12-29-2012, 03:08 AM
Phaethon.... No. But I did get my closest lose yet today, after over 3 months and hundreds of tries. I reduced him to 1 unit, with around 300 faculty left. However, it wasn't as close as that may sound. Let me explain:
I spent ~25 of my ~42 divs today trying with Demeter, Athena's Burning Golden Bull. Now at first glance, her stats look terrible: 8k recruiting cost, 62 valor and 68 spirit, making an already weak troop type attack power weaker still. However, she has one major strong point: 97 element. This makes her take greatly reduced damage from mages. That, together with the her unique ability to damage both mages starting from turn 1, made me think she was worth a try. It cost about 1.3M laurels, and a whole lot of patience, to wash her up to +84/+84/+83 for a total of 146/152/180. I then put her in Lochoi formation and spammed the attack Phaethon button (at M50, of course).
On turn 1, she does about 1k damage per enemy except for the rocky giant who takes 750-800 damage. Enemy valor/spirit attacks all do about 250 damage while the thunder mage does about 850 and Phaethon does around 650. To have any chance at all, the thunder mage and cyclone mage need to fail every single time while Phaethon himself needs to have at the very least once; in my closest battle, I think he failed twice. Alas, even that miracle of mage failing isn't enough. If I make it that far, the battle moves to a "Phase 2", where all the enemy units are dead except the rocky giant, who moved into an uninterruptable, unavoidable Total Defense mode in turn 4. By this point, both Demeter and the rocky giant will deal roughly equal damage (low 200s); but the rocky giant will have 2 huge advantages: blocking, and the tie system. In my closest attempt, I got very lucky with the blocks, suffering only 2 in roughly 10 turns. Still, that wasn't enough, as the battle ended with Demeter dying. Now if it had been 0 blocks instead of 10, I would have won; but I don't think I need to remind you how extremely improbable such a run of luck would be.
So what are the options with Demeter?
- Keep trying the same thing, hoping to get one more fail from Phaethon or two less blocks in phase 2. The advantage here is of course maximum damage per turn 95%+ of the time.
- Switch to Crescent, sacrificing damage every turn for a very small chance of a crit, which could be game-changing especially in phase 1.
- Switch to Inverted Wedge in the hopes of postponing the rocky giant's entrance into total defense mode or giving me an opening to hit him after he has started firing it
- Switch to Testudo in the hopes of extra damage against the rocky giant and postponing it's entrance into total defense mode.
All look excruciatingly hard... Sigh...
I spent ~25 of my ~42 divs today trying with Demeter, Athena's Burning Golden Bull. Now at first glance, her stats look terrible: 8k recruiting cost, 62 valor and 68 spirit, making an already weak troop type attack power weaker still. However, she has one major strong point: 97 element. This makes her take greatly reduced damage from mages. That, together with the her unique ability to damage both mages starting from turn 1, made me think she was worth a try. It cost about 1.3M laurels, and a whole lot of patience, to wash her up to +84/+84/+83 for a total of 146/152/180. I then put her in Lochoi formation and spammed the attack Phaethon button (at M50, of course).
On turn 1, she does about 1k damage per enemy except for the rocky giant who takes 750-800 damage. Enemy valor/spirit attacks all do about 250 damage while the thunder mage does about 850 and Phaethon does around 650. To have any chance at all, the thunder mage and cyclone mage need to fail every single time while Phaethon himself needs to have at the very least once; in my closest battle, I think he failed twice. Alas, even that miracle of mage failing isn't enough. If I make it that far, the battle moves to a "Phase 2", where all the enemy units are dead except the rocky giant, who moved into an uninterruptable, unavoidable Total Defense mode in turn 4. By this point, both Demeter and the rocky giant will deal roughly equal damage (low 200s); but the rocky giant will have 2 huge advantages: blocking, and the tie system. In my closest attempt, I got very lucky with the blocks, suffering only 2 in roughly 10 turns. Still, that wasn't enough, as the battle ended with Demeter dying. Now if it had been 0 blocks instead of 10, I would have won; but I don't think I need to remind you how extremely improbable such a run of luck would be.
So what are the options with Demeter?
- Keep trying the same thing, hoping to get one more fail from Phaethon or two less blocks in phase 2. The advantage here is of course maximum damage per turn 95%+ of the time.
- Switch to Crescent, sacrificing damage every turn for a very small chance of a crit, which could be game-changing especially in phase 1.
- Switch to Inverted Wedge in the hopes of postponing the rocky giant's entrance into total defense mode or giving me an opening to hit him after he has started firing it
- Switch to Testudo in the hopes of extra damage against the rocky giant and postponing it's entrance into total defense mode.
All look excruciatingly hard... Sigh...