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| Thread: Let's talk about Online Games |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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g123
Tavern Dweller
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posted March 17, 2005 03:09 PM |
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Hi Dimis, hope that I did gave some answers on my previous replies.
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I am afraid I can not agree that attacking crypts, utopias, conservatories and bad monsters in general requires no strategy. ... etc "as fast as you can"
That's the ONLY choice of time.
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The second one has to do with minimizing army losses when in-fact you do enter crypts, utopias, etc.
Only choice also. And for this you can read theory (the best way is posts by experts)
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On the other hand, there do exist strategic aspects on the battles against AI. Take as an example entering crypts, where you usually sacrifice one or more units in order to fool computer's vampires or wraiths. This is certainly strategic and not tactical.
That was quite strategic and brilliant for the first that invented it. For all the others is just theory and common knowledge since they can read it somehow.
However I don't distinct strategic from tactical aspects. As you point out they are strongly connected. I distinct inspiration from theory.
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is also a term for a technique in chess (which I can not translate in one word in english :-() when you "drive a piece of your opponent in a square that helps you go on with your attack". This is what happens in crypt and this is certainly strategic!
Several tips that everybody uses whether they invented them or not, become theory.
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moves on chess can be classified to opening theory doesn't really mean they lose their strategic background.Hope you agree on that last one...
Certainly not. But a rook and king endgame can be finished in seconds by a 5 years old kid that knows it by heart. As you said, Giucco Piano or any other opening has strategic background, but for the first 20 moves of such a game you won't take a second. And if the theory could exaust the space than also it would be quite strategic and brilliant for the theorists but nobody would play any more. That's the difference.
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tigris
Supreme Hero
Supreme Noobolator
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posted March 17, 2005 03:44 PM |
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What's the difference between tactics or strategy?
I saw those two words used often in this thread, but not always in the apropriate manner.I live in a military enviroment, so i'll relate this terms to troops in general.
To make it clearer here is a classification of military structures(in my country):group(5-10 individuals), platoon(3 groops), company(4-6 platoons),batalion(4-6 comapnies),regiment(4-6 batalions), division(2-6 regiments), brigade(4-8 divisions),army corps(4-6 brigades) and last the army wich consists of all the military forces, usually 4-6 army corps.If participating in international operations groops of armies can appear.
The lowest level of decision making units form the tactical level.In the military this goes up to a batalion level(that's around 300-500 people).So when you command a force like this you can say you take tactic decisions.This decisions are based on orders/general guidelines issued by higher ranked authorities,have a strictly local area of aplication and generally concearn only the given troops.
Next on the scale is the operative art or the art of opearations.This goes up to a brigade level of comand(that can be up to 50,000 peolpe but not that many in Romania now.Decision on this level must be taken acordingly to a given joined conception(issued by a supperior authority), but it has a certain freedom of decision, within some guidelines to issue orders to its subordinate units.
The top level is the strategical one.Here is where the conception work is made, decision are made at a macro-level.The decision and planning at this level are conceived for a long period of time, suture strategies are generated.
Translating this to heroes is quite easy, taking cripts, flagging dwellings, visiting mills or leps, gathering chests or resources are just means to an end and represent tactic features of the game.
Building up a solid hero, boosting his skills, fighting for artifacts, also building your castle the right way are elements of operative art, cos all the efforts are concentrated in the same direction according to a plan.
The decision making based on the map features that determines all this processes represent the strategy.
One exemple:I'll use a map i played yesterday against a friend on Jebus cross L no under with castle.
The first 3 days i did some scouting/ gathering resousces and gold/ cript fighting and basically gained a good perspective over my staring area.I took one castle, saw the other,saw my goldmines, discovered two conservatories, couple of pandora boxes, checked my board guards(were horde wiverns).
That was the day that i planned/schedualed my tasks for the next two weeks.
My ultimate goal was to break through that horde wiverns day 1 week 3.So i started planning where i should go with each hero,what should do next etc.
That game i'll consider a big succes for me cos i had a rather big starting area, so lots of tempting stuff on the way, but this time i succeded to stay focus on my goal(unlike i do most of the times  ).
I think the biggest mistake i made until now was i didn't stick with the plan, i always felt tempted to walk 3 days to a remote pandora that would give me some creatures or 5000 exp and lost valuable time.
In the end i succeded in defeating the wiverns with 8 AA week 3 day 1, then build up to lvl 17 in a 2 day cross in the middle area, boosted up my stats with some arts then into his area and at his door day 4.
there was no strategy involved in the endfight, the fight against the wiverns or his guards(horde dread knights) were much more challenging that the end fight itself.But planning each thing and see it work out according to paln was the greatest satisfaction of them all.
I'm but a n00b and i cannot take much pride in my skills, but planning something(even at my limited n00b level) and see it work is enough for me.
As a final advice for you guys, as you are seeking a better generator, try downloading the templates from this site in case you don't have them. Those too were created in an attempt to make the game more ballanced and fun.I trust you'll find them satisfactory.
And do come to the zone more often, you don't know how good it feels until you actually do it.
I for exemple, do big efforts to play online, pay a lot to do it, and walk every week end with my hardrive in my hand to a games shop to play.But i wouldn't miss it for nothing!
see ya!
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dimis
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Digitally signed by FoG
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posted March 17, 2005 04:19 PM |
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The second one has to do with minimizing army losses when in-fact you do enter crypts, utopias, etc.
Only choice also. And for this you can read theory (the best way is posts by experts)
Well, you are allowed to find out other ways achieving your goals and everyone will applause you! The fact that some things seem trivial when analyzed doesn't necessarily mean that their potential is lost as time goes by... The problem is that solutions proposed so far are almost excellent and it is very difficult, if not at all impossible to come up with better ones...
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On the other hand, there do exist strategic aspects on the battles against AI. Take as an example entering crypts, where you usually sacrifice one or more units in order to fool computer's vampires or wraiths. This is certainly strategic and not tactical.
That was quite strategic and brilliant for the first that invented it. For all the others is just theory and common knowledge since they can read it somehow.
However I don't distinct strategic from tactical aspects. As you point out they are strongly connected. I distinct inspiration from theory.
I believe my previous remarks apply to this one as well.
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moves on chess can be classified to opening theory doesn't really mean they lose their strategic background.Hope you agree on that last one...
Certainly not. But a rook and king endgame can be finished in seconds by a 5 years old kid that knows it by heart. As you said, Giucco Piano or any other opening has strategic background, but for the first 20 moves of such a game you won't take a second. And if the theory could exaust the space than also it would be quite strategic and brilliant for the theorists but nobody would play any more. That's the difference.
Well, at last we found out the heart of our disagreement! The fact that some things are theory, doesn't necessarily mean that learning them makes them "mere knowledge" ... Perhaps I can agree with you on the example of the 5-year-old child and that rook vs king endgame, but how many children do you know that are able to checkmate within 50 moves rule on an endgame of knight + bishop vs king, or the even simpler 2 bishops vs king? It is surprising though that you use the same arguments as I would and come up to a conclusion totally contrary to mine. If that was the case with theoretical aspects, then everybody who knew how to play the opening and endgame should have been a gm. But this is not the case. As you have excellently pointed out you need inspiration, which is not at all so easily found on heroes as in chess. Perhaps Heores' Tal {for those of you who don't know Mikhael Tal, he was en ex-world-champion in chess and his game-play seemed not at all reasonable on first sight even for GrandMasters. It was only after some moves that the deeper plan was clear.} hasn't appear yet! Moreover choices appear on Heroes all the time. What is the optimal number of heroes on the first 1 day? The answer depends entirely on the map you have opened so far with the current number of heroes and the presence or absence of wood, ore or/and other mines nearby your castle.
I must disagree though, that if we were to have optimal strategies for each particular game, then nobody would play that game. Have you ever played Solo (Solitaire)? It's search-space is about 25 million different positions, yet todays computers can play optimally, without even have to encounter each one of these different positions. This comes from algorithms in Machine Learning (mainly Reinforcement Learning / dynamic programming), and I have written a program to train mine, who after ~4 million games managed to find an optimal strategy for whatever initial position given. Moreover, solo is a game with very poor rules and allowable moves and in addition to that it is totally impossible to teach a person a behaviour on all these possible positions. Simply you can not remember all of them! Apart from that, Heroes is a much more rich game to play and the available choices on one's turn (excluding battles) is a way over 100, so search space explodes on each turn - not to mention different maps! (chess with about 20 available moves on each turn (and the same map all the time!) has a search space with about 10^{120} positions - many many more than ~10^{80} which is the estimated number of atoms in universe).
Concluding, it seems that even though we all use the word strategy, we do have different definitions for that word. But I believe that if we go on with this argument we won't come up to an agreement on generating a more balanced version of heroes. Perhaps it is better to "bypass" that and go directly to our goal.
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LordLazy
Promising
Famous Hero
Wood cleaner
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posted March 18, 2005 11:24 AM |
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g123: you're wrong
tigris: you're right
period
I advice you to get online and play. you will never become a great heroes player from reading strategies, this is learned by experience in online play. How will the opponent react? how will I plan/build? go online and play my last advice here
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tigris
Supreme Hero
Supreme Noobolator
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posted March 18, 2005 06:26 PM |
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lool 10x LL!
nice to be right once in a while!
Theese guys got me upside down with their chess anologies though...
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Plexus22
Known Hero
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posted May 27, 2005 02:49 AM |
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I think one of the main problems in this whole discussion is that Heroes 3 is a very dynamic game and has many LEVELS of strategy and everyone involved in this discussion has a different idea about the level of strategy or tactic or whatever u wanna call it, that they want to discuss or proove/disprove a particular point. Practically every decision made in the game fits somewhere in the strategical train of thought that as a whole makes up the players "srategy" unless ofcourse a players entire game is based on random decisions made "on the fly" that have no relation to other decisions in which case it is safe to say that the player has no strategy, probably does not know what they are doing, and will most certainly loose to a skilled player. Every decision made though, from day one, starting with the first move of the first heroe is part of the strategy and as I mentioned a players strategy takes place on EVERY level from exactly which hero to move in which direction, who to take as main, who to take as supporting heroes, what secondary skills to take (based on hero type, opponent hero type, current circumstances, goals, map type/richness/size/ etc...), what to do with each battle, and in a macro (not micro) respect, what overall chain of events or minor goals are needed to achieve the major goal or "gameplan".
This is where it all breaks down into what is considered strategy and more importantly this is where the defining lines exist between poor/unskilled players and skilled/veteran players and every level in between. Now, I think its fair to say that pretty much every player has a strategy or strategies on some level for example most players have an idea even in their first online game about what type of building process they like to use (creatures first or money first) and lets say that considering the town type they have and the richness of the map that they happen to choose the best building "strategy" in this respect....well, this may be the extent of that players strategy. They may think that thats all they need to do to win the game and as long as they develop their town correctly they got the game whereas a more skilled player will consider that as only a crucial piece of some overall plan that they will surely have an idea about because of their experience and knowledge.
Someone mentioned that specific tactics for battles and guidelines about how and when to take certain buildings or how to fight certain fights can be learned by reading informative posts and yes this is true (to a small degree) and yes this is a very important element of strategy that will improve your game but in no way by any stretch of the imagination can this be construed as a full comprehensive "strategy solution". The bottom line is that someone may have tons of knowledge about specific battle tactics and how to take that full dusa store with a week two tower army but if they dont know what to do with it (the battle knowledge) than they really dont have much but a single gear in the overall machine.
Theres plenty of strategy to be implemented on all different levels in any game whether it be a fixed map, a true random, rich map, or poor but it all boils down to how well you can execute the strategy on all different levels, how well u can make the parts fit together and how creative u can get with your master plan and still make it work like a well oiled machine. This is how the skill of a player should be determined and though its not a perfect system, the rules that are created are essential to a certain degree (like no dd, fly, diplo,) to keep from completely derailing the entire balance between real skill and luck.
Personally I dont have that strong of feelings about the rules or no rules either way because im not that experienced and skilled in online play for it to matter that much and mostly I just dont care at this point cause I usually just play games for fun and to learn. But for serious tournament play I can totally understand the need to have some restrictions......just dont get carried away with them. Afterall its that element of uncertainty about what ur opponent is capable of vs yourself and the challenge involved that keeps the game interresting and fun.
p.s. Sorry bout the long post.....talk about not getting carried away
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dimis
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Digitally signed by FoG
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posted May 29, 2005 08:33 PM |
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Edited By: dimis on 29 May 2005
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Heroes III - Cheat Codes - What is the matrix ?
I believe, as I have already stated, that this conversation might makes us lose focus on what we are actually interested in. So, for that reason, I 'll try to uncover some things that I thought all of you in HeroesCommunity knew.
Well, on a recent wandering I had on various threads and posts, I realized that some people don't know how they can be fooled when their opponent drops line (usually refered to as ... "connection problems" ... when these people come back) or simply request a save game so that you can continue the game some other time (although I think these people are to be trusted more!  ). Moreover, some other people, who do know what I am about to describe (perhaps more than the following!), say to those people either to forget the whole thing or try to cover things. Well, I am totally contrary  with that behaviour since (generally speaking) it is my belief that knowledge should be shared, or at least should not be hidden by anyone who is interested in acquiring it! 
Returning to the subject of this post, I first met some cheat codes by the person who gave me a copy of Heroes III - Shadow of Death, where he had included a file to accompany the game which had pretty much the outlay shown below. With bold letters it is shown the command you must enter at "the command prompt of Heroes III" (the place where your cursor appears by pressing the Tab button) and with italics you can view the effect of each command.
nwcagents Fill Empty Slots with 10 Black Knights
nwclotsofguns Gain All War Machines
nwcneo Gain a Level
nwctrinity Fill Empty Slots with 5 Archangels
nwcfollowthewhiterabbit Max Luck
nwcnebuchadnezzar Unlimited Movement
nwcmorpheus Max Morale
nwcoracle Reveal Puzzle Map
nwcwhatisthematrix Reveal World Map
nwcignoranceisbliss Hides World Map
nwctheconstruct Gain 100000 Gold and 100 of Each Resource
nwcbluepill Lose Game
nwcredpill Win Game
nwcthereisnospoon Gain 999 Mana and All Spells
nwczion Gain All Buildings
nwcphisherprice Change Games Colors to a Wierd Color Scheme
What is the matrix afterall?
You can use the code whatisthematrix on single player mode only (same applies to the rest of the codes), since otherwise, "Heroes III command prompt" is going to broadcast what you write on all players on the map and as a result you won't be able to use the code. So, when someone drops line, he may as well open the entire map check his surroundings or even check the amount of army that can not be determined on some garrissons (simply attack and retreat as soon as you count your rivals!). For example, your opponent may encounter Lots of Ancient Behemoths, but how many are they really? Is he capable of doing the fight with the army he possesses, or should he wait for a week or so and then reconsider attacking them? Moreover, he may as well open the save game in multiplayer (hotseat) mode and check all your heroe stats, creatures, etc...
P.S.1: If anyone of you knows more codes, please share! They are all welcome. If some codes apply only to specific Heroes III versions, please refer that one as well. The above work for Heroes III - Shadow of Death (I have not checked them on other versions).
P.S.2: Share your questions on cheating. Perhaps if we all help each other, then we 'll know more ways to recognize cheating techniques in online gaming.
My regards to all of you,
Dimitris
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tigris
Supreme Hero
Supreme Noobolator
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posted May 30, 2005 05:21 AM |
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each version of the game has it's own cheatcodes system.
I don't know them by heart, but i know they are all inspired by some movies like star wars or matrix.
u can find them all right here in the Library
Codes are only useful when testing stuff, but useless in other situations.I wouldn't get so low as to cheat on the AI.That would mean i admit i'm more stupid than it is.If u use cheats at one time in a game, when you finish the map, you will be ranked as cheater, wich is the lowest one cen get in the highscore chart.
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dimis
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Digitally signed by FoG
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posted May 30, 2005 02:16 PM |
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Thank you tigris!  Anyone else having more info to share or any other questions / ideas on how you can be cheated?
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