How do you fit black knights into a full army?

[john_crapper]

Posts about ways to utilize black knights are large and extensive. However They all seem to be directed at solo-ing with them. Solo-ing is kinda boring to me, as the appeal of the game is found in its variety of units and ways to synchronize their abilities and strengths.

However I cannot find a way to successfully integrate black knights into a full army. Too many races' morale goes down the drain. And at 35 level warrior, the attack/defense/crit penalty is really notice-able.

Cannoneers go from 63 A 32 D and 51% crit to 57/27, 38%

And thats just for 1 unit of morale. Orcs lose 2 and most other races lose at least 1.
Got the shard, got the eviln spell, all ready to go, but i cant find anything that goes well with black knights. Except dragons, but those arent easy to find in large quantities and on Impossible the verona dragon lair is guarded by 25 blacks, 35 reds and 40 greens, which given their immunity to "target" spell, makes them a costly battle.

Also the maybe more obvious answer to go full undead isnt applicable, because im playing for a high-score and running back and forth to replenish them isnt appealing to me.

So, any suggestions?

[ckdamascus]

There are quite a few humans who will work with the undead.

Inquistor, (maybe priest), Paladins, Possibly archmage, and the Rune Mage as well.

They do not incur a morale penalty in doing so. You could use the paladin as a starter tank to take the first counter attack, then use the black knights to follow up, but I find this is hard to do without double-cast.

You can also use another army in the meantime (keep the black knights in reserve) until you do get to a sizable team of undead.

The biggest problem is the annoyance of using either resurrect and/or eviln.

You'd really rather use only one or the other. Not to mention, I find eviln sort of crappy since you can't eviln to revive AND fight in the same round, unlike resurrect.

[Saiko Kila]

Unfortunately rune mages (and archmages, I believe) have morale hit when teamed with undead, including dark knights. It's possible to use items to offset that, or Persuasion skill.

[john_crapper]

Paladins do not work well with black knights. They can neither resurrect them, nor use second wind, and its really pointless to use tank units when your game plan is to have the black knights tank with unlimited retaliation. At high levels inquisitor rage is not as useful as having a damaging unit in the army, and inquistors deal good damage only to undead.

Rune mages are useful, only if you have talent runes to spare. Archmages have always been in my games, since KBTL, because their shield is an awesome protective spell. And used in conjunction with paladins, they can cast shield on the first turn, then the paladins grant them second wind, and the archmages's fighting trance buf expires just when the magic shield is ready to be re-cast.

So thats the kind of synchronizing I'm looking for

And neutralizing morale penalties is not efficient, because you would otherwise have positive morale, which would be another reason not to have black knights.

[loreangelicus]

Trim your list and zone in to units that are not affected morale-wise by undead. You could use a bunch of Neutrals, or even more undead. From Neutrals you have the 3 dragon types, then you just tank with BKs while they fly around doing massive damage. Same with Bone Dragons, great manueuverabilty, area poison damage, and like the BKs are easy to resurrect with Evlin. If you get S'Krassh shield and Jade Belt, then Undead Spiders could act as your DPS, while BKs act as tanks/DPS.

Or you could go with the team that I used for my impossible warrior high score run in KBAP: bone dragons, black knights, guard droids, repair droids (split into 2 stacks); a killer full 5 slots army, I'm sure you've heard about it since you made a comment regarding my post in the KBAP thread.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by john_crapper

Paladins do not work well with black knights. They can neither ressurect them, nor use second wind, and its really pointless to use tank units when your game plan is to have the black knights tank with unlimited retaliation. At high levels inquisitor rage is not as useful as having a damaging unit in the army, and inquistors deal good damage only to undead.

Rune mages are useful, only if you have talent runes to spare. Archmages have always been in my games, since KBTL, because their shield is an awesome protective spell. And used in conjuction with paladins, they can cast shield on the first turn, then the paladins grant them second with, and the archmages's fighting trance buf expires just when the magic shield is ready to be re-cast.

So thats the kind of synchronizing I'm looking for

And neutralizing morale penalties is not efficient, because you would otherwise have positive morale, which would be another reason not to have black knights.

The best 'team sync' is the undead armies. And as pointed out, neutrals don't care much either way.

Although, I'm not sure how you get around reviving your neutrals easily without a paladin, if you are going for no-loss?

Resurrect + EvilN are horrifically expensive to use together, and Black Knights are usually pretty bad in the defense category (but awesome in the offense category).

So, I figured to wasting 3-4+ turns after the battle for evilN spamming, you could mitigate the damage a bit by using another tank.

Argh, I hate that droid build haha... but yes, that works too.

Oh yeah, or the old fashioned demonologists. Dunno. They are ok, but I just don't dig them anymore. Rune Mage has obsoleted them and they were always high priority targets for the enemy.

[john_crapper]

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

Or you could go with the team that I used for my impossible warrior high score run in KBAP: bone dragons, black knights, guard droids, repair droids (split into 2 stacks); a killer full 5 slots army, I'm sure you've heard about it since you made a comment regarding my post in the KBAP thread.

I did indeed, but droids are too unappealing for me to use. My decision may have been made for me, since the item i got from the champion of teana was one I've never seen before - Dragon heart or something, Grants 1 morale to all dragons as well as -10% leadership. Im thinking of getting voice of the dragon and have max morale dragons in the army, and have reds tank for me, since the immense bonus to their defense would help. Also I may at one point start hoarding runes for Rune Mages as, they are capable of resurrecting even the black dragons.

When you play The droid tactic, do you use any specific items items/sets that work in conjunction with droids? Because from what i've seen as stats they are not impressive, and I dont see why you bother wasting 3 slots on healers + guard droid, when your target unit is the black knight? I suppose the fact that your whole army is immune to mind spells is a bonus, but I really cant place the droids strategically - their damage is mediocre and apart from being self-sustaining I fail to recognize their utility.

One thing i forgot to consider are royal snakes. In KBTL they were ridiculously powerful, because of the early 100% attack to snake wife and their no retaliation ability keeps them from painful retaliations while everything goes nuts on your "target"-ed unit. Assassins mirror the snake abilities very closely, but the damage-to-leadership math leans toward snakes. Although the one-time backstab is crippling, On Impossible boss battles require a more consistent source of damage. Plus, they cant be buffed.

Although I strive to play without any losses, I wont ever play a full no-loss game where I have to reload endlessly, or drag the battle 100 rounds to resurrect every unit. I once read somewhere that a guy went to 250 rounds with the spider boss or ktahu.

P.S and on that note I just had my most taxing battle so far: I attacked Demenion (46 lvl Impossible) with a 34 level warrior. All in All, I lost about a quarter of my army ( he had 5 stacks of 5 level units that couldnt be tanked with Target), but gained 29,968XP from the fight (20% talent+ 10% items and +50% ancient knowledge)


EDIT: What exactly does the warrior crossworlds skill "counter strike" do? More retaliations?

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by john_crapper

...
When you play The droid tactic, do you use any specific items items/sets that work in conjunction with droids? Because from what i've seen as stats they are not impressive, and I dont see why you bother wasting 3 slots on healers + guard droid, when your target unit is the black knight? I suppose the fact that your whole army is immune to mind spells is a bonus, but I really cant place the droids strategically - their damage is mediocre and apart from being self-sustaining I fail to recognize their utility.
...

Royal Hammer (+5 attack, -15% leadership dwarves), Engineer's Badge (+2 intellect, -20% leadership droids), and Horn of King Borg (+5 attack dwarves, -10% leadership dwarves) all add up to -45% leadership for droids; so you almost double your droid count, which effectively doubles their survivability and damage output.

They have 20% physical resistance and 80% poison resistance, high mobility (speed 5 and 3 for repair and guard droids respectively), and repair droids have a reload 3 repair ability that "resurrects" a massive 85% comparable leadership; Eviln level 3 at 30% stack resurrection looks pathetic in comparison, and that requires 35 mana. And don't even mention to me the Resurrection spell, not when I'm trying to resurrect a 45,000+ leadership stack that is being whacked on the head by three 70,000+ leadership enemy stacks on Impossible difficulty.

They draw aggro from enemies like moths to a fire. So long as your enemies can attack them, they will leave your black knights and bone dragons alone, sidestepping them to reach the droids if need be.

You guessed it, these self-sustaining near-impossible to kill droids will act as tanks for your team, allowing your bone dragons and black knights to concentrate on DPS.

Droid damage is mediocre? You must have only used repair droids. At half-stack (you normally split them into two stacks) I understand how their halved damage could indeed look mediocre. You should always use both guard and repair droids, or none at all. Let the full stack of guard droids take on ALL possible enemies it could draw aggro, then fly in your repair droids to repair it.

To bad I can't attach the Excel file I used to evaluate all units from all the races. Taking leadership, attack value and damage, repair droids' damage (0.11 Damage Per Leadership) is between that of a bowman (0.10 DPL) and hunter (0.12 DPL); guard droids' damage (0.18 DPL) is between that of swordsmen (0.17 DPL) and veteran orcs/decaying zombies (0.19 DPL). Royal Snakes are at (0.21 DPL) so not bad, though they are not as easy to resurrect as droids or undead. Black Knights actually just start off at 0.18 DPL (same as guard droids), though their special ability makes it a lot higher as they attack more.

[john_crapper]

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

Royal Hammer (+5 attack, -15% leadership dwarves), Engineer's Badge (+2 intellect, -20% leadership droids), and Horn of King Borg (+5 attack dwarves, -10% leadership dwarves) all add up to -45% leadership for droids; so you almost double your droid count, which effectively doubles their survivability and damage output.


To bad I can't attach the Excel file I used to evaluate all units from all the races.

Do you KB Scan for all these first? And you can always upload the excel file anywhere.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by john_crapper

I did indeed, but droids are too unappealing for me to use. My decision may have been made for me, since the item i got from the champion of teana was one I've never seen before - Dragon heart or something, Grants 1 morale to all dragons as well as -10% leadership. Im thinking of getting voice of the dragon and have max morale dragons in the army, and have reds tank for me, since the immense bonus to their defense would help. Also I may at one point start hoarding runes for Rune Mages as, they are capable of resurrecting even the black dragons.

Wow, I didn't realize Rune Mages could revive black dragons! Thanks a lot! I suppose this means they can also revive Cyclops... ugh. Time to go back and grab them.

Unfortunately, seems slow going with reviving though as even with 9 of them, I can only resurrect 2160 HP (and that is with the 20 mind rune minimum, too bad it doesn't keep scaling. I had up to 67 unused mind runes for a while. ).

Paladins with the resurrection skill get a bonus to this number. And, a warrior arguably will have about double the rune mages, but will probably not have a fun time doing phantom rune mages.

Looks like I might need to invest some points in the new Archmage skill which reduces the leadership costs (you can get about 50% more rune mages if you max it out)

I was using shaman to heal the black dragons instead. Maybe now I can switch some of my army out....