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| Thread: Heroes: A Force to be Reckoned With |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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StormWarning
Promising
Famous Hero
Archmage of Thunder
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posted February 08, 2002 10:05 PM |
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I think I'll probably run two heroes in my main army - at least until I get another town to add troops from, because you have two empty slots in the army with only 5 creatures available. (Of course, we don't know yet with any certainty what will be most effective in H4, but this is what I plan to try first.) One will probably be magic with a little bit of combat skill (and tactics for range troops and/or spellcasters, if command radius still applies), the other mostly combat with a little magic skill. Maybe something like this (skills listed in order of focus):
Hero 1 (magic): main magic skill, allied magic skill 1, Tactics*, Combat, allied magic skill 2.
Hero 2 (might): starting skill (such as Nobility for Lords or Scouting for Thieves), Combat, Tactics, Nobility, Scouting@, main magic skill.
* If command radius no longer applies, then Scouting instead.
@ Order of non-magic skills may vary depending on opponents - Scouting will probably be more important against Asylums since their might hero begins with Stealth (and if Necro still has that @#$! cover of darkness). Ignore the starting skill when it's listed a second time.
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The calm before the storm is about to end.
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StormWarning
Promising
Famous Hero
Archmage of Thunder
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posted February 08, 2002 10:12 PM |
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Oldtimer - specializing your heroes tends to leave weaknesses in other areas. Let's say you specialize in two schools of magic, completely ignoring Combat and other might skills. You meet a Stronghold army with some major resistance artifacts and a pair of heroes with Grandmaster Resistance. You're screwed, because your hero is worthless against them. Now if you have a hero with two schools of magic both fairly high level, but you have a little bit of Combat and Tactics alongside, your hero will at least be able to do some damage as he goes down (you're still probably in trouble if they have several resistance artifacts, but at least you can take a few of them down with you). I agree that a broad-based jack-of-all-trades hero is probably going to be little use, but I'd be a bit wary of over-specialization too.
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The calm before the storm is about to end.
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted February 09, 2002 12:47 PM |
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"You meet a Stronghold army with some major resistance artifacts and a pair of heroes with Grandmaster Resistance. You're screwed, because your hero is worthless against them."
Not necessarily. A mage can always cast beneficial spells on his own troops. Adding additonal strike or giving all your creatures first strike can work wonders. Or simply increaseing defence so that all damage is halved. Nature will of course summon more creatures.
Only Chaos Magic will have some problems but even Chaos Magic will have some spells that aren't cast on the enemy troops.
Also we don't know if you can protect creatures from magic. Some creatures have resistance towards it so they'll be difficult to handle.
When it comes to the enemy heroes, the choice is easy. It's your high level creatures that finish them off, and probably you're going to make this your priority.
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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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Oldtimer
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted February 09, 2002 05:30 PM |
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So if I understand you correctly, you believe that my hero should give up a promotion in his primary skills to get a basic in another skill.
Lets say I'm into a Magic hero and I like Life/Nature. You want me to give up spells like Guardian Angel(Target creature get X number extra lives), Sancuary(Target creature cannot be attacked), Summon Mantis and Summon Fairy Dragon so that my hero can have Basic combat and basic magic resisitance?
The little benefit you recieve from a basic skill cannot replace the huge benefit you recieve from having grand master. Until you get up to grandmaster levels it will probably be tactically unsound to start developing that third primary let alone a fourth or fifth.
The game is now designed to have heroes that each play differently and you are going to have to develop your strategy around that. If you think your mage is a little weak, create a might hero to general your army and use two heroes.
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<PLEASE DO NOT WAKE THE OLD MAN!>
"Zzzz...Zzzz...Zzzz..."
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Tristan
Promising
Known Hero
illegally insane
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posted February 10, 2002 05:32 AM |
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I think I agree with Oldtimer on this, the benefit of grandmaster skill in an area is likely to be more than another skill at basic level. However, what do you do if you don't get the chance? I thought your choices on level up were to raise a skill you had, get a new secondary skill in the area of one of your primaries, or get a new primary skill?
With this in place, I think grandmaster level skills will not be available as soon as the listings that have been given.
Another thing, about having a new hero and getting the skills you want that way, if they are in the same army, your more experienced hero will get more (most?) of the experience from the fight so he/she will not advance as quickly.
I think Djive may be right as well, in saying that pre and post combat may be more important to have a good hero for than actually IN combat.
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StormWarning
Promising
Famous Hero
Archmage of Thunder
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posted February 10, 2002 06:02 PM |
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Forgot about the beneficial spells, Djive. Some schools, particularly Chaos and Death, would be hurt a lot more than the others - Life and Nature would barely be affected.
Oldtimer - I'm saying that you shouldn't completely neglect the other skills, although going mainly after one or two will be a lot better than building all 5 equally. It will depend a lot on how easy it is to build high-level Mage Guilds. You will definitely need to protect your magic hero for him to be of any use, and you may need to invest a skill slot or two in Combat instead of magic. In fact, if high-level guilds are expensive enough you may want to do so early in the game and often. Leveling up, I'd focus on the magic skills, but if you're offered Basic Combat somewhere, take it because you'll need the defense. Depending on the nature of your foes (many range creatures or high-movement creatures), you may need even more Combat to stay alive long enough to make the spells worthwhile. What good is being able to cast Guardian Angel if your hero gets taken out before he can cast it?
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The calm before the storm is about to end.
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Oldtimer
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posted February 10, 2002 11:22 PM |
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Surviving to get the upper levels is the new tactics in battle. If you have a might hero, you have to go after that magic hero and take him out. If you are a magic hero you have to form a defensive stand to keep the mage in action. This will also determine which creatures you decide to have in your castle. The magic hero will take the defensive or shooting specialist while the might will take the fast attacking creatures. Style and tactics are going to vary widely depending on hero development.
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<PLEASE DO NOT WAKE THE OLD MAN!>
"Zzzz...Zzzz...Zzzz..."
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ThE_HyDrA
Admirable
Famous Hero
The Leader of all Hydras
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posted February 11, 2002 07:31 AM |
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Hero Skills and Level Bonuses
Skills, skills, skills. Yes, there are many of them, and, no doubt, they will play a large part in the hero battle system. What this argument is about, between SW and Oldtimer is how to use these skills economically, and utilise the resources you have to make the best hero possible, both have extremely valid statement, and they are both entitled to their opinion.
I would just like to stop in for a few words on this discussion..... 
Hero development has much to do with what the hero specialises in at the beginning. This particular aspect includes similarities to HeroesIII, but on a more diverse scale in which it is on. A point that seems blatantly obvious in this discussion is: Don't pursue skills that do not suit a hero An example is, don't teach a magic orientated skill to a barbarian. The skill will have more potency being learnt by a magic hero that can work alongside the might hero for maximum effect in battle field situations.
To subside this, what is possible is to spread the skills that you learn so you can get the best out of the ones that do great things with your hero. Diversify your choices on skills, so you may actualle change your horizons when you get to higher levels. I would raise at least 2 skills at the same pace, and another three close behind, so my hero is balanced. There is no point teaching a magic hero no defense skills, because as Storm said, they would most likely only be able to cast a few spells before they are defeated. There is no real point in teaching a magic hero a combat skill, as I outlined before. Yes, it will bolster hand-to-hand attacks, but really, a magic hero would not use that in battle, it would much prefer to cast spells.
At early levels, yes, it would be OK to teach them combat, but I don't think it should be stuck with, as the spells get more powerful and come into play more. It is similar to the development of the hero. At early levels, it is difficult to find much use for your hero, but once it gets some experience under its belt, then we can see their true colours fly.
"I think Djive may be right as well, in saying that pre and post combat may be more important to have a good hero for than actually IN combat."
At lower levels? Of course, what use is a hero with 40 HP and practically no spells? But in Heroes III, heroes were incredibly useful at that stage, as they need not worry about experience affecting every morsal of their performance figures. But at high levels in Heroes IV, that is when Heroes rule the battlefields. With around 2,000 HP, and many spells like Armageddon and Guardian Angel to help them, too, the spellcasting ability has returned, not just that, though, but the ability to actually present themselves with a more than considerable amount of strike force with hand to hand attacks, too.
Thankyou all for your opinions, I find it pleasing to see your spirited replies.
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"Dragons may breathe fire, but Hydras have many heads." - The Creed of Hydras
"As the Dragon drew its breath, the Hydra pounced, swiftly but powerfully, and the Dragon was defeated.”
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Oldtimer
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted February 11, 2002 08:23 AM |
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Okay, I understand that you guys think all skills are useful and would like your hero well balanced. Having two primaries rise at a steady pace and the other three close behind. It sounds logical. It even sounds like a very sound strategic decision. But it is wrong.
Why is it wrong?
Because the map will not be able to support the amount of experience needed to generate the promotions that you would have to have to create that super well balance main hero.
How many times do you actually get your hero over level 30 in h3? I think that there will be that upper level ceiling in h4 also. The fact is that you cannot afford to waste a skill promotion on a tertiary skill until your main skills are completed. What if 40 is the top of the promotion limit? You would need all of those promotions to maximize your chosen hero type. After the 40th promotion is when you need to decide which tertiary skill to add, not before then. Remember that in h3 all you needed was 24 promotions to max out your skills.
***EDIT***
After looking at some artifacts and items it seems that if you want to boost minor skills, your best bet would be to buy an item for minor magics and artifacts for health/power increases.
After looking at the kingdom overview screen from celestial heavens, I noticed that every army had 2 heroes. An army has 7 slots, 1 for each of the 5 available creatures in a town and 2 for heroes. So the ideal will probably be to have a hero of might and a hero of magic. (Or any combo that you want to try.)
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<PLEASE DO NOT WAKE THE OLD MAN!>
"Zzzz...Zzzz...Zzzz..."
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StormWarning
Promising
Famous Hero
Archmage of Thunder
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posted February 12, 2002 10:17 PM |
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Yes, artifacts will definitely help to compensate for weaknesses - a point I hadn't considered much. That probably swings the skills more towards specialization, since you can use artifacts both to compensate for weaknesses and to help power up your main skills. The only point of giving the magic hero Combat (which now provides defensive boosts; Melee has replaced Toughness as a secondary and provides the old benefits from Combat) is to ensure that the hero can survive long enough to cast spells, and if you can find artifacts that will give health boosts (which may not always be the case), you don't need to get Combat as badly. But I certainly would pick it up at Basic if I could at a university or similar, despite the risk that it would cut my progress in my main skills by offering them less frequently. Might heroes can afford to specialize much more easily, since Combat offers Resistance (to help offset the threat of magic heroes).
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The calm before the storm is about to end.
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Linkki
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 13, 2002 12:06 AM |
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There are tons of artifacts with health bonuses. All the different chest armors, magical and non-magical ones give health/defense bonuses.
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StormWarning
Promising
Famous Hero
Archmage of Thunder
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posted February 13, 2002 09:58 PM |
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Yes, but some mapmakers don't like to put many artifacts on maps. If you can't get one early, I'd take a level of Combat gladly to keep the hero up and casting spells longer. I'll have to see when HoMM4 comes out whether it works out better to take Basic Combat or that extra level in your main skills (although I won't hesitate to take Combat from a university in either case).
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The calm before the storm is about to end.
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Oldtimer
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted February 13, 2002 10:52 PM |
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It's good to see you come around to my way of thinking, (it was probably inevitable) and you did identify the only reason to get a third primary (Through univeristy, witches hut or any other structure that gives you one skill choice.) but it might retard (Probably not) your upper skill development.
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<PLEASE DO NOT WAKE THE OLD MAN!>
"Zzzz...Zzzz...Zzzz..."
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ThE_HyDrA
Admirable
Famous Hero
The Leader of all Hydras
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posted February 14, 2002 09:46 AM |
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Artifacts and Hero Skill thinking
"hat if 40 is the top of the promotion limit?"
What if it isn't? Maybe the map won't supply enough experience, but maybe other opponents will be able to. There are others trying to achieve the same goal as you are in this game. There isn't reason why the experience can't come from them. The opponents and their armies will, on larger maps, prove to be plenty of experience to substantialy supply your hero from levels 40 and beyond. I have it as a guess that most of you know that 99 is the maximum hero level. As 999 is the maximum amount of shots.
Also, to have a "super well balance main hero" means you must sacrifice developing one skill at a monstrous pace, and leaving the others behind. So, inevitably, you'll have to develop them more slowly, so you can keep them all practically align.
Concerning artifacts:
If you collect enough of them, you may be able to help all your skills, as there aren't many artifacts that focus just on that specific skill. Although, if you only have 1 or two, you may want to place them where they matter most.
Focusing on one skill especially will most likely bring down the ever-important devolopment in other areas. Gameplay doesn't center around one skill, in order to be successful in a map, and do it effieciently, you must broaden your horizons to get the most out of the maps resources, and what lay before you in adventure map locations.
Yes, go ahead and increase tertiary skills in which order you need them, the main focus on balancing is, that you don't stay focused on one or two particular skills, and when you need others, you may well have to learn it from scratch.
A possible example of this is a magic hero. Say you steer him towards magic and resistance based skills. Once the hero progresses in levels a bit more, say level 35, he becomes very proficient in the art in casting and protecting his army from spells. But when it comes to the physical side, he cannot cut it with the rest, let's face it, not all creatures can cast magic, and the only thing they can do is attack with physical force. If they decide to do so against the hero, he may find himself in a bit of strife, as he has not learned what was required in the combat side of things for the hero.
Yes, another might hero will also be in the battle, but it doesn't have any direct say in what happens to the other hero. Such as, the might hero cannot take the damage for he magic hero. It may hinder more from getting there by cutting the opponent down, and even then, the other magic hero may still cast spells. The problem is the magic hero is too magic orientated to survive in battle.
Universities will be very important, as they will help bolster your skills for the desired level, and in the early stages, can really help you trying to decide which primary skill path you should or shouldn't take.
Please keep the discussion coming.  It has proven most interesting.
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"Dragons may breathe fire, but Hydras have many heads." - The Creed of Hydras
"As the Dragon drew its breath, the Hydra pounced, swiftly but powerfully, and the Dragon was defeated.”
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted February 14, 2002 10:45 AM |
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There has been some scrrenshots where you see both level and XP. Sadly, I must say that it seems they've taken an approach which looks like Heroes 3 for XP. This means that levels beyond 30 or so are very hard to get and you won't get beyond 40 without placing a lot of Tree of Knowledge on the map.
The heroes 3 system requires overflows a 32 bit value around level 70 (give or take a few levels), and 32 bits is roughly 4.000.000.000 XP, which is an obscene amount of XP when a level 4 creature gives around 600 XP.
I'm inclined to believe that Oldtimer is right, at least partly. The best seems to max out your first skill completely getting GM in all.
After that you pretty much know that you will never be able to max out your second skill so it's probably just as good to diversify your interests. So opening up all five Primary skill and start visiting universities and other tuition places sounds like a good idea. At this time you will likely also have the money to spare for tutoring your heroes, without setting back town developement.
Now, the important part is that you will have more than one hero. And your different heroes will develope different skills. One may take a magic skill, another may take tactics, a third nobility and a fourth scouting.
The fact that there are 99 levels of increase doesn't mean that the designers will let you reach those levels. In fact I'm fairly certain they won't.
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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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Tristan
Promising
Known Hero
illegally insane
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posted February 14, 2002 04:24 PM |
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just a few more things
My last post I did not have the time to explain my reasoning for saying pre and post combat would be more important, so I hoped it would be understood more. At higher levels the hero will be more powerfull, but usually by the time you get there you will have a much larger army, so while a level 40 hero is a match for X creatures of X level, by the time your hero is level 40 you and your opponent will likely have 5 to 6 times X creatures.
As far as how high levels your heroes will get to, this will likely depend more on what type of game you are playing. I think multiplayer will have to be looked at a bit to see what kind of changes will be needed, but I could see campaigns in which you could get a level 50 or 60 hero by the end. I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that 3do has missed the boat some by adding MP almost as an afterthought.
I also think that having 2 heroes will be the way to go most of the time, even though that will make them develop slower
[edited to add] I mean 2 heroes per army, not total
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted February 14, 2002 05:23 PM |
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Edited By: Djive on 14 Feb 2002
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Quote:
I also think that having 2 heroes will be the way to go most of the time, even though that will make them develop slower
You think so?
I'd be inclined to believe that you want 1-2 Heroes for every ARMY that you have, excepting only 1-3 armies which you dedicate for pure scouting purposes (and these armies would either be a high level Hero with Stealth or a weak creature stack to pick up freebies.)
Now, your heroes CAN'T return to your castle to collect creatures. In part you will use caravans for transporting creatures, but even if you do so I wouldn't want to ever place all my creatures in one army.
Heroes 3 had Town Portal, Flying and Dimension Door to move quickly around. With those spells gone (Only order mages will have the weaker version of Town Portal) you end up with the strategic decision on how much of your units to deploy on defence and how much to deploy on scouting/invasion. Players will be unable to deploy units both for defence and scouting/invasion.
Also notice that you will not want to have armies that are not led by Heroes fighting battles, because that means that you won't benefit at all in many battles (None of your Heroes get XP, so what are you fighting for?)
So I'm fairly certain that players will have at least two main armies, and if you want to expand in different directions you probably need three or four. And all of these armies need heroes.
This is why I feel that you are likely to end up with several/pack of heroes around say level X, instead of one-two heroes of 5-10 levels higher. This will be forced upon you due to new restrictions on logistics.
Also notice that you REALLY want to develope Nobility and Scouting/Stealth in at least one Hero, just to be able to get the bonuses these heroes will give to the town/adventure map. (And if a hero can be governor in several towns, and I don't see why not... then that skill will be even more important to get to GM.)
ADDED:
Looked at a few recent screenshots with different level heroes.
16.000 is level 10.
35.500 is level 14.
7.123.900 is level 43.
I'm afraid this fits perfectly into the assumprion that level-up for XP is same as heroes 3. This means that if you are level 50, if won't be enough to defeat a Legion of Black Dragon to gain even a single level.
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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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Oldtimer
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Supreme Hero
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posted February 14, 2002 10:56 PM |
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The era of the super hero is over.
When you play other games, D&D, etc. the one thing you notice is that the characters are specialists. Magic users Knight, Theifs, Clerics, etc. This reflects an assumption that to be an master at an art you have to spend alot of time developing your skill. So now heroes 4 is going to reflect the same assumptions that are taken for granted in other fantasy games and stories.
I think that I am going to like this change. Instead of having a hero that I know is going to look like every other hero I play. I will now have all of these specialist heroes with whom I am going to have to develop special tactics for. An assassin is really going to play like an assassin, you will use his grandmaster stealth to sneak behind enemy lines and look for weak targets to kill with his death magic. You might claim that the specialist have weaknesses that could be compensated for in additional skills. I say that each hero will have weaknesses that are going to be a puzzle that will be figured out and tactics will be developed to play each hero to his strength and cover his weakness.
I now predict that there will be 37 new threads once h4 come out. "Tactics: Knight", "Tactics: Wizard King" (If no one else makes them I'm sure I can talk myself into writing them.)
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<PLEASE DO NOT WAKE THE OLD MAN!>
"Zzzz...Zzzz...Zzzz..."
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Djive
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
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posted February 14, 2002 11:43 PM |
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Yep, the era is over. It's not economically and strategically right to try and put all of your XP on one hero.
Some might try for the two skill approach mentioned by Oldtimer, but some others may very well diversify themselves completely after having specialized in their first skill. The second skill will never be fully developed anyway.
Some of the higher abilities doesn't seem all that much better. Is really Master and Grandmaster ressurrection worth an extra skill slot? (They just add 5% to ressurrection whereas Basic, Advanced and expert adds 10%, and there's also a few other abilities where the Master and Grandmaster bonuses seems overall small.)
Scouts can skip developing Seamanship on non-water-maps, so that means they can level out their first Primary skill at level 14.
All the magic skills also offer the possibilities of not taking the 3rd secondary in the case where you are just after the spells. I guess if you take Death Magic as your second skill, you may just want to skip Necromancy alogether.
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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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Oldtimer
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Supreme Hero
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posted February 16, 2002 12:46 AM |
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One reason to get grand master reserection.
If you lose 2 angels with grand master you get one back, at master you would need to lose 3 angels to get one back.
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<PLEASE DO NOT WAKE THE OLD MAN!>
"Zzzz...Zzzz...Zzzz..."
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