Academy build-up

[-BiS]

My main problem, playing a game with the academy faction is building it up fast enough to keep up with the other players. I mostly play on the difficult setting and even if i take gold from chests and trade off all unnecessary resources i'm still behind. To build the cloud colosseum in time, i have to skip on the both citadel/castle and the djinn building and upgrade only my gremlins. This puts me way behind the other players who already have their upgraded level 7 units and have upgraded most of their other units.

I love academy too much to trade it for another faction, so i'm looking for any tips on how to build-up the academy town faster.

Please help!

[stijn]

warlords (or what's that 8 player ffa map called, where everyone is with one other player on a quarter of the map. crossings?) is an excellent map for playing academy since there are so many mines, and you can usually capture the other player on your island within the first 2 weeks making sure you have enough gold. if you let that player also be academy you'll have little difficulty's even on herioc

academy is just a really expansive faction

[Kilop]

no solution here, academy is twice time expensive : one for the dwelling, then for the artefacts... Guess only good for real slow huge maps.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

My main problem, playing a game with the academy faction is building it up fast enough to keep up with the other players. I mostly play on the difficult setting and even if i take gold from chests and trade off all unnecessary resources i'm still behind. To build the cloud colosseum in time, i have to skip on the both citadel/castle and the djinn building and upgrade only my gremlins. This puts me way behind the other players who already have their upgraded level 7 units and have upgraded most of their other units.

I love academy too much to trade it for another faction, so i'm looking for any tips on how to build-up the academy town faster.

Please help!

I love the academy too, but the academy is currently underpowered. Academy is very expensive to build up is slow going early.

I start off by building the tavern if the town does not have one. Hire 2 additional heroes and combine the troops and war machines onto your main heroe.

Jhora is my favorite heroe to start with though Nathir and his fireball are great too. Wuth Jhora develop her sorcery skill quickly so she can cast often in combat.

There is no need to develop your heroe's magic skills much in the early going because you can't afford to build up the mage's guild. This is another problem with the academy since the heroes are primarily knowledge focused and secondarily focus on spellpower.

Use the non academy troops as fodder and remember that you can hold troops out of combat, which is particularly important when facing shooter stacks early.

Ore is a priority. You will probably have to skip the gargoyle dwelling for a while.

Use one of your additional heroes as a squire to flag mines and pick up resources. The other will shuttle troops and then explore.

Do not skip the citidel and castle to build the cloud castle. Build all financial dwellings as soon as you can and upgrade your fortifications as you are able. An upgraded gremlin and archmage dwelling will help you expand.

[-BiS]

Hire 2 additional heroes and combine the troops and war machines onto your main heroe.

Standard practice.

Jhora is my favorite heroe to start with though Nathir and his fireball are great too.

Both Jhora & Nathir are good heroes, but Havez is my prefered starting hero because of all the gremlins & war machines.

There is no need to develop your heroe's magic skills much in the early going because you can't afford to build up the mage's guild.

I don't. The only magic skill i develop with my heroes is light magic and i do that in late game. I usually take logistics, attack, enlightment & war machines before light magic.

Do not skip the citidel and castle to build the cloud castle.

Believe me, when playing academy against human opponents this is essential as you will have around 2-3 titans when your enemies will have 7-8 angels/bone dragons. Skiping these buildings is i'm afraid necessary.

Anyway, i do allright against neutrals with only my master gremlins, golems and rakshasa's, but as soon as i face another player i'm much weaker for several reasons:

1) i have taken gold instead of xp from chests (making my hero 5-6 levels lower than the enemy).

2) to save money i only buy 3 units (mentioned above) & titans, once i have them. Against a full army this is not much.

3) even with all the saving and skiping i still can't have enough units to hold my own against other players (especially if haven or necropolis are involved).

Thanx for the advice, but i'm afraid more is needed.

[Shauku]

I think you over-emphasize fast build-up; this is not Heroes 3. Of course one needs to build as fast as possible, but the aim is not in the level 7 dwelling, as it is not the most effective one.
There is no way that Academy can keep up with Necro for example.

[Arqane]

I think you over-emphasize fast build-up; this is not Heroes 3. Of course one needs to build as fast as possible, but the aim is not in the level 7 dwelling, as it is not the most effective one.

That's exactly what I was going to say. I actually prefer Razzak. He can actually play a style that the Academy is generally bad at... a battle of attrition. Golems are good at this, especially with Razzak. Most games I play, I don't even get to building my titans. I can't remember the last time I used Djinni in my armies, and even though Rakshasa are nice, I rarely use them as well.

With the correct hero, the tier 1-4 creatures are really the most effective in this game, I find. The higher tiers certainly add some power, and are useful when you can afford them, but not nearly as cost effective for power as the lower tiers.

EDIT: And just as a little fun aside... by the time Razzak engages in the larger battles, my golems usually take out the enemy tier 7 stack rather easily.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Believe me, when playing academy against human opponents this is essential as you will have around 2-3 titans when your enemies will have 7-8 angels/bone dragons. Skiping these buildings is i'm afraid necessary.

Anyway, i do allright against neutrals with only my master gremlins, golems and rakshasa's, but as soon as i face another player i'm much weaker for several reasons:

1) i have taken gold instead of xp from chests (making my hero 5-6 levels lower than the enemy).

2) to save money i only buy 3 units (mentioned above) & titans, once i have them. Against a full army this is not much.

3) even with all the saving and skiping i still can't have enough units to hold my own against other players (especially if haven or necropolis are involved).

Thanx for the advice, but i'm afraid more is needed.

Try going with the citidel/castle. You lose lots of troops by not building these.

However, as I said, the academy is underpwered compared to all of the other castles.

GOW

[Mytical]

Academy is indeed one of the hardest to build use. This follows most traditional rpg train of thought. Magic users are generally weaker then others early game, but they do become one of the most feared late game (at least in rpg's). Sadly this is not so much the case in H5 which tends to be a little more might friendly for some reason. One of the ways of getting the academy going I am going to go over, and have posted before, but it is for much larger maps. Sadly in small maps academy usually has a very very tough time regardless what you do.

Of course of vital importance is your gold producing areas, especially Capitol. I would actually suggest waiting to upgrade your units untill you actually have all the units being produced. If you need to conserve ore, the gargoyles building can be held off for awhile. One of the most interesting is the building under the djinn..it gives you extra gold per day and extra djinns...not a bad building at all. As stated your mage guild sadly has to wait, even though you need those spells. By all means add the library to help a little with this however. Lvl 1 mage building is a must, the rest will have to wait till you can afford. Artifacts, though useful, are also later game, too resource intensive. Lvl 7's are good, but they are mostly for attacking damage and your other creatures can actually take them down, so titans are nice but can be held off on. They are one of the most expensive lvl 7's.

Visit all Shrines...this helps the spell situation. Attack is a little more efficient then defense, so if you encounter any arenas my advice is to pick attack. Defense is nice, especially to conserve your much needed units, but if you can take down your enemy quick you take less damage anyhow. Choose your battles and creatures. When engaging neutral stacks, choose carefully. If mostly ranged, putting in gargoyles is just asking for them to be taken down. Yeah if you can spare them fine, but fast tanks are much better, you may take some damage but then the archers fall faster. Your magi/archmagi are your best friends, and your worst enemies. Watch where you put your units when Magi on the field. Also watch where your enemy's units are. It's always nice when your magi can hit two enemy stacks for the price of one. Castle seiges they are a MUST.

While it is nice to protect your Magi, realize whatever you protect them with is expendable, cause once out of magic, shooting by your mages can really hurt you. Put a neutral unit that has joined your crew there if you dont think you'll get many more of them. Then it doesn't hurt as much (and try adding deflect missile if you can to reduce friendly fire casualties).
Flag everything you can, even if you dont need it (like undead creature generators). Add them if possible (especially GHOSTS) but beaware of your morale. Puting ghost infront of said magi can be a good thing (not only do they help protect him from archers but the magi can 'miss' them do to there incorporal status when shooting through them). Remember the neutrals are expendable, your own units you need to conserve to make Academy useful.

While it is nice to blow up your enemy units, I would actually advise Summons over the other spell choices (I know this may not be a popular stance). Phantom Force is very nice vs computers, and Summon Pheonix can be nice vs either human or AI. I would normally advice life to add to this, but for a mage it is hit or miss. Too many of your units don't benifit from ressurrection (the most useful life spell IMHO). Gargoyles and Golems are immune. My second choice for spell type would be destruction or dark (if you can slow down your enemy then you stand a better chance). Destruction is good, but unless you have a lot of sp or think you will, go for Dark.

When you start making headway creature artifacts can really boost you creatures. Suprisingly here I will suggest Init or speed bonuses for most of your troops over anything else. Sadly avoid defense or attack for the most part, as Magic Resist and hp (hp in my opinon is cheap and a way of keeping your creatures alive) are of more benifit. Unless desperate for morale keep away, and choose luck if nothing else. The effect to lower the defense of your enemy per attack is nice, but maybe more useful on range units (which can stack up very nicely). Now I won't go unit by unit, there is a list somewhere here that works pretty well.

The one I will do however, is the kitties. They fall a little to fast for my taste, so I personally like this combo. Init, Speed, hp (hp can be replace with MR if facing a magic heavy opponit but useless vs warlock's irresistable magic). This gets them into battle faster, and with No Retal can be a way to cut there losses. Dash is best used vs ranged heavy armies, even though it sacrifices a turn..it makes your enemy face a choice. Target these kitties and not those mages...or have them in the middle of your archers sooner then later (a very bad thing). You can go Defense, HP, Luck...but they will suffer a lot more with this combo.
With a fast casting person (sorcery for this unit is a lot more useful then for most others) you can add arcane armor and have a real serious threat(thus summons )

Anyhow, this town is a very difficult play. Only if you consider yourself very brave do you want to use this MP. I personally don't like MP because I move really slow, and thus loose unless the other player has a similar style. I hate the zerg style play looses the atmosphere (for me). Hope this helps, and sorry it was sooo long.

[-BiS]

Again, thanx to everyone that replied. Valid points all of them, some i already knew and some i didn't, either way my game will hopefully improve thanks to this.

Anyhow, this town is a very difficult play. Only if you consider yourself very brave do you want to use this MP.

Academy is the only town i have ever played in MP. I get teased all the time for playing it and most other players don't even see me as a serious threat because of my town. But the fact remains i love academy and i know it can be competitive with other towns in MP.

Try going with the citidel/castle.

I have adopted a new strategy, now i build cloud colosseum then citadel/castle and build the titan upgrade afterwards, before i only built citadel/castle once i had titans. This way i only lose 1 week's worth of the castle growth bonus and still have the optimum number of titans.

I just have a really hard time accepting the fact that acadamy is a gimped town. Sucks, it really does.

[Mytical]

I think magic in whole in this game needs to be adjusted. About 20-25th level the towns should about be averaged out, might and magic about equal in str. About high 30's Mages should be about the strongest because they start the weakest. This isn't the case yet, though at one time I believe that was so. If you ever played any pen/paper or even MM game, the mages start wimpy but can decimate small armies alone when/if they reach high level. Magic should be hard to get, and mages hard to play early game, but late game they just don't make up for it for the most part.

[Ari]

You should offer to replay with somebody with each of you taking the other's former town pick. If the academy is at a disadvantage (rather than your game being at fault), it should be obvious at that point.

[asandir]

i think it is obvious regardless, it just depends on the map you play, if you have enough time, you will be fine with academy, but in a real rush map, you may struggle (guess it also depends who you play against )

[PhoenixReborn]

So how should academy be adjusted to make them less weak?

Change troops stats? Change growth? Lower resource requirements? I would do that last choice.

Also, am I way off or are Djinn's useless. I've never played against a human maybe they are more effective when the A.I. isn't targeting them.

[Mytical]

As combat troops djinn are a little below worthless imo, but as casters they can be a great help. Just careful with undead, some of there effects don't work as good on them.

[asandir]

they are not useless, but they are a bit middle of the road .... they're not really a great spellcaster, not really a great melee fighter, but with some buffing via an artifact, they can become pretty reasonable as a melee unit

as for the change to academy, maybe a slight resource rebalance, nothing too major though

[Qarl]

bis, you probably already have seen this, but in case you haven't, there is an Acadamy strategy guide on this very site:

https://www.celestialheavens.com/579

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

So how should academy be adjusted to make them less weak?

Change troops stats? Change growth? Lower resource requirements? I would do that last choice.

Also, am I way off or are Djinn's useless. I've never played against a human maybe they are more effective when the A.I. isn't targeting them.

Their buildings/troops are too expensive. Not only can they not keep up with everyone else building wise but they can't use their racial special (building creature artifacts) until the end of a very big map since the creature artifacts require lots of resources too.

Lower the costs of creature dwellings, perhaps a little lower mage's guild cost (they are totally reliant on spells with primary/secondary attributes of knowledge/spell power) and lower cost of creature artifacts.

Djjiin can't really be used as melee troops with their meager hitpoints/defense and you can't select what spell they cast which makes their caster value questionable. They can't be protected because they are a large unit (take up 4 squares.) Djjin die way too easily for a level 5 troop.

So the academy has 2 fragile casters that can't be protected. Mages, who shoot their own troops, and djjin, who are too big.

They have 2 troops (gargoyle and golem) that can't be resurrected. Before patch 1.2 this was eased somewhat by the master gremlin ability to repair golems. That ability was nerfed to allow them only one repair per battle.

The academy favors summoning and light magic. Summoning is most important for it. Summon Elementals got the nerf stick in patch 1.2 which also hurt the academy since SE is now a not so useful spell anymore. Overall the summoning school is the weakest magic school of all.

GOW

[Mytical]

Some possible ways to improve Academy without ruining balance.

Add a little oomph to the creatures, make creature artifacts a little less expensive, but not as helpful either (to balance the loss of expense and the gain of more powerful creatures).

Factor in level to spells and also, make them a little more powerful. Make them harder to access perhaps, and make some that are really powerful, but protected by strong creatures or quests! For Summon Elemental you could use the formula Levelxspx(a number decided by skill level) in hp worth of creatures. The number added by skill could be say .5, basic .75, advance 1, and expert 2. So a lvl 30 mage with 25 sp with advance summons would summon (30x25x1=)750 hp worth of creatures. Adjust the skill up or down to get a good number (keeping in mind the master of summons skill).

Reduce time till next round after casting Mark of the Wizard...let round start twice as fast. Make their superskill easier to get, but make everybody elses easier to get also. Cut building cost a little also. That is all I can think of ...for now.

[asandir]

i just think that the only real issue for academy is a resource one, the artifact ability allows the player to customise the troops to fit in with their style of play (so you need to power down the creatures a bit vs the rest or they will be a bit too powerful with enough of a boost) .... so if you reduce the requirements of buildings, and maybe slightly ease the artifact's resource cost, you get a noce little boost for academy, without overpowering them