Mid-game crisis :<

[Zonc]

Total bonus from zombie wife and DC is +1 speed (useful for every undead unit) +3 initiative (VERY useful when fighting dragons, allows archers to move before any dragon) and +7 attack (this is huge especially for a mage). I would say it would work without Rina (yes I like the demon wife double weapon slot ) but Dark Commander has a bonus too big to skip.

[Ryastar]

@jwallstone. Yeah I did make a math error, at some point in there a two crept in as a multiplier, I'm not sure how. Thank you for keeping me honest. Agreed then, that the difference between them when both +damage items are in use is small (though sprites are still on top!), Vulture doesn't have those, and Sprites are clearly superior when those items are not in use. My problem here is my mage game where I used both S and L and found that S was way more effective (no whip or daggar) is waaaaaaaay more recent than my last warrior game where i used both WITH the whip and daggar, so I bow to your more recent experience. P.S. where are you getting those critical strike figures? I have never noticed that stat in-game.


@Vulture. Ok, I am starting to figure out what is going on here. 1. you have no ranged troops in your army. Range units are the best way to minimize losses, as I saw somewhere "distance is the only armor I need". A dead enemy doesn't do any damage (not counting the UNdead, which isn't what I am talking about). A key thing for you is to get yourself some range units. Two stacks is usually enough, and sometimes three, though by the end of the game, you do need a majority of melee troops. I would recommend hunters and elves. Yes, their damage is not as high, but this is compensated for by their lower likelihood of being in danger and therefore their ability to do damage and not receive any in return. 2. Use your abilities better. THe primary one I want to talk about is lullaby. This is perhaps the most powerful ability in the game, and you have been treating it like a small thing of little interest. With lullaby you can ensure that all non-mind immune level 1-3 enemy stacks are out of the battle for the first two turns or more (more if you are willing to use a spell to extend that). The other important dryad ability is summon thorns, but more about that a little later. 3. Change your use of timeback. They way you have been using it is to replenish the number of your tank stack after it has been damaged ie. the stack that dies the least. I use timeback on the unit that dies the most, namely sprites, at least how I use them. They are my primary strike troops. This is due to the way the AI works. It usually chooses its target based on two factors: 1. whatever is closest. 2. whatever stack will be damaged the most by its attack. I take advantage of this by moving my sprites right up into their faces. I send them after whichever troop is most likely to be able to do damage to my other troops, and they will heavily damage if not kill it. That troop is now most likely to go after my sprites without any encouragement, and the other enemies are as well. By presenting my sprites up there as a target, they end up taking most of the damage. Right before the end of turn two, all that damage is neutralized by timeback. By this time, my range unit should have decimated much of their troops with support from no-retal units like lake fairies (send them in at the end of turn one, and then out again at the beginning of turn two, though be sure to leave one movement so you can cast timeback). Also towards the end of turn two, your dryads swoop in and summon some thorns and then swoop out next turn. These thorns then replace the sprites as the focus of enemy attacks, and you don't care if they die. 4. Get your basic stats higher. Most of your stats should end up soming from items. Try to get your attack and int up to between 15 and 20. Defense is thew least useful of the three stats, so change some items around. Go looking for better ones if you have to. There should be some around. Do you have a wife? Does she have kids? If you answered no to the first, get one. Even if her innate bonus sucks you still have four more slots for items. Don't have kids. Most of them are useless and the item slot they fill is more valuable. The only kids that are useful as the ones that give % bonuses to leadership, att, int, or mana or the ones that give +5 to any of the three primary stats (and maybe a few others, I forget), but these are few and far between. IF your current wife has kids and they aren't the good kind, spend as much of your money as possible, divorce her, and marry someone else.

With these suggestions, there is absolutely no reason why you should take any losses from that fight you decribed. 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. Clearly there should be only one stack that causes real losses with a good application of strategy. That is the giants because they deal area damage to all your ground troops. This makes them THE early target for killing. 8 of them is 7200 hp. One sprite/lake fairy hit and sniping from your ranged units and possibly a rage spirit move or a spell like helplessness and they should be dead or practically so. Your dryads will put everything but the ents and unicorns to sleep. The ent's ranged bee attack has a range of only three squares as far as I have noticed, so they should end up shooting at your sprites. The unicorns will also attack your sprites and suffer retaliation. Your lake fairies (which waited at the beginning of the turn) zip in and damage either the ents or the unicorns, the latter have more mobility, so i choose them to be the first to go. Turn 2 lake fairies move back out of range but keeps one movement point. Sprites attack the unicorns. Dryads wait. Range units snipe. Normal ents probably use run to move and attack the sprites. Ancient ents do whatever. Level 1-3 units stop snoring (you can put them back to sleep next turn using a phantomed stack of dryads if you want). Dryads move forward and summon. Timeback on Sprites. From here strategy should be fairly obvious: stay out of the way of the ents' bee attack, snipe with range units, hit and run with lake fairies and sprites. Summon more thorns with the thorns you summoned in the first place. OWN!

Yours lengthfully,

Ryastar

[jwallstone]

@ Ryastar:
Thanks for being honest about the math error, it happens to everyone. I completely agree with you that Sprites are definitely better without the two +1 damage items. With them, they're essentially the same in pure damage. I double checked the in-game damage ranges, and Sprites have better average damage (lower min but even higher max) against "vanilla" enemies, but against ones with magic resistance or high poison or fire resistance, the LF damage is slightly higher.

Critical hit percentages only show up with the Interface mod. If you hover over the Attack value of the troop or over an enemy, it'll display the % chance.

Not to dwell on this any more, since it's not related to the rest of the thread, but just to offer one final bit of information for those interested. The base % critical hits are Sprites 10%, LF's 15%. With +3 morale from Anga's Ruby and 0 rage, it becomes S: 14%, LF: 21%. With full rage (106), it becomes S: 26%, LF: 39%. The full LF critical hit % is quite impressive, and is one reason I like them.

@ Vulture
Ryastar has given you tons of good advice, which I completely agree with and if you follow it, will probably help a lot with these battles.

[Vulture]

Wow, thank you for your rather big list of proposals. I appreciate that will to help. Yet you seem to have skipped most of my statements. But I do post a lot I must admit. Maybe it's up to me to reduce my count of words to make more desirable posting worth being read fully

1. I said that I have sprites now. Tried them with a 3-she-elves combo as you describe using practically the tactics you describe (end of turn/first in turn double strike move) and as replacement for the lake fairies. Both ways did fine but left me with heavy losses on both fairies and sprites.

2. I do use Dryads properly and I have said that. I do use the most powerful spell ingame provided by a non end-game unit correctly. If only I had the spell turns to phantom them I would chain-sleep the 1-3s. And of course I do approach afterwards, drop thorns and leave, having a 500+ thorns stack ready to get eaten. Yet the damage is taken by Ls and Ss and not the thorns or mostly shared between the latter 2 which leaves me up to 60 mana for 2 stacks to rezz (40 if I'm lucky on the rank needed to bring em back) which is the opposite of what I want.

3. I said 2 times that I did try range units for those fights with the elven bow w/ 3 attack to archers and 15% extra physical damage on range dmg + elven crown giving me additional 1000 Ldr and +1 morale but their damage is just sucky as hell. A non-double shot kills exactly 1 ancient ent or 1 1/2. Whilst facing 25 on the field this is just a joke, I'm sorry to say that. I used both 2 Elven Archs + Sprites with dryads as well as 2 Elven archs, Bowmen, Emeralds and and inquis.

4. "Get your basic stats higher". Yeah, good advise, I can't script 'em into my game but atm I must settle with what is available (and I searched all of Demonis + land of the dead by now having everything explored except of 2 of the dragon spots in GW with 3+ dragon troops on a very very little area with no place to circle them having other 'impossible's in my back from where I came from) and that is angas ruby, sword of darkness (as said, I wanted light but fighting elves certainly denies that wish :> and of course I did NOT wear it while using the girl-combo) or elven bow or basic +3 atk + what not sucky bonus. The worst shit is my regalia slot: iron tooth, training chamber loot, woohoo. Never found a different regalia.

5. I stated on the first page that I am married to feonora since I went until Ellinia with a devastating Stack of Royal Snakes still keeping up my damage score records. In frog form of course, else makes no sense. Since I've read that Feos kids are most likely to be crappy (not only Feo's but 80% of any kids are) I don't have any, using the artifact/belt/helm slots for the stuff I have around. Few + Ldr/ Def / Int put around there. I would take atk If there was any item providing it in my game. But I still have chances since there are many shops to unlock by quests for higher levels. I would also take Xeona and I will for sure but I can't even think of facing her in battle...

6. I completely changed my setup being back from lotd as I have found blackies and ancient vamps over there. So I go with Blackies, Necros, Ancient Vamps, Skellie Archs and Demons which makes things much easier for me. I can finally spend a cast/turn for dragon arrows3 on the skellies. I still have to learn to estimate the dmg in and out for after timeback on the demons though not to lose too many vamps since I'll end up kiting turns to sacc/TB again for preserving losses. But that's a matter of ~5 fights to master. I do have black knights available, too. Maybe I'll give them a shot.

7. Thanks again for taking the time to analyse my situation. Much appreciated over here.

Few qs: Didn't try yet but do demons suffer from the plague spell from the necro ? If so I will exchange em with black knights or blue vamps.

Vamps in Bat form only drain life out of living creatures. As I've seen, plants don't count as living, is that correct ? Since I've wondered vamp bats not draining life out of hitting ents.

@jwallstone: I agree on these advice, too. Yet except for the description about 'aggro gain' I was familiar with all of them. I was wondering how the AI chooses targets if range/turns till strike is/are equal for 2 of my units back then. Now I seem to get it from my own estimation and Ryastar's clear statement. i used to think of something like 'AI seems to go for both, lower level if it has to choose and for dmg out weakening on enemy units per estimated own dmg done'. Wonder if this is understandable ^^

[Zonc]

Originally Posted by Vulture

6. I completely changed my setup being back from lotd as I have found blackies and ancient vamps over there. So I go with Blackies, Necros, Ancient Vamps, Skellie Archs and Demons which makes things much easier for me. I can finally spend a cast/turn for dragon arrows3 on the skellies. I still have to learn to estimate the dmg in and out for after timeback on the demons though not to lose too many vamps since I'll end up kiting turns to sacc/TB again for preserving losses. But that's a matter of ~5 fights to master. I do have black knights available, too. Maybe I'll give them a shot.

That's a good setup, however I would swap dragons with some other ranged uint (thorns are good with +dmg items, or just simple bowman). Demons + Target got all 1-4 units covered, so the only worry are 5 lvl tanks. Use Dragon Arrows against them

Vamps in Bat form only drain life out of living creatures. As I've seen, plants don't count as living, is that correct ? Since I've wondered vamp bats not draining life out of hitting ents.

- plants
- cyclops
- other undead (they're still valuable in Death Land though, just save living creatures for vamps so they can regenerate)

[jwallstone]

@ Vulture
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "aggro gain". As for AI choosing targets, they tend to target creatures that have a higher damage potential. This usually means large stacks of lower level units. They seem to have a preference however for certain special units, such as inquisitors. I've found that phantoms or summoned thorns also seem to get preference. Finally, if you have a unit next to an enemy ranged unit, if the ranged unit can move away and still shoot, it will almost always shoot the unit it just moved away from. That can be very useful for figuring out how to neutralize enemy ranged units.

[Vulture]

I'm pretty happy with it, too zonc. You're right about a second range unit (with respective gear for them) to be more suitable in this setup than dragons but still I have none of those items and no tolerance (UD+Demons around) so bowmen won't go. I prefer dragons for now for their fire damage and their special ability because in Ellinia multitarget fire damage is way better than single target physical. Took out a stack of sprites and 2 small stacks of ancient ents lined up yesterday with a fine 3x 4k fire breath. But of course for demonis and lotd the blackies will decorate a garrison and I'll go as you advise. Also, I was lucky to get another -rest lvlup for timeback so I'm with 20 rage / 3 turn rest for 1-5 creatures which is perfect as can be. Gives me the opportunity to reduce battle length to a max of 5 turns without kiting around too much waiting for next sacc/tb to work. Is there a chance to get it below 3 turns ? Reaper is only lvl 16 atm so there's much to come. 2 turns would be a blast :>

Funny thing is, I found my 2nd and 3rd sacrifice spell yesterday and my 3rd ressurrection (was even a stack of 3 scrolls of it and I felt very bad selling them ^^). I hope I don't pay for this spell luck in my next game ^^

Thanks again everybody for your help, I've learned a lot about helpful synergies through your comments, especially about skellie archs with DA. I usesd to be disappointed about this spell with hunters until I learned more about dmg increase through defense ignore for big stacks of low lvl archers. It increases the dmg by a much higher amount than with high lvl archers with higher attack rating and higher damage ratio (i.e. 2-3 vs 8-12). I'll keep that in mind for when I get the whip and hopefully find the dagger for the Ls and Ss waiting in Kronberg Castle to finally kick some asses :>

[Elwin]

Originally Posted by Vulture

But of course for demonis and lotd the blackies will decorate a garrison and I'll go as you advise. Also, I was lucky to get another -rest lvlup for timeback so I'm with 20 rage / 3 turn rest for 1-5 creatures which is perfect as can be. Gives me the opportunity to reduce battle length to a max of 5 turns without kiting around too much waiting for next sacc/tb to work. Is there a chance to get it below 3 turns ? Reaper is only lvl 16 atm so there's much to come. 2 turns would be a blast :>

Bah, my reaper with level 16 got only time back 1-2 As i wrote in other thread i still wonder if i did something wrong or its pure random and i am extrelemy unlucky for upgrades of time back Atm got the best rage skill completlety useless ( would work with sprites/dryads but i am happy with my current setup) .
As for demonis i agree blackies are useless i tried it ,did no damage at archdemon and not much to others .However i find them usuefull against Karador in lotd, had royal snake,shaman,emerald,hunter, elf in my team but after first recognizing fight ( which was failure of course) i fount out thats my weakpoint because he was main target for Karador's hypnosis and actualy he was kiling me instead of helping. Replaced him with blackie and problem with hypno dissapeared Karador got defeated . Actually with undead army you will not have problem with hypnosis ^^

About ranged setup you mentioned in first post : elven bow isnt bad, but in my opinion for such setup ale barrel + telescopic sight is a must be, addidional 100% attack and 30% crit make my elves and hunters hell powerfull , could add an elven bow for even more damage but actually i am playing mage and need more items for spells than for units.

[Zonc]

Originally Posted by Vulture

Is there a chance to get it below 3 turns ? Reaper is only lvl 16 atm so there's much to come. 2 turns would be a blast :>

Yes my warrior had 2 turn cooldown so there was only one turn for the assault unit to spend idling. However, it's required to win Bogacho's catle battle ASAP (my record is level 8 ) and have the skill that increases exp for spirits (which is very tough for a mage)

I usesd to be disappointed about this spell with hunters until I learned more about dmg increase through defense ignore for big stacks of low lvl archers.

To maximize damage try to achieve around 25-30 attack for skellies. This way maximum bonus (+200%) is achieved and they do tremendous damage (like 12k regular non-crit even for 5 lvl units). This is why I recommend Dark Commander, Xeona with 2 weapons is also very helpful.

[jwallstone]

Sorry, I just want to point out that the maximum damage bonus is achieved when your attack is 60 greater than the enemy's defense, not 30. Each point is a 3.33% bonus, so 30 gives a 100% bonus, and 60 gives a 200% bonus.

For some reason, this math mistake keeps on showing up on the forums.