Fighting a Dragon

Forest Drakes is the weakest of the dragons unless you count Slags. They don't have breath attacks.

They're pretty tough but i definitely recommend waiting until the minimum of having Boar spears with leather armor before you tackle them.

As for fighting the ones with breath attacks, the weakest breather is Fire Drake one. And you still can get oneshot even when you have well in excess of 350+ hp, I should know, happened to me. Damn criticals..

What you want to do initially stay spread out so that the fire breath will kill a few units as possible instead of ur whole army. Experiences in battling dragons from WoW will come in handy. Never face them frontally, hit their flanks, and rear. Spread out if you're not confident if you can kill the fire drake before it breathes on you. Otherwise Zerg fire drake hard and you'll be able to kill it before it fire breathes. It's dependent on map and initial positioning.

Then Storm, Chambercoil, fell and ashwake if I remember right, have several extra abilities in addition to standard fire breath attack + opening round with Fear. Due to fear spell I definitely recommend training brand new cannonfodder spearmen using boar spears+leather armor out of fortresses at minimum and then tell it to autoresolve against the dragons with fear spell because in auto resolve you dodge the fear, it doesn't work there. Bit gamey I know..

I once conquered the whole map with five storm dragons a single one of them is enough to destroy a faction completely due to fear in tactical phases. Nevermind combing all those storm dragons into a single army which I did once

I won't trigger them until at least my melee units have resistance to the type of damage their breath weapon comes from (poison, fire, ...). Unless you have massive initiative boost, the dragon is going first so regardless of initial placement you're going to take one big hit.

As the last post said, spread out to minimize damage from area-of-effect abilities.

If he has a cleave, stick and move - wait until it's used before piling on, then jump almost everyone back out when the cooldown is about to expire.

Also, it's kind of a Terry Pratchett situation with regards to sending a thief to catch a thief - dragons are not significantly better at fighting other dragons than a high-end trained unit (they just don't do enough melee damage while their abilities are on cooldown - and their abilites are often from the same school as the intended target).

Don't waste turns trying to debuff unless you can overcome massive spell resist. Buff your troops instead.

Spellcaster with access to the Kill (Death V) or Manablast (requires completion of a specific quest, and you need to have a lot of mana for Manablast to be as effective as Kill; if you don't have much mana, don't bother with Manablast) spells and high spell mastery. Maybe some fodder units or a good tank unit or two to occupy the dragon for the duration of the casting time, and possibly an extra round of casting time if your spell was resisted.

Alternatively, trained units which can hit from range combined with a mid+ level Defender with good armor and some form or another of healing ability (perhaps an extra champion with Life Magic, perhaps a Henchman with Life Adept, perhaps the Defender has a healing spell) will work if you have the Defender occupy the dragon (note that you can use another type of champion to occupy the dragon, but Defenders are the ones most suited to tanking anything that fights in melee, as long as no better targets come into range).

Another alternative is to have trained units which hit hard and fast, and which are either good at bypassing armor (meaning you have good spears or magic damage of a type to which the dragon is vulnerable, or at least not immune) or have a high enough attack rating that the armor just doesn't matter that much. Note that 'fast' doesn't necessarily mean 'high initiative' - if you can manage to get first strike using a bunch of guys armed with Mauls, that's a lot of damage on the first round, and even a dragon can only kill so many units in the rounds before the next action your clubmen take. Ice staves also tend to be good against dragons, as most (maybe all) dragons have neither resistance nor immunity to Ice damage, though they tend to be resistant or immune to Fire damage.

There are also some ways to soften up a dragon before you fight it with the army you want to kill it with. You might be able to hit it with strategic damage spells or strategic-level versions of certain curses (Wither being the big one, if you happen to have lots of Death Shards, but not particularly helpful if you only have one or two). You might churn out an army or two of cheap units, like the basic Militia unit, and send them in to hurt the dragon before your real army takes it on.

Ways to reduce the damage sustained when fighting dragons are rather limited, however. Giving all of the units you take into the fight Dragon Hide Cloaks (or at least Scale Cloaks) will give you a bit of Fire Resistance for surviving any fire attacks, as will Athican Leather if you have it. Having lots of ranged units will allow many of your troops to stay out of melee range, while having lots of melee troops and a healer can allow you to cycle your units around (assuming that your troops can survive at least one hit from a dragon and you can heal them up fast enough to keep at least one unit next to the dragon at all times, or at least heal them enough to significantly delay the time at which the dragon has wiped out your army). High-level units are more likely to survive a dragon's attacks by virtue of having more health, and are also more likely to resist the dragon's fear effect; large units are more likely to kill the dragon quickly because they'll deal more damage per hit (on average), but are not generally more survivable against a dragon than smaller units are. Tactical curses, like Shrink, Blind, Wither, Curse, and Slow can all be valuable, if you can make them stick; same goes for strategic curses, if you have them. Tactical blessings like Haste, Growth, and Giant Form can also be useful, but are not as useful as the curses are because the dragon is reasonably likely to be able to kill your units at about the same rate that you can bless them, and probably has a large(ish) initiative advantage. Having decent armor on your trained units is useful, but only if you're in melee range and the dragon is using its basic attack; dragon fights are one of the rather rare times that a champion makes a better tank than a regular unit does, unless your champion's defense rating is severely outclassed by the defense of your regular units.

Certain champion abilities are also excellent - Battle Cry from a high-level commander can allow your whole army to get off a second round of attacks or ensure that you draw first blood, spells which heal or boost Fire Resistance and defense are also invaluable (e.g. Diamondskin - throw that on a unit sitting by the dragon, and you have a unit that is guaranteed to survive its next three turns). Any stun or entanglement abilities are also useful, and there are a few useful scrolls or other items which can help - getting that extra Air Elemental or using that Despair scroll you'd been saving for a bad day can help to turn the tide if you need to, and having an Escape Scroll can at least get your champion out of there when things go sour, especially if you also have a Recall Scroll for moving the army out from beside the dragon.

If you want to design units that have a chance against a dragon, it's best to emphasize speed, mobility, and attack over the defensive attributes. While this was a long time ago (in E:FE rather than E:FE:LH, during the late part of FE's beta), I was once able to defeat three dragons (one Fell and one Ashwake dragon, plus either a Storm or a Clambercoil dragon, though I no longer recall which) in a single battle using only one champion with the Heal, Haste and Wellspring spells, and six or seven groups of mounted spearmen armed with Boar Spears and armored in Leather; I don't think I had any trinkets or cloaks on them. The horsemen units were using the second-largest group size at the time (which means that there were seven figures per unit, making these more powerful than the equivalent units in E:FE:LH, especially now that spears aren't as strong as they once were), and I more or less simply rotated them around to try to keep them alive as long as possible. I think two of the dragons died before the last of the horsemen fell, and the champion finished the last one. If you try this kind of thing, it is very important to keep an eye on your troops and pay attention to the kind of damage that the dragons are doing, and it is vital that you concentrate on taking one dragon down at a time if you have multiple to deal with (same goes for dealing with any dragon + army situation - either have something occupy the dragon while you kill the support, or kill the dragon and then deal with the support, unless you have something like Blizzard which will kill the support and turn the battle into a standard dragon fight). If you keep an eye on your units and make certain to heal them or pull them out of the fight before the dragon can kill them, you become much more likely to win the battle. Don't forget to mind your mana supplies, though.

Thanks for all the advice. Now to see if I can make it work!  :)

Defenders are really your bread and butter in this game.  They can practically win it for you, but you will need some ranged stuff and some healing power.

Defenders can increase the dodge of the whole army and increase the magic resist of the whole army.  That is going to help you get unit turns and get them more quickly as well as hopefully helping your defenders get a dodge once in a while.

More importantly, though, you have things like Stun that sometimes sticks.  You also have defensive abilities that give you immunity to elemental damage and abilities to switch places with your units.  These things can really reduce the rate of outgoing damage the dragon is producing.  Don't forget that one defender can give all its armor to another one if you have multiple of them.

Shrink, Slow, and Protection from Fire are other big spells you want to have available if you can.  I wouldn't send in units that don't have fire resist equipment if you can avoid it.

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Nature's Cloak (Earth spell). With a few Earth shards and troops wearing Dragon Hide Cloaks it's perfectly possible to get 100% Fire resistance for your entire army, which makes things vastly easier; you can ignore the dragon's breath attack, which is what does most of the damage. Protection From Fire is another possibility (under Abjuration in the Mage path), although it takes more picks to get and is tactical only, so you can still take damage before you've had a chance to cast it. Nature's Cloak can be cast in strategic for 7 mana per unit, and is frequently the difference between life and death when fighting a dragon.

I personally think the Dragon Eyes quest where you have to fight three dragons is the hardest battle in the game. It's much, much harder than the Quest victory. The times I've beaten it I've had high level troops with Dragon Hide Cloaks and Nature's Cloak. A couple of times I've won using Kill (have to cast Shadowbolt a few times to reduce the dragons' magic resistance). Once I won using Summon Grave Elemental in tactical, which gives Death Ward to all friendly units in one tile (i.e. you can give half your army resurrection). In both cases though you need to be able to survive the initial attacks, which is where the Dragon Hide cloaks and Nature's Cloak come in. If your mage has high enough initiative to go first, or has a good chance of resisting the Fear effect (unlikely when there are three dragons, but might be a chance), then this makes things much easier. If you're relying on your mage casting Kill, it makes sense to put any melee units next to the dragons on Defend. Any damage they do is irrelevant, but the longer they can survive the more chance you have to cast Shadowbolt and Kill.

Is Fear considered a spell?

Yes. It's even a resistible spell, though I don't know that I'd go out of my way to design custom units with high spell resistance just for a dragon fight.

To win dragons all you need is strong armor and 100% fire resistance. Get Dragonhide cloak - it gives 50% fire resistance. 2-level Earth spell gives elemental resistanses per shards, so when you have enough shards you are ready to fight dragons. With good armor and fire resistanse you don't need to worry about fear, because you are already near invulnerable! Don't build units with resistance - better have defender with you with trait Obsidian Guard. Or better 2 Defenders, because their bonuses summ. A heroic pack of several Commanders and several Defenders is highly deadly and invulnerable!

I have not found enemy mages to be very strong in this game so I tend to ignore items and spells that give you bonuses for resisting spells but if Fear is considered a spell then I think I may have to find different equipment!

1 champion with 100% fire resistance (athicans+dragonhide cloak+nature cloak) and a horse. This champ should have enough defense/hp to survive 1 and ideally 2 hits. Either the heal spell or first aid is necessary. Must have higher initiative than dragon (not hard with haste). 50 dodge would be very helpful (not hard with the air spell). Reap would be helpful. Basically, you hit and run, shaving off a few hp at a time.

I killed ashwake and a pyre boss with just my sov (~lvl 16), 27 attack + 15 defense + 50 dodge + 100% fire resistance + first aid skill. Cast initiative first round, hit for about 5 damage each time (I was assassin), but even if you only hit for 1 damage each time, it can work.

Takes a while but allows you to kill them before you have the resources to build high level units, but mostly importantly allows you MOBILITY, which you won't have with a full army, and saves the cost of trained units dying, since they die much more easily.

Most importantly - build up a Defender hero with spell resist for the whole army. Most annoying Dragon feature is not its fire breath - yes, it can cost you a unit but that´s just it - but that it starts the fight with "fear" before anyone else can move. And if 2/3rd of your units can´t move for 3 turns it can be a quite bloody battle.

IF you can resist fear with the bulk of an army, I found the easiest way is the most straightforward - hit the beast with as many melee units as hard as possible. Which requires troops with high initiative able to reach it in turn 1 - thus Altar or Mancer on horses have a real advantage on everyone else.

Regards,

Thorsten

You neeed:

- SPELL RESISTANCE. As much as possible. Fear cripples your whole friggin army.

- INITIATIVE: Dragons are hell fast. They can act multiple times before your slow units, meaning they are DEAD.

Best way to fight dragons is to spam cheap, disposable units (possibly ranged ones) and whittle it down. Just spam milita and spam bash. You'll loose all of them, but you might wound it enough that your second army will kill it.

Waste of money, time and resources. No fight against a dragon should see more than one lost unit.

I recently did the fight against 3 dragons, at the end of that quest.

Went in with 

2x Warrior

2x Summoner (nen ratcatcher and some other guy)

2x Dodger-Melee Unit

2x Magehunter (Ice-Mages on Wargs)

The fight was pretty easy, altho most of my guys were "afraid" and one of the summoners was killed before having an action.

The dodger unit survived until my souvereign went out of his fear, he did cast fire-shield (but that wasnt really needed).

Summoned some bait, dragons fell for it. 

Used the scroll "despair" for a ton of damage.

I think in the end 1 hero was dead and the 2 dodger units, didnt think it would be that easy 

(Souvereign was lvl 15)

Edit: just on a sidenote, the dragon you get as reward makes the whole game trivial. Also some spells really crush the AI. Thats kinda boring.

uh...  you just defeated 3 dragons.

if you can do that, the game already was trivial.

in fact, the game IS trivial.  many have worked to try and beef up the AI with mods, like the patchwork mod, with varying degrees of success.

but yeah... if you can beat the 3 dragons, the rest is just gravy, as it should be given the way the game works.

A lot of good advice here but you hardly need it against a single dragon. A single good champion backed up with 3-4 spearmen with boar spears and leather armor has always worked for me. Just watch out for the fire breath and you shouldn't lose more then 1-2 units.