|
| Thread: Heroes 4 features to come back |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 · «PREV / NEXT» |
|
alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
|
posted September 02, 2007 12:24 PM |
|
|
Quote:
I actually think that HOMM5 is closer to HOMM4 than HOMM3, except for some obvious elements that are retro to HOMM3.
(...)
The reason for this statement was given equal army sizes and equal attack/defense stats, whoever got to cast the first spell and get Expert Haste off first usually won the decisive meeting of main heroes... and that was determined by the speed of the fastest unit in your army. HOMM4 changed this by giving seperate stats of speed and init for each unit, as well as giving heroes their own init. Plus, each faction was reworked to focus on different specializations which tended to work overall in allowing each to be competitive.
Wow, this is actually a really interesting statement.  It might be the first time I've seen someone say this, and I'm not sure I agree fully, but I can follow you on some points - true, the idea of having Heroes having their own turn to act rather than being always available is a bit more similar to Heroes 4 than Heroes 3, but I actually think the new Initiative system is so different from what we had in both Heroes 3 and 4, that it can be compared to neither.
As for what you write about Heroes 4 offering you greater opportunity to play stategic than previous chapters of the game, I'm not sure. Yes, you had to choose a different strategy for each faction, that's probably true - much of which might have been due to the game favoring a single-skill evolution rather than a multi-skill evolution as previous and later chapters of the game. But for each faction, I think the path to victory was often pretty narrow - also because in most castle, some particular units were so broken, that you had to rely on this unit solely, and its specific qualities, to reach victory - examples being Genies (Order), Cyclops (Might), Vampires (Death) and Water Elementals (Nature).
Again, I think Heroes 5 is a step in the right direction, with the racial skill, that offers a much more different option for each faction, and also the faction dependant skill trees. And whether it's closer to Heroes 3 or 4, I'm not sure.
____________
What will happen now?
|
|
Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
|
|
posted September 02, 2007 12:36 PM |
|
|
Heroes 3 no doubt, just a few touches from H4 as the ranged retaliation on succubi, destroying dead stacks as with disintegrate, caravans, level ups etc.
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
|
|
Fofa
Famous Hero
Famous? Me?!
|
|
posted September 02, 2007 10:04 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Quote:
Flaging weekly generators (like waterwheels) deliver resources: I might need someone to clarify this for me.
You know the waterwheels and windmills and the garden of the weefolk, right? You allways have to go there once a week to get your ressources but if you would be able to flag them you would recive the ressources at the beginning of each week.
Flaged weekly generators work just like mines except that you get your stuff weekly not daily.
That does sound good, meaning you wouldn't need to have a back-up hero for that purpose. Thanks for clearing that up.
____________
Creator of the Guild and Prison towns for ICTC.
|
|
phoenixreborn
Promising
Legendary Hero
Unicorn
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 03:27 AM |
|
|
Quote:
Making Choices of which creatures to build at your castle: Ehh. . .I'm more used to having just one creature, but the idea can add strategic value. However, it can only really work properly if the two creatures are balanced: the Cyclops/Ogre Mage proves this point.
How do you think the alternate upgrades compare to that system?
Also you should play h iv a little bit if you get the opportunity.
|
|
SoRHunter
Hired Hero
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 10:53 AM |
|
|
Quote:
Just inserting my two cents: Note that I haven't played Heroes IV at all, so I might be a bit biased.
Moving creatures without heroes: Primarily used as scouts and distractions if an enemy hero comes along, but that's about it, in terms of players using this.
Heroes fight and can be killed in battles: . . .No. Heroes are generally riding on the horses and in charge of the army. If the commander was killed, then what would you do?
These two work together (so I grouped them). The basic idea is to be able to win a combat even if your hero gets killed (as they are no longer standing along the fight casting spells) and let those units go to a castle/sanctuary to get your hero revived. Also, they were used as scouts and/or resources gatherers. The broken part is to use armies composed by a single unit (like a Leprechaun) used to harass your opponent or to delay someone's destruction (a player would only be eliminated when all its castles and armies where dead), but you could only have eight armies at each time.
Quote:
Caravans: Very useful for when your hero needs to get backup from a far-away distance. Or anywhere, really.
Nothing to add.
Quote:
Daily growth of creatures: If you let the creatures gather up, and with daily growth added, you have one hefty price tag on the creatures, so basically you'd have to buy creatures everyday.
Not really. A creature's price stays always the same. And you can generate more money per turn (in the latest stages of the game) than you can spend in creatures. Also, in the game manual, it is stated that the higher difficulty option would generate creatures as in previous Heroes' games (ie, weekly) - never tried it myself.
Quote:
The master and grandmaster skill ranks: Basically, from what I see from this, is making a skill go overkill when it was just fine with the three levels. These skills can wreck a game if used correctly.
I like the hero development in HIV. This one is more a question of liking this feature or not. It is not really that important.
Quote:
Flaging weekly generators (like waterwheels) deliver resources: I might need someone to clarify this for me.
Someone already did.
Quote:
Retaliation happens at the same time as attacking: There go a lot of my attack patterns. . .It would make attack without casualties much more difficult to accomplish.
You either like it or not. I guess I already told everything in the previous posts.
Quote:
Creatures cannot be upgraded: Most people seem to forget that there was one other Heroes game that didn't have creature upgrades: Heroes I. Granted, that was what started the Heroes games (or King's Bounty), so that one is forgiven. Heroes II had a bit of it as well (i.e Unicorns received no upgrades).
For me, it depends on the creature: if the upgrade improves the original in many way, I'll upgrade it. If the upgrade costs too much for so little improvement, then it's generally ignored.
Making Choices of which creatures to build at your castle: Ehh. . .I'm more used to having just one creature, but the idea can add strategic value. However, it can only really work properly if the two creatures are balanced: the Cyclops/Ogre Mage proves this point.
These two also together: you do not choose either to upgrade or not, you choose which creatures you prefer. And your point is not proved: if you get two castles, it might be a very good idea to get both - as the number of ogre magi increases, they can cast Mass Bloodlust, greatly improving Cyclops damage. But as the shooters are considered better than melee units (unless these can fly), Ogre Magi are the "weakest link".
|
|
Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 12:04 PM |
|
|
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Making Choices of which creatures to build at your castle: Ehh. . .I'm more used to having just one creature, but the idea can add strategic value. However, it can only really work properly if the two creatures are balanced: the Cyclops/Ogre Mage proves this point. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you think the alternate upgrades compare to that system?
Also you should play h iv a little bit if you get the opportunity.
The alternate upgrade system sort of introduces this feature to the H5 series. Because now you'll have to choose which upgrade you'll want to have (but even then you can still change it for money). Personally i hated Heroes IV beyond all messures. And the fact that you had to choose this OR this unit didn't make it better... especially because of what fofa says... in most cases it was too obvious. Besides with upgrades you have waaaay more tactics and gameplay.
Quote:
Quote:
The master and grandmaster skill ranks: Basically, from what I see from this, is making a skill go overkill when it was just fine with the three levels. These skills can wreck a game if used correctly.
I like the hero development in HIV. This one is more a question of liking this feature or not. It is not really that important.
Nooo way that this is only about "likeing"... I totally agree with Fofa that this is just about makeing a skill uber strong when it really was good at expert. Having skills on the "grand master" level was just too unbalanced at times... I haven't experienced such an unbalance with the "expert" rank yet.
|
|
Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 12:12 PM |
|
|
It's not as much about imbalance but the inability to pick other skills too...It's more fun to get some on expert than take one grandmaster and an advanced  Less possibilities..
And tell you what, alternate upgrades although some may be a bit stronger the 'weaker' version is either better in creeping or vs specific factions. That's what I've seen so far but of course some things elude me.
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
|
|
SoRHunter
Hired Hero
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 03:03 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
The master and grandmaster skill ranks: Basically, from what I see from this, is making a skill go overkill when it was just fine with the three levels. These skills can wreck a game if used correctly.
I like the hero development in HIV. This one is more a question of liking this feature or not. It is not really that important.
Nooo way that this is only about "likeing"... I totally agree with Fofa that this is just about makeing a skill uber strong when it really was good at expert. Having skills on the "grand master" level was just too unbalanced at times... I haven't experienced such an unbalance with the "expert" rank yet.
Could you please provide some examples of über skills? I have yet to find them and it would be too time- and space-consuming to write my thoughts on all skills. 
I leave just a little one: in order to achieve Master and GrandMaster skill levels, you had to level your hero up. As the levels grow higher, the more difficult it becomes to get another level up. And the buildings where we can upgrade the skills are in limited numbers and gave random upgrades.
|
|
Azagal
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Smooth Snake
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 03:41 PM |
|
Edited by Azagal at 15:44, 03 Sep 2007.
|
Quote:
And tell you what, alternate upgrades although some may be a bit stronger the 'weaker' version is either better in creeping or vs specific factions. That's what I've seen so far but of course some things elude me.
Hmm?? I didn't think that I said that upgrade "a" will be better than the alternate or anything like that...or did I? I was just trying to explain that you will now have to choose in between upgrades which is a little bit like the Heroes IV feature : "building unit x makes it imposible to get unit y". It will not be like that in TotE because you can change them but you'll have to pay for that so in the end you'll want to make the right choice so that you don't have to pay in the end.
And about the "Grandmaster" level. I have to admit that I didn't play much Heroes IV so prehaps some of my impressions are wrong... but i found it "uber" to be able to kill hordes of Black Dragons with a Babarian with Grandmaster combat (or something like that which made him a killer melee fighter). If I'm talking nonsense or this is something that has been fixed a long time ago I'm sorry for talking about something I'm not 100% sure about.
|
|
alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 05:02 PM |
|
|
I actually really liked the Grandmaster skill system of Heroes 4. I liked the fact that it was harder to obtain the full mastery of a skill - thus, if you really wanted to excel in this area, you had to put a lot of skill points into that skill family, which of course ment you had to let go on some other skills, but made you particularly powerful in that area. In the current system, with just 4 levels, you can get some extremely powerful combinations like Expert Light Magic / Power of Rage or Expert Dark Magic / Power of Mind, which will let you dominate the enemy army completely.
Also, when talking about the Heroes 4 skill system, one should remember that it was not only one skill that was leveled up - each family would require you to level up 3 or 4 skills, which did in fact give you some diversity, although it is true that these generally focused on the same area. But I also liked the fact that Heroes 4 allowed you to gain many more skill levels that you do in Heroes 5 - one particular thing I really miss is the Skill Altars, that allowed you to level up a skill without achieving a new level.
I think perhaps an important difference is that the Heroes 4 skill system favored long games, because you could level up fairly easily even when you reached high levels, whereas the Heroes 5 system favors short games, because you will hit the level barrier around level 20, where it becomes extremely hard to obtain new levels and thus increase your skills.
____________
What will happen now?
|
|
kermit
Known Hero
Soul hunter
|
|
posted September 03, 2007 07:13 PM |
|
Edited by kermit at 19:14, 03 Sep 2007.
|
There were several quite fun features in HOMM4 and I would've really enjoyed the game, if it were not for the horrible AI...
Trying out different skill combinations to create advanced classes was really nice for instance. In general the skill system offered more variety. It is true that you had to focus on certain skills only, but you could have several heroes in your army, like a field marshall (with tactics + summoning) and a mage.
I remember this one really fun scenario where you'd start as a god of some sort (with skills like life +tactics +combat or death +tactics +combat), and you'd have ridiculous stats but practically no army, and you'd have to kill like 20 black dragons with only your hero to break through to the first castle.
Other nice features are different graphics and hero animations varying with class or gender. I find it really a pity that Nival has made no effort to make heroes look different, not even males/females of same faction (Jhohara with a beard isn't that sexy..).
On the other hand, I didn't really like the fact that you needed combat skill on every character, to make them actually survive a round vs a real stack.
One other thing that I miss from heroes 2 (or is it 3?) is a screen for managing your entire kingdom (really usefull for large maps with many castles), where you can buy troops/buildings check on all your heroes, etc..
|
|
BrennusWhiskey
Bad-mannered
Famous Hero
The quickest H4 player
|
|
posted September 04, 2007 11:32 AM |
|
|
quote:
On the other hand, I didn't really like the fact that you needed combat skill on every character, to make them actually survive a round vs a real stack.
Frankly this is not true, if you are good player you using your creatures to protect heroes, and you can get IMMO potions. Playing with good players online I realized that its very rarely happens to lost some heroes. In fact combat skills are good on final battle but thing are most important to win is GM magic skills. I won few good battles thanx to 'steal all enchantments' or 'desintegrate'
|
|
dale
Known Hero
|
|
posted September 05, 2007 08:45 PM |
|
|
Quote:
As far as I know the hero limit is 8.
I've never had a problem getting 8.
I was in one of the parts of a campaign and when I attempted to buy a fifth hero, I was told that I'd reached the limit. Since I made that post, I have been able to buy more than that in other parts of other campaigns -- so it must have just been something about that particular campaign part.
____________
Grey Beards of the world, Unite :-}}
|
|
dale
Known Hero
|
|
posted September 11, 2007 06:11 PM |
|
|
I have come across another desirable feature of HOMM4 that seems to be missing.
It is the ability to put a hero / stack to "sleep" on the adventure map. This came in useful when you parked a stack someplace and did not want to be bothered by the pop-up "you have creatures who can move" when you ended the turn.
As I recall, select the stack and hit the S key to put them to sleep. You could wake them up whenever by selecting and hitting the W key.
____________
Grey Beards of the world, Unite :-}}
|
|
phoenixreborn
Promising
Legendary Hero
Unicorn
|
|
posted September 11, 2007 06:19 PM |
|
|
Quote:
It is the ability to put a hero / stack to "sleep" on the adventure map.
This was also available in heroes 3. Not sure why it isn't in 5. The only way I have found to accomplish it is to move a hero into the garrison of the castle so that they no longer show up on the hero bar.
|
|
dale
Known Hero
|
|
posted September 12, 2007 05:36 AM |
|
|
Quote:
Quote:
It is the ability to put a hero / stack to "sleep" on the adventure map.
This was also available in heroes 3. Not sure why it isn't in 5. The only way I have found to accomplish it is to move a hero into the garrison of the castle so that they no longer show up on the hero bar.
And now it seems that you can only put one hero into a castle -- I used to train a bunch of GM Estates nobles, then park them out of the way. I also kept an imp stationed at a trader's post just in case I needed a quick exchange to build some important structure. Since the trader's post gave better rates, this helped.
____________
Grey Beards of the world, Unite :-}}
|
|
SoRHunter
Hired Hero
|
|
posted September 12, 2007 02:15 PM |
|
|
Quote:
I have come across another desirable feature of HOMM4 that seems to be missing.
It is the ability to put a hero / stack to "sleep" on the adventure map. This came in useful when you parked a stack someplace and did not want to be bothered by the pop-up "you have creatures who can move" when you ended the turn.
As I recall, select the stack and hit the S key to put them to sleep. You could wake them up whenever by selecting and hitting the W key.
The correct key to put a stack to sleep in Heroes IV is Z. You got the W right, although you didn't have to use it - you could just order the stack to move somewhere and it would wake up immediately.
|
|
yasmiel
Supreme Hero
Former Chessmaster
|
|
posted September 13, 2007 10:28 PM |
|
Edited by yasmiel at 22:39, 13 Sep 2007.
|
That was a feature from h2 or h3.
Edit: Ooops, someone already mentioned it.
|
|
phoenixreborn
Promising
Legendary Hero
Unicorn
|
|
posted September 14, 2007 02:56 AM |
|
|
Quote:
And now it seems that you can only put one hero into a castle -- I used to train a bunch of GM Estates nobles, then park them out of the way. I also kept an imp stationed at a trader's post just in case I needed a quick exchange to build some important structure. Since the trader's post gave better rates, this helped.
Now I feel like you are stretching the definition of 'feature' a little bit.
You can do the same thing with a trading post by using a secondary hero.
And surely you must know that the one hero (technically 2) per castle is a function of heroes being commanders not individual units. I mean you can still stick them somewhere where they won't get attacked.
|
|
dale
Known Hero
|
|
posted September 17, 2007 03:52 PM |
|
|
Quote:
As far as I know the hero limit is 8.
I've never had a problem getting 8. Did you notice the cost goes up per hero? So if you're on hero number 5 it would cost something like 5,000 gold.
I have just run into another map where the number of heros I can buy is limited. Map three of the Academy campaign (the Triumvirate). If I go to rescue Godric first, I am prevented from buying any other hero after I capture a town. If I go capture a town first, I am allowed to buy one hero, but not any more. I have now captured four towns, all of them have taverns -- but none will let me buy a hero.
____________
Grey Beards of the world, Unite :-}}
|
| |
|
|
