marauders: a good unit on impossible mode

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by kcwong

Well, HoMM V most definitely have much better unit death animations. And the town fly-by camera (plus those town music) are awesome when you first started playing.

I won't compare HoMM V to KB - IMO they are focusing on different area. I have Civilization V + Beyond the Sword (only for playing Fall from Heaven 2 mod), HoMMV plus its two expansions, plus KB:AP installed. They are different types of strategy games and each serve their purposes well.

So... you wanna hook a brother up with that CIV 5? Shouldn't FFH3 be on that? How does it work with Hexes?

[Jun006]

Thank you everyone for the replies. It's a nice surprise to see so many helpful replies appeared. (consider how quiet the forum was.)

Now I am on the second island and won exactly 30 fights without loss. Here are the details of the army.

Royal Snakes 32/32 (I brought some reserves when I left Debir.)
Inquisitors 19/19
Royal Thorns 3/5 (I almost missed it.)
Archmages 5/10
Marauders 44/65

Archmages are very useful to me so I have to kick priests out of the team. (hard decision consider that Amelie is a warrior and haven't learned order magic yet, so no heal spell) Well, it's not as hard as I thought, at least I don't need to use heal scrolls. And marauders are pretty active as a secondary melee unit with a high initiative 6 and swiftly strike.The bonus from marauders is about 700*15battles = 8500 extra golds. I have bought a snake boots 6000 golds, officer's baton 8000 gold, pirate's halberd 20,000 golds(+3 attacks, 5% extra gold after battle)

Now I am ready for Bolo with 2056 leaderships and a scroll Call Colossus. So what do you think is the best 5 unit? I want to keep marauders as long as possible Right now I am thinking about getting a red dragon. Amelie's mana pool is only 12 and I can't imagine how to take full advantage of black dragon. Or there are better choices?

p.s. kcwong, I assume you were talking about CIV IV, not CIV V, right? I just checked the official site again and the release date is this fall.

[Zechnophobe]

Red Dragon. Why settle for second best? It is also exactly in line with your leadership right now.

And I'm going to predict at about level... 15 you'll stop using Marauders. Depends on how Rusty Anchor goes. Just a hunch.

[KongMysen]

To the author: King's bounty is also a made by a russian company. They understand gametesting is the way to get a better and more balanced game. I wonder if it would be a bestselling game, had they hired som decent marketing employees...?

Anyhow. I used those Marauders alot in my first playthrough. The extra gold harvested was usually worth more than the casualty cost. However I learned that getting some higher hp troops, or some summoning troops can eliminate the fear of loosing units at all. and eventually that will get you rich.

But if you already had 30 no-loss fights before Bolo, I'm pretty sure, you'll have no trouble reaching the final phases of the game. That is, if you aren't palying on easy.

Originally Posted by Jun006

By the way, some posts said trap is a good spell.

Trap can stop even black dragons, who are immune to spells. Just place the trap, where the dragon will land. With tactics you can place two adjecent troops and spread the rest. This way you'll lure the dragon to move, where you want it to. Any other lvl5 unit immune to slow/fear/sheep etc. can be stopped by a trap. AND you can benefit from the huge dmg + poison bonus added by upgrading it to lvl 3 with a mage.

maybe not THE best spell in the game, but certainly one of the better

[N3MES1S]

except for the thing that on impossible mode, even if u drop a trap where u think the dragon will land, dragon will land on another place, xD. Almost i discarded the trap spell (well, i didnt need it anyways) for that reason. I only used trap on impossible to change the path the enemy will take. But with a warrior, it is hard to raise trap to level 3 and with good dmg.

[Razorflame]

i find trap a perfect spell

not only it stops units who use running(which is really nice)

it could also lead to trapping their own units

and combined with a fireball/fire rain/ ice snake after

it's boom boom

[KongMysen]

Originally Posted by N3MES1S

except for the thing that on impossible mode, even if u drop a trap where u think the dragon will land, dragon will land on another place,

AI doesn't change with difficulty settings. Maybe because there is no real AI and only some game mechanics, whick works similar on all difficulties?

If you place two non-fireresistant units adjecent to each other and the ohers spreaded out, the Black Dragon will ALWAYS fly to the same place. Its because game mechanics will tell it, that here it will do the most damage. If you leave the opportunity to use the ability however, the BD will instead fly across the units, since now this is the most damaging attack.

works with easy to Impossible setting.

[N3MES1S]

Originally Posted by KongMysen

AI doesn't change with difficulty settings. Maybe because there is no real AI and only some game mechanics, whick works similar on all difficulties?

If you place two non-fireresistant units adjecent to each other and the ohers spreaded out, the Black Dragon will ALWAYS fly to the same place. Its because game mechanics will tell it, that here it will do the most damage. If you leave the opportunity to use the ability however, the BD will instead fly across the units, since now this is the most damaging attack.

works with easy to Impossible setting.

Well, i really dont know if the ia changes on impossible, but the fact is, everytime i tried to place a trap in front of the supossed place the dragon will land, it flies to an adyacent trap cell and attack another enemy, even if that enemy is fire resistant. Maybe is just random luck, i need to say that now always happens and sometimes the dragon places on the trap. But that is not happening too many times xD. Maybe is something with the army configuration or something else, i really dont know.

[Razorflame]

the ai is random when it places dragons
or movements paths
based on your unit position and spell usage

[KongMysen]

I just did some gametesting to prove my point.

I loaded an old impossible mage save game, and quicksaved outside the dragon cave in Montero. I then replayed the fight a dozen times with different lineups. I had 2 stacks of shooters incl. droids, Black dragons 2 Melee tanks and 2 melee dmg dealers to mix the lineup as much as possible.

I only had Tactics level 1, and couldn't afford to buy enought Might Runes to get it to level 2. That means I could only make the enemy land in 4 different places, where I could lure them to land in a mine using the 2 adjecent units strategy. A more comprehensive testing would force me to load an older game and save those extra might runes for this test. Also I should try it in different difficulties, but I'm simply to lazy for this.

In a dozen attemps and with more than 20 mines I didn't fail one single time. There were 2 stacks of Black Dragons in the enemy army, and both dragons landed on a mine every single time no matter what units, I used as scapegoats, and no matter where I placed them. As long as I made sure that only 2 places on the battlefield could the enemy hit 2 units at once. It's failproof.

I haven't studied the game mechanics, but there is no such thing as an AI. An AI would not land on the mine, but mechanics telling the troop to hit where it hurts most will.

Also when the enemy keeps shooting at those repair droids despite their high defence, it's not because the troops are "clever". It is because, the game mechanics has put more "aggro" in som units, than others.

When the trap placement occasionnally fails, it's usually because there are several equally good places to put the trap. Or there simply is nowhere to hit more than 1 target with the breath.