Archdemons anyone?
 

I have really been enjoying using demon troops. Especially when fighting dragons (50% fire resist and +50% def). My question is... can you hire the level 5 Archdemons from anywhere in Demonis? I have found every demon troop except that one. I would imagine you can as I have been able to use any other level 5 troop so far.

You can after you beat Baal.
I like the archdemons too, very good tanks with Xeona for wife and the cloak from the Haas labyrinth quest. And Demetrius weapon so you can hire more of them :)

I think it's random but maybe completing some quest gives opportunity, don't know. But I find Demons more playable than Archdemons (obtained them few times by Demon Gate) especially my favorite combo now (since I divorced with Feanora and got rid of Royal Snakes):
-Scoffer Imps
-Imps
-Demons
-Xeona wife

due to tactics set both imp stacks as near enemy as possible, cast mass haste, put pentagram on ground with demons (imps get +3 morale) and hit with imps using their natural ability to strike and return. Next turn you can give fit of energy to one of them for throwing fireball at the end of turn. This setting needs tank like griffins or horsemen (I use horsemen due to their high initiative). Also Black Dragons are annoying but with help od dryads (put to sleep other troops and finish Dragons) their not very painless. OFC 2x Dragon Slayer Sword works very, very fine against Dragons:D:D

Archdemons are not guaranteed, even in Baal's castle. One game I couldn't find them at all. I haven't used these guys extensively but I believe that regular demons are better.

Original demons can't have 109 defense or so. And in certain cases they are hard to reposition after you time them back. Archdemons are good tanking unit, with "tanking" being the keyword here.

I defeated Baal yesterday and have only regular Demons in his castle.

I forgot to mention about Furious ability of Demons. They can be used same way as Griffins and even with Griffins.

I have played with Demon army, liked archdemons a lot, just I had to watch them not to die... replenishing them is an issue - teleport is the megabonus... and their nearly fire imunity is handy when you fight enemies that like using armageddon.

Demons are fine as they give large variety of tactic combinations - it just take much more brain effort to use it only for good benefit - for me it was much easier to use shooters in first half of game and life steelers in the secon half of game.

When I first played with demon only army - I realized they have not few weaknesses - they fire resistance is not high enough to make usage of armagedon, but their lack of other resistances make them vulnarable in normal battles - They miss archers, they skills are used up in first few rounds and do not replenish - so longer fights are tricky.

If you are good enough to know the AI of your enemy - it looks much more easy for me to use regular army, where ressurection works.

I found Archdemons nearly always till now (not that always I looked for them - so I could missed them but I didn't realize that) But normally I found them even out of the demon lands... if nowhere else than in labyrinth... Still don't worry, if you have a weakness for the sado-maso girl from hell and you like the hell army -> you will do fine w/o archdemons - all what I really missed was "running" ability for cerberus - would love it

gatts: fire resistance does not come into play with Armageddon. It deals astral damage.

You can replenish them using sacrifice. With 15 intellect, Sacrifice III and the dragon cloak you can get 2 with 1 cast even.

Hmm - good to know... armageddon with astral damage (and I didn't use it when I fought demons or dragons as I thought is pure fire damage)
also sacrifice works on dragons... cool... I would bet I had INT above 15... but no matter now I will try harder, maybe I was just too easy discouraged and stopped trying it....