Orcs on the March thread

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by ICECOOL

Thx.
In that case my advice to U is to use more ranged attack units (I had 3) and dragons - they have highest move pionts rate. If U put Ur dragon(s) on the center of the army U`ll be able to attack that nasty unit in first round on most battlefields - by black dragons "splash" damage and green dragons pulling. Eventually u may speed other flying units. And U must not forget about high level of initiative of Ur units so that they could move before shamans do

PS. U must rid off that Inquisitor's Blade. In near future U will find much more better "sword" artifacts and that pallandins become more unusefull because of their lack of move points - I switched them for green dragons

That's what Mass Haste on turn 1 is for.

[ICECOOL]

Yea but for mage (that I`ve played) useing that kind of spell is not best option. I used ball of fire in the beggining, instead

[ckdamascus]

Yeah, paladins end up sitting around a LOT for me. That's why they are probably truly the number one "love/hate" unit in my other thread.

Zhug, it totally depends on your army setup and damage capabilities.

IF you can clearly reach the goblin shaman in round one with a lot of units before he can act, and IF you can do SERIOUS damage to them, I highly suggest casting level 3 Pygmy as your first move.

It is probably the BEST debuff spell for warrior / paladin types in the game, and it is still pretty solid for mages too.

You will do ~66.7% more damage (better than criticals which does 50%) and if they retaliate in physical form, they take a 40% reduction in their attack rating (which doesn't really mean -40% total dmg, more like 33% but it does help a fair amount).

If you CANNOT do serious damage to them, I suggest magic shackles assuming you have enough leadership. It is also another reason why as a mage I was rolling with two marshal batons, etc. Because leadership is truly a king statistics in Impossible mode, unless you are doing something tedious and/or cheesy.

Another possibility is Phantom a high target unit, like Rune Mages. They LOVED aiming for my rune mages, especially the phantomed ones. The danger here is, you might end up "feeding" the orcs with an entire round of adrenaline, and trust me, that is NOT good if you can't do serious damage to them in the next round.

If you have engineers, you can disable them using the blind splash thing, but then you will find why I have them on the love/hate relationship thread too.

Blind works, but if you do any damage to them (including pre-burning them or poisoning them) they will awaken from it and it only affects one unit. It is a poor man's "magic shackles/fear" in a way and horribly mana inefficient, but it might save you since goblins are very fast and you might need a round to get into position.

Consider the heavy offensive route as sometimes it is the best defense. Remember, as deadly as astral attack is, if you can cut his army down in half before he gets the first move, you just "resisted" 50% extra damage right there.

Disabling just buys you time to setup to smash them into oblivion, or you can keep perma-casting it (eeek, shackles and the like are very expensive for that purpose, but again, it might be all the time you need). They can still attack with shackles on, but it is far far less painful than the astral.

[loreangelicus]

Wow... all this talk about goblin shamans. I'm still playing CotA and DotC, but I'll be jumping to OotM soon.

So what level are these goblin shamans that you can't just Fear or Blind them?

[ICECOOL]

Lol dunno. About level 2? That is so hilarious about that. They may have small numbers but they do tons of damage.
Blind or smthg are just half-measure. U must deal with them anyway. Besides they come in few stacks, and as U know there is no "mass blind" spell.
PS. Whats are CotA DotC & OotM ?

[ckdamascus]

<grumbles> this is why I like level 3 magic shackles. Mass Shackle!

But at the moments they out leadership you, you got to take desperate measures.

lore, yeah the orcs are grossly overpowered. I am now testing out my Orc Veterans to replace my Assassins, and it is not looking good for the assassins. (All because the game only spawned 28 Orc Veterans naturally, so I had to wear that stupid regalia to get the trophies needed to convert normal orcs into Veterans).

Goblin shaman are pretty pitiful damage to leadership, but, in Impossible Mode the computer "cheats" so it has far more leadership anyways.

Anyway, they are nothing compared to Blood Shaman, who are Level 4, have far more HP, can do Power of the Horde (thank god this one is magic damage), or yet another Astral Attack which will turn Black Dragons into silly putty.

Icecool, those are the names of the other campaigns

Champion of the Arena (CotA)
Defender of the Crown (DOTC)
Orcs on the March (OOTM)

[atlatea]

Because leadership is truly a king statistics in Impossible mode, unless you are doing something tedious and/or cheesy

Yeah, totally agree on that.

Back to shamans (goblin and orc), there are many ways to go againts them. But, seriously, they appear late in the game, and at that time, most of you already have many tricks againts them. Imo the hardest battle againts astral attack is in elon (againts the orc chief), the rest are easy compared to that battle.

Goblin shaman is not that overpowered if they become your enemy (in fact, they're just normal as there are many ways to handle them, well, if you look at the dragons in montero, they do way more dmg than them), but they're insanely overpowered if you use them (especially if you're warrior or paladin), reason? 25k-30k dmg in 2 turn in late game (not counting the phantomed one)

As for orc shaman, they are ok to me.

Well, here is another cheap way againts them, just have a minimum of 35 mana, several green dragons, invisibility, posion skull spell or any other spell you deem necessary, ball of lightning/dragon dive/dragon tail/mana accelerator. Cast invisible on green dragon, then you're free to do with them (shamans), before invisible disapear always remember to replenish mana with green dragon then cast invisible again, repeat that, should win easily without much thought and no losses.

[loreangelicus]

Aside from bypassing resistances, does their astral attack bypass the Defense statistic as well?

I'm thinking all these new astral-damaging units are hurting the mage and paladin class more. This is because on impossible, aside from Invisibility tactics, most tactics from these two classes rely heavily on buffing their units. The warrior does have enough of a leadership advantage to rely primarily on unit damage and "resurrecting" troops, and just minimal buffing.

See attached battle I had with Elenhel in KBAP with warrior on impossible. Droids and undead, -50% (vulnerability) and 0% base resistance to magic. And yet they wiped the floor with these magic-wielding enemies and hero in just 14 rounds at no-loss.

I'm still getting excited with all these talks about the new goblin and orc units. I sure hope they do put up a good fight as warrior on impossible usually just means the only serious battles that you have are the initial battles at the lower levels and the boss fights.