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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Modders Workshop > Thread: Heroes 5.5 Impossible Strategies Part 2
Thread: Heroes 5.5 Impossible Strategies Part 2
azalen
azalen


Responsible
Known Hero
posted May 12, 2018 05:47 PM
Edited by azalen at 18:18, 24 Jun 2018.

Heroes 5.5 Impossible Strategies Part 2

[under construction]

This is part 2 of my post containing an explanation of more advanced strategies you can use on impossible...

These tactics are from the perspective of a fairly resource rich map with an early town level start (1st level units upgraded) and can be shifted 1-2 days depending on the town level you start with and the resources of the map.


What to Do Day 1:

I usually start with a minor artifact, but what initial advantage you start out with (gold, recruitment, minor artifact) can depend greatly on the map.  

If you allow reloading to get a favorable start, then you can target certain artifacts...

For might heroes, the ideal artifact to start with is Ring of Caution (with the exception of Dungeon).  Sword of Might is good and Armor of Valor is also good.  Edge of Balance is decent for good factions (+3 attack mode).   You want attack stat over defense, because you won't be making much use of defense when relying on your ranged force and 1 unit blockers.  

For magic heroes, if you intend to get/start with Summoning, then Elemental Waistband is really good.  If you don't intend to get Summoning, than it is a mix between Beginners Magic Wand, Eldritch Breastplate or Necromancers Helm depending on hero beginning stats.

If you allow reloading, pay attention to the identity of the wood/ore guards.  Large groups of Assassins/Scouts, Dryads/Sprites/Pixies, Gremlins, and Skeleton Archers are problematic and can impose significant delays on your creeping.  You might want to reload if you see those groups at either mine on turn 1.



The Gatherer Hero:

On the first turn, the first thing you want to do is hire a second hero in your faction.  This hero will transfer all of his units to your main.  Also, if that hero has additional war machines, don't forget to transfer those to your main as well.  

This secondary hero will have the important job of collecting all the free/non-guarded resources on the map.  The main should not waste movement points to collect these.  Send the second hero immediately out to collect resources after transfer.  

Once your main starts out, he will generally never return to the town until very late game to pickup spells (I usually never return to the main town until I have level 5 guild and access to town management portal).   If your main needs troops or artifacts (bought at town merchants), secondary heroes will shuttle those to your main.   The one exception to this rule is early in week 1 if your main needs access to a critical creature upgrade (like Arcane Archers, Blood Furies, Crossbowmen etc..).

Remember that you can only hire a secondary hero with a full army each week.  If you try to hire a second hero in the same week, he will only come with a stack of 1, so you aren't getting your money's worth.   In general, hire a hero each week so you can get a fresh army stack, unless it is absolutely critical you get a second hero in that week.

Once your gatherer hero finishes his week 1 gathering task, he can either go back to town to become a governor, camp at a trading post/creature dwelling, help with creature shuttling, or become a Squire hero (see below) depending on map.



The Squire Hero:  

Every main hero needs a good squire hero, who essentially follows your main around.  The purpose of the squire hero is 3 fold:

-Prevent wasting of movement points by picking up resources that are not necessary for your main to pick up like treasure (when you intend to take gold), mining resources, mine ownership, artifact (which you trade to your main)  etc... picking up resources costs a lot of movement points... movements points that you can put towards your main creeping faster.  

-Provide additional army slots for you main.  When your main needs to go to a pure ranged force + all 1 unit blocker configuration or go into a particular configuration to take on a ranged force (like 7 1 unit blocker stacks), the squire hero provides the flexibility for your main to do so.  

-Help shuttle troops from your town to your main so your hero doesn't need to waste movement points visiting town.

I generally get a squire hero at the beginning of week 2, and leave my original gathering hero as a governor, but this does require extra gold, so your decisions can vary per map.  If the map is gold poor, you may just want to make your gathering hero a squire hero.    



Magic vs Might Hero (A General Overview):

In the general sense, the difference between the two hero types is that might heroes' have more powerful creatures, so their creature turns are more powerful, whereas magic heroes have strong spells, so their hero turns are more powerful.  

What does this mean from a week 1-3 standpoint?  Might heroes enhance creatures, so they get a good return on their gold investment from buying creatures.  However, creatures are expensive, and might hero turns are weak, so they MUST buy creatures to compose an offensive forces.  Magic heroes get more of their offense from spells, so they don't necessarily need to spend a whole lot of gold on creatures, saving money for spell power/knowledge artifacts, 50% spell damage artifacts, and racing up the tech tree to creatures that are powerful without the need for much might stats (like level 7s).  

Might heroes can mitigate their dependence on creatures somewhat by only investing in creatures that they absolutely need to creep: usually a ranged force, a stack of blockers, and maybe non-retaliatory finisher units like Pixies and Cerberi.  They can also mitigate their dependence on creatures by investing in early week 1-3 creeping skills like War Machines and Combat.  These skills allow might heroes to enhance their non-creature offensive turns, so that they a) don't take as many creature losses and b) don't have to invest in a lot of the creature tiers early on, allowing them to race up the tech tree faster.  However, both War Machines and Combat don't scale well into the end game, so the might hero might have semi-dead skill slots when it comes down to the final battle.

In general, might heroes creatures will take more losses because, even with their higher might stats, their offense doesn't match the tricks/damage output of a magic hero.  This means more turns for opponent stacks to be beating on might hero stacks, and more losses.  This is a problem, because Might Heroes rely on creatures to maintain their offensive potential, and if they lose creatures, they lose effectiveness and momentum going forward.  This is why, even though it is a weaker replenishment strategy than say, Regeneration... War Machines->Tent is so valuable to a might hero.

Magic heroes are limited by mana, which they can get from mana regeneration, spending a turn in a town to get to 100%, and mana wells.  If they don't have easy access to mana wells, they can waste tons of movement points and turns recharging their mana, as they are largely ineffective without it.  It is for this reason that magic heroes need to plan their turns carefully, as spending your last few movement points so that your hero spends the turn inside a town (recharging mana to full) instead of outside (just knowledge regen) can make a full turn difference.  

A magic hero wants to increase their spell power so they can get more effectiveness PER mana.  In other words, a lightning bolt at 20 spell power does roughly twice the damage of a lightning bolt at 10 spell power, but they still cost the same amount of mana, increasing the efficiency of the magic hero's usage.  Spell power also allows the magic hero to enhance their effectiveness PER SPELL TURN, allowing them to do things like burn down opponent stacks faster, minimizing any losses their creatures might take.  Early on, talents that give you spell power early on are very valuable for getting your magic hero online: Exorcism, Arcane Brilliance, Arcane Exaltation (if you can mentor it off later for Swift Mind), Cold Death, Twilight, the +4 Summoning skills, etc...  

Magic heroes are on a perpetual quest for the 50% damage artifacts.  Even though these artifacts are minor, they can have a massive impact on magic hero effectiveness, because, if they can match a good destruction spell in their spell book to an artifact, it can be like increasing their spell power by 50%.

When magic heroes first start out, the knowledge stat is in short supply, and is very limiting.  Finding a way to get knowledge is just as high a priority as spell power.  However, knowledge doesn't do anything to enhance your hero's effectiveness per spell turn, making it a much lower priority as you get into weeks 2-3.  The mana regeneration aspect of knowledge can be more or less important depending on the preponderance of mana wells on the map.
   


Creeping:

When you start out, the first thing you need is a creeping strategy.   This strategy will depend greatly on your hero, town type, and spells.  A good creeping strategy conquers the map with minimal losses to your army with each encounter.  Sometimes you can mix creeping strategies, depending on hero, but I'm listing here the main archetypes:

1) The Ranged Stack with 1 Unit Blockers Strategy:

This is the most common creeping strategy available to both might and magic heroes most heroes.  With this strategy, you get a large group of ranged units and a set of 1 unit blocker units to take hits while your ranged units continually shoots at the enemy.  Because most of the hits you take kill 1 unit blockers, you aren't losing any offensive army potential with each encounter.  The overall idea is to delay the opposing stacks as much as possible by forcing them to kill 1-unit blocking stacks while your ranged, War Machines, Hero, and/or Spells kill the opposing stacks.  

Ranged units vary by faction for week 1:

Academy: Gremlin/Gremlin Sabatoer
Haven: Archers/Crossbowmen
Sylvan: Elven Archers/Arcane Archers
Inferno: Succubus/Succubus Mistress
Necropolis: Skeleton Archers
Fortress: Blood Fury, Blood Sister (not ranged, but serve a similar purpose)
Stronghold: Centaur/Centaur Nomad

You will also need a group of Blockers/Finishers

Academy: Gargoyles
Haven: Peasants
Sylvan: I usually use Blade Dancers here as Pixies are more valuable
Inferno: Horned Demons
Necropolis: Zombies/Ghosts
Fortress: Mountain Guards
Dungeon: Assassins (unfortunately, as they are valuable - you can also use minotaurs)
Stronghold: Goblin Trappers


While maintaining your blocking stacks, a squire hero can help your main hero manage the army slot resource.  Remember that each army slot is a resource.  If you occupy an army slot with a group of your units that could take hits from the enemy, than it might not be the best use of that slot.  For example... a common offensive configuration for difficult gatekeeper battles is a single ranged stack with 6 1-unit blockers.  This is often better than deploying the full offensive might of your army, because you don't want your valuable ranged and non-blocking units to take big losses.  Another common configuration is the 7 1-unit blocker with no ranged group deployment.  This is a useful configuration when going up against glass-cannon ranged units (like elves).  The squire hero provides additional army slots to hold units and allows you to configure your main's army slots in the most efficient way possible so as to avoid losses.  

Usually, your ranged force is not enough on their own to effectively creep (unless, of course, you are partying with overpowered Arcane Archers).  Therefore, your hero will need to supplement your ranged with additional hero offensive skills.  These skills are: War Machines, Combat, and Spells.  For the most part, War Machines and Combat are considered Might Hero skills and Spells are under the purview of Magic hero with their own set of enhancing magic skills.  

War Machines gives you access to the immensely helpful First Aid Tent, that allows you to resurrect any losses you take with your ranged.  It also gives you access to additional ballista shot, making your ballista an effective offensive weapon in week 1-2.  The combination of Ballista, First Aid Tent, and your ranged is usually enough to take down most week 1-2 encounters with minimal losses.  Engineering is a good skill as well, as it allows your Ballista to beat out the initiative of ranged units.  I recommend against Triple Ballista (unless you are confident the extra offense puts you over the glass cannon threshold), as First Aid Tent is simply too good Week 1-2.  Ballista is also really good against ranged encounters, as the ballista can serve as your ranged force to take town the ranged stacks, while you just deploy blocking stacks to take hits while the ballista and your hero kill off the ranged (leaving your valuable ranged undeployed and unharmed).  

The second skill to consider is Combat... but only a very specific combination is useful: Martial Arts, Chain Attack, and Stunning Strike.  If your hero starts with Combat, like a lot of Death Knights, than Stunning Strike is definitely a worthwhile skill to pursue.  The idea is you place Chain Attack on a high initiative ranged unit like Gremlins or Skeleton Archers.  Then, with both your hero attack and the additional hero attack generated off the range, you can effectively control the initiative of up to 2 mobs.  If you can get the opponent to just 1 stack, you can shut down their turn all together.  Therefore, if you can get the opponent down to 2 stacks before the opposing stacks eliminate your ranged blockers, you have pretty much won the battle.  The base combat skill itself is pretty bad for all towns except Necropolis (for Vampires and Liches, its pretty good), as you don't really want your valuable stacks to be taking hits, period.  Martial Arts should also not be ignored as a pretty way to turn your hero into an effective damage dealer, particularly when combined with Chain Attack.  

Finally, you have the Spells Option, which is typically a Destruction/Summoner type magic hero option.  Here, your 1 unit blockers are doing the job of delaying the enemy while your magic hero does most of the work.  In this case, your ranged stack is only a small contribution to the overall offense, and you may not even want to deploy them in favor of just another 1-unit blocking stack or a protected larger group of blockers.  I will cover useful creeping spells in a separate section.  

For might heroes, ranged play a more important part in the offense of your army, so you will want to be on the lookout for skills that improve your ranged offense.  Here, the big winners are Battle Frenzy and Archery.  Battle Frenzy can provide an immense offensive upgrade for level 1 ranged units (Gremlins and Skeletons) as well as non-retaliation units like Pixies and Cerberi.  It can also pump the damage of your blocker units, turning them into fearsome finishers (like horned demons and gargoyles).  Archery is good mainly because it pumps the damage of your non-retaliatory ranged attacks (the attacks you will most often use).

Finally, consider the special features of the blockers of each factions.  Some have major advantages, like ghosts, giving you additional hits of delay due to Etherealness.  Inferno has gating, that can be used to gate in other blockers.  An Inferno blocking stack of 3 horned demons, for example, can summon a 1 unit blocker.  Some blockers have more subtle advantages.  Gargoyle, for example, have flying, which allows them to position themselves around firewalls and blade barriers, and obsidian gargoyles can absorb magic attacks, making them useful against druids, mages, and titans.



2) The High Defense "Tanking" Strategy

This is a unique strategy available primarily for Might Heroes (high spell power Light Magic heroes can also employ this strategy when they get regeneration).  The idea here, is to leverage a high HP, high defense "Tank" unit that you can get by late week 1... either through targeted building investment or creature paddocks.  Examples of these types of creatures:

Deep Hydra, (high hp, regeneration)
Unicorns (tough for their tier)
Ancient Treants, (high hp, defense, take roots)
Foul Wyverns (mild regeneration)
Battle Griffin (high hp and defense for their tier)
Mountain Guard (high hp and defense for their tier, Hold Ground, Ingvar buff)

For might heroes, the idea here is to obtain Defense->Vitality->Stand Your Ground and keep a single stack of these creatures in defense mode.  When combining might hero defense stats, hero defense skill, high creature defense, standard defense bonus, and Stand your Ground, your creatures become very "tanky" for their respective tier, making them easy to replenish with a mild replenishment strategy like War Machines->Tent and Regeneration.  For the most part, you will stay in defensive stance and rely on retaliation, your hero attack, and War Machines to do your damage.  In this case, an investment in the Combat skill is actually warranted, as retaliation is what your creatures will be doing.  

Retaliation strike and Preparation are also high picks (though I don't like the -2 attack from Preparation in the early weeks).  Note that Preparation isn't that effective with low initiative tank units, because it only activates once every time you activate defense for your creature.  Therefore, it is more useful for creatures like Battle Griffin (with 11 initiative).  So, don't consider Preparation a must-take.      

Some creatures, like Deep Hydra and Wyverns, come prepackaged with their own regeneration which is fairly effective, just on its own, weeks 1-2.

Just because you are relying on a tank unit doesn't mean you shouldn't deploy 1-unit blockers.  These blockers keep attackers off your tank stack long enough for your Hero/War Machines to whittle down their numbers.  

You can also deploy your ranged underneath the tank in the corner, guarded by the larger tank unit, for additional offense.  

For might heroes, this strategy does not scale particularly well into end game, when you have large groups of level 6 and 7 stacks, as they simply hit too hard for meager replenishment strategies like Tent, but it can get you through weeks 1-2 Impossible with relative ease.  In late game, you will want to transition to level 7 "Tanking" or just a standard Might setup of your best units.  

Level 7 Tanking is a similar, but tactically slightly different strategy, usually employed by light magic heroes.  Here, you deploy your full Level 7 stack, with super high defense and set to "defensive", which allows them to take hits and dish out vicious retaliations.  The idea is to use Regeneration (the top priority spell) on your level 7 units.  Most hits will not kill more than 2-3 level 7 units, allowing regeneration to keep up with the losses.  You can also apply Endurance and Celestial Shield to the level 7 tanking unit to make it easier for regeneration to keep up with the losses.  Finally, if regeneration is still not keeping up with the losses, you can cast Resurrection.  Mix and match these spells depending on which ones you get, but the key spell here is Regeneration.  A couple of important creature notes here:

-Initiative is an important factor for Regeneration.  The higher the initiative of the level 7 creature like Emeralds, the faster they regenerate.  This makes them "tougher", even though they not be perceived as a "tanky" level 7 unit.    
-Seraphs come prepackaged with their own Regeneration spell (in cases where you were unlucky enough to not get it yourself).



3) Summoning Creeping

The Summoning magic school is unique in that it is a creeping strategy unto itself.  Let us look at each spell to why:

Fire Trap: Fire Trap is immensely overpowered against walker units (especially large ones).  It can deal with a high percentage of encounters on its own.  The idea here is to get expert Summoning (for max number of mines) and simply deploy a bunch of 1 unit blockers to give you time to put a large mine field down in front of your stacks.  Then, you watch as the large units crumple to your minefield.  It is also quite mana efficient compared to destruction spells.  

Summon Elemental: When combined with Master of Conjuring and Pyromancy, the number of elementals you summon with this spell is far in excess of the power level of week 1-2 encounters, making creeping almost trivial.  With this spell, you sometimes don't even need a ranged force (you can just deploy a bunch of 1-unit stacks and let the fire elementals do their work). The spell is also quite cheap when compared to destruction (you only have to cast it once most of the time).  Not only that, the elementals can serve as additional blockers in a pinch when your 1-unit blocking stacks have been eliminated.  Finally, Pyromancy gets you the ultimate Summoning prize: Firewall - FOR FREE! (more on that later).  

Arcane Crystal: I consider it one of the weaker Summoning spells, but it still situation-ally useful.  It gives you the ability to place a 1 battlefield space blocker per spell cast in different locations, preventing walkers/flyers from getting to locations where they can attack your units.  It can be a poor man's blade barrier if the battle map has a lot of terrain elements that allow you to maximize it.  It can also be used to block ranged attackers that are close together.

Blade Barrier: This spell can absolutely dominate the AI.  Place a bunch in front of your ranged attackers, and they act as a nearly impenetrable barrier, allowing your ranged to attack forever without the need for blockers.  Watch as dragons/flame lords etc... stand around aimlessly not sure what to do with themselves as the AI tries to figure out how to get past your blade barriers.  Meanwhile, your range wrecks them.  This spell is also fairly cheap for its battlefield impact.  

Phantom Forces: This spell is pretty good for might heroes... even at low Summoning spell level.  You don't even need Summoning to make this spell good, as might heroes can use it on their level 1 battle frenzy enhanced stacks, and have a very deadly additional unit.  If you are a might hero, and you find a phantom forces scroll, this is actually a scroll worth equipping.  For magic heroes, duplicating your level 7 stack stacks is no joke.  The fact that this spell also gives the copied stack eternalness makes the copied unit very difficult to deal with, potentially wasting the opposing hero spell turn or big creature stack attack on a ethereal miss.

Firewall: On the surface, Firewall just seems to be another destruction-like spell.  However, it has several factors that make it one of the best creeping spells in the game.  First of all, you can get a 4th level spell FOR FREE and GUARANTEED without any investment in the mage guild with the Pyromancy perk.  This is huge when you're talking about creeping quickly.    Second, an individual firewall doesn't go away after the first time it does damage... it keeps doing its damage past your spell cast turn if the creature does not move.  Thirdly, when played tactically correctly, it acts almost as an AOE on all opposing stacks.  Thirdly, it benefits from Phoenix Feather Cape, so it doesn't have any disadvantages to Destruction in that respect.  Finally, and most importantly, Firewall STACKs in the same area, so if an opposing unit moves to an area where 4 firewalls have been placed, it is like being hit by 4 destruction spells at once.  

The idea of Firewall is that opposing stacks need to kill your units to kill you, so you know the general location of where they want to move (adjacent to your ranged most likely).  Therefore, if you stack multiple firewalls in the location where the opposing stacks MUST move to kill you, then they will get hit by multiple firewalls at once while they try to attack.  This produces a "Moths to the Flame" effect where they just crumple as they try to attack your ranged units.  In effect, each firewall cast becomes an AOE on all enemy opponent units.  Now, you will still need to give yourself time to stack firewalls, so you will need to sacrifice a few 1-unit blockers to give yourself enough spell turns to stack 3-4 firewalls.  Obviously, this tactic doesn't work on humans, but against the AI, it is dominating.

Firewall is also great for difficult ranged/spell caster battles, particular if the opposing stacks are in the 4 stack arrangement.  The idea is to hit 2 stacks with each firewall cast.  Because ranged don't really move, the ranged will continue to take hits from each firewall cast, wearing them down to nothingness.  Often, all that is required for ranged with firewall, is to show up with 7 1 unit stacks.  The ranged will not be able to kill all the 1-unit stacks before the firewalls kill them.  

Firewall is an expensive spell, so it is best used against difficult encounters like gate keeper battles, level 7 battles, and difficult ranged/spell caster encounters.


4) Destruction Spell Creeping

Destruction is an inferior spell school to Summoning when it comes to creeping.  The reason for this is it doesn't have the mana efficiency to compete with Summoning, nor the strategic value of exploiting the fact that the opponent stack has a single creature type.  It also doesn't have the ability to alter the map to exploit some of of the deficiencies of the AI.  

On the other hand, Destruction is generally more effective in the end-game battle and against human opponents than Summoning, because it has IMMEDIACY.  When you cast an empowered implosion/cold death, that stack is generally dead.  The AOE spells of Destruction have the ability to affect many unit stacks IMMEDIATELY.  When you cast an empowered/emerald slippers Meteor Shower, it will critically melt many of your opponent's lower HP ranged units before they can attack.  Also, your opponent will have a mix of creature types, so the strategic value of Summoning over Destruction is lessened.

That is not to say that Summoning is a bad spell school in the end game.  An opening turn phoenix cape/firewall on your opponent's ranged is pretty good.  Phantom Forces on a level 7 unit stack is no joke.  Hypnotize is... well.. puppet master, and Phoenix can pull games out that may have seemed lost.  One important factor about Summoning is that many of its spells can operate independently of your opponent's magic resistance.  Spells like Phantom Forces/Phoenix/Blade Barrier don't care about your opponent's magic resistance.

Overall, in the end game battle, it is all about what is the most effective possible thing you can do for this spell turn, and if you have skills and talents that don't contribute towards that one individual action, than they are dead skill slots for that particular spell turn.  If your hero has access to empowered slippers/implosions and icicle/cold deaths, chances are they won't be casting too many Summoning spells.  A Summoning spell slot could be a dead slot you could have put towards advancing your destruction hero faster towards the key Destruction talents.  A full-blown destruction caster has devastating spell turns if your opponent has no magic resistance.

Having said all of that, Destruction isn't a bad creeping school, it just isn't quite as good as Summoning.  The effectiveness of Destruction depends greatly on the location of mana wells on the map.  Depending on knowledge based regeneration is simply too slow and can waste movement points to the point where it isn't competitive.  Plan your moves carefully to END at a mana regeneration point like a mana well or a town.  If you end just short of the mana well, it can be a wasted turn, because your hero won't be able to creep any stacks the next turn.

While creeping as a Destruction caster, you have two opposed needs placed upon you.  The first need is to conserve your mana so that you can successfully creep to the location of the next mana well/town without having to stop and wait for mana regeneration.  The second need is to minimize the losses of your units, which means you might want to cast more powerful




5) Stalker's Only Creeping
   
This option is only available to the Dungeon town, and is one of Dungeon's greatest advantages over other towns.  The idea here is that the only units you buy at Dungeon are Stalkers, allowing you to save money for building mage guilds, buying spell power/50% damage artifacts at artificer guild, and building towards dragons.    

Stalkers, a level 1 upgraded unit, can turn invisible for 3 turns, effectively giving you 3 spell turns to cast Destruction/Summoning spells on the opposing stacks before the turn visible.  

However, it is not just 3 turns... most opposing creatures can't reach your stalkers the 1st turn, so you can wait a turn or two before you turn your stalkers invisible, extending the number of turns you can cast spells without taking any losses.

Also, you don't just have 1 big stack of stalkers... instead, you employ several 1 unit stacks of stalkers, so even when they do turn visible, the opponents can only kill 1 stalker at a time.  More targets for the opponent to kill means more time to cast spells.

Stalkers can move while invisible.  So, for example, you can spread out stalkers to different corners of the battlefield, forcing opposing creatures to travel the entire length of the battlefield to kill individual stalkers.

Finally, stalkers have decent speed and good initiative, allowing you to run slower stacks around the map, and further spread out stalkers.  Forcing opposing stacks to waste more turns attempting to reach individual stalkers.

All this adds up to giving many turns to cast spells while you are sacrificing very little resources (0-2 stalkers usually per battle).  

Stalkers also dominate ranged, as their 12 initiative generally beats out all of the worst ranged like Arcane Archers/Druids/Mages/Liches, so they will turn invisible before ranged can attack.

Using stalker tactics, it is possible for a Dungeon magic hero to creep the map with little more than the original Assassin production he got on week 1 (no exaggeration).  






 




Random Popular Questions:

Do I take Gold or XP from Treasure boxes?

This is a very map dependent question.  My best answer is that you should take XP with your main all throughout week 1 - UNLESS, it impedes you getting your town to Capitol as early as possible.   All of your secondary heroes should take gold.  

After week 2, you should pretty much be taking all gold with your main.    


Do I take Attack or Defense from Buildings?

This is an easy one... you take Attack 99% of the time.  


Do I take Spell Power or Knowledge from Buildings?

Another easy one... you take Spell Power 99% of the time.  


What's the Best Town Type?

Heroes 5.5 is nowhere near as unbalanced as Heroes 3 was in the town department.  Some towns have more of an advantage in the early game whereas other towns have more of an advantage in the late game, so the map can dictate which town is better.  Some towns specialize in providing a large number of strategies to best leverage what the random map gives them (like Academy).  Other towns emphasize the good stats (attack/spell power) at the expense of units (like Inferno).  

For the most part, Heroes 5.5 relies on a rock/paper/scissors balancing mechanism.  So, if your opponent counters what you are trying to do, and has a powerful strategy that you can't counter, it can seem unbalanced.  An example would be: Sylvan's Arcane Archers seem overpowered if you have no way to deal with them on the first turn, but if you swift mind a destruction spell or War Machines Ballista Engineering them to death before they can go, that advantage quickly evaporates.  Another example is if your Destruction/Summoning magic hero encounters a might hero with the magic resistance special (Ornellia for example) or a Shatter Skill, and you can't seem to do anything against them.  

Having said that, I would say that Sylvan seems to have a slight advantage in terms of unit quality over the other towns (down to something like Arcane Archers having 1 more initiative than they should have) and Fortress can do some crazy stuff in the late game with Runes.  


What's the Best Hero?

Here, the imbalances are a little more significant than town type.  Not all heroes are created equal, both in the starting skills department and hero special department.  See my first guides to see which heroes I think have an advantage.












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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted May 13, 2018 05:54 PM

you speak of materials start bonus but i thought i had replaced it with a troops bonus.
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fidanas
fidanas


Adventuring Hero
posted May 14, 2018 11:27 AM

Man...!
Impossible plus any other option except "Casual Game", is nearly impossible. I get a lots of anxiety overdoses, every time an A.I. hero will raid near my castle, when i'm still trying to build some elementary powers.
And those numbers...damn...So far only my Warlocks could challenge those raskals and their "cheating" behavior.
For example, lets say you play inferno, and you manage not to loose even a sinlge imp. You hire them all and you manage to stack 120 imps for example. Then an inferno A.I. arives and challenge you. You try not to snow your pants when you see about 300 imps in his ranks. Tough Tough Tough. Love it...hehehehe.

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Just another turn and i'm done...

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magnomagus
magnomagus


Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
posted May 14, 2018 01:10 PM

Well impossible with casual game is not really impossible it basically combines stronger neutrals with a weaker AI, a casual AI on hard will end up with bigger armies. Hard without casual game may already be tougher than playing impossible casual.
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