Now I'm on the fence over whether catching a ghost in a spiderweb is more or less hilarious than petrifying a stone golem.
How..? How do you do that? I love scouts, but my scouts can't ever do that! My units almost never, ever, ever, ever survive past level 5-10, too - and yours just keep getting higher and higher! I don't.. even.. And the medusa and hydra fight! Good lord, man! I've only had one game where I've had like two units hit 20, and those were guardsmen on a game I was already curbstomping. How do you stomp ranged units from just bringing your healer from full to dead in one turn, or some big unit one shotting one of your guys, or a unit getting dogpiled by the entire enemy team or any number of possible things that could go wrong? Like that slug, troll fight - at least ONE of my units would die from the slugs all ranged attacking on the same unit - even if he survived the inital barrage he'd take like 10 poison damage the next turn and die anyway.
I figured my level 28 Champion should be able to start taking on these dragon lairs. As long as it's not a Cult of the Dragon, the solo dragons aren't too bad.. I sent him into one. Five dragons.
How do you recruit basilisks & giant slugs? I built the trapper building at my stronghold, and I have the relevant eggs for those monster types sitting in my treasury, but the option to recruit them hasn't opened up anywhere.
This is not mine game. Some tips for saving healer: If enemy range unit can shoot without moving - it will shoot. So, you can use March, move swordsman under enemy fire and save your healers. Air shield, phantom form or stoneskin helpful for saving healer. Forest gives ranged def. Battles: Knight fight - Fatigue spell. 3-4 in a row will make him harmless. Slug/troll - snipe slugs, let goblins with agility scratch your swordsmen, rest, finish troll. Hydra/medusa - kill medusas, let lizardmen clog around swordsmen(use Rest), kill hydra. Place egg from treasury into hero inventory. Then in hero screen move egg from inventory to army slot
You have to put them in Hero's inventory the same way you do with scrolls for the Library. Once the hero has the eggs, open his army recruitment screen and drag the egg from his inventory to the relevant army slot.
Yes. They will shield you from hydra. Also using March for lowering stamina (and thus lowering counterattack) also helps.
Ohhh... so I can only recruit one critter per egg? And if I don't have the relevant building, I can't even hatch the egg? Ah... I was thinking I'd be able to put the egg in the building somehow, and recruit as many of the critters as I liked once I unlocked them.
Nope, one critter per egg, and only if you have the correct building. They do however seem to be much better than the equivalent regular trooper at the same level. For example, I managed to get two Giant Slugs and they generally seemed quite good for Tier 2 troops.
Like ydejin says, monsters are pretty great for their level, but watch their upkeep because they are very expensive to maintain.
Minotaur Guards are the biggest piles of bullshit. Guy has one in his stronghold province and I ended up needing to level my Wizard to 25 and even then I barely squeaked by thanks to copious use of Sleep, Web, and Blindness. It's crazy how much of a difference getting level 20 makes - casting two spells per turn is an amazing, incredible thing.
The best way to deal with massed Giants, Cyclopses (Cyclopsi?), or Minotaurs are either a solo 20+ Warrior (solo because they will decimate any retinue before they'll attack him), or an Archmage with both Mass Slow and high-damage AOE spells (preferably Firestorm) mixed with the occasional summon, Enslave Mind, or Word of Power to get them focused on something else. Giants can be a particular pain because they will boulder the fuck out of any support units you have, and they don't die quickly.
Yeah, I'm enjoying the Campaign, but after about 7 Shards I'm not getting any nonmerc 2nd level troops yet, unless I find a building. I think I do if I win this Shard though....
Has anyone else noticed very little of the mage gear (and no abilities) give a Stamina boost? I always end up with multiple +2 Stamina rings because Archmages burn through it so quickly. The + Stamina staffs help, and there are some individual bracelets, belts, and shoes out there, but no sets that I've seen. It's why I so rarely use Wizard sets, they can't compete with basic items like Suede Boots, Druid Belts, or recuperation cloaks. The + Stamina bracelets are also a lot more useful than + Health bracers. Ah, gotcha. I haven't tried the campaign.
2 mass suicides will kill minotaurs easily. T2 necromancy ritual+cloud of fear(T4 spell)+morale diversion+fear spells - fine too(overkill,probably). Archmage can fear them all with only fear spell. Golems - even bigger piles. They are immune to magic. Try to use Inspiration spell. It scales with your spellpower, can give around 10-14 stamina per cast on archmage. Sometimes I use monks as Inspirators for my scout and mage.
I've used Astral Energy that way before, but never Inspiration. Since the amount of Stamina regained doesn't scale with Astral Energy, Inspiration looks like a better slot use. Astral Energy is still nice for the extra turn, but you don't get it if you cast it on yourself. The +1 Resistance is pretty negligible.
I hadn't realized it scaled either, I was using astral energy too, hah. I used monks, instead - mass inspiration after every doubleshot/doublecast
Using the Commander hero for the first time. Do you guys recommend using him as a fighter or to cast spells to buff the large army?
Until he hits level 10, maybe even a few levels higher, I'd use him mostly for buffs/heals. Once you hit level 10, you can decide where you want to go with him. Commanders don't get any combat abilities, so without good gear, they're not going to be much help. Early-game Commanders have kind of the same problem as early-game Wizards with spells. Higher troop slots will unlock long before you have the infrastructure to put troops of that level in them. You can start giving him better casting or combat abilities at level 10 if you want, but it will take quite a few levels before he'll be effective with them. Besides the basic abilities of the new class at 10, Warlord (Commander/Warrior) gives your troops an armor bonus, Priest (Commander/Wizard) gives them (IIRC), Resistance and Morale bonuses, and Tactician (Commander/Scout) I don't remember.
Commander --> Commander gives a bonus to melee attack and counterattack. Commander --> Warrior gives a bonus to defense. Commander --> Wizard gives a bonus to resistance and morale. Commander --> Scout gives a bonus to ranged attack. Don't be afraid to put lower-tier units in higher-tier slots - there's no rule that says you must fill all your tier 2 slots with tier 2 units exactly. The commander's passive buffs can make units far more effective than normal. For commanders, I usually roll with magic arrow / cure light wounds at first, and try to snipe enemy archers while keeping my units alive. Once the commander has leveled up a bit and I can fill out the army with good ranged units, I swap out magic arrow spells for buffs and the like. But don't sweat it if your commander has nothing useful to do on some turns. The commander's job is to command! As long as the hero doesn't die, the rest of the army will continue to benefit from the commander's passive buff skills. No matter what, you're going to get most of your punch from the non-hero units in your army, so pick spells and strategy to go with that. If you have a lot of archers, multiclass into scout for bonus ranged damage. If you have a weak front line, multiclass into warrior for bonus defense and a tank hero. If you're using swordsmen, multiclassing into wizard will help cover their major weaknesses - a low resistance score and only 1 move point (cast Mass Haste). Doubling down on commander skills is great if you're using spearmen or similar units that are flexible and mobile but have mediocre base stats.
I like commanders a ton, but at higher difficulty levels (which means "Competent" for me right now) they're damn hard to get going. When they're first created, they play like a hero without any abilities. Average spell casting, can't use missile weapons, not particularly tough, and they only get 1 additional unit slot, which isn't much. I'm not complaining, exactly. They are what they are, and I still enjoy 'em. And once they get going I *really* enjoy them. But holy crap... their start is brutal. In theory they should work for either good or evil strats, but I simply can't get them started if I'm using a good army. I need my hordes of evil disposable troops to play a low level commander.
BTW... I've seen a lot of gushing about how awesome doubleshot is for any missile troops that can get it. But I'm not quite understanding why it's so highly praised. It's in-game effect seems to be that my missile unit is able to do pretty good damage for 2 turns, and then he's done for the fight because he's out of stamina. What am I missing?
You can use spells or effects to restore stamina and basically trade stamina spells for extra arrows. For example, monks usually don't have anything useful to do on the first turn of a fight, so have an archer doubleshot and then your monks cast inspiration. Or doubleshot, have your hero cast astral energy, and doubleshot again for 4 shots in one turn at a net cost of 3 stamina. If you apply damage buffs to the doubleshot unit, you can get the bonus damage more than once per turn. There's also a nice steamroller effect if you make a single archer do a lot of work - the archer gets lots of kills, which results in medals and levels, which make the archer more badass, so he gets more kills.
Oooh. I get it. So even if you're focusing on archery with your commander, it's probably best to have one or two "stars", and the rest of your army is filled out with meat shields, maybe a utility caster or three, and possibly (if you still have room) additional archers? When going the archery route with my commander, I had just been filling his ranks with archers, and... it hadn't been working out so well.
Definitely don't do that! Even when I run a commander --> scout and focus on getting big bonuses to +ranged damage, I still usually have at most 5 archers in a full army. You want to use archers to weaken enemies, then clean them up with your meat shield front line - the idea is that if you take 50% of the HP off the top of a target before it reaches the front lines, you won't take any real damage in melee when it gets there. It's too difficult to completely wipe out an enemy with archers. Simply standing in a forest square gives a +2 bonus to ranged defense and of course there are units with high base defense. If you only have a few archers, you can focus fire on the guy who isn't in cover, and let melee troops cover the woods. For a commander hero, I've had the best results by deploying horse archers. Basically, a commander works great with units that have high mobility and all-around mediocre stats. For example, normally the problem with spearmen is that they're neither as tanky as swordsmen nor as cheap as brigands, but they don't have any glaring flaws. A commander's bonuses can turn them from mediocre across the board to above average across the board, and they still have the flexibility of 2 moves and a one-shot ranged attack. Likewise, horse archers only cost 2 more gold upkeep than bowmen or crossbowmen, but have much higher HP, decent melee stats, and 4 moves. A commander can take them from "mediocre, but they can skirmish" to "strong, and they can also skirmish!".
These kinds of games usually encourage you to play to units' strengths, and exploit those strengths for everything they're worth. So I would've thought that a melee-focused commander would do best with units that are already good at melee. Swordsmen, for example, to take a first tier example. But you're suggesting commanders do better with mediocre troops like spearmen? Why? I would think that if you take a swordsman's already excellent defense & attack, and buff it with Mr. Commander, that's a much better combo than spearmen, no?
It's only useful to focus on strengths up to a point. It's called the "win more" problem - sure, if you take swordsmen with high attack/defense and then buff them, they will win in melee. But swordsmen already have high attack/defense even without buffs, so they usually would've won anyway. All the buffs do is let you win more. On the other hand, if you're facing a big stack of shamans and sorcerers, they'll deal high magic damage while your swordsmen slowly roll across the map, and it won't matter how badass the swordsmen are in melee because they will still have low mobility. Likewise for having fliers or cavalry surround and destroy your swordsmen piecemeal - the stat bonuses won't cover for the unit's weaknesses. Think about it like this: In what situation would the commander's buffs make the difference between victory and defeat? Units that already have high stats won't benefit from buffs. A knight will take no damage from ranged attacks anyway and doesn't need a ranged defense boost. Units that have really bad stats won't benefit either, because even buffed they aren't good enough to compete. A bowman will not win in melee. The best recipients for stat buffs are units that are close enough to being good that the buff pushes them over the line. Then you have, for example, a front line of spearmen that can take arrows and dish out melee like swordsmen, but still have 2 moves, a ranged attack, and a gold upkeep of 5/turn. Likewise, horse archers led by a commander can be good archers and good melee fighters simultaneously, while ballistas will always have high firepower and no melee defense no matter how they're handled. A commander-buffed horse archer can win in melee when fliers attack your back lines; a commander-buffed ballista will still lose anyway. On the other hand, ballistas will blow away enemies in ranged combat without any buffs, while horse archers have slightly underwhelming firepower if they're not getting the bonus from the ranged tactics skills.
So... best turn-based fantasy strategy game to date? I am thinking yes, personally. Still playing it every spare moment.
I just won a game with a ballista commander with a swordsmen line to keep enemies away. Holee shit. It was quite shocking to see archers doubleshot a ballista for 0 or 1 damage per arrow. EVERYTHING died before closing in on melee range except for gargoyles and occasionally pegasi, and even they only hit for like 2. Of course, the AI sometimes seems smarter than it should be and started decking out all his heroes with nothing but countless gargoyles and pegasi just to spite me, which made many battles more nerve-wracking than they would have been, should have been, with any other unit. The AI never uses gargoyles, it's ridiculous - why then? Pegasi at least die in one or two bolts, gargoyles require concentrated fire from all 7-9 ballista to kill, and just suck up ammo and stamina. Still, I won anyway - I should have used gargoyles earlier. I find it difficult to do well at all with any ranged units except for elves - extremely low anemic damage, limited ammo, often dies in one hit. Ballistas hit them for 10.
I played MoM so much that I know its every intricacy, and I've had a chance to discover all its flaws & weaknesses. I'm not at that point with Eador yet, so I don't know for sure exactly how much staying power it has. Having said that, yeah, I think I agree with you. It prolly is the best fantasy strategy game to date. It has some unpolished edges, (e.g. losing your hero on the first turn when exploring thanks to a bandit ambush) and there are a couple design decisions I'm not really on board with. (e.g. allying with most of the non-human races seems needlessly painfully difficult) But the more I play, the more I discover cool features & details about various units' abilities & spells. The biggest pitfall I've seen with most games that have *tons* of details & fiddly bits is that the AI isn't smart enough to take advantage of the various exploitable details. But the AI in Eredor seems aware of all the various abilities & how to counter them, so the whole experience is really, really fun. tl;dr: Yes, this game kicks ass.
Speaking of allying with non-human races, I've stumbled upon a really handy trick. Most races are rather difficult to ally with since their alliance quests are rather long and/or way too difficult for the early game. Then, while you're trying to fulfill the long and/or difficult quest, the AI will usually simply conquer the race in question. Well, instead of picking up the alliance quest when you first meet the race, go ahead & conquer them. Then, when you're at a point where you think you can complete their alliance quest, pillage the shit out of that race's province. When they're ready to revolt, clear out & let them revolt & regain control of their province. Then talk to the newly indepent province, pick up their alliance quest, and go do it.
The only major point of frustration I have is dealing with endless swarms of the exact same guard. The AI loves the Walking Dead guard, which tends to either be the sort of guard you either can't beat at all or the sort of guard that you clobber with no casualties. However, since they never retreat or surrender you wind up having to fight the exact same battle over and over and over but the Quick Combat isn't smart enough to win the fight without losses.
Wow. So... umm... I just encountered a fight against 8 medusas. What can you possibly do to beat them? I had a full army, but they turned 8 to stone, I did some damage to one of them, they turned the other 8 to stone, and the only damage I was able to do from then on was from my summons. (They had one turn to act before they too were turned to stone.) Medusa are pretty much immune to magic, so direct damage is no help, and neither are debuffs. Oh... *and* they have super high ranged defense, so you can't archer them to death either. It's gotta be melee... which are then stoned. I am so confused.
Mass suicide will kill them easily. double damage + poison. They can't turn into stone unit with resist>=ability. So, astral energy with its +3 resist bonus very helpful. 3 ranged defense isn't "superhigh". 3 medals of snipers mitigate it fully. Fully grown sniper can kill even ghost. You can use Priest, dispell remove "stone effect"
