The dragon riders and black dragons are spell immune. I can’t get more of those via cloning. Reds and Greeens, sure, but those aren’t as valuable. I’ve maxed my reds via the…whatever they are called…blood for the blood god units. It’s something, but I’d love to be able to heal or clone blacks. I can always buy more riders, but I’d hate to lose them.
Oops, I wasn’t using the dragon riders anyway so I didn’t realize they were immune. But yeah, I never use black dragons for just that reason, they are too annoying, and there’s never enough of them in the game. Anyway I prefer red dragons to all the other types because of the ranged hex-row attacks, though admittedly they aren’t much use against demon stacks that resist fire.
Where id the dude you rescue that lets the shelter dwellings restock? I also have a quest to talk to some lady (in the shelter) about making dresses so that common girls can fool dragons as to being princesses. Yet this NPC isn’t in the shelter as far as I can tell.
Dragon riders are pretty strong. I have a stack of something like 10 of them. They have 2 nice abilities. One summons a stack of dragons. I sometimes get another 10 red dragons on round one appearing in the middle of the enemy. The other is a dive-bomb move that does damage to everything nearby. You can have the dragon wait until it’s the last unit to move on the map, dive bomb, then the turn resets and you can move them somewhere safe.
The NPC to make dresses is the girl you meet on the first island, the inn keepers wife I believe, once you help her she can take over the order of light building there on the island. She can make the dresses. The Orc NPC that lets you restock and increase the diversity of troops in the shelter is on the orc island that is taken over by elves, don’t recall the name of it, Tristram perhaps?
I thought that was the person to make the dresses. She ends up as your wife or something, right? I talked to her and she doesn’t have any options for that. If that isn’t here, I can’t remember where she goes… oh wait, she goes to the “fan club” castle right?
As for the orc dude… well I guess I am a LONG WAY from getting him because the unit stacks that run around that island are like “LOL I have 890 treants and 1300 elves”… I can’t even begin to touch the other starting islands.
Disgusting necromancy time.
I’m playing Crossworlds at the moment and I’m delighted by how well the game has aged. Unlike, say, Heroes 5 it was released at the time when 3D models look fine in a strategy game. UI scales perfectly and it’s playable in 4K. There’s nothing quite like it today, maybe Expeditions series, so I’m puzzled why is it not in higher regard. Especailly with its sister series, Heroes, being dead as a disco. Yes, we have Age of Wonders 3 which is great but it’s a very different kind of game, more of a Civilization.
There’s a certain tedium to this game in that you have to backtrack to replenish your troops. It’s also not a game you can put out for a long time as you need to remember where have you seen those Evil Eyes sold cause you need them and there isn’t a big supply of them in any specific place. You have to spend a lot of time looking for place that suits your power level or risk fighting against a superior foe for specific rewards. It’s also highly replayable, it’s not my first run and I’m having a good time.
So why is it forgotten?
I really enjoyed these gamess, but they require a level of min/maxing that might not be enjoyable for a lot of people. Winning battless without losing a single troop is incredibly important to do as early as posssible as there are leadership bonuses attached to it. Those bonuses let you get more troops, so it’s easier to not take any losses, so you can…snowball.
I get the appeal, but I can understand why a lot of people wouldn’t, and why the game might be too flat out hard otherwise.
Also, the latest version of the game (darkside?) was somehow a lot less fun. Maybe it was more grindy than the other games, which were already incredibly grindy…
You make some interesting points. Certainly for a long time strategy gaming is dominated by games that are, let’s say, more about creative expression than mastery, like Crusader Kings. And I also can see how an unfamiliar player would launch KB, see all the flowers and pink dragons and think it’s a game for kids. It’s certainly a game that is easy to misunderstand: you’d think that using the same army and having a big losses is a viable strategy as long as you’re in the black, and it would be boring cause you have to come all the way back to the castle. Then you run out of troops to buy and the game straight out tells you to rethink your strategy and you might feel tricked into losing. It’s also not obvious that you’re supposed to run around locations gathering all the loot you can find without fighting.
But we’re also in an era when people love complex games demanding mastery. Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, Darkest Dungeon, even XCOMs are like that. KB are more forgiving yet more complex. So I’d expect them to have cult following.
Also about your note on no losses: I think it’s mostly a psychological problem. You see that reward and you need it. However it’s relatively tame. 100 leadership for the first 10 battles without losses is not that significant - you’d get more from levelup or minor artifact or from flags lying around. If you’re not the master of the game you might get better results from getting into bigger fights losing some units but gaining more XP and loot.
No losses is good in many ways (or to put it another way, taking troop losses punishes you a number of ways)
- Bonus leadership
- Limited troops to buy
- Limited resources to buy troops with
If you go onto the KB forums, the truly obsessive people are running the campaign on impossible AND not losing a single troop for the entire campaign, and WINNING.
Tons of strategies and spells are build around that no loss style of play - I feel like it’s really baked into the game by design, and the game is more punishing than you’d expect if you suffer losses. In my games, I went no loss for the first battles to max out the bonus, then only took losses on a few hard fights.
It makes picking your next battle (and what you can unlock) very important. But playing anywhere close to optimally is REALLY grindy. So much so that I got tired of it for Darkside and gave up about 3/4 of the way through.
I do wish this series had caught on as a sub-genre. I really loved the first couple versions of KB, and it has been long enough that a proper sequel would be nice.
For me it was just too much of the same. I played the first one, then I was utterly repulsed by the idea of playing a sequel.
Of course there’s no point in arguing that playing without losses is optimal.
The point is, devs had prepared a lot of safety valves for those who play even with great losses. I’m playing Crossworlds on Hard now and still I have more than enough money to get all the troops and artifacts I want. I try to go for no losses when I can but I don’t cling to it. More evidentely, plenty of skills only make sense when you play with losses. Like Paladin ressurection - it’s activated after your losses your counted and it’s not supposed to compensate fully for loses.
I’m not sure if those resurrections are counted against your loss - it’s been a long time since I’ve played, but I don’t remember that. It may very well be that to get the bonuses you need to do what you say, but then you can maintain 100% of your troops afterwards using one of many strategies.
I think the big one is Turn Back Time, but there are a bunch:
I’ve only ever played Legend and loved it at the time - I distinctly remember being impressed by the sheer scope and size of the game, as well as the unique mechanic on a map that had an underworld - that was pretty cool.
This thread inspired me to look at my Steam library and much to my surprise I realized I own all the games except Darkside. Should I just try playing them in order or is it best to skip to the latest one with good campaign, assuming I don’t want to play Darkside just now?
In order of release they appear to be:
Armored Princess
Crossworlds (seems to be upgraded AP? I can’t quit tell from the Store’s description)
Warriors of the North
Most are not. Resurrections are part of the general no-loss strategy. But, I’m not sure about Paladins, they’re so slow I tend not to use them much.
I love the King’s Bounty games. I still play them and also wish they’d revive the series. The problem is that the original developers went off to make an MMO and abandoned single player games. The last couple in the series have been made by another company entirely using the tools and editors of the original devs. Which probably explains why they aren’t quite as good.
I haven’t played later two and I’ve heard mixed things about each of them, from “talentless empty game with bad writing and no balance” to “best of the series”. All of those games use the same engine, models and art and are sort of standalone expansions.
The consensus is Crossworlds is the most polished one. It’s Armored Princess Enhanced Edition sorta. The Legend is fine too but it has some early installment disbalance and technical problems. Mind you, even those who don’t like later games say they have a better learning curve and gradual difficulty: Crossworlds kinda keeps you on the edge for all of the game but as any RPG you’ll probably find late game easier. Don’t bother getting other games for now even if you like Crossworlds; this game is bigger than you think and is replayable.
Thanks, Crossworlds it is!
I don’t think I ever finished Armored Princess and I never bought Crossworlds since it was supposed to just be the “enhanced edition” like you said. So I guess it’s time to add it to the Steam wishlist and watch for it to drop below $10.
You may get one of two later games. They’ll feel like a more fresh experience. They aren’t that worse and big part of why they aren’t like is that many people who played them played the whole series and didn’t see enough new stuff.