What are your favorite troops?

[Ryastar]

Wow, this thread has suddenly become VERY popular. I just gotta put my two cents in.

First, black dragons are ALWAYS to be found in the land of the dead, not too far from Karador's castle, amongst all the ridges an so on. Red dragons are also available in the same area, though not the same building, and green dragons are available in a shop only accessible from the water in the land of a thousand rivers.

As for arch-demons, I don't believe there is any garunteed location for hiring them. You'll have to check everywhere in demonis, and if you have no luck there, there is a small chance that you might find them in Haas' labyrinth. I know that i have seen demon-aligned shops there, and you might get lucky.

Final thing, Haas has a lot of spells he is fond of using, not just hypnosis (in fact, in three completed games, I have never seen him cast it). In my experience, he mostly casts armageddon, sheep and pygmy, the latter two usually on whatever stack you need the most.

[Goat]

One unit I really like that hasn't been mentioned are cyclops. They have high leadership and slow, but with an artifact that gives my slowest unit +1 to speed they are great. I walk them out into the middle of combat and because of their high damage resistance I very, very rarely lose one.

They are hard to find so I have to get more with sacrifice, but that is the only problem with them.

[Ryastar]

Their initiative is also TERRIBLE, meaning they pretty much always go last. That's why I don't use them, seeing as my strategy is that a dead enemy can't do any damage, so if you kill them fast you don't need to worry very much amount the damage they deal you.

[Vendetta]

Best Units:

King Snakes
Dryads
Orc Shaman
Necromancer
Ancient Ghosts - endless reserves
Seketon Archers

Worst units:
Zombies
Peasants
Plants
Archmage - wtf? Lvl 4?
Hyenas

Dragons: Red Dragon

[DarkLink64]

My favorite unit is Peasants. They rulz!
Red dragon ^^

[Falaris]

In my recent game (and so far only, starting again now) I didn't GET demons. There was no huts selling the (high level melee) demons. :S Other than that they seem kind of decent. However, favourite troops vary a lot; usually there's a combination.

1: Inquisitor. You need the inquisition ability so you can turn regular priests into inquisitors to use them all game. Three things to note:
Its resurrection ability is different from the spell. They won't resurrect demons, BUT they will resurrect level 5 creatures. Including red dragons (but not black as they're immune to magic.).
Gift, a relatively common order spell, will at level 1 recharge the resurrection ability and you'll get that WAY earlier than resurrect, I figure, especially resurrect level 3 (if ever).
Best for warriors that does not have vast intellect to power up their own resurrection spells.

2: Horsemen are good. Knights are stronger, sort of, BUT too slow.

3: Demonesses has EXTREMELY powerful abilities.

Horsemen and inquisitors are the only units I've stuck with throughout the game.

Tactical use:
1: Army of horsemen and demonesses + whatever.
2: Create phantom copy of horsemen.
3: Use the demoness' swap places so the phantom copies trade places with an enemy support / ranged unit you need to kill.
4: Zerg the ranged unit while your enemy keeps busy with the phantom menace.
5: Until phantoms are gone, hit and run / ranged bombardment.

Kngihts can work better than horsemen - a unit that WILL be swamped will have plenty of use for the circle attack - but I find knights too slow to be any real use.

Early on I really liked vampires. Eventually, though, they didn't have the stamina, strength, or numbers, to remain competitive.

[Zonc]

Originally Posted by Falaris

1: Inquisitor. (...)
Gift, a relatively common order spell, will at level 1 recharge the resurrection ability and you'll get that WAY earlier than resurrect, I figure, especially resurrect level 3 (if ever).
Best for warriors that does not have vast intellect to power up their own resurrection spells.

The problem is, that you spend both Inquisitior turn and your own spell. Plus, to have spell power comparable to the one from spell book, you'll need at least level 20. At some point they are not worth it. And if you're not paladin they're hard to get (limited numbers)

2: Horsemen are good. Knights are stronger, sort of, BUT too slow.

Horseman have no attractive abilities (no retaliation, furious, life drain, etc.). They are solid but nothing more. Knights are slow ase you said, no running = no use.

3: Demonesses has EXTREMELY powerful abilities.

Swap works only with one unit, so if enemy has like 5 or more ranged it won't make any difference. And you could spend this turn on making real damage with ranged unit.

Early on I really liked vampires. Eventually, though, they didn't have the stamina, strength, or numbers, to remain competitive.

It's true, but life drain compensates all these drawbacks. Just make sure they don't take beating from 4 enemy units at a time. Plus they're fast, good initiative, no retaliation AND they benefit from some special features: zombie form Rina (+1 speed and initiative) Dark Commader skill (+ 7 attack and +2 initiative). I use vampires and have lost very small number through the whole game (<10)

[Tosh]

Ive played through this game twice once with mage on normal difficulty and once with warrior in hard mode.

So far my conclusions are:
bears are nice, they have a nice damage output, crit often and dont die that easy, decent tanks imho
royal snakes, probably the best unit overall works wonders with the slow spell due to their no retaliation attack
necros high initiative, a nice basic attack and decent talents makes them prolly the best caster in the game
sea dogs great unit for a while but they loose their edge later, replaced them with cerberuses, more durable, good speed and a lovely basic attack (use them with timeback)

[Elwin]

Originally Posted by Ryastar

and green dragons are available in a shop only accessible from the water in the land of a thousand rivers.

Where exactly ? I sailed around the coast and islands there couln't find it. Found pirate hut, lighthouse and elven underground with many emerald dr but enemies, no any dwelling. Altough i have them (because i sneaked to demonis earlier and had them available after doing quest with stealing dragon egg from ultrax) and can use sacrifice to get more, would be nice to buy some if they are available nearby instead of playing with sacrifice ( already have to do that much with royal snakes due to lack of any places to buy more, and i had no inquisitors untill i beat Emenem, while there was only like 20 of them so not much, also got sacrifice just here in grey wastelands)


And about the topic : I didnt finsh game yet so havent tested all but so far my favourite setup is :
royal snakes - thats obvious
emerald dragons - mana, tank
giant - even better tank than emerald ;p and with emerald positive morale and alle barrel doing nice damage too
cannoneers - alle barrel + telescopic sight
shamans - love distract with totems and dancing axe heal

i am also considering to change cannoneers and gianst to elves + hunters, which are better cannoneers or elves/hunters?

[Ryastar]

To get to the green dragon shop, enter 1000 rivers via magic valley in your boat, go to the second place where you can land on the mainland. There should be a beach with a path that turns generally right. Follow it, the shop is at the end of the path. I hope that's clear enough.

As for elves/hunters and cannoneers, hunters are far better than them whereas elves are about the same or slightly worse. The big difference is the no range penalty and the ability to use dragon arrows. Having no giants in your army will also make your green dragons stronger since their morale will go back to normal instead of being at -2 (so they will gain back the 20% attack and defense that they lost as well as getting a critical twice as often).