[Bhruic]

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

Sure, because at that point they were level appropriate. If you just do Darion, and then go to Demonis, it is a generally difficult progressions.

Well, yes, because the game design seems to indicate you should do the Freedom Isles and Merlassar before Demonis.

This is the point. All the fights in Freedom Isles and Merlessar are 'before' Demonis in difficulty. And if you do them in order of difficulty, you end up doing a huge amount of really easy fights. By skipping the easy ones, you just artificially make the rest of the game harder.

Well, not, that's not the point I was making. My point was that they were easy because I did Demonis first. Had I not done Demonis (and Hades), those fights would have been more challenging simply because I wouldn't have had the extra levels from Demonis/Hades. And had I done Freedom Isle before Demonis/Hades, yes, the latter would have been easier, but probably not substantially so.

I stopped using Runemages after doing a chunk of Darion, because they completely sucked the fun out of anything. Didn't use any resurrectors until Demonis, when I picked up some Demonologists. So, yeah. At the end of all things, the game is still very easy and ress or not makes no difference. It's just one way of arriving at ease.

If I recall correctly, you are using a mostly level 5 army composition (dragons figure prominently, don't they?). Yes, that's another way of making things easier. Resurrection abilities aren't the only way that can be accomplished, just the most visible.

Basically, the units in the game aren't well balanced. Unit resurrection abilities again rank high in that list, but there are a lot of other areas. I suspect that if someone were to try a playthrough and (past the first 4 islands) only play with level 1-2 units, it would be considerably more challenging.

At this point, however, barring a complete rebalance of units/spells/skills/abilities taking place, the only way to make things "harder" is to give the AI more units - which is only a marginal improvement - or make the AI make better decisions - which is also only a marginal improvement.