A good army to beat Karador on impossible with a paladin?

[DGDobrev]

Originally Posted by Calinda

On Karador try to use the AOE from his necromancers against him (with Target spell), also dont kill the stacks, just reduce all of them evenly, and when they are all low, kill all of them fast in a turn or 2. This way you prevent him from raising too much stuff.

I was thinking about that, but the only tank I can get easily into their lines and cast target on it, is an emerald dragon and they aren't the best tankers vs. physical damage dealers. For instance, the black knights just love to crit them for over 1.4k damage (with a shield from the mages!!!) and that 2 dragons out of 10 down in a hit. I was a bit unlucky with the creature setup in ellinia. First of all, no hunters whatsoever (save for the 37 hunters that join you when you break the siege), so I had to do quite a bit of sacrificing to up their number. No ancient ents either. The non-ellinia based creature dwellings provided some cannoneers (good), and barbarians, human archers, royal thorns, guardsmen and swordsmen (bad). There were some griffins and I tried using them, but to no avail - as soon as the stack dropped to 140 (which happened in a few rounds, even though I was using shield from the mages, resurrection and time back), karador just used hypnotize after all my units have moved (since I generally have a better initiative) and BB griffins, because even if I wait and dispel, he would just hypnotize them the next turn and it's BB again

So I had to tuck my tail between my legs, go level up and prepare a better party setup. One of the best tanks vs. physical damage dealers that are most of Karador's army is the Knight. If I find archdemons in demonis I won't pass on them either since as a high-level Paladin I have tolerance. Horsemen may also cut it, since they have 20% physical and 20% fire resistance. We'll see. I have to go to Demonis first, and Demonis is a big place with a lot of XP roaming there.

One thing's for certain. The double battles with the powerpuff girl army (as sector24 called it) are a piece of cake. Open with mass haste, Inquisitors build rage, dryads cast lullaby, the sprites and fairies kill the lvl 4 unit (the orc shaman in my case). The next turn everything waits, dryad summons thorns and then time back on the dryads. Now you have lullaby and thorns again. Then it's easy. The future double had some units left after both lullaby's (turn 5), so cast target on one of the summoned thorns and it's GG

BTW, Vilk, you may have been right about necro call. The good question is where did I put that spell and did I sell it by mistake. If I did, it's my noobish mistake then

EDIT: I lied in this post There are hunters in my game. There are 2.4k hunters in a tower in the absolute backside of Demonis Now who would look for them here, surrounded by red and black dragons?!

[DGDobrev]

Sorry for the double post... I hate to do it, but it has to be done

Karador bit the big one tonight. The party that dropped him consisted of:

Horsemen
Demons (furious skill, always retaliates, better than a griffin)
Inquisitors
Priests
Archmages

I put the priests and the inquisitors in one corner and used them to gradually reduce the numbers of the enemy. I may have accidentally sold necro call, but xeona's castle had that spell and it was pivotal in this battle. As soon as an enemy dies, use the spell and get yourself an ally. You don't really need to level it up a lot - a simple lvl 1 will do. At lvl 1 you get 2 bone dragons from the fallen stack, which is enough. You're not counting on the raised undead to win the battle for you - just to stop the crystal from summoning.

The silver rapier helps a lot here with it's 30% attack vs. undead and it's a rather common item. Good matches for this battle are: horsemen vs. black knights (good resistance) and demons vs. everything else. The priests and inquisitors help to drop the enemy stacks to non-lethal sizes and the battle is won

After everything is cleared out, poison cloud over the bone dragons, magic spring on them and get resurrecting. I left the poison cloud at lvl 1 (doing 20-40 poison damage for 10 attacks) and the bone dragons were taking only 3-6 damage from the cloud and giving back a lot of mana. Sweet.

There is one word of caution here. If you're going for the no losses win, you should be extra careful. If you lose a stack, as I did, and the crystal summons something from it, as it happened in my battle, it counts as a loss of the entire stack. That's how my losses count went up a whopping 432 up

[Calinda]

Gratz on your victory

[Metathron]

Can you use target and invisibility on the same unit?

[DGDobrev]

I doubt that, but I didn't use target at all in my battle. Besides, being a paladin I can't try that out in the same turn I used necro call mainly, because I accepted the battle in my own corner of the map. Blind was for the enemy necromancers and necro call was available as soon as their unit went down.

Probably blind would have been a good complement to the necro call. Keeping the enemy necros at bay will be a rather good asset to the final victory with minimum losses.

And of course - thanks, Calinda. I can see how a pure human party with the marshal's baton and a few other good artifacts can easily win the day and I can see how did you manage to do it so well and so early on in the game. I'm absolutely confident that this can be done with a paladin as well. Looking at your save game with ambrosius, your skill build-up isn't much different than mine at this level. The only severe difference is the fact that the warrior can hold his rage awhile longer

[Vilk]

In fact the rage decrease seems to be a percentage decrease so the higher it is the faster it decreases. If your rage is higher for a same elapse time you end with a higher rage but not much.

[BB Shockwave]

Things to remember when fighting him:

-If you manage to completely kill one of his stacks, he will ALWAYS use Necro call on the stack. This is a GOOD thing. You'd rather have him resurrect a unit (that can only act next round) then for him to pepper you with chain lightning, hypnotize your troops or cast mass curse...

-Ice Shards. Use them first round! The dumb Death Knight spent 5 rounds just getting to me, hacking at the crystals.

-Kill Spiders and Bone Dragons fast. Spiders are a pain at that size, and Dragons are simply easy to kill and they'll be blocking you.

Units I used:

-Royal Snakes (with Feona and Snake ring, even the 50% poison res. of the Undead won't matter...)
-Black Dragons (sneak around the map, in the mountains you're sure to find a place to recruit them, even if you cannot fight the guards, just lure them away).
-Shamen (your only source to heal your dragons, plus use totems + ice shards to block his troops/block bodies. They make surprisinglx)
-Griffin (your meatshields. Go for the Necromancers and Skeleton Archers with them, never mind the losses, they can be resurrected easily).
-Originally I use Evil Beholders as fifth, but they are mostly useless against undead. So, I switched to Black Unicrons. They deal extra 50% damage to undead, are relatively tough and fast, plus resistant to magic. You can get them on the Grey Wasteland from the 'evil' druid after you do his quest.

As someone said above, the key to no losses is to:

1: prevent Karador from casting damage/hypnotize spells
2: leave the crystal and one minor troop intact that you kill every round
3: use Rage Taking+Chargers to get mana back, and resurrect your troops. You need to have Rage Taking on a high level for this, for me it was +45 Rage each time used.

It will take a lot of rounds, and pray that the game doesn't freeze or you don't get a blackout during the battle!

[Elwin]

How you have healed dragon with dancing axes on undead? -.-

[iregev]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Sorry for the double post... I hate to do it, but it has to be done

Karador bit the big one tonight. The party that dropped him consisted of:

Horsemen
Demons (furious skill, always retaliates, better than a griffin)
Inquisitors
Priests
Archmages

I put the priests and the inquisitors in one corner and used them to gradually reduce the numbers of the enemy. I may have accidentally sold necro call, but xeona's castle had that spell and it was pivotal in this battle. As soon as an enemy dies, use the spell and get yourself an ally. You don't really need to level it up a lot - a simple lvl 1 will do. At lvl 1 you get 2 bone dragons from the fallen stack, which is enough. You're not counting on the raised undead to win the battle for you - just to stop the crystal from summoning.

The silver rapier helps a lot here with it's 30% attack vs. undead and it's a rather common item. Good matches for this battle are: horsemen vs. black knights (good resistance) and demons vs. everything else. The priests and inquisitors help to drop the enemy stacks to non-lethal sizes and the battle is won

After everything is cleared out, poison cloud over the bone dragons, magic spring on them and get resurrecting. I left the poison cloud at lvl 1 (doing 20-40 poison damage for 10 attacks) and the bone dragons were taking only 3-6 damage from the cloud and giving back a lot of mana. Sweet.

There is one word of caution here. If you're going for the no losses win, you should be extra careful. If you lose a stack, as I did, and the crystal summons something from it, as it happened in my battle, it counts as a loss of the entire stack. That's how my losses count went up a whopping 432 up

How can you resurrect Demons ?
Does the inquistor spell works on them ?

[Vilk]

It isn't the reverse? Ie Inquisitor refuse to resurrect Demons but you can with your resurrect spell? I don't remember well.

About Karador battle my last try took me many attempt before to succeed but it's weird I end in using an overall strategy close to my previous game.

Joined bellow a funny snapshot after few rounds. Notice where are the Death Knight, lead there by a common use of Ice Thorn and very mobile target with Red Dragon.
The second snaphot is some round later, still all army but Red Dragons at start place and Death Knights still wandering around the place.

This attempt had been a nightmare until I decided three things:

• Use Red Dragon as a very mobile target.
• Take care to have a unit with the higher initiative that cannot be hypnotized (Red Dragon instead of royal snake).
• Take care to always cancel a Karador negative spell on my units and keep my High Magic opportunities more for that.

Other more standard points was:

• Drayd with summoned Thorn to avoid Necro call.
• Reduce enemy stack before killing some.
• Use Ice Thorns to slow down enemy stacks.
• Use slow to control some stacks dangerous for my target.
• When killing a stack take care of initiative to be sure to have right after the death a Thorn ready to summon Thorn or a unit to walk apon the dead stack.
• Use few targets to reduce Necromancer stacks.