Bookwyrm627: The AI has silly amounts of bonuses at higher difficulty levels. Bonus gold income, bonus mana income, and bonus experience-for-existing on all of their heroes. You're never going to really be fighting on even terms against the highest difficulty AI. It is still rock stupid, but now backed by quite the free money to throw at problems. You're going to have to fight a lot smarter, and don't mess around too much with defenses; you need to go out and conquer, or you'll eventually be crushed by sheer resources.
Don't try to garrison all of your cities. The AI isn't bright enough to do stealth type attacks, so get good map vision and you'll see attacks coming. Garrisons cost money while not providing anything strategically if the city isn't under direct threat (for example, it is on the front line). All those garrisons guarding cities behind your lines could be up front fighting the war and contesting/claiming territory.
The AI always knows where all of your units are, so concealment is a wasted ability against it. Don't bother with any strategy that relies on concealment (or the fog of war) keeping your units hidden from the AI. These are great tools against other players, but not the AI.
Assuming you're playing the base game, then the unit strategy is basically "all archers, all the time". You can throw in a few higher level units that are durable to soak up enemy attacks in auto combat (the occasional Titan for High Men, for example), maybe the occasional healer to patch up wounded survivors (there probably won't be many). You'll need siege of some sort as well, which basically means elephants if you can get them or rams if you can't. Time is one of your resources, along side gold and mana; a city that produces a Titan could have produced something like 16 archers considering just the upgrade time, installation time, and production of the first Titan. That doesn't even get into the gold cost of all those upgrades, and it doesn't get into the fact that you'll have archers streaming out every turn instead of only seeing your first unit 16 turns later.
Try to get levels for your heroes, which means giving them the killing blow. Wall Climbing should be the very first thing you get on every hero, costing only 5 skill points. Defense is cheap and good, so get it high early, add a few points of attack to help accuracy, and max defense and attack. Extra damage is very nice, but kind of expensive. A few extra hp can help shield against lucky hits from enemy units with either high attack or (especially) high damage.
If you find yourself with a T4 city that isn't under threat and you have plenty of extra gold, then you can consider some of the better upper level units. A fast moving flyer (eagle/wyvern rider) may be able to pick off unguarded possessions from the enemy, then hide on mountains or water to prevent retaliation. Air Galleys are really good, being a ranged flyer with decent durability. Possibly some of the fast brusier type units, like a Karagh. A big stack of doom priests could be good for converting units, if the race relations work out to allow you to keep them.
Hmm, I've used concealment with some success; yes, the AI knows you are there, but it can't actively search for your units because it doesn't seem to know exacly where you are (or atleast pretends that it doesn't). Still, seems the AI always keeps garrisons in all of it's cities - atleast if it can. Flyers seem to be generally alot better because it often fails to counter them with archers/ballistas. In all honesty, I usually fail with my concealed units because I can't keep them concealed...they move so slowly in forests so I think generally fliers are just better.
I didn't know about the gold and production rate bonus! Are these documented somewhere?
Yeah I discovered the cheesiness of archers in my last game... Since the enemy insisted on producing fliers or heavely armored units like Cavaliers, I had no choice but to go for archers and Shredder Bolts. Anything else just got killed and I was under constant siege so I couldn't afford to upgrade. I was ready to throw in the towel and do a final "Blaze of Glory"-push with my archers and shredders... who ended up doing alot more damage and capturing farm more cities than I expected. Oh well.
I've heard archers are really good so I've deliberately tried to avoid going "all archers", but this time I had no choice. Would be nice to be able to alter some of those game mechanics myself - the mods you linked me in another post changed too much for my liking.
I roleplay with my heroes (for fun and for balance reasons) so if I'm playing a tank-character he doesn't get wall-climbing. It makes no sense for Doktok the Fat to climb walls - he is too... large. :D But it's good advice, thanks!
Thanks for the advice, I have a better understanding of the mechanics now!
EDIT
...and again I ask questions first and look for answers afterwards.. >< I actually found a pretty detailed guide on how to use HxD to mod the game and it looks (atleast) easier than I thought to make modifications to the game! Fingers crossed it will allow me to change the (according to myself atleast) few things that seperate this game from being amazing to perfect! I may even make a mod of my own if inspiration strikes.
Btw, if you still play the game (or anyone else here on GoG), send me a PM if you are interested in doing some multiplayer! Marking this as solved.
Regards, N
