How to beat a wizard's home city full of Shadow Demons?

[unicurse]

I'm playing as Rjak, 10 book death, and two of my death magic using opponents have turtled up in their respective towers, filled them full of shadow demons (some of them with dispel magic cast on them) and I've got no idea how to counter that. Magicians and my own Shadow Demons die within the first round or two of combat and I can't inflict a single casualty.

Anybody got any tips?

[jhsidi]

I'm playing as Rjak, 10 book death, and two of my death magic using opponents have turtled up in their respective towers, filled them full of shadow demons (some of them with dispel magic cast on them) and I've got no idea how to counter that. Magicians and my own Shadow Demons die within the first round or two of combat and I can't inflict a single casualty.

Anybody got any tips?

At this point in the game, it's unlikely you can beat them. Shadow Demons don't have an exceptionally strong ranged attack so your best chance is to take in a couple high defense melee units that can hit flying units with your own Shadow Demons. Cast Mana Leak to limit the shots they get to take and let your Shadow Demons eat the damage, then take out the flyers with your melee units. Elite Gladiators might be able to do it... probably not, with lightning whittling them down.

Otherwise, isolate them in their fortress and get ahead of them on research until you come up with something better.

[Seravy]

If you can rush research Gate of Hades that can help.

Weakness might also be effective if you can cast it enough times but doing that is difficult. You probably need several durable spellcaster heroes. (Shadow Demons have only 5 attack, so that goes down to 2 which won't really deal any damage... as far as I remember, weakness does affect magic ranged attacks? Not 100% sure on that one.)

Beyond these two, Death doesn't really have spells that affect a Shadow Demon and brute-forcing your way through is next to impossible (as you also have no defensive spells.) but of course Mana Leak helps a lot with that by halving the number of turns to survive. Black Prayer might also be significant as 5->4 is a 20% loss in attack power. As you are both playing Death, peace is an option worth considering unless they are Chaotic.

In general, I would stay away from that city though. It's not worth the investment and you can simply conquer their other cities first, then come back to it when you have a good solution, or even ally with them and focus on the other two players. (a good flying hero with good defensive equipment can cut Shadow Demons down easily as long as you have enough other durable troops to tank the fortress lightnings but this requires fiinding that good equipment and is somewhat risky.)

[unicurse]

Thanks for the replies! Very helpful.

I ended up jumping down to Myrror and finding Tlaloc down there, with a horrific spell power level and honestly I think I'm gonna struggle to win that one now, even on Fair I don't fancy my chances but it's worth a shot