1.3 Academy

[Jolly Joker]

You don't see me posting in the modmaking guild, do you?
Because I wouldn't dream of starting a discussion about how this mod was bad or that good or whatever.
No, everyone can make their mods however they like.
This here is a DISCUSSION forum about Heroes V, however, and if people start to DISCUSS things here, I'm entitled to point out my opinion. When I see that people are seemingly not making use of the full potential of something and cry for a "fix", am I not entitled to point out what might be done instead first and then consider again?
If you don't want to discuss the perceived problem, but only the mod necessary to play the game the way you want to, no matter other options, why can't that be done in the Mod section of this board? For example: "I like playing Academy, and I like playing with tight money, but I hate being tight on resources with Academy. I would like therefore an Academy fix that will let me start with only 10000 Money on Hard level, but 30/30/20/20/20/20 Resources." See, nothing to argue. Fun, fix for a personal thing, might be fun to try it. That's a something completely different than claiming, everything is too hard for Academy, it must be changed (officially) there must be something done about it, basically trying to force EVERYONE then to play it THAT way.

[Shauku]

Yes I also thought that this was a discussion about how Academy plays in 1.3. There is another thread called Lets Balance Academy. It is about changing Academy via mods.

It would be nice to have some non-modified threads also, if you know what I mean. Nothing against mods though.

There always is some attempt to influence the developers via discussion on issues (patch 1.3 showed they actually changed some things according to fans desires) I think that answers partly why anyone would participate in the discussion Sir_Toejam, about balance in particular.

[Elvin]

Not so much.Unless you lvl up every day Or get knowledge boosting artifacts.Not every property changes for every point.Some get +1 every 4,5 or 10 points of knowledge

If you read a while back you'll notice a certain strategy JJ illustrated. That's the main thing was talking about. It was about getting the resources back to build something after you used them once. Also note how all the other faction don't need to return to town to get stuff back after they already used the special.

I know.I meant that after a couple of lvl-ups you may not have increased your artie's power because of some high knowledge requirements.From experience I know that I don't need to go to town every little while.Sylvan needs to return to town more times because when facing multiple opponents potential threats can change in the blink of an eye.

[Naskoni]

You don't see me posting in the modmaking guild, do you?
Because I wouldn't dream of starting a discussion about how this mod was bad or that good or whatever.
No, everyone can make their mods however they like.
This here is a DISCUSSION forum about Heroes V, however, and if people start to DISCUSS things here, I'm entitled to point out my opinion. When I see that people are seemingly not making use of the full potential of something and cry for a "fix", am I not entitled to point out what might be done instead first and then consider again?
If you don't want to discuss the perceived problem, but only the mod necessary to play the game the way you want to, no matter other options, why can't that be done in the Mod section of this board? For example: "I like playing Academy, and I like playing with tight money, but I hate being tight on resources with Academy. I would like therefore an Academy fix that will let me start with only 10000 Money on Hard level, but 30/30/20/20/20/20 Resources." See, nothing to argue. Fun, fix for a personal thing, might be fun to try it. That's a something completely different than claiming, everything is too hard for Academy, it must be changed (officially) there must be something done about it, basically trying to force EVERYONE then to play it THAT way.

Yeah, right - so in the IM thread you tell people that it is pointless to argue about balance and they should make a wishlist to Nival or make a mod and here you bash them for wanting to make a mod and you want to discuss balance, not to mention you changing the topic there COMPLETELY by requesting a mod that had nothing to do with the discussion at hand and it was of course something normal, for you. Here you defend your right to state your opinion but otherwise you claim how pointless for others is to share theirs - we shouldn't bother trying to prove anything, just make out personal mods and be happy? Right... excuse me for thinking of you as a hypocrite:

why is anyone even bothering to argue with JJ?

he has always thought the game was just perfect, even before the 1.3 patch.*

he won't ever contribute anything positive wrt potential things to tinker with.

so again, is there a point?

* btw, that's SARCASM, JJ.

If you want to make a mod, please make the following:
change the cost of
Fort: 3000 Gold, 5 W, 5 O
Citadel: 5000 Gold 5 W, 5 O
Castle: 7000 Gold 10 W, 10 O.

Change the cost of the mage guilds to:

Level one: 5 W, 5 O, 1 of each of the precious ones, 1000 Gold
Level 2: 4 W, 4 O, 2 P each, 2000 Gold
3: 3 W, 3 O, 3P each, 3000 Gold
4: 2 w, 2 O, 4 P each, 4000 Gold
5: 1 W, 1 O, 5 P each, 5000 Gold.

Thank you very much.
Thank you.

Second, there IS no correlation between the mod request and armageddon... not to mention the thread which is about Irresistible Magic. However, there is a connection to a post before. If connection to a thread was necessary to post under it a large percentage of the threads were just cut.

Listen. Why do you need "arguments" at all? You can mod the things whichever way you like.
So: you don't like IM the way it is? Go ahead and change it. But don't expect you can prove that it must be done the way you want it.
Just do it.
There's no need to try and make everyone agree. Simply go ahead with something.
There are many issues you can do this way or another way. The disigners took this way, I'm fine with it, some are not, so change it. There is no need to bash each other's head to prove that his or her god is the only one.
So make a mod or make a wish list for Nival.
But don't bother trying to prove that it must be done the way you want it and everything else is crap, please.

[Elvin]

This here is a DISCUSSION forum about Heroes V, however, and if people start to DISCUSS things here, I'm entitled to point out my opinion. When I see that people are seemingly not making use of the full potential of something and cry for a "fix", am I not entitled to point out what might be done instead first and then consider again?

I respect your opinions as it is obvious that you know more than the average guy.However you often seem as if you have never played some factions more than once or twice to know how they fare in competion.And many people that do,notice some things even though they may not perceive some strengths that you see.The thing is,whatever the discussion is about,whether they are right or wrong you just bust in to say 'this topic is too idiotic for my tastes,get a grip'.There is no way one can respect you with this attitude even if you are right ultimately.If you don't like something don't be negative/sarcastic about it.Unless it is really outrageous Then flame on!

[mr.hackcrag]

Spell A: Mana cost a
Spell A + B: Mana cost (a+b) * 2
Spell A + B + C: Mana cost (a + b + c) * 3
Spell A + B + C + D: Mana cost (a + b + c + d) * 4

I hate to interrupt the flow of this discussion, but I think this is a really interesting idea. We need more ideas like this to deal with the issue of the usefulness of spell power and knowledge compared with att&def. It's ideas like these that could really bring out a true diversified experience between MIGHT and MAGIC so the game can actually live up to it's name.

[ThunderTitan]

Sylvan needs to return to town more times because when facing multiple opponents potential threats can change in the blink of an eye.

This also depends on the neutrals you have on the map and how much you're being attacked. Academy would need to do it even when facing just one opponent. And i got what you said there, just didn't get what it had to do with the situation/strategy JJ suggested.

Oh, and how does Luck work with Avenger?

[Jolly Joker]

I suppose, he means that depending on the threats of other players you have to go back to town to change from, say Vampires, to, umm Succubi - if he had fought the neutrals.
Since 1.3, on Heroic, I actually use the Guild a LOT more against the neutrals. It helps a lot, if you have a minor artifact guarded by only lots of Vampires, but the Crystal Mine is guarded by a Horde of Vampire Lords, when you can put them onto the shit list of your hero, after killing the Lot first.
Avenger works together with Luck, so yes, it IS possible to score a hit with Luck on a favored enemy. Having Luck +3 or so and fighting against a favored enemy is pretty cool in terms of damage potential.
For Academy a bit of resource planning is necessary. Well, maybe even a FAIR bit. It doesn't do if you have your hero 3 days from home and equipped with artifacts you'd need the resources from. However, you can chain the artifacts the same way than troops (which is micro-management, I admit that).

[ThunderTitan]

Well you can actualy put more then one crit on the fav list, depending on lvl, and seeing how there are no mixed neutrals you can probably go a day or two without going back to the town (also note that you have to defeat 2 populations of the creature before you can fav it, which should mean you lvl-up a few times, so you should have 2 fav slots), so Academy still trumps Sylvan in that regard.

But i'd like the micro-manag to be cut down when posible, especialy since you can just make a chain to do it. At least Avenger give you a pretty big advantage (40% is pretty good, once every 3rd turn, and with all the creatures).

And how usefull is Consume Artifact anyway?

[Elvin]

First of all there are better artificer abilities to get as motw and magic mirror.That means to get it you'll need 6 lvls but why bother when you can take other more important skills?It's not as if you will run out of mana frequently,if ever.Summoning does have increased mana costs though as of lately.

[ThunderTitan]

Giving you back the resources might give it a leg up.

[Sir_Toejam]

what if destroying an artifact in combat gave you much more mana in return?

make it a simple percentage, say.

like this:

artifact level 1:

gives back 30% of your normal total mana.

level 2:

60 %

level 3:

100%

...and maybe even allow boosting your mana beyond normal capacity, up to 200%?

so if you destroyed two level 3 artifacts, you would get 200% total mana.

imagine being able to recover your entire mana pool mid combat.

would that make it worth it?

I can certainly recall some rather large battles where that would have come in quite handy:

say you have a stack you know is gonna get wiped on the next combat turn, and you are out of mana to resurrect it.

so, destroy the artifact on it, you regain your mana, next turn it gets wiped, and your next turn you can then resurrect it.

sound more interesting?

[ThunderTitan]

Not rally, as wizards have alot of mana, it's SP they lack and i'm not sure a battle would last that long in H5. Even in previous games, runing out of mana was more of a consecutive battles type of thing.

[Sir_Toejam]

one, i have had plenty of battles last that long (up to 15 turns in one instance)

and two, i often get battles occuring one after the other without being able to "recharge".

are you saying you always manage to recharge your mana points entirely between one battle and the next?

you must be playing with a mod I'm not aware of then, or maybe you only play maps with towns or magic wells every five feet?

curious.

getting the resources back, while getting the benefit of increased mana, doesn't make sense too me.

increasing the benefit obtained, by utilizing the resources in those artifacts makes sense to me.

Just so I'm clear, would you prefer the skill just to be that you can destroy artifacts in combat just to receive back the resources, with no other benefit?

[ThunderTitan]

The drawback would be the stack losing the bonus. And usualy after a 15 round battle you'd, IMO of course, normaly get back to town for reinforcements or the like. And getting that much mana back could be too much. Making both mods to see what happens might be a good ideea.

[Sir_Toejam]

Making both mods to see what happens might be a good ideea.

sorry, i lost you, which mods specifically?

do you mean one that returns resources, but doesn't boost mana, and one that boosts mana more than it does now?

[ThunderTitan]

Making both mods to see what happens might be a good ideea.

do you mean one that returns resources, but doesn't boost mana, and one that boosts mana more than it does now?

And the first one does boost mana, just not alot. Really, in the end you get some mana and eliminate the trip back to town if you req the resources.

[mr.hackcrag]

Giving you back the resources might give it a leg up.

You could always use the alchemy skill to convert wood into gold or leprachauns into gems.

[Kilop]

I ll try to explain why academy is totally underpowered, and the more the map is big with a lot of ressources, the more it is obvious.
Nival introduced the system of racial skills in order to bring something new in this game, necromancy was already there but everyone admit here how great gating is for example...
So what those two skills make at a high level... they simply multiply the strengh of the army by 30 to 60 percents...
And they did it too with haven, just think what makes upgrade tiers, it power your army !!

Avenger too, even if not in units numbers, they do it in dommage, coupled with high init , it is almost equivalent ( keep in mind that each of these skills have positive and negative points ... )
BUT for academy, what is SUPPOSED to make the army stronger doesn t work! And that is for two important reasons.

First, academy army, beside buffed golems is weak , you must wait for 6 lvl units, hard as hell to geet, in order to have some decent dommage dealer. and the artefacts are not enough of a buf for this army... remember genies are only 40 life point , this means 2 genies per SP for an empowered implosion , or so ...

so it scales badly with your creatures, once again best bet is Razzak with mass golems but it is viable just because the speciality of razzak makes up for the loss in atak / def a wizard has, and THEN the artefacts need to make those golems as godd as + 50 % power from the other towns ... undoable!

So for one time a disagrea with JJ, thought this artefact idea is brilliant, the devs miscalculated the power that is needed to be brought with them.

The artefacts should give a percent life and not just points, and some more buffs, because at the final battle, academy troops ( who suffer more during the game having no rliable tanks as sylkvan or way to avoid loss like the griffin only against shooters tactic with haven ) will not only fight troops with more atak / def , but in greater number too !!! ( once again, it is more easy for sylvan to save their troops ... )

I hope someone get what i tried to explain, and that devs see the point

[Idleness2]

I agree with kilop here, about 70%

first of all its not all THAT hard for academy to avoid losses against neutrals, just master gremlins repairing things for any melee neutral should give little or no losses, and they have good units for fighting casting neutrals that are more annoying to other races to fight. By increasing speed and maybe init of various creatures, like gargoyles, will make shooters less of a problem for academy, but shooters really are annoying for all faction cept necro very early (or cept maybe a lucky dungeon getting quick tactics)

I dont think its so easy to compare artificer with the specials of other races, but it obviously does suffer a huge amount from hard or heroic levels of play to the point of being almost unusable, and it is of course true that buffing your gremlins with a hp and some attack, cannot compare to a necromancer, who can effectively double or triple the force of his meager 'weekly generation' army by simply killing things. But then undead units are in general quite a bit inferior to the other races; while academy has 2 of their teirs that really are quite outstanding and surpass all the other races.

Titans already are strongest teir 7, if u give +% artifacts to them, academy will quicky jump from being underpowered to stupid overpowered, I think. I think this balancing act is very very tricky