Battles are just too fast

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
MrSteamTank
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Battles are just too fast

Unread postby MrSteamTank » 12 Jun 2006, 18:12

Is it just me or did they simply overdo the battle arena in heroes V. Units do damage at a tremendous rate and since many units can cross the screen in one round you end up in situations where you can lose half your units before you can even move. Even when the armies are somewhat close in power. Now I understand why neutral battles are so small as you creep for so long in the game and it just slows down the game.

So my ideal suggestion is to simply make the battlefields small only when people are fighting neutrals but up them a good 4-5 squares longer and wider when facing other heroes. This way you don't have scenarios where that stack of fast units can wipe out entire stacks and be in melee range before you can even move. Possibly even always allow heroes to move first at the start of combat so you can cast spells like slow and whatnot on those faster stacks so you can't lose a stack until you actually get a turn.

Do other people find this to be a balance issue with homm5 with the battlefields being too small making battles too quick and game deciding in the first round? Please comment on what you think of the current battle arena size(at least when it comes to hero vs hero battles). Thanks! :D

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Unread postby thecheese » 12 Jun 2006, 18:27

In my experience, battles don't go any faster than the other HoMM games; one might even argue that they go slower, what with the 3d action. The mass killing of units was always something that the first attacker had to their advantahge. Perhaps, though, the battle map could be larger.

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Unread postby Ari » 12 Jun 2006, 18:27

Personally, I haven't found most combat is resolved too quickly. Unless you're way stronger or weaker than an enemy hero, I've found that combat can go on for quite a few rounds. All the more so if one of you has high defense (stats or ability), and niether of you has particular good direct damage spells. Sieges are longer still (and I think they're actually done on a larger battlefield). And the siege in c3m5 is *forever* :)

One way of gauging how long a battle is involves asking how often your shooters run out of ammo (without a cart, obviously). I've found it relatively rare, but it does happen regularly. And that's even considering that the cart's so cheap that I often have it (and that many missions actually start a hero with one).

If anything, I think that fewer units can cross the battlefield in one turn now as compared with previous heroes games. Typically 1-2 units per faction, without tactics (and even tactics seems nerfed compared with previous games).

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Unread postby PhoenixReborn » 12 Jun 2006, 18:42

Personally, I think that aspect is fairly well balanced. Sure, my Black Dragons can cross the field in one move, but then they will be slaughtered by big numbers of defensive walkers.

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Unread postby Xenofex.XVII » 12 Jun 2006, 18:46

If you want battles to be longer, make all units have 10x HitPoints :D
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Unread postby Rapier » 12 Jun 2006, 19:39

Making the battles take longer would not change the fact that the first round can decide the battle, it would merely make it take longer to resolve the battle.

Personally I like the army balance, but I think that a lot of a battle is decided by which hero gets to cast first.
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Unread postby Akul » 12 Jun 2006, 19:55

Have you played H5 or you have watched the old videos? In my expirience, battles take longer then the H3 ones.
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Unread postby MrSteamTank » 12 Jun 2006, 20:12

I've played homm5 and the reason I'm posting this is because I lose entire stacks to spells because their 2-3 top fast moving units + hero get to move before I have a chance to. I faced an army with some dragons and grim raiders and before I even got a chance to even cast a spell or do anything I lost practically everything on my 2 ranged archer stacks(AoE dmg spell + moving the entire screen in one move).

What was I supposed to do in that scenario? Hope I'm lucky in my tactics placement so that he can't reach me in one round? Even if stacks are equally powerful you can easily lose more than 1/2 a stack to an average dmg spell + first attack combo.

Perhaps the battlefield doesn't need to be bigger but heroes should always have the first move so a player can at least decide if he has a disabler spell to stop a unit from demolishing one of your more fragile stacks.

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Unread postby Akul » 12 Jun 2006, 20:16

MrSteamTank wrote:I've played homm5 and the reason I'm posting this is because I lose entire stacks to spells because their 2-3 top fast moving units + hero get to move before I have a chance to. I faced an army with some dragons and grim raiders and before I even got a chance to even cast a spell or do anything I lost practically everything on my 2 ranged archer stacks(AoE dmg spell + moving the entire screen in one move).

What was I supposed to do in that scenario? Hope I'm lucky in my tactics placement so that he can't reach me in one round? Even if stacks are equally powerful you can easily lose more than 1/2 a stack to an average dmg spell + first attack combo.

Perhaps the battlefield doesn't need to be bigger but heroes should always have the first move so a player can at least decide if he has a disabler spell to stop a unit from demolishing one of your more fragile stacks.
Dragons and Grim Raiders are meant to be fast so that they come to you sooner then other units.
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Unread postby MrSteamTank » 12 Jun 2006, 20:44

Thats fine I'm just personally against 1 round ko moves on stacks. At the very least then allow heroes to cast their spells first so they can say cast slow on that stack of grim raiders so you can actually stop a stack from getting to your troops. In other words heroes should have automatic first initiative for spells so you can stop this kind of stuff. I don't enjoy it but it was a question so I guess it's just me that it annoys. :(

It seems like the best strategy is to just be dungeon and just get fast moving attack units with high dmg spells so you can take out the bulk of his army before he can react.

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Unread postby Gaidal Cain » 12 Jun 2006, 21:55

thecheese wrote:The mass killing of units was always something that the first attacker had to their advantahge.
Oh, how quickly some forget...

There's an easy solution to these problems that works in most of the cases. It's called "Simultaneous Retaliation", but it was in H4, which we all know is a spawn of Satan (or Kha-Beleth?), and must thus be kept as far from H5 as possible...

An slow wouldn't do anything to prevent the Grim Raiders from reaching you. Only if you had really strong shooters, but then you've only reversed the problem...
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Unread postby omegaweix » 12 Jun 2006, 22:22

Ari wrote:
One way of gauging how long a battle is involves asking how often your shooters run out of ammo (without a cart, obviously). I've found it relatively rare, but it does happen regularly. And that's even considering that the cart's so cheap that I often have it (and that many missions actually start a hero with one).
Right, i played the series since Heroes 2 and didn't even quite realize shooters having limited ammo until the H2 expansion...

...and now in Heroes 5 i went out of shots frequently... ammo cart has advanced to a must... in Heroes III it was rather a "nice-extra-if-i-got-too-much-gold" to me (although i have to admit, that H3 was the Heroes incarnation i played least) !
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Unread postby JamaY » 12 Jun 2006, 23:01

Personnally, the only problem I have is how powerful paladins are. I fought against a haven AI hero with 15 attack and defense, and I was playing dungeon with a hero with 13 attack and 10 defense. A stack of 4 paladins charged first and killed 3 of my 5 black dragons in one shot.
Sure, they're supposed to be stronger when charging from far away, but paladins shouldn't win a 1 on 1 combat against black dragons :disagree:

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Unread postby PhoenixReborn » 12 Jun 2006, 23:03

Once again, this factor of grim raider speed is often limited by terrain and placing your troops. In the tactics phase I often put my creatures that I'm protecting behind rocks so that they can not be reached in one turn. You can see the rocks and logs on the field in the tactics phase...also, I've become pretty good at guessing where the enemy units will start...

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Unread postby JamaY » 12 Jun 2006, 23:21

While we're on the topic of tactics, I thought of a good way to make the tactics phase more useful without overpowering it too much. When you attack a hero, he will have to place his troops without seeing yours...just like he was attacked by surprise and didn't have the time to see what army the enemy had. On the other hand, the attacking hero gets to place his troops AFTER the defending hero has placed his...that way having the first strinke gives you a nice advantage since you can reach his units fatser, or defend your units accordingly. It would also give an advantage to heroes chasing other heroes, and heroes jumping on other heroes from the fog of war.
Heroes defending castle sieges will always see how the enemy placed his units and place his accordingly.

What do you think?

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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 12 Jun 2006, 23:32

Funny,but even though the BF is smaller,I found battles as slow as in previous sequels.Even slower sometimes.

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Unread postby Ari » 13 Jun 2006, 03:54

MrSteamTank wrote:I've played homm5 and the reason I'm posting this is because I lose entire stacks to spells because their 2-3 top fast moving units + hero get to move before I have a chance to.
I've had similar things happen to me (on both the giving and receiving end). Does anybody know how hero order is determined? They seem to have no initiative stat, and there seems to be a seemingly random element to placement in the action order. *Is* this random, or is there a some underlying rule system that determines when (and how often) heros get to act?

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Unread postby theGryphon » 13 Jun 2006, 04:23

I really like the battles mechanics as they are, except I would like to see simultaneous retaliations.
There are some balance issues for sure. For example, I find Paladins somewhat overpowered. They are hands down the best tier 6 units. Along with other tiers in Haven town, and the possibility that a Peasant can be upgraded to a Paladins for as low as about 3500, I think Haven is the strongest faction (maybe ties with Sylvan). I know, this is not the first time I said this :)
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Unread postby vicheron » 13 Jun 2006, 05:52

Well, damage to hit point ratio is higher in Heroes 5 than previous Heroes games so battles should be faster since creatures kill more and die faster.

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Unread postby thecheese » 13 Jun 2006, 06:42

Gaidal Cain wrote:
thecheese wrote:The mass killing of units was always something that the first attacker had to their advantahge.
Oh, how quickly some forget...

There's an easy solution to these problems that works in most of the cases. It's called "Simultaneous Retaliation", but it was in H4, which we all know is a spawn of Satan (or Kha-Beleth?), and must thus be kept as far from H5 as possible...

An slow wouldn't do anything to prevent the Grim Raiders from reaching you. Only if you had really strong shooters, but then you've only reversed the problem...
Good point. I guess I must've blocked it out. D:


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