Protecting Shooters...

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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Paradox
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Unread postby Paradox » 13 Jun 2006, 20:40

maybe Nival never even played heroes 4.

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Unread postby Asjo » 13 Jun 2006, 23:04

It was also one of the first things I noticed when I fought. I thought "great, my shooters are sorrounded by defenders, no one can hit them" ... and they did. I'm not sure which idea is best, block or no block, but I have gotten used to the idea of no arrow blocking and it makes sense and seems to make things a little more flexible.

Keep in mind that this does not render it useless to keep units back to defend the shooters. As mentioned, they will stop other units for getting close to the shooters, in which case many shooters would have suffered big penalties for having to do melee attacks and would have lost the option to pick their own target. Also, should your units approach enemy shooters, they will receive more damage when within good shooting range, so if it's a battle of mainly shooters, where you have the advantage, it makes sense to let your tank units stay back and sorround the shooters.

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Unread postby sylvanllewelyn » 13 Jun 2006, 23:21

I kind of missed the idea of having friendly units blocking ranged attacks too. Actually, I miss a lot of things from Heroes 4, such as the caravan, and first-strike ability for some troops.

About the whole Heroes dying thing... here's what I thought Nival could've done:
- Heroes have defense and hit-points (say, defense = (30*level)^1/2 or hit-points = level^2.5)
- All heroes can rush in, use melee attacks, take retaliation, and leave.
- Heroes could also physically join a group of units, and add to the damage, leadership, initiative of the stack that they are personally commanding. The hero could leave and join the frontline during their turn.
- If the stack is wiped out before the knight could go back and join another stack, they take damage. Damage spells hit stack units first.
- Knight's ultimate could give them a very strong attack.

That way, heroes *could* die, but they could also elect to stay behind Heroes III style forever. I just feel that Haven Knights and Demon Overlords could be more physically involved, that's all.

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cornellian
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Unread postby cornellian » 13 Jun 2006, 23:38

Yeah, unfortunately Nival was unnnecessarily harsh in their inquisition to eradicate the heresy that was HoMM IV..
The sad thing is HoMM IV was a good game actually, it had many very good ideas but just lacked the brains. Nival should have incorporated at least some of the better ideas; it wasn't like no one would accuse them of theft or something...

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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 14 Jun 2006, 06:18

Ari wrote:There's always been an element of "rocks-paper-scissors" to HOMM. Shooters beat slow, strong units. Fliers (and fast land units) beat shooters. Slow strong units beat fliers (and fast land units). Granted, this isn't an absolute rule, but in general, that's how HOMM plays out. So those minotaurs, say, aren't directly useful for aiding shooters ( in a shooters vs shooters matchup), but they're great for killing the griffons that can cross the field in a turn and get in the archers' faces. That has always been one of the main roles of golems/hydras/treants, etc. To have these units also be particularly strong (out of proportion to their stats, that is) against shooters would make shooters far weaker in overall significance in the game.
It doesnt work that way now.Fast units beat slow tanks now because they get to act more often.I can beat a stack of treants with nothing but war dancers(I wouldve said pixies,but they have no retal.This way its much more fair).And I dont need bigger advantage then 2 to 1.As for gryphons,they own all units.Just deploy royal gryphons and battle dive your enemy into oblivion.
Paradox wrote:maybe Nival never even played heroes 4.
I think they did.Its hard to simply miss every feature of HIV.Its more likely they know HIV inside out,and avoided everything the game has.
Asjo wrote:Keep in mind that this does not render it useless to keep units back to defend the shooters. As mentioned, they will stop other units for getting close to the shooters, in which case many shooters would have suffered big penalties for having to do melee attacks and would have lost the option to pick their own target. Also, should your units approach enemy shooters, they will receive more damage when within good shooting range, so if it's a battle of mainly shooters, where you have the advantage, it makes sense to let your tank units stay back and sorround the shooters.
Id agree with you,if not for a fact that we have squares.Big squares.Accessible from 8 sides.In order to protect a your archers fully,you need at least one large and one small unit.In HIV,you could do this with just one unit(remember that there was a threat area).
sylvanllewelyn wrote:I kind of missed the idea of having friendly units blocking ranged attacks too. Actually, I miss a lot of things from Heroes 4, such as the caravan, and first-strike ability for some troops.

About the whole Heroes dying thing... here's what I thought Nival could've done:
- Heroes have defense and hit-points (say, defense = (30*level)^1/2 or hit-points = level^2.5)
- All heroes can rush in, use melee attacks, take retaliation, and leave.
- Heroes could also physically join a group of units, and add to the damage, leadership, initiative of the stack that they are personally commanding. The hero could leave and join the frontline during their turn.
- If the stack is wiped out before the knight could go back and join another stack, they take damage. Damage spells hit stack units first.
- Knight's ultimate could give them a very strong attack.

That way, heroes *could* die, but they could also elect to stay behind Heroes III style forever. I just feel that Haven Knights and Demon Overlords could be more physically involved, that's all.
Check out my proposal about this.And tell me what you think.

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Re: Protecting Shooters...

Unread postby Orfinn » 14 Jun 2006, 08:41

DaemianLucifer wrote:
thecheese wrote:Now, now, not EVERYTHING was bad. All different, yes, but not everything was bad. Paladins killing 20 Black Dragons on their own was pretty cool, if ya ask me. =P
Dont get me wrong,I love HIV,but its ubi/nival that came up with this golden rule.And now,we must obey.
As long as you insist on that or think of it too much, sure it becomes reality. And you wont that happen do you? Its like saying "you are stupid" to your children, they end up being stupid if you say it enough times.
But Im abit agree with you too, its too weird that they just simply forgot or accidentaly ignored features from H4. I really doubt they didnt play H4, I just hope they did it for a pure and safe H3 like start with some of their ideas, but they better implement more elements from H4 in H6, at least!

Anyway I like the shield protection from the squires and unicorns, but its abit lame that all squares around gives the effect. Heh protecting your angels from behind with your shield, it just dosent make sense! Units in the squares in front or diagonally in front of your squires shouldnt recive the protection.
But for the unicorns the story are different, it makes sense, since they have a magical aura, covering all adjecent units in any square around them.

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Re: Protecting Shooters...

Unread postby ThunderTitan » 14 Jun 2006, 12:05

Orfinn wrote: I really doubt they didnt play H4
I really doubt they did. There really was no point, as they started by saying that they're going back to the H3 way because that's what the "fans" wanted, because H4 was bad. So once they decided that H3 was going to be used why bother with all the other ones, especialy the underperforming H4?
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Re: Protecting Shooters...

Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 14 Jun 2006, 12:51

ThunderTitan wrote: I really doubt they did. There really was no point, as they started by saying that they're going back to the H3 way because that's what the "fans" wanted, because H4 was bad. So once they decided that H3 was going to be used why bother with all the other ones, especialy the underperforming H4?
Avoiding all those features can hardly be done by accident.

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Unread postby Ethric » 14 Jun 2006, 13:40

That "golden rule" of yours is incorrect, you know. If it were true there wouldn't be any trace of new to H4-features. But there are, for example that you need the apropriate magic skill to learn the higher spells of the school. Were it just like H3 there would only be 1 skill for all of it (Wisdom). And heroes have individual turns, as opposed to acting along with the creatures, and a few other things.

So while I agree wholeheartedly that things should have been differently, I feel that mentioning this golden rule all the time is a diversion, and an oversimplification. Not to mention that you sound like a broken record ;)

So please, try to focus on the issues at hand instead.
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Unread postby Asjo » 14 Jun 2006, 13:45

And I believe the catapult was invulnerable in Heroes, while breakable in Heroes 4. So, that has been preserved as well.

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Re: Protecting Shooters...

Unread postby ThunderTitan » 14 Jun 2006, 13:47

DaemianLucifer wrote: Avoiding all those features can hardly be done by accident.
Well there are some features that resemble the H4 ones, but clearly are not inspired by it. And avoiding them is easy, just stick to H3.
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Unread postby sylvanllewelyn » 14 Jun 2006, 13:55

Catapults are actually breakable in Heroes III (1000 hitpoints).

I think it's too late to allow guarding shooters now, because that would really upset game balance. What *could* happen is introduce this ability onto the expansion towns.

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Unread postby Thanquol » 14 Jun 2006, 15:26

I don't think it is too late to implement a Line-of-Sight kind of protection of shooters. The following is what I would like to see happen.

Any stack blocking the Line-of-Sight to the stack targeted for ranged attack would take part of the damage as follows
- defender and target stacks are of equal size creatures = defender absorbs 50% dmg
- defender stack is large size and target stack is small size = defender absorbs 75% dmg
- defender stack is small size and target stack is large size = defender absorbs 25% dmg

If there are several stacks in Line-of-Sight path then damage would be reduced going from stack to stack until final target.

Footmen and Squires defending would reduce their part of the damage with 50% (large shields) - and Squires would in addition still offer 50% reduction of damage taken by the intended target(or any other unit hit after the Squires in the Line-of-Sight path).

Insubstantial creatures would not be able to block ranged attacks at all.

Finally I would like to see Skeletons, Skeleton Archers and Bone Dragons gain a new Skeletal ability that would function like the Footman/Squires Large Shield ability(50% less damage from ranged attacks), but also reduce their ability to block ranged attacks by 50%. Spectral Dragons should be Insubstantial imho ;)

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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 14 Jun 2006, 15:46

Insubstantial should just reduce damage by 50%,it would be much better like that.And spectral dragons and wraiths should be insubstantial.

Good idea about LoS.But unfortunately its not likely to be implemented.Not now,nor in the expansions.


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