Beating the game with no losses (Paladin)

[Xelian]

Originally Posted by Metathron

Ummm...so you've defeated the giant turtle with no losses?

I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Originally Posted by Xelian

I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

Use the most pathetic unhits you have against your double and "smash him up" with rage and majic, if you're a mage that is.

[sector24]

Namel: That's very good to know. Fortunately I did not take leadership at level 12, so we'll see what I get. Overall my level ups have been fantastic, I took mana once, rage once, leadership twice and the rest have been attack and defense (mostly defense). I think I have a natural defense of 10 (from shrines and level ups), I'm at work and can't check right now. I'm going to start taking leadership bonuses now that they are more valuable.

----

The fights against my own army will probably be the most interesting. Since I have a ridiculous amount of money I will probably buy 5 full stacks of units specifically for these 2 fights. My goal would be to pick all melee units that are easily nullified by spells and have varying rates of movement. Examples being:

Peasants: Casting weakness on peasants reduces their damage by 50%. They also have move 2 so I don't have to worry about them until late in the fight.

Fire Dragonflies: They have haste and the AI will use it on the first turn, so I should be able to focus all 5 of my stacks towards wiping out the Dragonflies on the first turn.

Ideally I'd have a movement 6 unit (Dragonflies) a movement 4 unit, a movement 3 unit, and three movement 2 units. That gives me the most time to focus fire one stack at a time. Spells like trap or slow can further split the speed of the units. With Phantom I can create a stack to eat the counter attack, and then focus fire with all my stacks. Of course this is all theory, I'll probably run half way around the world recruiting an army and then find out it doesn't work and have to try something different. But I think it will be fun nonetheless.

[Zhuangzi]

I'm pretty impressed by what you have to say about this game, sector24. Sounds like someone knows how to think things through properly.

I haven't actually tried the double image fight, but I would have thought a Mage can win it fairly easy using crappy units like Miners and Hyenas.

[Shd]

Sector24, good luck in your adventure to complete wo looses...

Some hints from my mage (impossible, 0 looses):

1. Dont count on necromancy talent (if nothing is changed then ressurected units by talent is counted as "killed")
2. Be careful to not overupgrade spells/SR skills (sacrifice, time back etc.). I made such mistake, so in my opinion Sacrifice must be lvl 1, time back - up to lvl 2-3 units... But anyway, it is heavily depending on your gamestyle and Paladin one will differ from Mage one
3. All lvlup upgrades must be aimed toward tactic you will use against dragons (Because when you will get dryads from elves till dragons fights will be "piece of cake").... Just you must know what to do, if there will be 3-4 stacks of them with about 10 in each (there Mage tactic will not work, so i suppose i cannot help you much ).
4. Dont dismiss armies (not sure if it can hurt in straight way, but it really helped me in some fights when i got forest spirits (15 from mage strating army multiplied by hypnosis+sacrifice) before reaching elflands), just put them in garrisons.
5. Always have enough money to completly change your army. I needed to change it at least 5-6 times.
6. Dont expect "high" score at the end, because AFAIK its based on time spent (not killed/loss koeficient), for example mine was less than 800 when i played wo looses.
7. And last one... If you want to make such game interesting - dont use cheating tactics like greens+invisibility etc...


P.S. Killing turtle without looses is very easy. Just block her head with melee unit (cavalry will suffice). In such case she will not use AoE damage spell and knockbacks.

P.P.S. Killing "old double" is easy if you using dryads+ring+gift.

P.P.P.S. Beware of undeads, but as Paladin it can be more easy that as Mage

P.P.P.P.S. Most hard part will be dragons, i suppose... But, who knows...


Good luck and keep us informed of your progress

[kennec]

this is good reading.


anyone have tips for a paladin against unded hordes of ghosts and skeleton archers and legions of vampiers.

[Crocodil]

Originally Posted by Xelian

I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

there is an item that give u 5 mana for 5 rage + inquisitors = unlimited mana
item + inquisitors + gift 2 = unlimited resurrect units lvl 5
green dragon + phantom 3 = 15-40 mana

that should be enough mana

[sector24]

I cleared Haas' Labyrinth last night. I should have written down the names of the dragons and how I beat them, but honestly the fights were business as usual even though the armies listed as overpowered and impossible. I'm still using the all-girl + inquisitor pimp army. The one fight that was troublesome was the one in which the enemy had all level 4 and 5 units. I think it was Green Dragons, Archmages, and Cyclopes. The hero also had 190 mana.

Without any form of crowd control, I couldn't stop the hero from casting Geyser every round. I just gave up on resurrection until he was tapped out, but at that point I had to resurrect 20% of my army without him accidentally killing himself. I left 2 archmages alive and surrounded them with summoned thorns, but occasionally he would attack my inquisitors or sprites. Very annoying.

I did develop 2 new mini-strategies that helped:

1) I put 7 stacks of summoned thorns in a hex and cast fire rain on them. Some of them are afflicted with burning, and I cast Magic Spring on those as a way to get my mana back. It's just barely efficient, but getting 8 mana every 4 turns through Charger was just too time consuming.

2) Putting Glot's Armor on a unit that you cast Time Back on. If a spell like Geyser takes down Glot's Armor, you can use Time Back to restore the previous HP of Glot's Armor. Also very useful for avoiding incidental archer damage from 2 Archmages.

The other dragon that was mildly troublesome was the one with 9 million ogres and 3 million giants. One of the ogre stacks hit my lake fairies so hard that 2300 of them died. However, giants = unlimited mana so it was easier to resurrect. (I wrote about how awesome Giants are in a previous post in this thread)

I hit level 29 in the Labyrinth, and now I'm in Murock where the battles are easy again. Shamans are dangerous only because you can't control who they hit with the dancing axes, but thankfully 90% of the time they choose the Inquisitors or summoned thorns. Most orcs can be put to sleep with Dryads, and the odd stack can be charmed with demonesses. My biggest issue is my elven crown rebelling at inopportune times. I am -1400 leadership on all my stacks because of this, although I'm still able to plow through everything pretty easily. When I get access to a castle I can begin to build up my stacks again. I wish you could suppress an item when the morale reaches "bad" instead of having to wait for "terrible".

[Zhuangzi]

Almost done, sector. This has been interesting to read. Out of interest, how many hours of play do you think this has taken? I think you've probably played more than the standard 60 or so hours in pursuing this strategy, right?

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by Xelian

I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

The giant turtle is the easiest boss - I killed him in like, two rounds. Without losses, and I didn't even have Resurrect at the time...

basically my tactic with him - and later the giant spider too - is to attack him only with troops who have "no retaliation" ability, or with cloned stacks.

For the turtle, my troops were: Royal Snakes, Griffins, Alchemists, Inquisitors, Evil Beholders. I just went straight for the Turtle with the Snakes, then cast Phantom Image on my snakes. All the others attacked the turtle afterwards, except the griffins. Next round I hit him again with everyone and used the Inquisitors to resurrects the few snakes that died.

For the Spider, (I had almost the same troops but the last 3 were replaced by Giants, Evil Beholders and Shamans) I always killed off all the spawned spiders, while my Snakes, cloned snakes and cloned Giants were hitting the Spider. That way, he attacked me directly only twice during the whole battle, otherwise he just kept summoning the useless spiders. Even the Shamen could easily take out one stack of those without fear of retaliation. I have split my Griffins to help in the cleanup.