Beating the game with no losses (Paladin)

[Spiralkill]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Basically, sector24 controls the fight so as to minimise losses, and then uses Resurrection to replenish his losses by keeping a weak enemy alive.

Yep that's the trick. u try to keep a no retaliation enemy or a shooter alive since then u don't kill him by accidental retaliation. in the mean while u use rage drain/recharge to get ur mana up (shooter option) or mana spring if it is no retaliation troop (u can control who it will attack by keeping only one stack close to it) if there is no shotter and no ret stack in the opp army (very rare case) u just keep a low lvl stack alive and u just blind them(high lvl stacks cost more mana to blind ) or use slow and let them chase u around the board. upgrade/suppression combats are the easiest to control since u keep the a defensive tower alive and it will always resurrect a stack that stack will always attack the closest stack to it (gain mana via mana spring) and combined with rage drain/recharge trick u have unlimited amount of mana to resurrect everything u want back.

the only down point to this tactic is sometimes combats can take a long time.

[sector24]

I've been grinding methodically through the elven and undead lands and finally cleared all the stacks. The fights were fun, but there were a lot of them. Most battles were 2 or 3 turns, I did not have to cast any spells, and I always had full rage. So I opened every fight with an underground blades just because I could, wiped out 90% of the enemy army on turn 1, then on turn 2 used Time Back and killed the rest. Zerock hit level 30 halfway through the undead lands, which seems crazy. Since then I've been opening with Evil Shoal and just wasting the extra rage to try to level up Sleem. He's 29 now.

Finally I cleared everything except Karador. This fight probably should have been harder, but one result from committing mass genocide on everything I could find is that I was already level 27 before I got chance to siege the castle. So needless to say it was a lot easier than it should have been. The way to control this fight is to simply wipe out all of the units but leave the crystal alive. Karador will no longer be able to cast and as long as there is an available corpse on the map, the crystal will use Necro Call on it and then you can knock it down again. Even better, you can put Mana Spring on your summoned thorns and put a poison cloud over them, and the cloud won't move (unless the crystal raises a stack and you don't kill it right away). It's very easy to generate huge amounts of mana very quickly.

King Mark promoted me and my leadership is 22,000 now but I have been taking leadership on odd levels so I only have one more leadership bonus coming at level 29. I'm still a couple magic crystals short of Magic Shackles 3, so I'm not sure how I'm going to handle Demonis. Probably with heavy losses. If I had to do it again there are a lot spells I would not have scribed.

Isshara's Whip adds +1 fire damage that demons are resistant to and my silver rapiers are useless here, so there won't be any more ridiculous crits. But some of the stacks are only rated as "strong" and my army isn't even full strength since my promotion so I think I will be able to figure something out.

[jake21]

Confused by two things:
a) How do you recharge mana (what is rage/recharge?)
b) How do you wipe out 90% of the enemy with a single rage attack? When I use that attack it does approx 300 damage (hardly a dent to elven/undead stacks I faced).

[sector24]

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that my Underground Blades did that much damage. I leveled it up to 820-900 damage for 40 rage, and now that Zerock is level 30 he no longer gains experience. It's mostly used to thin the crowd a bit. It's very helpful against black dragons due to their magic resistance for example.

The fights are always the same, even the ones with black dragons. I send the Lake Fairies in to cripple/destroy the strongest stack. Demonesses either wait or swap an enemy stack with sprites. If they swap, then my sprites fly all the way back to my side of the board and kill the stack I just swapped (basically I use 2 of my stacks to kill 1 enemy stack safely). If not, the demonesses and sprites wait, and then at the end of the turn they do as much damage as they can. Dryads also wait and after all the enemies have moved they attack. Against undead, my Inquisitors can usually wipe out a stack as well. So counting it up, I cripple/destroy 4-6 stacks on turn 1:

Lake Fairies
Lake Fairies counter attack
Sprites
Inquisitors
Sometimes Demonesses
Sometimes Dryads

At the beginning of turn 2, all my units except the inquisitors go first again because of the initiative bonus of Anga's Ruby. So I can wipe out another 4 stacks before the enemy moves. And the Inquisitors can finish a 5th stack as long as they're faster than the last unit on the board. If for some reason I can't clear the board, then I have all my units wait in the backfield while the Lake Fairies suck up another turn's worth of damage, then use Time Back on them and attack at the end of turn 2 and the beginning of turn 3. None of the normal fights lasted past turn 3, except one against 23 Black Dragons where I had to do a couple turns of resurrecting.

[sector24]

I did not get to play a whole lot this weekend, I just cleared out Demonis. Ultrax was the hardest, I had to come up with some interesting strategies to minimize losses there and the Ultrax battle map was not very helpful. Basically you want to deploy your units in such a way that the enemy can never hit two of them at the same time. That means if you have adjacent units you need to line them up against a wall or obstacle. Red Dragons are the worst, they can breath fire in a line all the way across the screen so you have to watch out for that. An girl-powah army is not ideal for dragons, but the demonesses are strong enough to kill 4-5 black dragons per turn. Also, there is usually 1 stack that can be controlled to resurrect and regain mana. I don't think any of the fights went past 7 or 8 rounds though.

Demonis itself was easier than I thought it would be. I still don't have Magic Shackles 3, so I was worried about all sorts of Demoness switching and imp fireballs. However this turned out not to be an issue. Dryads won the day here, their lullaby knocks out imps and cerberi (plus random additional units such as inquisitors and fireflies) and that just leaves you with demons, archdemons, and demonesses. You have to treat archdemons like dragons, you simply can't stop them from hitting your weakest unit. Demonesses will swap units with you, but most of the time they swap a melee attack sprite/fairy with a unit that you have already put to sleep so there's no danger there. Large stacks of demons are the most dangerous, but well placed Stone Walls and Ice Thorns can contain them until your dryads summon some thorn stacks.

The only change in strategy here is that archdemons love killing inquisitors. So often instead of using time back on my lake fairies, I would use the Inquisitor's resurrection skill on turn 2 and then cast Time Back on them. This serves the double purpose or restoring the Inquisitors to full strength and getting a free resurrect out of the deal.

The castle Magni battle was interesting but again not as hard as I thought it would be. There are too many Demoness stacks to control the fight, so I decided on a different tactic. My opening rage move was to cast Ice Thorns to block myself in. Since the ice surrounds 3 squares not only did I get 3 shards adjacent to my units, but another 3 shards blocking the top of the drawbridge. Basically a double wall for the price of 1 rage skill.

All of my units waited except for my Dryads who used Lullaby, and the enemy archdemons spent their turns knocking down the ice thorns instead of hitting me. The black dragon got through to my inquisitors but that's what Time Back is for, and then the 3 Demonesses did their swapping. However, this was negated by the fact that everyone they swapped in was asleep, and they swapped out my sprites and Demonesses so that they were no longer blocked in the backfield (and could still take action on turn 1). If one stack of Demonesses swapped in another stack of Demonesses to attack, I could still swap them out with my own, but I didn't have to. Once all the opponents had moved I wiped out the Black Dragons with my Lake Fairies, and 2 stacks of Demonesses with my Sprites and Demonesses.

Turn 2 I wiped out the Archdemons with my Lake Fairies, and some of the sleeping stacks. The last stack of Demonesses attacked me but killed themselves in the counter attack. I used the Inquisitor's resurrect and then used Time Back on them, and I had resurrected everyone. Baal could no longer cast because all his units were asleep, and I could finish the battle at my leisure.

[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?

[sector24]

I imagine I did play more than 60 hours. The first post is October 18th, and I probably played ~4 hours a day with the occasional breaks.

So I beat the game this evening. I'm not sure what to say about the last fight. Your tactical position ensures that the losses will be atrocious, so it was really just a grind to survive the Armageddons and knock the enemy down to a single giant while you use Magic Spring to regain mana. I used the girl power army, but it was definitely less than ideal. Sprites are vulnerable to fire and there was no need to bring Dryads with nothing to Lullaby. Still it was good enough to win and that's all that matters.

You can see my attachments for the score. I think 19 days is pretty good considering the no losses challenge. I could definitely have shaved off 2 days for an unnecessary trip from Ellinia to Darion, and if I skipped Anga's Ruby that would be another 2 days. I could definitely see how players could win in 13-14 days. Ironically my Zerock and Sleem were level 30, but my other two were not. I used Time Back exclusively, I never used Soul Drain which is the big XP gainer. Other than that no surprises in my combat statistics. My highest critical hit for the game was 52,788. I updated my signature to reflect the awesome.

I hope you guys enjoyed reading, I must say that this challenge is definitely doable on impossible, but probably not with the warrior unless you find Resurrection very early. I imagine that you'd have to go to the Freedom Isles immediately (like around level 6 or 7) and see if you could buy it from a merchant there or find it in a scroll bag. If you could find Resurrect though, it would be the same as doing it as a Paladin.

I don't plan on another crazy challenge, but if I was going to try one, it'd be a no recruitment challenge. Playing as a Mage on normal/hard, the only restriction is that you cannot buy units. You would have to rely on purchasing items such as eggs, diplomacy, necromancy, and friendly/graveyard units. Unfortunately people report having problems with the diplomacy skill so it might not work out like I imagine it in my head.

[pantasd]

congrats
it was nice reading :p
and learned some things that helped my game