How do you fit black knights into a full army?

[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.

[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.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by john_crapper

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

I use the scanner primarily for Ancient Knowledge scrolls and other +XP items. Since I only play a campaign once (too little time to play) I can't leave to chance the existence (or lack thereof) of these items for a high score run.

In KBAP I didn't scan for these droid items as I didn't plan to take them from the get-go; I did scan for the Black Helmet and Eviln as I wanted to get Black Knights.

My KBAP unit evaluation Excel file in ZIP format attached; good thing ZIP is allowed here. As you can see, I called the repair droid "auto 1" and guard droid "auto 2" because I created this unit evaluation file even before I got my hands on KBAP.

[john_crapper]

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

I use the scanner primarily for Ancient Knowledge scrolls and other +XP items. Since I only play a campaign once (too little time to play) I can't leave to chance the existence (or lack thereof) of these items for a high score run.

In KBAP I didn't scan for these droid items as I didn't plan to take them from the get-go; I did scan for the Black Helmet and Eviln as I wanted to get Black Knights.

My KBAP unit evaluation Excel file in ZIP format attached; good thing ZIP is allowed here. As you can see, I called the repair droid "auto 1" and guard droid "auto 2" because I created this unit evaluation file even before I got my hands on KBAP.

A legend would've been nice. Like what's LPL and why are some of the numbers blue/red/bald-ed. And what does the final score stand for.

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

(too little time to play)

Oh my Deity, If making such a spreadsheet just for the sake of statistical analysis is your idea of limited time to play, I pray you never go on a KB binge.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by john_crapper

A legend would've been nice. Like what's LPL and why are some of the numbers blue/red/bald-ed. And what does the final score stand for.



Oh my Deity, If making such a spreadsheet just for the sake of statistical analysis is your idea of limited time to play, I pray you never go on a KB binge.

Lore goes all out when he does play. He gave me a run down on the best places to use Ancient Knowledge scrolls.

I did a lot of homework when planning for my 100% Critical Ranged Warrior build. I don't know about an extensive spreadsheet though.

It is worth it when it comes together. Killing nearly every boss in Impossible in about 10 rounds (some in 4, some in 12) - No loss is what I call... fun.

After I win with my Impossible Mage build, I want to try out an Impossible Paladin build using heavy melee. Not sure if I will hit 0 losses though on that one.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by john_crapper

A legend would've been nice. Like what's LPL and why are some of the numbers blue/red/bald-ed. And what does the final score stand for.



Oh my Deity, If making such a spreadsheet just for the sake of statistical analysis is your idea of limited time to play, I pray you never go on a KB binge.

Color coding was just manual highlights to point out promising values.

The last value is a susceptibility to a high attack rating monster (specifically attack rating 56). So the value is the bonus damage the enemy has against you!

In other words, the lower the better. The lower values indict a significantly better tank with normal attacks, and abilities except for dancing axes, astral attacks, and poison axes.

It uses a base attack of 56 (enemy) and applies it against the unit's defense.

Hmmm I could probably re-work and re-use this sheet. I've been on a quest for more insane winning combinations.

[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....

[BB Shockwave]

Undead armies rock. I recently played through the Legend with one, so I can offer assistance.

Zombies stood in for the Black Knights until they are available, afterwards they will be your tanks. I see no fun going solo with any unit...

My line-up was: Bone Dragons (to be replaced with Greens in certain fights, like against other undead), Necromancers, Ancient Vampires, Black Knights, Cursed Ghosts/Skeleton archers. The latter two I switched sometimes, as tactics required it.

I also used Werewolves early on, and Black Unicrons in some anti-undead fights.