Something for true warriors..

[impy]

Travel update.
level: 55. Unused runes: 723. Still going with Linguistics 1, Distorsion 1, Scouting 1.

So far the toughest challenge of all my humble contributions since the beginning. My core army still constists of runemages, royal griffins, inquisitors, paladins,royal snakes. Occassionally horsemen are called in when initiative is an issue. Neat trick : horsemen + mask of hate + portrait of dragon guarantees you get the first turn against any enemy (the only exception being combination of black dragons and archdemons in enemy army). Gourguanas come into play when huge enemy stack needs lightning ball + mark of blood. I have not used any boosting wanderer scrolls so far apart from those few ANcient Knowledge scrolls I found. 1st round of the battle these days goes like days : Royal Griffins need to go amongst the first (mask of hate if neccessary) and cast cheer. point is to make sure runemages with mediocre initiative (5) get their turn and summon thus creating meat shield. Reason to go first is also to unleash usually 2 x lightning ball straight away. Inquisitors shoot, royal snakes wait, paladins cast second turn on griffins. Griffins fly a tiny bit forward and summon.
I did not take this challenge lightly and have been saving scrolls which will be needed during ktahu & baal bosses - all phantom scrolls, calm rage scrolls, time back..and also dispel scrolls for fighting dragons etc.
All major battles in the game are done apart from a few forgotten wandering stacks and Scrounger, Arena battles, ktahu, Baal and wizard tower level 5 and beyond. The nastiest fight so far has been Samman, who loves to cast mass magic shackles in round 1 ruining all summoning etc, has 366 mana to play with and once he gets weaker casts armaggedon which ruins your resurrections and gives strong burning. Generally when you go no loss with paladin resurrections at the end of the battle strategy is as follows : leave the last few enemy ranged units standing and providing enemy hero spent all his mana, start happily phantoming paladins and resurrecting. When there are no ranged units in enemy army there are other more sophisticated methods
- from the start of the battle pick one level 1-3 stack (since you normally play with level 4-5 army) do not kill it and at the end of the battle cast fear. You can also carry some fear scrolls in backpack if mana is a problem.
- not killing that 1-3 level enemy stack also means do not let it come close to you if it is weak because you may kill it accidentally by retaliation. So start paying attention to this stack before battle is nearing its end. For example fighting dragon cave in Monero no loss is easy if there are some dragonflies. When dragonflies get closer (round 2) keep casting fear on them until the battle is done and then resurrect.
- if there are no ranged units, no 1-3level enemy stacks or mind immune stacks are present, you're up for an interesting battle. Then you have to pick one unit again to keep alive while you resurrect at the end of the battle. It should be a melee unit, since their manouvering is limited, slower the better.
a) Now keep slowing it (slow spell or lighning ball shock), trapping it, wear winter set etc, do anything neccessary to make it stay far away from where your resurrection party is taking place
b) sometimes everything mentioned above does not work to your liking, usually because it forces you to spend valuable mana and hero turn on repeatedly casting some silly spell on some unit left behind which does not take a decisive role in battle. Then, check the strengths of your summons - coming from royal griffins, runemages, dryads etc. Angelic guards are the best because of high phys. resist and mobility. Now evaluate and pick the enemy stack which is roughly the strength of one of your summons. The idea is that if these two equal stack get involved in skirmish, then their fight tend to last a while before it is resolved, unlike strong unit-weak unit skirmish. When ready cast slow on chosen enemy stack to make sure it stays behind enemy units rushing towards you. Now get to this unit with your summon. Since the enemy chosen unit speed has been lowered it will attack your summon, not getting closer to your main ranks. You just defend with your summon or even lure it further from your army. While they battle it out, it is your time to do your resurrections.
c) Things may get complicated when there is enemy hero present, so it is not just a wandering stack. That's why my fight with Samman got so messy. I ended up killing his archdemons quickly plus only roughly half of his army, so he does not start to cast armaggedon yet. Point was to make him feel secure and spend all his mana on other spells. Problem was while I waited turns and turns for him to spend all his mana, he did too much damage for resurrections to me, i only have limited mana and distorsion 1. So i ended up sticking royal snakes in the middle of his army for him to concentrate on. I kept casting mana balls and time back every second turn on snakes. Eventually it worked..So far, i can truly recommend this challenge to kbap veterans

[Jaedar]

You are quite possibly insane. But your travelogues are entertaining reads despite(or perhaps because of) this.

Basically, keep going

[ckdamascus]

They also let you see what the top strategies are. It pleases me that I figured out some of them before hand!

But I am always learning, so I am curious, even with a summon meat shield, when your royal snakes attack, doesn't the enemy retaliate against them later on? (not counter attack since they have no retaliation, but sometimes they don't take the bait/summon and go for your royals).

Do you just take the hit and resurrect later? If so, why royal snakes? They seem so fragile!

Or do you do the dance, where you hit after everyone attacked, then since they have the initiative bonus, you walk back one step, let the meat shields take the hit, then go back to hit again?

Although cheer only lasts for some time, and doesn't work on royals, does it?

I almost want to dump my assassins right now for similar reasons.

[impy]

Originally Posted by Jaedar

You are quite possibly insane. But your travelogues are entertaining reads despite(or perhaps because of) this.

Basically, keep going

Thanks. Don't tell my employer

There are few reasons why i picked royal snakes.
1) Due to limited resurrection capabilities i wanted a unit which does huge amounts of damage without retaliation. You see, after initial paladin's resurrection, which is admittedly quite powerful i could only do cca 20% phantom on paladins because of distorsion 1 (investing in intelligence to boost it is weak), so i had to play conservatively throughout the whole game. I mentioned earlier that summons get fairly strictly positioned in the middle of the battlefield for blocking enemy melee from reaching my back ranks, but not far out of reach of paladins and fragile snakes. Yes, snakes always wait & hit & run. they stay 90% of times out of reach of enemy melee. If it comes to worst, you can always cast time back level 1 on them. Sometimes it meant skipping a turn with snakes completely. Snakes by themselves will eventually max out your battle alchemy medal, so they are in the middle of my setup and attack the biggest enemy incoming melee unit so they can poison it.
2) you can argue that i could have picked much stronger knights instead, which won't go down easily. They are slow, but would only have to walk to the middle of battlefield due to my strategy of holding enemy forces there with summons. Or versatile horsemen. The point i was trying to prove was the game can be beaten with fairly ordinary units. My setup may be decent, but not the most powerful. I could have picked demonologists as well etc. The same goes for equipment. Believe it or not i did not use scanner in order to have favorable start. Just started the game to see what I find and make it somehow. With scanner i would have been obsessed with getting the best
equipment, but i did not want it like this. Just out of curiosity - what equipment i am talking about? Definitely belt of the winner (+50%defence +1 speed), slippery cuirass, maybe scaly set, knight set,snake boots..My number of unused runes could be easily improved by 30, since i have not found any of +10runes/50victories items. And the same goes for wanderer scrolls. I was determined to get to k-tahu without using these boosts. And again, it goes the same for using of any kind of overpowered combos, level 5 units, or kiting.It is very challenging but that's how i like it. Each battle - Mistikus, Moro, Shenobi etc etc. have their own story and ministrategy.Sometimes i was waiting for the train from work, just standing there thinking how i am going to beat that stupid guy

[ckdamascus]

Actually, as I finished writing it, I remembered your distortion level 1 limitation and how turn back time only works on level 1-3 at level 1.

That alone is a huge reason to go with royal snakes. I was also just curious if you had to do hit and run since I actually find soft, but hard hitting no-retaliation units harder to use effectively (hit and run doesn't seem as efficient at times) than stronger tanks.

Yeah, I think I spent too much time thinking about this game too. Haha.