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DivineClio
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 18, 2014 01:29 AM |
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Give to this guys an imploson 
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Ebonheart
Famous Hero
Rush the rush
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posted June 18, 2014 12:24 PM |
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OhforfSake said:
Guys, I just realized, the answer is obvious. The strongest town must be stronghold, because it's strong in its name! No other town comes close in strongness. Conflux and Necropolis, they don't have strong in their names. Now if they'd named a town weakling's hideout..
You're actually more correct than you might think.
Stronghold (on my list at least) ranks for N2 (assuming Necropolis and Conflux is banned) being only second to the Inferno.
It is very powerful as it is able to produce ALL creature dwellings with the exception for the Mess Hall with Castle during W1. (With 2nd dwelling pre-built).
The stronghold army has only one weak unit in my eye, the goblin/hobgoblin. However the rest of the army carry great potential and strength. Wolf raiders are superb in the endfight if you have managed not to lose too many or none during the map cleaning. Orc Chieftains are slow but they make good target dummys when clearing the dragon utopias. I rarely use these for the end fight.
The Ogre Magi, while a bit short on defense are superb creatures due to Bloodlust + great health and damage. Thunderbirds are solid lv 5 creatures and the thunderbolt proc is a sweet topping. Cyclops rules but tends to get blocked in the end fight, but vs the map they are godlike. ABs tear things to shreds.
We must also not forget that the Stronghold starts with Barbarians/Battle Mages and if hero selection is available then that means Crag Hack. It will also do well if the red of orb or cloak is on the field.
Last but not least, the Stronghold town art + music = King
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted June 18, 2014 12:44 PM |
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If only their top speed weren't the slowest together with Tower. 
But yeah, I have the feeling that apart from very successful demon farming, Crag Hack with AB's may be the best counter to a legion of skeletons.
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Living time backwards
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DivineClio
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 18, 2014 02:48 PM |
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I play very poor time stronghold because i think isn t so great.
I like lv 1 speed but they life is short so their dps is just 1-2 attack
lv2..i never understood them, after you give first attack, relatition and BOOM 20+ are dead, so the second blow is poor.lv3 on paper seem good but when i fight with them they damage is low(or being rampartfag i stimate them low respect elf).lv4 60hp..wow!best lv4 unit nothing else to say.lv 5, i don t like their speciality 20% for just..100-150 damage?,lv6 epic! but 20-20 as resurce, i was never able to build it in M map.lv7..THE BEAST!
lv3 mage build, no town portal and resurection QQ.
So tell me how can you use stronghold army so good.
RAMPART NOW AND FOREVER
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angelito
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
proud father of a princess
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posted June 18, 2014 03:19 PM |
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I don't know why the mage guild always comes into consideration when it is about to compare 2 towns....
You don't play with ONE single town only on 99% of the maps, so the chance to learn level 4 and 5 spells in other towns is present for all heroes (with wisdom).
Your ability to cast townportal and/or dimdoor /fly mostly comes from tomes and NOT from mage guilds in towns!
You also can learn spells out of pandora boxes...
So how often did you find townportal/dimdoor in your starting town?
Compared to those cases where you did NOT learn them from there?
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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DivineClio
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 18, 2014 04:02 PM |
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i find town portal/resurection on rampart mage like 50% of time and DD likely never and on random map(i don t play jebus or similar),i find max lv3 scroll an very poor time tome/spell hat.So for me it count.
Learn all X magic spell from a pandora only 2-5 time in all game i have played.
i take a "base" and then compare it to other thing, maybe is a dumb of
thinking or maybe not
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Kicferk
Known Hero
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posted June 18, 2014 05:09 PM |
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But still, by the time you can afford building up your mage guild, you probably conquered another city too. Thet means that "drawback" of some towns is quite non-existant...
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Ebonheart
Famous Hero
Rush the rush
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posted June 18, 2014 08:16 PM |
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Angelito has a good point here. Your second/third+ towns can provide you with spells aswell. Although DD/Fly tends to be banned. But he is indeed correct that those spells tends to primarely show up from Scrolls, Pandora Boxes and the Tomes.
But as for you DivineClio. You wonder why I favour the Stronghold over for example the Rampart? Well I shall be frank and say it is because of the units and artifacts.
If we look at rampart the creatures that pose a great threat to your army are: Grand Elves when in close archery range, Dendroids due to their binding/solid health and Unicorns.
Problem with Centaurs is that they are a lv 1 unit and rarely come in a power stack(in most of my games Angels replace them). They also tend to get killed on the map very easily if a wandering stack gets a morale bonus. Dwarves are sturdy but their damage leaves much to be desired as does their speed(often replaced by Wyverns). The Silver Pegasus is fast but tends to get crushed. Gold Dragons tends to come in a small stack due to the way the Rampart town builds. The rampart suffers a lot from restricted use in magic (cloak) or no magic at all (red orb) compared to other towns.
However the main issue with the rampart (from my PoV when facing it online) is the reliance on slow. Yes mass slow is very good (especially vs the map) but there is a big issue with it. You can't risk casting it first as the enemy might just use a mass haste/mass cure and that will leave your forces in quite the compromising position. Your elves are likely to get ripped apart and your Pegasus/Gold Dragon stack stomped. Nor can you risk waiting.
But on the other hand you can't risk advancing with the rampart. Your Grand Elves won't cut it with half their firepower lost due to range. Your Dendroids tends to lose their value due to their speed restrictions. Your Gold Dragon stack is likely to be squashed due to the small numbers and your pegasi aren't that good at taking hits. Your War Unicorns won't make it across to strike during the first turn without a morale bonus. Same can be said for your Wyverns. Unless of course, you use a mass haste which I rarely see Rampart players have access to.
Now for the Stronghold. We can forget about Mass Slow, it will be all about Mr Hack + Mass Haste (let's not forget what a level 20 Hack will do).
You can remove the Goblins/Orcs and replace them with Wyverns and Angels. Now as Ohforfsake stated the main issue with the Stronghold tends to be the speed, but remember you have Angels in there. But most units are quite effective.
Thunderbirds won't be sent vs the high lvs but rather Lv 1-4 while the ABs combined with Wolf Raiders tends to rip their focused target apart. Wyverns and Angels will cross the field aswell and dish out some damage. As for the ogres and Cyclopses, the tactic with these guys really depends on the user. In some battles I or my foe has kept them at your home turf and sometimes you advance with both units to get a full shot effect with the cyclops or lure the enemy player to attack them rather than your ABs, birds, raiders etc. The Stronghold army also performs well with Cloak or Red Orb on the field.
That's my view on the matter. But hey, every battle has its own twists and turns, but this is just the typical scenario the Rampart tends to end up in when I play vs it.
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DivineClio
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 19, 2014 12:03 AM |
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I don t know if you are right or not,m because i never played online.Only hot seat with friend.
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Kicferk
Known Hero
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posted June 19, 2014 12:35 AM |
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To be honest, Rampart is truly powerful, because (grand)elves and centaurs are a really great combination in fighting the map, providing you with faster and easiter access to other areas, and in consequence, ability to develop much faster. Five single centaurs, a stack of remaining centaurs and a stack of elves can take huge amount of slow units, and if you get mass slow, they can easily take a con too.
Besides, your argument about enemy stack getting morale is a bit invalid. Centaurs and elves can get slaughtered by map monsters morale, but so can goblins, or even rocs.
And finally, I completely disagree on Rampart relying on mass slow. It does not rely on it more than any other town, as it has only one shooter, and a bunch of tough meele fighters. I would say that its more important spell is mass haste, which can often be cast after a round(gold dragons magic resist  ).
To sum up, Rampart is a cheap and strong town in early game, which allows it to develop faster, and reach great results in the end.
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Ebonheart
Famous Hero
Rush the rush
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posted June 19, 2014 09:00 AM |
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Grand Elves + Centaurs does make a great team when clearing the map. But rampart falls on par with other towns like Inferno, Stronghold and Tower when it comes to clearing the map.
When it comes to the morale part, you are correct but there is a difference between how the rampart and say stronghold or Inferno works. When a creature stack with high speed get a morale bonus, your elves are most likely to get struck and if they are behind a shield wall (which they should be) the map monsters will go for your Centaurs. But as the Stronghold or Inferno for instance, they rarely go for Behemoths, Rocs and Ogres or Demons, Efreeti and Pit Fiends. The common targets tends to be Goblins, Wolf Riders, Orcs, Imps and Gogs.
I personally encounter few games with rampart using Mass Haste but like I said there are many battles and none tends to be the same in the long run. But I see several issues with this tactic. Your Grand Elves damage is cut short, your dendroids won't be in striking range without a morale bonus and your Gold Dragons will be slaughtered during the first round leaving you quite exposed in round 2. It also becomes problematic if your enemy has access to Mass Slow aswell or even worse, expert fire magic.
All in all Rampart is indeed a strong town in the early game. But I have found that each town has tactics and strengths vs the map that allows them to get through rough situations. Rampart is not at the bottom of my list but rather in the middle.
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Heroes 2 + Heroes 4 - Heroes 3 = Heroes 3 cause it owns.
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angelito
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
proud father of a princess
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posted June 19, 2014 11:16 AM |
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With rampart, your first move should be attacking opponent's shooter in some kind of suicide attack with silver pegasi.
Without shooter (or with decimated stack), opponent is forced to come to YOUR side to attack you.
Now the sturdy body of the dendroids and the dwarves/warunicorns come in handy while protecting the grandelves....
Just my 2 cents...
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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Ebonheart
Famous Hero
Rush the rush
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posted June 19, 2014 04:37 PM |
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But this will cause trouble if the enemy has more than 1 shooter like the Tower, Castle or Stronghold. If the enemy has no shooters at all like the Inferno it is true that they must advance but they can do it when they feel like it. As rampart you got little options if your enemy decides to stay on his side and buff up or curse your troops. While the rampart is strong in special abilities and health it is not exactly the best town when it comes to hand-to-hand fighting.
But once again I admit that rampart is lovely vs the map. Grand Elves and Centaurs decimates most packs with ease.
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szilellis
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 29, 2014 05:35 PM |
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gelbrekt said:
You don't understand. 250 Chaos Hydras have an insane amount of health, and it would be difficult beating them even with 20 arch devils on that map because your hero can't have any more than 10 knowledge due to the small map size and short time (so you can only keep Expert Slow for a limited amount of turns, and a single hit on your troops is completly devestating).
What I did was to hide the vampire lords in the corners (where only 2 hydras could attack at a time). Once I got those 2 hydra stacks down to 1-2 hydras using Stone Skin, Shield, Bloodlust, Blind and Animate Dead (all 7 stacks started at 35 chaos hydras), I could hit and run on the remaining Chaos Hydras while hiding between the weak stacks.
I know the vampire lords have 2 weaknesses: they can't steal health from unliving creatures and they have poor stats for their high cost. However, the poor stats are not relevant because they have 100% life steal, so they crush any living unit if you play with them correctly. At the same time, only like 15% of the units in the game are unliving. When i fight unliving troops on random maps. I use Thant's Animate Dead to spare me from any Vampire Lord losses even in those battles.
For those reasons I am very sure that Vampire Lords are not just "better than level 5 creatures", the Vampire Lords are easily on the top 3 most cost efficient units in the game. The only real weakness they are that you can't spend very much money on them every week (you can spend 4k gold per week on them with a castle, while you can spend 10k per week on titans and Archangels).
The point of all this is that necropolis is overpowered even without necromancy because they can maximize the production of one of the top 3 most cost efficient units in the game (unupgraded) during the first week. Conflux is the only faction that can go up against Necropolis because they have alot of unliving units (including the Vampire Lords’ worst nightmare; Magic Elementals). However, even conflux will lose against necropolis on large maps because the huge economical advantage (from defeated neutral armies) given by the Vampire Lords gives necropolis too many troops and strong heroes.
A very important note when using the vampire lords effectively is that you must go all in to maximize the vampire production as soon as possible (because they are stronger the greater number they are), and that you must place them in the top right corner of the battlefield. This is because only 2 enemies can attack the vampire lords then, allowing them to fight only 2/7 of the enemies at a time.
For example, Level 5 Thant + 50 Vampire Lords go up against 420 neutral swordsmen. When the battle begins there is one stack of 50 vampire lords and the 420 swordsmen split up into 7 stacks with 60 swordsmen in each stack.
* Thant uses Advanced Stone Skin, Shield, and Bloodlust on the vampire lords.
* The Vampire Lords fly up in the corner on the right side of the battlefield.
* 1 Stack of 60 Swordsmen attack the vampire lords. The vampire lords retaliate and almost all casualities from the Swordsmen attack are resurrected from the Life Drain ability.
* Another stack of 60 Swordsmen attack the vampire lords. About 35 Vampire Lords remain, but all other swordsmen are now blocked. They can’t attack the Vampire Lords and are forced to go into defensive mode.
* Thant resurrects 10 vampire lords using Animate Dead.
* The Vampire Lords attack one stack of the Swordsmen (20 dies). There are now 2 stacks with 45 swordsmen each that can attack the stack with 50 Vampire Lords. At this point the swordsmen can’t deal enough damage to kill the vampire lords because the Vampire Lords will steal their health constantly.
*THE 50 VAMPIRE LORDS TAKE OUT ALL 420 SWORDSMEN, 2 stacks at a time. THE ONLY THING LOST DURING THE BATTLE WAS THANT’S ENERGY, NOT A SINGLE VAMPIRE LORD. This is NOT due to the Swordsmens’ slow speed, Any living unit would suffer the same fate.
50 Vampire lord cost: 25k Gold
420 Swordsmen cost: 126k Gold
Vampire lord cost-efficiency: Ridiculous.
I really can’t imagine any strategy on large maps and larger that could defeat this strategy (except for necromancy and possibly conflux). If you think you know one, i would love to know.
When intentionally cornered so few enemy stack may actually hit the vampire lords, there is another thing you can do.
First, stop attacking the stack that plays last when you had weakened it a lot. The vampires will naturally retaliates against the other stack that plays first. So the almost dead stack still occupies a slot while inflicting very few damage. Eventually the stack plays first will die and the replacement may play after the weakened stack. In that case you need to weaken the stack that plays last again.
If there are 3 fighting stacks, you weaken the 2 that plays last.
If you manage to get cornered by the stack that plays last of all(or the 2 last ones if cornered by 3)then the weakened stacks will endure until the end.
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted July 30, 2014 07:26 PM |
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Ebonheart said:
I personally encounter few games with rampart using Mass Haste but like I said there are many battles and none tends to be the same in the long run. But I see several issues with this tactic. Your Grand Elves damage is cut short, your dendroids won't be in striking range without a morale bonus and your Gold Dragons will be slaughtered during the first round leaving you quite exposed in round 2. It also becomes problematic if your enemy has access to Mass Slow aswell or even worse, expert fire magic.
Mass spell is imba
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P4R4D0X0N
Famous Hero
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posted August 04, 2014 09:58 PM |
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Rampart... nice heroes: Kyrre, Mephala, Elleshar, Thorgrim, Gem (WoG), Coronius (WoG) / LvL5 Mageguild, Treasury (with 3+ towns never problems with money), best LvL1 unit imo, fast dragons, pegasus with long range, dwarf and deno are nice tanks.
Necropolis, Dungeon, Tower and Castle are pretty nice too... Stronghold is moderate (mage guild sucks) also Conflux (heroes suck there, also the creatures are quite boring) Inferno/Fortress well... not my type also need balance imo.
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Doomhammer
Known Hero
Smasher of pasties
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posted September 17, 2014 12:39 AM |
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I think the strongest town is Dungeon and the weakest is Inferno.
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Ebonheart
Famous Hero
Rush the rush
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posted September 17, 2014 09:52 AM |
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Doomhammer said:
I think the strongest town is Dungeon and the weakest is Inferno.
Apart from Fortress I consider dungeon to be one of my weaker towns. Personal opinion I guess.
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Doomhammer
Known Hero
Smasher of pasties
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posted September 17, 2014 10:41 AM |
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I suppose it all depends on playing style and personal tastes. There is no right or wrong answer really
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted September 17, 2014 01:25 PM |
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Dungeons have some good things going for them, and some limitations as well. Speaking from memory here.. From the top of my head:
Pro's:
1. Highest hp flyer, giving a much better chance at early town conquest against your opponent.
2. 2 solid for their level shooters.
3. 3 fliers.
4. Great starter in Shakti, second best in my opinion.
5. Best mage guild, in my opinion.
6. Above average for their level second, fourth, fifth and seventh level creature.
7. At least average first and third level unit.
8. Creature Portal can allow for extra level 7 units.
9. Overlords are fine heroes.
10. Permits access to resurrection by scholaring from a Warlock.
11. I like the mana vortex.. as it refills (and doubles) instantly, iIRC.
12. Has an artifact merchant.
Cons's:
1. Can't get 7th level unit before second week.
2. Cost of third level unit (can be a pain if played on impossible settings).
3. Weak 6th level unit.
4. Amount of shots for the Medusa.
5. If you want to gamble on extra level 7's from creature portal, you won't mark other creature dwellings, such as troglodyte nests.
6. Cannot resurrect Black Dragons (Is more a concern if the game doesn't consist of a single main fight, but a series of them).
7. Starting Terrain.
There's also minor stuff, such as Harpies against Shooters, where you'll have to place your Harpies in stead of outright attacking.
In my opinion, Dungeon fits very well to those 1-4 weeks games, because they're at a peak compared to many other towns, allowing for an advantage.
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Living time backwards
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