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.