Warrior on impossible is easiest at least timewise with different playing style

[jake21]

I found all the classes fairly easy on hard (warrior being easiest at end game and mage easier at start). I started an impossible game on warrior and find it a bit difficult - i've shelved it for now - not sure if I will finish it later - I'm level 7 or 8 - and I've gone to the land of the pirates to claim the map. I'm too weak to battle things there and I don't see a way to get stronger (hence the stalemate and a shelving for now). If I decide to finish it i'm not sure what I will do - I might pay for the map but then i won't have enough gold to buy dwarven or demon army. Hum. Have to think about it... Every game seems to have a 'hard' part that is the hump and once you get over it becomes easy - so I'm hopeful that this is the hard part for warrior on impossible and once I think of a way to get the map it will be much easier...

Originally Posted by Lari

Having played both, i should admit that from my point of view, tjoepee is right to say that the warrior is stronger -timewise- . Overall there is no big difference, but from my esperience, it took considerably less (maybe 20%) to use the exploit for the warrior, than the exploit for the mage. Focusing first on the might tree and having a second weapon slot avaible right from the start, made the difference for me. Mage is not gimp, it just take a little more time to develop his true strenght (you can do incredible things with 2 spells per turn, even if u don't use chaos at all).

[sector24]

Have any warriors topped 30,000 leadership? I think mages usually end the game in the very low 20s, paladins in the mid 20s, and warriors in the high 20s. It seems like the difference between mage and warrior is about 7-10k leadership which can be a lot more damage potential (~25-30%). The extra spell every turn needs to equal the average damage of the extra units in every stack of a player's army to say the mage is "better". Either that or the utility of a 2nd spell needs to be so great that the mage can do things the warrior can't. With the exception of a few tricks (hypnosis->sacrifice) I don't think this is really the case.

I'm not going to calculate the damage from an extra fire rain vs. the extra units from leadership, but that's essentially the main difference between the warrior and mage.

[Keneth]

Actually the average difference in leadership is more like 3-6k depending on how much you invest in it. But even if you get every single point of leadership available to you, it will just mean that your attack is lower hence lowering your damage by some 10% at least (if we assume you traded 3 points of attack for additional leadership) which would again even things out.

[sector24]

Originally Posted by Keneth

Actually the average difference in leadership is more like 3-6k depending on how much you invest in it. But even if you get every single point of leadership available to you, it will just mean that your attack is lower hence lowering your damage by some 10% at least (if we assume you traded 3 points of attack for additional leadership) which would again even things out.

Alright well I totally disagree with you, so I went into the high scores thread to compare leadership values:

Warrior
25,000
29,000
28,000
25,000
31,000 (MajorS)

Paladin
23,000
26,000
23,000
25,000 (me)

Mage
19,000
22,000
22,000
19,000
21,000
22,000

As you can see, the difference between the best warrior and the best mage is indeed 9,000 leadership, which is a roughly 30% increase in damage. The average is not quite so high, but still in the range of 6-9k difference between the mage and warrior.

Using info from the leadership, we can deduce that the warrior would have to sacrifice ~9 Attack to offset the increase in damage from leadership (assuming 1 Attack = 3.3% damage). I doubt this is the case, in fact in the screenshots where the mages have 22,000 leadership, they are wearing at least 3 artifacts that grant leadership to get that number so they are losing the same amount of potential attack points that the warrior would.

Now these numbers are very rough and there's a lot of interpretation and wiggle room involved. But again we come to the main distinction between the warrior and the mage. Is two spells in 1 combat round better than 6-9,000 leadership?

[Keneth]

But these are still the absolute values of purist mages and purist warriors, a mage investing in leadership gets around 21-24k of leadership whereas a warrior investing less in leadership gets 24-28k. I know because I never play purist classes, hence my warrior ended up 35 Int and my mage with over 24k leadership. The argument is not how big a difference can be because I agree, it can be huge, it's how small the difference can get if you play a mage like a warrior. So let's assume that 25k is the most leadership a mage can get and take MajorS' whooping 31k for the warrior, depending on the equipment and type of army, the warrior will do roughly 20% more damage. Whether or not an average mage can top that with a nuke is a topic for a different discussion but I guarantee you that the only difference in speed when playing at top efficiency will be the time spent waiting for your mana to recharge and it won't ammount to 15 hours when rushing, not with mana potions at every second vendor.

[Calinda]

It's not only the leadership.
Warrior = more leadership/ more attack/ more rage(i.e. more and better criticals)/ stronger spirits. Mage = second spell per turn for 3 turns (most important turns, we have to agree).

[milo]

You also don't seem to be taking spell buffs into account mages will be able to cast more (and more effective) spell buffs to boost their armies damage potential like mass bless, precision, dragon & demon slayer. Leadership considerations are not the whole story.

[tjoepee]

If you find the knight set together with the deductions u can hire 1250 swordsman with warrior stats. I never topped 30k ld but with 30k i think it' s even higher and if someone got 31k I think he can get closes to 200 knights? LOL using
Any one know what' s max of mage?
Using human only army the haas labyrinth is kinda ridiculous easy still most battle are labelled overpowering or impossible but I end it within 3 turns not exploiting the magic spring. I only reloaded the units few times in the labyrinth.

Also I managed to pimp up my warrior to intelect 40 with attack 30 and defense 19. Using the +5 +5 intelect and lvl 2 pain skull dunno the name but the +5 +5 thing. But I used it only for fun my end stats are 37 34 19
I used the mithril shield.

My phatom skills is 53% if i pimp up to 40 means my phanton of swordsman is over 600, lol.

With warrior vs impossible stacks u can do this and usually u win 3 turns with minor casualties:

Swap the demon with the demoness in enemy territory. If big stack ranged trap it so it has to attack u. U can use it in combo with the bone dragon poison cloud phantom the demon giot armor the dragon. The demon will clear most of them then u use sacrifice on him and timeback (if any damage of other units). In the end vs orcs doing this the first turn u do total damage of 60k. Yes using fairies sprite u can do the same but the difference is the number of enemies the damage is done on and the number of times u can attack (back) with the 2 demons stack.

[tjoepee]

Originally Posted by Keneth

But these are still the absolute values of purist mages and purist warriors, a mage investing in leadership gets around 21-24k of leadership whereas a warrior investing less in leadership gets 24-28k. I know because I never play purist classes, hence my warrior ended up 35 Int and my mage with over 24k leadership. The argument is not how big a difference can be because I agree, it can be huge, it's how small the difference can get if you play a mage like a warrior. So let's assume that 25k is the most leadership a mage can get and take MajorS' whooping 31k for the warrior, depending on the equipment and type of army, the warrior will do roughly 20% more damage. Whether or not an average mage can top that with a nuke is a topic for a different discussion but I guarantee you that the only difference in speed when playing at top efficiency will be the time spent waiting for your mana to recharge and it won't ammount to 15 hours when rushing, not with mana potions at every second vendor.

I really wonder if u tried human armies vs dragon using the warrior bonuses. Maybe someone else can explain u no matter what u do if I do a roughly estimation warrior and mage in absolute meanings is at least 75% ld difference. Try using demons with both classes if the difference is only 20% damage I need new glasses.

[tjoepee]

[QUOTE=Keneth;60512]B]identical[/B] for all three classes, hence the value of leadership is identical for all three classes.
QUOTE]

So what u are saying is europe use euros, america uses dollars and china yuan. They are all money so the value is identical?
Your warrior knights has always higher attack no matter what u do or if ur mage playing like warrior. That' s impossible u don' t get offered attack as much as warrior and u don' t find the attack bonus on the map as much as possible and u can' t equip 4 weapons. Thus the ld of warrior has more value than the othes classes imho.

Not to mention playing mage as a warrior u totally screw up ur mage. Having higher attack screwing ur intelect is not worth with the mage.
For fun I pimped up my warrior to intelect 41, if u watch the screen shots I didn' t have the best of the best weapons also.
Thus making the warrior and mage difference only the high magic the warrior can have same amount of intelect I believe with still much higher attack and LD.

Iron Fist just kick ass!