Langrisser II/Gameplay

Controls
You start each scenario with up to 10 heroes, each with his/her unique advantages and disadvantages. You can use the gold you earned from the scenario before to hire troops for them or buy special items that increase their power. In most scenarios, you get a number of starting positions that you can choose to post your heroes on.

The game alternates between you and the computer--you always go first. On your turn you can move your heroes and soldiers, attack, and cast spells. Each hero gives his/her followers attack and defense bonuses, but only if they are within a certain distance from him/her. Their command radius is helpfully lit up by a blinking area, light blue for you, red for the enemy. Except for special circumstances, NEVER let your units fight outside of that area. In the beginning, your troops will be closely matched with the enemy and you'll want every advantage you can get. Later on, your leaders' bonuses will be so high that fighting outside of their radius would be suicide.

In real life, numbers mean more than skill, but in Langrisser II and movies, experience has a huge effect on combat. A level 30 character could defeat an infinite number of level 5 characters, just because they wouldn't be able to damage him for more than one point in a blue moon (read: very rarely). Keep this in mind when fighting.

To heal your soldiers, have them spend a turn next to their leader. At the beginning of each turn, all damaged soldiers next to their hero will be healed by 3. Problem is, the AI tends to hit the weakest units. Protect the guys waiting to be healed with your more healthy ones. If you're lucky, they'll be powerful enough that the enemy will shy away from attacking you altogether.

L1 Note: In Warsong (Langrisser I) enemies pretty much always attacked, even if they had no chance. Langrisser II's AI is more timid - it only attacks if it thinks it will come out on top, or if it doesn't think it will be very damaged if it tries. You can take advantage by this by sending a strong unit into a mass of weak ones. As long as you keep your HP high, not one of them will try to attack you, even if they could overwhelm you if they attacked together. Also, the AI doesn't take into account first strike rules--a Scylla who could take down a full unit before they even reach her would still stay away from them if their attack was high enough.

To heal your heroes, have them use the 'health' command. This will restore their HP by 3 and their MP by 2. Healing yourself is of course a good idea if your HP is low. In addition to making you feel good about yourself, keeping your heroes alive until the end of the scenario means that they get experience bonuses. Since in Langrisser you cannot backtrack if your characters are lagging in exp like you can in most RPGs, this is important.

In Warsong, if a hero died he was gone. Permanently. This is no longer the case in the sequel. Unlike the first game, Langrisser II is very dialogue-heavy, so this may have been to avoid writing multiple sets of dialogue depending on who was alive.

Terrain
Different types of terrain give different defense bonuses. In general, the rougher it is, the larger the bonus. Rough terrain also means that units take longer to pass through it. Here's a list of terrain types and how they affect soldiers:

Try to position yourself so that you get the most out of the terrain. The difference is not large but it does matter.

If you're a flier, terrain doesn't affect you at all (see unit matchups for details).

Deep sea units will always get 0% when fighting on land.

Werewolves and archdemons are the only units who can move across high mountains (they look white on the map but look the same on the battlefield, and they give the same bonuses as normal mountains.)

Spells
Some of your characters will be able to cast spells. In fact, all of the higher level classes have at least one or two. Spells either damage the enemy, heal you, or hit someone with a stats effect, which can be good or bad. Healing spells are extremely useful, they can heal you much faster than health commands, and they give experience to the caster. How much experience depends on how many units the spell healed.

Damaging spells are good against enemy leaders, or large masses of units. It's a good idea to hit the enemy leader with a magic attack or two before you assault him directly. Leaders do fewer damage when damaged themselves--a full health hero can do a maximum of 10 damage, but a hero with only 1 HP left can do 5 tops. Ordinary soldiers get exactly as many attacks as their HP.

Relationship Between Hits and HP
Here's how many hits a leader gets depending on his HP:

Unit Placement
You can hire maximum 6 units of troops. The order of the units determines where they appear around the leader. Here is their placement:

- 3 6 1 L 2 5 4 L = Leader 1,2...6 = First, second... sixth unit

Orders
You can issue general orders to your troops so you don't have to give orders to each troop individually.


 * Move: Soldiers follow hero as close as possible, and attack any enemy units that they happen to find within range that are weak enough (according to AI). Leader's icon is a shoe.
 * Battle: Soldiers will aggressively attack anything within command radius unless enemy is more powerful than them. Leader's icon is a sword.
 * Defend: Soldiers will shy away from fights, refusing even to get within a single space of an enemy if they can avoid it. They will still try to follow the leader, though, and they still occasionally attack. Leader's icon is a shield.
 * Manual: Do it all yourself. Leader's icon is a pointing finger.

Units matchups

 * Spear units get about +10AT/+10DF against mounted units.
 * Soldiers get about +5AT/+5DF bonus against spear units.
 * Horsemen get about +5AT/+5DF bonus against soldiers.
 * Archers get about +10AT against fliers but don't seem to do very well against anything else.
 * Ranged units get a +20% bonus in forests.
 * Monks get about +10AT/10DF bonus against dark units (undead, demons, and the like)
 * Guardsmen get about +12AT/+12DF against slimes. They also get bonuses against dark units, though they're not as large as the ones monks get.

Other bonuses
Flyers ALWAYS get a 25% bonus from terrain--in some cases, this actually means they get less than an ordinary unit would on that terrain (like if they're on a wall, ground units would get 40%, but fliers would still only get 25) Fliers are also immune to earthquake.

Sea units get a +30% bonus over shallows and +50% over deep water.

From this, you can sort of get an idea of what kind of units will do best in a in a given situation. Because of the speed of their attack, flyers seems to do well against most ground units of equal strength - their enemies will only get in 5 shots, and then each surviving flyer will get in 2 hits (unless you entered the battle with less than 10 HP). Ballistae don't get any bonuses vs. flyers like archers do, but, as Hain will proudly tell you, they still do well against griffons because of their low defense. If you can put them under a commander with a high AT bonus, they can do quite well against a lot of units.

The moral of the story? Always check to see what your enemies have before you choose your units. Remember, you can mix and match unit types for a single character.

Formation
In general, put weaker units behind stronger ones. If you have some archers and some pikes, put the archers in back. If your hero is a fighting class, it often helps to put him/her in front of his troops. Since the leader is usually stronger than the followers, enemy attackers will either have to move around the leader to get to the soldiers, or attack the leader at a disadvantage. This is assuming that your hero is stronger than the enemy leader. If the enemy is a boss with much more exp, or if your hero is especially vulnerable, (like a mage or cleric) do the reverse of this and have your soldiers protect the leader.

If you have a whole unit that is stronger than the enemy, have that unit spread out to cover your other forces as much as possible. A good example of this is when you're facing enemy fliers. Since fliers move very fast, you might not be able to get first strike with your archers. Spread one of your own flier units out in front of your weak units. Let the enemy come, then use archers to shoot them out of the sky. Again, this assumes your fliers are better or at least as good as the enemy flyers.

If you are fighting a very powerful enemy, it's better to attack with all your heroes together so you can bring all your force to bear. The last thing you want to do is fight a powerhouse like Leon with a damaged Highlander and 3 heavy horsemen. Oftentimes, you'll run into a boss mid-scenario, when you may have already split your forces. Unless there's something that the boss wants more than he wants to kill you (like, say, Langrisser) retreat and delay him until you can pull everyone together.

Also, position your forces to take the most advantage of terrain. Put troops near the bottom of hillsides so that when the enemy attacks you he'll be doing it from lower ground. If you can see a place within your leader's command radius where you can get a terrain advantage, even if it is slight, you should probably take it. Remember that horseman cannot climb walls and suffer more penalties for moving through rough terrain than soldiers.

When to kill
Killing an enemy leader kills all soldiers under his command. While this may seem like a good thing, it is a waste of perfectly good experience. As mentioned before, you can't backtrack for level building unless you cheat, so every bit you gain counts. Try to kill all the followers before you go for the leader.

Exceptions:
 * There is a time limit that's running out
 * Not killing the leader immediately would result in the death of one of your characters or NPCs.

How to make this work better:

Keeping leaders like archmages alive for too long can be dangerous because of their meteor spells. To keep someone alive but harmless and immobilized, damage them down to 7 or below using spells, ranged attackers, or just plain melee units if you have to. Enemy AI always heals when its health is below 8. No exceptions.

Abbreviations

 * AT = attack
 * DF = defense
 * A = attack bonus given by leader to follower
 * D = defense bonus given by leader to follower
 * MDF = %chance of evading a negative status effect (like charm or sleep)
 * HP = Hit points. The health of the character
 * MP = Magic points. The magical energy (or mana) of the character used to cast spells.
 * MV = Movement points. How far the unit can move per turn over clear terrain. Different units take different penalties for rough terrain (see gameplay and basic strategy section).
 * L = Experience level. As you gain levels, you gain abilities. Each class has a set of bonuses/spells which will be gradually phased in. There are ten levels in each class, and at the tenth of any non-dead end class you will change into a higher class.
 * P = Gold, cash.