Level 3 enemy general with scorching ray

[Shepherd]

Spend weeks recruiting an army up to size 6. Fight an inferior size force led by a level 3 general with scorching ray. Every turn he inflicts enough damage with his magic to either half or completely destroy my archers. In six turns the enemy general has single handedly destroyed my entire army.

Crusade Mode- still bringing the fun. And then murdering it.

[The_Hero_Number_0]

The solution is to save him for slightly later when you have your own mage general who knows AoE spells like Fireball or Ice Storm. Or to split off individual 1-size stacks of trash units like Shieldbearers and just bleed the guy's army super slowly with your "armies" of single 1-size stacks. Player Mage general outnuking the Enemy Mage general is the much better option.

[NegativeZero]

Send in 1 unit stacks of some expendable unit until their commander is out of mana.

[Something completely different]

A general with a healing spell can heal your units as fast as he kills them as long as he doesn't kill them all with one spell.

[bullse]

Wait till you run into a enemy general using fireball and it decimates your army in even less time. lulz

[Gregorovitch]

Enemy mage generals are very powerful. But then so are yours. There are various tactics that work against them and what works trends to be different in each case. My tips for this:

* leave powerful enemy mage generals alone for now if you can't beat them.

* recruit mage generals yourself and take nuking spells for them.

* one weeks recruitment plus a level up or two for your general makes a lot more difference than you probably think it would.

* The acid test for when your army is ready to take out one of these uber-caster demon generals is when he can no longer 1-shot any of your stacks. Once that is true it is usually possible to defeat him with no losses since you can counter his spell damage with heals.

* the game lies about enemy army strength - and yours. An army that has a mage general is much, much more powerful than one that hasn't but the army strength indicators don't reflect that.

* this means in practice it is always easy to level up your own mage generals fighting enemy armies that don't have mage generals. As you generals level up their spells get stronger and most importantly their heals get stronger.

* several of the enemy armies have been carefully designed to give you a biig problem which you have to work out a solution to to beat them without sustaining unacceptable losses. These are often in the most awkward spots. Defending a fort you really want to take for example.

To give an illustrating example from my game:

There is a key strategic fort almost exactly due west of Drezen which is ideal for upgrading and installing a teleporter. It is defended by a strength 6 army consisting of two stacks, 550 cultists and 40 Incubuses, and a mage general.

I attacked this fort with my strength 7 army led by my best mage general. I thought it would be easy. It wasn't. I got my arse handed to me.

The reason is that these 515 cultists have a horrible AoE negative energy attack. If they start their turn next to your stacks they will 1-shot them with this AoE attack.

It turned out that it took thee cultists exactly two turns to reach my stacks so on the third turn they could unleash this devastating AoE. I found I could not delete these cultists within two turns no matter what I did and they would always destroy my stacks on turn 3. So I gave up, reloaded and waited.

A week later I have recruited about 200 extra troops for my army and my general had levelled up including getting an extra 5% boost to arcane spell power. Now I was able to reduce this cultist stack by 3/4 with my archers and general over two turns and finish them off when they arrived at my lines with my melee before they could unleash this AoE. Which I couldn't do before.

Therefore I won easily this time. The moral here is that even a modest 20% or so increase in your army stack size plus a good level up for your general can make a huge difference turning an impossible battle into an easy one. The balance of power in these army battles is a lot finer than it seems at first sight.

Note that the "trick" to this battle is to concentrate exclusively on deleting these cultists first and then heal up before finishing off the last enemy stack. Other battles will have different "tricks" you need to figure out.

[Shepherd]

I appreciate the advice guys (a lot of really good tips here). And I'm certain if I wanted to restart from when I began the campaign mode to either try to randomly get my own mage/healer to specifically counter this one guy it would work. I just don't have the patience for it anymore. In a game where you can have your level 3 party stumble on to a CR 18 demon just standing around the market I don't exactly have faith that the remainder of the experience isn't going to be super frustrating. I don't need another job.

And yeah, I know they have patched it so I can skip Crusade Mode. But why should I have to skip content?

Uninstalled three days ago and haven't looked back.

[seeker1]

You can turn Crusade mode off. Just one warning: you lose out on the ability to teleport your party (very useful in Acts 3 & 5). Secondly, be prepared to wait a long time for forts blocking your progress to fall.

There's a downside to turning it off that even affects the party/campaign part of the game. Be aware of it. I found out the hard way, It's why I grudgingly kept it on in 2nd playthrough.

Can't say I really enjoyed it, because almost all the bugs were fixed, and things made the most sense, until 3rd playthrough.

Also, of course, you won't have armies discovering places on the map for your party to come visit. They must do all exploring on their own. So ... fatigue.

Finally, all I can tell you is when it comes to facing mage generals on the enemy side, I feel your pain. The joy comes in having them on your side. How many battles you can end before they start. It's wild.