A good army to beat Karador on impossible with a paladin?

[DGDobrev]

Sorry for the double post... I hate to do it, but it has to be done

Karador bit the big one tonight. The party that dropped him consisted of:

Horsemen
Demons (furious skill, always retaliates, better than a griffin)
Inquisitors
Priests
Archmages

I put the priests and the inquisitors in one corner and used them to gradually reduce the numbers of the enemy. I may have accidentally sold necro call, but xeona's castle had that spell and it was pivotal in this battle. As soon as an enemy dies, use the spell and get yourself an ally. You don't really need to level it up a lot - a simple lvl 1 will do. At lvl 1 you get 2 bone dragons from the fallen stack, which is enough. You're not counting on the raised undead to win the battle for you - just to stop the crystal from summoning.

The silver rapier helps a lot here with it's 30% attack vs. undead and it's a rather common item. Good matches for this battle are: horsemen vs. black knights (good resistance) and demons vs. everything else. The priests and inquisitors help to drop the enemy stacks to non-lethal sizes and the battle is won

After everything is cleared out, poison cloud over the bone dragons, magic spring on them and get resurrecting. I left the poison cloud at lvl 1 (doing 20-40 poison damage for 10 attacks) and the bone dragons were taking only 3-6 damage from the cloud and giving back a lot of mana. Sweet.

There is one word of caution here. If you're going for the no losses win, you should be extra careful. If you lose a stack, as I did, and the crystal summons something from it, as it happened in my battle, it counts as a loss of the entire stack. That's how my losses count went up a whopping 432 up

[Calinda]

Gratz on your victory

[iregev]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Sorry for the double post... I hate to do it, but it has to be done

Karador bit the big one tonight. The party that dropped him consisted of:

Horsemen
Demons (furious skill, always retaliates, better than a griffin)
Inquisitors
Priests
Archmages

I put the priests and the inquisitors in one corner and used them to gradually reduce the numbers of the enemy. I may have accidentally sold necro call, but xeona's castle had that spell and it was pivotal in this battle. As soon as an enemy dies, use the spell and get yourself an ally. You don't really need to level it up a lot - a simple lvl 1 will do. At lvl 1 you get 2 bone dragons from the fallen stack, which is enough. You're not counting on the raised undead to win the battle for you - just to stop the crystal from summoning.

The silver rapier helps a lot here with it's 30% attack vs. undead and it's a rather common item. Good matches for this battle are: horsemen vs. black knights (good resistance) and demons vs. everything else. The priests and inquisitors help to drop the enemy stacks to non-lethal sizes and the battle is won

After everything is cleared out, poison cloud over the bone dragons, magic spring on them and get resurrecting. I left the poison cloud at lvl 1 (doing 20-40 poison damage for 10 attacks) and the bone dragons were taking only 3-6 damage from the cloud and giving back a lot of mana. Sweet.

There is one word of caution here. If you're going for the no losses win, you should be extra careful. If you lose a stack, as I did, and the crystal summons something from it, as it happened in my battle, it counts as a loss of the entire stack. That's how my losses count went up a whopping 432 up

How can you resurrect Demons ?
Does the inquistor spell works on them ?

[Vilk]

It isn't the reverse? Ie Inquisitor refuse to resurrect Demons but you can with your resurrect spell? I don't remember well.

About Karador battle my last try took me many attempt before to succeed but it's weird I end in using an overall strategy close to my previous game.

Joined bellow a funny snapshot after few rounds. Notice where are the Death Knight, lead there by a common use of Ice Thorn and very mobile target with Red Dragon.
The second snaphot is some round later, still all army but Red Dragons at start place and Death Knights still wandering around the place.

This attempt had been a nightmare until I decided three things:

• Use Red Dragon as a very mobile target.
• Take care to have a unit with the higher initiative that cannot be hypnotized (Red Dragon instead of royal snake).
• Take care to always cancel a Karador negative spell on my units and keep my High Magic opportunities more for that.

Other more standard points was:

• Drayd with summoned Thorn to avoid Necro call.
• Reduce enemy stack before killing some.
• Use Ice Thorns to slow down enemy stacks.
• Use slow to control some stacks dangerous for my target.
• When killing a stack take care of initiative to be sure to have right after the death a Thorn ready to summon Thorn or a unit to walk apon the dead stack.
• Use few targets to reduce Necromancer stacks.

[DGDobrev]

The demons can be ressed by the resurrection spell. Still, that was a battle I didn't plan on winning without losses, although for a little while it looked that it can be done. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that karador used necro call on my fallen stack of priests (they were supposed to be a scapegoat and die) just before I had to get a turn and ress them with the inquisitors (I had no mana for ress lvl 1 spell at that time).

Besides, I already planned to go on and replace some of the armies in that line-up with fairies, and since I had to return to the elven lands through the book and stack up on more appropriate troops.

With any luck, and with the setup I proposed, Karador can be beaten without a loss, provided you're patient. I may not have lost 400+ priests if I replayed the battle, but since those priests were expendable, and I did not plan on beating the game without losses, I let them die.

[Vilk]

You can resurrect a fully dead stack? I'm not sully sure but I don't think so.

[McSwan]

I started with copying the dryads and making both dryads summon thorns, then your starting area is jammed up and the bone dragon can't attack you initially, and instead they kill the walls.

Also, all the undead units get jammed up and fire rain can kill quite a lot. It was very easy battle with my mage, I suspect it would be more difficult as a paladin though.

[Vilk]

It was in impossible mode? The problem with this approach are the two stacks of Necromancers, they'll do heavy mass damages to your troops, that's why I was using Red Dragon they make the whole difference. Also the bones dragon are the weaker stack and not really a problem.

[iregev]

Has any paladin beat korador with no losses on impossible/would be intresting to see how

[DGDobrev]

I gave you the tactic, iregev

The lineup I used is enough to beat him on impossible without losses, provided you ress (or use time back when their numbers dwindle too much) your scapegoat priests as soon as they die, so that Karador doesn't ress them as undead, in which case they will count as lost.

Also, in my eyes, priests are better than archers for that battle, because they do extra damage to undead, which dramatically improves their damage, which is very important on higher difficulties.