No last save challenge

[lemminkainen]

Hi guys,

Having played this game for years on vanilla and now recently on GS5, I decided to challenge myself a little bit:

-I'll try to end the game (defeat Balkoth) without any last save
-Not using autocalc either
-Playing on Urak as a fire thief lord on hard difficulty on the latest GS mod

Records of my efforts:

-Attempt 1 fails at turn 1, lord getting killed in the first cave
-Attempt 2 goes fine, I clear three caves and two marauding parties, and then somehow my lord gets killed by level 1 flame berserkers in a level 1 cave Crushing blows?
-Attempt 3 in progress...

[Boaster]

Crushing Blow could be a factor, check your combat.log in the game directory.

Crushing Blow on Leaders is half as effective, I think 1 point of damage for each 8 health remaining.

If your Thief stealths, that cuts armor value in Half for combat calculations. Getting hit while stealthed hurts more now.

[lemminkainen]

Mar 1, 2018 18:56:00 GMT -6 Boaster said:

Crushing Blow could be a factor, check your combat.log in the game directory.

Crushing Blow on Leaders is half as effective, I think 1 point of damage for each 8 health remaining.

If your Thief stealths, that cuts armor value in Half for combat calculations. Getting hit while stealthed hurts more now.

 
I didn't know about that combat.log thing! Man it's great! It's like a League of Legends death recap years before. Did you come up with it or was it in the original LOMSE?
It was a crushing blow indeed, plus a 6 damage basic attack from another level 1 flame berserker and a 7 damage basic attack (I guess aimed missile?) from a level 1 slinger. Brutal. My punisher was not stealthed and level 3.

[Boaster]

Adding all of the logs that I did was a painstaking process. I wanted it in there, and worked on chunks at a time until it was perfected.

[lemminkainen]

-Attempts 3 to 5 were failures right at the first cave
-Attempt 6 was ridiculousely fast paced. Marauders as well as armies from life, air, and death invaded my territory at around turn 14! After tons of fight I reached a sizable army of level 4 units. At turn 24 an army from death with a lich (!!) shows up at my gates. I decided to flee towards chaos, but on my way I met a huge army of dark horsemen who outclassed my mostly ranged based army and brought my demise.

-Attempt 7 in progress...

[lemminkainen]

-Attempts 7 and 8 were unsurprisingly turn 1 failures.
-Attempt 9 is truly epic. The start is without attacks from neighbours and with some luck in encounters. At turn 22, I'm finding my first good artefact and reaching a decent army



However, freeing my temple is way too risky due to the presence of a high level assassin and a demon (yeah, I sacrificed an imp to get this information).
At turn 32, a huge, unbeatable army from death with 3 high level champions and 9 military units is invading my city and I have no choice but fleeing to my sole ally, chaos.



However, as you can see, even though I have no city and no temple, I'm trading very well, always buying and selling army and ressources. I'm farming all of chaos caves and buying some of their units.
As I'm busy in the border regions of chaos, all of a sudden I learn the death of the lord of chaos, killed by the lord of air.



The death of my ally is actually a great new, as I can now occupy their former city! Shortly after, Balkoth is surprisingly taking a severe beating from the earth people. His city, buildings and great temple are occupied and Balkoth is also withdrawing his troops from my native region. It's time to go back to my homeland and reconquer it!



Yes, as you can see, I've retaken my land, but it is badly trodden with not-so-friendly travellers. At turn 98 I'm liberating my great temple at last, with some coward technique.



I now own two capitals and two temples and have a blooming economy. I decide to march down the death/fire village to have some map control. Since I have enough forces, it will be the last battle fought by my punisher before she hides forever, preventing me to lose. I will then let demons, dragons and mercenaries fight Balkoth for me without the risk of losing this hardcore challenge.



So. A unit is missing in this army clearing a village. It is indeed a dead punisher. And it was a ONE SHOT. Yep, assassins assassinate indeed. I've learnt the lesson the harsh way.

Yaab Shroudbringer (Assassin) (Level 7) executed a Ranged Critical Strike on Päivätär (Punisher Lord) (Level 7).
Yaab Shroudbringer (Assassin) (Level 7) did 28 physical damage to Päivätär (Punisher Lord) (Level 7) in ranged combat.
Päivätär (Punisher Lord) (Level 7) was slain by Yaab Shroudbringer (Assassin) (Level 7) in ranged combat.

It is finally a LOSS at turn 112 and after 4 hours of gameplay and the sacrifice of 100+ cats and 50+ imps to play carefully. Will I have the strength to continue the challenge?

Anyway, playing this game in hardcore is great. I even discovered that sacrificing a single scout on encounters is often making their units level up right after. Is this feature intended, Boaster? I think it creates an interesting strategic dynamic, since 1) You gain information 2) You make them worth more xp but 3) You make them tougher!

[lemminkainen]

I've done it guys! Attempt 7 was successful!
It took me 135 turns, and I sticked to my challenge, not a single "last save" or "autocalc" was used.
This time I was wiser and stopped risking my lord's life after early game was behind and my economy was kicking in.
Balkoth killed two armies of mostly dragons, but the third one with Fafnir was too strong and did not let him escape.
A few screens:





Playing "hardcore" like this really made me understand and enjoy a ton of strategic things in this game that would otherwise just be neglected because of last save anyway, much like playing Diablo 2 hardcore.

[Boaster]

Good job! Glad to see you getting some personal enjoyment from playing LOMSE

Have you ever tried playing a custom setup with a Warlock for an Order Lord?

[lemminkainen]

Nope. What's the strategic reasoning behind this? What should the setup exactly look like? I was just looking for some new LOMSE challenges and ideas, since I'm going to have some idle evenings for the upcoming days.

[askjireg]

Took the challenge myself, as Life mage on hard mode.  Took about 12 tries to do it, I had to do a lot of trades with allies to get infantry and cavalry to bolster my army as well as a warrior champion.  Used the one free follower I got to get an Elven Thief Champion. Liberated my temple with some mercs at around turn 92 or so.  Most of the people I had traded for on the way died in the battle and I only had my lord, my starting army, and a cavalry unit from water and some Wolf Riders from Chaos left.  Stayed in my main town and researched some spells before clearing out the nearby mines and statues to get levels for my freed champions.  Once they were high enough I trained up some archers, infantry and cavalry to fill out the rest of my army then took out the Elven Keep nearby for my greater artifact.  After that I got my phoenix and went on the offensive.  Killed the fire and water lords (the rest had been wiped out before then) before finally finding Balkoth researching spells in the Death Capital and killing him.  Took around 250 turns, but I like to play so and dungeon crawls so for me it was a pretty fast run =) .  Overall I have to agree, playing on hardcore is fun in its own challenging way.   

[lemminkainen]

Awesome! I'll tell you when I have new challenges to attempt or new ideas. You can try to beat my 135 turns no last save challenge with fewer turns if you want, too.

[Boaster]

Warlock or Murderer could be a difficult one. The dismal health recovery of Death leads a slow pace.

[lemminkainen]

Exactly! I've in fact tried it recently with a warlock and my lord got sniped on several attempts by ennemy thieves or spells. But I'll try again next week.

[plebeian]

    Pardon for intruding, but just wanted to say - respect. It might not be much, but it takes skill and knowledge of the game to do a No Last Save challenge, especially with the Fire faith! I can tell that it must have been a struggle, especially with the lacking early ranged offense in comparison to the other faiths, but you did it, and you do noooice.

    

    Though, since you were masochistic enough to try the challenge, and in case you still hold interest, why not take it one step further? I mean, what´s one more step when you are already in hellish difficulty? *shot* In any case...- No Pause during combat! I know, this game was heavily designed to take advantage of pausing and taking time to assess the situation, and Mantera was kind enough to bring it back to Multiplayer from the base game, but why not try it anyway?

   

    In fact, the mod actually makes it more than doable, and a refreshing experience in comparison to slow tactics, like going from Classical Chess to Bullet Chess (though, I´ve only done so in Multiplayer early day 1 duels, not an entire Balkoth-hunting hard mode end game experience). But I can attest, that with the inclusion of hot keys from the mod (1/2/3 for selecting groups, Ctrl + 1/2/3 for selecting solo Champions in a group, A, D, B for Warriors, Ctrl+A,D,T for Thieves and F1, F2, D for Mages), it is veeery plausible, refreshing and a semi-realistically punishing/rewarding way to try!

    Anyway, sorry for the spam. Just thought to bring it up, since you´ve seemed crazy enough to do a No Last Save run with a Fire Thief. ...No offense meant, that is.

[lemminkainen]

Hehe thanks for your recognition. It surely took an enormous amount of time and knowledge of a game of which so few people even know the existence. So your recognition is very welcome. As for the lack of pauses, great idea! I had just never thought of it. It sure could be done, though even more attempts and time would be needed. I have already some other challenges underway. I'll keep you guys up-to-date.

[lemminkainen]

Hi everyone! A little update after a couple of months not writing. I've been addicted to this way of playing GS5 LOMSE! Oftentimes, I start modding or mapping, but I just end up playing the game because of the thrill of defeating Balkoth in a week long battle without a single mistake costing my lord's life!

I've beaten the game without last saves as every single faith, mage or thief. I've also beaten the game as an order warlock, as challenged by Boaster. The trick for an order warlock was actually just to protect the warlock all game long and use other champions as your main army, to prevent the warlock from being sniped at all cost. I'm a bit sad that I was too lazy to take screenshots throughout my games, though. I've also learnt that warriors are clearly the weakest lords, since they provide little power to actually kill Balkoth when you reach the late game.

I've never beaten the game without saves in less than 100 turns : this will be my next challenge. Introducing LOMSE hardcore speedruns!

[Boaster]

I may get the itch to start playing again soon. We shall see.

[lemminkainen]

Hi all! I'm getting close to beating the mod without a single last save in hard/insane settings. Looking at gs/LEVLMODS5.gs, I see: {35 70 140 280}{currentturn exch ge{1 add}if}forall

Does that mean that there's a cap at 280 turns where Balkoth's stats will stop improving? I'm getting stronger and stronger with my life mages, but Balkoth keeps getting stronger, too.

[Boaster]

Apr 6, 2023 4:42:16 GMT -6 lemminkainen said:

Hi all! I'm getting close to beating the mod without a single last save in hard/insane settings. Looking at gs/LEVLMODS5.gs, I see: {35 70 140 280}{currentturn exch ge{1 add}if}forall

Does that mean that there's a cap at 280 turns where Balkoth's stats will stop improving? I'm getting stronger and stronger with my life mages, but Balkoth keeps getting stronger, too.

Yes, the AI parties get stronger until a certain point.

[lemminkainen]

Nice, so there's a chance [Laugh out Loud]. For now, Balkoth keeps destroying my armies of 9 pegasus riders + 3 mages. I gotta manage my spells better and maybe I'll get him.