Magic compared to earlier series

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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Cyrox
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Magic compared to earlier series

Unread postby Cyrox » 15 Sep 2006, 09:05

Ermmm just a question I wanted to ask, because I've never played the earlier series prior to Heros V..

Was magic considerably weaker than in the previous series? It seems to me that with the recent patch Nival has made magic very weak.

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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 15 Sep 2006, 09:22

How so? They rebalanced some spells and made higher level spells more expensive, but reduced the resource costs for the mage guilds drastically and gave each "magic" hero a start spell. I don't see, how they made magic "very weak" with this.

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Unread postby Arqane » 15 Sep 2006, 09:26

Magic has gone all over the place in the series. It's been very powerful, and very weak.

Usually in the games where it was the most powerful, it took a very large percentage of your resources to get the spells. In some of the games, the sheer number of spells made it hard to get all the ones you wanted.

And in some of them, it's been alot weaker. Mostly used for support, and not really as much of an offensive ability. All of them have at least 1 race/faction that's mostly focused on magic, but for some of them they really expect you to use your troops alot, too.

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DaemianLucifer
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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 15 Sep 2006, 11:01

Well,its not as usefull as in HIV,but it is ok.A bit more strenght tweaking to the magic would be a good thing though.They did a step in the right direction by making it more dependable on the mastery of magic you have,but they shouldve expanded on that more.Still,I prefer magic from HIV,with this one being a close second.

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Unread postby Zombie_Inc » 15 Sep 2006, 14:02

I would very much like to see a greater veriaty in spells. There aren't enough, and there are spells missing like a healing spell for instance. IMHO, the spell system needs a great deal of expansion. If it could be as elaborate as the skill system, it'd be perfect.
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Unread postby Killroyan » 15 Sep 2006, 14:42

The greater difference from the earlier series is the larger amount creatures you are running around with. A lightning bolt in HommI where you had maybe 100-200 creatures in stack tops was devastating. Nowadays on heroic I face heroes with 400 hunters. What is a spell that deals 260 damage do against that when a stack of 300 blade dancers is capable of dealing 1000+ damage.

Besides throughout the series there have been more and more ways to get magic resistances (creature abilities, spells, skills and artifacts) which makes magic seem weaker.

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Gaidal Cain
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Unread postby Gaidal Cain » 15 Sep 2006, 17:24

Killroyan wrote:The greater difference from the earlier series is the larger amount creatures you are running around with. A lightning bolt in HommI where you had maybe 100-200 creatures in stack tops was devastating. Nowadays on heroic I face heroes with 400 hunters. What is a spell that deals 260 damage do against that when a stack of 300 blade dancers is capable of dealing 1000+ damage.
Though on the other hand, that makes spells as bless and haste more potent. I'd argue that increased stack sizes mostly affects balance between spell types, and not so much balance between might and magic (though more troops->more Xp->higher stats->Might gets stronger)
Besides throughout the series there have been more and more ways to get magic resistances (creature abilities, spells, skills and artifacts) which makes magic seem weaker.
H5 isn't that different though -- there are a couple of skils that increase resistance, and a couple of artifacts, but not as much as for example in h3.
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Unread postby Metathron » 15 Sep 2006, 17:36

Zombie_Inc wrote:I would very much like to see a greater veriaty in spells. There aren't enough, and there are spells missing like a healing spell for instance. IMHO, the spell system needs a great deal of expansion. If it could be as elaborate as the skill system, it'd be perfect.
Exactly. HoMM V has a meagre 44 spells in its repertoire, while HoMM IV, for example, boasts almost 150!! (over 150 with the Equilibris mod) spells, which really increases the diversity of the game.
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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 15 Sep 2006, 18:02

Metathron wrote: Exactly. HoMM V has a meagre 44 spells in its repertoire, while HoMM IV, for example, boasts almost 150!! (over 150 with the Equilibris mod) spells, which really increases the diversity of the game.
Even more,all of those 150 spells had a use for them,while now(as in HIII)there are completelly useless spells.

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Unread postby vhilhu » 15 Sep 2006, 18:05

err, i wouldnt overqualify h4 spells, there were too many useless spells. as you now get just 3-2 spells each level, the result of getting something bad would be a disaster. it doesnt even have to be a bad spell by itself, but if you get a long-awaited 3. or 4. or whatever lvl as a ward of a nation that doesnt excist on the map and the opponent gets something like phatom forces, you are screwed.

more spells would be great if you would get 1 or 2 more spell each lvl. then risk of getting not a single great spell would be small. risk like that shouldnt decide the games outcome.

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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 15 Sep 2006, 18:17

vhilhu wrote:err, i wouldnt overqualify h4 spells, there were too many useless spells. as you now get just 3-2 spells each level, the result of getting something bad would be a disaster. it doesnt even have to be a bad spell by itself, but if you get a long-awaited 3. or 4. or whatever lvl as a ward of a nation that doesnt excist on the map and the opponent gets something like phatom forces, you are screwed.

more spells would be great if you would get 1 or 2 more spell each lvl. then risk of getting not a single great spell would be small. risk like that shouldnt decide the games outcome.
You run that risk in every heroes.But getting a spell that has no usefulness on the current map is not the same as getting a spell with no usefulness at all.

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Unread postby AngelEyes » 15 Sep 2006, 18:22

While I do agree about mass-buff spells being more potent, I do think the Destruction spells are way under-powered.
I remember back in Heroes 2, once you got Chain Lightning with decent spell power, you could really put a hurtin' on your opponents. Now, even Armegeddon and Meteor shower is under-powered.

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Unread postby cornellian » 15 Sep 2006, 18:57

I wonder if the developers know the saying "don't fix what ain't broken".. Heroes IV's magic system was the best so far and sadly we are down to a new low after that..

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Unread postby Sir_Toejam » 15 Sep 2006, 23:52

...but reduced the resource costs for the mage guilds drastically
AFAICT so far, they did this for academy, but not for necropolis, for example.

I just finished a map with both necro and academy on it, and while the high level mage guild costs (rare resource) were halved for academy, they were the same for necro.

has anyone checked the other factions?

edit:

I'm sure this is posted elsewhere, but for easy reference:

all mage guilds are now half the rare resource costs, level 3-5, except:

necro, which is unchanged (still costs 10 of each rare to build level 5)

and dungeon, which costs only 4 of each rare resource to build the level 5 guild.
There aren't enough, and there are spells missing like a healing spell for instance.
yes, I agree there should be a low level healing spell, but do note that resurection can be used as a healing spell.

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Unread postby Arqane » 16 Sep 2006, 03:46

AngelEyes wrote:While I do agree about mass-buff spells being more potent, I do think the Destruction spells are way under-powered.
I remember back in Heroes 2, once you got Chain Lightning with decent spell power, you could really put a hurtin' on your opponents. Now, even Armegeddon and Meteor shower is under-powered.
Perhaps because you're used to the 1-shot spell battles in the older Heroes games? OK, sometimes it took 2 to completely wipe out the enemy.

I think the Destruction spells are slightly underpowered, but not horribly. When I'm fighting big battles, most of the first attacks with the stack do between 1000 and 2000 damage. Destruction spells top off about 1000. I wouldn't mind seeing that going to 1500-2000 for empowered L5 spells around 30 spellpower.

Still, it's more balanced than the older Heroes games. First of all, you can't say that with 2 equal armies, one with Destruction Magic, and one with no magic, that the Destruction Magic wouldn't help. He'd win hands down. Destruction Magic doesn't win battles by itself in this game, it turns the tide.

So it's definitely better in my opinion than the old ones where you could have one Black Dragon, spend 20 out of 200 spell points and win large battles. Now you have to have some army and spend most of your mana on a large battle.

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Unread postby Metathron » 16 Sep 2006, 11:21

Arqane wrote:So it's definitely better in my opinion than the old ones where you could have one Black Dragon, spend 20 out of 200 spell points and win large battles. Now you have to have some army and spend most of your mana on a large battle.
I do wonder where exactly that was the case... ;|
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Unread postby Arqane » 16 Sep 2006, 20:26

Metathron wrote:
Arqane wrote:So it's definitely better in my opinion than the old ones where you could have one Black Dragon, spend 20 out of 200 spell points and win large battles. Now you have to have some army and spend most of your mana on a large battle.
I do wonder where exactly that was the case... ;|
Heroes 2 was like that. Grab Black Dragon, cast high level Armageddon, that pretty much did it. However, at least I found in most Heroes games, spending too much mana was never a problem at higher levels. Some of that certainly depended on the map (magic wells have always been very powerful), but that's where alot of people complain where Knowledge is often useless, since it's been easy to get more than you need.

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Metathron
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Unread postby Metathron » 16 Sep 2006, 22:00

Arqane wrote: Heroes 2 was like that. Grab Black Dragon, cast high level Armageddon, that pretty much did it.
But wouldn't you have to be relatively far into the game to be able to do that? Meaning you'd accumulated enough experience gallavanting through the map to increase your spell power (and knowledge to some extent) considerably, and to have gathered enough resources to construct the black tower. At this later stage of the game, I don't think this tactic is unfair, or that overpowered, really.
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Unread postby Corelanis » 16 Sep 2006, 22:05

Its not unfair its just no one likes to lose like that. My only real problem with HV magic is they took out prayer, I really loved prayer.

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Unread postby DaemianLucifer » 16 Sep 2006, 22:12

Corelanis wrote:Its not unfair its just no one likes to lose like that. My only real problem with HV magic is they took out prayer, I really loved prayer.
They did not.They just nerfed it a bit and turned it into a skill called benediction.


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