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Heroes Community > Heroes 4 - Lands of Axeoth > Thread: Siege Strategies
Thread: Siege Strategies
isabel
isabel


Known Hero
Dragonblessed
posted August 08, 2009 02:54 AM
Edited by isabel at 02:55, 08 Aug 2009.

Siege Strategies

I find the siege in Heroes IV somehow imbalanced. Once I fought a siege where the computer judges as "You will crush this army like a bug", and as a result I lost horribly.

The balancing issue mainly comes from these two features:

1. The wall. If two stacks fight over a wall, the one outside deals much less damage, and the reduction is a very big one.

2. The towers. If a shooter stands on it, it can shoot no matter how and it is almost immune to other shooters' attacks.

These give me headaches when I siege, so there are some questions I would like to ask:

a. How to take a castle, say, with a good stack of cyclopes, without forgetfulness? Using my own shooters against them simply destroys my army more quickly.

b. Under what condition can a flyer fly pass the castle wall? The penalty hitting through wall is massive, but usually I cannot fly creatures into the castle.

c. Defender's tactics hero hides behind a tower and has his mighty behemoths standing at the gate. His cyclopes decimate my medusi and now I don't know what to do with them.

Anyone got ideas how to beat such a powerful Might castle with a "about two weeks stronger" Chaos?

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Vlaad
Vlaad


Admirable
Legendary Hero
ghost of the past
posted August 08, 2009 03:52 AM
Edited by Vlaad at 03:56, 08 Aug 2009.

Confusion or Wasp Swarm. Displacement. Nightmare's Terror.
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sphere
sphere


Supreme Hero
posted August 08, 2009 05:34 PM

And a few Immortality bottles to gobble down...
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Who is this General Failure, and why is he looking at my disk ?

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SoRHunter
SoRHunter


Hired Hero
posted August 10, 2009 10:49 AM

It seems you are still learning the ways of Heroes IV. Just try and hit the automated button and see what the computer does - I found out a couple of things when watching this kind of battle. Once you know how to fight (eg, to push enemy shooters away from towers, cast forgetfulness or hypnotise on them, poison them and then cast sanctuary, send in a strong stack and choose martyr to keep it alive, etc.) you can then try to reduce your casualties to a minimum (or to an accepted level).

If you wish a more detailed advice, you should post the initial set-up of the battle.

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Invictus
Invictus


Adventuring Hero
posted August 11, 2009 10:28 PM
Edited by Invictus at 22:53, 11 Aug 2009.

Magic is the easiest way to defeat castles. For one thing, magic doesn't suffer penalties when shooting against towers - and if anything, the towers make them vulnerable to your attack spells. As mentioned, there's a lot of ways to disable shooters on towers using spells such as terror and forgetfulness. If the enemy has a strong shooter, hypnotize always results in fun. The teleport spell is also useful in sieges (don't like the cyclops on a tower? then teleport it down right in front of your army!) With chaos, you can use a variety of damage spells, as well as confusion / cloud of confusion, and the Nightmare's terror. Split your nightmares into many stacks so that they can terror multiple opponents.

Another tactic with spells is to sit outside the wall and keep summoning units, until you have a huge army. You can also do this with the illusion spell (Genie/Order), and keep multiplying your army as long as your opponent doesn't have anyway of dispelling the illusions.

With might, it's harder but you can still rely on shooters if you have items that negate the anti-tower penalty, or if your hero has a high level archery skill which would also negate the anti-tower penalty. If you want to fly over the wall, you have to position flyers at the wall and then fly over if the gate hasn't been knocked down. Another thing you might not have realized is that your hero is resurrected right after the siege, so it's ok to have heroes die during the siege. With that in mind, one strategy is to have your heroes soak up the enemy projectiles, since it's not a problem if they die. Finally, another thing is that when you're inside the castle, you want to fight on top of the towers.

"His cyclopes decimate my medusi and now I don't know what to do with them."

Then get more Medusas!
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SmallButDeadly
SmallButDeadly


Hired Hero
Precision addict
posted September 03, 2009 07:02 PM

Well, with order I normally put my ranged troops behind and cast precision on them all. If you are willing to suffer the morale penalty, then I suggest you find a tavern and recruit and Order mage if only for precision.

Then again, I am only new to Heroes too, so... If my advice fails then please don't kill me
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Halflings will rule the world... One day... One day...

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Tzeentch
Tzeentch


Hired Hero
posted September 04, 2009 08:15 AM

It's VERY hard to take towns with lots of shooter with a completely might hero. Only basic order magic (displacement, precision, blur) can save your life. Devils come in handy, but not that much if the shooter has normal melee.
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Impurity shall be our armour
Hate shall be our weapon
Immortality shall be our reward

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Invictus
Invictus


Adventuring Hero
posted September 04, 2009 07:44 PM

I wonder why nwc never made a map that had you attack a castle defended by 70 titans and a hero with very high speed, GM archery, magic resistance, combat, tactics skills, order and nature magic, among some other units. The AI hero has the shackles of war (no retreat for you) and would cast anti-magic on the titans on the first round of combat.

I think that would have been a fitting end to the order campaign, as you would need an epic army to beat that.
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Tzeentch
Tzeentch


Hired Hero
posted September 05, 2009 03:07 PM

Yeah, that's what Gavin Magnus should have. Instead of 4 Dragon Golems (I had 9 of them)!!
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Impurity shall be our armour
Hate shall be our weapon
Immortality shall be our reward

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isabel
isabel


Known Hero
Dragonblessed
posted September 05, 2009 03:24 PM

Quote:
Another tactic with spells is to sit outside the wall and keep summoning units, until you have a huge army. You can also do this with the illusion spell (Genie/Order), and keep multiplying your army as long as your opponent doesn't have anyway of dispelling the illusions.


Yeah, that is one way to beat a much larger AI army. Nature magic is the best for this case, since it also has a lot of powerful buff. Summon a massive army of creatures then Stoneskin, Snake Strike, Giant Strength etc.

And agree about magic: Life buffs up your army, death debuff their army, but none will work if your opponent greatly outnumber you. Chaos can only kill a few out of a hundred. Nature can summon a couple of creatures and get destroyed the next turn. Only Order can save you from huge armies with Hypotize

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Triviadude
Triviadude

Tavern Dweller
posted October 17, 2009 10:46 PM

SoRHunter and Invictus all had very good suggestions.  The basic strategy is to be able to either get inside the walls very quickly (such as sending a black Dragon to knock down the gate or use teleport or using mind spells to keep the enemy forces at bay while part of your army attacks the gate) or to use magic to be able to do damage (poison,hypnotize etc.) at a distance without suffering from the disadvantages that you mentioned (walls and towers) that come from ranged attacks which will be retaliated against causing greater damage than you inflicted.  Without either extensive magic skills or a way to get inside quickly, you will have to have an overwhelming force, not merely an equal one, to offset the advantage of the walls and towers.  

Hypnotize is probably most effective. It allows you take the opposing armies strongest force and use it against them.  Lightning strikes by faerie dragons can also be effective in forcing ranged opponents to abandon their position on towers to get out of view of the faerie dragons.

Four things to be wary of though if you are relying heavily on magic to attack a fortress 1) remember about creatures that are immune to magic  2) heroes might have various devices that make them immune to certain kinds of spells. Although you will have no way of knowing this until you attack--if you find out that a hero has a helm that makes them immune to mind spells, you will have to adjust strategy at that time.  Opposing heroes might also use exorcism or dispel to remove any spells you cast.  If that's the case, you will need to take out the opposing spell caster as quickly as possible. It's always a good idea to take out opposing spell casters as soon as possible in any event.  They have the ability to mess up your entire strategy.  3) the enemy will often try to take out your mage or mages first thing.  Immortality potions might be the difference between victory and defeat.  4) Be wary of your number of spell points.  Use mana potions or mana flare if necessary.  If you are relying on mind spells to keep a superior force at bay, then you have to be able to destroy those creatures with your non-magical forces before you run out of spell points.

One additional thing in regards to potions such as potions of immortality and mana.  USe them on the campaign map prior to the attack on the fortress.  That way you don't have to waste a turn taking them during battle.

Also, someone mentioned camping outside the fortress and building up your fortress (that is an actual siege opposed to a direct attack).  If you do so, also go around depriiving the enemy of resources prior to the siege.  Take over their gold mines, ore mines, sawmills, etc.  That way you impede their ability to also build their forces while you are building up yours.  And you get additional resources.

If you are able to succesfully deprive the enemy of resources and they realize they will eventually face attack from a much superior force, then they may even preemptively come out and fight outside the fortress walls.  Which will probably result in you taking much lighter casualties.  This could be a factor if you have more than one opponent.  You should also keep in mind that if you face more than one opponent, it's not always to your advantage to take a fortress as soon as possible, if it will lead to you taking heavy casualties.  If you take a fortress and eliminate an opponent, but your army has been decimated, then you will be extremely vulnerable to the remaining opponents or opponent.


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Bones_xa
Bones_xa


Known Hero
posted January 20, 2010 08:29 PM

Ya as discussed there are various strategies.
I find that often its easier to fight a castle rather than in open land because the computer stays in the castle and you can pick away at the units with the aid of various spells.

How about strategies on the opposite end?
Actually defending a castle.
It depends on the situation but I say if you know your gonna take losses, you can make it tougher for the enemy if you come out aggressively with your walkers while your shooters are on the towers.

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