Strategies
General Strategies
Dragogeddon
A tactical maneuver, wherein the hero aims to cast the Armageddon spell without harming his own troops. In the original Restoration of Erathia, Black Dragons and Gold Dragons were the best creatures to have when using this tactic, hence the name dragogeddon. Important note is that Red and Green Dragons, who are, respectively, basic versions of Black and Gold ones, are immune only to 1-3 level spells, and thus will be normally damaged by Armageddon which is level 4 spell.
In order for dragogeddon tactics to work in the best possible way, the hero requires:
- at least advanced Wisdom to learn Armageddon
- high power skill for Armageddon to cause as much damage as possible
- reasonable knowledge for sufficient spell points to cast the spell at least few times
- creatures with appropriate spell immunity to cause damage only to enemy units.
Possible creatures for the dragogeddon tactics are:
- Black Dragons from Dungeon (but not Red!)
- Gold Dragons from Rampart (but not Green!)
- Efreet Sultans from Inferno
- Fire Elementals, Magma Elementals, Magic Elementals or Phoenixes from Conflux
Additionally, golems may be used for the tactic because of their Spell damage resistance ability. For this purpose, Tower's Stone and Iron Golems are typically the easiest to gather. However, dragogeddon tactics are often used in situations where it is essential to rapidly – preferably in the first round of combat – destroy enemy forces, and therefore golems with a slow speed rating are not a preferable choice. Conflux's Fire Elementals and Magic Elementals are not significantly better. Another option is using Archangels or Arch Devils who are faster than Gold or Black Dragons, casting Anti-magic on them in the first turn and Armageddon afterwards (beware that Anti-magic disallows you to resurrect units).
The combination artifact Power of the Dragon Father, while hard to obtain, makes all of the hero's units immune to Armageddon, allowing dragogeddon usage with any army.
Another situation for dragogeddon is when a player needs to weaken an enemy hero's main force. When used for this purpose, the attacking method is typically hit-and-run, which makes speed essential and Phoenixes the best choice. It is vital for the hero to act first in the combat, cast Armageddon and then surrender (or retreat), and then repeat the process. In an ideal situation, the enemy hero's movement has ended up near the defending player's town, when it is a short distance to attack the enemy hero over and over again with Phoenixes combined with Armageddon.
The biggest threats for dragogeddon are Orb of Inhibition, disallowing the use of all spells in combat and Recanter's Cloak, suppressing spells any higher than level 3.
In general, Dungeon's Black Dragons are more likely to be part of Dragogeddon than Rampart's Gold Dragons, since Armageddon spell appears only in evil alignment towns (Inferno, Necropolis, and Dungeon). If a map has Rampart and/or Conflux but no evil alignment towns, it is almost impossible to use dragogeddon tactics.
Artifact Monopoly
A tactic for the turn's first human player of every month. Since all Artifact Merchants carry the same stock, the human player who is first in the turn order gets the first choice of artifacts to buy every month. This can be a huge advantage during multiplayer games, as the computers always act after the human players.
If playing with Shadow of Death expansion, a solid use of the strategy is to buy every combination artifact piece they can afford at the first round of the month. After a few months, and with some luck in adventuring, the first player - using this tactic - may combine few of the easier combination artifacts like Bow of the Sharpshooter, Cloak of the Undead King or Wizard's Well - all quite powerful.
A mite, but not an enemy, very charming, no enmities
If you don't have the resources to run that one town you need the troops from, let the enemy capture it and spend all their resources building it for you, then when they least expect it, take it back with minimal force. Losses are 500 (basic city) over 1000 (with Town Hall building) over 2000 (City Hall) gold to 4000 gold (Capitol city, losing the Capitol to the enemy destroys the 10k gold Capitol building) each day and the added costs of recapturing the town - but the Resources needed for better buildings might even be harder to come by and you want that high level unit buildings to be built in the long term, why not let the enemy build them.
Stack divide, and conquer
Flanking has its uses, Cyclops and Genie units with their casting or castle wall damage feature work without considering the unit amount of the stack , so Cyclops that have damage castle walls as a special will get one castle wall attack per Cyclops stack (or even advanced Ballistics and thus two shots when the stack is a Cyclops King stack), the number of Cyclops in the stack is not relevant and Genies will get their usual allotment of spells without regarding the stack size too - one Genie and his utility spells is as important as 100 considering spells that they can cast - as opposed to Faerie Dragons that use damaging spells that depend on the number of units the stack has. Genies are level 5 creatures, a Cyclops is a level 6 creature, both are a little bit faster than level 1 or 2 units in general - and those tend to die off easily midgame so the open places in the army of the hero are not actually wasted given utility spells on worthwhile creatures or faster sieges and additionally higher level creatures also tend to move faster on the adventure map.