Wow, just wow. NO Demonesses in my game.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by onepiece

@Ckdamascus; I learned that in AP and boosted all my units critical (dagger of judgment + shadow cloak/ Max Prayer skill; critical boosting items for particular races/units, etc.)

The only problem is that by having 95-100% critical chance, Ancient vampire are nearly invincible (since they cannot be hit by critical) so I had to kill them by spells or wait until a negative effect lowered my critical chance.

Sheep them.

[Metathron]

Oh really? Sheep works then? I assumed that sheep would keep an attribute like death's deception much like they keep their defense/hit points/resistances (I guess). Though it would be funny to see a sheep swerve from a crit.

Also, attacking ancient vampires with special attacks like the elves' double shot or the executioners' execution cannot trigger a critical and is therefore a safe bet.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by Metathron

Oh really? Sheep works then? I assumed that sheep would keep an attribute like death's deception much like they keep their defense/hit points/resistances (I guess). Though it would be funny to see a sheep swerve from a crit.

Also, attacking ancient vampires with special attacks like the elves' double shot or the executioners' execution cannot trigger a critical and is therefore a safe bet.

Yeah, but where is the fun in that? I want some REAL damage. Haha.

One thing I hate about sheep is that they automatically lose all debuffs and buffs when they transform into a sheep.

So, if I am using the fire/poison/helplessness/pygmy combo on someone, and then my rune mage sheeps him on attack... he loses all those debuffs.

[onepiece]

@Ckdamascus; I didn't have sheep at that moment (or not enough mana) so all I could do was wait

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by onepiece

@Ckdamascus; I didn't have sheep at that moment (or not enough mana) so all I could do was wait

Sheep is really mana expensive too.

Yeah, you have to goad them into going back into bat form and/or just disarm most of your critical hit buffing items.

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Sure, but Demons are soft. They die verrry easily due to low HP. They are excellent as disposable units. So, they are fairly ideal for phantoming and dropping them into enemy lines.

Umm... sorry? Demons have like, 200 HP. That's among the highest of Level 4 units. Only Royal Thorns and Royal Griffins exceed those. They also do insane damage against Level 1-3 units, always retaliate... Granted, they have no Physical Res. but then, you can cast Stoneskin.

Maybe things were really different in The Legend, but, they have 766 HP, they also have 66 native defense, the 3rd highest in the game, (black dragon has 70, cyclops has 67), 20% physical resistance, which is nearly the 2nd highest in the game, not counting ghosts.

Erm, Paladins and Knights have 30%, a lot of units have 20% (even Stone Spiders and Swordsmen). They had 666 HP in Legend (demons have a fixation for that number). And yeah, they are tough to kill physically, but if you attack them with magic, they die easily as their HP is low for Level 5. That said, I still want to try and use them - in AP on my first walkthrough I gained one Archdemon with a Scroll of Summon Giant very early on, and the halving ability was really, really sweet.

Phoenixes are slower. Archdemons are the fastest unit in the game. If the enemy stack is not ungodly powerful, I will typically stoneskin the Archdemon, position the Archdemon in enemy lines, and summon a phoenix next to him.

Does Restoration only remove negative effects from them? Not positives?

I don't see the point in hitting and running. He is NOT a no retaliation unit. This is not HOMMIII. He burns an enemy counter attack so my Phoenix can hit for free and hit the adjacent enemies for free. (since now the enemy is really strong, and I cannot buff the Phoenix with defensive spells, their counterattacks would hurt the phoenix tremendously).

Well, it's your game... IMHO, the Demon is a better blocker due to the unlimited retaliation and because you can have larger numbers (more HP) of him. I'd use the Archdemon to warp around and take out bothersome units.

Even the Demoness has a better damage per leadership than the Demon (against level 4s and level 5s).

Sure, that is because the Demoness is a slow tank creature (with some interesting abilities). Without tactics, you will spend several rounds getting her into the fray, while Demons have Running. I always easily kill enemy Demonesses - just Magic Shackle them, and they are as dangerous now as Peasants. You can pick them off from afar or wait until they move and kill them with no-ret. units. Their main strenght lies in the teleportation and the +1 cell range attack, take that away and they are not that strong.

However, the Demons are extremely tenacious due to infinite retaliations. So, no problem. My Demons summon other, disposable Demons for me.

In AP I used Demonolgists for a while, so I have seen both them and Executioners 'at work'. The special fear ability is neat, but as you say, the summoning can be more usefull. Especially if your other summoners are Demonologists - since you cannot control what they summon.

Yes, Divine Armor works on Archdemons and Demons... probably the entire Demonic race.

That's good to know. In the Legend, my Mage hardly learned any Order Magic at all, as Bless, God Armour, Resurrection, Healing do not work at all on my Undead troops (or even damage them).

Another benefit of the Archdemon as a tank is his ability to purge negative effects. You have no idea how often I got pissed when my Super Troll Stack would burn away a troll every round because he got hit by some stupid catapult.

That is a neat ability, with the Witch Hunter and Heavenly Guardians too. I defeated Ragni easily in AP because every round, she cast Hypnotize on my Heavenly Guardians... And Gremlin Towers like to do this too. They never learn...

Curiously enough, if the 3rd best defensive unit, with the 2nd highest physical resist unit isn't a good enough tank, what is? Not everyone wants to go Humans (Paladins and Knights probably being the better tanks at 30% physical resist and SCALING defense that goes up to... similar levels as the Archdemon after quite a few hits. )

(Cyclops cannot be revived, short of Turn Back Time level 3, Black Dragon cannot be pre-buffed, so he will definitely take losses against insane physical stacks). Paladins have 30% physical resists.

Cursed Ghosts are pretty good tanks - in my Undead game walkthrough, I used them often. Just cast Stoneskin and send them into the fray. Granted, against creatures with fire/magic attacks, they fall like flies. And best of all, they resurrect themselves. Though they can be a bother, when doing no-loss, as they often over-drain themselves and then you have to hit them with calculated spells like Healing to whittle them down to your exact Leadership. Also, it is quite annoying that you cannot resurrect them if they are completely killed off. (Though I'm glad this means the enemy cannot raise them with his necromancers either).

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Sheep is really mana expensive too.

Yeah, you have to goad them into going back into bat form and/or just disarm most of your critical hit buffing items.

I found that the enemy almost always transforms them into bat if you place a unit they can reach in that form in their way. Me using undeads myself, naturally sent my ghosts out to be bait every time - and vampire bats without life drain are easy to get rid off.

Doom is incredibly usefull against things like Death Knights, who otherwise take a long-long time to kill and get stronger as the battle goes on.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

Umm... sorry? Demons have like, 200 HP. That's among the highest of Level 4 units. Only Royal Thorns and Royal Griffins exceed those. They also do insane damage against Level 1-3 units, always retaliate... Granted, they have no Physical Res. but then, you can cast Stoneskin.

Again, I think the Impossible difficulty is the difference here. I still end up losing at least one Demon as the battle progresses even with both Divine or Stone Skin. It might be that I didn't want to keep baby sitting them by constantly casting Divine Armor, whereas my Archdemon has nearly 130 defense (Belt of the Victor) and doesn't need Divine Armor after the 2nd round.

Don't forget that Demons are harder to resurrect... all Demons and Undead are since I cannot rely on mass-healing of the Paladin. So the more of them you put on in the field, the more at risk you are of wasting a lot of rounds recovering or sucking up double Phantoms on rune mages.

The Demons go back to par with the Orc Veterans with Domination (+30% against 1-3). Again, they are excellent disposable units.

That said, here is an even better strategy that I ended up using instead.

Phantom!

1) Phantom Demon (level 2 if I want to do Ancient Phoenix, level 3 otherwise)
2) Archdemon teleports next to the Phantom Demon
3) Pygmy the teleported enemy and slam the crap out of him. (although in a lot of my matches, it ended up that my rune mage could sheep him a lot of the time too, making my Pygmy wasted)
4) Rune mages either summon or hit, demonologists either summon (if it will place it next to the enemy line too) or hit too.
5) Real Demon either hits or summons
6) Archdemon hits twice in a row. (might skin or pygmy the enemy if I decided to cast Ancient Phoenix in the previous round instead)

So basically the Phantom Demon causes all the havoc now by summoning again right in their line. So I don't really have to buff him.

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

Erm, Paladins and Knights have 30%, a lot of units have 20% (even Stone Spiders and Swordsmen). They had 666 HP in Legend (demons have a fixation for that number). And yeah, they are tough to kill physically, but if you attack them with magic, they die easily as their HP is low for Level 5. That said, I still want to try and use them - in AP on my first walkthrough I gained one Archdemon with a Scroll of Summon Giant very early on, and the halving ability was really, really sweet.

Yeah, ignoring Ghosts (50% phys), as a common unit, 20% is the 2nd highest. Swordsmen and Stone spiders don't have NEARLY as much defense and HP.

Divine Armor, ghost armor, mirror shield, chrown of chaos, diploma of antimagic... 766 HP still too low? Higher than Cyclops. Nearly the same as Troll. Dragons beat him and so does Giant. I'd hardly call him on the low scale though. Cyclops has it pretty low at 650 and is unhealable, making the Cyclops more vulnerable to magic. Not to mention, how are you not rolling around with a Crown of Chaos in this Orc infested campaign?

Best part is, if you field demonologists with them, you phantom the demonologists, and use thread of life so even if you lose or get close to losing one, you can damage AND heal in one disposable unit.

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

Does Restoration only remove negative effects from them? Not positives?

Yeah. Unlike the crappy Assassin unit.

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

Well, it's your game... IMHO, the Demon is a better blocker due to the unlimited retaliation and because you can have larger numbers (more HP) of him. I'd use the Archdemon to warp around and take out bothersome units.

Sure, that is because the Demoness is a slow tank creature (with some interesting abilities). Without tactics, you will spend several rounds getting her into the fray, while Demons have Running. I always easily kill enemy Demonesses - just Magic Shackle them, and they are as dangerous now as Peasants. You can pick them off from afar or wait until they move and kill them with no-ret. units. Their main strenght lies in the teleportation and the +1 cell range attack, take that away and they are not that strong.

I did end up using Demons, but only as a Phantom. Sped up battle a bit thanks to unlimited retaliation.

How the AI uses the enemy isn't any indication of how strong a unit is when used on your side. They can't buff the demonesses like I can.

If the enemy was weaker, I would end up going on the offensive instead. First round, Pygmy an enemy (who has two cells exposed). Sending my Archdemon to the enemy, teleporting my Demonesses, NOT my demons, against the enemy who I just burned a counterattack to. Would basically always kill a stack or cripple it.

I hit nearly 100% critical hit with the demonesses (my build relied on near 100% criticals for all the demons), so they would easily hit their max damage amount, so it is a free bless + doom in one.

Against Level 1-3 units, Demons are probably a little better for aggregate damage due to unlimited retaliation with the bonus gives you a much better aggregate.

Against Level 4-5 units, especially with Agvares (basically +26 attack rating to demonesses), Demonesses are MUCH MUCH MUCH better damage wise since their attack rating ends up being higher than the Demons PLUS they do more damage per leadership, so their raw damage is already higher.

Since I nearly crit with all of them, I will use their MAX damage to calculate raw damage.

Demoness does 18 damage. 18/160 = 0.1125
Demon does 27/300 = 0.09

So, if demon does domination, they do 0.09*1.3 more. However... with Agvares... the story is different.

So that is a +24 Attack rating advantage over the Demons. 52 Attack - 30 Attack 22 is 22*0.03333 ~ 0.73 or 1.73X more damage over the demons.
I say this statistically, not from "how I feel".

However, this is ONLY true if the Demons cannot achieve +60 Attack over the enemy defense. If the Demons can, then you want them to hit the Level 1-3 units for Domination and the now moot point of 3X damage.

Otherwise the Demonesses will outdamage the Demons in one to one combat. Demons will do more aggregate damage if in the middle of a fight, but will probably take too much baby sitting and take losses (more maintenance). Phantom Demon solves this easily

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

In AP I used Demonolgists for a while, so I have seen both them and Executioners 'at work'. The special fear ability is neat, but as you say, the summoning can be more usefull. Especially if your other summoners are Demonologists - since you cannot control what they summon.

If the enemy is annoying, I would just keep phantoming and re-summoning. I would then use the Archdemon to quickly hit things, then Thread of Life to restore them. The higher defense rating helps a ton. Also the Archdemons can bring down the tenacious physical resistant enemies with Halving once their numbers get low enough.

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

That's good to know. In the Legend, my Mage hardly learned any Order Magic at all, as Bless, God Armour, Resurrection, Healing do not work at all on my Undead troops (or even damage them).



That is a neat ability, with the Witch Hunter and Heavenly Guardians too. I defeated Ragni easily in AP because every round, she cast Hypnotize on my Heavenly Guardians... And Gremlin Towers like to do this too. They never learn...



Cursed Ghosts are pretty good tanks - in my Undead game walkthrough, I used them often. Just cast Stoneskin and send them into the fray. Granted, against creatures with fire/magic attacks, they fall like flies. And best of all, they resurrect themselves. Though they can be a bother, when doing no-loss, as they often over-drain themselves and then you have to hit them with calculated spells like Healing to whittle them down to your exact Leadership. Also, it is quite annoying that you cannot resurrect them if they are completely killed off. (Though I'm glad this means the enemy cannot raise them with his necromancers either).



I found that the enemy almost always transforms them into bat if you place a unit they can reach in that form in their way. Me using undeads myself, naturally sent my ghosts out to be bait every time - and vampire bats without life drain are easy to get rid off.

Doom is incredibly usefull against things like Death Knights, who otherwise take a long-long time to kill and get stronger as the battle goes on.

Yeah, the AI will try to hit the nearest enemy, so putting them just out of reach of bat form will most likely trigger that.

Well, most of the time, my units already have 100% crit or close enough to it that Pygmy makes 2000% more sense.

Pygmy Level 3: 40% attack rating reduction and effectively 66% more damage for 20 mana.

Vs... doing 50% more damage and max damage.

Pygmy does both defense and offensive in one.

[BB Shockwave]

You know, when I recruited Agraves I was checking his ability and was like "WOW!" - then it turns out he can only command quite crappy units (well, except for Assassins). I wish he could command Demons instead... that'd make him more usefull.

Is there some item that grants +1 speed to Demons? It'd be quite usefull.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

You know, when I recruited Agraves I was checking his ability and was like "WOW!" - then it turns out he can only command quite crappy units (well, except for Assassins). I wish he could command Demons instead... that'd make him more usefull.

Is there some item that grants +1 speed to Demons? It'd be quite usefull.

Only items I can think of is the metamorphic axel and belt of the victor.

I'm actually working on a new build where it won't quite matter. Or in short, I think I found a useful purpose for the paladin class.

Dryads
Forest Fairy
Lake Fairy
Paladin
Demoness

Paladins will revive the other non-demon units, Demoness will get resurrected by Resurrection Level 3 Paladin Skill.

It won't help for No-Loss, but it makes for smoother play. I can just teleport the Demonesses over and not worry about restoring them.

Paladin's Mind Tree Resurrection ability helps on Prayer too, and Holy Armor might save my fairies from catastrophic losses.

I haven't fully fleshed it all out. I might even swap in another unit to replace a fairy unit.