[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Sure, but Demons are soft. They die verrry easily due to low HP. They are excellent as disposable units. So, they are fairly ideal for phantoming and dropping them into enemy lines.

Umm... sorry? Demons have like, 200 HP. That's among the highest of Level 4 units. Only Royal Thorns and Royal Griffins exceed those. They also do insane damage against Level 1-3 units, always retaliate... Granted, they have no Physical Res. but then, you can cast Stoneskin.

Maybe things were really different in The Legend, but, they have 766 HP, they also have 66 native defense, the 3rd highest in the game, (black dragon has 70, cyclops has 67), 20% physical resistance, which is nearly the 2nd highest in the game, not counting ghosts.

Erm, Paladins and Knights have 30%, a lot of units have 20% (even Stone Spiders and Swordsmen). They had 666 HP in Legend (demons have a fixation for that number). And yeah, they are tough to kill physically, but if you attack them with magic, they die easily as their HP is low for Level 5. That said, I still want to try and use them - in AP on my first walkthrough I gained one Archdemon with a Scroll of Summon Giant very early on, and the halving ability was really, really sweet.

Phoenixes are slower. Archdemons are the fastest unit in the game. If the enemy stack is not ungodly powerful, I will typically stoneskin the Archdemon, position the Archdemon in enemy lines, and summon a phoenix next to him.

Does Restoration only remove negative effects from them? Not positives?

I don't see the point in hitting and running. He is NOT a no retaliation unit. This is not HOMMIII. He burns an enemy counter attack so my Phoenix can hit for free and hit the adjacent enemies for free. (since now the enemy is really strong, and I cannot buff the Phoenix with defensive spells, their counterattacks would hurt the phoenix tremendously).

Well, it's your game... IMHO, the Demon is a better blocker due to the unlimited retaliation and because you can have larger numbers (more HP) of him. I'd use the Archdemon to warp around and take out bothersome units.

Even the Demoness has a better damage per leadership than the Demon (against level 4s and level 5s).

Sure, that is because the Demoness is a slow tank creature (with some interesting abilities). Without tactics, you will spend several rounds getting her into the fray, while Demons have Running. I always easily kill enemy Demonesses - just Magic Shackle them, and they are as dangerous now as Peasants. You can pick them off from afar or wait until they move and kill them with no-ret. units. Their main strenght lies in the teleportation and the +1 cell range attack, take that away and they are not that strong.

However, the Demons are extremely tenacious due to infinite retaliations. So, no problem. My Demons summon other, disposable Demons for me.

In AP I used Demonolgists for a while, so I have seen both them and Executioners 'at work'. The special fear ability is neat, but as you say, the summoning can be more usefull. Especially if your other summoners are Demonologists - since you cannot control what they summon.

Yes, Divine Armor works on Archdemons and Demons... probably the entire Demonic race.

That's good to know. In the Legend, my Mage hardly learned any Order Magic at all, as Bless, God Armour, Resurrection, Healing do not work at all on my Undead troops (or even damage them).

Another benefit of the Archdemon as a tank is his ability to purge negative effects. You have no idea how often I got pissed when my Super Troll Stack would burn away a troll every round because he got hit by some stupid catapult.

That is a neat ability, with the Witch Hunter and Heavenly Guardians too. I defeated Ragni easily in AP because every round, she cast Hypnotize on my Heavenly Guardians... And Gremlin Towers like to do this too. They never learn...

Curiously enough, if the 3rd best defensive unit, with the 2nd highest physical resist unit isn't a good enough tank, what is? Not everyone wants to go Humans (Paladins and Knights probably being the better tanks at 30% physical resist and SCALING defense that goes up to... similar levels as the Archdemon after quite a few hits. )

(Cyclops cannot be revived, short of Turn Back Time level 3, Black Dragon cannot be pre-buffed, so he will definitely take losses against insane physical stacks). Paladins have 30% physical resists.

Cursed Ghosts are pretty good tanks - in my Undead game walkthrough, I used them often. Just cast Stoneskin and send them into the fray. Granted, against creatures with fire/magic attacks, they fall like flies. And best of all, they resurrect themselves. Though they can be a bother, when doing no-loss, as they often over-drain themselves and then you have to hit them with calculated spells like Healing to whittle them down to your exact Leadership. Also, it is quite annoying that you cannot resurrect them if they are completely killed off. (Though I'm glad this means the enemy cannot raise them with his necromancers either).

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Sheep is really mana expensive too.

Yeah, you have to goad them into going back into bat form and/or just disarm most of your critical hit buffing items.

I found that the enemy almost always transforms them into bat if you place a unit they can reach in that form in their way. Me using undeads myself, naturally sent my ghosts out to be bait every time - and vampire bats without life drain are easy to get rid off.

Doom is incredibly usefull against things like Death Knights, who otherwise take a long-long time to kill and get stronger as the battle goes on.