Berserker-the-Talent doesn't simply add 10 Attack and 3 Initiative, it doubles current values, which means as your Attack rises Berserking Barbarians actually pull noticeably ahead of Barbarian's in damage, and if you've got any Initiative-boosting effects the Barbarians will instantly spike to 8 or more Initiative ie going before everything that isn't a boss, high end Gremlin, or itself benefiting from Initiative boosters.
As such, Attack directly does Defense's job, but overall better. So in the long haul, the primary point in Berserker's favor is that they've got Running. Which is hampered by AI stupidity Talents: Separation Charge: 1. Stack splits in half, shunting half its numbers into a new stack directly adjacent. This new stack cannot use Separation, interrupts the previous stack's turn, and is considered a new unit in most every respect, having its full supply of Action Points and being unaffected by any effects lingering on the spawning stack.
This does not end the turn of the 'originator' stack. Separation is a very odd Talent. There's the turn interruption element, there's the fact that this is the only 'summon' in the game where the new stack isn't treated as a summon in any way This is more important in later games, but still relevant , and it's the only 'summon' in The Legend that doesn't end the summoner's turn. This gives Griffins an exceptional functional range, actually greater than Archdemons, as they can travel 4 tiles, Separate and drop the new stack 1 tile ahead, and then that stack will have 5 Speed, for a total reach of 10!
They also 'double-dip' on Speed boosters, so they don't really have competition. As such, Griffins are one of the better units in the game for ensuring you get chests, especially if you're backing them with Initiative boosters. Onslaught 3 ensures they go ahead of all unboosted enemy unis, for example Griffins themselves are surprisingly durable, being one of a handful of units with more HP than Leadership, and then they have a minor Physical resistance and a slightly greater Magic resistance.
And find the stuff, of course They're not quite convenient for early-game Resurrection -a Paladin would have to rush for Order Magic 2- which is a bit disappointing, but overall they're a surprisingly effective unit. It does mean they can single-handedly dogpile ranged units and thus force a melee attack Which will of course be retaliated against in situations other fast fliers wouldn't be able to do so, but in most situations you'd rather they just be one big stack Furiousing at enemies.
Probably their best-case scenario is managing to get into the face of multiple ranged units in a situation where those units can't actually get out of melee with them. This is mostly nice, since it makes it possible to keep casualties down with good play, but it does hamper the appeal of Griffins a bit. In practice it tends to lean toward them being frustrating to fight, since the player's army may well be 4 or even 5 ranged stacks.
Sometimes they'll Split immediately and then move. Sometimes they'll fly out, and only start Splitting once they reach your forces. Sometimes they'll fly most of the way, Split, and have the new stack fly the rest of the way.
I can imagine that some players are nudged away from such melee mobs by Griffins existing, but I suspect most players figure out fairly quickly that such melee mobs are undesirable -not to mention boring. In conjunction with the 'they'd be great against ranged mobs It's a bit sad, because I think Griffins are very well-designed in and of themselves, but the larger design space kind of undermines them.
They'd be pretty darn good in something more like a competitive strategy game format, or if The Legend had found some way to make it so that 'takes casualties as part of doing its job' wasn't so thoroughly undesirable a feature for player forces, but alas, you're going to have to wait until later games for that.
Damage: Magical. Beholders are a bit of an odd unit, in that they're really, really good in certain matchups, such as allowing you to keep massive stacks of Devilfish disabled indefinitely while chipping them down, but outside these matchups they're kind of eh. Being a 3-move ranged unit with standard range is pretty nice, at least. I'd assumed, given their melee attack animation is a bite, that they were, but I've even confirmed this in-game -their melee damage is the same against, say, Ghosts, as their ranged damage.
Thanks in part to No Melee Penalty, of course. Weird scaling. Paralyzing Ray is also odd in that it induces Sleep on the target, but unlike the Sleep induced by every other effect in the game, this Sleep isn't cleared if the target suffers damage. I'm not entirely sure why the game didn't give it its own status effect -I spent a while convinced that Bears waking up when injured was some weird exception, rather than Paralyzing Ray's behavior being the weird exception.
A bit of unnecessary confusion there. This applies to Evil Beholders as well, just to be clear. Ultimately, the main issue with Beholders is actually their lack of support. The fact that Evil Beholders largely outclass them doesn't exactly help, either. As enemies, Beholders are surprisingly forgettable, unless your army is made heavily of low-level units susceptible to Paralyzing Ray. I'm not sure why Beholders and Evil Beholders are immune to mental effects.
Is it driven by game design considerations, so that Beholder mirror matches don't have to worry about one getting lucky and ending up Sleep-locking the other? Which would be incredibly frustrating Is there some Heroes of Might and Magic game-based reasons I'm not aware of? I'm primarily familiar with the 3rd game Oh well. Design-wise, Beholders look I don't think the 'skin' looks that great, to be honest, even though I like the shape. Luckily, the devs apparently agree with me, because Armored Princess promptly reskins both them and Evil Beholders!
Talents: Mind Control Charge: 1. Mind controls a single unit -enemy or ally- and directs it to attack a specific target, which it will burn its entire movement to approach even if it can't actually make an attack on it. This can only be used on units that haven't moved yet. A bizarre quirk of Mind Control is that the unit taking damage immediately ends the control - even if the damage is Poisoning or Burning.
As such, if you've been spraying Fireballs or whatever, make sure to pay attention before using Mind Control, as otherwise you'll just be granting an enemy unit its turn out of order! A particularly frustrating aspect of how Mind Control works is that it works differently in the enemy's hands than in yours.
The description I gave is how it works for the player. The AI can do stuff like Mind Control your Royal Snakes and then direct them to back up and Lunge at one of your units, making it far more problematic in enemy hands than it is useful in yours.
And since Evil Beholders can only Mind Control stacks smaller than their own, AI Evil Beholders are a lot more consistent at getting the opportunity to pull off a Mind Control in the first place -you'll usually need to inflict a lot of damage before any of your enemies are valid to Mind Control. And if you could inflict that much damage, the Mind Control will often be more like a minor bonus than anything significantly useful.
So Mind Control is actually largely a trait that can make Evil Beholders incredibly frustrating to fight if you're using any units that aren't immune to mental effects, rather than a trait that's particularly relevant in the player's hands.
Especially since the game doesn't like giving you Evil Beholders early enough in the game for you to be liable to be going up against 'match' fights as a regular, reasonably challenging sort of fight.
Still, if you were considering using Beholders anyway, Evil Beholders largely outclass them. So basically see my description of Beholders, and just keep in mind Evil Beholders' 5 Initiative puts them ahead of a bunch of units. Talents: Stun Charge: 1. Does Physical damage to an adjacent enemy and Stuns them , Push Reload: 2. Pushes an adjacent enemy one tile away and does Physical damage in the process. The target can't retaliate. Immunity to mental effects is thrown in.
The Cyclops is an inorganic unit, rendering it impossible to heal but immune to Plague etc , No Melee Penalty. Stun has the odd quality that it won't provoke a retaliation if the target is successfully Stunned, but will if they aren't. The main point I'm aware of this mattering on is that Level 5 units are immune to Stunning.
I'm not sure if anything else is or not. As such, a Cyclops can use Stun to make a free melee attack While also lowering Initiative and Speed and denying Talent access unless the target is a Level 5 unit. The game itself doesn't properly convey this: it will normally tell you that the target will get to retaliate when targeting Stun, no acknowledgment that the vast majority of units actually won't get to retaliate.
It's one of the more frustrating learning curve issues in a game that's mostly very good about communicating information to the player, as the game doesn't mention anywhere that you can't Stun Level 5 units and, again, the game doesn't actually account for whether the Stun will block a retaliation when predicting retaliation or lack thereof.
As such, a player learning the game may well be really confused as to what's going on with Stun on several levels. Anyway, Cyclops are one of the most unusual units in the game on a number of levels, and one the game likes to use as a kind of mini-boss. You might intuitively expect that you should close to melee against the Cyclops, but not only does it have No Melee Penalty but its two Talents actually hit harder than its ranged attack and still Usually prevent the target from retaliating!
Cyclops also will shrug off a lot of 'easy buttons', thanks to their resistance to all non-Magic damage and immunity to assorted effects. If you've lucked into a Lightning scroll, they're a lot more manageable, but that's really about it. You might think running a Magic damage-heavy army might avail you, but the fact is that Magic damage units tend to be relatively lackluster in damage output, so the Cyclops' sheer bulk and solid fighting ability will usually render this less-than-effective.
As units on your side, they're not nearly so noteworthy, as a ranged unit that's difficult to kill isn't so useful when you're usually in control of the battlefield enough to keep the heat off your ranged units in the first place, while the Cyclops' damage output is actually rather lackluster for its Leadership.
An equivalent Leadership in Thorn Hunters would, ignoring Attack and Defense for a second, do with its ranged attack, when at optimum range. That's unrealistically extreme circumstances, and the Thorn Hunters aren't doing joke damage compared to the Cyclops. More realistically, the Thorn Hunters are just plain doing more damage until they start suffering casualties.
Similarly, the Cyclops being a Sniper isn't that useful to the player. Most battles are a melee-heavy enemy force trying to charge straight at the player's forces, with light support from ranged attackers, and the player eventually gets Tactics, allowing them to substantially sidestep range as a limitation. Unlimited range is useful, but not that useful for the player. Nor is their suite of immunities relevant in most fights; most battles are against foes with no access to Plague, mental effects, etc.
Then their awful Initiative means they only contribute their damage late in the turn, when The Legend is a game where early damage output effectively acts as a boost to defense, because dead units don't do damage! Indeed, their immunity to healing makes them less effective than some lower durability unit at absorbing punishment without suffering casualties, a point that's only rarely a real flaw in AI hands. Of course, part of the problem is that the game doesn't like to give the player access to them early on.
If you could expect to get Cyclops pretty much the instant you had the minimum Leadership for 1, they'd be awesome for being able to tank huge amounts of damage without costing the player any gold, while still contributing with ranged firepower et al.
In actuality, you're normally going to be waiting a while to get a hold of any of them, and by the time they show up you've got the Leadership for multiple of them, and by extension your battles are big enough they don't really expect to shrug off more than two or three attacks without suffering casualties.
That said, they do have a notable niche of being a ranged attacker that can double as the melee meatshield once enemies close.
They have problems in that role, and I'm really quite glad the later games bolster them dramatically For all that it makes them even more frustrating as enemies! They're also notable for being one of a handful of ways to directly manipulate enemy position in The Legend, with Push potentially buying your forces another turn when used on slow units That you're slowing further or on units you manage to Shock as well. Or you can shove an uncooperative enemy onto a Trap they bypassed. Or shove them out of a chokepoint, letting you set a Trap to hold up the entire enemy army for another turn.
Push has a lot of utility, and for the moment it's nearly unique. For the moment, Cyclops are most notable for functioning as early game miniboss fights, but they're still a unique unit that isn't displaced by any other unit, so they're better off than, say, Pirates. Talents: Target Capture Reload; 2. Targets an enemy 1 empty tile away, dragging them adjacent and doing Physical damage per Emerald Green Dragon in the attacking stack.
The target doesn't get to retaliate, and will eg set off traps it's been pulled into , Mana Source Reload: 3. Inflicts Magic damage on all adjacent enemy units, granting the owning Hero Mana for every unit hit by the effect.
As a level 16 mage playing on hard I was just able to defeat a level 30 hero demon troop with no losses using Royal Snakes, Cyclops, Paladins, Necromancers, and Evil Beholders. I just used level 3 slows, traps, and stone skin on my tanks while killing whatever the demon portals spawned with my other troops. This combination along with my current spells and talents seems to be working well, so I'll just stick with it until they start losing effectiveness.
I've garrissoned my royal thorns for the above stated reasons and am now relying on the necromancer for summons. If anyone reads this later and has some advice, I would be happy to take it. Last edited by Kaihekoa ; 24 Apr, pm.
Satyrion View Profile View Posts. Last edited by Satyrion ; 28 Apr, am. Thanks for the reply, Satyrion. I'm up to lvl 25 now clearing Montero and am getting a better idea of what an ideal army composition is like.
Tried assassins, but they aren't as good. I've been struggling to find upgraded troops for the last two roles. I think I'll try a big stack of the human bowmen and see how they do I did love their frost arrow skill.
Will give royal thorns another try too. I do have access to green dragons, so maybe I can try using them as my main tank and letting the cyclops take the archer role. Would love to use the shamans and necromancers together, but can't do that without finding a morale booster for the shaman.
I am lvl 26 now in the Montero Dungeon. Here is my new setup, i didnt loose 1 unit in battle after i got this setup! I think Tirex is the reason for my success because they never die and if 1 were to die i would just rez it with my inquisitors.
They are pricy though Red Dragons r like for 1. Last edited by Satyrion ; 29 Apr, am. I'll keep an eye out for Tirex and Gorguanas. I'm guessing you found them on the lizardmen island? Tirex is the strongest unit in game by my opinion I got them both on the lizard island yes.
Candesco View Profile View Posts. Do you guys still play the original AP or also with CW? I guess you play AP. I'm level 11 myself now, but didn't came across any cyclops, paladins, necromancers and evil beholders to use them.
Only fought against some cyclops, paladins and evil beholders. I even can't use any knights, which should appear at Debir after a time. Don't know if this has something to do with the changes that Steam did. I play with CW and play the orcs on the march campaign. User Info: Farmacept. More topics from this board Chest of rage getting Lina and Reaper to join? Side Quest 2 Answers Can you remarry a wife after divorcing her?
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