|
| Thread: Inferno Insight |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 · NEXT» |
|
Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
|
posted April 15, 2007 03:27 PM |
bonus applied. |
|
Inferno Insight
Ok, time for inferno players (and ex-inferno players, like myself..) to try and answer the questions about problems of hellish force.. there are many. So, I ask Sanyu, Destro23, and all of the guys playing inferno for help; perhaps we will find some solutions 
First of all, we need to assume that we play without Deleb. With Deleb, there is not much to think about: go creep the map, get nightmares and devils, rush.. Too bad it's quite boring. Duh. So, let's assume there's no Deleb.
Problems..
1.Creeping problem - Ok, let's see how other factions do it:
Haven: Vittorio's ballista or marksmen+squires+griffins if there's enough ore, that counters suprisingly well the majority of neutrals.
Dungeon: Full magic + furies for walkerkills
Academy: Full magic (MMR) plus some tanks
Sylvan: Hunters and problematic creeping.
Fortress: Shieldguards and their specialists, bears with their specialist: limited in creeping quite a lot.
Necrpolis: whatever, most likely spectres and MoTN; due to raise dead, no loses, and due to spectres' incoreporality and vampirism against casters, it's very easy.
So.. it's either summoning.. or destructive(but with boosters).. or some kind of ressurection (tent, raisedead..).. or a horde of worthless creatures of tanky nature (shieldguards), or h3 style shootercreeping (hunters, marksmen..)
And what can inferno do?
Summoning - NO It's not inferno's school, demonlords have little spell power, none of them starts with summoning
Destructive - NO, demonlords have little SP and no destructive damage-booster ; no artifact merchant, either. For no reason, destructive is one of their prime magic schools, though.. it gets wasted. MAYBE if grawl started with eldritch arrow, with consume corspe abuse on stacks containing 1 demon it could become a desperate's MMR.. But the spell power is still too low.
Ressurection: NO, no deleb - no warmachines - no tent.
shooters: NO, the only shooter AKA succubi is rather wimpy without a very costly upgrade; even with it, it's a poor man's necropolis - no means to raise the obviously targeted succubi means huge loses against neutral shooters and casters.. no, it won't work.
tanks:MAY DO, although it's not the best either: Horned overseers' survivability is 67%, against 20 hunters you can lose like 12 of them in first turn.. they are expendable, but not to that extent. Besides, getting castle is extremely hard due to that ridiculous pre-requisite of ritual pit, so their numbers will never be astonishing; Finally, their damage is poor. You'd need grok (obviously, for such creeping you NEED this hero..), tele assault which you can get after 4-5 levels if lucky, and battle frenzy to raise their pathetic minimal damage a bit, plus hellfire.. quite a lot of requirements for a poor way of creeping, ey? Since even with those things it still sucks.
We can also use;
Grawl+Hounds; too bad he has no attack+tactics, and even if he had.. cerberi are meant to deal damage to several targets at once, and that makes'em shine, otherwise their damage is pathetic, and their survivability is even worse. On hard, it's impossible to kill the shooter/caster in 1 blow 99% of the time, and each turn gives more and more loses due to enemy shooters' melee attacks (not mentioning casters..).. no, this method sucks horribly.
Nebiros+anything: A bit better than above, but the melee attacks problem still exists, and casters are still impossible to touch. Damn.
So, the best way is to use horned overseers and grok? Gh. Seems so..
Possible Solution:: use Deleb Joke. Well, I guess the best way is to focus on the guilds, first. With a bit of dark magic, you can minimize the loses in your demon stack, and therafore, keep creeping longer. Rushing to frenzy and puppet master is also a possibility; Another poor man's MMR, but with a lot of knowledge and consume corpse, you can spam those spells a lot; The problem lies elsewhere, I mean, if you use grok, you want him to cast teleport all the time (if you have tele-assault, and you really should..-_-), so there is no time for casting dark magic.
Unless..
unless you cast your dark magic first, when demons defend, and several stacks of 1 imp use gating to distract enemy. After that, you may start teleporting.
Another problem; resources. So, you use them to be able to creep? Well, partially, that's what creeping is for: to get resources. Not opposite.. And you can't delay getting the dwellings that much: it's risky, you might get rushed... Having a spell like puppet master may help against a rush much more than having 5 extra nightmares, though..if only demonlords' SP was higher, that is ><
2.Knight player goes for mass paladins
Scary scenario; Facing triple or quadruple palas that kill your stacks in 1 hit due to your 0 DEF is rather a sad experience. Dark magic is not the best here; first, knight can have cleansing. Ofc, there's 50% chance of getting it, but if he does not, it's 100% certain he'll have additional tiny pala stacks to use lay hands when needed. Duh. And, say farewell to your devils, or at least to majority of them, since a thinking player will kill them first; with nightmares second, you have nearly nothing to fight.
Possible Solution: DELEB AND RUSH.. umm.. no, seriously, I have no other idea. All we can hope for is the alternative upgrades; maybe they will introduce something that will help inferno.
3.Knight goes for dark magic
Yeah - since inquisitors may throw some nice spells at his overgrown paladin stack, and single paladins may take care of curses, who needs light magic if you can throw some nasty, un-counterable curses instead?  Say hello to puppet master. Since Knight has the "Fallen Knight" perk, it's almost as deadly as necromancer's one!
Possible Solution: - Very problematic. First of all, tent can't help against puppet master. If he controls your devils, you have to leave..you don't really think you can stop paladins, archangels, archdevils and imperials on one team, do you? 
4.Knight goes for both things mentioned above
Possible Solution: Leave the game. Don't even bother.
5.Necromancer rushes
Yeah, he may do it, why not? With extra, say, 20 liches obtained through necromancy, he attacks you in fourth week. Now, try to stop them with apes, some dogs and maybe nightmares, and have fun..
Possible Solution: well, another major problem; even a bunch of spectres is a major problem since you have no way of destroying the via magic, like warlocks do. Normally, rush to frenzy and puppet master is a solution, but here..
6.Necromancer abuses dark magic
He goes for a lot of curses, takes control of your devils(or blinds them), destroys your ATT advantage through suffering.
Possible Solution: Get power of speed and dark magic at all cost; first, you will counter his mass slow, second, you'll cripple HIS stats aswell. If he was lucky to get puppet master, you may still win, although it's next to impossible. Don't depend on sucking his mana with familiars, a simple MoTN and archliches' decay will provide endless mana for the necromancer.
7.Warlock goes hit'n'run
Inferno has nearly no magic protections; Dealing with warlocks and their magic is a pain.
Possible Solution:Even deleb won't help here, since spells may destroy the ballista with ease Well, getting some resistance/protection arties is the first step. Getting shackles is the ultimate goal, but it's not likely to happen most of the time. Also, familiars may do some good here, but it's probable the warlock will just blast them away with his remaining mana, and run, to come back and do the same harassment, but with full mana and against no familiars. Generally, not too many possibilites here..
8. Warlock blows everything away with lucky empowered meteor shower with slippers
Without cloak of sylanna and heavy resistance arties, you're a gonner. Possible Solution:Don't panic, though: In a long game, you have, strangely, bigger chances than in a short one. First, try to get additional dungeon or academy towns; they give access to artie merchant. Try to visit map artie merchants regularely, too; their stuff changes as the time passess. If you can get shackles, great for you; if not, getting cloak of sylanna and a ton of resistance arties must do.
9. Dwarven player endlessly turtles in his castle; I can't beat the guardpost!
No wonder; guardpost is ridiculous. If you let the dwarven player develop his town too long, he'll become unbeatable in it (especially if he gets destructive magic..).
Possible Solution: Don't wait too long: harass the opponent's territory. You don't necessarily need to fight him, just don't let him grow too rich.
10. Academy player goes for dark/light or dark/destructive.. or dark/summoning..
So it's not only dark, but a second school aswell? Well, it's time to accept the fact that inferno is extremely vulnerable to magic of any kind (of course, especially to dark, but..). MMR rush ends the game most of the times; he can wasp swarm you to death while his (even wimpy!) stacks slowly tear you apart. In the endgame, it's even worse; dual light and dark is the worst, but even pure dark is horrible. Bah. Again, it's uncounterable.
These are the most terrible infernal problems: as you can see, they are quite severe, and cripple the town insanly. For now, there's not much we can do; ofc, add your thoughts here please But I fear all inferno players can do is to wait for alternative upgrades and some sort of dark magic balancing.
Fortunately, inferno enjoys a balanced game against sylvan (even in it's endgame). At least one good point. ~~
|
|
feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 03:48 PM |
|
|
LoL! It's good to know that i'm not the only one who thinks inferno sucks in almost every aspect of the game
But i think its a tradition that nival continues. Inferno was always weak. Too bad, i always liked them.
I really enjoyed reading it: especially leave the game part Id say even more. Don't start
____________
|
|
Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 03:50 PM |
|
|
Not all, you know; still the developers need a nice kick in the butt for messing up such a nice looking town with such a great motto. ~~
do what thou willst, for those that don't remember ^_^
|
|
Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 04:12 PM |
|
Edited by Elvin at 16:16, 15 Apr 2007.
|
A good post from a guy who knows what he is doing with inferno!  I haven't played as much with the faction but I had thought most of these problems existed.
Creeping:
They can do something against tanks and slow walkers but casters and ranged are rather out of the question. Even upgrading to familiars with exp attack, adv gating and hellfire asap cannot help against them. Sure you may upg cerberi but even if you split them in 2 stacks plus one 1-cerbeus stack to block the ranged you will have some casualties(tactics required). Dark is not a guarantee early and you must also hope you'll get luck so as to kill a stack outright...Nebiros already has +1 luck so 2 lvls in luck and you have 30% chance already. Note that you can deal with hunters with the tactics+split cerberi way. Tougher ranged no, unless you get nightmares.
Quote:
2.Knight player goes for mass paladins
Scary scenario; Facing triple or quadruple palas that kill your stacks in 1 hit due to your 0 DEF is rather a sad experience. Dark magic is not the best here; first, knight can have cleansing. Ofc, there's 50% chance of getting it, but if he does not, it's 100% certain he'll have additional tiny pala stacks to use lay hands when needed. Duh. And, say farewell to your devils, or at least to majority of them, since a thinking player will kill them first; with nightmares second, you have nearly nothing to fight.
Maybe if you charge with cerberi hoping that he will not be able to charge at your large units? You just attack at the right spot. If he kills them you can raise pitlords or have bought time for a frenzy/puppet master yourself. Not that you will be able to kill such a number of paladins even then but why actually allow that? That requires in immense amount of gold even now and if you don't press things you know it will turn out this way eventually. Also it will take some time to use training unless he skips angels-where to find all this ore?
Quote:
3.Knight goes for dark magic
Yeah - since inquisitors may throw some nice spells at his overgrown paladin stack, and single paladins may take care of curses, who needs light magic if you can throw some nasty, un-counterable curses instead? Say hello to puppet master. Since Knight has the "Fallen Knight" perk, it's almost as deadly as necromancer's one!
Possible Solution: - Very problematic. First of all, tent can't help against puppet master. If he controls your devils, you have to leave..you don't really think you can stop paladins, archangels, archdevils and imperials on one team, do you?
More problematic for sure. However only puppet master is the absolute misfortune. If he casts something dark you can as well except he has higher defense and his units won't hurt him as much. Not everyone has the gold to upg priests right away too.
Quote:
7.Warlock goes hit'n'run
Inferno has nearly no magic protections; Dealing with warlocks and their magic is a pain.
Possible Solution:Even deleb won't help here, since spells may destroy the ballista with ease Well, getting some resistance/protection arties is the first step. Getting shackles is the ultimate goal, but it's not likely to happen most of the time. Also, familiars may do some good here, but it's probable the warlock will just blast them away with his remaining mana, and run, to come back and do the same harassment, but with full mana and against no familiars. Generally, not too many possibilites here..
Yes not too much to do. However if he has few 1-unit stacks you can attack with some cerberi stacks with tactics and possibly eliminate him before he plays. Or use a frenzy on his raiders/hydras with bigger armies.
I have played the academy part some times and it is very powerful. Motw+frenzy/blind can cripple you and you can follow with a double icebolt(evercold icicle) or phantom forces. Mass slow is just as crazy. However acedemy is not sure to get the right spells even with library. In long games it can be a harsh reality however.
Edit: Typos 
____________
H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
|
|
Sanyu
Known Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 04:27 PM |
bonus applied. |
|
Quote:
Ok, time for inferno players (and ex-inferno players, like myself..) to try and answer the questions about problems of hellish force.. there are many. So, I ask Sanyu, Destro23, and all of the guys playing inferno for help; perhaps we will find some solutions
First of all, we need to assume that we play without Deleb. With Deleb, there is not much to think about: go creep the map, get nightmares and devils, rush.. Too bad it's quite boring. Duh. So, let's assume there's no Deleb.
Problems..
1.Creeping problem - Ok, let's see how other factions do it:
Haven: Vittorio's ballista or marksmen+squires+griffins if there's enough ore, that counters suprisingly well the majority of neutrals.
Dungeon: Full magic + furies for walkerkills
Academy: Full magic (MMR) plus some tanks
Sylvan: Hunters and problematic creeping.
Fortress: Shieldguards and their specialists, bears with their specialist: limited in creeping quite a lot.
Necrpolis: whatever, most likely spectres and MoTN; due to raise dead, no loses, and due to spectres' incoreporality and vampirism against casters, it's very easy.
So.. it's either summoning.. or destructive(but with boosters).. or some kind of ressurection (tent, raisedead..).. or a horde of worthless creatures of tanky nature (shieldguards), or h3 style shootercreeping (hunters, marksmen..)
And what can inferno do?
Summoning - NO It's not inferno's school, demonlords have little spell power, none of them starts with summoning
Destructive - NO, demonlords have little SP and no destructive damage-booster ; no artifact merchant, either. For no reason, destructive is one of their prime magic schools, though.. it gets wasted. MAYBE if grawl started with eldritch arrow, with consume corspe abuse on stacks containing 1 demon it could become a desperate's MMR.. But the spell power is still too low.
Ressurection: NO, no deleb - no warmachines - no tent.
shooters: NO, the only shooter AKA succubi is rather wimpy without a very costly upgrade; even with it, it's a poor man's necropolis - no means to raise the obviously targeted succubi means huge loses against neutral shooters and casters.. no, it won't work.
tanks:MAY DO, although it's not the best either: Horned overseers' survivability is 67%, against 20 hunters you can lose like 12 of them in first turn.. they are expendable, but not to that extent. Besides, getting castle is extremely hard due to that ridiculous pre-requisite of ritual pit, so their numbers will never be astonishing; Finally, their damage is poor. You'd need grok (obviously, for such creeping you NEED this hero..), tele assault which you can get after 4-5 levels if lucky, and battle frenzy to raise their pathetic minimal damage a bit, plus hellfire.. quite a lot of requirements for a poor way of creeping, ey? Since even with those things it still sucks.
We can also use;
Grawl+Hounds; too bad he has no attack+tactics, and even if he had.. cerberi are meant to deal damage to several targets at once, and that makes'em shine, otherwise their damage is pathetic, and their survivability is even worse. On hard, it's impossible to kill the shooter/caster in 1 blow 99% of the time, and each turn gives more and more loses due to enemy shooters' melee attacks (not mentioning casters..).. no, this method sucks horribly.
Nebiros+anything: A bit better than above, but the melee attacks problem still exists, and casters are still impossible to touch. Damn.
So, the best way is to use horned overseers and grok? Gh. Seems so..
Possible Solution:: use Deleb Joke. Well, I guess the best way is to focus on the guilds, first. With a bit of dark magic, you can minimize the loses in your demon stack, and therafore, keep creeping longer. Rushing to frenzy and puppet master is also a possibility; Another poor man's MMR, but with a lot of knowledge and consume corpse, you can spam those spells a lot; The problem lies elsewhere, I mean, if you use grok, you want him to cast teleport all the time (if you have tele-assault, and you really should..-_-), so there is no time for casting dark magic.
Unless..
unless you cast your dark magic first, when demons defend, and several stacks of 1 imp use gating to distract enemy. After that, you may start teleporting.
Another problem; resources. So, you use them to be able to creep? Well, partially, that's what creeping is for: to get resources. Not opposite.. And you can't delay getting the dwellings that much: it's risky, you might get rushed... Having a spell like puppet master may help against a rush much more than having 5 extra nightmares, though..if only demonlords' SP was higher, that is ><
2.Knight player goes for mass paladins
Scary scenario; Facing triple or quadruple palas that kill your stacks in 1 hit due to your 0 DEF is rather a sad experience. Dark magic is not the best here; first, knight can have cleansing. Ofc, there's 50% chance of getting it, but if he does not, it's 100% certain he'll have additional tiny pala stacks to use lay hands when needed. Duh. And, say farewell to your devils, or at least to majority of them, since a thinking player will kill them first; with nightmares second, you have nearly nothing to fight.
Possible Solution: DELEB AND RUSH.. umm.. no, seriously, I have no other idea. All we can hope for is the alternative upgrades; maybe they will introduce something that will help inferno.
3.Knight goes for dark magic
Yeah - since inquisitors may throw some nice spells at his overgrown paladin stack, and single paladins may take care of curses, who needs light magic if you can throw some nasty, un-counterable curses instead? Say hello to puppet master. Since Knight has the "Fallen Knight" perk, it's almost as deadly as necromancer's one!
Possible Solution: - Very problematic. First of all, tent can't help against puppet master. If he controls your devils, you have to leave..you don't really think you can stop paladins, archangels, archdevils and imperials on one team, do you?
4.Knight goes for both things mentioned above
Possible Solution: Leave the game. Don't even bother.
5.Necromancer rushes
Yeah, he may do it, why not? With extra, say, 20 liches obtained through necromancy, he attacks you in fourth week. Now, try to stop them with apes, some dogs and maybe nightmares, and have fun..
Possible Solution: well, another major problem; even a bunch of spectres is a major problem since you have no way of destroying the via magic, like warlocks do. Normally, rush to frenzy and puppet master is a solution, but here..
6.Necromancer abuses dark magic
He goes for a lot of curses, takes control of your devils(or blinds them), destroys your ATT advantage through suffering.
Possible Solution: Get power of speed and dark magic at all cost; first, you will counter his mass slow, second, you'll cripple HIS stats aswell. If he was lucky to get puppet master, you may still win, although it's next to impossible. Don't depend on sucking his mana with familiars, a simple MoTN and archliches' decay will provide endless mana for the necromancer.
7.Warlock goes hit'n'run
Inferno has nearly no magic protections; Dealing with warlocks and their magic is a pain.
Possible Solution:Even deleb won't help here, since spells may destroy the ballista with ease Well, getting some resistance/protection arties is the first step. Getting shackles is the ultimate goal, but it's not likely to happen most of the time. Also, familiars may do some good here, but it's probable the warlock will just blast them away with his remaining mana, and run, to come back and do the same harassment, but with full mana and against no familiars. Generally, not too many possibilites here..
8. Warlock blows everything away with lucky empowered meteor shower with slippers
Without cloak of sylanna and heavy resistance arties, you're a gonner. Possible Solution:Don't panic, though: In a long game, you have, strangely, bigger chances than in a short one. First, try to get additional dungeon or academy towns; they give access to artie merchant. Try to visit map artie merchants regularely, too; their stuff changes as the time passess. If you can get shackles, great for you; if not, getting cloak of sylanna and a ton of resistance arties must do.
9. Dwarven player endlessly turtles in his castle; I can't beat the guardpost!
No wonder; guardpost is ridiculous. If you let the dwarven player develop his town too long, he'll become unbeatable in it (especially if he gets destructive magic..).
Possible Solution: Don't wait too long: harass the opponent's territory. You don't necessarily need to fight him, just don't let him grow too rich.
10. Academy player goes for dark/light or dark/destructive.. or dark/summoning..
So it's not only dark, but a second school aswell? Well, it's time to accept the fact that inferno is extremely vulnerable to magic of any kind (of course, especially to dark, but..). MMR rush ends the game most of the times; he can wasp swarm you to death while his (even wimpy!) stacks slowly tear you apart. In the endgame, it's even worse; dual light and dark is the worst, but even pure dark is horrible. Bah. Again, it's uncounterable.
These are the most terrible infernal problems: as you can see, they are quite severe, and cripple the town insanly. For now, there's not much we can do; ofc, add your thoughts here please But I fear all inferno players can do is to wait for alternative upgrades and some sort of dark magic balancing.
Fortunately, inferno enjoys a balanced game against sylvan (even in it's endgame). At least one good point. ~~
Firstly, good post!. It is quite sad that you can only think of two players that play as Inferno (me and Destro23), how unpopular can it get...
Since I never play as Deleb, I guess I can offer some opinions.
I'm personally surprised that so many players find creeping a problem. I find it easy, although not as smooth as Dungeon's.
I always get tavern first and transfer all creatures to main hero(duh). Then I proceed to buy imps and upgrade them immediately. There is a HUGE difference using familiars to creep as compared to imps. This is where many players don't realise. Familiars have extremely high damage. Start a battle by gating. When enemy creature's retaliation has been soaked, let familiars attack. Nearly always one hit K.O. I don't think any other 1st tier creature can do such damage in week one or two. Pixies with their low population, assasins and their penalty, shieldguard's very pathetic damage so on. The main problem, however is shooters.
My take on this: Creatures like master hunters and marksmen, don't pursue until later. Creatures like skirmishers, skeleton archers, assasins, master gremlins, attack quick before their populations balloon. When fighting high initiative shooters, dont bother about gating. Instead, dash one tile before half of the battlefield, and familiars and hell hounds/cerberi can attack next turn. Minimal loss.
However, when fighting skirmishes, gate everyone. Then defend (thank them for their lower-than-average-shooter initiative.)You will lose the most 5-6 familiars. Now for the harder part, tackling fast + high initiative creatures. Blood furies and war dancers. Position them on the front tile, together in the middle three slots,(better if you use Nebiros).Chances are, two out of your three creatures can hit them after they move towards the front of the battlefield. Concentrate all your attacks on one stack. Leave the other stack to hero's direct attack or weak spells which usually suffice due to bad HP. Never fight sprites. Not worth the experience. Simply let them escape. Slow creatures like squires and golems are easy. Gated stacks can nearly finish them off,and spring in for the kill when they are weak enough to be one-hit-K.O by your familiars, Hellfire is a must though. Druid Elders and Archmages are never really meant for Inferno to handle though. Only pursue them if you have learnt tactics/some initiative artifact (that way succubus can shoot first + heroes' attack/ spell)/ boots of speed. Else, unless they are guarding sulfur or mercury mines, leave them. The high tier creatures are really easy to handle using Inferno. When fighting Nightmares or paladins or Djinn Sultans, take out all large creatures. Again position all your creatures to the center back tiles of the battlefield. Attack immediately if it is Djinn sultans or nightmares and your creatures' high damage (much help from heroes' attack) will most likely finish off in one hit. Paladins are harder. Dark spells will come in handy. Slow them. Then pelt them with attacks from cerberi and succubus mistresses. With that, quickly send familiars to tackle them.
Hence, I don't quite get why creeping is a problem...
However, Haven players can be quite annoying to deal with. If faced with crisis 2, dash both nightmare and cerberi (they are guaranteed to be swifter than paladins). Strategic positioning of both nightmares and cerberi can restrict much jousting from paladins and the remaining paladins probably cant do much already. That is, however, if the player only has one stack of paladin. With two or three stacks, it can be really difficult. Dashing is still the only way but make sure both nightmares and cerberi are at different end of battlefield. That can restrict jousting by quite a bit since three large creatures and some battlefield obstacles means that they wont get to move much. In any case, three stacks mean lower populations so with Inferno's high attack it shouldn't be much of a problem. ALthough you can nearly say goodbye to nightmares... The best of solutions, however, would be to distract your opponent so much that he attacks you in a castle. As for dark magic I really need advice against it so I cant offer any myself either. Someone would know that.
Necromancers become real threats only if you do conservative creeping like me. If you level up your heroes quickly, the weak stats of necropolis's creatures will heavily impact them. Necromancy is indeed a huge problem. So I guess the solution would be to level up quick and get decent arties or play a larger map.
Warlocks and wizards are real frustrating with guerilla tactics. Thank god their creatures are insanely weak. Would want good advice on that too.
Dwarven hero is a joke, sorry, but I have won a dwarven player in his castle before with additional 2100 shieldguards and I can be sure
that they are not much threat. The point is with their bad initiative, you can nearly concentrate on killing all his other creatures first, with gated units, of course. Runes are good but gating is better if you know how to use it properly. I don't find the need to offer advice here since I've never found it a problem in the first place...
|
|
Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 04:32 PM |
|
|
nice points, sanyu:
About the fortress part, well, perhaps you haven't player a good fortress player yet? A good fortress player is annoying as HELL. Literally... Can't describe those guys.. I hate playing against them ;p
|
|
Sanyu
Known Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 04:38 PM |
|
|
Quote:
nice points, sanyu:
About the fortress part, well, perhaps you haven't player a good fortress player yet? A good fortress player is annoying as HELL. Literally... Can't describe those guys.. I hate playing against them ;p
Introduce me to a good fortress player then. I want to see what you meant.
|
|
feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 04:56 PM |
|
|
I just got an idea.
In many cases you dont have time to gate units.Why not make gating like Lethos skill, for all units after tactics phase, each creature uses gating before combat starts. With swift gating they could appear before shooters turn. It would help both , creeping and their poor pvp performance.
____________
|
|
executor
Famous Hero
Otherworldly Ambassador
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 06:58 PM |
|
Edited by executor at 18:59, 15 Apr 2007.
|
Doomforge, you mentioned problems in using destructive, and I'm glad you did.
I played inferno a bit, so I'm no pro here, but it constantly annoyed me that their SP is so low  . They are chaotic beings, bent to destroying, so this magic should shine on them.
But Nival made them well-educated(high KN ), instead of granting them some sufficient SP(like wizards' one). Now they are impotent casters  . This should be changed.
I posted the idea of swithing their SP with KN in wishes for ToE topic among others, btw.
If this switch won't take place they will remain a faction of destroyers with pathetic destuctive, which is a nonsense.
@sanyu
good point about imps/familiars, thay help a lot. I always upgrade them quickly - 66,7% dmg increase.
|
|
ChaosDragon
Famous Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 06:58 PM |
|
|
@feluniozbunio: Great idea, very creative indeed  With this inferno can compete with all the others.
Quote:
Doomforge, you mentioned problems in using destructive, and I'm glad you did.
I played inferno a bit, so I'm no pro here, but it constantly annoyed me that their SP is so low . They are chaotic beings, bent to destroying, so this magic should shine on them.
But Nival made them well-educated(high KN ), instead of granting them some sufficient SP(like wizards' one). Now they are impotent casters . This should be changed.
I posted the idea of swithing their SP with KN in wishes for ToE topic among others, btw.
If this switch won't take place they will remain a faction of destroyers with pathetic destuctive, which is a nonsense.
Agreed. Why children of chaos a.k.a the destroyer (chaotic evil) doesn't shine with destructive, based on their description, inferno should be the best faction to use destructive spell, not dungeon, they describe inferno like this: "Inferno troops is well known for their insane brutality on both might and magic. Their goal is only one, destruction on all creation of order", bah, it's total crap.
Also, i always have an unswered question, why darkness dragon god a.k.a Malassa has something to do with destructive spells, all the spell of her priestess (Shadow Matriarch) is dark magic, and why the god of chaos a.k.a Urgash is excellent with dark magic. It's total nonsense.
|
|
alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 07:34 PM |
|
|
Truely inspiring review here, guys! Very interesting and helpful.
I will leave a note on the magics as well: I think the combination Dark + Destructive from a philosophical point of view is good for Inferno, in the sense that it suites their evil and chaotic nature. Furthermore, this also made sense from the view-point of the developers, as the original 6 factions each had a different combo of 2 magic schools, and this combo did in fact suite Inferno best - the suggested change to Summoning might make sense from a game-play point of view, but in the original approach, that would have left Necropolis with Destructive instead, which made less sense, being that Raise Dead is a Summoning spell. Of course, nobody say that the original approach has to remain.
The swapping of Inferno Spell Power and Knowledge increase factor should indeed be a minor issue that could easily be implementet. It would not make the Inferno hero more similar to any of the other hero classes in terms of skill progression, and it would indeed suite their chaotic/destructive nature better. If this would seriously improve the Inferno creeping, I think one should make a detailed explanation of this and send to Nival. If such a small change can have so much impact on the game, I see no reason to believe they would not be willing to introduce it in the next patch. That is not a promise, just my point of view, though.
____________
What will happen now?
|
|
ChaosDragon
Famous Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 07:56 PM |
|
|
Great idea alci. Yet, something still doesn't make sense according to myth of creation (Malassa with destructive, Urgash with dark).
How about making creatures spellpower become linear like in homm 4? And give some destructive spell to Archdevil (like implosion or a new lv 5 aoe fire spells or an aoe fire atk bonus to archdevil) to make archdevil doesn't lose to Pitlords. With this, inferno is indeed known for their brutality in both might and magic.
|
|
Beowolf
Adventuring Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 08:18 PM |
|
|
I have a different idea about ArchDevils. They should either get no retaliation with their pit lord summoning remaining as it is or fix just summoning so it would call number of pit lords same as archdevils but it would not require any fallen stack.
As for the spellpower/knowledge issue, demon lords need mana to support hellfire ability. I dont know'bout you, but i dont like the idea of beeing completely drained of mana after one medium battle or in the middle of creeping.
|
|
Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 08:22 PM |
|
|
Hellfire drains too much mana for it's strength anyway..
Hellfire should be based on knowledge instead of SP, it they really want knowledge to be one of the prime stats of demonlords, and it should be dependant on the quanity of the stack like its description says. That would make it a bit more useful..
|
|
alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 08:37 PM |
|
|
I'm not sure beefing up of the Devil is what's really required - the alternative upgrade will probably have No Retaliation (just my guess), but Destructive spells will probably be a bit over the top (Pit Lord + Devil ...) and Implosion simply is too powerful.
As for Hellfire, one could change it to increase creature damage by 5 % or 10 % by adding fire damage, but that would make it very similar to Searing Fire, and would also not offer the same help that the current version can during creeping, because the added damage obviously would be very small. On the other hand, currently Hellfire is an early-game only ability.
Also, I think the mana consumption of Hellfire is an important point. If one actually wanted to change the Demon Lord stats, he would end up with significantly lower Knowledge, and thereby much less Mana. With Hellfire triggering on 30 % of attacks and draining 5 mana each time, that would potentially empty his mana reserve very quickly.
What do you feel would be the overall best solution to Hellfire with respect to damage and mana?
____________
What will happen now?
|
|
sdfx
Famous Hero
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 08:38 PM |
|
|
IMO, arch devils should have higher speed(8 or more) and I do agree that switching knowledge and spellpower is the way to go.
____________
|
|
Destro23
Promising
Famous Hero
Keeper of GrongGrong
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 08:49 PM |
bonus applied. |
Edited by Destro23 at 20:53, 15 Apr 2007.
|
Inferno needs to rush a human player. There is no way around it.
By rush I don't nessecarily mean go and kill them quickly, this may or may not be possible. I'm also surprised to see the creeping disadvantage people speak about, I only see this as an issue for the first few days of the first week. What gets you into real trouble is 35+ assasins or something similar guarding a vital mine wood/ore. This will cut your creeping ability down to minimal. As I have said before, inferno works as a complete force, there is no independantly great creature for creeping. With the exception of Familiars should you be blessed with a dwelling or 2 native heros.
You need to apply pressure to the map, and alot of it. Inferno has some of the most efficient week 2 early week 3 power creeping in the game. With 3 devils, 5 familairs and decent stack of say 100+ horned demons you can clear most everything on the map. Bear in mind I play for the most part 2 town maps, that have access to dwellings. I don't have set in stone methods that I use for troop placement or things like that. I normally use auto combat to "predict" the fight, and possibble targets/outcome. In the above scenario (5 imps, demons, and devils) you will block in your demons, clearly I am talking about creeping high level non shooters. The demons gate, the imps will take retals, devils do there thing.. by now you should have some decent dark magic to aid your cause.
About map pressure, breaking a large closed guard early on is a good idea. Although your opponent will yell at you for busting up sim turns early again. You break and start clearing their area in week 2 or early week 3. Often times players don't expect this sort of thing and their main hero is far away dealing with some powercreeping of his own. You can move to a couple paths.. A) take his town B) take his artifacts C) take his mines D) Get everything that time allows. His hero will sense the pressure comng and this will often throw off his plans enough that you can start forming your attack, putting a player on a commonly played closed map off. course will really hurt his overall chances for victory.
Again about maps. This is very important to understand the map you are playing. Some maps with utopias, lots of witch huts, magi vaults, pyramids offer some very interesting options for inferno. If you can get a witch hut with lightmagic.. take it. Anti Magic and resssurect from a utopia or mage bank is a HUGE surprise, as is cleansing, divine strength, ect in the mass form.
I would go so far as to say an inferno with light/dark magic is more lethal than a Haven player.
Inferno on 2 town map with probable combat mid week 4 or later is a nice game. Noramlly under these circumstances I will double build up to succubus. Devils in main town, sadly no castle in second town. Thank you to whomever thought of ritual pit, eat hot barbed wire please. Speaking of ritual pit.. who in their right mind would sacrifice joiners or neturals for the abysmal experience it provides.
Inferno on the 1 town map with combat week 5 or later is a very hard game, and harder still is the 1 town map with little resources combat @ week 3.
Now for some strategies I use.
Vs Haven ---
Haven is a tough fight. Without light magic you will suffer greatly. Hopefully your dark magic can keep them occupied for long enough with cleasnings and such to not totally handicap you through their own dark magic. This match up is second only to dungeon is deciding when to gate. If you choose to gate immediately you will most likely take the full brunt of paladins turn1 possibly.. and most likely a fully hasted army in turn 2 which will sadly obliterate you. This match you need to hope for alot of lucky rolls on attacks and very clever trapping of paladins.
Another good strategy here involves luck with atb bar. Often times if your hero goes at a good time you can hamper havens next few moves enough with dark magic. or frenzy to gain an edge. I will often wait my hero in this matchup (yes this is a pain) but sometimes having him able to drop frenzy on a paladin stack going next is worth more than him having an easily countered spell and waiting for next cast.
-- An alternate strategy I used vs one haven player which worked well. But I don't think the haven player was that good. This combat was a total slaughter for him. I'm not sure it would work vs a good player.
I used Grawl as main hero and developed his destruction magic. I took master of fire, master of ice. With Grawls massive attack boost the armor reduction of fireball, and the frezzing power on circle of winter it actually gave me an advantage with destruction magic that was not dmg.
Vs Academy ---
Oh god.. its academy. run hide.. Unless you rush the hell out of academy you are going to die. Even with a rush you need to hope that they don't have counter measures, and most importantly.. they wern't planning on rushing you.
Ideally you want to catch academy week 3 when they are busy building artifacts, or upgrading creatures. If you can disrupt chains to main hero their troops are easy to defeat without the hero to back them.
If you let academy develope and play the games on their terms.. well you deserve to lose suck it up.
Vs Dungeon ---
After a few matchs vs dungeon now, I would rate this fight as easily the most difficult of any match you will face. Their magic will tear through your ranks easily. And then to top things off after they have dropped that 2K meteor on your slower units, with the warlocks overgrown attack stat, their creatures will make short work of whats left after the initial hit. Magic resistance is the only way to go in this fight. Hopefully you can get the cloak, and hopefully some other resistance artifacts.
The actual comabt is a big toss up, you need to look at the warlocks luck.. hopefully he doesn't have 5. And hopefully you have -2 or more artifact to enemy luck. If you think your troops can sustain the initial meteor, and want to gamble that it won't roll luck start gating. This is going to leave your creatures open to a magic assault, but in the end its probbaly best to gate bigger stacks first. As in all likely hood your creatures will be cut down substantially enough a few rounds from now to make gating impotent.
If you think the warlock will roll luck, and decimate your army right away, charge. Try to place nightmares, cerberi, and devils on bottom, mid, and top rows of field and hopefully they will act before opposing hero. You can try to position around the meteor, but most likely its gonna hit.
Vs Sylvan
This is an initiative battle. If you can get some good artifacts ring of speed, dragon bone greaves, staff of the netheworld, things like this its an easy fight. You shouldn't have to worry about dark magic vs Sylvan which is a huge bonus. With the proper spells to help cut holes in the overgrown defense stat and a little initiative dampener or booster this becomes a trivial fight. One draw back that sylvan has vs dark magic is the initiative of the emerald. Often times you can puppet master this unit and have it act before his hero has a chance to cleanse it.
Vs Necro
The easiest battle inferno has. Even with dark magic they undead creatures are just too weak to break through you. Some strong summoning magic will cause you some grief but only temporary. Pit Lords make short work of phoenix. Firewall is the only real threat here.
The biggest mistake you can make vs necro is not using consume corpse on dead enemy stacks every chance you get. Removing the corpse rom the battle field will win you games vs these motn raise dead strategies.
Other than firewall, there shouldn't be alot of dmg coming your way. The necros horrendously poor attack skill allows your hero to shine with his equally poor defense rating. Watch for mass decay, it can do some serious dmg. Otherwise... gate, see the firewall.. charge. Comabt should end a few turns later.
Vs Fortress
I have only played one serious game vs a fortress player. And he lost horribly. He tried to armageddon me with a stack of 10 magma dragons vs my whole army.
Enter Shackles of the Last Man. Shall we go report now?
Another strategy I am begining to explore is pit lord farming. I've been trying to collect neutrals and external non inferno dwellings for the purposes of turning them into pitlords. I havn't been too succesful in this yet as I just can't get it running early enough.
I was a very good demon farmer in H3, I could average often 200 ish demons on a 4 week map. I know there has to be a way to make pit lord farming a valid strategy. If anyone can offer me suggestions on this I'd gladly accept them.
As I have said before, inferno is not the strongest faction in the game. And to win with inferno requires some help ( from the map, and guilds) vs almost all opponents. You will lose more games due to bad luck with inferno than with any other faction. They are however a very fun faction to play with, and can be extremely powerful if the circumstances line up.
One multiplayer game vs a fairly decent haven player was a prime example of this. I built my hero from day 4 week 1 after seeing both staff of the netherworld and ring of speed in my area. I built him for urgashs call and got it at level 26 (thanks to some witch huts). Purchasing a ring of celerity and dragon bone greaves from a merchant I went to attack him in week 5. (dragon bones greaves gives an inferno hero +3 spell power and +10% initiative to all creatures in his army.) So I was sitting at +40% initiative and -20% to oppenent with instant gating. AKA Slaughterama.
EDIT : I almost forgot the most important skill for inferno creeping.. War Machines, the attack skill makes ballista strong, the first aid tent can in some cases be a life saver for the top devil in the stack. In a deifficult early battle.
INFERNO : PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK!
|
|
watcher83
Supreme Hero
Child of Malassa
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 08:51 PM |
|
|
Inferno may not be the best choice but it's not that bad, gating + skills that aid gating cuts the losses against creeps and aid against other players(except for dungeon)
vs haven - rush or die
vs dungeon - not a chance(unless your opponent is a beginner)
vs sylvan - 50%-50%
vs necropolis - this is a fight you can win most of the times
vs fortress - depends on how rich in resources is your opponent, but the best strategy is a rush
vs academy - rush + magic resistance(marbas is your best choice)
|
|
executor
Famous Hero
Otherworldly Ambassador
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 10:13 PM |
|
Edited by executor at 22:52, 15 Apr 2007.
|
To SP vs KN issue:
IF demonlords had decent destructive, they would not need helfire desperately for damage dealing. BTW helfire's damage would increase then. Running out of mana could be a problem, but then lower the mana cost slightly for helfire or sth.
And vs player familiars + gated familiars provide you with a swimming pool of mana... you'd better not drown .
Edit:
Quote:
Another strategy I am begining to explore is pit lord farming. I've been trying to collect neutrals and external non inferno dwellings for the purposes of turning them into pitlords. I havn't been too succesful in this yet as I just can't get it running early enough.
WOW... destro, when I tried this eons ago(with 1.4), the raised pit lords were unsummoned after battle... I do not doubt your expertise, just thank you for informing me on this change in 2.0/2.1! My heatbeat became faster ... thanks.
____________
Understanding is a three-edged sword.
|
|
alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
|
|
posted April 15, 2007 10:33 PM |
|
|
Quote:
And vs player familiars + gated familiars provide you with a swimming pool of mana... you'd better not drown .
Yes, very good point there! I did not consider that. That might actually save the day for the Demon Lord.
____________
What will happen now?
|
| |
|
|
