Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General How to Survive AI spamming Shamans?

Most of the late battles I lead run like this:

Both sides push for the resource points, some skirmishes ensue, moving the lines either closer to me or to the enemy.

Then the enemy sends in 10 or more Shamans (those little double zeppelins). Within seconds, most of army gets turned into lady bugs. Add to that some spell that opens a ring of smoke raining down fireballs directly above my army that decimates it in about 5 seconds. The moment that ring disappears, a new one opens, so I can't even risk scrolling away from the battle or using the dragon powers.

I can't issue 10 commands per second like the AI, simultaneously deal with backyard attacks and keep my factories producing new units.

So how does one win these battles?

Those are not Shamans, they're Warlocks.

Warlocks are fragile. Here's one way to deal with them:

Have your ACTUAL Shamans (single larger blimp) cast Immunity on some Hunters and have the Hunters attack the warlocks. Immunity will prevent the Hunters from being polymorphed, they're fast enough to take little damage from the meteor swarm (if you order them to keep moving. If the Warlocks cloak, Hunters can have the passive "Reveal" skill, so the Warlocks can't hide.

Your Shamans could also cast their fear spell on the Warlock groups to paralyze them.

They're also easy to kill with your Dragon.

I got eye of the patriarch pretty soon and what i do is wait till i can morph and then i suicide charge into them releasing eye of the patriarch, if i get away then i go back to friendlies and unmorph.

not being able to micro like a machine i discovered that i can only deal with that in a proper way myself in dragon form. especially when i dont have upgraded impfighters,hunters etc yet in good supply.
meteor shower doesnt matter that much then and if they cloak it doesnt help them either because you can still hit them (to uncloak) by aiming at where they are. either you still know or you watch where the fireballs are being cast from. with a little training you spot them in no time.
my dragon has a lot of skills on survivability tho. healing when damaging enemies,passive regen and so on. this helps prolonged fights against them or when they move with backup. still i prefer to just do quick strafing runs so i dont get hit often.
other than that i try to not even let them get into the fight but kill them as soon as he has produced them or as soon as he starts to move a bunch of them away from the base.
killing them is rather quick and doesnt hold me up for long if you spot them before getting into dragon mode.
at least thats the way its best for me.

Yeah, if the Warlock dies, the spell is immediately cancelled.

Or, you can use a zeppelin + devastator in siege mode, which destroy it from a distance (used with 2 shaman's protection help or not) ...

Zeppelin + mustard gas works pretty well.

Was this patched in? Because this is definitely not the case in my game (1.0.27.0)


Warlocks are nasty, but the Shamans are worse. Their defensive ability allows the front-line units to absorb punishment as they approach and then they charm your most powerful units, forcing you to kill them as quickly as possible or else suffer massive damage at the hands of your own units. Losing devastators or juggernaught is catastrophic (although sometimes they'll comically charm everything and you can just wait out the timer)


Overall I'm very surprised to see twitch-micromanagement abilities like these in the game. When you're in dragon form, your units are basically helpless against these special abilities. I'd have to agree that sniping them with your dragon is the best bet, but failing that mustard gas from a zepplin is the best defense.

Fortunately Dragon Form has an extremely effective counter to Meet the Beatles and Charm that costs a mere 10 research points. Can't remember what it's called but it stood out pretty sharply to me right after my opponent crippled my entire army with Warlocks.

^^^

Cleansing Charge



*shrug* I am in Dragon form, Warlock starts casting the spell, I shoot Warlock dead, spell is not being cast any longer. If it was just a fire and forget, it should have kept going regardless of whether the warlock was alive any more.