Smoother normal game play - warrior, paladin, or mage

[ckdamascus]

I've been trying to find a reason to try out the warrior or paladin class, as I have only played on impossible mage.

One thing that has really bugged me about the mage is the mana regeneration after a battle. Sure sure, when I can easily wreck the enemy team to transmute, wait for concentration, and drop the mana accelerator.

But, it just seems really tedious to extend battles JUST to regenerate another round of points, especially if the enemy is weak enough not to generate a lot of rage.

Maybe I am overreacting since I've just finished undoing that pain of skull... twice in too short a time frame.

I've wondered, if I go with a warrior class, can I literally just do battle after battle? Yeah, there might be some of that boring resurrection crap (gosh, I really hate doing that and I wonder if anyone has a balanced team that doesn't rely on phantom paladins and inquisitors).

I'm just sort of sick of fighting, extending, waiting for mana to regen.

I am also sick of over-micro management of spells. There seems like so many powerful items for damage (yet, everyone says defense is key, bleh), yet how come there isn't really a lot of pure damage armies besides black knights?

And, I'm not too keen on the "let's go super buff royal griffin" team. I feel like inquisitors and archmages are like dead weight liabilities after they have used their buffs. Just more units to resurrect and/or protect.

The quick math says that having a really high attack rating might not buff as much as say buffing criticals, in which case, the warrior's advantage is only more leadership.

Anyone have a saved game of an impossible warrior that has smoothly crushed everything? I say smoothly as in, NO extending battles significantly (wasting 5 rounds just to rebuild mana/regen/resurrect is NOT smooth).

Boss battles must be smoothly done. I mean, 20-30 turns max. None of this 64 turns of very tedious stuff, like calm rage, phantom, resurrect. Or 10 rounds of eviln.

No waiting for rage to dissipate or mana to regen. I figured a warrior could just end with max rage, mana accelerate first thing next battle, and continue his rampage.

Any thoughts?

[Elias_Maluco]

Im playing warrior hard now, and "battle after battle" is pretty much like it.

When I played paladin, I was used to waiting a lot to get mana restored. With warrior, I have full-mana pretty much all times, just for beating the crap out of enemies. After most battles I will be filled with rage and mana, so is good to attack again imediatelly. I will never "extend" more than needed to dig (when I dig, is not always).

About ressurection: Im not using any ressurector right now, in fact Im using a team of 100% level 5 units. Every once in a while there will be a loss, but I dont care too much about it, unless is some unit I cant replace.

But it all boils down on how do you play the game. If you arent worried about a few losses or maximum score, warrior is probably the easiest and fastest class.

[fable]

Try vampires. They either die fast or finish with full stack.
Or play paladin class with a single stack of something: the "resurrect" skill will bring back all lost troops.

[ckdamascus]

I actually restarted yet again last night with the warrior on impossible. Holy cow, sooooo easy early on compared to the mage.

With the impossible mage gift pack restart, I just went straight to kiting every map except for tekron (honestly, I'm still not sure how I did it...).

With the impossible warrior, I just immediately cleared the first map, no kiting.

Either that, or I have played this game waaay too much.

Yeah, the paladin resurrection is QUITE appealing for a smooth game play, but I usually try to aim for no-losses anyway (just to get the medal ASAP). So far, it seems like having some rage for the next battle is really key. I'll find out soon enough though.

[loreangelicus]

Well, since you are playing warrior on impossible now instead of mage, you might want to try this lineup:

black knight-repair droid-guard droid-repair droid-bone dragon

Droids don't need mana/rage to repair, and you only need Eviln to resurrect the two undead units. And if you really don't want to micromanage their minimal losses, you could just spam Phantom level 3 on the bone dragons and just use the phantoms to engage the enemy for no losses; then use your real army to mop up survivors if there are any.

For boss battles, just use the black knights (with stone skin of course) and repair droids to attack the boss while the rest of your army either does nothing or kills summons.

Only boss battles would make you pause to think, and only Zilgadis and maybe Baal (haven't fought him yet) will prove a challenge:

Driller at level 33, 25 rounds, no loss
Zilgadis at level 47, 63 rounds!, no loss
K'Tahu at level 53, 16 rounds, no loss

I didn't kill the spider and frog bosses since I am going for a fast run as well and I want to chain-fight them with an Ancient Knowledge scroll, but with undead and droids that are 50% and 80% poison resistant, they would have been pushovers anyway; they are also the weakest bosses, btw.

In the battle with Zilgadis, maybe it could have been done in a lot less rounds. He was doing a string of mass attacks, and it came to a point where I held off in killing him only because I was waiting for him to generate a friendly tower (to keep alive while I recover from his mass attacks), but those are the breaks of the game. Granted, 50% magic-vulnerable droids and 0% magic-resistant undead are not exactly the optimal units to use against a mass magic attacking boss, but it was a welcome challenge since the said lineup was slaying everything else with impunity before that point (and even after that point).

K'Tahu was a joke. Except for the gorguanas, he and his minions were all doing physical damage which my lineup was highly resistant to. Undead and droids are immune to fear as well, so the Tirexes were not a factor. Then again, maybe my high level at that point made a difference (I'm doing a high level run as well)...

Oh, and with Bloodthirst, you could end battles with zero rage and max mana (with mana accelerator/calm rage), then your rage immediately jumps back up to 40% of your max rage for the next battle, usually more than enough to start turn one with mana accelerator-Phantom level 3 (25 mana).

[ckdamascus]

Wow! Thanks for the detailed response! This is sort of what I was looking for.

Honestly, I was going to settle for just low casualties.

Normally the droids would annoy me with the cross healing (mostly because enemies seem to blitz them), but with super black knights crushing everything really fast, this shouldn't be too bad.

I wonder if the phys resistant droids can salvage my old impossible mage game too... hmmm.

I am assuming you have played impossible mage as well, is it true that warriors have a smoother/faster real-time game play than mages?

63 rounds isn't too bad. I nearly cried when I took about 30 rounds for 3 of the droid fights on bolo.

[loreangelicus]

I have a job and a family, so I don't have too much time to play games. I played the original game, KBTL, only once, with a paladin on impossible. I have yet to finish my impossible warrior game in KBAP. But since it seems that there would not be a 3rd installment for the KB series, I might play mage on impossible when I get the time.

I also play the game at impossible/7-days/no-loss, so coupled with my limited playtime, it's pretty slow going. Just like you though, I do have the advantage of benefiting from the experience of others, thus my choice of units.

Yup, all the enemies will try and attack your droids first, especially the repair droids. This is all good for this lineup since the droids can easily repair each other. Eviln may be overpowered, but I still sometimes find it tedious to bring back lost undead units with it.

Take note that for most battles, it is probably better to just let your droids, bone dragons, and phantom bone dragons to do all the fighting and just let your black knights kick up their heels and relax. This is because they are slower than the rest of your units, and in the middle to late part of the game, an attack from an enemy stack would most likely cause them to incur at least some losses, thus necessitating a casting of Eviln. Their superior firepower is vital for boss battles though, so don't make the mistake of thinking of them as unnecessary.

In this lineup, it is important to note that the shard from Moro Dark is not really needed; just kill the fool for XP.

For the initial islands it really helps a lot to do a lot of digging with your pet dragon, and hopefully dig up a Call Colossus. I was very fortunate to have dug up 4 Call Colossus by the second island (Scarlet Wind). I took out Bolo quite handily by using 2 of the 4 Call Colossus scrolls to generate 1 red dragon and 1 black dragon. To prevent the droid hero R-14 Gromozeka from pounding the red dragon with direct damage I simply took guard droids and repair droids to fill in the rest of my army slots.

Note that if you are trying to go for dragons via Call Colossus early in the game, you need to prioritize Glory (from the mind tree). Even a warrior would be hard pressed to get 2,000 (for red dragon) - 2,500 (for black dragon) leadership by the 3rd island (Bolo). In a 7-day run, it pays off though, as evident by my taking out Bolo in the first pass, before going to Verona.

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

I've been trying to find a reason to try out the warrior or paladin class, as I have only played on impossible mage.

One thing that has really bugged me about the mage is the mana regeneration after a battle. Sure sure, when I can easily wreck the enemy team to transmute, wait for concentration, and drop the mana accelerator.

But, it just seems really tedious to extend battles JUST to regenerate another round of points, especially if the enemy is weak enough not to generate a lot of rage.

Maybe I am overreacting since I've just finished undoing that pain of skull... twice in too short a time frame.

I've wondered, if I go with a warrior class, can I literally just do battle after battle? Yeah, there might be some of that boring resurrection crap (gosh, I really hate doing that and I wonder if anyone has a balanced team that doesn't rely on phantom paladins and inquisitors).

I'm just sort of sick of fighting, extending, waiting for mana to regen.

I am also sick of over-micro management of spells. There seems like so many powerful items for damage (yet, everyone says defense is key, bleh), yet how come there isn't really a lot of pure damage armies besides black knights?

And, I'm not too keen on the "let's go super buff royal griffin" team. I feel like inquisitors and archmages are like dead weight liabilities after they have used their buffs. Just more units to resurrect and/or protect.

The quick math says that having a really high attack rating might not buff as much as say buffing criticals, in which case, the warrior's advantage is only more leadership.

Anyone have a saved game of an impossible warrior that has smoothly crushed everything? I say smoothly as in, NO extending battles significantly (wasting 5 rounds just to rebuild mana/regen/resurrect is NOT smooth).

Boss battles must be smoothly done. I mean, 20-30 turns max. None of this 64 turns of very tedious stuff, like calm rage, phantom, resurrect. Or 10 rounds of eviln.

No waiting for rage to dissipate or mana to regen. I figured a warrior could just end with max rage, mana accelerate first thing next battle, and continue his rampage.

Any thoughts?

Dragons + Pet Dragon = Awesome sauce. This is how I play Warrior (and Paladin to a lesser extent). Did a no loss warrior run with this, and did not spend wasted extra time rezzing units at end of combat. Target + time back + army that absolutely dishes out the damage was more than enough in almost every encounter. Get lots of crit gear, focus on rage and pet dragon building skills.

I did end up having to use a solo bone dragon stack to kill Ktahu and Baal however. If you want No Loss against those two it requires some pretty specific combat choices.

[N3MES1S]

U can do more "battle after battle" with warrior thatn with mage. Instead of mana, with warrior u can raise the rage, and the bloodthirst skill, i finished the game on impossible with warrior 3 or 4 times, and it is eeeasier than with mage. And if u play with all level 4-5 units (like i did) u can just kill em all without being touch. Just cast fear, and see how they die one after another xD. (logically fear only is not enough, but playing with level 4-5 units its more easy).

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by N3MES1S

U can do more "battle after battle" with warrior thatn with mage. Instead of mana, with warrior u can raise the rage, and the bloodthirst skill, i finished the game on impossible with warrior 3 or 4 times, and it is eeeasier than with mage. And if u play with all level 4-5 units (like i did) u can just kill em all without being touch. Just cast fear, and see how they die one after another xD. (logically fear only is not enough, but playing with level 4-5 units its more easy).

Hi N3MES1S, I have always wondered how a level 4-5 only army fares against mass-attacking bosses, namely Zilgadis/K'Tahu/Baal. Could you tell me your experience with regards to these bosses (ie. level you fought them, how many turns to end the battle, any losses, what units you used)?

I'm asking this because against other enemies, be they regular enemies or hero-enhanced ones, I think one is spoiled with a bunch of tactics that work towards no-loss; it seems it is only the boss fights against the top 3 bosses that require superior tactics.