable for no-loss was to mod the game such that he starts with a single ancient vampire. This seemed fair (Demoness starts with *two* level 4 units) and is still quite a bit less powerful than the vampire's start in Early Access.

The early game's still hard as hell with this, but it can be done. I just finished Whitehill now. The elf battle took me 50 rounds and a little luck; the single Whitehill fight I could handle took me 90 rounds. (I got a Magic Spring scroll, so my main tactic is to nuke down the ranged units as quickly as I can, then hit and run with Magic Spring and Poison Skull, changing to bat form when needed to avoid heavy-hitting melee. This is hardest in the elf fight, since they have three 4-speed attackers, one of which can soar across the chasm. Still, it's doable.)

Great ideas, Loremipsum1!

I have not tried to see if the Evil Book will help, yet.

The problem with vampire troops is that they regenerate every round. So this makes it tough, I think, to give the player starting (Ancient) Vampires and coupled with the no retaliation, you can do pretty amazing things with just a few of them. I think the developers tried to keep this in mind with respect to impossible no loss when playing Daert.

I've noticed from my experience with Daert is that Vampire troops can get into a corner and limit the damage to just 3 troops if there are no ranged attackers. The enemy stack sizes are just large enough (especially the thorns) to do more than 70 damage, sometimes. You need to whittle them down a bit, but then if there are two or three armies attacking the Vampires then they can kill at least 1 of them. So you end up trying to kite them around, but it is a lot harder with the limited space of the Catacombs fights.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think 1 Ancient Vampire would be able to solo all the fights to at least the shelter and he could easily do the Dwarven Shelter stack (I know that since I as able to do it with the 2 Vampires).

That's why I was thinking the spell route may make no loss possible (and it goes with the fact that he is a mage), while keeping the starting Vampire troops as they are. Also, I don't think we should be going over about 20 to 30 rounds to do no loss, otherwise, it just gets tedious.

I certainly, though, like your idea of trying to balance Daert's starting troops with Neoline's. I think in all fairness, with respect to troops, that 1 Demon is equivalent to 1 Ancient Vampire or 1 Black Knight and that 2 Demonesses are equivalent to 2 Necromancers.

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

BTW, I am discovering that Turn Back Time crashes my game a lot. While I understand that it is kind of overpowered, I don't like the failsafe against it

This has been a problem since EA and it has been reported. I'm not certain why it hasn't been fixed, yet.

I just steered clear of it since I didn't want to deal with the crashing issues.

/C\/C\

[Loremipsum1]

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

Great ideas, Loremipsum1!

I have not tried to see if the Evil Book will help, yet.

The problem with vampire troops is that they regenerate every round. So this makes it tough, I think, to give the player starting (Ancient) Vampires and coupled with the no retaliation, you can do pretty amazing things with just a few of them. I think the developers tried to keep this in mind with respect to impossible no loss when playing Daert.

I've noticed from my experience with Daert is that Vampire troops can get into a corner and limit the damage to just 3 troops if there are no ranged attackers. The enemy stack sizes are just large enough (especially the thorns) to do more than 70 damage, sometimes. You need to whittle them down a bit, but then if there are two or three armies attacking the Vampires then they can kill at least 1 of them. So you end up trying to kite them around, but it is a lot harder with the limited space of the Catacombs fights.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think 1 Ancient Vampire would be able to solo all the fights to at least the shelter and he could easily do the Dwarven Shelter stack (I know that since I as able to do it with the 2 Vampires).

Yeah, that's correct, unfortunately. All the battles through the Black Gate were trivial, barring two giant stacks in the catacombs. Though, as you point out, the same is true with the default troops.

I definitely understand your concerns about ancient vamps being too strong, and before I did the Shelter fights, I had that concern too. After my first few attempts at the Elven Guardian, my concerns were resolved. 140 hit points is still fragile enough that the player will die if he gets hit by most melee stacks; the only difference is that it gives him a chance to survive the initial volleys from the enemy's ranged troops.

If anything, I think my setup is a little too weak; I don't think it's possible to beat the Shelter Guardians with it unless you get a scroll of Magic Spring from Clarissa. I'm not sure how to resolve that. (Other than swapping out your starting plague scroll for a scroll of magic spring, I mean.)

That's why I was thinking the spell route may make no loss possible (and it goes with the fact that he is a mage), while keeping the starting Vampire troops as they are. Also, I don't think we should be going over about 20 to 30 rounds to do no loss, otherwise, it just gets tedious.

I like this idea in the abstract, but based on earlier posts in the thread, even giving Daert something as extravagant as Summon Phoenix still makes that fight pretty tight. (And it comes at the expense of breaking the game a little earlier in the post-Whitehall sections.)

[zjazd18]

Phoenix in my opinion isn't that outrageous, but it has to be a scroll, so you don't have enough magic crystals to get it to level 2. Demoness gets hypnosis so it sounds fair.

Other option i considered is last hero, only thing i don't know is if troops take damage when the battle ends, if not some nice planing can lead to no loss victory. Haven't tested it as i went with phoenix approach.

Damage spells simply don't cut it, even the most powerful ones.