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| Thread: Heroes 3 Town Rating -COVE- | |
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Rage08
Famous Hero
Making it in the real world
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posted February 02, 2014 07:44 PM |
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Edited by Rage08 at 21:45, 02 Feb 2014.
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Heroes 3 Town Rating -COVE-
Everyone is invited to share his/her own opinion about every town in Heroes 3. Try to use these topics as order for your postings:
- Advantages, Disadvantages
- Best creature(s), with explanation why, e.g. tactical usefulness
- Worst creature(s), with explanation why, e.g. too low stats
- Special buildings
- Building order (good, too slow, etc...)
- Hero classes (don't refer to these classes for ONLY this specific town, because perhaps they are more useful with other towns)
- Good/Bad on what kind of maps
- OWN subjective rank in a town-ranking, from 1st (best) to 10th (worst)
Let's collect as many opinions as possible, to finally find the best possible "review" of every town.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 03, 2014 02:58 PM |
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This should be in Heroes 3.5 section.
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Rage08
Famous Hero
Making it in the real world
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posted March 08, 2014 01:06 AM |
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Edited by Rage08 at 10:59, 19 Mar 2014.
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Perhaps you are right about that. The mods can feel free to move it if they wish.
Well since nobody has chimed in, I guess I'll take a shot at this. Of course, my and/or our opinions on Cove may change over time, as I'm sure people are still getting comfortable with this new team and exploring optimal strategies.
Advantages:
- Native terrain swamp is good for slowing down enemy heroes in your area
- Overall good damage output and strong ranged units
- Some very useful/strategic unit specials
- The unique war machine (cannon) is certainly an asset
Disadvantages:
- The fastest unit being 12 will likely mean you lose initiative in hero battles (although the overall speed unit to unit is decent)
- Only two "flying" units (Oceanid and Ayssid) and both are quite squishy
- Overall low health for lower to mid level units
Best Creatures... In general, Cove has a solid cast, but these are some standouts:
- Sea Dogs - Although they do require two upgrades, their accurate shot along with good damage/attack/defense, and lastly, being ranged with no melee penalty/no enemy retaliation make them viable at all stages of the game
- Sorceresses - Another ranged unit with decent damage, but more notably, the ability to weaken and then cast disrupting ray on your opponent's key stacks is why they must be a priority for your enemy
- Nix Warriors - Man can these guys take a lashing. Their defensive special makes them extremely useful against heroes/units with high attack skill, allowing them to be the definitive unit at soaking retal and blocking ranged
- Haspids - An all-around force to be reckoned with in most battles. Their damage is above average, continually improves with revenge and, though slightly low in defense, they have plenty of health to get dirty and potentially poison key stacks
Worst Creatures... I can hardly call these creatures bad, but they have "flaws":
- Oceanids - Nothing too wrong here other than being really squishy. Just don't let them take retal.
- Seamen - Their stats are at least average to above average, they just lack a special. Probably their biggest weakness is having to be named Seamen...
- Ayssids - By their own merits, they have great damage output and speed. The drawback is they're Cove's only viable flyer and they are lacking in defence/health. However, because the cannon can attack walls and Cove has solid long range, this isn't as much of a hindrance as it seems
Special Buildings:
- Shipyard - Nice to have, but often not applicable
- The Pub and Roost - Creature hordes are always good for business. In Cove's case, even more so, because they have two creature hordes that both yield above average numbers
- Thieves' Guild - Gives you more info than your vanilla tavern, but not always a huge benefit
- Grotto - Good if you have useless arts or (unlikely) creatures you don't need
Building Order:
The only question that really needs to be asked is "Can you build level 7 with castle week one?" and the answer is "Yes." (you'll just need to sacrifice pirates in this case and you must have started with both level 1 and 2 dwellings day one).
Hero Classes:
- Captains - They are useful to any team with their affinity to attack skill, but especially to their own team, due to the overall high attack/damage of all the units to start with. Pair both these factors with a hero like Corkes (offense specialist) and their damage is unrivaled
- Navigators - Seem like decent magic heroes. Since they gravitate towards spell power, expect to sacrifice spell points for better damage and longer durations
Good/Bad on What Kind of Maps:
Let's see, they would appear to have a solid early, mid and late game...
- For smaller maps, as mentioned above, level 7 and castle can be achieved week 1, so it's up to the map's richness whether that happens or not. Otherwise, Pirates are a solid fallback for nice ranged units to clear starting zones
- For medium maps, the Sorceresses, Sea Dogs paired with any/all the other units make for a solid wrecking crew
- For large maps, refer to the four units from the "Best Creatures" section to see what a team of ass-kicking looks like. These units can take you to end game no problem
- Cove is lucky in that it doesn't suffer as much as some towns from resource poor maps... just a bit of gems and crystal for Stormbird and Sea Witch dwellings and, of course, sulfur for the Sea Serpents. Otherwise, it's basically wood, ore and gold until you start getting into some upgrades
Subjective Rank From 1st (best) to 10th (worst):
Deciding the overall rank of the teams is no easy task, because there are so many factors, especially now that some teams have been buffed/nerfed in HotA (which has been a welcomed change). And, as always, the endless possibilities of maps is going to play to different strengths of different teams. I may end up changing my mind, but for now I have to rank Cove as probably 1st for the most powerful team overall, especially in raw power.
I pitted a full week's worth of upgraded Cove units against each other team's full week's worth of upgraded units. For this test, I made sure each side had no morale/luck bonuses, no spells, no secondary skills and no primary skills on desert terrain and I played both sides to the best of my ability. Cove leveled every team, sometimes by a landslide. I was actually quite shocked and I even redid some battles to make sure, but still the same result. I started experimenting with three full week's worth of upgraded units, still they dominated even teams like Conflux and Castle.
This may be better discussed as an entirely separate topic, but I noticed a few factors that seemed to render Cove potentially overpowered...
- The Haspid's insanely powerful revenge specialty... the problem is, as the battle rages on, their damage output just keeps rising endlessly as they take hits until it's at a point where they completely decimate everything in sight, even units like AA. In fact, in a one to one, a Haspid can beat an AA and an Ancient Behemoth. This isn't even mentioning their unique poison...
- The Nix Warrior's special makes them as hard to take down as most level 7 units. One to one, they can beat a Dread Knight only because they ignore so much damage
- When you start to examine all the other creatures' specials in combination, it makes Cove nearly untouchable. As noted above, it's partly because there are no "bad" units on this team. The Sorceress' Weakness/Disrupting Ray can turn a power stack into sitting ducks if you let them. The Ayssid's double attack makes them basically a flying crusader. The Sea Dog's accurate shot basically gives them a ranged death stare
- Their build order is fast and not resource-intensive, their might heroes are high in attack, their unique war machine is the best by far and their already great units are high in growth
It'd be really interesting to hear some other people's thoughts if anybody's actually reading this.
Overall, I think this team is really cool, has a very cohesive look to it and is very unique, but I'm wondering if others are noticing how powerful they are.
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gatecrasher
Famous Hero
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posted March 10, 2014 04:59 PM |
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Cove is surely very powerful but:
In case you can acquire Haspids still only Tower and Stronghold have got a slower fastest unit.
This way the enemy can possibly act first (in non swamp battles) and cast Mass Slow/Haste and your Pirates/Sorceresses/Ayssids may be taken out after round 1.
Nix Warriors are at least prone to magic.
Your "full week's worth of upgraded units" test doesn't take Cove's high costs into account.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted March 10, 2014 07:08 PM |
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Rage08 said:
Subjective Rank From 1st (best) to 10th (worst):
Deciding the overall rank of the teams is no easy task, because there are so many factors, especially now that some teams have been buffed/nerfed in HotA (which has been a welcomed change). And, as always, the endless possibilities of maps is going to play to different strengths of different teams. I may end up changing my mind, but for now I have to rank Cove as probably 1st for the most powerful team overall, especially in raw power.
I pitted a full week's worth of upgraded Cove units against each other team's full week's worth of upgraded units. For this test, I made sure each side had no morale/luck bonuses, no spells, no secondary skills and no primary skills on desert terrain and I played both sides to the best of my ability. Cove leveled every team, sometimes by a landslide. I was actually quite shocked and I even redid some battles to make sure, but still the same result. I started experimenting with three full week's worth of upgraded units, still they dominated even teams like Conflux and Castle.
In HoM&M there are so many variables and case-scenarios that a single, full week worth of upgrades units combat it is just not enough. Yes, it can give you some idea about how they do in a rich scenario, but that isn't the average scenario.
For instance, the Pirate/Corsair/Sea Dog. Yeah, it's true that Sea Dogs have several awesome abilities and great stats, but the second upgrade building cost a snowton of resources, and in low-income maps they are unreachable (or non optimal).
Not saying that the comparations you made are useless though.
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