Teach me, expert players of Armored Princess

[kcwong]

It is problematic alright.

Before I can make a move my demonologist stack was reduced to 33 from 68. He has 191 Archmage, 2 stacks of 66 Demonologists, 186 Evil Beholders, 90+ Necromancers, 130+ Druids, 2 stacks of 17 Executioners, and about 400 Fire Dragonflies.

I have pretty much the same army in last upload. I removed the Skull of Pain before getting to level 40, but still his army to too big. Teleporting my trolls (it was evening) into the fray does me no good as his stacks will just run away (possibly getting rid of range penalty to shoot at me).

I'm now inclined to dismiss him... I already extracted much wanderer scrolls, I'd trade +4 Int and some artifact slots for a successful no loss game. T_T

[Saiko Kila]

Originally Posted by kcwong

It is problematic alright.

Before I can make a move my demonologist stack was reduced to 33 from 68. He has 191 Archmage, 2 stacks of 66 Demonologists, 186 Evil Beholders, 90+ Necromancers, 130+ Druids, 2 stacks of 17 Executioners, and about 400 Fire Dragonflies.

I have pretty much the same army in last upload. I removed the Skull of Pain before getting to level 40, but still his army to too big. Teleporting my trolls (it was evening) into the fray does me no good as his stacks will just run away (possibly getting rid of range penalty to shoot at me).

Maybe you could try some other, unorthodox strategy. When I was playing the game for the first time, and was level 39, I tried a new strategy for fighting tough opponents - a single stack of Emerald Green Dragons. I had the skull of necromancer and was a mage. I battled "impossible" pirate, got loss-free victory and, surprisingly, a new fight with traitorous, sneaky elf (the fight was optional, but I weren't willing to part with my artifacts placed on this bastard). So I started the fight with 18 points of mana halved and a stack of 6 EGD. That was the most spectacular fight to that point so I remember it quite good Anyway, it was another no-loss, but I wasn't believing I would survive that till the end

Beginning of battle, each of these pictures is about 400 KB:
http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/4...enhelbegin.jpg

Middle:
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5...helmiddle1.jpg
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5...helmiddle2.jpg
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/9...helmidend1.jpg

Bitter end (for pointy-ears):
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/837...helmidend2.jpg
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/5...enhelscore.jpg

Of course, I had fairly good magical defense, that's why it was possible. The key points were:
- magical defense (items, from gift bag)
- amazing EGD with their mana steal ability
- good spells: invisibility, time back, healing level 3, and demon portal to spice things up
- luck with treasure hunter, i.e. Volcano

But the fight is at lev 40, so I think most heroes would be quite good by that time. Note that invis is not good against plants, droids, gobots, some other creatures and spells, because they can target invisibles and these would reveal themself by retaliating. For this reason I hate guard droids and thorn warriors.

[kcwong]

I've read about Invisibility + EGD strategy, but never used it.

I have Invisibility (III I think), 6 EGD in Verona plus an egg... I guess it's time to fetch them!

[Saiko Kila]

Also, one of the best abilities of pet dragon for mage hero is Ligthning Ball, because it's percentage based and hits where it would hurt most. It is the second ability I max, after treasure hunter. BTW I use mostly Invis II, because it's kind of sweet spot between duration and mana spent, but it depends on enemies and their positioning. Amount of Mana recovered by EGD depends on damage (1 mana per 100 HP I think) and sometimes you get less than you'd like to - when enemies scatter or have high magical resistance. Another one known and good strategy against tough guys is paladin+phantom, but I had no phantom at level 40, and I think that paladins are better against bosses and physical damagers.

In KBTL there was unlimited rage and mana thanks to inquisitors and ice spirit, so almost every big fight was easy (with gift or resurrection), even if tediously long, but in KBAP it's impossible. Either EGD or Calm Rage (rage->mana) are way to go for mana, and lower level creatures and resurrection if you want to bring more troops. Unfortunately with nerfed/changed Anga's Ruby (Ring of Arianna boosts pirates instead of ladies) there's no universally good low levels, but I prefer priests and inquisitors, and beholders too (beholders suck against magic resistant but are perfect for aggro ). It depends on items and availability, human troops are also good and durable. And dryads are still very good with their summons and lullaby. Ah, and demons (meatshield/avenger angel carrier) can be resurrected, even summoned ones, and I prefer to summon them than to pay and bring them to the fight. Besides, demons lower morale of most other races if you keep them in the main army.

[Quelthos]

Here was my setup for Elenhel: Setup

Presumably because I used two half stacks of black dragons (3/6, 3/6) and one stack of green dragons ( 8/8 ), he used summoning spells instead of geyser (snakes and fireflies, hah). He had a large stack of demologists who summoned some cerberus that I had to avoid, archmages, druids, and necromancers in smaller stacks, and one stack of 20 green dragons.

To nullify the dragons I placed one of my black dragon stacks on a square two squares away from a trap, and made him the only unit the dragons could reach. They fell for it, and never got another turn.

Each round was simply one use of ghost blade followed by geyser. I went into the fight with full mana and rage, and used mana accelerator to keep my mana up. Nobody could really do any damage to my units except the cerberus, and I avoided them throughout. I killed him on round 5 and had half my mana left; this was one of the easier fights I've encountered so far.

I find an army of only dragons, or dragons and archdemons, is highly effective for no unit loss as it gives you mobility, strong special attacks, and makes fear a viable spell.

[edit] Finally found where KBAP saved my screen shot for the win. See here. [/edit]

[kcwong]

I'm back!

I had an accident... this Monday afternoon, in my office I suddenly saw some black floating objects inside my right eye. I have floaters in both eyes since I can remember, but those were new additions. On close inspection they dispersed... and I knew I had blood in my right eye.

I left work immediately for an ophthalmologist... he told me that my right eye indeed had a blood vessel bursted. Bleeding already stopped when I noticed it, and my retina had no sign of falling off, so he sent me home with some medicine, vitamin C pills and "Papase 30mg" (seems to be some anti-swelling enzyme), and told me to come back two weeks later.

I still have no clue why that happened... I never had any eye problems before, other than being close-sighted, astigmatism and occasionally dry eyes, which is understandable for an IT guy that stares at monitors a lot.

So I'm now taking it very seriously... a mandatory 5 minutes break every hour from any reading. Hopefully I won't have another busted blood vessel somewhere...

While I have to stop realtime gaming like Starcraft II, luckily Armored Princess and upcoming Civ5 are still viable choices.


Anyway, I defeated Elenhel, but not really because of a lot of skill on my part. It's just the mysterious ways the AI acts in this game.

I tried single 8/8 EGD stack using invisibility first, but Elenhel's stacks moved first, and I was down to 4 EGD when I get to move.

I tried several times more (on Orc islands), and then started switching the triggering battle, trying to start out on a better terrain with full rage/mana.

Eventually I chose the magic protection test as my triggering battle (I know I won't get a chance to equip it)... I didn't end it with full rage/mana, but somehow in Elon Elenhel stopped spamming geyser every single turn. Instead he chose to use Call of Nature almost every turn, and only used Sheep on my Archmage and Demonologist stacks once each.

Here's the before and after saves...
http://www.box.net/shared/639y9dg97e

And here's the result screen...

Archmage stack didn't deal enough damage to out rank the multiple stacks of Cerberus.


@ impy:

1) improve your magic resistance. majority of his units are ranged magic dealers so if you put on chaos helm, magician cloak etc. they'll do only negligible damage.

Unfortunately I don't have any such artifacts. I make map notes of every single artifact for sale, so I'm pretty sure of it.

2) improve your physical resistance. His geyser is physically based.

Already using all I have! Slippery Cuirass and Leather Dress.

3) dump level 5 creatures. facing those many,many geysers you do not want to spend tons of mana on time back. Replace temporarily or permanently with unit with god resistances - knight, horseman..

In earlier attempts my stacks were quickly reduced to nothing if I went with too much weak units, since he's spamming geyser non-stop.

4) better artefacts. I remember seeing those fire protection boots, shark tooth.. which are not helpful in this fight.

For the boots, I have no other options, other than the pair that makes your slowest stack move faster one. The only other boots for sale is on the demon island, the same pair of fire protection boots. So I think the +2 Def is already my best option.

5) This is one very nasty fight where you either have to wait until he spends all his mana before you start resurrecting or leave last unit - dragonflies and cast fear. So you are actually quite lucky with him having dragonflies. Cast fear on them in the first round.

On Elon he didn't have dragonflies... but then he also didn't spam geyser either. The AI in this game moves in a mysterious way.

7) have you improved those skills are was telling you about - mana acc., summoner? You can improve your resurrection also by - higher intelellect, increases strength of summoning spell, inquisitors blade, increases number of paladins you can have

I closed up a quest and became level 40 before fighting Elenhel. I took Summoning I with that... but it wasn't the deciding factor as it turns out.


Edit: Exchanged mind runes (had near 40) for magic runes, so I have Summoning III now. Might runes is around 15, I think I can go for more bonus defense in Defense and Caution later, or get Anger II. Only Concentration III left, then it's Wisdom or the map-regen on for a bigger mana pool. Got flying mount.

[Quelthos]

Your spells seem to do very little of your damage, percentage wise.

I continued using dragons/archdemons and cleared out all the islands of regular armies. I would mix up between using a single stack of dragons, multiple stacks, or dragons + demons depending on whether my strategy was more kiting or more aggressive. Fear, geyster, death star, and ghost blade the dominant spells.

After that I went back and started taking out heroes (using a knowledge scroll for extra xp), and once I'd done that, I started knocking down bosses. Driller, Demenion, the frog were all easy with my dragon army (hellooo hitting the boss through its own summoned troop), but I could quickly tell that wouldn't work for Gremlion.

I wound up using royal gryphons, archmages, and paladins for Gremlion. With two archmages robes, the +crit belt, and +crit mind skill, my archmages had a 100% critical strike rate. I used their magic shield on the paladins (they have lesser resistance) and attacked the boss otherwise. I let the gryphons and paladins kill the gremlin towers, while the paladins would give extra turns to the archmages. I cast ghost blades and fire arrows on Gremlion, and resurrected troops when my spell power hit 90-100% on that troop. I used rage eater to keep my mana up, and on the very last round, had my paladins heal all three troops to their full stack.

Driller
Demenion
Gremlion

[impy]

you're not giving up at the first serious obstacle are you?

1) improve your magic resistance. majority of his units are ranged magic dealers so if you put on chaos helm, magician cloak etc. they'll do only negligible damage.
2) improve your physical resistance. His geyser is physically based.
3) dump level 5 creatures. facing those many,many geysers you do not want to spend tons of mana on time back. Replace temporarily or permanently with unit with god resistances - knight, horseman..
4) better artefacts. I remember seeing those fire protection boots, shark tooth.. which are not helpful in this fight.
5) This is one very nasty fight where you either have to wait until he spends all his mana before you start resurrecting or leave last unit - dragonflies and cast fear. So you are actually quite lucky with him having dragonflies. Cast fear on them in the first round.
6) Once last creature is standing start resurecting. position all units around paladins in the circle and go. Phantom paladins, repeat.
7) have you improved those skills are was telling you about - mana acc., summoner? You can improve your resurrection also by - higher intelellect, increases strength of summoning spell, inquisitors blade, increases number of paladins you can have