Holy crap-You MUST see this! (academy strat)

[Banedon]

Thats easy.Do it with blade dancers.More of a chalenge

You overestimate the powers of hit-and-run. My 29 Deep Hydras split into three stacks; my hero's level 3. Hero does 59 damage to Deep Hydra with a shot; Sprites deal 12. Deep Hydras regenerate as well (if they didn't, it's much easier).

If you still don't think this is an absurdly tough battle, go on and try it. Create a custom map and then play the side with Sprites, then set the side with Deep Hydras to auto-combat. If you can do it within the next one hour, my hat's off to you.

EDIT: I thought about it, and I highly doubt you can do it within the next two hours

[DaemianLucifer]

You overestimate the powers of hit-and-run. My 29 Deep Hydras split into three stacks; my hero's level 3. Hero does 59 damage to Deep Hydra with a shot; Sprites deal 12. Deep Hydras regenerate as well (if they didn't, it's much easier).

Yup,hydras do regenerate,but you steadilly kill them off.Something like 50 hp per three rounds.As for split in three stacks,I did that with treants a few times.

EDIT: I thought about it, and I highly doubt you can do it within the next two hours

Depends on the speed of animation

[Banedon]

Treants? Very improbable. Treants move with speed 6. If I keep getting cornered by the speed 5 Deep Hydras, Treants would be even worse. You either had a lot more Sprites, suffered some casualties or else had some powerful spells to cast.

Anyway one more detail: your hero doesn't know any spells. Good luck with winning that battle

[DaemianLucifer]

Neither.Although that was with agrael,and he does increase your initiative.

Maximizing your morale here will help.Youll get approximatelyy 50% more initiative.Just what you need.

[Banedon]

You have 1 morale and 1 luck. And Agrael? Of course, Agrael is a powerhouse with tons of weapons at his disposal.

Oh, and after my own two hours of play, I've decided that it's more important to hope that the Hydras get morale, not you (though it was precisely because of the Hydra's good morale that I lost the closest battle I'd ever gotten to killing them all...)

[DaemianLucifer]

Cant you find some moral boosters on the map?And that was without artifacts.Begining of 3rd map.But the increase was enough(10%)

[Elvin]

My second try on dragon's cape.Destructive,summoning,sorcery,enlightenment as usual-somehow dark eludes me!But I don't know if I'd get it anyway,not unless my others are at adv or exp.This time no wasp swarm but icebolt.Gremlins were built so in 2nd -3rd day after some lvls I was able to kill lots of golems (about 40-direct attack+gremlins).Gargoyles were my saving grace.I faced with them lots of hunters in week 2 and using icebolt I had little casualties.As with the druid elders.
I noticed colossi could be built in week 2 but went the castle/mage way and it proved better.With capitol ready I could build artifact merchants,buy my army and an artifact.To experiment I tried going for rakshasas instead of colossi and it worked even better.Of course next time I may not have the resources for that.
The mini artifacts I needed at this time were def for rakshasas(went to dragon utopia in week 4 or 5 ),health for obsidian gargoyles and gremlins.Other alternatives were resistance(rakshasa) but the AI had haven so there was no need and maybe luck for mages.My magic were chain lightning(with artifact),s.elementals,arcane armour and armageddon.Gargogeddon with phoenix cape(800 dmg) is just crazy but the rest spells were meh.Gargoyles work well with chain lightning too if you let your other units out.
After the dragon utopia(7 shadow,7 emerald) which came down easily with phantom forces,motw+icebolt I got implosion(1100+ dmg) and summon phoenix and it was game over.Even with the 80(!) priests,120 marksmen,10 paladins,4 archangels,36 imp griffins and 10 inquisitors versus my 4 rakshasas,4 rak rukhs,20 obs gargoyles,40 steel golems and 200 master gremlins.Not exactly a miracle as it's just the AI but the numbers should show something.Haven AI doesn't seem to have one strategy for training,when it uses it anyway.
I must mention that there ARE some resources around in this scenario.It's normal size,2 players with a garisson of 25 of each elementals.

[Banedon]

Cant you find some moral boosters on the map?And that was without artifacts.Begining of 3rd map.But the increase was enough(10%)

That's beside the point. The way you put it, it sure didn't seem like very good morale was needed - and, besides, I quite believe it can be done with 1 morale.

Anyway the beginning of the third map obviously means that Agrael has at his disposal some powerful magics. I don't know what you casted, but if you had Destruction magic for example you could have immobilized one of the Treant stacks no problem while dealing a whole lot more damage than can possibly be done here.

Your hero does 59 damage to the Deep Hydra stack. The Deep Hydra stack regenerates about 35 hit points every turn. The Deep Hydra stack also has 125 HP. You therefore take about 5 shots to kill one with the hero alone (though in practice, you might take rather less thanks to the Sprites). You have to stall a long time, take care of random morale bonuses and still make it out intact (if any of the Deep Hydra stack hits the Sprites, it's game over).

Try it out and see. Best I've gotten to so far was 13 Deep Hydras (one stack) dead, when a freak morale bonus got me.

PS: Off topic, so if you try it and have something to say, send me a PM and / or open a new topic, not post it here.

[cqr]

I guess no one wondered that academys way to go is magic. Anyway this strategie -as it has been alredy mentioned- not undefeatable. All stratagies have their own circumstances in wich thy perform better, and a resource rich map with a pool being around ur town for example is not a bad thing for academy.
I didnt read all posts, but i would like to have a comment on the fight took place between vittorio (200marksman) and the acad hero. To counter magic use magic immunity.. with those marksmen being in one stack, protected by squires(one big stack, 4 small like 1-2 in each) , and magic immunity being casted on marksmen first should have handle that fight( phoenix with precise shot can be considered to be dead after acting once and even 200-300 mana will run out after like 6 turns, or maybe u can finish acad troops no matter what the phoenix doing). With marksmen being magic immune the only way to go is summoning, wich can be countered as well. - This is olso true in general not only in that fight of course-

[Banedon]

Wise men think alike I suggested something similar, the key point being to lump the Marksmen into the same stack. We'll have to see what the results are from the bbs forum.

PS: I know DaemianLucifer will write, "Or fools seldom differ"

[mr.dna]

Could a necromancer build be done the same way? or are the spells and spellpoints to few?

A nec with sorcery, dark, destructive, summon and enlightment.

[Elvin]

Probably but 3 schools may be a bit too much.And one skill has to be attack.For mana you could either get motn or enlightenment->intelligence.Still a necro doesn't have mark of the wizard to weild magic as effectively and mana costs are increased...No artifact merchants as well.

[Campaigner]

Could a necromancer build be done the same way? or are the spells and spellpoints to few?

A nec with sorcery, dark, destructive, summon and enlightment.

Perhaps....but to be able to be nigh as good as a Wizard in spellcasting you'd have to play perfectly since Necromancers don't get knowledge so often.
You'd have to choose arcane training and intelligence at pretty optimal moments and also choose some easy fights to replenish your mana with MotN.

But I think some heavy tweaking is in order to make spellcasters better at casting spells than mightheroes. Making sorcery more powerful (25, 50 and 75%) and adding a ability that treats all the heroes abilities as spells would possibly be enough.

[Mytical]

I just can not seem to grasp this so I am putting my testing on hold. Last time I tried I had 123 gremlins on day one, and 20 gargoyles. Still could not seem to get anywhere. So it must be beyond my capability to do the rush game.

[Elvin]

@Mytical
You do place the gremlins(master) is a corner and surround them with 3 stacks of gargoyles,right?If you start with warmachines or magic arrow so for the better.If not no wonder you had difficulties.

[Mytical]

Yes, I did the 3 stacks of gargoyles, had no war machine, but had Eldritch Arrow. Even had no problem with mana, but even when I had the 123 MG on week 2 day 2 Dungeon was knocking at my door with a lot of creatures. Didn't have a chance.

[Elvin]

If you are rushed by a warlock in week 2 it is perfectly undestandable as you won't have taken many lvls and thus spellpower nor good spells.Tried using obsidian gargoyles and steel golems?Motw can help a lot and if you are lucky try getting counterspell in time.
What map did you say you play?I don't ever recall being rushed before week 3-4.

[raistlinz]

It might be a small map(like the land of outcast, ai and I can rush in week 2), I should say that In week 2 if the money is good you can hire a 3rd hero, so your army could be bigger than that, and like Elvin said: try use obsidian gargoyles and steel golems, they are the right army against Dungeon, even ai not rush you this 2 armys can make great efforts during your level up.

[Campaigner]

But using MotW or Counterspell counts as a regular action which puts you down to 0 initiative again! And it takes forever to get back to 100% so you can cast MotW. And thats TWO regular actions...! In the meantime the Blood Furies have hit you 3 or 4 times and then you're dead!

[Mytical]

Motw is half action, and with sorcery you act pretty fast, so it is possible. I just am not skilled enough to pull it off is all. Well back to the mines .