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| Thread: Worst town in HotA? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted October 31, 2019 10:58 PM |
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Quote:
Deathstare
Multi-hex attack with no retal
Weakness+dispel on hit
Turn to stone
yeah, those are crap.
zero utility
the problem is not that Fortress doesn't have powerful abilities. On the contrary, 5 creatures out of 7 have op-ed abilities, which no other town has. The problem with Fortress - as I've said earlier today, but I don't remember on which thread - is that they are a slow faction. Only against Stronghold can shine most of the time, but against any other faction they will suck it badly... unless you play Tazar and get to level 60+. At that point only Necro (possibly Conflux, too, but I've not seen this) will still rape Fortress badly, all other factions will kind of suck it if you play Fortress at least decently. I would know this because I have played this town many times in the early 2000s when I used to play H3 weekly for a couple of years against one of my high school colleagues. That guy has been (and probably still is) slightly better than me and he would beat me 6-7 times out of 10 games, but the most victories against him would come when I played Fortress. It's true that I have ever been at advantage in these encounters because we would play by our own rules (no diplo, no logistic specialists, and only engage each other after we have fully cleared the map, gotten all artifacts that we wanted or could find, and built ALL our towns fully).
In these circumstances the skill between 2 (almost) equally skilled players doesn't matter too much. Other variables come into play and decide the outcome of the final battle, and luck plays a major role in these conditions, but I've never had too much luck in life anyway. But that's not the point I am trying to make. The point is that the most victories against my colleague have come when I have played Fortress, and since I'm not better than him at this game it means that the town has helped tremendously in my success. And it has (well, Tazar has helped more than anything, I admit  ), but even so, the town itself is incredibly strong if played correctly. It's just not compelling to play because of the damn (slow) speed of the hydras and the cows. If one of these 2 creatures (preferably both) can reach the opponent's tier 6/7 army before getting halved it's pretty much game over. But the problem - again - is that they are too slow, and pretty much any other faction will decimate Fortress' army by the time it reaches the enemy (oh, the horrors I've gone through when I had to play Fortress against Tower! They're haunting me to this day)
Anyway... what I wanted to say is that in this particular aspect I agree with you that Fortress' specials are the best in H3 in my opinion, but the problem with this town is that it's freaking sluggish, both on adventure map and in battlefield. Moreover, the 2 key creatures (cows and hydras) that can carry the Fortress army to victory are not very sturdy (on top of being slow, thus unable to reach the enemy before they get decimated). That's why I propose - if anyone still cares about this game anymore and has the ability to do this - that they give ALL Fortress creatures (ok, lest dragonflies maybe) +1 more speed, and that they also give the monarchs +5 more HPs, and the hydras +10 more HPs. Do these 3 small changes and I'm sure that everyone will want to play Fortress.
Also, despite of the fact that on paper (with all the demon farming and the base stats of the creatures) Inferno seems tougher I actually think Inferno is weaker. And I can say this because I don't remember to have ever won as Inferno against my colleague in over 100 of hotseat games that we've played. Not even a single victory comes to mind, but it's true that I've never farmed demons either (at that time we have been rookies at H3, so we have been unaware of all the intimate mechanics of the game at that time)
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted October 31, 2019 11:07 PM |
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monere,
in general, as a Fortress player, you want to do two things:
1. build a wyvern powerstack (Hives are often generated for Swamp bioms)
2. utilize your hero's superiority (Beastmaster class is the best along with Barbarian) to create an earlygame advantage and snowball from there.
It doesn't matter that much what the rest of your army is; most competitive games from my past have looked roughly the same: people with angels, wyverns and maybe some additional units bashing each other.
Now without creature banks, it would be obviously quite different, but creature bank meta has been here when I retired from online play a couple years ago and it's still here when I checked things back up.
We did things a lil different compared to modern Hota players (I mostly watched some youtube games to learn the trends) but it's roughly the same idea.
You're neither swimming in gold to buy your full pop + extra creatures + additional heroes to have tons of demon fodder, nor you have the time/resources to dedicate yourself to farming. In "my times", devil dwelling always took priority and you'd get better units out of other towns. It was just the unimpressive Demoniac lineup that made people not so happy playing Inferno in the first place. Demon farming was, is and will be a massive hassle of planning and calculating, the logistics of it can be quite maddening, and all that is just to bridge a gap between your army and your opponent's because you can't rely on your own creatures.
Devils and Efreets are good. With devils, you can do wonders vs. neutrals. But like Bloodsucker said, it's usually a better idea to start with a powerful hero with strong starting army, than to start with a weak hero relying on gimmicks instead of good old face mashing power. It's certainly less frustrating. If you have mad skillz than yeah, you can compete. Inferno popularity - or lack thereof - simply shows, however, that most players just wouldn't want to bother. Demon farming is a chore and it's not even that good.
For stating the obvious, I've been, however, repeatedly insulted by a guy that somehow can get demons from fighting neutrals and makes constant comparisons to necromancy which works in a completely different fashion. This place will never change, lol
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monere
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted October 31, 2019 11:23 PM |
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First, I could have used these tips 20 years ago. Nowadays, I can't play multiplayer games anymore for many reasons.
Secondly, regarding the demon farming issue... I only agree that it's tedious to pull, but I don't agree that it's bad. If you acquire demons at even 4 times less than Necro acquires skelletons I think you can counter Necro quite easily. And Necro is the 9ayest faction ever and if you can beat it at its own game you can beat any other faction even easier (I think you can beat even Castle, although I agree that Castle has insane advantage over Inferno)
Thirdly, hell yeah! I'll go for hives with every chance that I get, don't worry! Wyverns are weak, but more wyverns than you can grasp are bad for your enemy's health, so yes, I know about the hives and I've done it a few times... until my colleague has come up with a new rule (no hives and griffin conservatories in our games lol). I've been OK with this rule because when he has played Castle against my Fortress he had still had the bigger advantage, so I never minded this rule too much. But yeah, I know about the hives, and I get every single one of them, even now when I play WoG against the AI I still go for them just because I like these creatures.
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Djangoo
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 31, 2019 11:56 PM |
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Doomforge said:
Djangoo said:
I'm extremly interested in this, cause huge stats fan.
Would be super nice if someonce could find MP statistics.
here you go:
http://www.heroes-iii.com/
Pretty cool, thanks!
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Djangoo
Adventuring Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 12:40 AM |
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Edited by Djangoo at 00:43, 01 Nov 2019.
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I have played a lot of DotA so I know the worst thing you could do ist judging the objective strength of a hero by its public win%.
A very good Hero could have a low win % just because he is very hard to play, but have insanely high win% on someone who knows what hes doing.
Yes, you can't judge objectively what is the best town from these stats, but I have never seen H3 stats before so this was news to me.
Any chance there ist sth like this for HotA?
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Otuken
Famous Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 01:47 AM |
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The stats are belong to SoD, Inferno is played few times compared to other towns plus it is the hardest to play with efficiently. Maybe it is below average or the worst town in SoD but no way it is in HotA.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted November 01, 2019 07:33 AM |
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It's a shame Inferno is considered hard to play with. Demon Farming should have worked differently or there should have been some kinda Gating ability, something that runs (almost) automatically, like Necromancy.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 08:15 AM |
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phoenix4ever said:
It's a shame Inferno is considered hard to play with.
This is bulls*, when Conflux could upgrade the pixies immediately it could be a considered an "hard to play" town cause you would need to attack with them, in the next turn flee and bait the enemies with something else, then in the third turn attack and in the fourth flee... but it was a way more powerful start. The same is true for some other tricks, like having a guy with Vampire Lords only, raising skeletons and another following him just to pick them or having a powerstack of dwarfs that forces you to always have a second hero in reach to pick them before the end of the turn. If you want to achieve his maximum potential any town it will be "hard to play" in some way. Of course, some like Castle and Stronghold are more straight forward then others but that doesn't mean they are easy to play.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted November 01, 2019 09:01 AM |
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If Castle is not easy to play, I don't know what is.
Look at the stats above, how few times Inferno is picked compared to Castle. There must be something wrong with Inferno, either it's hard to play, it's not very good or both...
Conflux get's a terrible start in HotA btw, it takes forever to upgrade an extremely fragile level 1 unit.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 09:35 AM |
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phoenix4ever said:
If Castle is not easy to play, I don't know what is.
And what is the most played hero? Valeska.
Valeska is like Shakti or Ivor, it provides for a great start then you "pray to the RNG gods" to find an Hero in tavern (and since they hire eight in the first day and dismiss at least six in the first week that is quite possible to happen) or use her to fight Crag or Gunnar...
Castle might be quite easy to start at 160% but if I am playing a Giant map 200% without cheats (blearg...) I no doubt prefer to start with Corkes on Cove then with any possible hero on Castle. I'll be lucky if I can hire the two heroes with army in the first few days and one of these three (possibly two if I managed to chain army between the two corners...) will be above level 10 (and I bother to visit nearby powerups...) before the end of the week. I remember to gave an example where I took a Castle with Corkes, pirates and nymphs and basically changed development to there but as I said previously, Cove provides for a much better start (and has a much better tavern...).
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 12:02 PM |
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Castle is sadly too much RNG in trying to find a better hero than Knights, which are mostly meh. Just like Bloodsucker said.
Valeska provides the strongest start and you're supposed to ditch her and go for a better main.
With Cove, you can start with Corkes and there's no RNG required.
The hero I pretty much like to start with is Illor, though. Because armorer is a 2/10 skill for Captains and tactics is 6/10 (and mighty useful early on), this hero effectively doesn't have to sacrifice a goat to get all the interesting might skills.
+1 Speed for Ayssids is a decent mini-bonus, since they are the among the best creatures in the game.
it is my usual off-meta pick. Eovacius is hilarious as well. The first blow with three Ayssids is mindblowingly devastating and he starts with intelligence so he doesn't have to worry about mana usually, sadly magic heroes aren't really that great in this game.
Jeremy is also fun, especially since the Cannon itself is worth 4000 gold.
I think most of the competitive hota scene prefers to get Cassiopeia first, though.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted November 01, 2019 12:04 PM |
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What perhaps would work best for Inferno, is if it had some sort of similarity to Necropolis, but then the other way around. After a battle in which the Inferno player is victorious, the game could add up all the casualties on the Inferno player side and convert those to Demons, based on the number of Pit Lords within the army at the end of the battle.
No hassle on having to do this during the game, nor just a single stack that needs to fully die for this to work; just take the total number of casualties on Inferno side and go from there.
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 12:08 PM |
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Another way would be to create a "demonology" skill or something and give it to all demoniacs for free. It would roughly work like pitlord raise. This would be a major buff:
1. The player wouldn't need to have Pit Lords;
2. The player wouldn't need to fully kill his stacks to benefit from demon raising;
3. There could be artifacts added to boost the skill to be highly competitive.
It could be balanced by percentage according to players' feedback and stats.
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Otuken
Famous Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 12:54 PM |
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Then you would destroy all enjoyable/useful factors of demon farming. If there was a mechanisma in Inferno towns that turns creatures into Demons based on HP and Pit Lords like Skeleton transformer, then it would mean you would not just destroyed a lot of strategic approaches also downgrading demon farming itself!
Because again demon farming is NOT just blatantly turning low level creatures into demons! This mechanisma force you to find out when, where and what creatures should be turned into demons; and unlike no-brainer necromancy -which is halved- it allows you breaking banks with almost zero casualties which no town is capable of in the same timeline.
Even if you don't like demon farming then you can still use this feature by just constantly reviving demons in battles.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 12:55 PM |
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Doomforge said:
The hero I pretty much like to start with is Illor, though.
I was thinking of him when I said this: and has a much better tavern...
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted November 01, 2019 12:59 PM |
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I didn't play HotA nearly as much as the vanilla game, but if you ask me, I'd say Conflux.
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Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted November 01, 2019 01:31 PM |
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Hey Drakon-Deus you can vote back on page 1. 
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted November 01, 2019 09:48 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 21:57, 01 Nov 2019.
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Those stats just show Inferno, even in SoD, is not the worst town. Seems to be the least picked, which only confirms what I said: Demon farming is boring
But the ratio of all towns is pretty even close to 1:1 showing Inferno is in no way "30% worse than castle" because of some dumb math about summing up creature HP and att/def. In fact, if it was 30% worse than castle, period, it would lose pretty much every game.
Instead, we see it having a better win/loss ratio than Tower, for example, which produces a relatively good amount of att/def and HP weekly, showing there are far more important variables.
Castle, with the "strongest creature stats", is very close to 50/50, whereas Rampart, with significantly worse creature stats (tho still "good" for the number-worshippers), is significantly ahead in win ratio.
So, the graph shows the opposite of what you wanted to prove: Inferno is only unpopular (which I already explained due to it being a hassle to play), NOT weak; there are several towns below it in win/loss ratio (including funnily enough Necropolis).
And even Stronghold is below 50% win ratio, whereas Inferno is not much behind it. And Dungeon is WAY behind inferno in win/loss despite/because it is a popular town.
And that's before HotA made Inferno stronger.
Few players =/= weak, many players =/= strong. That's just popularity.
Lesson : Statistical analysis is more than summing up weekly creature growth.
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gatecrasher
Famous Hero
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posted November 01, 2019 10:03 PM |
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That Necropolis figure is probably due to Necromancy banned. Without it you can chuck it in the dustbin.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted November 01, 2019 10:06 PM |
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Which further proves my point that special accumulative mechanics (like demon farming is) are as important as creature lineups in a matchup. I am pretty sure that on a larga maps with different towns Inferno could beat all but necropolis, and it is the only one that would stand any chance (with cloak of undead king banned and a very good player).
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