This game forces you to change your strategy!

[Zhuangzi]

...on Hard it does at least. How many games have I played where I genuinely had to think of new ways of doing things over the course of a game. Not many. Not many at all. An example:

After cleaning out most of Kordar and heading over the Elinia, I had a serious cash flow issue. My bank balance kept going down, from its high point at about 300,000 gold to as little as 33,000 at one stage. I was worried. I thought I might actually *lose* the game due to lack of money. This is a real issue on Hard because there are more enemies and less money. It's not enough to win fights, you need to win without losing many troops.

Prior to this I had been using an entirely dwarven team for some cool morale modifiers. I think I had a team of Cannoneers, Giants, Alchemists, Dwarves and Miners (like 700 of them). A pretty tough team but basically a direct fire team. They kept taking a pounding from all the nasty demons in the Underground Sea etc.

So I needed a new strategy.

I thought - 'how can I assemble a team that DOESN'T lose this many troops?'

This is where you have to use what is available to you. I had a couple of artifacts that I hadn't used at all - Anya's ring (which gives insane bonuses to 'she fighters') and a dwarven telescope thing (which gives 100% hit bonus to archers).

My new team looks like this, with about 15,000 leadership:

80 Horsemen
400 Swordsmen
210 Elven Archers
400 Archers
1800 Sprites

Sprites? WTF? Well, they're 'she fighters' which means that Anya's ring gives them +3 Attack, Defense, Morale and one other thing. They cost 20 gold each which means you can have a stack of 1800 at my level.

Then I made use of two spells I had rarely used before, Dragon Arrows and Phantom. At level 3, Phantom creates a stack 43% the size of the original that lasts for three turns. I had been having some luck with phantom horsemen (about 30 in a stack) but even better is the phantom stack of 800 Sprites. So you move the sprite forward a bit, create the phantom stack which runs straight toward the enemy. Meanwhile, you use sniper to take out the biggest threat on turn 1 with your elven archers, and on turn 2 you give him Dragon Arrows. Turn 3 you create another phantom stack of 800 Sprites, and turn 4 you do the same again. So you are fighting with Phantom troops and sniping with arrows at the same time. Meanwhile the original Sprites, plus the Swordsmen and Horsemen are hanging back waiting for an easy kill.

What do you think of my new strategy?