Heroes of Might and Magic Community
visiting hero! Register | Today's Posts | Games | Search! | FAQ/Rules | AvatarList | MemberList | Profile


Age of Heroes Headlines:  
5 Oct 2016: Heroes VII development comes to an end.. - read more
6 Aug 2016: Troubled Heroes VII Expansion Release - read more
26 Apr 2016: Heroes VII XPack - Trial by Fire - Coming out in June! - read more
17 Apr 2016: Global Alternative Creatures MOD for H7 after 1.8 Patch! - read more
7 Mar 2016: Romero launches a Piano Sonata Album Kickstarter! - read more
19 Feb 2016: Heroes 5.5 RC6, Heroes VII patch 1.7 are out! - read more
13 Jan 2016: Horn of the Abyss 1.4 Available for Download! - read more
17 Dec 2015: Heroes 5.5 update, 1.6 out for H7 - read more
23 Nov 2015: H7 1.4 & 1.5 patches Released - read more
31 Oct 2015: First H7 patches are out, End of DoC development - read more
5 Oct 2016: Heroes VII development comes to an end.. - read more
[X] Remove Ads
LOGIN:     Username:     Password:         [ Register ]
HOMM1: info forum | HOMM2: info forum | HOMM3: info mods forum | HOMM4: info CTG forum | HOMM5: info mods forum | MMH6: wiki forum | MMH7: wiki forum
Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Temple of Ashan > Thread: Request for tips and tricks...
Thread: Request for tips and tricks...
Jabarkas
Jabarkas


Adventuring Hero
posted February 28, 2007 01:42 PM

Request for tips and tricks...

Hmm... might warn you that this will be a long post. I've the bad habit of rambling and getting side tracked.

To the point, I feel that my skill in HoMM V is a bit in the between of Normal and Hard difficulty setting. Normal is just too easy... however, I don't know if it is a bad choise of maps, but I have actually some problems to beat the computer with the Hard-setting.

So... this is a request if you folks can give me some helpful tips and tricks so that I can improve my gameplay.


I have tried to look for strategy guides etc, but I have so far not found anything along those lines. If you feel this question has been answered before, then feel free to just post a link to the thread/post with the information.


Ok, I think in order for me to get helpful tips, it might be best for me to outline my basic approach... and it is about now, when the massive wall of text will kill you.


First of all, I am quite influenced by old HoMM III, so I basically play HoMM V the same way. The very first thing I do in the beginning, is to build a tavern and recruit a second hero, and pool the resources, i.e. the creatures, ensuring that my first hero has doubled his starting army... while my second hero will act as a general runner for scouting, picking up the odd resources and transporting reinforcements from my town to my main hero.

However... after that I'm pretty happy with the number of heroes that I have. I noticed that the AI tends to recruit slightly more heroes than that, but I still remember with horror the hero-spammage that the HoMM IV-AI was... still, is HoMM V designed so that it is more profitable to have multiple Heroes?

Now... I am a bit more Might-fan than Magic, regardless of what race I decide to pick. This means that I always focus on getting my ultra-offensive unit-dwellings up, before I even contemplate to develop the magic guild, or for that matter racial special structures. I notice a bit of trend here with using destruction spells for the early grinding, so perhaps I am using the wrong approach, or?

Next part is pretty straight forward, when everything evolves around securing resources. My town tries to raise that village hall into a capitol, while my main hero is busy securing every mine and lumber mill he can find on the adventure map. Though... this is also a potential flaw of mine. I am a bit of a cowardly builder, who focus perhaps too much time to get the town up and running, before I even dare to venture out and attack enemy towns. Where goes the line between sitting tight and charging the enemy towns?

While my cities steadily advance, I try to jump-leap to the ultimate tier 7 creature dwelling by skipping other unit-dwellings that I feel are too defensive and also too resource intensive. This is another thing that I wonder if I'm doing right? I notice that folks here are promoting the use of durable units in order to spam a few extra damage spells, which generally is the kind of units that I tend to skip. Am I staring too much on the end-price and thus forgetting that the mid-tier units are not too shoddy either?

Meanwhile I try to also streamline my Hero into a killing machine by picking the skills I deem to be good. Once again it is HoMM III that sets my priorities. With bad memories from Eagle Eye and First Aid, I rank Enlightenment and War Machines as low-priority. With good memories of Tactics and Leadership, I rank Attack and eh... Leadership... very high. Sorcery is also a skill I rank high, just thanks to Magic Insight. When it comes to the 4 magic schools (Dark, Destruction, Light and Summon) then I tend to go for one of the two that the town specialize in... but I've a certain weakness for Dark-magic, just due it feels so freaking overpowered. The skills that I've not mentioned, tend to place themselves as average. But... I've starting to re-evaluate this ranking. Do you have any comments?

Hmm... what more to say? Well, this is basically the general setup for me. After that it is pretty straight forward chicken-run, where I try to use my extreme offensive army to very early tip the balance in my favour by nuking key enemy units... and key-enemy units is generally every unit-stack that I think has a good potential to kill loads of my own units. Tank-units are of low priority, while cavalary- and caster-units are of top priority. Shooters have mid priority, since it is just enough to park one of your own cavalry units next to an enemy shooter (if you can't teleport a tank), to take it out of the picture. What I am wondering a bit about here, is if I perhaps write too much into the enemy's damage potential and if I should instead look a bit more into what alternative will remove the most health... or?

I tend to leave the pure tanks at home, guarding my cities, since I remember the movement penalty you got for carrying those slow units around in HoMM III. When I lay siege to towns, then it just tends to evolve into a shooter and caster war. Where my more fragile unit stacks eat bullet after bullet from the guarding towers... but the computer tends to die, never the less since I am busy focus-fire down his ranged units. Once again, perhaps I'm over-rating the moat-damage, and I should really try to get my melee inside the castle walls... or?


Now... as you should have gathered so far, my overall strategy is very might-based with special love for Dark-magic... however, the pure oddity here is that I'm not really that much for playing towns that agree with this. You might have guessed that I am an Inferno or Haven-freak, but actually I love Academy, Dungeon, Sylvan and Fortress far more. So as a last question in this massive wall of text, perhaps it is really nothing wrong with my overall strategy... it is just the wrong strategy for the races I play, or?...
____________

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
ZombieLord
ZombieLord


Promising
Famous Hero
that wants your brainz...
posted February 28, 2007 04:03 PM

Some useful strategy threads:

For Haven
For Academy
For Academy with MMR
For Dungeon

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
ZombieLord
ZombieLord


Promising
Famous Hero
that wants your brainz...
posted February 28, 2007 04:07 PM

There are also some comments about Necropolis, though not actual strategies:

Necro Heroes
Necro Creatures

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Shauku83
Shauku83


Promising
Famous Hero
posted February 28, 2007 04:55 PM
Edited by Shauku83 at 16:57, 28 Feb 2007.

I'll give you quick tips, as longer startegies are written for all factions separately. And there is the first tip, all factions DO play differently. One major part in here is Heroes and their developement.

Having multiple heroes as gatherers and resourse collectors are always better than just one for the job, but this varies among the map you play. If you feel like you can't do everything you would want to do in the weeks time, then hire additional hero.
You will find that other Heroes can do some fighting too, and building a secondary Hero for defense is recommended. Furthermore, you will find slain computer Heroes in tavern that are already highly built, you should always hire those for protecting either your first castle or newly conquered ones.

Charging enemy towns is not needed or even possibe in most cases, unless you have planned yourself a rush. But getting near the opponents castle is important, as you want to know what they are doing and cover much area that you will know when he is coming.

You are way too fixated on level 7 creatures. They are good, but the backbone of your army comes from levels 4,5 and 6. They give you a healthier economy too, as level 7's are very expensive. You become reliant on one creature alone, and enemy will find ways to deal with them. You can skip a dwelling for higher level creature if your economy allows it, but not many of them! For example, skipping Rakshasas for Colossus in Academy is reasonable.

Skills are a major part in this game, but one good thing is that there are not that crappy skills as there was in Heroes 3. So Enlightenment and Warmachines are way better in Heroes 5. That said, there are many routes to follow so I won't go into detail. That is covered quite well in faction strategies.

Destructive Spells help in creeping, so use them if you can have them. It helps Sylvan and Inferno greatly in particular, because they are guaranteed to have Destructive in their guild. For Dungeon it is a must, and Academy benefits massively from spells, because they have so  much mana that it would be a waste NOT to use it

There is no movement penalty in Heroes 5! Having Zombies doen't make you move any slower etc. So take the troops you need.


 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted February 28, 2007 04:56 PM

Quote:
Hmm... might warn you that this will be a long post. I've the bad habit of rambling and getting side tracked.


Same for me, and welcome to the HC

Quote:
To the point, I feel that my skill in HoMM V is a bit in the between of Normal and Hard difficulty setting. Normal is just too easy... however, I don't know if it is a bad choise of maps, but I have actually some problems to beat the computer with the Hard-setting.


No big deal, AI cheats horribly and plays terribly bad at the same moment. I suggest you to play with human opponents, or the game will quickly turn boring..


Quote:
I have tried to look for strategy guides etc, but I have so far not found anything along those lines. If you feel this question has been answered before, then feel free to just post a link to the thread/post with the information.


Oh, I did a lot of those. They may not be perfect, and most of them is not actual, but who cares


Quote:
First of all, I am quite influenced by old HoMM III, so I basically play HoMM V the same way. The very first thing I do in the beginning, is to build a tavern and recruit a second hero, and pool the resources, i.e. the creatures, ensuring that my first hero has doubled his starting army... while my second hero will act as a general runner for scouting, picking up the odd resources and transporting reinforcements from my town to my main hero.


It works well here, too.

Quote:
However... after that I'm pretty happy with the number of heroes that I have. I noticed that the AI tends to recruit slightly more heroes than that, but I still remember with horror the hero-spammage that the HoMM IV-AI was... still, is HoMM V designed so that it is more profitable to have multiple Heroes?


No. They can't do a damn thing. Maps are really more empty than in heroes III. There ain't much to get on most maps.. as you've probably noticed already. There is much more guarded stuff here, and that needs less heroes, but with stronger armies/skills.

Quote:
Now... I am a bit more Might-fan than Magic, regardless of what race I decide to pick. This means that I always focus on getting my ultra-offensive unit-dwellings up, before I even contemplate to develop the magic guild, or for that matter racial special structures. I notice a bit of trend here with using destruction spells for the early grinding, so perhaps I am using the wrong approach, or?


No, not entirely. Every faction needs to focus on different things early, ok I will give you a brief summary:

Haven: squires+Marksmen+dougal for creeping OR vittorio+ballista+marksmen+squires
Inferno: Deleb, ballista and demons
Necro: Mark of the necromancer,Vamplords, Archliches, darkmagic
Dungeon: Destructive magic
Academy: MMR or havez+archmages+obsidians
Fortress: No clue :|
Sylvan: Ossir, m.hunters and lots of stacks containing single pixies/bladedancers

That helps with creeping and countering rushes early.


Quote:
Next part is pretty straight forward, when everything evolves around securing resources. My town tries to raise that village hall into a capitol, while my main hero is busy securing every mine and lumber mill he can find on the adventure map. Though... this is also a potential flaw of mine. I am a bit of a cowardly builder, who focus perhaps too much time to get the town up and running, before I even dare to venture out and attack enemy towns. Where goes the line between sitting tight and charging the enemy towns?


Depends on your gameplay, generally forget about tanking, get a hero described above and use the strategy to kill neutrals without using many creatures of your own. There are particular strategies that make it possible to kill i.e. 40 titans with several gargoyles or 40 archmages with 7 scouts. YOur secondary hero should secure the land with the troops coming from the castle. later on, the main one returns with arties and high-levels, takes the army and goes for enemy.. That's the easiest newb-friendly strat I can imagine. The more complex ones involve heroes with logistics to annoy the opponent by taking his mines over and over and attacks at a certain point of the game.

Quote:
While my cities steadily advance, I try to jump-leap to the ultimate tier 7 creature dwelling by skipping other unit-dwellings that I feel are too defensive and also too resource intensive. This is another thing that I wonder if I'm doing right?


Wrong, dude. This is not heroes 3, level7 creatures have little impact on the game itself.. you will get thrashed doing this online. Sure, they are nice to get, but try to get the most crucial creatures of earlier dwellings first.


Quote:
I notice that folks here are promoting the use of durable units in order to spam a few extra damage spells, which generally is the kind of units that I tend to skip. Am I staring too much on the end-price and thus forgetting that the mid-tier units are not too shoddy either?


Not all towns can do it. Dungeon doesn't need creatures in fact, only tanks, to make them last while warlock blows everything away with the spells.. In fact I consider warlocks the most powerful force in the game. If you want I may explain it further.

Quote:
Meanwhile I try to also streamline my Hero into a killing machine by picking the skills I deem to be good. Once again it is HoMM III that sets my priorities. With bad memories from Eagle Eye and First Aid, I rank Enlightenment and War Machines as low-priority.


That's very bad for you. Warmachines are needed for certain heroes that tend to be great creepers and rushers: Deleb, Vittorio, Havez..


Quote:
With good memories of Tactics and Leadership, I rank Attack and eh... Leadership... very high.


Except with heroes that start with leadership, only haven heroes have high chances to get that skill. Most of other heroes (especially magic ones) have a lousy 2% to learn leadership. Sadly.

Quote:
When it comes to the 4 magic schools (Dark, Destruction, Light and Summon) then I tend to go for one of the two that the town specialize in... but I've a certain weakness for Dark-magic, just due it feels so freaking overpowered.


Most begginers feel that way, but while you gain experience in H5, you find that dark magic is one of the worst. Many units come with cleansing or cleansing-like abilities that counter the most powerful dark spells, other towns focus on light magic that counters dark exactly the same way. No, dark is nowhere near overpowered. It's nice to have and strong, but don't call it that way.



Quote:
I tend to leave the pure tanks at home, guarding my cities, since I remember the movement penalty you got for carrying those slow units around in HoMM III.


Move penalty does not exist in heroes V, and leaving tanks in the cities makes them very fragile. No, that's a bad habit from H3: forget it.


Quote:
When I lay siege to towns, then it just tends to evolve into a shooter and caster war. Where my more fragile unit stacks eat bullet after bullet from the guarding towers... but the computer tends to die, never the less since I am busy focus-fire down his ranged units. Once again, perhaps I'm over-rating the moat-damage, and I should really try to get my melee inside the castle walls... or?


Lol ofc! Shooters do 25% damage through walls, Casters' spell damage formula is non-linear, making them weak in the endgame. Use flyers and melee creatures in sieges mostly!

Quote:
Now... as you should have gathered so far, my overall strategy is very might-based with special love for Dark-magic... however, the pure oddity here is that I'm not really that much for playing towns that agree with this. You might have guessed that I am an Inferno or Haven-freak, but actually I love Academy, Dungeon, Sylvan and Fortress far more. So as a last question in this massive wall of text, perhaps it is really nothing wrong with my overall strategy... it is just the wrong strategy for the races I play, or?...


Well, it's hard to judge all the towns at once, for each uses varied strategies. Feel free to ask about any town in detail, though, I'll gladly answer that and it will be easier to talk about towns and strategies seprately.

Regards and have fun with heroes5!

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Jabarkas
Jabarkas


Adventuring Hero
posted February 28, 2007 08:30 PM
Edited by Jabarkas at 20:32, 28 Feb 2007.

Loads of thanks for the replies... and I've spent a few hours just going through the few guides ZombieLord was kind enough to link to. This was exactly the kind of threads which I was looking for but could not find.

...also learnt a few new tricks thanks to Shauku83 and Doomforge's replies that highlighted a few of my mistakes (though... it was perhaps a bit more of a confirmation of my own suspicions )


My first intention was to actually add a bit more in-depth description in my first post on how I played each specific race, but you can only write so much before the time is up and it is time to leave the office... so... perhaps I could fill in a few of the gaps now and outline a bit how I play each of the towns.

Dungeon
Then
The first town I started playing with, hence I thought I might as well start with it here.

Now, I quickly realized that while Blood Furies were no versatile Harpy Hags, they were damn nice damage-dealers... but I'm a bit sad that my beloved Minotaurs got hit by the nerf-bats.  

So far Dungeon-games for me has been grabbing Sinitar (this was before the change to his speciality) and then creeping with Assassins and Blood Furies. For dungeon I try to avoid jump-leaping my production, so I tend to build every creature dwelling... but I don't upgrade, or for that matter recruit Minotaurs or Hydras. Outside the T1 and T2 units, I tend to add Grim Raiders and Shadow Witches to my army. Influenced by the old HoMM III, I might be a wee bit too eager to go for Black Dragons.

Skill-wise I tend to focus (in order) on Attack, Sorcery, Destruction, Luck and whatever turns up as the fifth wheel... but truth to tell, as I mentioned before, Enlightenment was never that high on my list. I usually ended up with either Summoning, Logistics... or if I was lucky, Leadership.

Now
Hmm... in the future, I do think I'll try to look through ZombieLord's guide and salvage the parts that I like. Afterall, just because one strategy might be the most effective does not mean I will enjoy it the most. Take for example the Multiple-Magic-Rush... bah, never I will use that one. I want to have fun, and that means a long game where I get to use all tools available (No, multiplayer games is not really an option for me).

Now, I'm sort of considering to use Kythra, just for the sake of the rare Leadership-skill. I will try to add Enlightenment and try it out a bit more. It was first when this excellent fan-based Game Manual made its appearance, that I started to really appreciate the importance of the primary skills (i.e. Attack, Defense, Spellpower and Knowledge).

I don't think I'll change my building strategy that much, or for that matter my combat strategy. Well... I'll probably with Enlightenment try to use Destructive Magic to a bit of Greater Effect.


Academy
Then
I got a bit irritated on how fragile my Blood Furies were, and how low damage my scouts did... so I started to look on other towns and see what they offered. I made a very brief test with Haven, but never got the economy working to fully utilize the Training-speciality, plus their units had never that fun-aspect that got my heart beating. Instead I discovered Academy, and the nice synergy between the Arcane Forge and the Gremlins. The right trinket and your T1-shooters became quite deadly in the early game... and later on you had all other nice units poping up.

My Academy games have so far been to first get Jhora, and then build myself a nice stack of Gremlins. I try to get the Arcane Forge up relative early, and push up the health, incentative and morale of those Gremlins.

While I build every creature dwelling for Dungeon, I can't say the same for Academy. Here I have the bad habit of jump-leaping my production by ignoring both Golems and Gargoyles, while I try to grab Mages asap. Djinns, and especially the Treasure Cave is also of prime importance. I do try to build the Coliseum before the Pavilon... but, I generally have my T6 units around before I have my Titans out.

Skill-wise I tend to focus on Attack (yes, despite it has only 2% to show up), Sorcery, Light Magic and Summoning Magic... the fifth skill tends to be Luck or War Machines... though I might get lucky and replace that one with Logistics or Leadership.

Now
Ok... I think here I'll start making the most changes. I have started to re-evaluate the importance of Jhora... and skill wise I feel that I should perhaps try to go more for Magic skills, instead of my blind focus on Might skills. Destruction seems like a very good candidate. I think Havez might be the Hero I'll use from now on... though... Nathir looks interesting also.


Sylvan
Then
What I enjoyed the most with Dungeon was its high incentative units... and what I liked with Academy was its shooters... so quite naturally I decided to try my hands with Sylvan next... and the hero was of course Wyngaal.

Start out with Pixii... that are quickly upgraded to Sprites... for then, for the time being, skipping the T2-dwelling and go straight on the Hunters... and perhaps even more importantly, the Lightning Bolt spamming Druids. Next step was to build the Battledance Arena, Treant Alcove and Unicorn Garden, but I generally never recruited any of those units, instead I saved my resources so that I could as fast as possible get those nice looking Emerald Dragons.

Skill wise, then I went for Attack, Luck, Logistics, Sorcery and Light magic. Sylvan Heroes was a bit of an exception from the standard template where I left the fifth slot to be decided by chance. Here I really grabbed the same skills over and over again.

Now
Well... I think I'll keep old Wyngaal around... and that means that I'll keep Attack as one of the five available skill slots. I feel Luck to likewise be a very important skill... and Light Magic feels like a better option than Destruction (since, as mentioned, I favour more of a Might-approach than shooting laser beams). I feel Sorcery is really a good deal, especially Magic Insight (who can say no to Phantom  Forces, Fireball and Confusion?), so it will most certainly be my fourth pick. What is left is the old Logistic-slot.


Fortress
Then
I have actually tried my hand a bit with both Necro and Inferno... but niether town felt like it was my kind of town. Inferno had its moments, but I didn't like the early game there... while Necro was a bit more of the opposite, where Wraiths and Spectral Dragons were a bit of let-down.

However... there is an expansion around now, and I got it... and I fell in love with the Skirmisher and Bear Riders of the Fortress town. It is an ultra-defensive town, which really goes against my usual gameplay... but it is a new town, and who can deny that it is damn fun to see when crippling wounds and paw strike triggers, eh?

I always go for Karli, since I feel that this dwarven hero outshines all the others. He starts out with the ammo-cart, turning the T2 unit to a shooter, and he has Soldier's Luck, which further ensure that all those important unit-specials triggers.

Structure-wise I am still trying my way forth. T1 structure is pre-requisite for the Bear Pens, while Blade Halls goes without saying. No, the big question here is really Priests or Thanes? Ok, there is actually another question also... what the hell is Berserkers?

Berserkers look like they are supposed to give, literally, an offensive punch to your dwarven army... except their health is not really top notch, and all dwarves are so damn slow that you can't really afford to have fragile units. So... perhaps they deal a tremendous amount of damage?... eh, no... not really what I can see. I keep asking myself if I'm overlooking something. Does their growth rate totally change this sub-par unit to an outstanding unit, or am I actually justified to skip it?

Well, over to Priests and Thanes... this is another mystery. Priests will not really compete with my Skirmishers when it comes to damage, thanks to Karli... but then again, Thanes are not really uber-damage dealers either, i.e. if you don't use them against ranks of packed enemy units. However, Priests are ranged units and they can always apply that Mark of the Fire, increasing your fire damage spells. Meanwhile, while Thanes could be a bit hard to use, the upgraded Warlords get a nice ranged attack that has far better potential to cause damage without putting your expensive unit at risk. So far I tend to go for Priests.

The Fire and Magma Dragons are nice I guess... but they are also a bit late game, and since they are so damn slow, you cannot really use them for offensive action, despite that they would probably shine for that since they are afterall quite more offensive than the other dwarven units. In the end, I tend to rely far more on my fragile bears, and those Skirmishers to save the day.

Ok, skill wise I have already Luck. Next one that I tend to grab is actually Defense... and believe it or not, but here I actually go for Enlightment. I feel that with this slow army, you really need to push up the defense as far as it can go. After that I tend to grab Destruction. Now the question comes to which should be my fifth skill... and I actually try to go for Leadership, though I'm debating a bit with myself if War Machines or Light magic could be a better option.

Now
Well, I should really try out those Berserkers a bit more, despite how goofy they might look. Hero-wise and skill-wise, then I think I'm actually doing the right thing. Perhaps I should try to develop my Runic Temple and Mage Guild a bit more, and stop being so dependant on Blackbear Riders.



...ok, enough rambling from me. If you wish to comment, feel free.

 Send Instant Message | Send E-Mail | View Profile | Quote Reply | Link
Jump To: « Prev Thread . . . Next Thread »
Post New Poll    Post New Topic    Post New Reply

Page compiled in 0.0560 seconds