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Heroes Community > Library of Enlightenment > Thread: HoMM1&2 - "a trip to the past" & complete playthrough
Thread: HoMM1&2 - "a trip to the past" & complete playthrough
Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted August 17, 2018 10:22 PM bonus applied by Maurice on 12 Oct 2018.
Edited by Doomforge at 00:10, 18 Aug 2018.

HoMM1&2 -

I've finally started what I've planned for ages: replaying whole HoMM series from scratch (campaign only, highest difficulty if possible). Since I've actually never played HoMM campaigns seriously, this is quite a treat. Doing it for the first time, so to speak. This means my times aren't exactly the best, but for total lack of knowledge about the map I find my scores satisfying (mostly).
Note that I didn't play multiplayer at all, so all my thoughts here refer to player vs. AI, poor as it is in 1&2.

I've played HoMM 1 first. The game didn't age too well and I've decided not to spend too much time on it. Since I'm aware how stupidly broken Dragons are, I've picked warlock to get it over with quicker. Of course, to maximize the "imbalance touch", I've also recruited a Barbarian for each of the missions - built-in pathfinding is amazing, and in a game where 1 ATT difference over DEF gives as much as +14% damage (!), you really want as much offensive stats as possible. In comparison, in HoMM2, such a difference gives +10% damage and in HoMM3 it only gives +5% damage.

I don't have much to say about the campaign. It went reasonably well, except mission 2, which took me way too long (lack of map knowledge pushed me into being not aggressive enough, letting the AI develop and thus eventually chasing never-ending waves of crap enemy heroes coming from all directions for my weak towns, something I really hate with passion about this series in general). Once I've learned how to clear neutrals easily with gryphs+centaurs (with a small stack of gargs to either block access to centaurs, or to block shooters in first turn), I was breezing through the game. Getting some gryphs/centaurs join me would be an overkill, making the mission ridiculously easy (and it does happen fairly often in this game). Every time the game would be over fairly quickly after rushing Dragon dwelling and pouring all my money into them. Since dragons are so statistically imbalanced compared to Tier6 creatures of other towns AND my hero happened to buff them considerably by his mighty ATT/DEF stats, none could even hope of bringing me any trouble. The stupid AI wouldn't often hand its butt to me on a silver platter anyway - casting blind and immediately attacking the blinded troop (? - no, in HoMM it doesn't prevent retaliation) and leaving half troops in the castle and leaving with the hero despite my strong army was standing next to it (!?) - obviously those were the early days of the AI and it showed. The campaign was fairly generic and boring, and I wasn't interested in replaying it with other factions. Like I said earlier on, the game didn't age well and isn't worth playing nowadays except for some nostalgia and maybe a feel of "going back to the roots". Here's my score (poor due to botched mission 2, obviously)



Then I moved to HoMM 2. This was my first game I played from the series (I was like, 11 yo back then? feels like forever ago), so I was pretty excited here, the nostalgia factor was heavy, and I have to admit I love the Wizard town's theme in Price of Loyalty In general, the game felt way better than the predecessor. Clearing neutrals (creeping) wasn't half as brain dead as in HoMM1 and for the first time a skilled player could achieve some strong advantage over a weaker player, making the whole early stages way more interesting. Might dominance is still there (lightning bolt is powerful though), and the towns themselves are imbalanced as usual How can a game feel balanced in later stages when one town has mostly slow fragile walkers and the other offers a shooter that has more than 50% effective HP of the whole Knight/Barbarian town!? (I calculated for an attacker has ATT=9 and defender has a def of 9 as well for simplicity sake, since performance against tier 5+ creatures is what is important).
Unlike HoMM3, the tier 6 creatures are statistically so ahead compared to other tiers that the game against the AI highly favors the towns with mightiest tier6s, obviously. Since AI doesn't rush you, you have plenty of time and space to develop, usually. That made me avoid Knight, Barbarian and Sorceress like a plague. Warlock troops are highly overrated (besides dragons, obviously) - just look at the numbers - which made me choose Necromancer for Evil and Wizard for Good every time I could pick.

Also, a confession here - it didn't help that I wasn't aware at that point that you can split stacks holding shift, so my map clearing speed suffered. I actually played 5 campaigns without knowing that you can split stacks. This means that it took me either unnecessary loses, or just more time in early creeping, since splitting fliers is obviously mandatory against shooters, and splitting low tier shooters into stacks of 1 troop can bait enemy walkers and buy your sweepstack a lot of time to clear the enemy. Duh! My bad.

As for the campaigns themselves, let me drop my scores first before going in detail:


(like previously, I was playing each map for the 1st time in my life, so the results were sloppy at times due to insufficient scouting).

Archibald

Archibald campaign was the first one I played and I highly enjoyed the Necromancer faction added in HoMM2, since the completely OP Vampire Lords would allow me to easily clear paths to AI, grab important ATT/DEF artifacts on the way and crush the opposition. A cheap and fairly powerful Tier 6 and the ever-multiplying Skeletons (strongest lvl1, also seemingly lowest on AI priority which makes you never lose them to neutrals) would only strengthen my snowball speed. The AI can do nothing against skeletons+vamplords+bonedragons week 2 and you just win again, and again, and again, preventing my most hated "endless hero stream" scenario due to crushing the opposition early and denying them development. Necromancers as heroes are fairly balanced statwise, obviously not Barbarian tier but they do get some ATT/DEF and the necromancy is extremely powerful itself, so I'd end with a decent caster most of the time. IIRC there is like 22% chance for Dimension Door from level5 guild, and it increases your sweep speed tremendously, so that was also a nice bonus. Completing the "Slay the dwarves" mission improved my speed a lot since on many maps you can get 80+ Ogres for free and upgrade them in Hill Forts, giving you a gamebreaking early advantage over your opponents. I liked the final scenario - Archibald with ultimate crown, a grand total of 22 SP and Armageddon spell (with easy to get boots of mobility near your castles) would just melt everyone on the way to Roland, and shortly after that - Roland himself in an easy, fun victory. Definitively a more fun campaign than HoMM1 one, but some missions were just bland and if it wasn't for Necromancer's earlygame power, I'd probably curse a lot, especially without the knowledge about stack splitting at that point.

Roland

Here's where things went downhill. Knight and Sorceress armies suck (yes, I'm aware of the lightningbolt+one v.fast/u.fast unit+surrender hit and run spam, Salamandre! ) so I would choose Wizard every time. However, while powerful even in the early game against enemies without offensive spells, wizard would suffer from repeated lightning bolt strikes to their precious mages, making some rush scenarios less successful, thus giving AI more time to develop. This would end with my hated scenario of zounds of lame heroes swarming the map re-taking your towns in a continuous fashion, being worse than vermin and hard to eradicate. The fact that Titans cost ridiculous amounts of gems would always make my guilds underdeveloped and I wouldn't even have Dimension Door or Town Portal (rare as it is) to help me eradicate the vermin plague 99% of the time. Besides, I always recruit a Barbarian for Wizard town anyway since Wizard hero sucks much like Sorceress does, so access to tier 5 spells would be limited even if my guild offered Dimension Door. My score reflects the amount of days it took me to overcome the pointless herospam and in the end greatly contributed to me not enjoying the campaign much. The fact that I skipped "Save the Dwarves" mission didn't help - it was especially obvious in the "dig for the crown" mission where the enemy would just spam Spellpower 5+ warlocks with lightning bolt against my tired stacks of Mages, leading to a lot of frustration that I could omit by doing the dwarf mission (since that would give me 50+ Dwarves day 1 which would prove too much for the enemy to defend against in an early rush). Even the final mission wasn't too fun: while Roland with ultimate crown isn't much weaker than Archibald, the fact that he's a wizard contributes to low chance of getting Logistics and Pathfinding, both of which are crucial on that map due to its size and the amount of sand/rough terrain! I ended up with an unbeatable Roland (15+ ATT/DEF, 20+ SP/KN) but he didn't have logistics/pathfinding and didn't find a single artifact improving movement speed along the way, which made him very slow. What's worse, Dimension Door was available, but only in two enemy castles and both were extremely far from my starting position. Seeing how slow Roland is I quickly gave up on my towns, recruited about 10 Titans/Phoenixes/Crusaders, went for DD, skipped most of the river by casting DD, summoned a bout and went for Archibald instead of even trying to battle the never-ending stream of enemy heroes swarming my lands. By the time I got to Archibald, AI already took most of my towns. It's not like I tried to defend them, but I wouldn't be able to do so anyway due to the number of troops the AI heroes brought with them for each of their heroes. Archibald himself was a wimp (why Red Dragons rather than Black?) and couldn't handle Titans+Mirror Image+Ressurect True at all. This campaign wasn't fun to me in the slightest, sadly. Too much pointless running around after stragglers and 2/3 of factions available being mostly useless to me didn't feel too fun.

Price of Loyalty

This campaign, however, was definitively a high point of the whole HoMM1&2 series. The introduction of keymasters and barriers was an excellent move, allowing to cut the map into segments you’d naturally progress into, without the constant stream of AI heroes coming from all directions. Even the maps changed, introducing more corridors, streamlining the AI into following a path rather than expanding wildly in all directions. That reduced the frustration a lot. The difficulty, while still low, was somehow improved by giving the AI troops fairly decent starting armies, and the missions themselves were made in a fairly interesting fashion. I actually enjoyed this one. The final map, where you meet multiple heroes with pre-generated 250-300 Bone Dragons each (some with Dimension Door as well), was quite a surprise and actually forced me to abuse the AI's stupidity to beat it since my towns were wildly underdeveloped (I didn't thought I'd need to develop them so I didn't). I abused the fact that AI always splits its troops when capturing a town and led the AI to capture some of my towns and fragment its stack of Bone Dragons doing so. After my opponent was left with 80 Bone Dragons (down from 300), my 19 Titans trampled them (15+ ATT/DEF did its job) and two weeks later I was already breezing through my opponent's lands with 50+ Titans, a force his 200+ dragons couldn't even touch due to my hero's superiority. I have to applaud everyone who beat this campaign without completing the artifact in the optional mission (giving you a town portal spell from, along with other goodies) - playing without TP on this map takes some serious nuts (bigger than mine I guess ). I enjoyed this campaign very much.

Voyage Home

Short and fairly satisfying campaign that would - much akin to HoMM1 - introduce heroes with overpowered armies camping in their town, making rushing undesirable. The first mission was pretty funny (abusing war trolls regen vs. stupid AI was refreshing) and the second one felt a bit pointless (the map looked very pretty though, and thank Lord for no hero-spam on boats, that's even worse than stream of herospams on land). The final mission was a bit of a letdown, though. I picked necromancer side and the opponent was so underdeveloped by the lack of wood that he had nearly no Crusaders/Champions at all, leading me to easy victory. I guess AI can't really cope with limitations intended for the player (since you can choose sides and AI gets the side you didn't pick - with all the limitations placed there for the player). Unfortunately, the nature of this map would mean a lengthy "final phase" of chasing the enemy crap heroes and retaking your underdeveloped towns in a cyclic fashion, something I seriously detest in the whole series, as I've already said (many times, lol). I'd rather have a stronger blue opponent and skip the whole "you have to capture every lame sorceress town on the map to win", changing the victory conditions to "defeat your former Lord" - which would make a lot of sense plot-wise as well.

Wizard's Isle

This one felt acceptable, I guess, but flawed. The first mission was easy (enemies leaving their castles open for a rush from the sea, after that a stomp with 20 Titans + Archery Barbarian on a fragile 0 ATT/2 DEF enemy hero camping in the castle), second felt even more rush-based than the first, third would be extremely annoying if I didn't skip most of the barriers with dimension door (lucky me for getting it and red AI for being passive and letting me set up for a dig in peace - right next to their castle and a hero with a couple dozen dragons), final one - ugh. I'm all for epic stuff, but the amount of black dragon freebies tossed to your enemies is a bit too much and artificially stretches the scenario to a point where I had to wait 2-3 weeks to accumulate enough Titans to stomp the enemies with my Barb with ease. I guess, much like in Price of Loyalty campaign, skipping the "optional" mission that gives you an overpowered artifact would make this mission unreasonably hard, but a sphere of negation is a nice middle finger to those pre-generated level 25+ warlocks the enemy gets for free (with Armageddon in their spellbook. Of course.). All in all, I felt there was a bit of overkill here. Epic is one thing, grindy is another. The scenario could use some trimming, albeit I did like the fact that you had to look desperately for resources in the first month facing an overpowered enemy - I just didn't like the fact that the enemy was overpowered to such extent.

Descendants

The final campaign started with two very easy missions where rushing to tier 6 is so simple that the enemies just don't stand a chance (of course, as usual, I picked a barbarian main in 2nd mission - sorry, not playing warlocks, might over magic, bros). I crushed the AI with extreme ease (my discovery that you can split stacks made me start to abuse the stupid AI - you can watch an example of me screwing AI up right here https://youtu.be/27wBcNofklQ trololo). I thought this would be a fun rush-based campaign that centers on the ability to clear neutrals without loses and destroy the AI fast. I couldn't be more wrong. The third mission was just plain awkward and felt like a poorly made custom map (the one where you recruit the "Uncle Ivan", a blessing for the rest of the campaign - a high level barbarian available from the scratch), the fourth one was an annoying XL with allied enemies pooling in from all sides (yep, one of those) but due to teleport gateways and Uncle Ivan it was manageable (hell, my Ivan reached 13 ATT in second week, lol). Fifth one I chose the "retake the city" campaign because the alternative seemed another "no enemies, just gazillion dragons to kill" aka Mission3 on steroids (no thanks), and I liked it, especially when my manly barb with crap army demolished the puny wizard with a huge army (watch for snows and giggles - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDy88R1R9j4&feature=youtu.be) and it was a pretty nice map too. By that point I completed the 5 missions in 240 days and I hoped for another easy Black Dragon score. However, the final mission was UNBEARABLE. The very epitome of what I hate about HoMM2 campaigns - yep, allied enemies spawning trillions of heroes. Not just regular heroes, tho! Freaking Dimension Dooring heroes that just never. Die. I can't even count how many times I killed those 10 ATT/10 DEF Dimitri or 12SP/10 KN Halon, and I mean killed (they didn't escape) - that meant nothing tho, two days later they were already dimension dooring back in with another 1 million units from nowhere. GOD! In the end I literally started hiring&dismissing heroes, one after another (as much as 20 per turn) just to get Halon, Dimitri and Jezebeth to show up as available for recruiting - only to deny AI the ability to endlessly send those guys against me. Only then I was able to maintain my sanity and slowly (for me at least) creep back to dominating (in the end I used the very same Halon that tormented me throughout the game as dimension door assassin, sniping crap heroes before they spread). If only I could just rush the AI, but NOPE - the map is designed deliberately to lock you in a labirynth-like forest and allow AI free reign, and to make things worse - AI starts with a couple of fully upgraded populations of Knight/Wizard army in their "hometowns" - just in case you, idk, got lucky with Wisdom and Dimension door on your Barbarian. Oh, and an Ultimate artifact buried right next to AI's town? Sure, why the hell not. What a sadistic map. In the end I was so tired of playing it, it made me sick just to chase another **** biscuit chasing after yet another town of mine with magically materializing, never-ending stream of wolves, Cyclopes and Crusaders. I must have killed thousands by the end, which took me exactly 98 days. Wizard's Isle was a campy overkill, but this - this was a whole new level of overkill and it made me glad I'm done with the game, despite enjoying most of it.
But - It's done! Finally, after - well - many years, I conquered the first two games. Sure, I could play Expert-difficulty map on Impossible setting or something else, but screw that, I'm done. Enough of endless hero streams storming my poor cities. Just leave me alone, damn AI.

Whew!

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Salamandre
Salamandre


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
posted August 18, 2018 12:53 AM
Edited by Salamandre at 01:00, 18 Aug 2018.

Great read. I would not have the patience to play H1 but H2 is still fun.

PS: Yet watching your videos I realize how much depth the H3 "wait" feature added. An example of genius and inspiring idea.

PS2: the "stupid Homm2 AI" video is new to me, didn't recall it was SO bad.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted August 18, 2018 01:03 AM
Edited by Doomforge at 01:11, 18 Aug 2018.

Thanks I wasn't too crazy about playing HoMM 1 either but fortunately it's a very short game if you just want to beat it with a single faction.

HoMM 2 is a way better game and I'd rate it (single player wise) as a fun experience, except the final map for "Descendants" and "Wizard's Isle" which went kinda overboard with the annoying aspects of the game.

Now I have whole HoMM 3 ahead of me - Chronicles and everything!

Salamandre said:
PS2: the "stupid Homm2 AI" video is new to me, didn't recall it was SO bad.


AI just goes blindly for shooters first, fliers second, trying to ignore everything along the way. Another way to abuse it would be to tempt it with a single stack of fliers (preferably a single sprite since they are useless) when they only have a walker as an alternative target. They will ignore the walker and kill the sprite, even if it means going back to their starting zone of the combat grid. That way you can kill a bit bigger stacks of units like veteran pikemen without losing important units (ie. druids) early.


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Drakon-Deus
Drakon-Deus


Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
posted August 18, 2018 05:50 PM

That is a nice blast from the past.

And it made me want to play H1&2 again, of course. For H1 I've found the single scenario games better than the campaign and I still find it enjoyable.

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted August 19, 2018 09:31 AM
Edited by Doomforge at 09:34, 19 Aug 2018.

You should do so, completing game series as a whole is a fun experience. I have a couple more on my list: after finishing HoMM (1-7), I'll probably play through Neverwinter nights games and then whole Final Fantasy series.

I guess "Descendants" would be much less annoying for me if I picked a different penultimate mission. The reward for that mission is that Elves/Grand Elves join you for free. There's plenty of grand elves where you start, which would make it possible to expand quickly and possibly take the ultimate artifact before the AI does. perhaps even rushing the opponent, despite him having a hefty amount of units pre-generated, would end up successful with your high level barbarian + ultimate artifact (heck, if you get the +12 ATT sword or the +6/6 ATT/DEF shield, it's free win). There's plenty of gold chests where you start so you could quickly end with a level 10+ barbarian, even in the first week. The reward for the mission I picked is "ultimate scepter" (+2 to all stats). Not too bad, but it's not enough on a map purely based on logistics and momentum. Elven freebies would be a much stronger bonus.

Not going to replay this (sorry ), but for all who wish to try - consider the "elven" penultimate mission, since that should greatly reduce the frustration factor of the final one.
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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted August 23, 2018 10:48 AM
Edited by Elvin at 10:50, 23 Aug 2018.

Nice

No doubt my scores would be much better if I replayed those campaigns now. I probably don't remember the map layouts well but I'm a better player since.. some 10-15 years ago.

H1 campaign wasn't much, I only played the game out of curiosity. The magic system and epic genies were kinda interesting. But H2 is where the money's at. Sure not all factions are as powerful but avoiding sorceress? Disappointed! Still, wizards were my favourite. Herospam haha, this brings back memories ^^ I'd played Roland campaign first but then I bought the enemy's blackies and spammed armageddon to speed up things I don't even remember the price of loyalty maps or even if I ever finished them.

So is H3 next? I absolutely loved SoD campaigns and Catherine, Dracon, Adrienne missions from Armageddon's Blade. Christian too! Original H3 missions weren't nearly as exciting and heroes chronicles were fun if easy. Some way too easy. I think I mostly enjoyed clash of dragons and the sword of frost.


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JoonasTo
JoonasTo


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
posted August 23, 2018 11:23 AM

I remember  not having issues with DDing enemy hero spam but then again I played necro/warlock and sorceress 90% of the time so my speed with dragons/vamps wasn’t as bad as wizard. Especially arma sorceress is epic with those ultrafast phoenixes for catching, and killing, those heroes. Plenty of spellpoints to go DD all over the map yourself and arma everyone before they get a chance to do anything.

Been a while though I do remember all being Black Dragon ranks, I think it was something about getting all towns on all maps divides by days? So that’s probably why you didn’t get them all if you rushed some maps.

I do remember using attritional contaiment to beat the skelliedrags as well btw ^^

There were also a few maps where I couldn't afford dragons so just let the ai capture the town and build them for you xD

... and then when you first try they build the right tower...
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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted August 23, 2018 12:06 PM
Edited by Doomforge at 12:13, 23 Aug 2018.

I don't think Black Dragon rating on all campaigns would be even hard for a 2nd playthrough. Now I roughly know in what direction the enemy castle is - that is a huge advantage I also now what bonuses you get and which ones are more valuable. For instance, "Descendants". Allying with the elves would allow me to rush the enemy. Getting a carry-over scepter (+2 to all stats) effectively does squat in comparison. In fact, one would have to be insane to go for the scepter when there's more than 100 elves at your starting position and you have a lvl 5 barbarian ready to be recruited in your town from scratch.

I'd also know where to rush enemies in Roland campaign. Most likely I'd play Archibald's 1st four missions then betray him and finish Roland. That way I'd get through the first missions faster (vamplords+dragons rush 2nd week). You can't really reach those kinds of speeds with "good" castles unless you have a specific set of neutrals that you can clean without loses.

Maybe I'll do it one day? I'm taking a break now. Finishing The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut (a pretty average game, to be honest. Wasted potential and a lot of bugs, but worth playing once) and starting HoMM3 right away. I have nothing against Chronicles being easy, and to be honest, my goal is to finally beat the "Back for Revenge" map on Impossible difficulty. You know, the one you have to kill 400 ancient behemots on a cursed ground (no casting) within 3 or 5 months? As a kid it used to be my nightmare. Time to conquer it like a champ.

as for Sorceress town, my main gripe is both buildup (expensive for what it does) and Elves (which are very weak, statistically both weaker in damage AND effective HP than tier 2 Rangers of knight's castle - of course per population, not per unit). They are very fast, of course, which is excellent on its own, but they pose little threat on their own. Shooters are too easy to block in HoMM2 where fliers are plentiful & all have infinite movement, and IIRC only Titans and Mages have no melee penalty. A stack of Vamplords lead by a Barbarian on top of those puny Elves really hurts. Of course the AI doesn't do that, and of course you can own AI with anything because it royally sucks in combat AND exploration (being good mostly at creating herospam and being annoying overall), but that's a whole different matter.

If I were to rate towns, I'd hesitate because it depends on the situation. This isn't HoMM3/HotA when it's easy to pick strongest towns. I'd say Barbarian town is very strong on small/poor maps and big ones where you can get more than one barbarian town since you can amass cyclopes which are super cheap , Warlock/Wizard are great on large/rich with few towns (Wizard being better at clearing neutrals and lategame, Titans beat Dragons), and Necromancer feels fairly strong in all cases (might need some extra T6 power though). Sorceress lacks punch and suffers the fairly big buildup costs (10 gems for a T5 building? urp), Knight is downright disappointing (only one fairly fragile shooter and no fliers, very low HP for T6 making it hard not to lose to lightning bolt spam of random heroes, poor neutral cleaning) and I avoid it if I can.  Sorceress does have a great creeping potential with the AI abuse, enemies will prefer 1 stack of 1 sprite over your unicorns so you can get them to return to starting positions, buying more time for your elves/druids to finish them off.
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JoonasTo
JoonasTo


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
posted August 23, 2018 05:53 PM

It really depends on how fast you need to get somewhere. Necromancer is OP as usual if you have a chance to gather skellies and a Barbarian with Black Dragons is the scaried thing in the world.
Except for a warlock with armageddon and dragons. FFFFFFFFFF-
Storm is nice too

As for just creature line up:

Sorceress sucks. I love it, but it sucks. Everything is snow. Fairies are actually kind of decent because they're only average so they don't actually suicide when flying in but that also makes them SUCK in creeping. Dwarves are too slow. Elves are meh. Druids are meh. Unicorns are meh. Phoenixes are just too fragile. So really your only chance is arma spam with ultra fast phoenixes.

Knight sucks because even ultra-fast cavaliers are kind of crap. Everything else is too slow and crusaders are just weak.

Barbarian is pretty good because cyclops are plentiful and not all that weak. Trolls are decent and wolves are fricking awesome. Orcs, goblins and ogres suck ofc, too slow.

Warlock is a mixed bag. Centaurs are good, but not that good. Gargoyles are great for creeping blockers but otherwise useless. Griffins are meh. Minotaurs are actually great but doesn't really help when hydras are obnoxious. Red and Black dragons are the best lvl 6 ofc.

Wizard is a fail, your lvl 1 is great for creeping but they are slow so you don't want them after. Pigs are fast but not great. Golems, GAH. Mages are good but really they're too fragile. Rocks are great, probably the best thing they've got but still average speed, gah. Titans are good as well but you'll never have money to make them so kinda pointless.

Necro has a million skellies, and that limits your speed to average anyway so you can actually pull all of your weight with you but let's be real, you're never needing those zombies. But average dragons? Eh, really? REALLY? Screw you fellas. Mummies? Eh? Liches though, man, they're really sweet. But really the best thing ever are vamp lords. Very fast, never die, what's not to like? BLAAAH!

It all boils down to if you can gather skellies or not on the map you're playing. If you can, necro wins always. If you can't Vampire lords still win always
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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted August 24, 2018 10:10 AM
Edited by Doomforge at 10:26, 24 Aug 2018.

Let's use my calculations for comments. Remember, ATT=9 when calculating EHP and DEF=9 when calculating damage per week (since it's the performance vs. higher tiers you're after, so performance against 9 ATT/DEF or more is more important)

JoonasTo said:

Sorceress sucks. I love it, but it sucks. Everything is snow. Fairies are actually kind of decent because they're only average so they don't actually suicide when flying in but that also makes them SUCK in creeping. Dwarves are too slow. Elves are meh. Druids are meh. Unicorns are meh. Phoenixes are just too fragile. So really your only chance is arma spam with ultra fast phoenixes.


Yeah, I concur.



nothing special here. And everything is just so damn fragile!

JoonasTo said:
Knight sucks because even ultra-fast cavaliers are kind of crap. Everything else is too slow and crusaders are just weak.


Crusaders are surprisingly good at damage dealing, but the whole army is fail. No fliers, one (pretty good) shooter, low HP tier6 making it lightning food.

However, crusaders have an unreal population damage against the overpowered necromnacer army



JoonasTo said:
Barbarian is pretty good because cyclops are plentiful and not all that weak. Trolls are decent and wolves are fricking awesome. Orcs, goblins and ogres suck ofc, too slow.


While not the fastest, the tier 2-5 of Barbarian is 1st regarding population damage and 3rd regarding effective HP (1st/2nd Wizard Warlock, but that's mostly due to hydras and golems which are pretty much useless).

The cyclops sucks. its saving grace is 750 gold cost. Compare the DPW/EHP with other tier 6th, you will see... it's the only tier6 that is easier to kill (population wise) than golems and hydras. Bleh.



JoonasTo said:
Warlock is a mixed bag. Centaurs are good, but not that good. Gargoyles are great for creeping blockers but otherwise useless. Griffins are meh. Minotaurs are actually great but doesn't really help when hydras are obnoxious. Red and Black dragons are the best lvl 6 ofc.


Griffins are really GLASS, just compare their EHP with other units (even of tiers 1-2). Hydras are useless, gargs and centaurs are fine for creeping but lack punch that makes Warlock underperforming against slow walkers due to lack of damage per round. Dragons are statistically far ahead, having more EHP than whole Knight army combined (in addition to being magic immune, flying, v.fast and with double hex attack), but I still think Titan is the better creature of the two.



JoonasTo said:
Wizard is a fail, your lvl 1 is great for creeping but they are slow so you don't want them after. Pigs are fast but not great. Golems, GAH. Mages are good but really they're too fragile. Rocks are great, probably the best thing they've got but still average speed, gah. Titans are good as well but you'll never have money to make them so kinda pointless.


Well, Pigs are as threatening offensively as a population of Peasants (lol) and very fragile (behind Orcs, which are shooters), but the fact that this town has 3 shooters is unique on its own. Rocs are average in everything, but Titans.. they are so RIDICULOUSLY strong, just compare their EHP with whole knight/barbarian town lol. The reason why I prefer Titans over Blackies is because:

1. They benefit from archery (+50% damage) while there is no offense in this game to buff black dragons. This alone pushes their DPW past blackies (excluding the 2-hex attack but that can be a blessing and curse) and their survivability is already bigger.
2. If you put them in the corner, there's only effectively 2-3 units that can gang up upon them. And they have to cross the whole battlefield to do so, giving wizard an upper hand in the ability not to charge at all. whereas Black Dragons will likely be surrounded by all troops and heavily focused upon.
3. You can buff them. Steelskin pushes them to ridiculous heights regarding physical EHP, clone makes them madly powerful, ressurect true is just a slap in enemy's face (rare as it is), etc. They are also effectively partly magic immune to enemy spells, since they can't be affected by blind, paralyze and berserk, the three most terrible tier6 disablers in the game.

Mages are fairly good (lightning bolt food, though), and while titans are stupidly expensive, you can "almost" afford them with 2x town+statue. Because of their ridiculous stats and specials, they are totally worth it, too. I skip everything I can just to get the titans.



JoonasTo said:
Necro has a million skellies, and that limits your speed to average anyway so you can actually pull all of your weight with you but let's be real, you're never needing those zombies. But average dragons? Eh, really? REALLY? Screw you fellas. Mummies? Eh? Liches though, man, they're really sweet. But really the best thing ever are vamp lords. Very fast, never die, what's not to like? BLAAAH!

It all boils down to if you can gather skellies or not on the map you're playing. If you can, necro wins always. If you can't Vampire lords still win always


If you can't, a Barbarian with Vamplords and possibly anti magic spell is a major "screw you" to everyone on the map in week 2-3, to a point of being gamebreaking. The army is fairly balanced but I honestly only recruit Vamps and Dragons (which are slow, but offer great cost effectiveness). This opens the ability to recruit other units from other towns if possible, since Mummies/Zombies are useless crap, and Liches are just AI fodder and they will keep dying every time you're clearing shooters, fliers or whatever without the super elusive "animate dead" spell.

Also, skeletons are stupidly strong in this game.



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