Wow, just wow. NO Demonesses in my game.

[BB Shockwave]

Jimmy Kraud can use a dress too, if you give him the Blood of the Goddess. (And also grants you +700 Leadership).

Ckdamaskus: I meant, as opposed to The Legend. I played it recently, and afterwards sometimes I have to remind myself that these units have changed.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

Jimmy Kraud can use a dress too, if you give him the Blood of the Goddess. (And also grants you +700 Leadership).

Ckdamaskus: I meant, as opposed to The Legend. I played it recently, and afterwards sometimes I have to remind myself that these units have changed.

Ah, good to know. I didn't know he would uh... cross dress after imbibing such fluids.

Oooh, I never played The Legend.

[Metathron]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Oooh, I never played The Legend.

C.K.!! Wash that filthy mouth of yours with soap!

Or better yet, play the game!

[DGDobrev]

I second metathron's suggestion The legend may lack a lot of the new additions presented to us in KBAP and KBCW, but it was then when all the basic KB strategies started to take shape - the girl power army, my favorite lineup (Knights, Horsemen, Archmagi, Inquisitors, Royal Thorns/Cannoneers), playing a lot of turns to get a no-loss (which was harder back then, but attainable if you're willing to sacrifice some time) and so on. The lovely wives you had to choose from (except for Gerda, cough-cough!) were less than all the armor-bearers Amelie has to choose from, but they had some really great slots - who could forget the alluring and dashing demoness Xeona with her 2 WEAPON slots! Damn, she was the best catch for pretty much every character - including mage - who wouldn't want to wield 3 weapons that provide intelligence bonuses - much better than the +3 int bonus frog princess girl

[Metathron]

I was going to use an orc army in my new paladin game (playing on normal, though - want to have a relaxed game with lots of room for experimentation and making errors), but ck's demon build looked so attractive that I went with it instead. It's a strong combination of units - I just love demons/executioners - and the three summons right in round 1 help a lot in distracting the enemy.

However, I have a small dilemma regarding weapon slots (companion Agvares): Is it better to have a +20% damage axe and a +20 crit sword, or two axes? Not much of a mathematician, so not sure which is ultimately better, though I am leaning more towards having two axes because it's a concrete improvement not rooted in chance.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by Metathron

I was going to use an orc army in my new paladin game (playing on normal, though - want to have a relaxed game with lots of room for experimentation and making errors), but ck's demon build looked so attractive that I went with it instead. It's a strong combination of units - I just love demons/executioners - and the three summons right in round 1 help a lot in distracting the enemy.

However, I have a small dilemma regarding weapon slots (companion Agvares): Is it better to have a +20% damage axe and a +20 crit sword, or two axes? Not much of a mathematician, so not sure which is ultimately better, though I am leaning more towards having two axes because it's a concrete improvement not rooted in chance.

I believe a critical hit adds +50% damage, so statistically a +20% critical translates to only +10% damage; so take the straight-up +20% damage axe.

[KarlosCV]

In my last playthrough I decided to finally try orcs and demons.

Orcs - even with the CW improvements still a bit disappointing (or maybe because of them, I didn't care for the new Adrenaline feat).

But boy, the demons were fun! I dumped executioners after a while (too slow, too expensive, wimpy dmg/lship ratio) and changed them for imps. Best unit ever! With the Whip of Pain, Assassin Dagger and the awesome strike-and-return ability a thousand imps can wreak some serious havoc.

And the demoness was even more awesome. With Avgares nad the Whip of Pain she almost always killed the whole stack with one strike.

Not that it was necessary after she teleported my Cerberi into enemy ranks - with their three-head strike they cleared it all out in two three rounds.

The only possible weakness - Archdemons. In my view they don't have any useful abilities. Teleportation seems nice, but a hasted demon with "run" is with the enemy in one round as well and with my demoness-cerberi combo it was not really necessary anyway. And halving only sounds cool. Later I only took them for the fights with dragons, it was funny to watch those poor black and red bastards not being able to even touch them One stack of 15 black dragons did like 22 damage to my Archdemons


So if anyone is also bored with overpowered strategies like black knights, pure ranged or plants with botany-blackthorne-assasin dagger-whip of pain combo, demons are a great entertainingly different team to go with.

[ckdamascus]

Yup, lore hit it right in the head. The only case where criticals are better is if you can guarantee a critical. I still tend to push for criticals though.

Another thing to consider is that morale (which is only really useful for the first hit, since you will most likely get hit by negative status effects), multiplies up your base critical. So it pays to get a higher base critical.

That said, ck's demon line up is not working out so well haha, at least in impossible. I did ok for a little while though.

What happens is, despite being really powerful, even with stoneskin and divine armor, the Demons have trouble resisting potentially major losses. I end up doing a lot of restoration instead.

Not to mention, that executioners have relatively damage to leadership (actually all demons do), so I can't quite blitz out the enemy even after I teleport them.

Demons and Executioners only get decent damage to leadership against level 1-3.

I end up baby sitting the executioners and demonesses a bit too much. Maybe when I get speed items, those demonesses and executioners will be more worth while.

I have now revised my build to

Archdemons
Black Dragons
Demons
Rune Mages
Demonologists

I actually end up phantoming the Demonologists instead. Now I can heal my Archdemons every round while dealing damage. Plus, the demonologists tend to draw a fair amount of aggro and now I got a lot of meatshields out there.

Mobility was an issue with my old army too. Again, things might be different once I get my speed items (belt of the victor and metamorphic axel).

You might be especially fine in normal modes though.

I might restart my mission back to level 37 though (i'm currently level 42 or so) so I can undo diplomacy. That like 24 mine runes and 8 strength runes I can't really afford. ;(

But ugh, I will then lose my ghost armor which I found as a random chest in a battle! Does anyone know if that will "always show up"?

I suppose I can live without some of the other skills. Or I can just start using that student belt non-stop now, plus start farming up gold big time.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Yup, lore hit it right in the head. The only case where criticals are better is if you can guarantee a critical. I still tend to push for criticals though.

The problems with criticals is the base +50% damage from a critical hit. An item that for example guarantees 100% critical essentially translates to +50% damage; on the other hand an item that adds +100% damage obviously does twice the bonus. This is why Crown of Blackthorne is so good for thorns, despite the faulty description (it says it doubles attack, not damage), catapulting thorn warrior as the highest possible DPS units with available items (Whip of Pain, Assassin's Dagger), with thorn-hunter coming second.

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

But ugh, I will then lose my ghost armor which I found as a random chest in a battle! Does anyone know if that will "always show up"?

The good news is it is guaranteed to show up; the bad news is that you have to do EVERYTHING EXACTLY as you had done before; doing exactly the same island-hopping sequence, eggs item usage (basically any action that could also influence what unit you get from a Call Colossus/Call of Death scroll), sequence of enemies fought, etc. up until the battle that generated chests that gave you the Ghost Armor.

Thankfully, unlike the chests your dragon digs up, if you are able to generate the same starting chests in that particular battle, then you are guaranteed to get the same item.

If you got it from a chest dug up by the dragon (is this possible? I always thought you could only dig up gold/scrolls/wanderer scrolls/runes) then the pain continues: you have to do the EXACT battle that you did before, down to the very last detail (ie. on round 8 you first cast Heal on the rune mage, then you had it move to coordinates [4,6]). Good luck with this, I had a hard time recreating a battle up to just the 3rd round (dug up an AK scroll on the 3rd round, but incurred a loss in later rounds, forcing me to replay the battle).

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

The problems with criticals is the base +50% damage from a critical hit. An item that for example guarantees 100% critical essentially translates to +50% damage; on the other hand an item that adds +100% damage obviously does twice the bonus. This is why Crown of Blackthorne is so good for thorns, despite the faulty description (it says it doubles attack, not damage), catapulting thorn warrior as the highest possible DPS units with available items (Whip of Pain, Assassin's Dagger), with thorn-hunter coming second.



The good news is it is guaranteed to show up; the bad news is that you have to do EVERYTHING EXACTLY as you had done before; doing exactly the same island-hopping sequence, eggs item usage (basically any action that could also influence what unit you get from a Call Colossus/Call of Death scroll), sequence of enemies fought, etc. up until the battle that generated chests that gave you the Ghost Armor.

Thankfully, unlike the chests your dragon digs up, if you are able to generate the same starting chests in that particular battle, then you are guaranteed to get the same item.

If you got it from a chest dug up by the dragon (is this possible? I always thought you could only dig up gold/scrolls/wanderer scrolls/runes) then the pain continues: you have to do the EXACT battle that you did before, down to the very last detail (ie. on round 8 you first cast Heal on the rune mage, then you had it move to coordinates [4,6]). Good luck with this, I had a hard time recreating a battle up to just the 3rd round (dug up an AK scroll on the 3rd round, but incurred a loss in later rounds, forcing me to replay the battle).

Oh no doubt it is the highest damaging unit per leadership with those buffs. If I wanted that though, I wouldn't have picked the Demonic Race. Although it seems maybe those little imps should not be ignored. Haha.

I get a feeling that it was one of those chests that was "in the battle" in the beginning. I'm not sure though! I swore I dug it, but who knows.

In my opinion, the demons true strength is tenacity due to infinite retaliation. That's why they are excellent summon units (and awesome candidates for Kamikaze).

KarlosCV: were you playing Impossible No Loss mode? That must have been a pain to restore the imps?

I like Archdemons since they are far more durable. I'm not so sure about other bosses, but it certainly made fighting the Frog and Spider doable. Admittedly they are NOT so good for damage/leadership.

The Frog... I had to use the Archdemon to force him NOT to use a mass attack.

I'm surprised you didn't see the power of orcs. Try using moldok as your hero, get onslaught level 3.

Phantom Orc Veterans eat up the front line like nothing. Once they hit Adrenaline Level 3, even bosses can't counterattack their assault.

Goblins end up doing 18K/damage per hit... throw in a Paladin and second wind. Oooh that pain.