Dark Knight

[GrudgeBringer]

In all the games I have played I have heard of but never seen the " Four Heroes have decided to liberate the provice from you and it includes a Dark Knight" event.

How bad is this guy (and friends)? If mentioned by name I would guess 100 Barbo's would seem easy. Anyone help me out there or suggestions on what it would take to kill it?:confused:

[PriestyMan]

they cheat, and have "fire mages" or "fire commanders" orders, so a thug ought to take care of them if well equipped, but don't send troops with just some commanders and/or un-airshielded and guarded mages.

[13lackGu4rd]

there's bogus the troll, some troll archer, the dark knight who is flying on some weird animal and some mage. these are the 4 "heroes", they're equipped with some nice items and as PM said have hax orders, which is why most games consider "copying bogus orders" as a cheap and illegal tactic.

[Gandalf Parker]

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Bogus
The company Illwinter was orginally called Bogus Games.
Bogus and Company is an in-game representation of the Illwinter developers group of DnD adventurers they used to play with. They have some things (such as orders) which used to be in the game but got removed later.

And yes, they kick ***. One suggested tactic is to not fight them together. Use assassins, or better yet seducers.

[NooBliss]

In ReVendetta, these guys popped in a mountain pass between me and the next guy - right when I attacked it.
They wiped my army.
When I have equipped a thug against these guys, vampires popped in the same province. :) These indies managed to stay neutral until turn 40 or so.

[LDiCesare]

The dark knight is a real pain.
I managed to kill them recently with a tartarian using astral shield and huge regen. She had 2 other tartarian bodyguards (one being an armless, feebleminded afflicted tartarian titan with chains, who got mincemeated by the dark knight alone). She really needed her spells, regen, huge protection and bodyguards.
The flying knight is especially painful as he can kill mages very easily. Then there's Bogus who turns berserk and can kill most thugs without problem, and can take out armies of regular troops all by himself.

[RadicalTurnip]

I usually just send in a handful of astral/nature/blood mages and try to steal them for myself...expect to lose some of them, though.

[Edi]

There's five of them:
Bogus the Troll Raider
Fang the Troll Archer
Fadmargast the Dark Knight
Kartuk the Troll Mage
Kreon the Warrior Mage

Of these, Bogus and Fang not being on the map is a requirement for the event to happen. As long as one of those two is on the map, the event cannot happen. If some of the others are on the map but Bogus and Fang are not, the event happening again should mean that the others go poof as they join Bogus in another raid.

[Gandalf Parker]

Interesting that its those two that are the pivotal units for the group. I dont think Ive seen J or K actually say which character belongs to who. Now to figure out which is which. Strange, I always thought of Kristoffer as a mage.

[Soyweiser]

The information is also interesting enough to put on the wiki. But that seems to be down atm.

[Gandalf Parker]

I have along list of things Id like to get around to putting in the wiki. Such as, after all these years its crazy that we still dont have a really good complete HotKey list anwhere of all the keypresses and shortcuts

[Soyweiser]

Why not put the list here, and let somebody else take care of it?

[Gandalf Parker]

That might actually work (now) instead of creating a flood of DIY posts.
I need to find my notes on it. What comes to mind are
1) moving bloodslaves to lab
2) hiding researchers from army lists (tab)
3) rename
4) the use of the TAB key in the F1 and F2 menu
and the one to get equip off a commander?

[fantasma]

1 Z
5 l
6 Next commander on default orders n
7 Recruit r
8 Map displays (1-9), I find 8 (shows neighbours) most useful (non-default)
9 < > Resize commander list
10 in spells menu use the a w f d e s n b keys showing only those paths.
11 the dreaded e
12 M monthly cast
13 Cntrl+left to move, not sneak
14 X patrol
15 P preach
16 R research
17 F forge

[Edi]

Hmm, I was mistaken. The trigger was Bogus and Kartuk, so the raider and the mage after all. Didn't have the events list at work to double check.

[Soyweiser]

Hmm, I was mistaken. The trigger was Bogus and Kartuk, so the raider and the mage after all. Didn't have the events list at work to double check.

I copied your lines. Hope you don't mind.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ahhh that makes sense. Id make a guess that Bogus is Johan and Kartuk is Kristoffer. And one of the others is probably the other Johan (Kristoffers brother)

[Kref]

Never thought of them as about a large problem, also it may be enough to leave a province they took to be free for some time. As far as I remember, they may be outnumbered and killed just with such things as about 80 heavy infantry, without mage support.

[thejeff]

I suspect you remember wrong. Or had exceptional heavy infantry.
A regenerating heavily armored berzerk Troll wielding a Wraithsword could take 80 heavy infantry by himself.
And that's assuming the Archer and Dark Knight don't just kill all the commanders and route you that way.

[Kref]

2thejeff:
Well, of course you should consider the presence of flying commander and not to leave your commanders without protection.
I think it's better not to place infantry in first lines, better to put them somewhere in a middle of battlefield with hold and attack command. Then dark knight flies to our troops before Bogus can help him, then he gets surrounded and killed. I don't remember that mages of that company casted any spells which could greatly afflict 80 infantries as a whole. So, after the flying knight Bogus becomes surrounded and killed. Then the same thing happens to three remaining heroes. That is a scenario which is close to my memories and I think there is nothing strange in it.
Well, maybe we should find a savegame with them somewhere.

[Soyweiser]

Kref: The flying commanders ain't the problem. It is the sniper, who shoots your commanders. That one is the problem. Because he has the shoot commanders order.

So, I hear you think, bring more commanders. Sure that works, but having 10 spare indy commanders is kinda wasteful. A lot of that gold and upkeep is better spend on other stuff. (Same with the heavy inf, assuming your not using heavy inf in your normal arsenal). And collecting this stuff would also take a few turns.

All in all a pretty high investment to take back just one province.

[Gandalf Parker]

There are some BattleSims that can be used to test that.

Im guessing that the answer would depend quite abit on the time of the game. Early game would rougher than mid or late. But in any case I would rate Bogus as being one of the events which remains a problem for later in the game than most others.

[thejeff]

Why would early game be rougher? He's talking about using heavy infantry with no mages. I suppose very early you'd have trouble getting 80 of them together, but other than that what difference would it make.

In general, I agree. In fact, late game they're an opportunity: Charm/Hellbind Heart. Relatively nice units, even if you're not allowed to copy the orders.

[LDiCesare]

Then dark knight flies to our troops before Bogus can help him, then he gets surrounded and killed.

You do realise he's got a defense around 29 plus armor, so he'll usually kill a few guys before he goes down.
So, after the flying knight Bogus becomes surrounded and killed.
Usually, what happens is he becomes berserk, and kills everybody around him.
Maybe 80 emerald guards, or abysian infantries with heat aura, can kill them, but it's unlikely in my opinion.

[Kref]

Well, I was able to found my old game (it looks like it is lost) with that hero company.
I must say I was not right about just 80 infantry. I was able to crush them with about 57 wardens of avalon (unblessed), 31 axemans, 56 archers (most longbowmen) and 3 commanders, 1 commander and 17 soldiers dieing in process.
So, to take that guys without mages (I think even a weak mages can be of large support) one should assemble army large - brave enough to resist horror helmet (sermions of courage, berserkers may help) with enough amount of strong guys with two handed weapons to deal with Bogus, who ressuply fatique and hitpoints with his sword.

[Psycho]

If you bring mages along be warned that the troll archer is scripted to "fire magic user" and not "fire commander", which means that mages will be first targets.

[13lackGu4rd]

Why would early game be rougher? He's talking about using heavy infantry with no mages. I suppose very early you'd have trouble getting 80 of them together, but other than that what difference would it make.

In general, I agree. In fact, late game they're an opportunity: Charm/Hellbind Heart. Relatively nice units, even if you're not allowed to copy the orders.

this. unless the event happens in the early game, it is usually better to leave them alone until you can convert them to your cause. Enslave Mind will also work, although I'm pretty sure they'll lose their unique orders as regular troops, and even after you GoR them.

[Gregstrom]

They do. They also lose their kit, which is a shame.

[sansanjuan]

In all the games I have played I have heard of but never seen the " Four Heroes have decided to liberate the provice from you and it includes a Dark Knight" event.

How bad is this guy (and friends)? If mentioned by name I would guess 100 Barbo's would seem easy. Anyone help me out there or suggestions on what it would take to kill it?:confused:

Funny thing... I had them hit me in almost every MP game I've played. Did manage to charm them last time (did not copy their orders but did leave them as is). Lemonade out of lemons.
-ssj