|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
posted December 01, 2011 08:54 AM |
|
|
However, you get the wrong impression.
Like Miru pointed out, it has actually become a lot more strategic. If you really play a map big enough that you may battle on more than one front and lead a resource war, you can actually do it.
For one, the game makes it possible to recruit stronger heroes. Even if there is no XP to gain for level-up, come the point your main is level 10, you can hire a level 5 secondary (with more troops than a level 1) for more money and make him a saboteur, equipping him with Plunder Mine, Scouting, Logistics, Lightning and, say, Regeneration and handing him SOME troops. THEN you would send someone, and that someone might flag a mine, relevant for you, not relevant for the owner. Now every mine is important. Now your Saboteur can actually plunder or sabotage a mine, Fortress or not. NOW your level 5 hero with some troops is pretty effective, and may do actual damage.
No strategy? LOL.
And Town Portal, yeah. You need to build the structure in every town you want to portal FROM (you can use TP only in a town that has the building, AND it costs a lot of TIME to use it. Simply waltzing onwards with a main hero and all troops is obviously possible - but more often than not it's also bollox to do so. You cannot afford to waste turns and turns and turns by portalling around the world to defend an area against one of the above-mentioned saboteur heeroes. Also you lose precious resources by NEEDLESSLY building portals in your towns.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
When discussing the hiring model in H VI, it makes sense to note that H 5 was basically what I would call a "one-town-per-player" game. A second town would completely alter the picture (for example handing you much more magic, virtually guaranteeing you all spells, making Master of choices rather pointless), and while the actual strategic situation with a view on resources became rather interesting, the LOGISTIC part of the game got much more involving - you wouldn't want to build double upgrades, so you'd have to caravan troops from the second to the first town and haul them back and so on.
Not to mention the fact that Necro wouldn't have a strategic problem with different towns at all, but only a logistic one.
While I like to play Heroes 5 (and the others), the logistic part is a chore. For me, it's pretty easy, I come from mathematics - I have no problem to set up chains and rounds for secondaries and to organize supply and what I call "guarding chains", effectively allowing my troops to cover my whole domain and still make progress.
What I liked as well was setting up a second good hero for a different conquered faction - but that was just against the AI.
Anyway, this is something you CAN actually do in Heroes 6 as well - for one thing you don't have problems hiring a fitting hero. But does it make SENSE as well?
Well, what I find pretty cool in H6 is the fact that we are back to be able to handle A LOT of towns (and dwellings) again. Also, UNIT PRODUCTION is one hell of a lot more difficult. THEN the best way to build things up was ALWAYS clear - go for an upgrade only if it's either indispensable or doesn't inhibit your ability to build the maximum possible higher-level buildings - and the maximum possible was always clear.
Now it's not. Not in the least. You can play the same map at the same position and get vastly different amounts of troops. You can play multi, and you can actually OURPRODUCE your opponent, something unheard of, provided things were fairly equal. Creature growth is influenced in so many different (and much more interesting) ways, resulting in different army set-ups. And while it is impressive to have an army with tons of Basic creatures, because you have a couple of towns that produce them - they will be crap when facing a sizable amount of Champions led by a good hero
Back to town conversion. Sure, conquering a town and converting it, getting the basic creature dwellings is fine - but it also costs resources; resources you may need to build a champion dwelling in your starting town. Given a big enough map - and there ARE big enough maps there -, and suddenly it's not anymore about converting everything to the death. You CAN keep the different town, hire a hero for it and start sabotaging. This is especially interesting on maps with water.
It's definitely also not about cramming all troops into one hero - you do not want to waste your time with your main by exploring a fresh area and flag the mines there, after you conquered the town; you may consider hiring a hero, give him the necessary amount of troops and let HIM to the legwork, while your main rolls on, taking the direct route to the next border.
There is also nothing wrong with setting up chains - Ive been doing that a lot on the afore mentioned Broken Alliance map. There is something of a key position between the areas of starting position 1 and two, I think, - there is the portal in the Northwest, and if your main is in the Southwest exploring East, you need a hero there to defend from intrusions without having to jump back and forth every time. Note also, that it's actually strategically advantageous NOT to hire: as long as your creatures are still in the pool, they are VIRTUALLY everywhere. Once you HIRED them, however, they are committed and have to be transported.
What we are talking about here is REAL strategy, not logistic penny-counting. It's called RESERVES, and it's - for a change - the real thing.
Oh, yes, once the map is big and involves more than one opponent, your task is still about finding the right balance: HOW MANY offensive heroes, who gets what troops, how many reserves, where are defensive heroes needed for which bad case. But there is a safety line as well. Having Town Portal definitely helps as an insurance, and sometimes it's even the fastest way to get reinforcements - if you need them.
Take for example the Wheel of Hate map. This map has an underground that pays to explore. However, the surface map is a chain of 12 areas, with six starting town areas separated by a neutral one containing random dwellings (that require you to take a fortress to actually get them). That means THREE directions to go - but also to expect opponents from.
If you play that on hard difficulty, your first problem is that you obviously can and have to make use of more than one hero for more than one reason, but you need 5000 gold for your first secondary, which is a lot. Town Portal? Who can allow to build that?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I wonder whether people noticed that we actually have CUSTOMIZABLE difficulty settings now. You can play the frigging game any way you want. Since I've seen the patch notes already, I know that patch 1.2 will come with major bug fixes AND updated routines and decision-making for the AI, but until that time NEVER set-up anything else as HARD AI for the AI players, because that's the only setting the AI is actually playing without any handicap. Also pick AGGRESSIVE AI in the difficulty menu.
Everything else is a matter of preference. Normal starting money and hard guards is as possible as, say, hard starting money and easy guards, which makes for very different plays.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Lastly, and ignoring the really annoying bugs for the moment, multiplayer in Heroes 6 is the most fun of them all - and by a vast margin. It's fast, it offers a lot of different modes (turney mode that works like chess with a certain amount of game time instead of turn time, is extremely, well, imposing a sense of urgency), and it's FUN. I find myself constantly challenged to adjust my building strategy.
So the bottom line is this: I have no doubt, come the second expansion, that Heroes 6 will be the best of the lot so far. None whatsoever, having played 3 for something like 8 years.
Will it be perfect?
HELL, no! For one thing, I still miss the INDIVIDUAL TOWN BUILDING TREES, the way Heroes 2 started them, and 4 and 5 added more elements for possible use (if it helps, if you imagine Disciples had a building/recruiting mechanic like Heroes, that's what I call individual town building trees). I'm starting to get sick of the seven-creature-seven-upgrades tune.
So it's still enough to do, and yet...
|
|
kodial79
Promising
Supreme Hero
How'd Phi's Lov't
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 08:55 AM |
|
Edited by kodial79 at 08:59, 01 Dec 2011.
|
@coconut
Well, you might have added the "tedious" part to it, but it was Ubisoft that came up with "micromanagement" when they were explaining why they cut the resources to four.
In the case when it has been completely safe, then the task of running around to gather troops from external dwellings might be indeed tiring at times.
In that case, Heroes V's caravans was the best solution. The strategic part of it was still there. If the area was unsafe, a secondary Hero would have to go get them by himself. If it was safe, you just summoned the caravans to bring them.
To be sure, they sometimes created a sort of a traffic problem. But that was where I expected them to expand on it and make it better. But well, they chose to kill this entire part of the game by creating common pools. Boring...
Town Portal is a very powerful spell. It must be hard to get. Because those who have it, in essence they have better control of the map. If everyone gets it easy, then it makes for a very annoying game as everyone can be anywhere he wants at any time. It's more like Star Trek then with everyone beaming around than Heroes of Might and Magic.
Somehow for me, that kills the atmosphere of the game when imagining that there's such an advance network of portals that the heroes and their huge armies go through city to city and forts without having to step outside of their walls. Ok, there's magic but it should not be so readily available to everyone.
____________
Signature? I don't need no stinking signature!
|
|
Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 08:55 AM |
|
Edited by Miru at 09:09, 01 Dec 2011.
|
EDIT: double ninjad and page broken..
I think that dave's suggestion here would be a good improvement, provided they also returned caravans now that they would be needed.
I think that town portaling in itself isn't bad, it just needs a nerf. Maybe if it cost 1/20th the cost of your army, or had a long cool down it would be more reasonable.
I also liked heroes 2 where they only gave units upgrades that make sense. For strategy though ToTe was the best. Several units I actually picked the worse upgrade for initially (Namely Centaur Nomad, the Marauder is much better.)
Micromanagement has been applied to many games, this isn't something Ubisoft made up as a justification of what they did, it is why they decided to do it. It is the main reason I dislike melee in Starcraft 2, the units are morons and need to be constantly baby-sat.
____________
I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
|
|
Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 09:22 AM |
|
|
Quote:
Somehow for me, that kills the atmosphere of the game when imagining that there's such an advance network of portals that the heroes and their huge armies go through city to city and forts without having to step outside of their walls. Ok, there's magic but it should not be so readily available to everyone.
+1 on this one. There must be a better way to balance a nuclear war then to give the same Nuclear weapon to everybody. I Just miss the way the Orcs were so none magic in ToE it somehow highlited there No Dragon God feeling. Now it just feels to obviouse that Ylath just took guidenc over them under a different name.
@Miru
No reason not to add them if it would work like I wrote.
A nother very nice Idea. some structures like the Naga Temple or Demon Gate have cooldown. Why not give the TP a Cooldown. just1 turn. Alowing you to use it every second turn. This will lowere its power and influence on the game, and Also give it a more strategic value. So the player has to descide when to use it. (Also it would help, to change the TP from a "Spell" to a "structure"
Also some more on map spells would by nice. Why does Darknes not have something like "Silver tongue" a spell that increases your diplomacy skill. but it would have a negative efect. A that attackes a grupe with this spell active, does not have the option to retreat. If the unites would not join him he musts attack.
____________
I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
|
|
kodial79
Promising
Supreme Hero
How'd Phi's Lov't
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 09:42 AM |
|
|
Quote:
However, you get the wrong impression.
Like Miru pointed out, it has actually become a lot more strategic. If you really play a map big enough that you may battle on more than one front and lead a resource war, you can actually do it.
For one, the game makes it possible to recruit stronger heroes. Even if there is no XP to gain for level-up, come the point your main is level 10, you can hire a level 5 secondary (with more troops than a level 1) for more money and make him a saboteur, equipping him with Plunder Mine, Scouting, Logistics, Lightning and, say, Regeneration and handing him SOME troops. THEN you would send someone, and that someone might flag a mine, relevant for you, not relevant for the owner. Now every mine is important. Now your Saboteur can actually plunder or sabotage a mine, Fortress or not. NOW your level 5 hero with some troops is pretty effective, and may do actual damage.
No strategy? LOL.
Minimum strategy. Compared to previous games that you had to have all the Heroes you could get leveled up and ready for battle besides their menial tasks. Or why did you think that in the campaign your best Heroes would pass along to the next map with their levels and items? Because it was that you could not play with just one, unlike now.
Sabotaging mines was a nice touch but it's nothing much to speak of. The way the resources have now been simplified, it's not necessairy. The only rare resource is not so rare anymore, simply because it's only one, you will find it easily and with little to no management you can get what you want out of it.
Furthermore, in older games, you did not need to sabotage mines, you invaded their areas and you just grabbed them. That's much better than wasting a turn to simply sabotage it, when you had to eventually lure the enemy out of his walls to recapture them or let him starve in there.
Quote:
And Town Portal, yeah. You need to build the structure in every town you want to portal FROM (you can use TP only in a town that has the building, AND it costs a lot of TIME to use it. Simply waltzing onwards with a main hero and all troops is obviously possible - but more often than not it's also bollox to do so. You cannot afford to waste turns and turns and turns by portalling around the world to defend an area against one of the above-mentioned saboteur heeroes. Also you lose precious resources by NEEDLESSLY building portals in your towns.
What? You have to build a Town Portal in each town? Hell, how come I missed on that part? Give me a break, right?
What, you mean to tell me that it's actually harder now? Just because you have to build an extra building?
Well, what about before when Town Portal was not so readily available and you had to make sure this towns must stay defended if they could be threatened and you could not get back in time?
Now all you need, is a handful more crystals! Big deal...
Quote:
Well, what I find pretty cool in H6 is the fact that we are back to be able to handle A LOT of towns (and dwellings) again. Also, UNIT PRODUCTION is one hell of a lot more difficult. THEN the best way to build things up was ALWAYS clear - go for an upgrade only if it's either indispensable or doesn't inhibit your ability to build the maximum possible higher-level buildings - and the maximum possible was always clear.
Now it's not. Not in the least. You can play the same map at the same position and get vastly different amounts of troops. You can play multi, and you can actually OURPRODUCE your opponent, something unheard of, provided things were fairly equal. Creature growth is influenced in so many different (and much more interesting) ways, resulting in different army set-ups. And while it is impressive to have an army with tons of Basic creatures, because you have a couple of towns that produce them - they will be crap when facing a sizable amount of Champions led by a good hero
You're kidding me? Unit production a lot more difficult? Where did you get that from? It's never been easier! All I see now, is that I never had a problem recuiting any of my units. I always have the resources required and I always get the buildings I need in time. I don't how it got any harder?
Back then to build the required buildings and capture dwellings, visit them weekly and gather the army that you should have was almost an impossible task. Being pressed by the enemy, you were forced to defend instead of visit dwellings, and missing on the weekly crop of troops.
Also though I haven't compared the prices in this one and the older games, but I remember that there were a lot of times that I did not have enough gold to buy all the creatures unlike now, I always seem to have more than enough to buy even the double ammount of what I get. So either the resources come a lot easier now or the troops are much cheaper.
And even in the rare the times when you managed to recruit all the troops available, without expert coordination and organization, you could not possibly bring them all to one place and defend or attack as easily as you do now, which resulted to many casualties in a lot of the battles.
Now I start and finish campaigns with 0 casualties.
Quote:
Back to town conversion. Sure, conquering a town and converting it, getting the basic creature dwellings is fine - but it also costs resources; resources you may need to build a champion dwelling in your starting town. Given a big enough map - and there ARE big enough maps there -, and suddenly it's not anymore about converting everything to the death. You CAN keep the different town, hire a hero for it and start sabotaging. This is especially interesting on maps with water.
Again with the cost of resources as if in the older games you had everything for free. Town Conversion is an idea that I like, but they must make it harder to get. I think you convert them very easily. Maybe it should be more expensive or maybe it should happen gradually within a few turns time, during which you could not build something new. Then we would be talking because your argument is week.
So far in every map that I played wether big or small, I've been converting forts, towns and creature dwellings thoughtlessly without needing to worry myself about the impact on the economy for there was none.
Quote:
It's definitely also not about cramming all troops into one hero - you do not want to waste your time with your main by exploring a fresh area and flag the mines there, after you conquered the town; you may consider hiring a hero, give him the necessary amount of troops and let HIM to the legwork, while your main rolls on, taking the direct route to the next border.
I got a few snatchers running behind him sometimes to gather what he does not need to spend movement points on to get. But why would I wanna do that? No one else needs to gain any levels other than my Main. They are not required to do battle because thanks to Town portals, my main can effectively defend and attack whereever he is. So no, all experience goes to the main hero. The game is build in a way that favours a single route followed by a single hero.
Quote:
There is also nothing wrong with setting up chains - Ive been doing that a lot on the afore mentioned Broken Alliance map. There is something of a key position between the areas of starting position 1 and two, I think, - there is the portal in the Northwest, and if your main is in the Southwest exploring East, you need a hero there to defend from intrusions without having to jump back and forth every time. Note also, that it's actually strategically advantageous NOT to hire: as long as your creatures are still in the pool, they are VIRTUALLY everywhere. Once you HIRED them, however, they are committed and have to be transported.
What we are talking about here is REAL strategy, not logistic penny-counting. It's called RESERVES, and it's - for a change - the real thing.
I told you what I did in Broken Alliance. All the army under the main Hero, he was clearing the area and then he was staying in town. Buffed up movement secondaries with not a single core creature, were running around and capturing the always undefended enemy towns and when they did that, the main hero was porting there and clearig the area getting the xp, and porting to wherever he needed to be to defend against other attacking heroes. Some of my secondaries were being caught up by the enemy and I had to re-recruit them but that did not damage me at all, because it was almost free.
The map in normal difficulty with aggressive AI, was mind numbingly easy. There were no need to worry about anything.
Quote:
Oh, yes, once the map is big and involves more than one opponent, your task is still about finding the right balance: HOW MANY offensive heroes, who gets what troops, how many reserves, where are defensive heroes needed for which bad case. But there is a safety line as well. Having Town Portal definitely helps as an insurance, and sometimes it's even the fastest way to get reinforcements - if you need them.
That was the case for the previous games. The Town Portal does not only help, it wins the game for you. Especially since the AI is only using to flee...
Quote:
I wonder whether people noticed that we actually have CUSTOMIZABLE difficulty settings now. You can play the frigging game any way you want. Since I've seen the patch notes already, I know that patch 1.2 will come with major bug fixes AND updated routines and decision-making for the AI, but until that time NEVER set-up anything else as HARD AI for the AI players, because that's the only setting the AI is actually playing without any handicap. Also pick AGGRESSIVE AI in the difficulty menu.
Everything else is a matter of preference. Normal starting money and hard guards is as possible as, say, hard starting money and easy guards, which makes for very different plays.
Well, you could customize somewhat in Heroes V too, don't remember about the others...
But here's the thing now. Everything's on hard, impossible, aggressive etc. And I still win, almost effortlessly. Where if I was going to do that in the previous games, I would be toasted.
In the other games even in normal and sometimes even on easy, I was having a really hard time to beat the scenario. Now not anymore, and that's the difference.
Quote:
Lastly, and ignoring the really annoying bugs for the moment, multiplayer in Heroes 6 is the most fun of them all - and by a vast margin. It's fast, it offers a lot of different modes (turney mode that works like chess with a certain amount of game time instead of turn time, is extremely, well, imposing a sense of urgency), and it's FUN. I find myself constantly challenged to adjust my building strategy.
I haven't played multiplayer yet. Perhaps it changes everything, I don't know. But I never played multiplayer in HoMM. It's always been a single player game for me. I am too impatient to wait for human opponents to finish their moves.
Quote:
So the bottom line is this: I have no doubt, come the second expansion, that Heroes 6 will be the best of the lot so far. None whatsoever, having played 3 for something like 8 years.
Will it be perfect?
HELL, no! For one thing, I still miss the INDIVIDUAL TOWN BUILDING TREES, the way Heroes 2 started them, and 4 and 5 added more elements for possible use (if it helps, if you imagine Disciples had a building/recruiting mechanic like Heroes, that's what I call individual town building trees). I'm starting to get sick of the seven-creature-seven-upgrades tune.
So it's still enough to do, and yet...
Even here, we're going to disagree. It can still get perfect. The possibility is slim but as I mentioned in many previous posts, it still has the potential to easily trample over the previous installments.
In all honesty, the game is very enjoyable. It just needs a lot more work done and a few radical changes to be done to it.
But that potential is volatile right now, that it can even get to be the worst as easily as it can become the best. The game is treading on a tight rope, so to speak.
We shall see...
____________
Signature? I don't need no stinking signature!
|
|
feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 10:06 AM |
|
|
Quote:
Everything's on hard, impossible, aggressive etc. And I still win, almost effortlessly.
Maybe you need more challenge then? www.toheroes.com . I have some time today and tommorow, we can play np, see how easy this gonna be for you.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 10:10 AM |
|
|
Your post doesn't make much sense, because it's more or less about campaigns only which are differently set up then those before. The last campaigns I really enjoyed were in Heroes 2, and those in 6 are a mixed blessing as well.
I'm not discussing those. Repeat: I'm not discussing those. I Due to the "story must go on" rules, they are heavily scripted and work more like adventure games. If you expect the campaigns to reflect the actual game where the words "replay value" make any sense at all, this is definitely the point where discussion stops to make any kind of sense.
That's not true for skirmish, though, and skirmish is what I mean. You continually talk about Broken Alliance played on normal and aggressive (and probably normal) AI. And that experience is what you base your judgement on?
I find that pretty rash.
So I would like YOU to give ME a break for a change - we are not talking about the campaigns here.
|
|
Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 10:15 AM |
|
|
|
@JJ you must admit that BA us a badly designed map. Too many players, too many towns and Dwellings. Resources too easyto get and common. But the fact is that Gold is Too common in most of the HVI games. I would not have a problem with the reduction of Town income to 500-750-1500-3000
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 10:48 AM |
|
|
Broken Alliance is a remade Heroes 3 map.
Due to the changed mechanics the game doesn't really work that well in HoMM 6.
That said, while the map isn't small, it's still meant to be a FAST skirmish map with fast contact.
In 6 this map will be fought with Basic and Champion creatures exclusively.
It's definitely not a "standard" map.
Talking about money.
Money is the prime market place bartering commodity, in case anyone noticed. It's abundance reflects the fact that actually the RESOURCES are the bottleneck this time around.
It's also a good thing in the sense that you don't need to rush for Capitol anymore.
Sheesh, what's the matter with you people? "I can buy all my creatures now and still have money left." Tell me, what sense does it make to have millions of creature in towns that you cannot hire? And you can't, realistically, in Homm games before.
I mean, did you notice that this time around it is possible to get up to FIVE level 7 creatures in just one town (6 for Kirins)? While at the same time, basic creature amount maximum won't be 50, but is something like below 20 for Goblins as the most plentiful creature.
Try to find the resources for those full champion levels. So OF COURSE you will have money left: basic creature amounts look quite impressive - but 100 Basic creatures are pretty much toast if you come up against a good hero. And basic creature full production isn't worth much - in that sense it's comparable with Heroes 2.
Why do I write that? Because on Broken Alliance, if you play Rich level (and even Normal) you may rush to Champion in week 1. There are also Champion dwellings around. What about "money left" then?
However, the actual point, since BA is a very special map:
If you have tons of money left you don't play best, because you probably could have bartered money for resources and build some more.
|
|
feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 10:57 AM |
|
|
Quote:
In 6 this map will be fought with Basic and Champion creatures exclusively.
I played on BA only once in my h6 noob days but its the map i said to myself for the first time "WTF is with the growth in this game" That was after i was getting 9 champion units/week with one castle lol. Sorry for offtopic 
|
|
Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 11:12 AM |
|
|
Quote:
Broken Alliance is a remade Heroes 3 map.
Its Actually a remade H2 map. not H3. If there was a H3 BA map it was a Remake of the original H2 one.
But back to the money. Agreing on the fact that BA is a Special map. I think you miss the point of the Not enought money topic.
Sure have money for all the unites is not bad. Especialy when Heroes+common artifacts+Town+Forts+Mines give you gold. But what would happen if you did not have all that Money.
You would have to chose:
between Build or recruit.
Between Strong melee unit or a range shooter.
You might chose Yuki onas for creeping but then an enemy comes with Pathers. Both of you had scarse money and had to chose only one elite. He had a tough time creeping, you will have tought times when his melee guys rush into your range girls
You can always sell your resources to get more money. as well as you can always buy resources for money.
Or are the new market palce prices to high?
|
|
feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 11:22 AM |
|
|
|
There isnt too much money right now, you still have to choose what you want. In all of my games i havent built tier 3 fort once, i havent bought an artifact more expensive then 10k and i have build special buildings only once just to check out how they work. I always take gold with 20% bonus from chests and i still cant buy everything. You dont want to sell resources unless you are in trouble and need money badly.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 11:30 AM |
|
|
Yeah, you are right, it's a H2 map. 
Anyway, the money.
First thing is, ALL creature buildings plus fortifications add to creature growth. ALL maps I've played so far offer not enough resources - if you have enough resources for one town you will already have at least another one. It's not possible, starting from week 2, to build every day.
Compared with that, it's fairly easy to get your hand on money - but there are ways to SPEND that money as well.
You may barter resourves for money (something never done before, but something fairly natural now).
Also, heroes will become VERY expensive, as soon as your hero reaches level 7 and more. However, it has certain advantages to hire them.
So I repeat. IF you have a sizable money surplus, you obviously "overlook" uses for it.
I repeat - you do not need to rush to Capitol (costing at least 8000/8/8), you may use that to build an Elite dwelling instead). You STILL have to maximize things.
|
|
JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 01:32 PM |
|
|
There have been some tentaive patch notes in the official forum released, and among others we can read:
• Skirmish AI tweaks:
- Tries to defend all owned town (previously the AI focused on its starting town)
- Previously if a hero stronger then the AI's hero threatened a town, the AI hero let that town undefended. Now the AI calculates all of its nearby hero's army and creature growth and defends the town if it finds it possible
- Always defends the last owned town if it can causes reasonable losses to the attacker hero
- Huge speed improvement, AI thinking is approximately 2-3 times faster than in the previous version
- Further improvement of cooperation among primary and secondary heroes
- Improved exploration and target priority
- Pre-calculated army contraction. The AI calculates how many creatures can the target collect (including possible creature growth) before the AI's hero can reach it and calculates if it is worth to chase it.
- Further improvement of Town portal usage
- In case of an FFA the AI tries to attack and capture towns from a weaker player
- FIXED: Sometimes the AI attacked a much stronger hero than itself
- FIXED: Sometimes without reason the AI split its army into 2 and lost against a stronger hero
- FIXED: Sometimes the AI miscalculated the cost of a town portal and spent too much points before trying to use it (resulting an undefended town)
- FIXED: The AI ignored some neutral buildings
Now note, that this is valid for SKIRMISH AI (and not for campaigns).
I repeat, it mkes no sense to talk about those - except of course, that you get a rating, and if you bat everything without losses you may have not been going the fastest road there.
Anyway, everyone can handle that whichever way they want, but it makes no sense at all to discuss the difficulty of the game with a view on campaigns.
|
|
mike80d
Famous Hero
Map Maker
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 02:08 PM |
|
|
Kodial, I have a feeling you haven't been playing Heroes 6 multiplayer against other humans.
If not, then you're basing your opinion off of an AI that needs some re-working.
|
|
Coconut
Hired Hero
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 03:11 PM |
|
|
Quote:
@coconut
Well, you might have added the "tedious" part to it, but it was Ubisoft that came up with "micromanagement" when they were explaining why they cut the resources to four.
I can tell you where I got it from: the Civilization III forum. It's a frequently used term there, mainly used for making small adjustments to towns to optimize their production.
Perhaps you heard it first from Ubisoft, then saw someone use it here on the forum and added 1 + 1.
Except I never saw their propaganda. No offense meant, but 'micro management' is a fairly standard word that anyone can use.
|
|
Pontifex
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted December 01, 2011 05:04 PM |
|
|
Quote:
I can tell you where I got it from: the Civilization III forum. It's a frequently used term there, mainly used for making small adjustments to towns to optimize their production.
Perhaps you heard it first from Ubisoft, then saw someone use it here on the forum and added 1 + 1.
Except I never saw their propaganda. No offense meant, but 'micro management' is a fairly standard word that anyone can use.
You are correct. I'd say micromanagement in one way or another is a staple of any reasonably complex strategy game. City management in Civ games is a good example. The concept does not always imply a negative - many people like to care for the minutiae and certainly having the option to exert greater control on certain aspects of a game is a welcome plus in my book.
That said, when micromanagement does become an issue that hampers gameplay, different games handle it differently. Some use the "governor" mechanic -- the computer will take care of your settlements/cities etc., as in the Total War series. The HOMM series didn't need those - you never had that many castles to maintain, nor that many different units to build. The meat of the strategy always pivoted around the classics: resource management, army composition and logistics considerations. Two out of those three have been consciously limited/crippled in HOMMVI. Regarding resource structures and dwellings, I don't think those were a pressing issue before since they'd always been optional, and there was a tradeoff involved. HOMMV offered the most elegant solution, IMO, to the problem of the chore that meant recruiting creatures from external dwellings, without sacrificing the strategic possibilities they provide: caravans. Moreover, the fact that caravans could be intercepted by enemy heroes (i.e., they were not "magical") even added an additional and attractive line of conflict that in my view enriched the game and helped reduce micromanagement at one fell swoop.
On the other hand, magical, virtually "free" teleportation is a step back no matter how you slice it. HOMM VI, being as it is essentially HOMM Lite, of course saw it fit to throw the baby out with the bathwater - the touted "micromanagement reduction" is nothing but a logical side effect of the general dumbing down that comes together with the game-breaking freebies awarded to the computer on a regular basis. Believe not a word from Ubi or their mouthpieces that this was done for the benefit of the game - this was a financial decision in line with the dual goal of catering to the casual, neutral-stack-fighting, King's-Bounty oriented crowd, and reducing the "boring" downtime between battles (note also the grindy, on-rails feel and the general suggestion to tackle the puzzle maps FAST before the dummies along the road to the final boss bulk up, a linear experience that many find -surprise- trite and boring). To be honest, HOMM V is probably more to blame as it started the trend continued and built upon by this disappointing installment. Consider how the option of waging the attritional resource war stopped being a factor once it was obvious the computer didn't NEED to flag mines. And indeed, flag them it didn't in vanilla HOMMV (it does in later expansions, though I'm not sure how much of that is just a show put on for the human player -- hey, at least the AI heroes have to spend those movement points now).
In sum, any perceived excess in micromanagement can be dealt with in several ways and sometimes solving it is not a question of mechanics, but interface. In this case, however, it's just collateral damage from the drastic strategic simplification Ubi felt the market demanded (a notion I don't necessarily dispute).
|
|
x-ecutionner
Known Hero
|
|
posted December 02, 2011 04:29 AM |
|
|
Lots of informations / opinions in this topic, I like it
I still think the game needs a massive amount of tweakings :
- 100's of bugs (game not starting for some people, game crashing alot on average gaming rig, plague bug, luck not working, Gryphon special abilities, Dynasties Weapons vanishing, Centaurs killing Flyers making them stay in the air...)
-Extreme imbalance (Necropolis being insanely overpowered, Sanctuary being able to walk on water, Inferno sucking alot)
-AI low overall abilities (too numerous to write them)
-Low number of units (neutrals / 5 factions : minor change, will be added through expansions)
-Diplomacy rework : currently not usable.
-Tear / Blood only for main hero
-Unability to play online
-No simultaneous turn
-No RMG (random map generator)
-Useless legion mode
-Complete rework on the skillset to balance them.
Change all of these and this will be my best heroes ever !
PS: By the way Ubi_Irina sent some patch notes about the upcoming 1.2 patch. It should be up in around a month.
So wait & see...
|
|
feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
|
|
posted December 02, 2011 10:18 AM |
|
|
Quote:
The meat of the strategy always pivoted around the classics: resource management, army composition and logistics considerations.
Lol biased much??
After this statement you are totally not credible dude.
Resource management didnt even exist before h6 because everything required different resource. So you either had them for buildings you could build or you didnt.(and there was strict order because there was limitation requiring certain city level so there was very little freedom=decision making there) What you had there want resource management, it were decisions which mine i want to capture first (what resources i need most) but that was logistic consideration, not a resource management, you cant manage something you dont have, or calling a decision to build one thing when you have no other option a management.
Army composition? Are you kidding me? This stuff appeared in tote when you actually was able to choose what units you want. Before you may think you had the choice just because you could move units and put this 10 goblins that joined your army(in rare cases joined stacks were more powerful then those recruited) but i guess you always prefered that 100 crossbowmen from your castle instead.
Logistic consideration. Half of logistics is and always have been about flagging mines, gathering resources and artifacts, all this stays the same. Other half is metagame with your opponent to get upper hand when comes to area control and catching him offguard. This is also present, but with completly new dimension because of area control and town portals. Its not gone, its not bad , ITS DIFFERENT.
You conveniently(hope there is such word) forget about actual meat of the game which is creating a powerful hero, defeating neutral and opponent armies in combat using different tactics,
building your empire: stuff that wasnt existed before h6 at all because there was impossible to defend it thus there was no borders, now you have forts where you can teleport heroes to defend the area and now it feels like true kingdom. Before you had random castles , someone who was lucky enough to get his own castle automatically got big advantage. Now everybody can convert towns and defend them efficently.
|
|
Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
|
|
posted December 02, 2011 10:33 AM |
|
|
|
The logistics is not only about flagging mines but also about effectively defending your territory using the limited movement of your heroes (or chains to bypass part of the latter). Now there is absolutely no logistics in the game because you don't have to defend your external dwellings, your resource supplies and in many cases even your towns. Or, if you want to defend the, just use the universally available town portal. That's no logistics, that's a mechanics-based cheat, worse than the chains.
|
| |
|
|
This thread is pages long: 
