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| Thread: Primary skill analysis: Scouting |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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NKW
Hired Hero
Tatalian Guard of Honor
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posted October 19, 2001 11:31 AM |
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8 armies limit; and the stack limit for an army is 7, i think
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"What actually transpires beneath the veil of an event horizon?
Decent people shouldn't think too much about that."
--Provost Zaharov, Adress to the Faculty
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 19, 2001 11:36 AM |
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"First off, no. The bandits can split up and go in different directions. The scouting skill can't. So the bandits still reveal more. Secondly if you have to go off the beaten path to use the skill and go places you would not otherwise go, then you are wasting time that could have been spent expanding and collecting resources. So it's kind of a wash. Trust me, there is a reason why the best players in H3 all seem to think scouting is a bad skill."
Bandits is a poor example due to their special... They won't be available to every player so let's assume Halflings insted.
Then let's examine what happens if you have a single Hero with advanced scouting skills and compare to what happens if you use a halfling.
The halflings can split up but they can't pass boundaries of the map or monster guards. They will not benefit from adventure locations, will have to take money from treasure chests, and will be slowed down by the terrain. And you risk ending up your turn close to monsters, which then take out your scout.
For the advanced scout hero the situation is very different. From each of the boundary points the Hero's Scouting will remove more of the shroud than the Halfling could, this could reveal mines or towns you may wish to take. The Hero can pass monster guards, and so flag mines/dwellings access treasures beyond guarded areas. If monsters guard a pass to the new area the hero can use stealth to pass the monsters and access the new area.
Moreover, the scout will benefit from all artifacts he/she picks up and can get XP from chests. Moreover, the scout will be able to visit power-ups as she/he goes, and will not be slowed down by the terrain, and Stealth will prevent nearby monsters from attacking you.
Since more of the shroud is removed the chance to uncover a poorly defended town increases, and the hero could use Stealth to bypass monsters that may denying others access. (The halfling will just see some monsters. Can't slip past and propbably won't see the town to begin with because the shroud hasn't been lifted.)
"I can't imagine stealth being useful for the average main hero."
We're not necessarily talking about MAIN heroes here. Stealth is useful for guerilla warfare and for it to be really useful the hero has to travel alone, or the stealth protection doesn't apply. I'd imagine that usually you want your best heroes backed up by your army??
For your main army, you may want a scouting hero in it to remove terrain/movement penalties in the case you travel in rough terrain. You may also wish a scout so you're able to detect enemy stealth heroes and wipe them out. (Although for the latter the scout doesn't necessarily need to be part of your main army.)
"There are plenty of magic items that give you the same benefit stealth does, and there have been times I've been stuck with stealth from a witches hut. I've never found it useful. If a skill is only useful on rare occasions it is not a good skill."
Don't agree. First, there is no Stealth skill in Heroes 3. So how can you say you've played with it? In heroes 4 scouting is a useful skill for Hero scouts. Sure in the beginning of the game, then perhaps you will have to hire halflings to work as scouts, but once you begin developing the abilities of Scouting it will pay to send out Heroes instead of Halflings to do the Scouting.
"That advantage was probably negated by you spending one or two turns wandering off the path, and by how much weaker your hero is having expert scouting instead of expert earth magic, logistics, offence, wisdom, or any of the many other much stronger skills."
I was not talking about "MAIN" heroes here. You should be aware that the strength of the Hero is not everything. Rather, monetary income and good economy is more important because then you can afford more creatures. Perhaps, you get the production of creatures of two towns instead of one. In short Scouting increase the chances you get lucky when playing an unknown map. (Of course if you already know the map then the value of scouting is dimished.)
We're not talking "Scouting" as in Heroes 3 in this thread and the offering is very different in heroes 4, because once you take a primary skill you also select all the secondaries and their abilities.
Besides, all power-ups are often off the beaten path. I assume you let your main hero visit mercenary camps and similar? (If you're in a swamp it may just be an idea to let your main hero have a Pathfinding hero with you to visit that Library of Enlightment???)
Besides, the indications I've heard is that the one "MAIN" hero approach is very strongly discouraged in Heroes 4.
In heores 3 I often find my freedom curtailed by monster stacks (and this could be a stack I wouldn't want to attack even if I had my best hero and best army ranged against them). Being able to bypass them (even with a single lone hero) is a great ability.
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted October 19, 2001 12:45 PM |
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Edited By: Jenova on 19 Oct 2001
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If 8 stacks is the limit, then niteshade's "split up several stacks of bandits for exploring and scavenging" trick isn't going to be very viable. The more groups of scouting bandits you have, the less actual armies you will be left with..
Don't forget also that unlike in previous HOMMs, scouting is not *only* useful in the beginning but throughout the entire game also, because of fog of war. In the older games, once you revealed the map, your scouting ability became useless. Not anymore.
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2001 07:25 PM |
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Jenova,
"If 8 stacks is the limit, then niteshade's "split up several stacks of bandits for exploring and scavenging" trick isn't going to be very viable. The more groups of scouting bandits you have, the less actual armies you will be left with.. "
Wow that is so not true. In H3, how many times did you start the game with 8 seperate armies? Usualy you had just a couple, and all except one was just there to scout and grab resources. Now you can use troops for the same purpose, only much more efficiently. I'd almost think you've never played heroes before if you think being limited to 8 armies in the beginning of the game is a significant limitation.
Djve,
Reading your last argument I can see that in a sense we are discussing two different things. I was talking about it being useless to give your main hero scouting in H3, and you were talking about how scouting is great for a secondary scout hero. I don't disagree with you there. If I had a hero whose sole purpose was to scout out the land, I would give him scouting in a second. Similarly I wouldn't hesisitate to give him the scouting skill in H4. There is one main problem with this though.....
In H3 while scouting was a great skill for scout heroes, they rarely got the chance to take it. Scout heroes rarely got any real xps because you don't get xps from scouting. The only way they are likely to get xps is from pavilions since no good player is going to take xp from a treasure chest taken from a scout hero (in fact most good players rarely take xp in the first place). So unless you started with scouting, or got it from a witch hut, the heroes who it was useful for were extremely unlikely to get it.
I foresee the same thing in H4, but worse. Yeah I'd love to have a designanted scout with grandmaster scouting and stealth. But that would require him to be 10th level at minimum, and probably higher when you consider other skills will pop up as well instead. Most designated scouts never get above the low single digits in level.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 19, 2001 09:03 PM |
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You are probably calling me a bad player then but I don't mind. My heroes 3 "scouts" takes out wandering mosters they encounter, I don't want the extra days for my main hero to clear a stack to take a mine. If a chest gives 1500 XP, I give it to the scout without compunction. The scout must develope their skills to become useful. Chests with 500 XP and 1000 XP usually end up as money.
Of course, if your apporach is that the only XP a scout will get is that he gets from learning stones then of course they'll not be terrible useful to you.
What most players don't seem to realise is that after a certain point XP becomes more or less useless to your main hero and you're better off giving it to scouts and secondary heroes. If your "main" Hero has 10,000,000 XP and you also have a scout with 10,000 XP beside a Pandora's Box which you know gives 2,000,000 XP beside you. I'd most certainly give the XP to the Scout.
Of course some maps are "poor" in XP so you can barely get even a single Hero to a decent level, and in that case Scouts suffer.
How the scouts will develope in heroes 4 largely depends on how XP is split after fight. If you get more XP to share the more Heroes take parts in combat then scouts will develope well because you're then likely to join the Scout with the main army before taking out the monsters. If the amount of XP doesn't increase the likely course is to split away the scout hero before fighting so that your prime hero gets the full XP reward.
I'm fairly certain that the XP scheme will change, but where and how much is difficult to say. I believe that levels will be gained a lot faster. In part due to the fact that monsters overall have more HP.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 19, 2001 09:22 PM |
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"You are probably calling me a bad player then but I don't mind. My heroes 3 "scouts" takes out wandering mosters they encounter, I don't want the extra days for my main hero to clear a stack to take a mine. If a chest gives 1500 XP, I give it to the scout without compunction. The scout must develope their skills to become useful. Chests with 500 XP and 1000 XP usually end up as money. "
Well I'm not really calling you a bad player, but you should know that most experienced players almost never take xp from chests especialy in the early game. Like you said later, xp becomes much less useful over time but gold is always extremely important. And certainly your the only one I know who would even consider giving xp to a scout from a chest. Now taking out wandering monsters is a more reasonable idea, but the problem is that requires you give your scouts troops. Since scouts often get killed by other players, this is often a huge waste.
"Of course, if your apporach is that the only XP a scout will get is that he gets from learning stones then of course they'll not be terrible useful to you. "
Unfortunately at least the way most people play, this is almost always the case.
"What most players don't seem to realise is that after a certain point XP becomes more or less useless to your main hero and you're better off giving it to scouts and secondary heroes. If your "main" Hero has 10,000,000 XP and you also have a scout with 10,000 XP beside a Pandora's Box which you know gives 2,000,000 XP beside you. I'd most certainly give the XP to the Scout. "
I would too although most boards do not have this kind of box. On the other hand if there was a treasure chest, I'd just take the gold.
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted October 20, 2001 06:08 AM |
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Quote:
Wow that is so not true. In H3, how many times did you start the game with 8 seperate armies? Usualy you had just a couple, and all except one was just there to scout and grab resources. Now you can use troops for the same purpose, only much more efficiently. I'd almost think you've never played heroes before if you think being limited to 8 armies in the beginning of the game is a significant limitation.
niteshade, once again you're only thinking about the beginning game. What happens later in the game when enemy heroes creep all over your territories? Will you still be relying on the 6 groups of single bandits to do your scouting? And it hasn't been revealed yet just how far single units can walk on the map (could be related to their speed), so they may not even be able to travel more than a few steps. I definately believe they won't move as far as a hero. This may also limit their usefulness in scavenging at the beginning. When the game gets to the stage where your armies are built up and it's time to conquer all the towns, you really won't have enough armies to spare for the bandits anymore, unless it's a small map.
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 20, 2001 09:11 AM |
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Jenova,
"niteshade, once again you're only thinking about the beginning game."
That's because we were discussing the beginning game.
"What happens later in the game when enemy heroes creep all over your territories? Will you still be relying on the 6 groups of single bandits to do your scouting?"
Well actually, yes. Those bandits will make an excellent early warning system for any invading heroes. And it's much better to lose a 50 gold bandit then a 2500 gold hero.
"And it hasn't been revealed yet just how far single units can walk on the map (could be related to their speed), so they may not even be able to travel more than a few steps.
I definately believe they won't move as far as a hero. "
Well nothing we've heard would indicate this, and in fact it was strongly implied that this is not the case by the fact that all units have their own individual movement points.
"This may also limit their usefulness in scavenging at the beginning. When the game gets to the stage where your armies are built up and it's time to conquer all the towns, you really won't have enough armies to spare for the bandits anymore, unless it's a small map. "
Are you saying that on a medium sized map you would divide your armies into 8 seperate groups? That sounds like one of those things we used to make fun of the computer for doing in H2. Come on, I'm sure your a better player then that (although you did say you were used to H2 so it is possible you haven't really developed a good sense for effective tactics since you don't need it in that game). Concentrating your forces was everything in heroes, and it will be even easier to do in H4 with caravans.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 20, 2001 10:23 AM |
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"Well actually, yes. Those bandits will make an excellent early warning system for any invading heroes. And it's much better to lose a 50 gold bandit then a 2500 gold hero."
In the case of bandits yes, but ONLY because they have Advance Stealth. Substitute them for something else and they become useless.
And there won't be much use in having scouts wandering your own territory. Windmills and Watermills will become flagged and produce resources weekly. You can still pick up creatures from dwellings, but in your own territory there's not much more they can do.
"Well nothing we've heard would indicate this, and in fact it was strongly implied that this is not the case by the fact that all units have their own individual movement points. "
Yes, but heroes will be travelling further than most. I don't think they're the ones that will slow down army movement. Much more likely it's the slowest stack of creatures in most cases. If you take Heroes 3, then a hero without an army has maximum movement allowance on the adventure map, which indicates a speed of 11 or greater. I believe the difference is that heroes are assumed to be mounted while many other troops are walking, so overall I believe Heroes can travel further.
"Are you saying that on a medium sized map you would divide your armies into 8 seperate groups?"
Well, it's no use having a Hero with say 1 Halberdier in it. if a scout is to be successful, he needs enough troops to take out at least mine-guards.
There's a few ways to do this.
You can actually "chain" the main army between heroes in the beginning, allowing you to traverse the bulk of your army to needed points and defeat the monsters. It will split the heroes XP, but will allow for faster growth of your economy.
There's also a chance that you get an early join. That troop may make an excellent army for your scout hero.
A third alternative is to give the scout the full population of a fast monster, just enough to take out mine guards with neglible losses.
Sure, when the enemy comes knocking you'll concentrate your forces to strike back and you'll also concentrate them to take out the oppositin's main hero. Although, when I play the AI it's almost always me that attacks first.
I usually play on L and XL map and there's a reasonable time to build up before you're attacked. In this time this type of strategy makes good sense. In S and M maps, i gather the strategy would be somewhat different.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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Jenova
Famous Hero
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posted October 20, 2001 12:11 PM |
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Edited By: Jenova on 20 Oct 2001
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"That's because we were discussing the beginning game."
Hmmm.. what happens if all the free resources on the ground were in some way guarded by enemies which a single bandit couldn't handle?
"Well nothing we've heard would indicate this, and in fact it was strongly implied that this is not the case by the fact that all units have their own individual movement points."
It's not too bad of an assumption since a Hero in H2 and H3 without logistics and having slow or average units could move about 9 or 10 spaces on grass. These figures aren't all that accurate because I'm just estimating from memory, but I don't think a single unit on it's own should be allowed to move further than a hero.
"Are you saying that on a medium sized map you would divide your armies into 8 seperate groups? That sounds like one of those things we used to make fun of the computer for doing in H2. Come on, I'm sure your a better player then that (although you did say you were used to H2 so it is possible you haven't really developed a good sense for effective tactics since you don't need it in that game). Concentrating your forces was everything in heroes, and it will be even easier to do in H4 with caravans."
Maybe I'm just not as good as you, but one thing I remember was that I went for high scores, which means beating the map in fewer days. My job got a lot more complicated when I had to hunt down pesky heroes after taking out most or all of their towns. This was especially difficult if you concentrated all your forces on one or two heroes. Having ONE hero to hunt down 3 or 4 enemy heroes is not viable, as it takes too long and they could be annoying and attack one of your weaker scouts/scavengers/troop-ferriers. With fog of war, I can only imagine the task of hunting down heroes to be even more difficult if you focus all your strength on one or two heroes.
For the record, I usually have about 4 fighting heroes on a medium map. I don't play small maps. In large and XL maps (which usually take several game months) by the end of the game, I have all 8 heroes fighting, conquering towns on their own. Occasionally when one hero had taken too many casualties, I'd have them combine their troops with another hero, and send them back to get more. By concentrating all your forces on one hero, you get one mega army who will never lose, but it's also annoying to chase down an enemy hero who is far away and threatening an unguarded town, when you have no one nearby who can handle him. Doing it my way, at least I have a fighting chance, and it's easier to take care of invaders because I will have less "incompetent" heroes hanging around. Conquering towns is also faster with more than one hero, leading to a better score. That's as long as you aren't playing a human player since the CPU doesn't like massing large armies, so their defenses are never a threat to your armies anyway.
One downside to my playstyle is that in a multiplayer game, people got really pissed off at me because my turns took ages (since I have multiple armies fighting each turn instead of just one). The only time I ever find myself needing to focus all forces one one hero is when the objective of the map if to beat one really difficult battle (one where by the time you get to the hero/castle their troops will be mega huge in number).
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 20, 2001 08:51 PM |
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Djive,
"In the case of bandits yes, but ONLY because they have Advance Stealth. Substitute them for something else and they become useless."
That is so not true, I wasn't even thinking of their stealth ability. It doesn't matter if the enemy hero sees them or not. If he attacks your 1 troop all the better because not only does it slow him down slightly but you get to see his exact troop composition. On the other hand if he kills your scout he just cost you alot of gold and an experienced hero. So from now on I'm going to say halflings instead of bandits because for some reason you seem to think that it matters that they are bandits (granted
bandits are optimal, but not by that much. I'm pretty sure heroes can still see them as long as they have lvl 2 troops or better).
"And there won't be much use in having scouts wandering your own territory. Windmills and Watermills will become flagged and produce resources weekly. You can still pick up creatures from dwellings, but in your own territory there's not much more they can do. "
True, but it's better to have an early warning system then none at all. And you can send them to scout enemy territory too and it's alot safer then a hero.
"Yes, but heroes will be travelling further than most. I don't think they're the ones that will slow down army movement. Much more likely it's the slowest stack of creatures in most cases. If you take Heroes 3, then a hero without an army has maximum movement allowance on the adventure map, which indicates a speed of 11 or greater. I believe the difference is that heroes are assumed to be mounted while many other troops are walking, so overall I believe Heroes can travel further."
I suspect your right about that one, assuming the hero has no troops with him. Remember though she was implying that troops without a hero travel slower then troops with one, which based on what we know is not true (unless the hero has something special like grandmaster pathfinding that might boost troop moves).
"Well, it's no use having a Hero with say 1 Halberdier in it. if a scout is to be successful, he needs enough troops to take out at least mine-guards.
There's a few ways to do this.
You can actually "chain" the main army between heroes in the beginning, allowing you to traverse the bulk of your army to needed points and defeat the monsters. It will split the heroes XP, but will allow for faster growth of your economy. "
Yep, an annoying tactic but effective one. But one that we believe will not work in H4 with individual movement points. Also even the most obessive chainers didn't try to chain 8 heroes together in the beginning. That would totaly hamstring your economy.
"There's also a chance that you get an early join. That troop may make an excellent army for your scout hero. "
Well only if the scout has troops. I disagree that it's a good idea to give each scout enough troops to take over a mine. Diving your forces like that leads to substantialy increased casualties, and even a scouts starting troops are often not enough to take a mine out. If you want to get an early join you usualy want to consolodate your forces not divide them.
"A third alternative is to give the scout the full population of a fast monster, just enough to take out mine guards with neglible losses. "
That's more of a mid game strategy when you have that many fast monsters. but certainly a valid one. But only for one scout usualy.
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 21, 2001 01:48 AM |
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Jenova,
"Hmmm.. what happens if all the free resources on the ground were in some way guarded by enemies which a single bandit couldn't handle? "
Then your halflings (not I'm using halflings instead of bandits so as not to confuse dijve) have given you valuable information and you can plan accordingly. And you got that information much less expensively then if you had hired scouting heroes to find this out.
"It's not too bad of an assumption since a Hero in H2 and H3 without logistics and having slow or average units could move about 9 or 10 spaces on grass. These figures aren't all that accurate because I'm just estimating from memory, but I don't think a single unit on it's own should be allowed to move further than a hero. "
I don't see how that's relevent to anything since in H2 units could not move without a hero in the first place.
"Maybe I'm just not as good as you, but one thing I remember was that I went for high scores, which means beating the map in fewer days. My job got a lot more complicated when I had to hunt down pesky heroes after taking out most or all of their towns. This was especially difficult if you concentrated all your forces on one or two heroes. Having ONE hero to hunt down 3 or 4 enemy heroes is not viable, as it takes too long and they could be annoying and attack one of your weaker scouts/scavengers/troop-ferriers. With fog of war, I can only imagine the task of hunting down heroes to be even more difficult if you focus all your strength on one or two heroes. "
That's a completely valid strategy for cleaning up a map which you have already won. Personaly though I prefer to focus on strategy that helps me win a map, not one that helps me clean up when I have already won. But then I prefer maps where the challenge is trying to beat it, not ones that are so easy that the only challenge is beating it as quickly as you can. And once you do get to a point where you've already won and your just trying to clean up you can disband all your little mini scout groups and just send out heroes.
"For the record, I usually have about 4 fighting heroes on a medium map. I don't play small maps. In large and XL maps (which usually take several game months) by the end of the game, I have all 8 heroes fighting, conquering towns on their own. Occasionally when one hero had taken too many casualties, I'd have them combine their troops with another hero, and send them back to get more. By concentrating all your forces on one hero, you get one mega army who will never lose, but it's also annoying to chase down an enemy hero who is far away and threatening an unguarded town, when you have no one nearby who can handle him. Doing it my way, at least I have a fighting chance, and it's easier to take care of invaders because I will have less "incompetent" heroes hanging around. Conquering towns is also faster with more than one hero, leading to a better score. That's as long as you aren't playing a human player since the CPU doesn't like massing large armies, so their defenses are never a threat to your armies anyway. "
Well it depends on the map. But like I said before I prefer to focus on strategies that allow you to beat difficult oponents, either humans or maps with tough computer opponents, rather then to focus on strategies that only work against easy maps.
"One downside to my playstyle is that in a multiplayer game, people got really pissed off at me because my turns took ages (since I have multiple armies fighting each turn instead of just one). The only time I ever find myself needing to focus all forces one one hero is when the objective of the map if to beat one really difficult battle (one where by the time you get to the hero/castle their troops will be mega huge in number). "
Well if you play multiplayer much I'm sure you've found plenty of situations where you needed to focus all your heroes into one force (or maybe two forces for larger maps). Either that or you have lost alot (or played bad players). But perhaps you just haven't played multiplayer much, some people just aren't into it. I have played with people who use the annoying hero chaining tactic in the beginning of H3 (though certainly never with 8 heroes) and it can be effective and very slow. It can also backfire and lose you the game. But all of this is fairly irrelevent in H4 where hero chaining looks to be a thing of the past.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted October 21, 2001 05:53 PM |
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Edited By: Djive on 21 Oct 2001
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"If he attacks your 1 troop all the better because not only does it slow him down slightly but you get to see his exact troop composition."
You can always hope... My bet is however that your bandit either joins the enemy, or flees, becuase he's outnumbered. Remember that this is the advantage of having a hero in an army in Heroes 4.
"On the other hand if he kills your scout he just cost you alot of gold and an experienced hero."
The purpose of grand master stealth is that the enemy can't attack you, and with Expert Scouting that you will see him before he sees you. The risks of losing such a hero is small, especially if your enemy doesn't develope Scouting.
"I'm pretty sure heroes can still see them as long as they have lvl 2 troops or better)."
Hmmm... yes you would probably be right in that assumption.
"True, but it's better to have an early warning system then none at all. And you can send them to scout enemy territory too and it's alot safer then a hero."
You can't really. Territories are usually separated by high-level monsters. The Bandits /Halflings cannot pass it.
A high level scout can both pass the monsters and use them as a 'shield' when he returns.
About movement, even without the logistics boost the Hero with Pathfinding will move a lot longer than the bandit over rough terrain types.
"Yep, an annoying tactic but effective one. But one that we believe will not work in H4 with individual movement points. Also even the most obessive chainers didn't try to chain 8 heroes together in the beginning. That would totaly hamstring your economy."
You're probably right about the individual movement points although I haven't seen anything to confirm this. This is where the importance of how XP is split comes in. In Heroes 4 there's likely to be one slot over for the Scout Hero when you fight monsters. (Since you only have four levels of Monsters.) This will largely decide how much scouts will develope.
"Well only if the scout has troops."
This was an idea applicable to heroes 3 only. In Heroes 4 you don't NEED the join. You get Grand Master Stealth instead and pass through the monsters.
"A third alternative is to give the scout the full population of a fast monster, just enough to take out mine guards with neglible losses."
I've not really been talking early-game here at all. This is feasible usually in week 2 (if you're lucky) or week 3. Perhaps week 4 if you're playing on Impossible. And you'e right it's usually one Hero only, but it depends a bit on your preferences on playeing and which town type you play.
If you play Conflux, Sprites and Storm Elementals for taking out any non-missile troop mine-guard and usually with no losses. (This is otoh the best town you can have for this strategy.)
In Heroes 4 the scouts will not be powerful enough to be used as standalone scouts before perhaps week 2 or 3, depending on how much XP they get. Before they are experienced enough I'll certainly use the Bandit approach just as you. (The Scout will have to be good in his "job" before being released on his/her own. Being bad at the job is very dangerous for a Scout.)
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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niteshade
Known Hero
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posted October 21, 2001 08:24 PM |
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"You can always hope... My bet is however that your bandit either joins the enemy, or flees, becuase he's outnumbered. Remember that this is the advantage of having a hero in an army in Heroes 4. "
A good point, but even if that happens they have still served their purpose. They were mostly just there to warn you somebody was coming.
"The purpose of grand master stealth is that the enemy can't attack you, and with Expert Scouting that you will see him before he sees you. The risks of losing such a hero is small, especially if your enemy doesn't develope Scouting. "
Well if your opponent does develop scouting the risk of losing such a hero is actualy quite significant. And I imagine getting to grandmaster stealth will not be the easiest thing in the world.
"You can't really. Territories are usually separated by high-level monsters. The Bandits /Halflings cannot pass it. "
Well if your territory is still blocked off from the enemy you don't really need an early warning system that badly.
"A high level scout can both pass the monsters and use them as a 'shield' when he returns. "
I am curious about exactly how that will work. If a hero with grandmaster stealth can stroll past any map monster, even a legion of lvl 4s, it will make map design much harder. If this were the case I might be in a rush to get to GM stealth so I could grab every artifact, resource, and mine on the board without a fight. But I kind of qf suspect there will be some kind of limitation on sneaking by monsters.....or at least I hope there will.
"About movement, even without the logistics boost the Hero with Pathfinding will move a lot longer than the bandit over rough terrain types. "
Well in H3 it was really only swamp, snow, and desert that gave you a major slow down. Rough terrain was fairly minor. But either way we weren't talking about heroes with special abilities, just the average hero.
"You're probably right about the individual movement points although I haven't seen anything to confirm this. This is where the importance of how XP is split comes in. In Heroes 4 there's likely to be one slot over for the Scout Hero when you fight monsters. (Since you only have four levels of Monsters.) This will largely decide how much scouts will develope. "
Yep this makes a huge difference. If he gets equal xps, then having a high level scout hero is quite viable. But if he has to split xps thus taking them away from your main hero I would probably not want the scout along at least until the main hero is quite well developed. As for individual movement points, we have seen screen shots of an indivudal stock with movement points reduced.
"This was an idea applicable to heroes 3 only. In Heroes 4 you don't NEED the join. You get Grand Master Stealth instead and pass through the monsters. "
Well that's not super easy to get, and we don't know exactly how it will work as I said.
"In Heroes 4 the scouts will not be powerful enough to be used as standalone scouts before perhaps week 2 or 3, depending on how much XP they get. Before they are experienced enough I'll certainly use the Bandit approach just as you. (The Scout will have to be good in his "job" before being released on his/her own. Being bad at the job is very dangerous for a Scout.) "
Well that's the thing, unless the xps are not reduced for having multiple heroes I don't think I would try to develop a scout right away. At least the one benefit for survival a scout does have is the ability to be raised after he's killed. Many people aren't going to want to waste their prison (if they have one) on a scout.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted February 11, 2002 11:24 PM |
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This is the the updated version of Scouting.
As we guessed Logistics have been used for Pathfinding. I believe they could have split up the bonus so it appeared gradually instead of first removing terrain penalties and then giving logistics bonus. That is:
Basic -20% terrain penalty, +10% movement.
Advanced: -40% terrain penalty, +20% movement.
Etcetera.
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Prerequisites between skills:
Basic Pathfinding required for advanced scouting
Advanced Pathfinding required for master scouting
Master Pathfinding required for grandmaster scouting
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Basic Scouting
+1 radius
The hero can view if an object is guarded or not. The hero can view an enemy with Basic Stealth
Advanced Scouting
+2 radius
The hero can view the exact number of monsters in a neutral or enemy army and an enemy with Advanced Stealth
Expert Scouting
+3 radius
The hero can forsee if he can win or lose a battle and view an enemy with Expert Stealth
Master Scouting
+4 radius
The hero can learn skills from enemy heroes and view an enemy with Master Stealth
Grandmaster Scouting
+5 radius
The hero can view the screen of an enemy hero or the screen of an enemy town and an enemy hero with Grandmaster Stealth
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Stealth only affects the hero and not his army, so travelling with monsters will negate the skill. Enemies can view the hero if they're on an adjacent hex on the adventure map and the hero is not invisible.
Basic Stealth
The hero is invisible for 1st level creatures and heroes without Scouting.
Advanced Stealth
The hero is invisible for 2nd level creatures and heros without Adv Scouting.
Expert Stealth
The hero is invisible for 3rd level creatures and heroes without Exp Scouting.
Master Stealth
The hero is invisible for all level creatures and heroes without Master Scouting.
Grandmaster Stealth
The hero is invisible for all creatures and heroes without Grand Master Scouting.
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Basic Pathfinding
-25% terrain penalty.
Advanced Pathfinding
-50% terrain penalty.
Expert Pathfinding
No terrain penalty
Master Pathfinding
No terrain penalty
+25% movement
Grandmaster Pathfinding
No terrain penalty
+50% movement
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Basic Seamanship
+25% movement over water.
For sea-battles the hero acts as if he has basic tactics, basic offence and basic defence
Advanced Seamanship
+50% movement over water
For sea-battles the hero has advanced tactics, advanced offence and advanced defence
Expert Seamanship
+100% movement over water
For sea-battles the hero has expert tactics, expert offence and expert defence
Master Seamanship
+150% movement over water
For sea-battles the hero has master tactics, master offence and master defence
Grandmaster Seamanship
+200% movement over water
For sea-battles the hero has grand master tactics, grand master offence and grand master defence .
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth.
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"A brilliant light can either illuminate or blind. How will you know which until you open your eyes?"
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