Best Class for Race-Based Games via Editor

[Helios]

Yeah, I figured it would be too much of a good thing, dainbramage.

I'm not sure which unit to Phantom! None of them have good mobility, and would likely need to be Teleported to be useful. I expect enormous losses against mass dragon stacks. I don't know how I'll survive Haas, if I make it that far.

Bone Dragons? I'll be nuking them with Fire Rain, if possible, or the super-wasteful Lightning if other non-Black Dragons are in the fight.

[Vulture]

Or just bring Cannoneers and/or Evil Beholders to fights with significant numbers of Bone Dragons. With Sight/Barrel Cannoneers will one-shot any stack. That's the good thing about them. They profit from the items, yet they aren't arrow users :>

[Helios]

Good, thanks, Vulture! I'm sure I'll be hard pressed for every decision with my spells and Mana later on.

[Helios]

Man, the Undeads are just tearing through the game. I've never gotten to Ellinia so quickly, and I've even won the Dragon Slayer Sword Tournament, cleared the Gremlins' Castle, and Mehgard, just for the heck of it. The Undeads would be great even without Dark Commander. Round 1: Dragons Arrows--Kill most dangerous stack in one shot, send the vamps out to draw the attention of nearly all the units. Even the Necromancers' Plague is very useful for dropping the health of all the enemies (except those immune units). I could probably hold my own in Demonis with this crew right now. It's funny, but I've brought the Black Knights into almost every battle until now that my leadership is high enough to get 11 Bone Dragons. The morale boost the BKs give the entire army was better than the few BDs I could field, even though I didn't even use the BKs that much, except for mopping up or against lots of plants and undeads.

As I'll probably be through the game by the end of next week, I've been thinking of ways to help out the all-Archer team and have a few editing ideas I'll toss out here that I don't think are too egregious. I haven't decided on implementing any of them yet.

A wife that grants one or more of the following (all to just Archers): +1 Speed; +1 Initiative; -10% Leadership requirements.

An added bonus to the Archer set that either gives +10 Defense or 100% Defense to Archers (though the Cannoneers would be pretty better tanks than all but dragons then), or a 100% HP bonus, so there will be fewer corpses on my end to try and resurrect when the mobs reach them. If I don't buff their defense, I may end up broke. :p

I'm not sure how to buff the Phoenix spell--even with outrageously high statistics, there's just one in the stack, and I can't foresee it surviving in the late game if 2000 Lake Fairies hit it. Or even 130+ Demons. I thought the Phoenix might make for a great distraction (can use cast Target on it?) for these stiffs so they won't have to rely on the Ice Ball to draw attention. (Need Lina for Ice Thorns instead, likely.)

I've also thought of buffing the Battle Cry spell to be mass on level 2, since this group will be pretty low in initiative otherwise and Order 3 will be hard to reach quickly with all the skills this group needs to augment them.

As for a typical game, the skills to get are going to be pretty hard for a Mage: I need 1 level of Tolerance for the Skellies; 3 levels of Bowmen Commander; 3 levels of Onslaught; and 3 Dark Commander couldn't hurt for the Skelly Atk and Init boost, but I doubt I'll have enough Might runes to get that on top of Onslaught. This is going to be very hard, if it is indeed possible. I don't want to edit the Attack or Damage of the Archers--I'm going to make sure there's at least one Elven Bow in my game.

Any thoughts?

[Vulture]

Undeads are the #1 team to clear early and mid-game as their damage stats are significantly stronger than those of any (or most) living creatures. But you will be put in your place in end game. Especially when it comes to Dragons and Undeads (Karador will be fun, I promise). The fact that Undeads don't like fire so much and they don't really have an abundance of HP or Defense will become a problem. Against other Undeads you'll end up cursing your playstyle. Geyser spammers like Dragon Wirz, Drrum and Reige will be a pita and impossible to restore losses after. But then again, you probably edited Hordes of your units into Kronberg, so...
I can't really argue with casualty games. The game is too easy if you restock. You can "just win" with whatever you want if you can play. No challenge there really.

About the archers. Well, I don't know if you can 'Target' a Phoenix but you can Target Phantoms and summons so I don't see why you couldn't. But it makes no sense since a Phoenix drops like a fly...

Giving Archers 100% Defense bonus breaks the game clearly. Archers have lower Defense because they are rangers and can attack from afar. If they were as durable in close quarters as melees are nobody would ever use a melee unit...
"Distance is the only defense I need."

[Helios]

Yes, there will bound to be casualties later. I lost over 1,000 units in the second Double fight already. I don't know if I can just win with the Archers or Outcasts, even if I put hordes of them into the game.

And yes, the Defense boost is probably too much. I just don't know how to keep the distance as defense for more than two turns. I guess I could try Higher Magic with level 3 Slow repeatedly. I'm going to tweak around with a super-buffed Ancient Phoenix and see if I can get it to behave more like a tank (doubtful).

[Helios]

Actually, I think I can win with the Archers with 90% of the battles not incurring losses (my general approach to the game). I'm only going to boost the Phoenix spell so that it is a tank, not a damage dealer--plus, I don't think it will break the game later, as I'm testing on the fly with my Warrior in the Land of the Dead--it's fiery attack will be useless against dragons, and even giving it 5000 HP won't make it survive more than 1 round if some enemy stacks aren't greatly reduced.

I'm going to mod Feanora into the "Archer Wife": giving +1 to Initiative and Morale of Archers. And I'm going to add +5 Defense to the Archer Set, as an added bonus. (Beer makes people feel impervious enough to the elements to go shirtless at football games in sub-zero weather, so I find it a bit funny to add that bonus to the set )

The Undeads are insanely powerful. I just beat Karador in five turns, though his army sucked much more than last game, as he didn't have any stacks of 1000+ Skeletons, and only one stack of Black Knights. I'll be done with the game in a few days at this rate. Using the "Animate Dead spell Mod" has made things too easy, I think, removing the Undeads' weakness of not being able to resurrect them. I didn't lose any units to Karador. For some reason, it only recorded one of my screenshots of the battle when I was ressing.

[Vulture]

Gee, that's insane amounts of ldr. And oh, you used the easy win mod ? Meh... That's not real undead play but well, as long as it floats your ducky xD Undeads are incredibly strong by default. With resurrection it really is too easy.

[Helios]

Yes, it's really easy. Those two batons really helped me out for the leadership, plus I was on level 26 or 27 when I fought him. (I invested in maxing Learning and KoL early on.) I eventually run out of Mana to ress all my Undeads--I used the mod to try and keep my losses low as I build up to an eventual run at no losses to polish my skills at those techniques and not have to just buy hordes of Skelly Archers.

I still had a hard time with Baal. All those Demons with Domination beat the hell out of my Vamps. And I started getting careless, sending my two Vamps in with level 2 Tactics to attack in the first round before the enemy moves. I got a rude wake-up call in the start of Haas' Labyrinth as one of his heroes killed both Vamp stacks in one turn. I had been running wild that my leadership so high that I was stronger than most of my enemies until Demonis.

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Also, I have some interesting information I keep forgetting to share on level-up attribute choices. When I started my current game, I began 7 games as a Warrior, and used the cheat code to level them all up to level 30, selecting leadership for the first time with each different character at different levels four times. Shockingly, every game that I waited to take leadership with the Warrior past level 6 (480 leadership) my base stats of Atk/Def/Int in all eight games always ended up worse or the same than if I waited and didn't take leadership until later. (Also, as one would expect, my base stats were worse if I took leadership at level 2.) The only higher stats I got if I waited on leadership was more Mana and Rage at the cost of usually Atk, and usually Int and a point of Defense.

I'll try the same with the other classes when I get to them, but I was shocked that taking leadership so early gave me better or the same Atk/Def/Int every single time I tried taking it at level 6. Maybe it's just a quirk of my games, but I think 7 games with attempting 4 different intervals for each gives enough data to possibly point out a trend. Or maybe it's nothing, and just a big coincidence.

[Vulture]

Well that's why I take it past lvl 6 only. I've heard of that years ago and since then sticked by that. It made sense when I read it but I forgot what it exactly was about and what the reason is. I just go by math. ldr below 400 is just inferior to ANYthing you can be offered except Def ^^