Well, in my current shard. I haven't encountered my rivals yet. My Scout is a level 10 and doing quite well - thanks to that Gamers Guide video series about starting your heroes- even though it was done for MotBw, it does work with Genesis.

So I'm at this cross roads. I have a nice semi circle ring of provinces, except one that was overrun by barbarians, and it would be a losing fight (I think there's about nine of them including a Thug). I'm wondering when I should get the 2nd hero hired. I'm thinking Warrior or Commander. I don't do Wizards, I haven't had much luck with them.

Any suggestions?

Well, it of course depends on your situation. Is this a campaign shard? If so how far are you in the campaign, and what buildings do you have unlocked? What stronghold buildings do you have built? Do you have any equipment or spell scrolls that are best used with a certain hero? What difficulty are you on? What sort of "special places" (you know, like Ruined Towers with Goblins or Ancient Ruins with Centaurs) do you have available? What turn are you on? How much gold do you have? Which units do you have available for hiring? Which magic schools do you have?

Sorry If I'm overwhelming you with my flood of questions, but all of these things and more can be relevant to choosing your second hero. But try to answer at least a few of them.

As for more general advice... Don't hire a commander if you don't have at least tier 2 units. Don't hire a wizard if you don't have good spells (although some of the best spells are tier 1, so this rule is a lot more flexible). Warriors are always good, but best with cheap expendable units especially if you are doing the solo warrior strategy. If you are unfamiliar with the solo warrior strategy feel free to ask in a reply. And scouts are always good, but are best used with a defensive wall made up of swordsmen (or guardsmen, but they are tier 2) with a healer (or healers) behind them

This isn't a campaign shard. I did well with one,but messed it up. Right now it's learning how to put it all together. I haven't done tier 2 just yet. I'm able to, and I'm using the wall of swordsmen method with my scout, It's very effective. I appreciate you answering my question.

IME Commander will break out better than a warrior can... upgrade him to priest at ten for best results.

No doubt wizard hero's are broken due to them not being allowed to have an army for thousands of years.

Commander and Warrior are the best but Warrior is the best early on.

However, even later on with a powerful commander, a warrior may still be better under certain circumstances.... especially against units that don't go down easy such as Dragons. So if you had started off with a warrior, you cannot go wrong, because he will always be useful.

And don't be shy to swap out your experienced army with inexperienced ones on a regular basis, so that you can keep the experienced ones only for battles without losses. Otherwise your just going to keep throwing away valuable experience which is an unnecessary grind.

I always start with Wizard actually as I believe they are the hardest to level up.

With both Scout and Warrior a solid weapon makes leveling them quite easy and quick.

Commanders can take the veteran troops from your Wiz and Scout and level up quite quickly as well.

My ideal hiring order is Wizard, Scout, Warrior and then Commander although I sometimes switch Warrior to 2nd place if I see a lot of Goblin and Lizard sites in my capitol and starting ring as they make great early leveling for him to solo.

Also Wiz and Scout I always go pure no multi classing.

Warrior I often go pure as well although sometimes I really want to go Dark Knight (Warrior/Wiz) as I love to solo and this gives lots of HP and Magic abilities. Although I truly sadly regret the loss of Round Attack and Berserking.

When to hire your 2nd is usually asap (as soon as possible). They can gain exp merely exploring.

Actually you know, i can see the advantage here - because the starting battles are the easiest, representing the best opportunity to strengthen up the weakest useless moron in the game. It will be much harder to level him up later on when you are on your fourth hero purchase - usually by then i would just use that useless thing for scouting, but it would be better if it could be made more useful!

Thanks.

(Or keep a rebelling province near the capital - that is another way to level him up, shhhh)

Why do you think that wizards are weak, just because they can't have a very big army? Unless you multiclass him with a commander, spells, not units are the wizard's strength. That would be like saying that the commander is bad because he only has 4 tier 1 spell slots.

If you are using the wand that often you are doing something probably wrong. You should only ever not be casting a spell if you... A: Want to conserve gems, B: Have already used all of your spells this battle, or C: Want to save the spell that you aren't casting for use later in the battle.

I have to agree with your points totally. There is only one other time I would use the wand instead of spells with the Wiz and that is to perhaps soften up an enemy so that my Swordies can deliver the coup de grace and avoid a retaliation, or sometimes if my guy fell just 1 or 2 hp short of killing him to finish him off.

Some of the first Tier spells become insanely good with Spell Power and Thaumaturgy boosting them. For example Fear, Burning Ammo, Fatigue and even beneficial spells like Inspiration amp up so well with a Wizard.

Cloud of Terror FTW as well on so many units is sweet as well.

Remember that at level 10 when Wizard becomes Mage he gets a +2 Spell Power class boost, this combined with the +6 he can get from Spell Power level 5 = +8. The following is how this +8 bonus applies to the spells I mentioned above.

Fear* - Lowers Morale by 12 instead of the usual 8.
Fatigue - Lowers Stamina by 9 instead of 5.
Inspiration - Restores 10 Stamina instead of 2. (Not sure how much Morale it gives back though at higher levels)
Spark - 12 Damage up from 4. Remember it only takes Stamina to cast this NO MANA Crystals.
Magic Arrow - 16 Damage up from 8.
Cure Wounds - 15 Life restored up from 7.
Burning Ammo - UP TO 12 Life and Ammo from original 6 although it only does as much damage as ammo it destroys. Otherwise it would be quite over powered.


Fear is one of the odd spells though that really suffers extra penalties if your target has resistance. It suffers 2x targets resistance to it. For example casting Fear at a target with 1 Resistance would only lower morale by 6, 2 resistance would only lower morale by 4 and become completely useless if a target had 4 Resistance or higher.

Therefore the Wizards Spell Power and Thaumaturgy (Resistance Negation) Really comes in handy.

Thugs have 9 Morale and 1 Restance at level 1. A Normal Fear cast at them would only lower them to 3 Morale. However if cast by a Wizard with only Spell Power and Thaumaturgy at level 1 would totally lower their Morale to 0.

Executioners likewise also have only 9 Morale normally but they have 2 Resistance at level 1. These guys can also be taken out VERY early super easy by Wizards with 1 Spell Power and 2 Thaumaturgy.

Troll and Ogres also make very good targets for a Wizards Fear spells as well.

I like how this game works, you have to really think of when to hire the next hero, what type do you use. I found a thread courtesy of the Eador forums and it was about the Heroes and how to approach them. I decided to hire my first as a Scout and then the second as a Warrior. It seems to work out very well. Especially if you get the Scout leveled up a bit where his Scouting ability takes hold, and it allows him to check out the guards in the dungeons he might need to fight or retreat from, I did that with him exploring and then the Warrior would come in and clean out the dungeons that were his level to do so.

I need to figure out how to buff my units against poisons, such as giant slugs and spider.
So perhaps some range units might be needed? But as I said I am really appreciating the complexity to this game.

There are a few ways you can deal with Slugs and or Spiders. Slugs are a bit more straight forward to deal with though so I will start with them.

Slugs start with 8 Ranged Attack and 5 Shots each

1) Skeletons at level 1 have 8 Ranged defense and Poison Immunity, like all undead guys. You could bring along just 1 worthless unit to sacrifice to their poison so that you can use Raise Skeleton, It's best to park them in some a "Forest" Tile to up their Ranged Defense by another 2 as they only have 9 hp.

2) Gargoyles are also immune to poison and start with 6 Ranged Defense as well. You can sometimes Hire them from Sorcery shops OR use the T2 Summon Gargoyle spell.

3) Ghosts are even better then the 2 choices above as Ghosts could be the ones to actually do quite a bit of the killing as well as taking really no damage since they have 20 Melee and 40 Ranged Defense. Unlike the example above they would actually be doing the killing as well as soaking up shots.

4) Dwarfs - at level 8 Dwarfs can potentially get Poison Immunity. In pretty much all other respects they are just a better version of Swordsmen units and they start with 6 Ranged Defense and increased Stamina & HP although they pay for this with a starting Upkeep cost of 17 Gold (YIKES). They would also be helping to do the actual killing as well as soaking up shots. Sadly you would need to gain an alliance for these guys really (Mercs won't be worth it as you need to keep them for quite a long time) depriving yourself of the ultimate awesomness that are Elves.

5) Dryads - These T2 creatures can also learn Poison Immunity starting at level 8. Start with 5 Ranged Defense.

These are the most reliable ways to soak up and/or take out Slugs. Ghosts and Dwarfs would also be a good way to deal with Spiders as well. Skeletons and Gargoyles wouldn't survive the melee attacks all that well although Dyrads COULD because they could be healed to help them survive.

Scout can also sometimes just take out Spiders (3 or 4, if more than that Dwarfs/Ghosts or a really strong army are pretty much a must) If he has level 2 Scouting that lowers stamina and has a couple Slow spells on him. This will drain those Spiders even more to let your troops deal with them normally.


EDIT - I wanted to add another way for dealing with the Poisoning and that is with the use of the Life T2 spell "Restoration". It not only Heals 12 HP but also removes Poisoning effects currently on the troop, which can be real helpful but only if you have a guy with a LOT of HP really. Also the T2 MONK can learn Restoration starting around level 7 but it uses up 3 ammo. It's really good though because unlike the Monks normal healing ability Range doesn't matter. Sadly the T3 Priests do NOT get this spell although they can get Resurrection starting at level 8.

Actually the ability to see the exact composition of the troops with Scouting ability is one I 99% of the time never use even if I could. It's pretty much a waste of gold.

In fact one of my main complaints about this game is that even if you do explore the ruins and retreat you lose all that info and can waste another turn if their are 2 locations in the province that have the same name and troops. For example 2x Ancient Ruins each with Goblins, however one has 6 and the other only 4. Or even one could have just those Goblins and the other has 2 or 3 Slugs mixed in with them as well. Even if you explored there is no way to later check unless you visit the ruin again, potentially wasting another turn.

It's a little thing but it's quite annoying.

Wizards can be one of the best heroes for taking out lairs and opponents that would otherwise mean at least some units lost for other heroes. They are also incredibly versatile if you choose their spells right, with only a few enemy types they have trouble with (dragons being the main one, although even that is manageable if you have a spider or two in your army).

Cloud of Terror can neutralize even the strongest units in one shot- the normally powerful Clan of Giants guard can be reduced to nothing but a panicked mob waiting to be picked off before they can even act.

Mass Suicide, Firestorm, and White Magic are all incredibly powerful offensive spells that can wipe out or severely weaken most of the enemy army in a single shot.

Summon Phoenix or Dragon Form lets you call up an extra lvl 4 unit to help deal with magic immune creatures like golems and dragons.

Word of Ice lets you completely immobilize any non-magic immune creature for a large number of rounds, and a wizard casting this spell is pretty much the only way any hero can neutralize enemy phoenixes in a single round.

Fireball and Lightning are nice spammable damage spells that you can load up on and which remain useful even through the late game.

And even simple spells like Inspiration can be used to quickly restore the wizard's stamina in a single shot (as blasting off two high-level spells each round can drain it pretty quick).

Now, a really well-geared solo warrior may be a bit stronger in the very late game (provided they have poison immunity), but aside from that I'd consider wizards to be the strongest heroes once they're leveled past 20 and loaded up with a good selection of spells. Crank up their initiative so they get the first turn and most battles are over before they even begin.