Holy crap-You MUST see this! (academy strat)

[Elvin]

Tried MMR on peninsula yesterday(hard). Naturally I built gremlins, gargs, golems and mage guild 2 in week 1. One trick I use with dwarves is build tier 1 in day 1 and upg it the 2nd day. Another hero takes the gremlins back and gives them to the main upgraded so that he can creep better. Note that you get +4 initiative plus you play before most shooters.
In week 2 you have few obstacles, though you should have motw(from lvl 2 if possible) and a destructive spell(ice bolt preferred). I defeated lots of blackbear riders with gargs and gremlins,a throng of ghosts(same army) and lots of master hunters by just placing my gargs in defence and casting away. I would have won even with Jhora's eldritch arrow. Druid elders can easily be handled too if you upg gargoyles and use only them(defend and cast destructive as usual) but expect to have casualties.
What I found out was that Galib makes for an amazing support character. In lvl 2 he got resourcefulness and that alone is more than one could ask.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

But against shooters, my Gremlins are getting carved up, or if I hold them out I take similar losses with my Golems and Mages. Fast shooters like Master Hunters will wipe me out, since all these Academy armies have such low initiative. I can get some fast damage from Archmages, but my Master Gremlins are useless at long range.

Academy expands slowly unless you emphasize mage guilds early at the expense of creature dwellings.

Against shooters you will need to keep the gremlins out and keep the golems/gargoyles defending on the back row and take out the shooters with your magic.

I'm using my Genies to soften up the opposition rather than for direct attack. But are Master Genies worth it? I never see them cast Light spells.

And the Rakshasas come in late because of resource requirements. It's better to get the Collosi, right?

The Djiin suck. They are not good spell casters and not good at melee either because they die like flies. Yes the Djiin Sultans can cast light spells if you target your own troops with their special. However you may get a spell that protects you from ranged attacks when there are only shooters. Djiin die very very quickly but at least the towers target them first during sieges.

Yep, go for Titans.

I started out playing Hard, which is what I've done for the other factions, but even clicking back to Normal, I'm struggling. This is frustrating, since I've pretty much mastered Haven and Sylvan, and do well enough with Dungeon and Inferno. But clearly I'm missing something with Academy. Or as I said, I've been having a run of bad luck.

IMHO the academy is the weakest of all the factions.

The academy's low level creatures are slow and not very offensive. You have to support them with strong magic to expand quickly, whih means you have to sacrifice creature dwellings, which means you will have to continue to press the attack or your opponents will overwhelm you with their advantage in creature numbers. It also means if you get a poor early spell selection your rush attempt will go nowhere.

Rushing is not my favorite way to play but with the weak academy creatures it is the only way you stand a chance against a human opponent on heroic difficulty. On maps where the academy can rush they can be competitive. On maps where rushes are not possible the academy is likely to suffer defeat.

GOW

[Banedon]

I've actually found Academy to be quite a strong race, definitely stronger than Dungeon, even without explicit use of MMR. My brother who plays Academy favours Nathir (or whatever's the name of the hero with the Fireball speciality). The result:

But against shooters, my Gremlins are getting carved up, or if I hold them out I take similar losses with my Golems and Mages. Fast shooters like Master Hunters will wipe me out, since all these Academy armies have such low initiative.

Battles against Master Hunters become absurdly easy. Master Hunters have 14 HP. An early Fireball can easily deal 200 damage. That's enough to kill more than 10 Master Hunters, and unless the Master Hunters are guarding something very important, you'll kill one of the stacks of Master Hunters if they split up or seriously reduce their numbers if they don't. Then you defend with the Gargoyles and kill them all. Academy can win this fight with negligible losses, something no other race except perhaps Necropolis can do.

The academy's low level creatures are slow and not very offensive. You have to support them with strong magic to expand quickly, whih means you have to sacrifice creature dwellings, which means you will have to continue to press the attack or your opponents will overwhelm you with their advantage in creature numbers. It also means if you get a poor early spell selection your rush attempt will go nowhere.

My brother's playstyle is just as you say, but very effective. He builds the Mage dwelling but does not recruit them, continuing to fire the Fireballs / Eldritch Arrows and killing stack after stack. Because of Academy's high knowledge, you have less problems with spell points, unlike Dungeon. There's a period in the game when Academy's spells are devastatingly effective, around week 4-8. At this point Fireball can easily deal enough damage to kill 20 Master Hunters (I was playing Sylvan against him then). Absolutely devastating. Surprisingly, he expanded faster than me, getting to Rakshasha long before I was ready.

We didn't fight a decisive battle, just enjoyed the early-game. But if you ask me, Academy is hardly a rushing race.

[aulfgar]

When I play dungeon my first week is to upgrade both the Scouts and Furies as the upgrades are awesome and with those two simple cheap upgrades you have a nasty force.

[Caradoc]

Battles against Master Hunters become absurdly easy. Master Hunters have 14 HP. An early Fireball can easily deal 200 damage. That's enough to kill more than 10 Master Hunters, and unless the Master Hunters are guarding something very important, you'll kill one of the stacks of Master Hunters if they split up or seriously reduce their numbers if they don't. Then you defend with the Gargoyles and kill them all. Academy can win this fight with negligible losses, something no other race except perhaps Necropolis can do.

What I often see is (neutral) Master Hunters in three stacks of around 20 each. Since I can only hit one with a Fireball, I'm going to take several rounds of fire, even before the Golems get in the fight. The Gargoyles can close in the second round, but they don't do much damage in the numbers I will have in the first few weeks.

I'm going to try again on Normal, where I ought to have enough resources to put up a decent Magic Guild. I'll hold off on Genies and put my income into town hall and artifacts.

[Banedon]

What I often see is (neutral) Master Hunters in three stacks of around 20 each. Since I can only hit one with a Fireball, I'm going to take several rounds of fire, even before the Golems get in the fight. The Gargoyles can close in the second round, but they don't do much damage in the numbers I will have in the first few weeks.

If you're fighting neutral Master Hunters in stacks of three with around 20 Master Hunters in each stack, that's a really major neutral force (for early-game at least) that no race will be able to deal with properly. It is entirely possible to win though once you gain some time and space. A 280-damage Fireball is the key here - deploy 7 stacks of Gargoyles and defend with them all. Hero tosses Fireball and destroys one stack. That leaves two, which kill two stacks of Gargoyles. Toss another Fireball. Last stack kills one more stack of Gargoyles. Toss a third Fireball. Victory.

That's the best case, but even in the worst you'll lose only 6 stacks, giving you a win.

[Banedon]

Vittorio would make some smart decisions as well. As the attacker in the battle, he would note what creature it was that you chose to split - the Gargoyles. He would then split his Marksmen into stacks (of 5 Marksmen, maybe?) such that each Marksmen shot can kill one of your tanking units. I personally would just lump all the remaining Marksmen together and prioritize Magical Immunity on them. You might say I have the privelege of knowing that Nur will be casting Dark Magic. It's possible, but if you consider the options it's also reasonable. Nur has magic, that I know, of which one is Summoning Magic. The others are Light, Dark and Destructive. Among these three Light Magic is no threat; the other I can neutralize with Magical Immunity. I therefore make a calculated gamble: if you were unfortunate enough to receive only Light Magic spells in the mage guild, I would win the battle anyway since your greatest asset is gone.

OK. This was a dumb post. I only realized a week ago that you could split units in the battle itself Vittorio, unless he's a great mind reader, won't be able to predict how many Marksmen stacks to split everywhere.

I still think however that putting the Marksmen and Paladins in a lump stack and prioritizing Magical Immunity would result in a Haven win though.

86wyp, did anything develop as a concrete counter to MMR, or did anything significant change? I'm interested since I just finished the campaign and will probably progress to serious multiplayer

[Elvin]

Wouldn't splitting marksmen to 5 stacks make them vulnerable to aoe? A firewall of meteor shower could be disastrous.
Also magical immunity can't help against a summoned phoenix or fire elementals but it's a long shot.

[Banedon]

Well the splitting...I meant splitting 5 / 5 / 5 / 200 Marksmen, or something like that. The stack of 5 Marksmen would have the task of killing one of the Obsidian Gargoyles in a hit. Too bad it'd require a load of mind-reading.

[Elvin]

As it is when battle diving with griffins. I occasionally attack an empty spot in the hopes the enemy will move there.
Don't you just love it? Of course you must know thy enemy.

[sylvanllewelyn]

Academy's focus on knowledge and spellpower does translate to good early spell damage against creeps, just as magic users have an advantage against might heroes in the beginning. I don't know what people were smoking when they said they sucked online.

However, I still prefer Haven or dungeon. With Haven my marksmen can take on even bigger creeps with precise shot, and with dungeon, I build up advanced destructive, build lvl 4 mage build and beeline for the closest human town, because the enemy hero's probably out creeping (especially if it's Academy).

[PhoenixReborn]

As it is when battle diving with griffins. I occasionally attack an empty spot in the hopes the enemy will move there.
Don't you just love it? Of course you must know thy enemy.

And I occasionally forget where I told them to dive and move my own units in the way. I guess I need to know myself better

[Elvin]

Haha! Happened to me once or twice so far but I wasn't paying much attention so I forgot about them!

[winterfate]

. Ouch, that would be a painful surprise. It reminds me of the time where I was fighting 3 stacks of Imperials. They flew up and battle dived my 14 Marksman (instant kill). The first stack stayed in that exact spot, then the second group bombed the first. Then the third hit that first stack, slaying it .

Now, that's what I call friends !

[sylvanllewelyn]

So I've read the posts earlier, and yes, some people on this forum are very rude. This strategy does work, and works well, because level 15-ish is when a pure magic user has the most advantage against a might hero or a hybrid, and unlike heroes 2 and 3 where the warlock is coeval to the wizard, in Heroes 5, only the wizard is a pure magic hero.

However, I have also beaten players using this strategy.

But that says nothing about whether this is actually the best strategy or not.

This is a game between two players. It's to determine who's the better PLAYER, who's better at executing strategy, not (just) who is better at choosing a strategy. When two swordsman fight, it's to determine who's the better swordsman, not "which sword is sharper". You choose your favourite sword and then you fight, it's that simple.

The Academy MMR is a good sword, I just happen to like another kind of sword. I also happened to have beaten people that use the Academy MMR. One time I did it by attacking an academy town with a chain-lightning warlock exactly on day 7 (I build nothing else in my town, and then recruited all the academy troops on day 8, and successfully defended against a mana-exhausted lvl 14 wizard, with withering tower fire. Man his town was built up). Another time, we had a duel on a huge map, and I creeped for towns rather than mines, with expert logistics. My 5 expert-logistics heroes got his uber army running in circles while not knowing which towns are built-up and which ones weren't. Because he was so focused on one hero, he couldn't split his armies into a secondary hero either, because that lvl 1 fella would've been beaten to a pulp.

[86wyp]

Vittorio would make some smart decisions as well. As the attacker in the battle, he would note what creature it was that you chose to split - the Gargoyles. He would then split his Marksmen into stacks (of 5 Marksmen, maybe?) such that each Marksmen shot can kill one of your tanking units. I personally would just lump all the remaining Marksmen together and prioritize Magical Immunity on them. You might say I have the privelege of knowing that Nur will be casting Dark Magic. It's possible, but if you consider the options it's also reasonable. Nur has magic, that I know, of which one is Summoning Magic. The others are Light, Dark and Destructive. Among these three Light Magic is no threat; the other I can neutralize with Magical Immunity. I therefore make a calculated gamble: if you were unfortunate enough to receive only Light Magic spells in the mage guild, I would win the battle anyway since your greatest asset is gone.

OK. This was a dumb post. I only realized a week ago that you could split units in the battle itself Vittorio, unless he's a great mind reader, won't be able to predict how many Marksmen stacks to split everywhere.

I still think however that putting the Marksmen and Paladins in a lump stack and prioritizing Magical Immunity would result in a Haven win though.

86wyp, did anything develop as a concrete counter to MMR, or did anything significant change? I'm interested since I just finished the campaign and will probably progress to serious multiplayer

When I first introduced this strategy on herocommunity I named it MMR because at that time this strategy was only tested in rush games. But now I would like to call this strategy a Universal Strategy of Academy, because we have realized that this strategy is almost always the best strategy for any academy hero(except havez sometimes) on any map and on any difficulty level. The main point is to alway rely on combinations of magics and restrict the opponents' magics and grab as many resourses as possible. Artificer is an extremely powerful skill in late game, and magic is still a key to victory in late game too.

[Banedon]

Thanks for telling And do post here more often if you can. I certainly appreciate them a lot.

[Banedon]

Just wondering, has anyone tried using Marbas against this strategy? A week ago my brothers, I and a friend of ours had a 4-way-duel. My brothers took Academy and Dungeon; the friend took Necropolis. Against three spell-casting races I took Marbas and annoyed my brothers to kingdom come ('hey pity me I didn't get Eldritch Arrow in the mage guild go kill [the Dungeon player]' - my brother with Academy), but sneakily enough I found Deleb in the tavern on day 1 and switched main heroes.

In a more serious game I can imagine what such a move would do. A high-level Marbas would incapacitate the usage of Destructive and Dark Magic; forcing the Wizard to use Summoning and Light. But compared to their destructive power (no reference to Destructive magic here) certainly Summoning and Light magic are inferior to Destructive and Dark. Not that they cannot change the course of the battle, but I'd certainly think spells like Mass Confusion, Mass Slow and Mark of the Wizard / Implosion are a lot more deadly than Mass Divine Strength (for example).

So after the Wizard commits to Light and Summoning, the change in main heroes would disorient and end the game. The main problem would be with Deleb not appearing in the tavern when Marbas would have difficulty clearing the neutrals around. But even so. This could be a strategy to be developed.

Just thinking aloud here.

[Elvin]

Maybe but that's what MMR is about: Having multiple magic schools to counter as much as possible. Marbas would create some problems anyway MMR or not.

[sylvanllewelyn]

I don't know whether the effectiveness of this MMR strategy implies, or whether other strategies are better or worse, after deep thought. What it does say is that it's the Heroes, not the troops, that wins the battle, always. When people talk about town balance, everyone talks about the troops, but not much attention towards the Heroes themselves. I believe that's why people were so shocked by this strategy.

I'm still convinced that with the exception of Sylvan, any other towns could counter this strategy (especially fortress, as they're no slouches in magic either).