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occipitallobe posted:I gotta ask, what difficulty are you at? I'm struggling with competent on some later shards, and I'm wondering if this is viable at higher difficulties/larger shards. Zerging the smaller shards is very easy, but the neutrals are tougher and I usually need to grind some xp before I can break through on a large shard. I'm playing beginner as the good guy and competent as the bad guy. But I've tried some of the tactics out in skirmish on a higher difficulty. While I lost one fight because my build got hard-countered with a random-loot scroll of fireballs found by an enemy, it worked quite well on several maps. (And the first enemy on that particular map) Imagine you're digging trough the map, following a gold-vein of poorly defended provinces (hopefully plains you built mills in later) with a side-order of resource provinces. When you find the enemy, you'll only need to guard one province with your most expensive guard, while they'll have to be on a lookout for your advance from any direction so instead of spending money on getting more money, the AI will have to start replacing it's obsolete province guard. You, on the other hand, can "dig" around and probe for a weakspot. If you act fast, you can hit cheap-guard provinces while it tries to protect everything. Hopefully, you'll be able to beeline for the capitol, or at least a nearby important province you can drop a fort on. If you succeed, you win. If you get blocked by tougher guards, that means that the AI won't have the money to pay for the infrastructure needed to get the really good guard contracts, troops or magic, while you'll have the home infrastructure to tech-up and quickly replace any losses. So even if the AI wins a battle, it will lose the war. However, the most important thing about this is: The greatest problem in the campaign is that the enemy can go further up the tech tree than you can. So do not invade shards so large that you can't reach the enemy by the time they can start out-teching you. Tiny/small shards are perfectly fine for tier 1. Do not attempt to capture anything larger until you have monks, at least one other tier 2 unit, and at least some tier 2 gear and magic. Not even if there's something super-awesome on them. On even larger shards, it's not the tier-gap that kills you, but the corruption. Get some method of keeping it in check, or you'll get a gaping hole in your pocket before you can even reach the enemy. quote:My dad, another question. Why rank counterattack over attack? I get that it's possible to counterattack more than once in a round, but the number of counterattacks is always going to be on rough parity with the number of attacks, presuming the two sides have equal numbers. Most of the time, it's the ranged units and spellcasters that do the most damage, and melee units that take the most. If then enemy can do more damage than your healers can mitigate, you don't want to attack in melee at all, unless you can finish off a unit without retaliation. So most of the damage you do in melee will come from counterattacks. edit: vvv Depends on the enemy. If I can easily lock them up, and I feel like it, I'll poke the map for a bit, explore and fight some harder neutrals. However, since your score also depends on the time it took you to finish the map, you shouldn't take too long doing that. my dad fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Dec 30, 2012 |
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Dec 30, 2012 20:41
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This game doesn't hold back, even on the easier difficulties, but what do you guys do when the win is clearly in your hands: enemy stronghold open with your army at the ready? Do you go for the kill or surround them with tough guards and conquer the whole map? I'm mainly curious because I'm wondering which method gets you more glory in general. Pointless usually, but it looks cool on your astral stat screen. 
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Dec 30, 2012 20:46
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Does anyone have a list of special achievements/titles for shard battles (i.e. their requirements, I can pull the list from the game files)?
Pierzak fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Dec 30, 2012 |
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Dec 30, 2012 21:22
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I've always tried to 'dig' towards enemies, but never manage to do it in time. The enemy always manages to do it to me, first. Inevitably, there's nasty independents, like nomad steppes, or giant lands, or <insert horrible monster> swamps, or just ordinarily easy areas, like barbarians, that just have too many enemies - 9-11 barbarians/shamans with a thug or three thrown in for good measure. My poor hero with his 2-4 swordsmen and a healer can't ever possibly hope to compete, and moving to Guardsmen (Which is what I usually win the game with) is a huge investment I can't afford for a while (by which the enemy has somehow battered through the tough enemies and already found me) And god help me if I find an alliance race. I swear, they're always positioned in a vital province, often with a good resource, and whenever they are important, the quest becomes almost impossible - brigands dry up, mage towers refuse to be found, and I have never actually, ever, found a lair of bandits after getting the dwarf quest - EVER. I just stripmined more than a third of an average sized map and never found one. Not even ONE. (I was actually looking for a 'valley of the ancients' I was vaguely directed to for the keys of knowledge plot quest, but never found it, sadly. - and I uncovered at least 95% of the map, too). Has anyone figured out how to reliably ally with dwarves? I've TRIED to love cavalry, but I just can't - to work well, you need a scout to give terrain bonuses, but a scout has too few slots. If you multiclass commander/scout or scout/commander you get some conflicts - commander/scout gets a ranged boost, but you can't get 5/5 of the commander ranged skill which adds +1 range (as well as some other damage). Plus, you lose out on a ton of the commander stat boosts, and I'd guess offhand that a commander/scout won't end up with as many unit slots as a full fledged commander. I find it hard to justify ever going scout/anything, because doubleshot makes you a dragon-slaying, army-destroying God.
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Dec 30, 2012 23:20
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toasterwarrior posted:This game doesn't hold back, even on the easier difficulties, but what do you guys do when the win is clearly in your hands: enemy stronghold open with your army at the ready? Do you go for the kill or surround them with tough guards and conquer the whole map? I typically go for the "kill" when I have at least two heroes who are battle-worthy and each have a decent supporting army. I prefer a single-class scout and single-class wizard, in that exact order. I'll send them in break the enemy on the same turn, and the scout will go first because he was my first hero. The scout will open with either a false alarm (reduced enemy stamina) or poisoned water (enemy has -1HP/round). The scout will try to kill or cripple the enemy hero with double-shot. If the enemy hero is a wizard, it's pretty much guaranteed to die. Even if the scout loses, he will probably have done fatal damage to the enemy, enough that a necromancer wizard will be able to clean up easily. In the meantime, my third hero (usually a warrior), will be leveling up on easy neutrals on the chance that my attack fails and I'll need him for a longer-term war.
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Dec 30, 2012 23:28
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Pierzak posted:Does anyone have a list of special achievements/titles for shard battles (i.e. their requirements, I can pull the list from the game files)? From the gog.com thread: Tactician - no returns and no units lost Strategist - no returns and no battles lost Explorer - explore more than 1000% in provinces Cartographer - open all provinces on a map Architector - build all buildings in castle Dragon Hunter - clear more than 10 guardians with dragons Destroyer - looted more than 1000 gold from your own provinces Collectioner - wear set of 4 or more items in one hero
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Dec 30, 2012 23:30
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The way independants are structured is the first ring around your capital (or any capital really) is easy units, then the next ring out is harder, and so on - this means that you generally need to punch a hole through at least one tough province, but after doing so, it should get easier, not harder, to reach the opponents home province. I'm not sure if this is universally true (I play skirmish games, haven't touched the campaign)
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Dec 30, 2012 23:37
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victrix posted:The way independants are structured is the first ring around your capital (or any capital really) is easy units, then the next ring out is harder, and so on - this means that you generally need to punch a hole through at least one tough province, but after doing so, it should get easier, not harder, to reach the opponents home province. It seems generally true, but not universally so - there's always that one especially tough independent positioned in a terrible spot. Plus, you could be unknowingly heading in the wrong direction so instead of getting easier they'll just keep getting harder, and harder.. I was rather unpleasantly surprised on an earlier game when I was trying to reach a distant corner I thought a master might have been in, only to be more than a little bit surprised when a Holy Lands pulled out a tier 4 paladin that single handedly wiped the field with my guardsmen and executioners (I had a legendary banner that negated morale penalties for mixed alignment - my first ever legendary, in fact.) I managed to get that legendary from labyrinths - I had dismissed them as dangerous wastes of time, but they pay off SERIOUSLY well. All you need is a strong doubleshotting scout (15+ - this is harder than a dragon cave) choose 'heart of the labyrinth' surround him with chaff, and doubleshot all 3-4 minotaurs to death before they can get through the units surrounding you. I think the heart is supposed to have a ton more minotaurs than just like 3, since the text for the heart describes an army of minotaurs, but for whatever reason there are only 3 there, and they are pretty easily killed by doubleshot spam. You may have to try a few times to actually find the true heart of the labyrinth, but once you do, and win the fight, the labyrinth will collapse, you'll get a ridiculous amount of gold, and 1-2 extremely good items. Plus, if you're lucky, when choosing 'search for the heart' you occasionally gain the opportunity to recruit minotaurs, who are incredibly good t3 units - I'd take them over executioners or knights any day. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Dec 30, 2012 |
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Dec 30, 2012 23:42
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enigma74 posted:From the gog.com thread:
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Dec 31, 2012 00:23
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Never mind I see there was a hotfix.
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Dec 31, 2012 02:53
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Ugh, I managed to rush a local lord and then use a ship to rush at L'anshar skipping most of his provinces, but he somehow got an Army of the Dead guard on his demesne - two tier 4 vampires, three tier 3 ghosts who are all but immune to non magical attacks (I don't have magical attacks). The vampires are bad enough but the ghosts, good lord. Even four knights and three horsemen, a bishop, and five crossbowmen can't even kill one ghost or vampire before they're taken down.
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Dec 31, 2012 03:06
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Do you have the Magic Weapon spell? That should change their attack type from physical to magic
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Dec 31, 2012 03:45
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victrix posted:Do you have the Magic Weapon spell? That should change their attack type from physical to magic It's the t2 spell Flame Blade that does that. It's what I EVENTUALLY used to take him down, several hours later, after grinding my archer and commander to 25~ - flameblade doubleshot scout took down 3 ghosts, one per turn, before being devoured by vampires, commander dogpiled the vampires with five knights, four guardsmen, and five crossbowmen - most of them level 10+, and was equipped with a +15 damage armor piercing +3 flaming crossbow. Good lord. I spent more time than i take on most shards just grinding up to take down that guard. That is one ridiculous guard contract.. I hope L'anshar doesn't always get it for free on his capital or some crazy stuff like that. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 05:00
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Early game chat! Given that (as far as I know - I'm only seven shards in) you have to power through the early tiers on every single shard, it's a good thing there are so many options. I start with the commander most often, and early unit choice is really critical since you rely on the grunts for killing power - I was in love with Swordsmen for a while, ignoring all the cheaper options and rushing straight for the best unit, but it's a tricky tightrope to walk. You're constantly broke and relying on clearing lairs to pay the upkeep on your Swordsmen, one misstep can ruin you. I switched to Barbarians and had a blast, they can be fantastic units if they get a chance to shine but it's tragic when your level ten multi-decorated hero barbs meet a couple of tier 2 units and get splatted. As such I'm now moving more in favour of completely expendable units. Maybe even giving up on healing and just replacing them with fresh bodies when they die. Spearmen are kinda blah as the default option. Has anyone had any luck with Brigands or Thieves? And does anyone know if the Brigand 10% loot loss stacks? It would suck pretty terribly if every Brigand you employ skims another ten percent off the takings, especially since they're meant to be cheap muscle.
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Dec 31, 2012 05:49
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Fargo Fukes posted:As such I'm now moving more in favour of completely expendable units. Maybe even giving up on healing and just replacing them with fresh bodies when they die. Spearmen are kinda blah as the default option. Has anyone had any luck with Brigands or Thieves? And does anyone know if the Brigand 10% loot loss stacks? It would suck pretty terribly if every Brigand you employ skims another ten percent off the takings, especially since they're meant to be cheap muscle. Brigands are ace and can handle most demesne and 1-distance province locations with ease (assuming nothing crazy, of course). As far as I can tell brigands count as a "stack" for the purpose of loot loss, I was running six of them and still getting decent returns on location clears. In fact, for the most part they allow you to treat the early game as F10-centre, since they are nothing more than fodder and not worth baby-sitting. Can't speak about Thieves, haven't used them enough, nor do I know if they count together with the Brigands in the -10% loot "stack" or if they add their own -10% to the calculations.
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Dec 31, 2012 05:59
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Fargo Fukes posted:Early game chat! Given that (as far as I know - I'm only seven shards in) you have to power through the early tiers on every single shard, it's a good thing there are so many options. Before choosing Brigand or Swordsmen you're going to have to decide on 'good' or 'evil'. 'Lawful' is slightly good and 'Unscrupulous' is slightly evil (swordsmen/pikemen/crossbowmen and thieves/barbarians/brigands/shamans respectively). It's possible to go 'neutral' but you're balancing on a bit of a tightrope and will still lean in one direction or the other, especially when you don't have all of the options available to you to keep morale issues low. Units that are the same alignment as you personally are gain a morale boost, varying with how close you and they are, and units that are the opposite gain a penalty. Units grouped with the same type of unit gain a small morale bonus, units grouped with different units of the same alignment gain a significant morale bonus Good and evil units in the same group get a significant morale penalty, especially if one is opposed to you alignment wise, in which case the opposing one screwed with a like -7 to 9 morale penalty and probably has the huge penalty to stats from floored morale. Also, after every shard you conquer, your current alignment is added to your astral alignment - maxed out alignment on a shard will just about knock you up (or down) about one rank in astral alignment. Your astral alignment is where you start in a shard alignmentwise, and it's what matters insofar as main plot/how other Masters treat you. You'll benefit from being friendly with some masters, and a neutral person will be disliked by pretty much everybody. Plus, there's several ways to win that require cooperating with good or evil Masters or - I only know of one truly 'neutral' win. If you plan to specialize in necromancy or chaos magic, you're evil by default - good units can't stand zombies or demons, and every cast of a spell in those schools will lower your alignment. Incidentally, necromancy needs corpses, and the most powerful chaos magic requires living sacrifices. It just so happens that brigands/thieves happen to conveniently be extremely cheap and evil, and instead of being traumatized by their buddies being killed and turned into flesh eating ghouls, they'll gain a significant morale boost, because undead are all max evil. Evil magic synergizes perfectly with the disposable, spammy tier 1 evil units. Good magic (sacred) has powerful heals, buffs, and resurrects to keep their expensive-but-powerful units alive. I've gone good, and I pretty much adore swordsmen despite the cost - the 'parry' skill is considerably more useful than you'd think. I almost never attack with them, just make them stand still and counterattack - most swordsmen get the option to upgrade parry on quite a few levelups, so you can easily have a swordsman with like 10-14 defense when defending, who takes almost no damage and counterattacks brutally - I've seen them survive or even win vs t2 or t3 units with a few levels under their belt - a line of swordsmen is an excellent defense for most ranged/healer units. God if I can figure out why anyone would ever use pikemen, though.
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Dec 31, 2012 06:39
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What does it mean for a resource to be "guarded" and red?
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Dec 31, 2012 07:47
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Brackhar posted:What does it mean for a resource to be "guarded" and red? You don't get its benefits until you kill the guards.
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Dec 31, 2012 08:04
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on the GoG forum a russian player posted the XP formula, if anyone's interested:quote:Exp distribution: Useful to know how XP is distributed in a fight. I'm glad to know that casting any spell gives xp - damaging spells don't give any more than buffs do. 3 times the stamina used on spells would add up fast, tier 2+ spells are stamina vacuums. Last hitting with a spell is pointless, too. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 16:01
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This game is creating the highest demand for English-Russian translators since the cold war.
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Dec 31, 2012 17:16
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Playing the beta and writing my report on what I think they should change. (Let's just say I plan to name the thread "[Interface] The current UI is an abomination unto God" complete with screenshots with Hitler photoshopped into the lovely-rear end pop-up radial wheel province thingy and the ridiculous new nested fifty-level stronghold construction menu.) But as I played I also came to a conclusion about a different topic. The one province improvement per turn limit is completely pointless and bullshit, isn't it? There is absolutely nothing it adds to strategy and it just artificially inflates the amount of micro you have to do. The only new tactic I foresee being different if you switched to one improvement per turn per province is a strategy where you delete a building in every province from where you are to where you want to go and then build granaries -> stables in every province. And you know what? That's okay with me. I am willing to tolerate this to escape the sheer loving drudgery of having to go "did I use up my province building slot this turn? Are there any provinces that need something? Okay *click* which one of these *click* still has *click* a slot *click* avalaible.
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Dec 31, 2012 17:25
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Wolpertinger posted:God if I can figure out why anyone would ever use pikemen, though. Pikemen are great. Their requirements are one building off from crossbowmen, which are also great. Those two units are a great combination of a survivable, powerful front line with damage-dealing archers, even to high ranged defense units. I use the Scout most often, too. This is only on the difficulty one above Beginner though.
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Dec 31, 2012 17:32
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Megazver posted:The one province improvement per turn limit is completely pointless and bullshit, isn't it? There is absolutely nothing it adds to strategy and it just artificially inflates the amount of micro you have to do. The only new tactic I foresee being different if you switched to one improvement per turn per province is a strategy where you delete a building in every province from where you are to where you want to go and then build granaries -> stables in every province. And you know what? That's okay with me. I am willing to tolerate this to escape the sheer loving drudgery of having to go "did I use up my province building slot this turn? Are there any provinces that need something? Okay *click* which one of these *click* still has *click* a slot *click* avalaible. I like it. If anything I feel it reduces the amount of micro involved. Every turn I can have a set checklist of Heroes, Stronghold, Province Building, Province Guards, Rituals. As you can only do one thing a turn it both forces to think strategically (in a war, the decision of using your one slot to build a stable, a store or a fortification can be huge) and keeps the game flowing as you don't get bogged down in setting construction in twenty provinces at once. In Total War games I always idle clicking around my empire for several minutes at the end of a turn because I've forgotten one of the fifty different things I'm meant to be doing. In this game I don't have to worry, I make my decision and end the turn. I think one of the best things about Eador is how it gives you a million options at the strategic level, but severely limits what you can do in one turn (and doesn't allow you any take-backs). It keeps it focused, and leads directly to a lot of "I installed the game and suddenly it's three in the morning" posts.
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Dec 31, 2012 20:06
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UP AND ADAM posted:Pikemen are great. Their requirements are one building off from crossbowmen, which are also great. Those two units are a great combination of a survivable, powerful front line with damage-dealing archers, even to high ranged defense units. I use the Scout most often, too. This is only on the difficulty one above Beginner though. I'm on the same difficulty, my general tactic is just swordsmen, or occasionally swordsmen + crossbows. I use spells or a scout for ranged usually though, unless I can get elves or halflings. The reason I prefer swordsmen over pikemen, is while pikemen have first strike, and will hit whoever hits them first, but take full damage, swordsmen instead have parry - which means the first attack on the enemies turn will have a very significant amount of defense added to it. They still have good counterattack too, and I focus on raising parry, phys defense, and counterattack when leveling them up. I've seen them take 0 or 1 damage from surprisingly tough enemies - orcs, rogues, brigands, even occasionally non-charging horsemen (a charging horseman will maul anybody). I'll admit, though, that I've learned to never attack pikemen with a swordsman - you'll lose. However, if you just 'end turn' the pikeman will attack you, instead, like a moron, using his weaker attack rating and getting negated by parry. So, in a battle between swordsman and pikeman, whoever actually attacks loses. I can only imagine a battle between a swordsman player and a pikeman player in a multiplayer game - move them into melee range, alternate end turn hoping someone will actually take a swing. edit : God help me. I'm being DOUBLE TEAMED by L'Anshar and Beleth from two different directions! And only one of my heroes doesn't suck! edit 2 : drat you, L'Anshar! I'm hosed. Level TWENTY FIVE commander vs level 8 scout.  edit 3: I don't know how to possibly win this shard.. third time returning to astral - I can't even beat l'Anshar alone, goddammit. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Jan 1, 2013 |
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Dec 31, 2012 22:59
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I've started ditching swordsman all together. I'll build NOTHING BUT Xbowmen. I'll research swords for the Guard Tower so I can hire guards, but otherwise I find swordsman to just be a waste. I agree that defense is important but what usually kills me is mega ranged bullshit shamans/sorcerers. Seriously they make me mad. Why should a stupid T1 unit have a magic attack that does more than a T2 melee attack? That is what kills me most of the time, so I'll keep Xbowmen, put them in the back rank and make them come at me while I plink them with my scout. Anyone else using a similar tactic? Another question-how do I get a decent guard unit that isn't chewed up and spit out by the enemies warrior? He'll kill my Guards guard unit with ease, maybe losing one unit, while I attack his Thug unit and have to be VERY careful on how I engage them. 3 thugs, 4 bowmen and the rest as assassins/brigands make it very difficult to over come.
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Jan 1, 2013 02:42
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Jastiger posted:I've started ditching swordsman all together. I'll build NOTHING BUT Xbowmen. I'll research swords for the Guard Tower so I can hire guards, but otherwise I find swordsman to just be a waste. I agree that defense is important but what usually kills me is mega ranged bullshit shamans/sorcerers. Seriously they make me mad. Why should a stupid T1 unit have a magic attack that does more than a T2 melee attack? That is what kills me most of the time, so I'll keep Xbowmen, put them in the back rank and make them come at me while I plink them with my scout. Anyone else using a similar tactic? To be fair, shamans have a rather feeble magic attack if you have decent resistance, and have puny health. The only reason they seem to do so much damage compared to melees, is many units have almost nonexistent resistance. They only have, I believe, 4 or 5 ammo, too - and casting Curse uses one ammo. One magic arrow (or scout arrow) usually finishes them. Also, a healer can help heal off the damage. I've never figured out how to get ahead of the computer on the guards arm race - the 3 adventurer contracts you get for upgrading the inn in your capital are precious. It seems that the computer's tech tree is focused heavily on having superior guards (even if they fall behind in other areas). I recently got the Men of War guards (from the military academy) and while that can't DEFEAT enemy heroes it can certainly wound them terribly and make them vulnerable to my heroes, or cause them to back off and heal.
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Jan 1, 2013 02:59
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Yeah the shaman magic attack isn't godly or anything, it's just the fact that I have a relatively weaker defensive army and they get a shaman on a hill somewhere behind some REAL threats like a Thug or Executioner and I can say hello to at least 3 turns of shamans blasting my otherwise good Xbowmen for 7 damage a pop. It's ridiculous because that one shot needs to go to take down the big boys, not be wasted on a stupid shaman. It's really a great strategy for the AI to have long term. It may not win the war, but by picking off the little guys with cheap shamans it is definitely the long game. The trouble is I know that isn't what its doing, it's just a stupid mechanic that counters mine and I'm irritated about it:)
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Jan 1, 2013 04:36
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Wolpertinger posted:I think the heart is supposed to have a ton more minotaurs than just like 3, since the text for the heart describes an army of minotaurs, but for whatever reason there are only 3 there, and they are pretty easily killed by doubleshot spam. You may have to try a few times to actually find the true heart of the labyrinth, but once you do, and win the fight, the labyrinth will collapse, you'll get a ridiculous amount of gold, and 1-2 extremely good items. Plus, if you're lucky, when choosing 'search for the heart' you occasionally gain the opportunity to recruit minotaurs, who are incredibly good t3 units - I'd take them over executioners or knights any day. Went into the heart of the labyrinth with my awesome doubleshot scout. Eight minotaurs. Wolpertinger!  After going on a wild murderspree, I discovered that apparently you might need some masters to help win the game. So I started again, this time as a namby-pamby hand-holding baby-kissing heal-using Good master. So much easier than evil. Playing evil gives you an incredibly strong start, but you simply lose units and can't change that fact. As a good player, I can and will be able to conserve my units, until the point where even T1 units routinely beat enemy T2 guards. As a good player who never hits F10, you end up facing enemy scouts who have less ranged attack than your archers.
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Jan 1, 2013 05:42
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occipitallobe posted:So much easier than evil. Playing evil gives you an incredibly strong start, but you simply lose units and can't change that fact. As a good player, I can and will be able to conserve my units, until the point where even T1 units routinely beat enemy T2 guards. As a good player who never hits F10, you end up facing enemy scouts who have less ranged attack than your archers. I started as a careful, canny, trooper-preserving Good player but am slowly succumbing to the darkness. The lure of expendable bodies and the F10 key is overwhelming. edit: Also, healing can be bloody stressful. Your hero can only pull off 7 HP of healing a turn and the early game healers get sniped by anyone with a rock and the will to throw it. It's drat difficult keeping them alive. suburban virgin fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Jan 1, 2013 |
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Jan 1, 2013 06:45
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Maybe I missed something - I'm playing the tutorial and getting my rear end stomped by the enemy lords troops. He's using steel wielding spearmen and swordsmen, while the best I've been able to rustle up is leather clad spearmen - is there a way to upgrade my troops? I bought all of my buildings up but couldnt find any option to upgrade..
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Jan 1, 2013 07:39
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Tithin Melias posted:Maybe I missed something - I'm playing the tutorial and getting my rear end stomped by the enemy lords troops. He's using steel wielding spearmen and swordsmen, while the best I've been able to rustle up is leather clad spearmen - is there a way to upgrade my troops? I bought all of my buildings up but couldnt find any option to upgrade.. The tutorial limits your tech tree unfortunately. Ultimately, losing your troops in the tutorial doesn't really matter as long you win the map in the end though; that's when what you do in the game starts to really matter.
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Jan 1, 2013 08:09
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toasterwarrior posted:The tutorial limits your tech tree unfortunately. Ultimately, losing your troops in the tutorial doesn't really matter as long you win the map in the end though; that's when what you do in the game starts to really matter. Ok thanks  So how do I take on the enemy stronghold? I picked a scout and crossed him to an archer at level 10 (he's 15 right now) but I can't attack the enemy archers on the field, and his archers can attack me fine.
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Jan 1, 2013 08:18
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Tithin Melias posted:Ok thanks You could upgrade the pub and stock up on better mercenaries. Also, I think you should be able to learn some Magic Arrows to soften them up from the distance. And level the Archer to 20, he gets double shot.
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Jan 1, 2013 08:25
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Also hunt around for Harpy Nests, they're an ace monster lair that allows you to recruit flying, level 2 monsters with a marvellous attack rating. They're how I won my first couple of shards!
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Jan 1, 2013 08:39
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Tithin Melias posted:Ok thanks IIRC, the tutorial map has no time limit so you can grind all the provinces for monster lair experience. Also, you might get lucky and find ranged weapon/leather armor shops when exploring; buy their stuff since you have all the time you need to farm gold. Megazver's advice is also sound since you can randomly get Swordsmen in the draw, which are way better than Light Infantry at tanking. If you're feeling lucky, you can auto-resolve the fights if your hero is feeling confident about the fight and his stats are really high. It's not reliable, but it can pull off wins without losing troops that you'll be hard-pressed to do yourself for some reason. Conversely, it can lose you troops and fights that you can do perfectly.
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Jan 1, 2013 08:51
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I decided to start over again and be a good guy. Evil just wasn't working for me. The Chaos level 2 spells are terrible (Fiend and Hellhound aren't very good, and you can't even keep them afterwards like Necromancy). At least now I can use healers! The only thing is that I'm getting hosed by random natural disasters and of course I have to help my people this time! 
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Jan 1, 2013 09:18
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Megazver posted:You could upgrade the pub and stock up on better mercenaries. Also, I think you should be able to learn some Magic Arrows to soften them up from the distance. And level the Archer to 20, he gets double shot. How do you upgrade buildings, just build the next one in line, or click on the "ticked" building in the building screen?
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Jan 1, 2013 09:22
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Level 2 Necromancy is very powerful. Chaos magic is pretty much for warriors only, I've found. Commanders have better things to cast, and nobody else has the health to tank summoning all those demons. If you don't have gargoyles though, and your wizard has the summoning skill (though why you'd ever get that without gargoyles is a mystery), fiends are very effective. Here's a quick rundown on good vs evil for anyone who might be wondering which way to lean. Evil: + Much, much, much better start. 10 gold brigands are the best T1 unit in terms of cost-efficiency by far, and require no resources. + Much better T1 spells. Skeletons and zombies are very powerful considering you can repeatedly raise them. Imps make a warrior's first few turns very potent. + Wizards tend to be better. A necromancer is very powerful mid-game on the evil tree. + More resources to play with. Your choices tend to grant you gold/gems instead of taking them from you. + The easiest alliance in the game (orcs), which can be made permanent for massive shard advantages. + If well-played, the strong start can easily snowball into a massive win. + Better magic attack. Sorcerers/shamans vs priests/healers. + Win by attrition. If you can smash two armies into a good army and lose one apiece, you're ahead. + Very powerful early-mid game for wizards and warriors. - Commanders are very weak. - Scouts are not used to their full potential. - No healing. - Low-levelled units. Unhealed units tend to die, and thus don't level. - Don't get the best alliance in the game (elves). - Every turn you're not fighting the enemy is a turn you're losing. - Worse T2 units. - Terrible shooters. Good: + Better sustain. A late-game good army will steamroll an evil one. + Better defensive units. Swordsmen/spearmen vs brigands/barbarians. + Better archers + Heal spells and healers. + Best alliance in the game (elves) + Incredible defensive units makes scouts a great buy. + Leveling up units means commanders give a huge marginal benefit. - Wizards have a weak start without necromancy. - Warriors have a slightly weaker start without chaos magic. - No easy alliances (like orcs). - Much more difficult start. If you screw it up, you will almost certainly lose. - Poor magical attack (rarely a concern). - Worse offensive units. - Very expensive early on. You don't get gold from evil choices, and your early-game units are more expensive. Losing a single swordsman can be more harmful to you than losing a full army of brigands is to an evil player. - Attrition is dangerous. If an evil enemy trades army for army, you'll end up losing. editreply: Yeah, though those maps appear for evil players as well. Sometimes I lose a shard because I have nothing but swamps (or dead lands) for 2 provinces in every direction, and I just can't kick my economy off the ground. I've had good results spamming spearmen and militia. Even though they're weak, they're very cheap, and sacrificing one or two of my T1 unit slots in return for a good start is a great bargain. occipitallobe fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Jan 1, 2013 |
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Jan 1, 2013 09:59
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occipitallobe posted:Good: As a good player fighting against L'Anshar and Beleth, the quintessential evil Masters, this is exactly it. I can barely beat him, trading army for army, and he immediately recovers and pushes back again while I'm still reeling from the massive financial blow, and then I'm screwed. I don't get how they expand so quickly! I'm trapped by drat tough independents all the time in my little corner, and usually only push out just in time for one of his heroes with a swarm of assassins and/or thugs to swarm my still-t1 units. Cheaper, easier to unlock t2 units are a big benefit - it doesn't help that this map has no iron anywhere near my start, so swordsmen, crossbowmen, pikemen, guardsmen, all the powerful good units are a black hole of cash - and all I can hope for in many fights is trading the lives of all my soldiers for a barely-win (only for his second hero to wipe the floor with my now defenseless scout/warrior). This game is getting very, very hard, just when I started to feel cocky about winning nearly every time. And here I thought I could move up to Competent. Hah. I'm half tempted to just abandon this shard and hope the buildings pop up again somewhere else - and this shard would give me all of the requirements for what would be my first t4 units - the Paladin and the war elephant. I'm trying try #4 with a barbarian/evil unit start just so I don't piss away all my money on iron-hungry good units. I start at 'Pure' anyway, so it's not like I can't afford a few alignment hits, hah. I can't even use brigands or thieves, because at Pure they have a base -3 morale penalty, for a whopping total of 3 morale (and a permanent stat penalty, heh) Barbarians start at 10, so they only get knocked down to 7. Edit : Huh, barbarians play.. completely differently from swordsmen. I didn't realize just how much I relied upon the swordsmen's impenetrable shield wall - a line of swordsmen are very hard to break, with high defense, parry, and counterattack. Attacking is a bad idea. Barbarians, on the other hand, have very high attack, boosted by berserk, but terrible defense and counterattack. You always want to be the one to attack instead of the other way around. Pikemen are terrifying for berserkers, pushovers for swordsmen. It feels weird actually rushing forward to attack instead of huddling in a formation in a corner. edit: ARRGH THIS SHARD GOOD LORD. Oumm and Stenriya replace Belthor and L'Anshel - guess what happens! Oumm puts up a HUGE fight, sending out a level 21 Scout vs my level 16 scout and wizard, after barely winning by using go back in time like 30 times, I am about to push forward, then suddenly stenriya declares war, swoops in from behind, killing both my heroes, and allowing oumm to recover from what would have been a deathblow. Now, side by side, they slowly close in on my demesne  . I'm going to have to give up here.. or god help me, move down to Beginner.
Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jan 1, 2013 |
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Jan 1, 2013 10:10
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 15:29 |
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It'd be neat if recruited Unscrupulous/Lawful/Neutral units over time changed alignment based on your army composition. Is hiring an Unscrupulous unit that much of a hit to your karma if everyone else is good? I got a Sorcerer merc, since I really needed some T2 power, but I regret it since he's -3 morale and everyone turned -1. I think I might go back in time.
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Jan 1, 2013 21:03
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