Trading skill - gone?

[jake21]

Well that is disappointing; in the first game money was an important factor at higher difficulties. It sounds like they removed the the money factor from the add on

I wish they would do another space ranger

Originally Posted by Dargor

I think there is no problem in dissapearing of this skill because there is no money deficit in the game. At normal difficulty you can "collect" up to 5000000 of gold easily.

[BB Shockwave]

Well money is still a necessity - artifacts and spells cost a lot more. In my first game, the starting castle already had the Dragon Slayer sword for sale, but for 45.000 gold - that takes a while to accumulate.

On the other hand, magic crystals are more numerous - plus, any class now can take Alchemy so upgrading spells is less costly.

[Zhuangzi]

From my limited experience with AP (on Hard) I found that I had to be much more discerning about which items to buy. I also had to try harder to minimise losses, which can usually be done quite easily if you really want to. There is a new spell that is basically like Reaper's Time Back rage skill and I was using this a LOT. In fact it made the game pretty easy toward the end. I would just cast Mass Haste and buff my Horsemen, who would then charge right into the nest of enemies and take a load of damage. On Turn 2, I would wait something that wasn't too important, then cast the Time Back skill before the end of the turn.

[Dargor]

I do not develop Alchemy because most of spells are near useless for certain Hero with certain army. Money can make your victories more comfortable in the start of the game. And probably you can feel their deficit if you like to experiment with different new units (it is realy interesting ).

[Zhuangzi]

Dargor, some of the new units are just incredibly fun to play with. I especially loved the Paladin with his mass resurrection, the Pangolin race (not so much the T-rex, but especially the raptor thing that lays eggs) and of course the Royal Griffin. Need I say more?

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Dargor, some of the new units are just incredibly fun to play with. I especially loved the Paladin with his mass resurrection, the Pangolin race (not so much the T-rex, but especially the raptor thing that lays eggs) and of course the Royal Griffin. Need I say more?

Where do you first get Pangolins? I haven't even met them as enemies yet, but I really want to use them in my army. This is my first play-through and I want to test all the new units as well the changes to the old ones.

I just got to Verona and bought myself some 13 Royal Griffins, can't wait to try them. Too bad they don't mix well with Dragons (-2 morale) so I guess my Emeralds will take a backseat from now.

My current army composition was until now (Level 9): Droid Guards, Droid Engineers, Polar Bears, Emerald Green Dragon and the last unit I swapped between Inquisitors or Royal Thorns, depending on the need for resurrection.

Droids are really fun units, they can take a pounding due to high resistances and defense. Guards are a tad slow, but they can grab and pull enemy shooters/mages from across the screen to your slower units, which is great. Shock is a bit bugged - doesn't work as often as 30% chance would let you think. Damage is always max for them (12-12) which is nice. Engineers have ultra-powerfull resurrection skill for droids, it works much better then regular resurrection, so you can let your droid guards run ahead and take the beating. Plus, it's rechargable. They are also the most mobile shooters in the game with 4 speed and flying, it's impossible to block them.

Little hint: if your engineers are getting killed - since they can't resurrect themselves - use Phantom on them and heal them with the phantoms.

From the new units, Demonologists are also great, but I found only 4 so far. Their summoning (it always brings Demons, Executioners or Cerberi) is great for blocking/occupying enemies, thanks to the new demon skill that lets Demons/Executioners act again if they are hit (50% chance). A pity you cannot control these summons, though. Their other skill is like sacrifice cast on enemy units - good, but not as powerfull as resurrection, of course.

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

Where do you first get Pangolins? I haven't even met them as enemies yet, but I really want to use them in my army. This is my first play-through and I want to test all the new units as well the changes to the old ones.

I just got to Verona and bought myself some 13 Royal Griffins, can't wait to try them. Too bad they don't mix well with Dragons (-2 morale) so I guess my Emeralds will take a backseat from now.

My current army composition was until now (Level 9): Droid Guards, Droid Engineers, Polar Bears, Emerald Green Dragon and the last unit I swapped between Inquisitors or Royal Thorns, depending on the need for resurrection.

Droids are really fun units, they can take a pounding due to high resistances and defense. Guards are a tad slow, but they can grab and pull enemy shooters/mages from across the screen to your slower units, which is great. Shock is a bit bugged - doesn't work as often as 30% chance would let you think. Damage is always max for them (12-12) which is nice. Engineers have ultra-powerfull resurrection skill for droids, it works much better then regular resurrection, so you can let your droid guards run ahead and take the beating. Plus, it's rechargable. They are also the most mobile shooters in the game with 4 speed and flying, it's impossible to block them.

Little hint: if your engineers are getting killed - since they can't resurrect themselves - use Phantom on them and heal them with the phantoms.

From the new units, Demonologists are also great, but I found only 4 so far. Their summoning (it always brings Demons, Executioners or Cerberi) is great for blocking/occupying enemies, thanks to the new demon skill that lets Demons/Executioners act again if they are hit (50% chance). A pity you cannot control these summons, though. Their other skill is like sacrifice cast on enemy units - good, but not as powerfull as resurrection, of course.

Well I played through the whole game (only about 30 hours) and I don't think I found the Pangolins in any great quantity until the Pangolin continent. I forget what it's called right now, but it's where one of the last quest thingys is. One of my general strategies is to try to get all the 'new island' cards as quickly as possible. The fights aren't usually as hard as they seem (Overpowering etc) and you can use the special spells before the fights. When you first get to the Pangolin continent, you can pick up about 10 T-Rex eggs from the ground all over the island, which will make a really nasty tank for the mid-game (very high leadership though). The egg laying ones are the best IMO though, because each one lays an egg that will have 50% of the original's leadership, and that one can lay an egg for 25% of the original's leadership, etc, etc. Lots of cannon fodder. So my advice is to open up new continents and search for cool units and combos of units. This will mean you take more days to complete the game of course.

But the Pangolins can wait until later otherwise. You can't go wrong with Paladins, Royal Griffins, Royal Thorns and Inquisitors, plus a random grunt like maybe Guardsmen. This is geared more for the Warrior class. All of these should be available in Verona. I liked using the droids too in the early stages of the game, especially on the island where you buy from the specific droid-seller.

I could only find about 12 Demonologists in my whole game too, so I didn't really get to use them. Those Executioners look pretty awesome too, but I didn't use them. It's really hard to go past the Paladin, I think. That mass resurrect is pretty sweet.

EDIT: back onto the topic of this thread, another thing that is gone is the Reserve skill. Now you get two reserve slots from the beginning, which I think is fine.

[travelingoz]

Yes, the availability of Demonologists can be very scarce. Likewise, necromancers can be hard to find too, especially early game!

I haven't tried the warrior or paladin yet but have played through mage on hard and as Zhungzi suspected in another thread, it wasn't too difficult. I'm trying to play through on impossible now with no losses and find that using a combination of Paladins, Royal Griffins, Red Dragons, Dryads, Beholders, Necromancers and Demonologists works well. However i'm level 48 now and trying to defeat some of the bosses on the lizzard island is proving quite lengthy!

Back on topic, i havent missed the trading skill at all. Early game, playing on impossible, cash is a bit of a worry but if you get some marauders, split them and use your pet dragon's find treasure ability, money can be accumulated just as quickly as in KB with the trading ability.

Later game, you'll have oodles of the stuff! There is a cool new artifact that gives you +5 intellect but -30% money from battles. I've been wearing that since level 15 and i still have over 1 million and a truckload of artifacts that can be converted to crystals if they're needed.

[DGDobrev]

Actually, as Calinda suggested, you don't really need big tanks... All you need is a full stack of paladins and the phantom spell. Each phantom image can resurrect the orginal stack, so you will hardly ever come to some problems.

Paladins can be found very early in the game. The island should be called Scarlet wind. There is a Camp, guarded by a tough army, which is easy to kite away from it.

To get back on topic myself, I second the opinion that trading isn't that important. Money is plentiful in this game

[Zhuangzi]

For some reason I didn't get Phantom at all in my completed AP game, but I can see that using it on Paladins would be devastatingly effective. In fact, for a Warrior who doesn't really have the Mana to cast Resurrect a lot, Paladins and the Time Back spell more than compensate.

I agree that money is plentiful, at least on Hard. At the end of my game I still had pretty much every item I'd picked up, because I was loathe to sell them for such a miserable price. Still had plenty of money without selling them. That's a good idea about the Marauders finding money - I was using the Baby Dragon's treasure finding a lot in the early/mid game, until I realised it wasn't necessary anymore.

But it is a little disappointing to hear that no losses on Impossible is relatively doable. I think we all hoped that AP would be a little harder than TL, but I see no evidence of that. For me the fun is not in trying to complete the game in the quickest possible way, or with zero losses (although I may try this at some point), but simply to relax and have fun with the game, trying out different combinations of artifacts, spells and units.