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| Thread: Secondary Skills you avoid and prefer for your hero? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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RedSoxFan3
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posted June 05, 2002 03:53 AM |
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Quote:
With diplomacy you can recruit creatures for free... how much better can it get? It doesn't show up on some ToH maps which set all monsters to savage, but the very fact all monsters are set savage shows how much havoc diplo can reap.
Necro with diplo is the strongest, then infero. Doesn't really matter after that, about equally strong for all other towns.
On non-ToH maps you can win the entire map without ever buying any creatures from your towns cept the oens you get one day 1 if you have a diplo hero. And you can win before end of month 1 if you have more than a couple diplo hero.
I have found that hordes of skeletons seem less effective than hordes of demons, but that is just my experience, because demons don't die as easily.
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Ichon
Responsible
Famous Hero
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posted June 05, 2002 06:43 AM |
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hordes of demons
are much harder to get than hordes of skellies. Also the Animate dead spell works better than resurrect, plus low level units get more out of all the rex, reanimate spells. You can make 1000+ skellies in a few weeks easily, but it'll take alot longer than that to get 1000+ demons.
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RedSoxFan3
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posted June 05, 2002 07:31 PM |
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but 200 demons are much more useful than 1000 skeletons. I usually upgrade them to horned demons also. I usually turn my imps into extra demons also, so I have room for demons that I just created and horned demons that I have upgraded.
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Ichon
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Famous Hero
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posted June 06, 2002 01:28 PM |
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200-1000
Well, from my experience in the time it takes to get 1000 or so skellies normally you only have around 80-100 demons probably. Since you need the HP sacrifice for demons whereas skellies come free from enemy in every battle. It's also easier to make skellies on huge maps since you don't need new reinforcements to sacrifice every few battles.
100 horned demons are nice, but I think I'd prefer 1000 skellies still. I'm not discounting demons at all, but they are slower to get than skellies even if they are more valuable individually- they just can't match skellie swarms.
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RedSoxFan3
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posted June 06, 2002 02:29 PM |
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I disagree, because I can usually get more than 100 demons in about 2 to 3 weeks given that I have 2 castles, because I turn my imps and the level 1 and 2 creatures of my other castle into demons.
Also we are talking about diplomacy not if demons or skeletons are better. I'm saying that the increase in the number of skeletons isn't as good as the increase in demons that you get with diplomacy. With diplomacy you can get probably 200+ easily after 1 month.
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Ichon
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posted June 07, 2002 06:48 AM |
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well
When are you given 2 castles? Also- with diplo and skeleton transformer, it's exteremly easy to get skellies- you don't need to fight a battle every time. 1000+ skellies is the # I used, 1000 would be conservative in 1 month with diplo. In most cases I think on a medium map it should be around 2200 in the first month. Of course it depends if it's a ToH map or some other map a little. You can get 1000 skellies on most maps without diplo.
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RedSoxFan3
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posted June 10, 2002 03:00 AM |
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so in other words, diplomacy is more helpful to inferno.
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cane
Hired Hero
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posted June 10, 2002 11:54 PM |
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my favorite skills:
1-logistics(no matter how strong your army; has no meaning without escaping from others or caching the others)
2-earth magic (because of town portal, resurrection, animate dead and slow)
3-air magic (fly, dimension door, haste)
4-wisdom (neede for higher level spells)
5-water magic (not so important but can be used cure, water walk, summon boat)
6-basic patfinding (with logistics considerabely increases walking range)
intelligence can also be in the list
the worst ones for me:
1-estates (no meaning to take 500 gold everyday i think this is the worst one)
2-diplomacy (nonsence to wait for the creatures to double and join)
3-eagle eye (i am playing this game for two years and never learned a valuable spell from my enemy; already enemy that I can learn a good spell must be strong in most cases and at that time, such spell is already in my spell book)
4-sorcery (can't see so much difference)
5-archery (archers are the ones that are killed first during a fight)
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RedSoxFan3
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posted June 11, 2002 12:59 AM |
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Quote:
5-archery (archers are the ones that are killed first during a fight)
I disagree totally. If you have expert archery, I believe that's a 30% increase. Not counting any archery artifacts you get. Let's say that you are even rampart. You're Grand Elves are going to demolish everything. With some arties you could have a 50% archery skill.
If you have Tower with good archery skill, then you should crush anyone easily. Titans and Magi are great.
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cane
Hired Hero
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posted June 11, 2002 09:38 AM |
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RedSoxFan3 but isn't it a truth that if you are fighting with an enemy which has archangel or one of the dragons, archers are the ones that all these big creatures attack first. I don't mean Titans (they are strong enough) For example think about Sharpshooters; they are wonderful and they make a considerable damage. But there is no way to prevent an attack of a dragon at the beginning of the fight. And it is not so enjoyable to watch how number of these sharpshooters decreases to half by one attack...
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RedSoxFan3
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posted June 11, 2002 07:56 PM |
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so what would you attack first if I was tower?
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Cane
Hired Hero
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posted June 11, 2002 11:12 PM |
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but you can't deny they die immediately (i am talking about archers, gremlines, lizards not about titan or mage)
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Ichon
Responsible
Famous Hero
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posted June 11, 2002 11:36 PM |
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Edited By: Ichon on 11 Jun 2002
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necro stil benefits more
For demonology you have to be fighting some creatures who can do enough damage to kill enough creatures so you can get a few demons from them, plus have the pit lords there to raise them. A map only has so many creatures strong enough to do that... you can spend your time managing ever battle vs 2 level and higher to try and squeeze that 1 extra demon each battle, but unless you are very lucky you end up getting diminishing returns compared to necro who doesn't need to manage the battles so carefully and gets free skellies as long as it wins. Also- the joined stacks are converted directly into skellies rather than having to be killed in a fight and then raised as demons which isn't the best converstion of HP.
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RedSoxFan3
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posted June 12, 2002 12:54 AM |
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I usually don't have trouble with that, because I'm only trying to kill about 50 gremlins or so. This isn't hard. Also with the great speed that inferno and good spells that inferno has, inferno should do this quite easily with a little practice. Sure it may need a bit more skill than exchanging your guys into skeletons at the transformer.
Let's say you get 45 orc Cheiftans. 20 hp each right?
You have 12 pit lords. Those 10 pit lords can turn dead orcs equal to the hp of the pit lords.
So 45 * 12 = 540
540 / 20 = 27. This tells you that you should use 27 orc cheiftans in battle.
540 / 35 = 15.428 or 15 so you can get 15 demons this way.
But you still have 18 orcs.
18 * 20 = 360
360 / 35 = 10.28 or 10
So in total you got 25 demons from 45 orc cheiftans.
What's better 25 demons or 45 skeletons?
Remember you got the orcs strictly from diplomacy.
If I want to upgrade those demons, which I do immediately through hero chaining. I have horned demons compared to your skeletons. This was only one set of creatures aquired.
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Ichon
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posted June 12, 2002 01:30 AM |
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Edited By: Ichon on 11 Jun 2002
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and
The thing about raising demons in the battles is that trying to get your 1 joined thru diplo stack killed and all your other stacks not damaged is only easy if you are fighting really slow stacks. If you fight ranged or fast stacks, the AI hardly ever attacks your joined stack. So then you lost either some demons or some pit lords, you can still kill of the joined stack you need by retaliation strikes, but in my experience it's hard to get that perfect # in every battle. I can usually get the perfect # ratio in about 2/3 of the battles. So, also as you mentioned you have to fight 2 battles to use those orcs effeciently. Necro needs no battles. Also as you can chain for your horned demons necro can chain for their skeletons and it costs alot less, of course skeletons aren't as strong as demons, but they are alot more numerous.
Now, in your example you used a level 2 creature- which is fine, but most of your joined will be L1, with alot of L2-L3 and few higher level scattered around as that is how they usually are on the map. The conversion benefited you for L2, but benefits Necro for L1's which are most numerous. Especially when Necro can get them to join and loses 0 HP with the converter. Plus if you get 7th levels they'll be bone dragons.
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mmontgomery
Hired Hero
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posted June 12, 2002 01:34 AM |
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Skill order:
CRITICAL FOR MAIN HERO
1 - Wisdom : Access to higher level spells
2 - Earth Magic : Town portal, Resurection, Slow, ...
3 - Logistics : Speed RULES
INTERESTING SECONDARY SKILLS
4 - Intelligence : Double spell points. I like the fact that it scales with the knowledge level. Compare this to skills like expert offense (+30% attack) and armor, which effective add +6 to your attack or defense rating respectively, and do not scale. If I have 12 knowledge, intelligence gives me a +12 to knowledge. If I have 20 knowledge, intellegence give me a +20 to knowledge.
5 - Air Magic : Dimension Door, Haste, etc. If the odds of finding dimension door were higher, I would rate this higher.
6 - Tactics : Many battles can be won or lost based on initial setup. Also, gives a chance to surrender before taking any damage.
7 - Pathfinding : Depends on the map. Speed rules, and if the terrain warrants it, pathfinding can provide almost as large a boost to mobility as logistics.
8 - Necromancy : depends on random creatures. This works best if the map has lots of stacks of lower level creatures to be harvested.
9 - Ballistics : depends on strategy. The best part about ballistics is getting 'first strike' on your spell casting when attacking a castle. Otherwise, it is a waste.
10 - Artillery : good for long campaigns where you can easily achieve attack ratings of 20 or higher. Otherwise, a waste of a skill.
11 - Water Magic : Bless, Prayer, etc.
12 - Fire Magic : Curse, etc.
In general, I only take Water or Fire Magic if I don't get Earth or Air offered, and my other
SPECIAL PURPOSE SKILLS
Diplomacy : I personally would try to get a secondary hero with expert diplomacy and shuffle the army to him to try to recruit, rather than saddle my main hero with this skill. Tip: have diplomat hang with main hero. When you find a stack, transfer army to diplomat, then cast visions to see if the stack will join you. (Transfering the army helps your odds.) If so, get them. If not, give the army back to your main hero and have them clobber them.
Estates : Every secondary hero should get estates if possible, but don't saddle your primary hero with this.
Scholar : Great for one secondary hero, along with advanced wisdom. Never for main hero.
Scouting : Nice for every secondary hero, never for main hero.
SO-SO SKILLS
- Archery
- Offense
- Armorer
- Sorcery
- Luck
- Resistance
These all give small boosts from 15% - 30% in their respective areas. At maximum level, the effect is sometimes similar to about a 6 point bonus on a primary skill. Of these, I consider Resistance to be the best, simply because it can disrupt your opponent's perfectly laid plan.
- Leadership : Only really needed if using creatures from 3 or more different towns.
WASTED SKILLS
- Navigation : Unless on a water scenario, where it might be handy for a secondary or perhaps even primary hero.
- Learning : The extra experience nets you about one extra level. But you give up 3 levels of secondary skills for expert learning. What sense does that make?
- Eagle Eye : I have never learned an important spell from Eagle Eye. In fact, you CAN'T learn the most important spells, like town portal and dimension door, using eagle eye.
- Mysticism : I rarely depend on regeneration for a serious spell caster. Intelligence is much more useful, to give a bigger pool of spell points between town/well resupplies.
- First Aid : Even at expert level, it just does not do enough.
As for other issues raised:
RUNNING OUT OF SPELL POINTS. If you conserve your spells, then sure, your spell points may last long enough. The advantage to knowledge is being able to be somewhat reckless with spells. Using Dim Door just for the speed boost, even if you are not trying to clear an obstacle. Using an extra resurrection or animate dead spell before the final kill to avoid suffering the loss of 20 pixes or skeletons. After all, this is like finding 600+ gold.
And I have had battles that turned out to be just spell point battles: we are both generating 75 Earth Elementals per spell, and/or resurrecting one key stack per turn. I went into one battle very badly outnumbered, and was reduced on the first turn to a single stack with a single archangel remaining alive. I kept generating Earth Elementals and/or resurrecting archangels every turn. My opponent ran out of spell points, and lost the battle. (He could have fled during one of the early turns that all of my non-summoned creatures were killed, causing a mutual loss, but he still thought he could win.)
As for gaining skills, I have never seen a case where any hero was unable to get a skill from a University or Hut, even if it is a skill that would normally never be offered to that hero.
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andiangelsla...
Disgraceful
Famous Hero
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posted June 12, 2002 02:00 AM |
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SO-SO SKILLS
- Archery
- Offense
- Armorer
- Sorcery
- Luck
- Resistance
These all give small boosts from 15% - 30% in their respective areas. At maximum level, the effect is sometimes similar to about a 6 point bonus on a primary skill. Of these, I consider Resistance to be the best, simply because it can disrupt your opponent's perfectly laid plan.
- Leadership : Only really needed if using creatures from 3 or more different towns.
ooooooook...first you cant mix up armorer, offense and archery with sorcery, sorcery blows the other are good.
armorer and offense as so-so skills...well what can i say, those are the skills that help you in EVERY battle, you dont need to cast for it or anything, and every hit is affected by it...those are must skills
much more wisdom would be a soso skill, if there are scrolls its useless, if there are tomes its useless, if you got recanters or red orb its useless, if your hero is a might with bad magic skills its useless...
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mmontgomery
Hired Hero
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posted June 12, 2002 02:09 AM |
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If you think using 3 secondary skill slots to get +6 to your attack rating is a great deal (expert offense), and that wisdom is an iffy skill, we should play sometime.
In most of my games, magic is THE decisive modifier for the battles. Not so much the direct damage spells, but the things like resurrection or animate dead, or summon earth elementals, or expert slow. If you think a measily 30% extra offense can compensate for lack of wisdom, you must be playing a different caliber of player than I am used to.
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andiangelsla...
Disgraceful
Famous Hero
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posted June 12, 2002 02:13 AM |
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lol, you know my toh rating thou dont you?
and yes, exp offense means a lot, a might hero with offense and armorer and mass spells will crush your resurrection hero without it like nothing...
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mmontgomery
Hired Hero
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posted June 12, 2002 02:26 AM |
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I noticed you tossed in your "massed spells" into the fray to confuse the issue. You don't get "massed spells" without an expert magic school, and you don't get full advantage of an expert magic school without expert wisdom.
Try an experiment. You take expert offense/armorer and one week's worth of production from a castle and your basic level 2 spells.
I'll take the same forces, but take expert wisdom/earth. We can take the luck of the draw from a single level 5 mage guild.
Then we fight. Do you have any question of the outcome? Do you for one minute think that expert offense/armor can compare to expert wisdom/earth magic?
This is why offense/armorer is so-so, compared to wisdom and expert magic schools.
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