Not sure which troops to use

[Kaihekoa]

I'm doing well (have only had a few fights with losses) in the game playing on hard as a level 14 mage. I'm clearing Rusty Anchor and have come across a new troop, Shaman, that might be a good pickup, but I have a full roster already. I use the following troops now:

Royal Snakes - High Speed & Initiative, No Retaliation Attacks, 2 cells away melee attack
Cyclops - High Defense, High HP tank; decent damage and abilities
Paladins - Higher HP rez spell than inquisitors that can target more than one troop, decent tank/dmg and the gift skill is very useful
Necromancers - awesome skills, including a summon, mass normal attack and -1 morale curse
Evil Beholders - Pretty good dmg, mind control to do dmg and steal a unit's turn, paralyzes low level stacks
Royal Thorns - summoner, okay dmg, pretty good hp; haven't used them much lately because heroes target it with fire or its level 1 stacks go against my fear strategy
Inquisitors - rage generation and resurrection

The Shaman has great skills and I can use the totems as another option to prevent a big stack of archers from shooting at my troops. He's got a pretty good melee attack too, not that I need more melee though. Is it worth garrisoning one of my other troops to pick up the shaman? I would be able to make a full stack of them.

Thanks for any advice.

[Kaihekoa]

Didn't realize this board was dead, but it looks like I answered my own question. As a level 16 mage playing on hard I was just able to defeat a level 30 hero demon troop with no losses using Royal Snakes, Cyclops, Paladins, Necromancers, and Evil Beholders. I just used level 3 slows, traps, and stone skin on my tanks while killing whatever the demon portals spawned with my other troops. This combination along with my current spells and talents seems to be working well, so I'll just stick with it until they start losing effectiveness. I've garrissoned my royal thorns for the above stated reasons and am now relying on the necromancer for summons. If anyone reads this later and has some advice, I would be happy to take it.

[Satyrion]

i am a lvl 20 Warrior and i use:

Red Dragons (Good damage, AOE, DOT, great tank, mobile)
Paladins (Tank, healing)
Human Bowmen (ranged, DOT, slow enemy)
Elf Bowmen (ranged double damage, snipers)
Royal Throns (summons and ranged attack)

This works great for me because my paladinbs just stays in the back and protect my ranged units while my dragon flies around killing everything with help from ranged attacks.

[Kaihekoa]

Thanks for the reply, Satyrion. I'm up to lvl 25 now (clearing Montero) and am getting a better idea of what an ideal army composition is like. For me, playing a mage on hard, the following seems to be a good setup:

Big, Strong Tank
Secondary Tank/Support
Summoner/Support
Ranged Attacker/Support
DPS

For those roles, I now use:

Cyclops - high physical dmg resistance w/ twinkling boots and Stone Skin and high defense
Paladins - great physical dmg resistance + magic resist, mass rez, and the gift ability
Necromancers - summons, plague, magic lock, and aoe curse, but the undead do cause morale conflicts
Archmages/Evil beholders - tried archmages for this role, but they have poor dmg. Evil beholders are doing less dmg against the troops I now face, will experiment more with new units
Royal Snakes/Assassins - Royal Snakes have been dying alot in Montero from Gobots/Giant Stomps, am looking for a higher level/health troop upgrade. Tried assassins, but they aren't as good.

I've been struggling to find upgraded troops for the last two roles. I think I'll try a big stack of the human bowmen and see how they do...I did love their frost arrow skill. Will give royal thorns another try too. I do have access to green dragons, so maybe I can try using them as my main tank and letting the cyclops take the archer role. Would love to use the shamans and necromancers together, but can't do that without finding a morale booster for the shaman.

[Satyrion]

I am lvl 26 now in the Montero Dungeon.

Here is my new setup, i didnt loose 1 unit in battle after i got this setup!

212 - Human Bowmen (fire arrow and ice arrow is great)
106 - Inquisitors (rez, rage generator)
88 - Gorguanas (Ranged, support with tons of good talents and abilities)
48 - Paladins (u know em)
5 - Tirex (Best tank, high armor, hp and attack, Regen and several other great abilities and talents.

I think Tirex is the reason for my success because they never die and if 1 were to die i would just rez it with my inquisitors. They are pricy though 13.000 gold for 1. Red Dragons r like 5000 for 1.

My tactic is just keeping all units back supporting ecept for Tirex who owns all with Magic spring lvl 2 (+10 def and gives men more mana) and at the end of the battle i rez all fallen units with my Paladin :)

Have not tried any miniboss/hero fights with this setup yet though

[Kaihekoa]

I'll keep an eye out for Tirex and Gorguanas. I'm guessing you found them on the lizardmen island?

[Satyrion]

yup u should. Tirex is the strongest unit in game by my opinion I got them both on the lizard island yes

[Satyrion]

changed my army again to an all human army this gives all my untits superior moral which gives great stat bonuses :)

around lvl 35 now

[Candesco]

Do you guys still play the original AP or also with CW? I guess you play AP. I'm level 11 myself now, but didn't came across any cyclops, paladins, necromancers and evil beholders to use them. Only fought against some cyclops, paladins and evil beholders. I even can't use any knights, which should appear at Debir after a time. Don't know if this has something to do with the changes that Steam did. I play with CW and play the orcs on the march campaign.

[Satyrion]

well am lvl 35 in AP and has only seen 3 cyclops for sale so far and not a single necromancer. Paladins and evil beholders there r tons of on the big human island. Dont remember the name now...

[Kaihekoa]

I am playing the KB games in order and am on AP now. The troop placement is somewhat random; I believe for each island and shop there is a pool from which the game randomly picks troops.

I got paladins from Debir after retrieving the Stone from the Bola Catacombs and turning the quest for it in. They appeared in the castle or the magic academy, but if you don't get them there, you will find them on Verona (main human island). I don't know what changes they made for the CW campaign, but if you've already turned the quest in and don't see knights/paladins, maybe they changed the troop spawns.

There is quest on Bola from a Viking who wants you to bring his wife back to him by defeating her in battle. If you talk to her she says she doesn't want to go back, if you tell the Viking that, I think his name is Rolfe, you have the option to fight him. I had to come back several levels later to beat him without losses, but once you beat him he adds more troops to his shop, including evil beholders for me.

On Scarlet Wind, there is an undead ctiadel and ship that you can fight. If you beat those, they will sell you undead troops. That is where I got Necromancers and the skull of pain/agony artifact which you can eventually turn into a +5 attack and +5 intellect artifact.

I got Cyclops from King Odin's shop in Bola. It might not have showed up until after I did his quest to suppress his living axe though.

Basically, just be patient. What you've seen through level 11 is probably no more than 5% of the whole game, maybe less. You will start seeing better troops as you level up and are able to defeat tougher armies and hero armies. Because of the random troop spawns, sometimes you just have to make do with the possible combination of troops and items you can find. Prior to this core army, I was using sea dogs as the core of my army because of the companion and an artifact that gave me 400 leadership, +1 to pirate speed, and +3 to pirate morale.

As I wrote before, a good, general army composition is a main tank (cyclops, trolls, green dragon, polar bears), secondary tank/support (I use paladins now, but before that I just used a melee fighter), summoner (royal thorns, necromancers, druids), ranged attacker/support (inquisitor, priest, archmage, repair droids which work well when paired with a guard droid as one of your two tanks), and some sort of damager/supporter (bowmen, beholders, etc). I would prefer to stick with a ranged troop for the fifth spot as it's hard to keep more than 1-2 melee troops buffed, but now I use royal snakes for this spot because they are a great assassin type of troop w/ no retalliation, especially if you get the artifact which adds 3 damage to their attack.

Let me give you some links to information that I used to help learn about the game and evaluate troops/items/talents.

HeroScreen - Lets you play with talent combinations, troops, items, etc - very useful - http://www.aurelain.ro/HeroScreen/

All the important info you need on AP - http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=10991

Locations that Spawn New Troops (in the early game, this is primarily where I got more advanced troops) - http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=128191&postcount=9

[Kaihekoa]

Originally posted by Satyrion:

changed my army again to an all human army this gives all my untits superior moral which gives great stat bonuses :)

around lvl 35 now

Me too. I've learned that you have to be adaptable in your army composition. Would be nice to have 5 troop reserve slots though.

Now I use Green Dragons, Paladins, Royals Snakes (I was very lucky and found 2 snake rings that I upgraded, giving me in total +10 intellect, and +6 dmg to snakes), Archmages, and Royal Thorns (I swap them out for something else when fighting dragons). I also leveled up the Trapper achievement to Level III. Now my traps do more damage than any of my spells (to a single target). They are great against dragons and huge stacks of miners who get their speed boosted to 9. I've also picked up the skills in the warrior tree to boost rage inflow and my dragon experience as he used to lag behind my leveling up quite a bit. He's doing a lot more dmg now.

[Candesco]

I use now an old backup from last year, where i already had access to paladins. And it turned out that i did retrieve the stone of hope already. So i guess it's indeed that this is the requirement you need for the paladins showing up at Debir. In my case at the royal academy. Another change will be that the swordsmen will be unlimited (horde) and the guardsmen appear at king frederick's castle. And at Bolo (not bola) you can buy droids and engineers from lin (that dwarf near the entrance to the catacombs)
I've changed my troop now. Added some demonologists to it, which i found at the tavern at scarlet wind. Those guys can summon a random demon and could also steal life from an unit and give it to one of your own. Also added guardsmen, which have a positive working on the swordsmen (commander skill, which gives +1 morale). My army consist now of 4 engineers, 4 demonologist, 7 paladins, 36 guardsmen and 51 swordsmen. I'm now clearing the rest of scarlet wind and bolo. Most of the battles results in a no loss one. Only that richard the cruel was a nasty one. Not much loss, but it wasn't a no loss one. Those demonologist are quite usefull and the engineer too. I have now also access to some necromancers, which shows up in that chapel at scarlet wind. But i don't use them now, as it would downgrade the morale of the human troops. And i could also use a runemage.

[Kaihekoa]

I haven't come across a demonologist yet and have cleared half of the islands. That's a good find! I'm glad you've been able to upgrade your army and are doing well.

[Candesco]

You can also get them at the military academy at Debir. You need be able to train your troops to level 3 though and have a fair amount of trophies. Then you can train your archmages into either necromancers or demonologists. It needs 2 archmages and i think around 6600 trophies to create at least one demonologist.
By the way; the link you provided to that heroscreen is usefull indeed, but it seems to be based on AP only and doesn't include crossworlds as you can't select runemages, set items (dragon's toy for example) and other new things.

[Bontakun]

Wich troops should i take with me when im playing a warior ?