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#1
03-25-2009, 02:58 PM
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Yes, Ishara's whip and the Poison Dagger are essential to high damage output with sprites and lake fairies. Since they do 1-2 or 1-3 damage, if you add +2 to that, you are almost tripling their damage with these items.
I do have to disagree about Sprites being better than Lake Fairies. Not always. They do have a slightly better damage range (1-3 vs 1-2), but with higher leadership (8 vs 7), you can recruit fewer of them, so this evens it out partially. Furthermore, the Whip and the Dagger have a MUCH greater effect on Lake Fairies because you can hire more of them. The power of these items essentially are proportional to the number of units in the stack. So I've found that if you are using these two items, go with the Lake Fairies, otherwise, Sprites are better for damage. I've actually tested this out with full stacks of both in my army. Just hovering over enemy units, the Lake Fairies had higher damage ranges (both the minimum and maximum were higher) than the Sprites. Finally, since Sprites have Fire Weakness, they drop like flies fighting Dragons of other fire-based units, which pretty much are in all the hardest fights. Lake Fairies don't, so live much longer. Last edited by jwallstone; 03-25-2009 at 07:28 PM. 
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#2
03-25-2009, 05:41 PM
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@Zonc: thanks for your detailed information. As for me I can't go with demons and undead using bowmen as 5th unit for I refuse to buy 3 talents I consider of low value if not totally useless to get to tolerance. As for Dark Commander it would take me 2 more levels to get it since I'm totally out of might runes and the handy 'easy runes for free' talent is maxed already. This includes the possibility of buying runes @ Bogacho which I already did to get my magic schools spells to a reasonable rank (for ress, sacc, target, divine armor etc). Anyways I cured Rina and she's happy with Hake as a human. I thought by myself 'I'm not going for undeads anyway, I'm a paladin and will have Dark Commander veeeery late due to lack of runes' and so didn't take an undead army into consideration.
You're certainly right about this setup being marvelous along with the talents but I'm afraid it won't work out for me at the moment since I just can't reach them/can't buy them. But that is what matters for me. My current state in the game. It is unbearable for me. I don't want to lvlup 3 or 4 levels taking 5min+ fights to the point of agony when concentration3 only delivers 2 mana per turn in order not to run to the castles grabbing reserves :/ By the way how do you restore losses on your undead troops as they can't be resurrected if I'm not mistaken ? For me it would turn out into running castles to refill which is actually what I want to avoid. As for the tactics everything is clear. If only it was as easy as 'hit archers with archers, take melee strike units and kill archers, enemy melee is busy with demon tanks'. Those fights are piece of cake and I can win them without losses with practically every setup. My problem is for example this typical PITA enemy troop in ellinia: 3 stacks of 300-500 sprites or lake fairies each, 2 stacks of 10-23 ents, 3 stacks of 3-7 ancient ents, 2 stacks of 50 unicorns, 1 stack 8 Giants and one stack of 60 random lvl 3s. How to take such a bunch of mobs down, especially those ignoring 'target' and lots of melee/range hybrids ? Which actually means that in this enemy troop setup they spit or melee my melee strike department down to 50% manpower (which is 2 resurrections aka 60 of 89 mana only for those, assuming target and phantom/protection spell being cast twice, once before and once after timeback on tank this means 0 mana left and numbers of ranged decimated by Giants Stomp or Ents getting them in spit range). For a mage this would be a simple zapp 'n crack setup takin them all out quickly with Fire Rain (hello plant ents) and keeping them away with ice snakes. For me neither worked. The dryad, lake fairy and sprite (I purchased them now) setup with demoness and demon was just smashed hard leaving me with losses again. I tried a full range setup with bowmen/elves/hunters with Emeralds as tanks, supported by inquisitors and it ended up with what I said above. Turn 15+ long term fight for simple 'slightly weaker' outdoor troop just to not lose too many units. As for availability I can't hire ancient vamps anywhere in my game having cleared all the sarcophagi and tombs so far. Castle Karmag provides ghosts and normal vamps only, same with the necromancers hut in Kordar whereas Demonis has Bone Dragons, Skelly Archs and Skells only. As for the lands of the dead I can't tell for there's a lvl 27 hero unit with 'impossible' tag blocking the first path -.- @jwallstone: Yeah, that's actually what I came across, too when reading about these girls. The lower leadership makes up for the lower dmg range when hiring big stacks of 2k+. Below that number I'd conclude from the maths that it's practically even and prolly tending a bit towards sprites though. A question in general is: What can I do to avoid many low stacked units to surround my tanks (if not flying) leading to the problem of additional enemy stacks ignoring the target spell because there's no space in the targets melee range ? Against fast units this always breaks my neck on the melee strikers or range/supports. Traps don't do much as I can't cast them anyway for I need any cast/turn for survival of the tank. Another one: am I expecting too much ? Does the battle duration and difficulty (not tactic wise but mass and strength of troops wise) rise suddenly to such a huge extend when going to ellinia ? Was the impression of the first half of the game a false one ? I was used to 2-4 round mashing through any kind of troop including 'match' or 'strong' heroes even in ardent's peaks. Was that just the warm-up ? If so the general impression of the game loses in my eyes but I don't want to believe it's the game's 'fault' but want to believe it's mine. Last edited by Vulture; 03-25-2009 at 06:28 PM.
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#3
03-25-2009, 06:33 PM
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Two questions before i can help:
1. have you been using your dryads' abilities? Cause they certainly shouldn't be around for their damage-doing skills 2. are you completely dead-set on using target and timeback? The usual solution to a strategy not being as effective as it used to be is to switch tactics. As for the sprites vs. lake fairies argument: Lake fairies (known henceforth here as L) have 7 leadership, sprites (S) have 8. This means that if both stacks are equal, you will have 14.28% more L than S. With 20000 leadership you would have 2500 S, 2857 L Let's do some damage math. Assuming the ideal enemy, who has no defence and no resistances and a hero with no attack, S 5666 avg damage, L 4714 avg damage. This is based on the average damage for each creature (S is 2 (avg of 1-3), L is 1.5 (avg of 1-2)) and the fact than each point of attack over defence adds 3.33% damage (S has 4 att, L has 3). No, assuming that the hero has equipped both +1 damage items: S 22666 avg damage, L 10999 avg damage. This is based on the new figures for average damage (S is 4 (avg of 3-5), L is 3.5 (avg of 3-4)). Clearly, S does more damage despite the slightly higher leadership cost. Other stats: S has 33.333% more health (S has 8, L has 6). So the 20000 leadership stack from above have this much health: S 20000, 17142. Again, Sprites have the lead. The only ways that L is better is init and speed, having one more of each compared to S ( L 6 init/5 speed, S 5 init/4 speed), in defence, having one more point (S has 2, L has 3) and is resistance, not having the -50% fire resistance that S has. But just keep S away from fire units (or use timeback to get all losses back) and S comes out ahead by a huge margin. Yes, Sprites are my favourite unit, why do you ask?
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#4
03-25-2009, 07:46 PM
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Can you roughly figure my problem out or what could be a bit of help ? Having no zombie Rina, being too weak to get Xeona, having not even a chance to get to Dark Commander and/or Tolerance in the next 3-4 levels I only see the chance for She-fighters + neutral (morale-downer wise) units to make up for a striking army. But it all ends up melee-only :/ My choice of items is very limited, too. I have the sword of darkness (wanted it to be light, but fighting elves turns it around of course), the elven bow (which showed up being not much of a help even with 3 physical bow-using archers) and 2 sorts of dwarven hammers of which one is the quest reward of course and the other is the one with +3 atk and +3 atk for dwarves and several crap weapons providing lower values. P.S: after collecting tons of units and traveling around for 5 game days I am willing to reroll a warrior or mage, the real classes that can work with only one aspect but therefore to the full extend in opposite to being a lowie mage stuck with 1 cast per turn and with no spellpower, put into plate armor, receiving no extra attack or leadership, therefore getting a little more rage which is by far not enough to draw enough power out of the rage spirits. Ok, whining doesn't help, it's me not the class, that fails atm, I am honest with myself ^^ Last edited by Vulture; 03-25-2009 at 08:02 PM.
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#5
03-25-2009, 07:51 PM
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Ryastar,
I think you've made a math error here. The Sprites definitely do not do 22666 damage with the two items. They do 11333 damage, half of what you calculated. They essentially do nearly the same damage with the two items. However, there are two things that stack the odds more in favor of Lake Fairies. First, LF's have a higher critical hit change, 15% versus 10% base chance. The % also depends on rage, and changes differently for the two units. With full rage, I was getting around 15% for Sprites versus around 25% or so for Lake Fairies. (if I remember correctly, I'll check when I get a chance). This alone translates to more average damage for the LF's. Second, most unit's have some sort of resistance. Since having the two items gives you three types of damage (Magic, Poison, Fire), unless the enemy has equal resistance to all three types, the larger numbers of Lake Fairies means you're dealing more of the type of damage that bypasses the strongest resistances of the unit. So in practice, this leads to more damage output from the Lake Fairies too. I've played with both unit types in the same battle, and just hovering over enemies has (in the battles where I tried this) shown that Lake Fairies do better damage. The extra initiative and speed help too. The extra health is great for Sprites, but these are not units I want to be soaking up damage at all anyway. I use them more like hit and run or fast strike troops. I only bring them in harm's way if I can kill off nearby stacks, bring in a tank that will absorb the damage, or use Timeback. In general, I think the health of this troop is not that important to its use, as opposed to say, Demons. The Dispel ability of sprites may be great, but I've never used it, as good old killing seems to be a better use. Granted, to put all this in perspective, it's kind of like deciding between two troops that are almost identical in usefulness and power. It's up the user to decide on the minor differences between the two. I prefer the Lake Fairies actually for the higher initiative, speed, and not having to worry about fire damage as much, and not so much for minor differences in damage output, which for both are just enormous, which I think we can agree on. Last edited by jwallstone; 03-25-2009 at 08:02 PM.
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#6
03-25-2009, 07:52 PM
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 most units are slow so it's very easy, more problem with Beholder or Vamps but our hero is faster then any stack so it's achievable.
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#7
03-25-2009, 08:20 PM
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As I stated before, I can't get zombie Rina anymore. Do undeads make sense without her ?
And as well stated before, there were no ancient vamps in Marshan Swamp. I mentioned Castle Kormag and I said I cleared every tomb and sacrophagus. And I said there were none with the Dwarven Necromancer in Ardent's Peaks. As for the pull back and turn tactics I am used to it. If not so I wouldn't have explored and grabbed every item and shop in Demonis and Ellinia without a fight. The problem about lotd is that the hero guy is at the very start. Only like half a screen away from the portal on the slim path. With the Portal in my back I can't drag anything anywhere I suppose. I drew his attention by mistake and escaped though the exit which animates slowly what gave him the chance to stand directly next to me and I'm afraid he is now directly in front of the Portal when I return. Bu I'll try, maybe he is reset now. Last edited by Vulture; 03-25-2009 at 08:27 PM.
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#8
03-25-2009, 09:46 PM
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Little update from my side here. Hero was reset and I could go through the land of the dead. Managed to find available troops: Blackies (+Eggs), Ancient Vamps and Black Knights. Am still angry about myself not having picked up tolerance and dark commander on my way to this point and about having cured Rina giving out the magic formula to Hake :/
Yet I don't know how to put a team together that can take and deal likewise on a decent level 
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#10
03-26-2009, 12:09 AM
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Yes, for sure this is what I will be doing, too. I see myself a few months from now posting about impossible no-buy-no-loss-playthroughs with no-nukes mages ^^. If I like a game - and frankly I DO like KB:TL - I always play it really intensively over and over.
Provided the new creatures I might go with Demons, Blackies, Skellie Archers, Necros and Ancient Vamps. Using Demon retaliation,target, timeback vamps target w/ Blackies nuking lines and dragon arrow skellies. Dunno if this works out w/o Rina and Dark Commander though ? Can someone please say yes or no please ?
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Hybrid Mode
