I really enjoy the game but I've got two problems with it, which is why I haven't picked it up in months.
The difficulty curve gets steeper as the game goes on, I'm on the pirate isles now and I've stopped playing because I can't get enough troops together to keep going. Finite amounts of troops suck.
Hah, I got stuck there as well, for ages.
Basically I just left the game for a few months and came back to it. Went back to Endoria and picked up some fresh troops, and it soon worked out.
It also helped that I found a source of Polar Bears on the islands, which are high health and damage. Keeping my other troop levels up in general wasn't too bad, and sometimes I supplanted with Seadogs (or whichever the better pirates were).
I don't know about the crashing, KB's been ridiculously stable for me for all the time I played it. I crashed once that I can remember, and that was after a frenzied bout of alt-tabbing in and out.
I'm both the best and the worst guy to be reviewing this. The best because last year's strategy/role-playing curio King's Bounty: The Legend was comfortably my game of the year, and one I bent the ear of anyone unlucky enough to be in the same room as me about. The worst because, well, that. I know the thing inside out. Armored Princess is a standalone expansion for it, and as such it's pretty much the same game. If I'd come to it without already knowing how good King's Bounty is, I'd have been grabbing people in the street, staring at them with wild eyes, shaking them by the shoulders and shouting, "Princess! Armored Princess! Omi god it's amazing it's a proper PC game you have to play it you have to play it whoops I just had a trouser malfunction."
It is a proper PC game. You do have to play it. I have just had a trouser malfunction. It's just... it's the same game again. When you can pick up the first game (well, not the first - The Legend was a semi-remake of the old 1990s King's Bounty) for less than a tenner, it's very hard to tell you to spend £30 on this one instead. And that's the nub of it - if you haven't played the first King's Bounty, get that. There isn't anything in Armored Princess that's worth spending an extra £20 on, unless you particularly get off on inventory screens showing a girl in chainmail that cuts away to reveal an impossibly flat stomach. She might be an Armored Princess, but she's certainly not a Well-Armored Princess. As for whether you should pick this up if you do know King's Bounty intimately, I'll get into that shortly.
For its first half at least, The Legend did the latter well, bombarding you with semi-satirical dialogue made even funnier because it was seen through the prism of a so-so Russian-English translation. It threw divine madness at you - most notably, the option to take a zombie as your bride, then to divorce her because a frog-lady gave better buffs. But it was always text, and the quests involved no choice, no resolution bar fighting something to death.
... What. Frog lady... wife?
... What?!
It's slicker than KB in a lot of ways, too - the incongruously cute pet dragon that lends a remote hand during your fights is a smart amalgamation of the over-complicated Rage uber-powers from the first game, for instance, while an instant transport system means there's nowhere near as much backtracking through now-empty zones. There are tons of tiny under-the-hood changes and improvements, resulting in a smoother-playing and slightly more accessible experience than its noble parent.
Yet the original stands just that bit taller thanks to its extra wildness. If you're going to play a King's Bounty game for the first time, make it The Legend - and I'd say that whether or not it was available so cheaply. If you're all done with that and crave more, then Armored Princess will not do you wrong. It's a mighty, beautiful and highly-polished game, and a welcome presence on any PC. I just hope the mad-as-bat-cheese developers are saving up the crazy they didn't quite unleash here for a full sequel.
Are you playing on hard? I got Armored Princess this weekend and I really like it, but I chose mage as well on hard difficulty and I can tell I'm about to hit a wall on the 3rd or 4th island.
I know going Chaos magic early in the game was not a good strategy in the original, I just thought it might have been tweaked to be better in this one. Nope.
If that's what you did as well, I'd advise you to move more toward the buff your troops/debuff enemies style of magic as that's proven to be a good strategy. The third teir of many of those types of spells has a mass effect that can totally swing a battle in your favor. If it's too late for that, start over. That's the fun of King's Bounty. All the places will have different troops and equipment for sale and you'll end up using totally different strategies. I'm excited to get home and start my next character.
If you're playing the first game, mage becomes overpowered later on. The first part though can be tough at times, especially in Armored Princess. I'm playing through it as a paladin, it got hairy in a couple places, but I'm starting to do well since getting assassins and paladins.
I played mage on my first (and only so far, since I only finished recently) playthrough of KB. I found battles were tough going until I learned some of the better units and strategies.
Early on you won't have access to the high damage spells that will really turn the tide of battle for Chaos magic. Instead you might be better focussing on Distortion spells. Don't invest crystals in a spell unless you're sure it's valuable to your playstyle. It may seem like you're glutted with crystals in the beginning, but later spells need more crystals in order to upgrade.
Trap is an excellent damage dealer if you know where they're going to go, with the bonus that it also removes all the rest of their action points, so it's also really good in choke points. Slow is very good against larger and tougher groups on the table, allowing you to whittle them down with whatever ranged attacks or RAGE attacks you have. After that, there's a few interesting Distortion spells to play around with. My build tended to be about raw damage dealing, so I used to go with things like Ghost Blade and Geyser. But spells like Hypnosis and Blind can be very powerful when used properly.
As soon as possible get the double-cast skill (it's at the top of the mage tree). That's pretty much invaluable, particularly when you get the higher damage spells. My army was week, but with fully upgraded double cast and lots of mana, I was hitting them with punishing spells for
Good damage dealing Chaos spells are things like Fire arrow (cheap mana cost for when you're drained), and Fire Rain (large area a tonne of damage with the right builds). With double-cast and enough mana you can wreck the worst that an army has to offer before they can even properly. I also used to use Ice Snake for heavy damage against single units that were fire resistant.
If you're going the buff / debuff route, don't forget about Dispel and Helplessness in the Order spells, those two can be very powerful. Sheep from the Chaos spells could also be very valuable. You won't be able to turn the highest level monsters (level 5) into sheep, but most of the time your threats will simply be from lower level units that are in huge numbers.
For levelling up and items, I'd suggest to focus on maximising your Int. Every 7 levels, spell duration increases by 1. Every 15, Spell power increases by 10%. So by level 30 (endgame), a spell that originally lasted 3 rounds now lasts 7, and you're doing 20% more damage on top of whatever other damage buffs you've got.
tl;dr : The way I used to play was to try and eliminate as much of the enemy army as possible before they could strike mine. However, it's also viable to focus on buff / debuff spells to give your troops the advantage.
For army composition, I'd say try to stick with smaller, high HP units that do more damage. Royal Snakes do well at pretty much any level.
Thanks for the advice. I keep getting my ass kicked, but in a good way. I hear there's a "Sacrifice" spell that turns the game around later, hope I get it.
Might start over again. So Distortion is the way to go initially?
I heard Paladin is a joke and that Warrior is basically impossible on higher difficulties, is that right?
I finished the first King's Bounty on normal difficulty. It was a bit of a challenge at times because I wasn't paying enough attention to the fine details of the game. If I won a battle I moved on, I didn't worry if I lost most of my troops, I just bought more. So I almost ran out of money to buy troops. I also tended to stick with the same troops through most of the game.
Now I'm playing Armored Princess, it's even better. This time I am paying more attention to the details, so the game is a little easier for me, but still enjoyably challenging. I'm enjoying it so much that I plan to play the game a second time at the hard difficultly setting. I almost never play games more than once, certainly not games that last 50+ hours.
Both these games are great - I've been playing games since the Atari 8 bit era. Both games would be on my top ten all time greatest games list, they are that good.
Steam tells me that I spent 100 hours on King's Bounty: The Legend, and I don't remember ever getting bored -- it took me that long to complete the single player campaign. If you've ever played Heroes of Might & Magic III, this series is what I would call the perfection of the RPG/Hex based tactical combat game. If you were ever addicted to HoMM3, be careful with this game! It's one of the most painstakingly balanced games I have ever played, which makes it a genuine challenge and very rewarding when you pull through a difficult fight using every trick you have. They've taken tropes from Heroes (Hex field, army stacks), Diablo (skill tree), added a lot of new and interesting abilities to units and spells for heroes, and completed a genuinely great synthesis.
Both the original and expansions are challenging, though. This game is really about attrition, keeping your troop levels and gold levels up as much as possible -- don't throw units away, ever! The most valuable units are the ones that will save you the most gold, either resurrecting others or resurrecting themselves after losses. Although they repaired some of the original difficulty in KB:TL by adding infinite unit production to certain castles, both games are still largely about protecting your good troops as much as possible until fights where you know you'll have to take heavy losses (bosses, etc.). This is one type of game where I would say easy mode is not a bad idea on a first run.
I do kind of wish I'd waited until this week to buy both games for my Dad, but I made the mistake of letting him watch me play -- he was a Heroes nut too, so the addiction was instantaneous.
Steam tells me that I spent 100 hours on King's Bounty: The Legend, and I don't remember ever getting bored -- it took me that long to complete the single player campaign. If you've ever played Heroes of Might & Magic III, this series is what I would call the perfection of the RPG/Hex based tactical combat game.
That would be Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.
This game's not a bad second, though.
Steam tells me that I spent 100 hours on King's Bounty: The Legend, and I don't remember ever getting bored -- it took me that long to complete the single player campaign. If you've ever played Heroes of Might & Magic III, this series is what I would call the perfection of the RPG/Hex based tactical combat game.
That would be Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.
This game's not a bad second, though.
Unfortunately Age of Wonders isn't available on digital distribution services, so we must make due with what we have.
It isn't, right? I'd totally buy it if it was.
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Steam tells me that I spent 100 hours on King's Bounty: The Legend, and I don't remember ever getting bored -- it took me that long to complete the single player campaign. If you've ever played Heroes of Might & Magic III, this series is what I would call the perfection of the RPG/Hex based tactical combat game.
That would be Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.
This game's not a bad second, though.
Unfortunately Age of Wonders isn't available on digital distribution services, so we must make due with what we have.
It isn't, right? I'd totally buy it if it was.
Gametap has AoW: Shadow Magic, but only in their monthly fee service, not the standard digital distro.
Does having Armored Princess installed make any changes to the base game or is the expansion self-contained? I ask because I have KB downloaded already but not AP, and whenever I launch the game it pauses the AP download.
I'm currently in Monterro in AP, and the difficulty is definitely getting up there. I feel lucky when I get the opportunity to fight enemies rated as "Very Strong". Most of the folks wandering around are "Lethal" or "Invincible".
I suppose they have to this, as I've been steam rolling anything unfortunate enough to be rated as "Strong" or weaker.
It's very colourful Just finished the starter isle, except for some really impossible quests, and thought I'd travel to the Freedom Isles. Then my entire army was nommed by 1,500 fish
I too dislike how the maps are populated by so many impossible enemies in Armored Princess. The fight calculator probably doesn't account for spells/rage/artifact abilities, but it's still annoying to see every enemy rated as Strong or Very Strong. And those damn high level heroes roaming around...
I'm playing a Warrior, but I'm feeling much weaker than my Mage in the original game. I seem to sustain far too many losses.
Although what's interesting is that I liked to use it as my "10 minute" game, for when I'm short on time and just want to play something quickly. You can leave it for ages, pick it up again, and just wander into the next battle, and any given battle usually takes 10 minutes at the most.
Also, major props to the devs for having a little option in the menu that you can tick to skip ALL the extraneous intro movies and get straight to the game menu. Every game should have this option. Devs, if I've seen your freaking intro logo and the half dozen other affiliated publisher and middleware logo movies once, that is more than enough I assure you and you don't need to shove it in my face every freaking time I start the game.
Also, the dialogue has a sort of quirky charm to it that is present in another Russian game I've played (Space Rangers 2). Do Russians have a strange sense of humour or is it the result of poor translation?
I find the lack of a real plot difficult but also fun - I'm playing the first one, and the story is "Hey, you graduated knight school. Now, go find me monies and stuff." It's quite amusing that my purpose in life is to go round and find money
The design of troops is very interesting, and I'm sure I'm missing something with army design.
There are the basic 'human soldier' troops: Peasants - Cost 10 G / troop. No health to speak of, but you can have heaps of them - also, there are limitless numbers of them for sale. For every 30 soldiers, they get +1 attack because they're braver I guess. I don't use them with my warrior, because they die a LOT and need to be replaced after nearly every fight. Haven't found a res spell yet. Swordsmen - Cost 70 G / troop. My basic troop at the moment. Initially there are a limited number but after passing the first boss they have become limitless also. They have good health (32), armour, decent melee damage and walk 3 squares / turn. These guys take a lot of punishment and I usually have their troop in the front lines. Archers - Cost 100 G / troop. Do less damage than swordsmen and have less health, but have good range (about 2/3 of the hexes for full damage). They also get special arrows which either slow or burn the enemy. Not *too* bad in close quarters (they punch the enemy, which looks amusing). They are also limitless after the first boss fight.
The human magic users I've encountered are: Priests - Cost 100 G / troop. They have a decent ranged attack (double against undead), decent health (26) and also can cast 2 heals spells during combat. They can also buff an ally for 2 turns so they do maximum damage. I find the heal spells unhelpful at the higher levels, as my troops tend to just die and there's no point in healing them. Healing is good for troops with very high health figures. Archmages - Cost 900 G / troop. They also need 200 leadership per mage so your numbers are fairly limited. They have a lightning attack which can hit anywhere on the board, a defense buff that reduces damage by 50%, and a telekenesis ability that moves any troop one hex in any direction (odd, occasionally useful). They also have heaps of health (over 100) which makes the most survivable of the troops I can access easily at the start of the game.
These guys make up my basic army (except the peasants, they die more than everyone!), and in the first four zones they did pretty well. Now I'm on the Freedom Isles and they get substantially annihilated in every combat! I'm not sure if this is just a) working as intended or b) I should be using troops with more HP so they don't suffer 10-20% troop loss when the pirates hit them. I've saved up $260k gold (playing normal difficulty) but the money I'm making in battles is by no way covering for all of the losses I'm suffering.
EDIT - I love the Chest of Rage - someone had a lot of fun writing those guys...
I picked up these two games about two months ago off steam...they are fantastic. They scratch an itch I didn't know I had since I stopped playing HOMM games. (And yes, Age of Wonders: SM, is delicious too).
I found that in The Legend, I ended up, after a while, not using human units very much at all since the animal units tended to be more numerous and had better abilities. The Archers have a great special ability, but after they fire them off, they are distinctly below average.
I'd have to say that Armored Princess is more balanced than The Legend...but it's also a hell of a lot harder, a LOT harder. (which to me makes it fun most of the time, until you have to slog through tons of hard battles in a row) but I just got to a place that sells me more Paladins so yay!
yeah, the majority of human units outlive their usefulness incredibly early on. As far as early game units to use, I generally rely on the following:
Seadogs- Probably the most damaging melee unit you'll find early on. Great init, blah speed but they come with running. Their 3 grid attack is AMAZING (hint: line up enemies for it via spells/rage/abilities). They lack the survivability of swordsman but make up for it in damage/init IMO. I tend to only attack with them once or twice in a given combat (using the 3-grid attack targeting a weak enemy that won't be able to retal to hit 2 others) but even in so few attacks they end up making up a large % of my teams damage early on. They're even better in AP because they have an evasion move.
Royal Snakes- The other contender for best melee unit early on. I think these are actually rarer in the original (whereas, they always spawn in AP). No retaliation, high int/speed, good damage, decent HP, etc. Just great units all around.
Vampires/Ancient Vampires- Good init (bat form), self sustaining, no retaliation... only problem is they're undead and can lower morale (and that they're rare). If you come across them though, probably worth ditching human units to use.
For ranged:
Inquisitors- 3 bless + rage uses + a minor rez. Great for keeping a "no loss" game or just utilizing rage abilities. Ranged damage isn't great but they're decent against undead. Worth it for the rage generation alone IMO.
Beholders/Evil Beholders- Amazing early game units. They can put level 4 and under units to sleep (miss a turn). They will *always* put level 1 units to sleep unless it's immune to mind spells. You can effectively lock down a group with one. Considering the number of level 1/2 units you meet early on, these units are awesome.
Royal Thorns- Underrated. The creation of fodder stacks seems more important in AP than it does in the original. What's great about thorn's fodder stacks is they can create MORE fodder from corpses. Very handy ability to have when you're trying to draw out combat to maximize rage exp or certain challenges (in AP).
Other:
Archmages are great with "tank" units (high HP) like cyclops or dragons. The target spell (not sure if that's in AP) + archmage shield can be pretty ridiculous. Also fun to phantom a griffon/royal griffon, buff it with defense, and just sit in in the middle of the enemies stacks and watch it counter-attack destroy everyone.
I too dislike how the maps are populated by so many impossible enemies in Armored Princess. The fight calculator probably doesn't account for spells/rage/artifact abilities, but it's still annoying to see every enemy rated as Strong or Very Strong. And those damn high level heroes roaming around...
I'm playing a Warrior, but I'm feeling much weaker than my Mage in the original game. I seem to sustain far too many losses.
What's wrong with leaving the impossible enemies until later? For me, there have always been a large number of impossible enemies, in both the Legend, and in Armored Princes.
I'm up to about level 29 with my Paladin in Armored Princess. I'm enjoying the game at least as much as the Legend. My current favourite troop is the Paladin - very good attack and defense, and two great skills. As a downside, the Paladin's speed isn't very good, I usually end up having to cast haste. The Paladin can give another troop an extra turn, and even better can cast a heal/resurrect to all troops immediately surrounding the Paladin. Near the end of a battle, I gather all my troops that had significant losess around my Paladin and use this skill. This has given me quite a few no loss battles - I'm still working on the level II award for this.
I'll throw in my undying love for Royal Snakes as well. Their stun from two spaces away is a fantastic skill. I'm also a big Griffon fan. Splitting up the Griffon troops in battle and flanking worked really well for me. Ancient Bears kept me going for a long while too. Their toughness more than made up for their lack of speed for about the first 3/4 of the game.
I really need to start Armored Princess sometime soon. I had so much fun with the first one.
I've been rolling with stacks of Black Dragons and Royal Thorns. My Black Dragons always go first, and can hit almost anywhere on the battlefield (Congratulations! Your archers are now stuck in melee and on fire to boot). The Royal Thorns just generate enormous fodder stacks every three turns, as well as dishing out some ranged damage in between.
I've also been using those dwarf canon units. Their salvo ability does ridiculous quantities of damage.
I might try out that Archmages+Griffins+Phantom set-up, sounds like a hilarious time.
I too dislike how the maps are populated by so many impossible enemies in Armored Princess. The fight calculator probably doesn't account for spells/rage/artifact abilities, but it's still annoying to see every enemy rated as Strong or Very Strong. And those damn high level heroes roaming around...
I'm playing a Warrior, but I'm feeling much weaker than my Mage in the original game. I seem to sustain far too many losses.
What's wrong with leaving the impossible enemies until later? For me, there have always been a large number of impossible enemies, in both the Legend, and in Armored Princes.
Well, some of these impossible enemies are really in the way of things. I don't mind em when they're used to wall off specific areas or protect castles, but there's so many high level ones patrolling among the regular troops. I'm finding it hard to tell sometimes which area I'm supposed to be focusing on - to the point of feeling like I'm cheating by sneaking to the next area (with even higher difficulty enemies). I don't recall there being as many roaming heroes in the first game.
I'm just wondering at what point the game is going to actually make me feel powerful. I shouldn't be getting owned by a buncha peasants - it's so humiliating!
And yeah, since I've been using Paladins + red priests, I've finally been able to get a few battles without losses.
Posts
Hah, I got stuck there as well, for ages.
Basically I just left the game for a few months and came back to it. Went back to Endoria and picked up some fresh troops, and it soon worked out.
It also helped that I found a source of Polar Bears on the islands, which are high health and damage. Keeping my other troop levels up in general wasn't too bad, and sometimes I supplanted with Seadogs (or whichever the better pirates were).
I don't know about the crashing, KB's been ridiculously stable for me for all the time I played it. I crashed once that I can remember, and that was after a frenzied bout of alt-tabbing in and out.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/kings-bounty-armored-princess-review
... What. Frog lady... wife?
... What?!
Son of a bitch. I knew I should have waited.
(I bought it Wednesday morning.)
I know going Chaos magic early in the game was not a good strategy in the original, I just thought it might have been tweaked to be better in this one. Nope.
If that's what you did as well, I'd advise you to move more toward the buff your troops/debuff enemies style of magic as that's proven to be a good strategy. The third teir of many of those types of spells has a mass effect that can totally swing a battle in your favor. If it's too late for that, start over. That's the fun of King's Bounty. All the places will have different troops and equipment for sale and you'll end up using totally different strategies. I'm excited to get home and start my next character.
Early on you won't have access to the high damage spells that will really turn the tide of battle for Chaos magic. Instead you might be better focussing on Distortion spells. Don't invest crystals in a spell unless you're sure it's valuable to your playstyle. It may seem like you're glutted with crystals in the beginning, but later spells need more crystals in order to upgrade.
Trap is an excellent damage dealer if you know where they're going to go, with the bonus that it also removes all the rest of their action points, so it's also really good in choke points. Slow is very good against larger and tougher groups on the table, allowing you to whittle them down with whatever ranged attacks or RAGE attacks you have. After that, there's a few interesting Distortion spells to play around with. My build tended to be about raw damage dealing, so I used to go with things like Ghost Blade and Geyser. But spells like Hypnosis and Blind can be very powerful when used properly.
As soon as possible get the double-cast skill (it's at the top of the mage tree). That's pretty much invaluable, particularly when you get the higher damage spells. My army was week, but with fully upgraded double cast and lots of mana, I was hitting them with punishing spells for
Good damage dealing Chaos spells are things like Fire arrow (cheap mana cost for when you're drained), and Fire Rain (large area a tonne of damage with the right builds). With double-cast and enough mana you can wreck the worst that an army has to offer before they can even properly. I also used to use Ice Snake for heavy damage against single units that were fire resistant.
If you're going the buff / debuff route, don't forget about Dispel and Helplessness in the Order spells, those two can be very powerful. Sheep from the Chaos spells could also be very valuable. You won't be able to turn the highest level monsters (level 5) into sheep, but most of the time your threats will simply be from lower level units that are in huge numbers.
For levelling up and items, I'd suggest to focus on maximising your Int. Every 7 levels, spell duration increases by 1. Every 15, Spell power increases by 10%. So by level 30 (endgame), a spell that originally lasted 3 rounds now lasts 7, and you're doing 20% more damage on top of whatever other damage buffs you've got.
tl;dr : The way I used to play was to try and eliminate as much of the enemy army as possible before they could strike mine. However, it's also viable to focus on buff / debuff spells to give your troops the advantage.
For army composition, I'd say try to stick with smaller, high HP units that do more damage. Royal Snakes do well at pretty much any level.
Might start over again. So Distortion is the way to go initially?
I heard Paladin is a joke and that Warrior is basically impossible on higher difficulties, is that right?
EDIT: You're welcome, but I can't take credit. Steam Thread is source of all things steamy.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
I finished the first King's Bounty on normal difficulty. It was a bit of a challenge at times because I wasn't paying enough attention to the fine details of the game. If I won a battle I moved on, I didn't worry if I lost most of my troops, I just bought more. So I almost ran out of money to buy troops. I also tended to stick with the same troops through most of the game.
Now I'm playing Armored Princess, it's even better. This time I am paying more attention to the details, so the game is a little easier for me, but still enjoyably challenging. I'm enjoying it so much that I plan to play the game a second time at the hard difficultly setting. I almost never play games more than once, certainly not games that last 50+ hours.
Both these games are great - I've been playing games since the Atari 8 bit era. Both games would be on my top ten all time greatest games list, they are that good.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Both the original and expansions are challenging, though. This game is really about attrition, keeping your troop levels and gold levels up as much as possible -- don't throw units away, ever! The most valuable units are the ones that will save you the most gold, either resurrecting others or resurrecting themselves after losses. Although they repaired some of the original difficulty in KB:TL by adding infinite unit production to certain castles, both games are still largely about protecting your good troops as much as possible until fights where you know you'll have to take heavy losses (bosses, etc.). This is one type of game where I would say easy mode is not a bad idea on a first run.
I do kind of wish I'd waited until this week to buy both games for my Dad, but I made the mistake of letting him watch me play -- he was a Heroes nut too, so the addiction was instantaneous.
This game's not a bad second, though.
Unfortunately Age of Wonders isn't available on digital distribution services, so we must make due with what we have.
It isn't, right? I'd totally buy it if it was.
Gametap has AoW: Shadow Magic, but only in their monthly fee service, not the standard digital distro.
Good thing I didn't miss it!
I also often get that pausing of a download in Steam when I am playing another Steam game.
I love the ale drinking lil' bastards so I'm hoping I can have a dwarf companion.
Image by Sharpwriter on deviantart.com
I suppose they have to this, as I've been steam rolling anything unfortunate enough to be rated as "Strong" or weaker.
Ironic, because I did. Poops.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
I'm playing a Warrior, but I'm feeling much weaker than my Mage in the original game. I seem to sustain far too many losses.
Although what's interesting is that I liked to use it as my "10 minute" game, for when I'm short on time and just want to play something quickly. You can leave it for ages, pick it up again, and just wander into the next battle, and any given battle usually takes 10 minutes at the most.
Also, major props to the devs for having a little option in the menu that you can tick to skip ALL the extraneous intro movies and get straight to the game menu. Every game should have this option. Devs, if I've seen your freaking intro logo and the half dozen other affiliated publisher and middleware logo movies once, that is more than enough I assure you and you don't need to shove it in my face every freaking time I start the game.
The design of troops is very interesting, and I'm sure I'm missing something with army design.
There are the basic 'human soldier' troops:
Peasants - Cost 10 G / troop. No health to speak of, but you can have heaps of them - also, there are limitless numbers of them for sale. For every 30 soldiers, they get +1 attack because they're braver I guess. I don't use them with my warrior, because they die a LOT and need to be replaced after nearly every fight. Haven't found a res spell yet.
Swordsmen - Cost 70 G / troop. My basic troop at the moment. Initially there are a limited number but after passing the first boss they have become limitless also. They have good health (32), armour, decent melee damage and walk 3 squares / turn. These guys take a lot of punishment and I usually have their troop in the front lines.
Archers - Cost 100 G / troop. Do less damage than swordsmen and have less health, but have good range (about 2/3 of the hexes for full damage). They also get special arrows which either slow or burn the enemy. Not *too* bad in close quarters (they punch the enemy, which looks amusing). They are also limitless after the first boss fight.
The human magic users I've encountered are:
Priests - Cost 100 G / troop. They have a decent ranged attack (double against undead), decent health (26) and also can cast 2 heals spells during combat. They can also buff an ally for 2 turns so they do maximum damage. I find the heal spells unhelpful at the higher levels, as my troops tend to just die and there's no point in healing them. Healing is good for troops with very high health figures.
Archmages - Cost 900 G / troop. They also need 200 leadership per mage so your numbers are fairly limited. They have a lightning attack which can hit anywhere on the board, a defense buff that reduces damage by 50%, and a telekenesis ability that moves any troop one hex in any direction (odd, occasionally useful). They also have heaps of health (over 100) which makes the most survivable of the troops I can access easily at the start of the game.
These guys make up my basic army (except the peasants, they die more than everyone!), and in the first four zones they did pretty well. Now I'm on the Freedom Isles and they get substantially annihilated in every combat! I'm not sure if this is just a) working as intended or b) I should be using troops with more HP so they don't suffer 10-20% troop loss when the pirates hit them. I've saved up $260k gold (playing normal difficulty) but the money I'm making in battles is by no way covering for all of the losses I'm suffering.
EDIT - I love the Chest of Rage - someone had a lot of fun writing those guys...
I found that in The Legend, I ended up, after a while, not using human units very much at all since the animal units tended to be more numerous and had better abilities. The Archers have a great special ability, but after they fire them off, they are distinctly below average.
I'd have to say that Armored Princess is more balanced than The Legend...but it's also a hell of a lot harder, a LOT harder. (which to me makes it fun most of the time, until you have to slog through tons of hard battles in a row) but I just got to a place that sells me more Paladins so yay!
But yeah. Awesome games. Three thumbs up.
Seadogs- Probably the most damaging melee unit you'll find early on. Great init, blah speed but they come with running. Their 3 grid attack is AMAZING (hint: line up enemies for it via spells/rage/abilities). They lack the survivability of swordsman but make up for it in damage/init IMO. I tend to only attack with them once or twice in a given combat (using the 3-grid attack targeting a weak enemy that won't be able to retal to hit 2 others) but even in so few attacks they end up making up a large % of my teams damage early on. They're even better in AP because they have an evasion move.
Royal Snakes- The other contender for best melee unit early on. I think these are actually rarer in the original (whereas, they always spawn in AP). No retaliation, high int/speed, good damage, decent HP, etc. Just great units all around.
Vampires/Ancient Vampires- Good init (bat form), self sustaining, no retaliation... only problem is they're undead and can lower morale (and that they're rare). If you come across them though, probably worth ditching human units to use.
For ranged:
Inquisitors- 3 bless + rage uses + a minor rez. Great for keeping a "no loss" game or just utilizing rage abilities. Ranged damage isn't great but they're decent against undead. Worth it for the rage generation alone IMO.
Beholders/Evil Beholders- Amazing early game units. They can put level 4 and under units to sleep (miss a turn). They will *always* put level 1 units to sleep unless it's immune to mind spells. You can effectively lock down a group with one. Considering the number of level 1/2 units you meet early on, these units are awesome.
Royal Thorns- Underrated. The creation of fodder stacks seems more important in AP than it does in the original. What's great about thorn's fodder stacks is they can create MORE fodder from corpses. Very handy ability to have when you're trying to draw out combat to maximize rage exp or certain challenges (in AP).
Other:
Archmages are great with "tank" units (high HP) like cyclops or dragons. The target spell (not sure if that's in AP) + archmage shield can be pretty ridiculous. Also fun to phantom a griffon/royal griffon, buff it with defense, and just sit in in the middle of the enemies stacks and watch it counter-attack destroy everyone.
Also bears.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
What's wrong with leaving the impossible enemies until later? For me, there have always been a large number of impossible enemies, in both the Legend, and in Armored Princes.
I'm up to about level 29 with my Paladin in Armored Princess. I'm enjoying the game at least as much as the Legend. My current favourite troop is the Paladin - very good attack and defense, and two great skills. As a downside, the Paladin's speed isn't very good, I usually end up having to cast haste. The Paladin can give another troop an extra turn, and even better can cast a heal/resurrect to all troops immediately surrounding the Paladin. Near the end of a battle, I gather all my troops that had significant losess around my Paladin and use this skill. This has given me quite a few no loss battles - I'm still working on the level II award for this.
The Royal Griffins are also great.
I really need to start Armored Princess sometime soon. I had so much fun with the first one.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/idolninja
I've also been using those dwarf canon units. Their salvo ability does ridiculous quantities of damage.
I might try out that Archmages+Griffins+Phantom set-up, sounds like a hilarious time.
Well, some of these impossible enemies are really in the way of things. I don't mind em when they're used to wall off specific areas or protect castles, but there's so many high level ones patrolling among the regular troops. I'm finding it hard to tell sometimes which area I'm supposed to be focusing on - to the point of feeling like I'm cheating by sneaking to the next area (with even higher difficulty enemies). I don't recall there being as many roaming heroes in the first game.
I'm just wondering at what point the game is going to actually make me feel powerful. I shouldn't be getting owned by a buncha peasants - it's so humiliating!
And yeah, since I've been using Paladins + red priests, I've finally been able to get a few battles without losses.
Also - catapults
Plus the totems are often a focus of attack (which is one less attack going to your troops), and can be used to block or delay troops.