Don't play the game as a mage - you will get bored quickly!

[Ryastar]

Handel, I have played a full game as mage. And dude, you are full of crap. 180 archmages in a moderate stack size you might face towards the end of the game on friggin normal. Gatts`calculations are totally valid, far more so than your stupid comments. You cannot win on anything beyond normal, and probably even on normal, just using damage spells, especially fireball, which is a less useful spell the further you go in the game.

[Handel]

Ryastar - maybe you should read what exactly Gatts wrote. It is in english.

[Ryastar]

Originally Posted by Handel

Ryastar - maybe you should read what exactly Gatts wrote. It is in english.

Ok, yes, he did the calculations for the damage wrong. He didn`t notice that the 6k damage was for a fireball AFTER a greasy mist. That`s fine. However, his point about the archmagi is still good, though i doubt that 640 archmages is a reasonable amount of archmagi (though maybe on impossible, i don`t know).

Let`s use actual experience, here: from memory i remember several stacks i have encountered. These are on NORMAL difficulty:

250-ish Necromancers, at 140 HP each, that is 35000 hit points. It would take about six of your fireballs to kill that, and that is only one of the stacks (admittedly, i think they were divided into four stacks, but that was the total number of necros, and there were (at least) four other troops there. This was one of the haas battles)

85ish Ogres, another battle against haas. I do not recall exactly what their hp is, but it is between 550-650, i think, so let`s say 600. 85 times 600 is 51000 hit points. That`s nine of your fireballs, so that`s ten spells altogether, assuming that greasy mist lasts the seven rounds it takes to cast that many spells. Again, there were other stacks in this battle.

Need i go on?

I don`t see how BLAST BLAST BLAST can beat those enemies.

[Handel]

I played the game almost to the end (untill after Haas labirinth) before stopping to play because there wasn't anything more then battles (like quests and interesting dialogues) and never ever got 4 stacks from 180 creatures from this level. As for the ogres and such - blast, blast, blast...
I never wrote I won the battles without losses. First I didn't have rez spell and besides I found it is too boring to prolong the games too long.
But As I said I won most of the latest battles with just 2 stacks - from spearmen and royal snakes because I was keepeing those in the reserve and could easily replenish the losses. Sometimes I was buying other creatures too although they weren't really needed and I was too lazy to go back to restock so after few battles they usually were reduced to unsignificant quantity. And yes - the AI goes for ranged troops first and if they are hit early they may take big damage - but who cares. A mage don't need them and they make excelent cheap cannon fodder.
As for the Gatts - basicly he wrote "I didn't play as a mage but nevertheless let me teach you about the mages".
And what I wrote IT IS FROM MY EXPERIENCE as a high level mage you don't really need all those fancy spells besides the few highly offensive spells simply because it is much easier to blast the enemies instead of trying to cast buffs/debuffs and such. It is true - after the 3rd turn and after 6 water/poison (for dragons)/fire spells there are very few enemies left. Usually most of the battles finish at 5th turn at most. So providing there are no more quests and dialogues and choices to make and such the game becomes pretty boring.

Besides - don't forget most of the damaging spells are area spells so untill I kill the ogres the fireballs are killing zillions of smaller critters too so after turn 5 there may be some other critter left but not much.

[Ryastar]

Well, I`m sorry that that was your experience of the game. Let me just assure you that most people do not have the same experience as you did. What difficulty level did you play as? If easy, then maybe you should try normal or higher. If normal, try hard etc. Personally, i had tons of fun as mage on normal, and even more as warrior (probably because i had a better idea of how to play). For my third (well, forth, see below) game, i am trying mage again, on hard this time. So far, fireball has been my primary spell, because i haven`t taken a single leadership upgrade as yet (i`m focusing on my other stats), but it`s starting to be less useful, as enemy stacks are getting larger, and my INT isn`t really very high yet (i`ve only been offered INT upgrade once, and only one INT-raising item so far, i might need to restart). I`m still having fun, though, and this is my fourth time through the starting area (my second game was lost to a fried hard drive shortly after signing the dwarven peace treaty) and second as a mage. I encourage you to try again before passing such a sweeping judgement on a truly great game.

[Handel]

Once you start to feel the offensive spells are doing little damage you must upgrade them. The difference is huge and is much more then you can get by raising the INT.
At first glance raising the INT seems better choice because it gaves 10% increase. But this increase is calculated on the basic damage and the basic damage in the center of the 1st lvl fireball is only 120 points (I think) at 0 INT. So +1 INTgive just a measle +12 points damage.
At the same time upgrading the fireball doubles and tripples the basic damage which means it doubles and triples all the bonuses from the INT and from the destroyer ability (and from items if any).

[Ryastar]

Yes, Handel, i know how these things work. As i said, i have played a full game as a mage before. I don`t yet have enough runes for chaos two.

[Handel]

I started to play on impossible as paladin. But with this ressurect spell I am feeling like I am cheating

[Smash]

Who the hell use fireball in late game? Even fire rain is blah, use geyzer and later armaggedon if you go spell damage mage u need to reduce enemy since from 10 stack to 1-2 the biggest then disable rest, sadly there is no some kind of "implosion" spell which could do massive damage to one target.

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by Handel

I started to play on impossible as paladin. But with this ressurect spell I am feeling like I am cheating

Good choice - I personally believe that "as devs intended I assume" paladin has the largest variety as in battle so in level ups (skills) - hence it makes him the best character to try and taste all the flavour of the game. [well - all would mean max 70% - to get 100% you should play it at least for 2 times fully - thanks to the great randomness)

Do not worry about "cheating" feeling - there are some tactics [like invisible + green dragon ] that could be considered cheating - I still call cheating only using the cheat codes in console - nothing else.

Some types of games have "farming" - which is "bad" only if you play multiplayer, but using ressurection would not be even farming (you are not getting more units, you just hold up your original numbers)

I even used Sacrifice -> what could be considered "farming" as I increased my original number of units... still I didn't use "doublearmy" - I just found out how usefull is sacrifice + ghosts or vampires...

BTW - I hope paladin on impossible will show you this game in new light and you may start enjoying it much more