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STRATEGIES BASED ON DEFENSE DURING BATTLE AND SUMMONING CREATURES by ZOLTAN

Zoltan

1. My "shield-strategy" is to pick the Defense modus for a unit which is badly injured and let the other units in the party fight the battle. Then the enemy unit, which reaches the defended one hits it with half power or hits other one with full power. It depends on the remaining HPs of the wounded unit and the damage caused by the enemy unit if latter picks another one or hangs on to the wounded unit. The same is when you take a single fighter unit/leader and some archers/wizards. The fighter always gets into defense modus, and the others fight the battle (eventually you can also use healers to heal the fighter).

2. Since shielding a unit makes additional 50% shield, it is very useful against 2 or more enemies of the same type : even if you could take out one of them with a single blow of the fighter, they would do more damage to a non-defending fighter than to a defending one. Against 3 enemies (in the first row) there is no doubt : your fighter gets 2x damage if you manage to kill one of the three (suppose a single enemy unit does x damage), but only 1,5x if he defends himself, and all 3 hit him. Against 2 enemies: 1x and 1x either way, but :

a) there is ca. 20% chance that the fighter misses the target (the exact probability depends on potions/spells of that unit and the level/attribute of the unit) ? so it gets 2x damage instead of just 1x

b) there is ca. 36% chance that at least one (1-0,8*0,8) enemy misses your fighter ? 4% that both (0,2*0,2) This all means, that the estimated value of damage received by your fighter is 0,96x if you attack ( 0,8*0,8x + 0,2*(0,8*0,8*2x + 0,8*0,2*2x) = 0,64 + 0,32 ) and 0,48x if you defend ? the shield still halves the damage! (in this case, i calculated that a blow from the fighter can take out one enemy with 80% probability, so the damage is even greater if you attack and hit the target, but it is not enough to kill that enemy unit. This all means that you should defend until you have a chance to kill the enemy with a last blow.)

3. A Pegasus Knight and 3 Acolytes can easily take out two Orcs or an Orc Champion without any damage at the end of the battle (I mean the HP of the Knight won't be less at the end of the battle than it was on the beginning ? it can even get higher: you can heal him!). It couldn't be achieved without shielding: you can win all battles in that the enemy is causing less damage to the shielded fighter then the "healing capacity" of the healers (of course, you should consider archers and wizards who can take out your healers, and, that you still have to survive the first strike of the enemy ? your healers come at the end of each turn since they have an initiative of 10). For example, 2 orcs do 2x55=110 damage to an unshielded unit, but only 55 to a shielded one. So you can heal him with 3 Acolytes. Starting with an injured fighter, you should heal him till it gets its full HP restored (or approx. 80-90% of it), then every second turn hit the enemy ? every second turn defend him to get less damage : you have to hit the enemy after all if you want to win the battle. If the fighter's HP is seriously low because the enemy does so many (or a little more) damage than you can heal, defend and reheal him until the enemy misses some blows (all healers have 100% to heal).

4. Another fine strategy is "the mighty level 1 spells" : Incantare Hellhound, Illudare and Summon Skeleton. Summoning Hellhound Illusions to recon missions is just mana-wasting compared to the use it can bring you blocking the way of the enemy. Narrow passages and islands are my favorite places where i summon this dog. Since they last 3 days, putting them in the path of enemy leaders, thieves and especially rod planters will make them to take a longer way (if even possible) which usually takes so many movement points for the enemy that in the next turn you can move the Hellhound to block the new path of that enemy party.

Against human players, it is not as useful since they recognize that making a turnaround costs more movement points than attacking the illusion. In Disciples I, however, the AI was intelligent enough to summon a Roc/Living Armor in order to attack and eliminate the illusion (but then your casting costs were still below the costs of the enemy : ). In Disciples II the AI is not that sophisticated any more : (. Since Skeletons are immune to Death magic, you should summon them to weaken enemy parties with Wywerns, Doomdrakes, Necromancers, Liches, Vampires, etc., especially if they're without Zombies and other creatures with weapon-based attack. There are several Deathdragon + Initiate/Warlock/Necromancer combined parties since they represent a serious threat because of the strong Deathdragons. You just let the Deathdragon's HP go very low and let your summoned Skeleton retreat before killing anything ? then attack the enemy with a weak party and kill the Deathdragon with a few blows : your party will get lots of XP. Note that the Evil Ent has not Death immunity (the Nightmare and the Thanatos do, but they are too expensive).

-ZOLTAN

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