Yes, we did it on KBCW. I dug up my old screens and I have 80% book damage, cause I abandoned the 1 BD challenge on lvl 43 and switched to 1 stack of Black Knights + Eviln. Well, Call of Nature and Demon Portal weren't working the same way as they do in KBDS now. I don't even recall using them so extensively, cause they did not provide sufficient amount of troops - and the ones you got could only survive a few hits, so you were much better using Gift + Paladins than wasting so much mana on Call of Nature, for example.

Wow, 23 pages. I guess you guys must be really, really "hungry" for TBS games that you play this really flawed subpar expansion for such a long time. Me, I went back to playing Crossworlds, and recently, Etherlords II. So much more enjoyable without unbalanced maps and units.

BB killed the forum :P

Well, the start of the game is clearly not balanced, at least on Impossible, which is doubly a shame since that's where people make first contact with the game, and since the game spent quite some time in Early Access so you'd think the devs would have had some useful feedback.

I gave myself a coupla Necromancers and an Ancient Vampire, and I wouldn't as Sethmage say that it was a "breeze". I found it actually pretty tough at times (aiming at no loss), but doable in the end.
Then I went as soon as I could for the single Black Dragon stack, and there the game was a breeze.
First (until about fight 200) with the Armageddon approach.
Then transitioning to Call of Nature.

Now, that spell is indeed way OP in its current version. It does turn the game into easy mode.
Only the two chained fights presented a challenge (easily solved by making sure only one stack lived through the first fight, and then using a combination of Orc Shield and Last Hero to make sure it lived through the second fight).

I've started an Orc run next.
Now, forget about no loss.
On Impossible, simply making it through the Shelter/Whitehill fights doesn't seem achievable without resorting to the uncontrollable stack trick.

That's... pretty dumb.

On the other hand, I'm now having a blast with a pure Orcish army (Shaman x2, Veterans, Chieftains, Spirit Talkers).
Not playing that one originally as "no loss", but as "minimal losses". I'm roughly half-way through (Tristem and Dragandor done), and now in "no loss" mode.

Not sure if I'll be able to keep it up through the really crazy parts (late demon/elven lands), but we'll see.
Then they'll be the issue of the last fight where the Orc player gets completely shafted obviously.

See the link for a mod that balances starting Bagyr and Daert!
 

Certainly agree with the imbalance of Daert and Bagyr!

By the way, my teeny, tiny mod that balances the starting conditions of Bagyr and Daert is here!

No loss with Deart and Bagyr should now be possible under any start condition!

Enjoy! :)

/C\/C\

Wow, what a useful thread!

I have recently started a normal difficulty (no loss) run with Daert, and I learned a ton reading all of this, thanks a lot guys!

Guess I still need to become a lot better before I can do those initial fights on impossible, but I'll get there eventually 8-)

This save is great.
However no Dark Paladins.
I eddited it using the scanner to add them in the Iselburg,
If you want it I'll post.

Sorry for necro this, and my English as well.

I bought Dark Side last year, but not played it until today.
I choose Demonesses, never played Paladin before, Impossible Difficulty, and aim for a no loss campaign, finish all quests :D

Right now I'm stuck at one of the very first quest, the rescue "Demon Cubs" quest.

I have 2 Demonesses, 1 Blood Priestess, 4 Cerberus, 1 Demon, 5 Scoffer Imps.

I've used all knowledge I collected from TL, AP, CW, WotN, but I still loss troops in this fight TT

Could you guys tell me how to remain no loss after this fight ??? I can't pass the portal now, the quest will be marked as "failed".

THanks, and sorry for my ENglish, again.

Three years later, I've finally come back to Dark Side to finish MattCasperMeyer's 'Phoenix Ore Cart' Vampire save. I knew that the rest of the game would be fairly straightforward to achieve no-losses, and it was, EXCEPT the final battle against the Spirit of Light.

The Vampire (Mage) ends up with very high Intellect in this game due to a skill which gives you an extra point of Intellect for every learned skill in the Mage tree. I had 109 Intellect by the end, including FOUR Rings of the Snake King! Early on I was using Ancient Phoenix a lot to inflict damage, but even that eventually becomes ineffective around level 40-50. Thereafter I used Dragon Riders a fair bit, and when I got bored of the grinding I started cheesing with Dragon Riders + Armageddon, which I did for the last 100 battles or so.

This doesn't work in the final battle, however, as the Spirit of Light will hit you on Turn 1 and you can't Resurrect or Turn Back Time on Dragon Riders. I tried a lot of other combinations without much success. By this stage my Fireball was doing 13k damage on the Spirit but I was still losing troops too fast (especially if I used Armageddon too). Eventually I remembered that Call of Nature is REALLY overpowered in this game. It's a spell I never really used but it is ridiculously strong. I summoned a stack of Royal Griffins on Turn 1 which did about 20k damage per hit to the Spirit. I just used one stack of Dark Paladins meanwhile. By Turn 12 the battle was over and thus at long last I was able to complete a no-losses Impossible run as the Vampire, but only with Matt's save with the Phoenix in the Ore Cart :)

Omg man! Good job! All this talk brings back good memories, but I don't know if I have the power within me to try it again. :)