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| Thread: Heroes 3 - Fortress Review |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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Ebonheart
Famous Hero
Rush the rush
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posted November 17, 2016 06:11 PM |
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My two cents. I believe Fortress work well vs any town nor is it exposed to any certain town. However, it does not have any "clear" advantages either, making it feel somewhat "weaker" than say a well rounded town like Castle/Dungeon.
But this is just based on my experience with the town, it might be best if some player who tends to play Fortress frequently to help out.
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AlHazin
Promising
Supreme Hero
النور
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posted November 17, 2016 06:51 PM |
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Edited by AlHazin at 19:56, 18 Nov 2016.
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Town Rating
OK, I incorporated the last details, please read it and tell me if it is OK or if it does need any change. 
I. Creatures - Powerful but slow melee units, highest defence. Cheap, with good growth (gnolls, flies). Great specials (Poison, Dispel/Weakness, Death Stare, Stone Gaze) make this lineup a deadly army.
+ troops : Gnolls are OK. Dragon flies are fast, useful for early scouting and casting first in battles. Basilisks are a good level 4 unit. Mighty gorgons are amongst the best level 5 units in the game with their death stare ability, a natural level 7 slayer. Hydras can attack multiple stacks without fear of retaliation.
- troops : Lizardmen are weak archers (enhanced in SoD), Wyverns are amongst the weakest level 6 creatures. Chaos hydra has 7 speed, and beside dragon flies and wyvern monarchs, fortress creatures are very slow. Having two rather weak flyers make this lineup ill-suited for siege combat if not supported by strategic spellcasting.
Important upgrades : serpent flies, gorgons, wyverns, hydras.
Rating : 8.
II. Special buildings - Rather poor but really cheap : Cage Of Warlords permanently gives +1 Defence Skill to visiting heroes further enhancing the beastmasters' defensive tendency ; Glyphs Of Fear add a +2 Defence Skills to any hero defending the town against a siege ; Blood Obelisks add a +2 Attack Skills when defending the town too ; the Captain's Headquarters help hording up gnolls.
Rating : 6.
III. Magic - Level 3 mage guild ; Spell restrictions : Curse, Disguise, Death Ripple, Animate Dead, Protection From Earth.
Rating : 6.
IV. Grail building - Increases a hero's attack and defence skills by +10 each when defending against a siege, increasing the defensive Fortress capabilities.
Rating : 7.
V. Heroes - Beastmaster : A fighter class relying on defence and focusing on it, resulting in a high defence for its already tough units. As low as the Barbarian in magic. Decent attack (about half it's defence) make this class likely and apprpriate to create tank heroes, still delicate to use. Good specials : Armorer, creature specials.
Rating : 8.
- Witch : A rather weak magic class focusing on magic with very poor defence and poorer attack, good specials are Intelligence, Stone Skin, Weakness. Eagle Eye specialty + Schoolar tactic being hard to put into play.
Rating : 5.
VI. Resource requirements - Lots of Wood, Ore and Mercury (the late one principally for the upgrades), and then tons of Sulfur in the late dwellings, otherwise a cheap town to build. Few building dependencies : you can get wyverns straight forward ; upgrading gorgons requires ressource silo though.
Rating : 8.
VII. Best opponent - Castle : Fortress specific building order gives a quick start to its heroes, getting wyverns early on gives an edge over Castle's classical and expensive building order, allowing early rushes, efficient with the high Fortress' units' defence stats. Fortress requires employing specific strategies to be effective.
VIII. Worst foe - Necropolis & Conflux : Death stare and wyvern's poison won't work on elemental and undead creatures, although basilisk's stone gaze does affect them. Speed is disadvantage for Fortress against both.
IX. Final grade : 6.9.
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Nothing of value disappears from this world, it will reappear in some shape or form ^^ - Elvin
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted November 18, 2016 12:07 AM |
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Seems like Fortress has many bad match ups, against Tower they will be shot down and yes Conflux and Necropolis are no good for Gorgons and Wyverns. One way is to rush the opponent like the example with Castle, but what if everyone has already build their towns up entirely... Well I also think Fortress is a very strategic town, where it pays to play clever, it's all about utilizing those Gorgons and Hydras and doing some damage, teleport, bless, prayer and clone can help with that. Tactics is also a nice skill for Fortress armies. I suppose a good match up for Fortress could be Stronghold as they are even slower, Gorgons have to hit Behemoths, Hydras must hit as many stacks as possible, Dragonflies can annoy the shooters and dispel enchantments. Just need to be carefull about a mass haste and tactics skill, from the Stronghold army.
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AlHazin
Promising
Supreme Hero
النور
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posted November 18, 2016 12:33 PM |
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In the Stronghold review it's written that the best foe for Stronghold is Fortress, so it would be a contradiction to say that it's its worst opponent too. It states that stronghold is better in the range department, and has better speed managing too.
I guess Fortress is a specific town requiring strategies and tactics to ve effective. That will be stated too.
If you're all OK, I'll let the Castle as best opponent, stating of course the strategies to be employed in order to be effective.
I think Inferno is pretty manageable for Fortress too, but not as Castle since Efreet can come easily into play.
____________
Nothing of value disappears from this world, it will reappear in some shape or form ^^ - Elvin
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Pol
Known Hero
.^.
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posted November 18, 2016 03:05 PM |
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Ha, Fortress - The most underestimated town by casual player
I would rephrase this:
Quote:
Mighty gorgons are the best level 5 unit in the game with their death stare ability
with:
Mighty Gorgons are among the most useful 5 LVL units in the game, with their Death Stare ability. Natural Slayer Creatures.
Anyway there are better units for many fights. This speciality is actually an opposite to the one of Pit Lords. If we talk about about pure attack then Minotaurus Kings are The Kings. So Mighty Gorgons could be above middle. Don't forget that Death Stare can be easily countered by stacks of level 1-3 units.
Leader of Fortress army is expected to be deadly in Offense and Defense in case of Bestmaster (and also logistic - they tend to be very fast) and Witch is supposed to Master Water Magic. Because Cure, Bless & Teleport are the most useful spells for this army. And some other magic, mostly Earth or Air.
Eagle Eye is something for special chapter. Good Idea but badly implemented. However, having high level spell is sometime critical, so combination of Eagle Eye and Scholar give sense but, it's impractical until the map/scenario is not having special limitations.
Witches usually look for Prayer, Water Walking, Town Portal, Fly or DD. They also tend to have Intelligence.
BTW Frost Ring can be extremely good support for Wywerns and Dragon Flies rush. Causing havoc among enemy gnolls/pikemens/whatever.
Nothing is better fun, than during siege open the game with teleporting Chaos Hydras behind the walls and start to cutting down enemy numbers. AI usually fail in chaos. (Note, that you need to have some substantial defense and attack for this.)
The town Grail is best suited for defense, accompany it with Expert Slow and Force Field and you can defend your town with hero LVL1 against hero LVL20. Gotcha.
For fighting with Undeads is better to have Expert Dispel, you may also open with this spell when sieging Tower. The effect is very cool.
The original idea was pretty much to use a diversity strategies for every faction, for Fortress this works! - But map/scenario must support it. If there would be abundance of high level spells, no swamp and little of core resources, the Fortress will fail.
Not exactly BTW, Jolly Joker wrote excellent guides (albeit incomplete) here.
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted November 18, 2016 03:18 PM |
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Pol said:
Mighty Gorgons are among the most useful 5 LVL units in the game, with their Death Stare ability. Natural Slayer Creatures.
Nice rewording. 
Level 5 units are unique and useful in many ways, it is one of the levels where it's more difficult to talk about a strictly best unit.
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AlHazin
Promising
Supreme Hero
النور
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posted November 18, 2016 05:23 PM |
bonus applied by Valeriy on 21 Nov 2016. |
Edited by AlHazin at 20:05, 18 Nov 2016.
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I edited the last review post, tell me if it needs any changes. Otherwise, if it's OK, I could send it.
Edit : And without further addo, I will then send it to be uploaded.
Thanks to everyone, for your participation and your contributions to the making of this review, by sharing your experiences with this town and your precious opinions. I can't thank you enough for that. It's a little step for HC, but a giant's step for Heroes series! (We're in the moon, dammit!)
Cheers.
Fortress Rating
I. Creatures - Powerful but slow melee units, highest defence. Cheap, with good growth (gnolls, flies). Great specials (Poison, Dispel/Weakness, Death Stare, Stone Gaze) make this lineup a deadly army.
+ troops : Gnolls are OK. Dragon flies are fast, useful for early scouting and casting first in battles. Basilisks are a good level 4 unit. Mighty gorgons are amongst the best level 5 units in the game with their death stare ability, a natural level 7 slayer. Hydras can attack multiple stacks without fear of retaliation.
- troops : Lizardmen are weak archers (enhanced in SoD), Wyverns are amongst the weakest level 6 creatures. Chaos hydra has 7 speed, and beside dragon flies and wyvern monarchs, fortress creatures are very slow. Having two rather weak flyers make this lineup ill-suited for siege combat if not supported by strategic spellcasting.
Important upgrades : serpent flies, gorgons, wyverns, hydras.
Rating : 8.
II. Special buildings - Rather poor but really cheap : Cage Of Warlords permanently gives +1 Defence Skill to visiting heroes further enhancing the beastmasters' defensive tendency ; Glyphs Of Fear add a +2 Defence Skills to any hero defending the town against a siege ; Blood Obelisks add a +2 Attack Skills when defending the town too ; the Captain's Headquarters help hording up gnolls.
Rating : 6.
III. Magic - Level 3 mage guild ; Spell restrictions : Curse, Disguise, Death Ripple, Animate Dead, Protection From Earth.
Rating : 6.
IV. Grail building - Increases a hero's attack and defence skills by +10 each when defending against a siege, increasing the defensive Fortress capabilities.
Rating : 7.
V. Heroes - Beastmaster : A fighter class relying on defence and focusing on it, resulting in a high defence for its already tough units. As low as the Barbarian in magic. Decent attack (about half it's defence) make this class likely and apprpriate to create tank heroes, still delicate to use. Good specials : Armorer, creature specials.
Rating : 8.
- Witch : A rather weak magic class focusing on magic with very poor defence and poorer attack, good specials are Intelligence, Stone Skin, Weakness. Eagle Eye specialty + Schoolar tactic being hard to put into play.
Rating : 5.
VI. Resource requirements - Lots of Wood, Ore and Mercury (the late one principally for the upgrades), and then tons of Sulfur in the late dwellings, otherwise a cheap town to build. Few building dependencies : you can get wyverns straight forward ; upgrading gorgons requires ressource silo though.
Rating : 8.
VII. Best opponent - Castle : Fortress specific building order gives a quick start to its heroes, getting wyverns early on gives an edge over Castle's classical and expensive building order, allowing early rushes, efficient with the high Fortress' units' defence stats. Fortress requires employing specific strategies to be effective.
VIII. Worst foe - Necropolis & Conflux : Death stare and wyvern's poison won't work on elemental and undead creatures, although basilisk's stone gaze does affect them. Speed is disadvantage for Fortress against both.
IX. Final grade : 6.9.
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Nothing of value disappears from this world, it will reappear in some shape or form ^^ - Elvin
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Valeriy
Mage of the Land
Naughty, Naughty Valeriy
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posted November 21, 2016 10:15 PM |
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Thanks AlHazin (and everyone who contributed feedback) for doing a great job with writing up this missing article for Age of Heroes It is now posted on AOH.
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You can wait for others to do it, but if they don't know how, you'll wait forever.
Be an example of what you want to see on HC and in the world.
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com
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