Surviving on Impossible

[Zhuangzi]

Fresh my my successes on Hard as a Paladin and Mage, I am ready to try Impossible for the first time. Firstly, I feel certain that playing as a Mage MUST be easier than as a Paladin and especially a Warrior, so I'm going with the Mage. Why? Because as a Mage you can limit your troop losses moreso than as a Warrior. I know Warriors get higher leadership (i.e. more troops) and faster ragebox progression, but I feel that this isn't as good as the Mage's access to the Magic tree (including Higher Magic) and Alchemy.

Plus, rage progression is slowed significantly on Impossible. I think it's 70% of the normal rate of progression. But it says nothing about spell progression, i.e. Mage is suited to Impossible.

Okay, looking at the starting screen, it seems that the biggest issue the Mage (and any class) will face on Impossible is that of money. You only get 60% of the money you would get on Medium, which I am guessing will be a serious issue as the game goes on. I just about managed to deal with money problems on Hard, but 60% sounds very low.

The other difference is listed as Enemy Strength on the startup screen. I take this to mean the size of enemy stacks, but I'm not sure this is the case. If Enemy Strength on Impossible is 170%, this should mean that the stacks of enemies are 1.7 times bigger, correct. Well, in actual fact it seems to relate to the amount of experience needed to gain a level. I noticed that on Medium you need 100 xp to reach level 2, and on Impossible you need 170. So is this what is meant by Enemy Strength? Or are the stacks bigger as well?

Those of you who have beaten the game on Impossible (i.e. Russian guys), I am looking for a few tips. I realise that I need to develop a strategy that revolves around NOT losing troops, but how do you do this early in the game? I know Demon Portals are great but I won't have access to them for ages, will I?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Zhuangzi]

Okay I worked it out myself. You do need 1.7 times more experience to level up AND the stacks are 1.7 times bigger, but this actually makes sense as it means that there is still about enough enemies in the game to reach level 30.

I am in Greenwort still, level 2. My team consists of Archers, Priests, Horsemen (a whopping two of them), Peasants and Swordsmen. I don't think there are any other ranged units available this early? Fireball is very useful for a Mage early on, but mana regeneration is SO SLOW. So I put a point into that when I could, as well as Scouting 1 and Distortion 1. Given that money is going to be very tight, I have decided that Trading 3 and Trophies 3 are going to be early priorities. I have always loved Trading and I refuse to sell anything until I have Trading 3, and I figured Trophies will help me out too. But I have to avoid getting anything killed. Maybe Stone Skin can help early on...

[leo]

I have also only just started playing with a Mage at Impossible difficulty (for exactly the same reasons you've listed in the first post on the thread).

Based on my own prior experience of Mage on Hard, I think the key is going to be SACRIFICE.

I know based on some of the other threads on sacrifice that you're not a big fan of the spell, but take it from another Mage-Hard player, it is an awesome cost saver early-mid game and lets you keep your favourite units w/o excess travel.

Now, some people have used ancient vampires + sacrifice + letting them regain numbers, but I am not a fan of mixing undead with my troops.

The stategy that I used early and mid game was to get cyclops or giants, monitor your sacrifice strength to be just under the health of 1 cyclops/giant (if you have peacefulness, thats even better - you can increase health by 40% at its level 1 before casting sacrifice). Just cast the spell before close of battle - basically ensuring that you don't lose the cyclops/giant to enemy attack

Final point on the trick is if you have Orc Shamans (probably the most strategic unit in the game) hopefully in the Orc Embassy at Freedom Isles and giants, you can actually heal the giants enough using the magic axes for another go at the sacrifice spell. This is a great alternative to maxing out the healing spell (I prefer to not waste a spell turn on heal). It'll only work with giants though as Cyclops cannot be healed that way..

Btw, I will be looking out at this thread for swapping strategy being in the same boat as you .

[Zhuangzi]

Awesome stuff Leo - this will be fun. You are right about me being hesitant to use Sacrifice, I completely missed it in my first game and in the second I tried it once, and sent my troop into a murderous rage for being over cap. So I don't know how to use it effectively. But I will try when I find the spell.

Things are going very smoothly so far (day 2 - level 4). My strategy at the moment is very simple. Three ranged units (Thorn Hunter, Archer, Priest), a stack of Swordsmen who usually do nothing but occasionally deliver a coup de grace, and most importantly a stack of 4 Horsemen. Horsemen are VERY strong in the early game which is probably why they aren't really supposed to be available, except by the trick of getting past the king's tent guard that someone worked out weeks ago. I think there are 13 Horsemen in the tent so I need to make sure I don't lose any.

I am still spamming Fireball at this early stage. This is a great strength of the Mage, who starts with Fireball without access to Chaos magic as yet. All I do is fireball whatever looks weakest (it's great on Thorns - they take double damage from fire) and then attack strategically with the Horsemen. And the Priests are perfect for Blessing/Healing the Horsemen. With this strategy, and only taking on enemies that are listed as Slightly Weaker or below, I have virtually ZERO losses. Sometimes against a somewhat harder enemy I will lose a couple of archers or a swordsman. And I am up to 25,000 gold already which is a lot for this early stage. There is plenty to do in Darion while you are still weak, and I know the continent so well now that I know which enemy stacks and locations are too hard for me.

This is great fun.

[ThyrsaM]

Great story again, keep us posted.

I think I still don't know how sacrifice works, will have to look into it when I finally get the spell.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Awesome stuff Leo - this will be fun. You are right about me being hesitant to use Sacrifice, I completely missed it in my first game and in the second I tried it once, and sent my troop into a murderous rage for being over cap. So I don't know how to use it effectively. But I will try when I find the spell.

Things are going very smoothly so far (day 2 - level 4). My strategy at the moment is very simple. Three ranged units (Thorn Hunter, Archer, Priest), a stack of Swordsmen who usually do nothing but occasionally deliver a coup de grace, and most importantly a stack of 4 Horsemen. Horsemen are VERY strong in the early game which is probably why they aren't really supposed to be available, except by the trick of getting past the king's tent guard that someone worked out weeks ago. I think there are 13 Horsemen in the tent so I need to make sure I don't lose any.

I am still spamming Fireball at this early stage. This is a great strength of the Mage, who starts with Fireball without access to Chaos magic as yet. All I do is fireball whatever looks weakest (it's great on Thorns - they take double damage from fire) and then attack strategically with the Horsemen. And the Priests are perfect for Blessing/Healing the Horsemen. With this strategy, and only taking on enemies that are listed as Slightly Weaker or below, I have virtually ZERO losses. Sometimes against a somewhat harder enemy I will lose a couple of archers or a swordsman. And I am up to 25,000 gold already which is a lot for this early stage. There is plenty to do in Darion while you are still weak, and I know the continent so well now that I know which enemy stacks and locations are too hard for me.

This is great fun.

I'm about to start a thread cause i'm going out of my mind here without having a resurrect or hypnosis spell at LEVEL 22!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't read all your threads of course but are you aware of the hypnotise/sacrifice of enemy units to replace your own tactic? I'll assume you have but basically you hypnotise one of the enemy then sacrifice it to replace your own lost units as you go along

[Shd]

About Hypnosis...

Don't look only at scrolls sellers. There are artifact which gives you hypnosis when you will win "keepers". An that artifact is not "rare" (especially if your have lvl 22 ).

[leo]

As it turns out, I never got the hypotize spell in the last run of the game at Mage-Hard, so I am not sure if it works in combination with sacrifice.

I did however use Druids to convert animal troops using their tame ability, and then sacrificed them for the double joy it provided. There were three drawbacks though:
- I could only convert low level creatures (I think 1-2 or 1-3) and I had to thin the troop before I could convert it
- The ability works only on animals and that too not all creatures with that "paw" sign indicating animals
- The druids soon turned out to be not very sturdy survivors, and for the most time I was resurrecting the druids themselves. Basically they outlived their utility.

On this note, the beholder hypotise and the demoness charmed creatures did not allow me to sacrifice them. If someone has another experience, do share - maybe I was doing something wrong.

Sorry, I don't mean this to become a sacrifice thread. I think Zhuangzi has a great thread going for Mage-Impossible game experience, and I am keen to contribute to it, and learn from it.

[Namel]

I have absolutely no experience with difficulty beyond normal but here is couple strategies that might work.

Cursed ghost (normal ghosts might work too) If you have stack of 10+ cursed ghosts they suck enemy life and generate more ghosts. In normal I quickly make more and more ghosts never needing to buy any more. If you go over leadership limit you will lose control but at least for me they never turn hostile to me. I think units only go hostile if they are a lot over leadership. If you got sacrifice you can use that whenever stack goes over limit and gain control and replace some died units. Or just use about 80% of max strenght of ghosts and keep rest in reserve.

Another tactic that should make at least start easy. As soon as you are able to go kill turtle. That gives you extra leadership for rank. After that you can go to pirate islands, buy boat and sail around all the islands and gather leadership. money and scrolls. After that come back to finish normal stuff. Should cut your losses a lot since you have very strong army.

[travcm]

It seems to me like wasting runes on trading and trophies will just weaken you in the long run. I had millions of extra gold (w/o any points in trading or trophies until the end, when I had more mind runes than I could spend) on impossible with my Mage. If you are real concerned about money, you can just incorporate Marauders into your army.

Your starting army should probably be Archers, Priests, Inquisitors (if available)/Evil Eyes, Horsemen/Royal Snakes, Archmagi.

The problem with impossible is that you will have to spend a ton of time trying to sneak by everything to pick up rewards before you have a chance at killing it. Technically, you can get Demon Gate as soon as you have access to the Dwarf area (by sneaking around in the Demon world).

One big piece of advice is to save most of the easy, low exp battles for later on when you have the skull (essential) and other items that are activated by # of battles won.