emphasize strength or compensate weakness?

[Odish]

I was wondering, what is the best or favourable strategies when you play.
Do you emphasize the strengths of the faction or try to compensate for its weaknesses?
for example, say you're playing dungeon who's strong on attack and spell power, will you take the attack skill thus making the troops more damaging, or defence in an attempt to balance the stats a bit? Will you use spell power enhanced artifacts or knowledge artifacts?

[gaspi2]

Well it depends on trategy and perks taken, for example when I tave expert defense and thus stand your ground, I like to take defense skill becouse thus perk is more effective(10 def + 60% = 16, 20 def + 60% = 32 it's definetly difference)

[Apocalypse]

Well, it depends a lot on strategy, situation and other things

[Gaidal Cain]

In general, I play on the strengths, while trying to do at least something to compensate the worst weaknesses- for dungeon, that'd amount to for example taking Secrets of Destruction for that badly needed knowledge boost.

[Apocalypse]

Oh yeah, I forgot there are also fixed choices. Secrets of Destruction is an always-picked ability by me with Dungeon

[Campaigner]

Depends. With Wizard I like to emphazize his strenghts by going the completely magicroute with Sorcery that make him a good spellcaster, Summoning Magic that makes best use of Spellpower together with Archery and Battle Frenzy from Attack and expertlvl artifacts for the Master Gremlins.

If facing casters/shooters I have a secondary hero that carries around a pack of Gargoyles.


With Necromancer I either go Summoning Magic, Enlightenment, Sorcery, Logistics and Attack to emphazize his magicstrenght or Dark Magic, Enlightenment, Attack, Defense and Logistics to emphazize on his mightstrenght.

With the Warlocks, Defense and only Chaos Hydras can be quite viable (atleast in the campaigns), allowing the hero to shine and truly playing to his strenght.

[Apocalypse]

With Wizard I like to emphazize his strenghts by going the completely magicroute with Sorcery that him a good spellcaster, Summoning Magic that makes best use of Spellpower together with Archery and Battle Frenzy from Attack and expertlvl artifacts for the Master Gremlins.

Hmm, doesn't attack compensate for the Wizard's weakness? I mean, the wizard is pretty bad at might things, so I guess the attack skill (being a might one) compensates for this weakness rather than emphazizing the strengths.

[Campaigner]

I consider the Wizards ranged troops a strenght and boosting them is boosting one of his strenghts The Wizard has always had good ranged attackers that have always had more attack than defense (unlike Heroes II Lich f.e.)

[BoardGuest808888]

Well, in Heroes V the strength and weakness of most factions are so obvious that I tend to emphasize strength in most case.

Emphasizing strength would make your troops far better than average, while trying to compensate weakness just make your troop average at best.

[gaspi2]

Like me:) as Inferno long game I boosted attck sky high(36 I think) and I did some nasty thing - I cast frenzy on gated pitlords, they had also divine str and righterous might on themselfes but def was poor - they hit original pit lords with such dmg that 92 gated pit lords killed 94 out of some 130 original pit lords - what a blow! (along with luck:))

[Odish]

I consider the Wizards ranged troops a strenght and boosting them is boosting one of his strenghts The Wizard has always had good ranged attackers that have always had more attack than defense (unlike Heroes II Lich f.e.)

Well, I consider this as compensating for the low attack values of the wizard. there´s no question about the fact that the skill will make your troops more damaging, adding might to a magic hero.

Emphasizing strength would make your troops far better than average, while trying to compensate weakness just make your troop average at best.

emphasizing strength will make your troops very powerfull in one aspect but very poor in another, thus you´re getting an all out average yet strongly specilized towards one aspect of fighting.
compensating strength will make your unit average yet more balanced towards diffrent aspects of battle.
The question is which is better?
do you like best units with alot of attack and little defence- attack oriented (or vice versa) or the more balanced troops, not bent on one aspect only?

[Caradoc]

I take the opposite tack for the Might skills. If you look at the math, you'll see there are diminishing returns as skill level differentials increase. I let the natural progression take care of the strong skills and use bonuses to boost the weak ones. For instance, a Ranger is always going to have a ludicrously high Defense, so I go for bonuses and artifacts to boost the Attack. Besides, Defense is a skill for losers. I prefer to improve my chances of a fast kill that ends the battle over toughening up to sustain fewer losses. (However, Haven with high defense numbers and Resurrection can succeed at this game.)

For Magic, I always go for Spell Power. If you hit hard enough, you don't worry so much about running out of Mana.

[Orfinn]

I mostly compensate weaknesses. With Warlocks, Demon Lords I beef up their defence stats ASAP and also trying to get the skill Defence and the following abilities such as Protection, Vitality, Evasion, Hellwrath for the Demon Lord is very nice to have. For Warlocks it goes by the same thing, and their Resistance ability which boost a +2 defence permanently adds valuable points. Teleport Assault and Dark Revelation from Logistics and Enlightment further helps.

But with Knights, Wood Elves I emphatize their strenghts in attack, defence and a few points in spellpower and knowledge if needed.
For Wizard and necromancers I do the same but emphatize in spellpower and knowledge.

With the dwarves I do a 50/50 in both focusing on strenghts and eliminating their weaknesses.

[okrane]

I usually try to increase their strengths... for warlocks I take Attack and offensive stuff all the way... so I can crush the enemy before being able to do much damage to me....

[BoardGuest808888]

emphasizing strength will make your troops very powerfull in one aspect but very poor in another, thus you´re getting an all out average yet strongly specilized towards one aspect of fighting.
compensating strength will make your unit average yet more balanced towards diffrent aspects of battle.
The question is which is better?
do you like best units with alot of attack and little defence- attack oriented (or vice versa) or the more balanced troops, not bent on one aspect only?

Well, emphasizing strength will make your troops a better than average because like I said before, the strength and weakness of every factions is so obvious.

Ex: By emphasizing your faction's strength, your troops would be better than other similar faction because you maximize what your faction already do to a better capability.

If you try to compensate weakness, then eventually you'd find another player with another faction that's very good at what you're trying to emphasize, and if he/she emphasize that, your troops wouldn't fare well because they're not designed to match that other player's strength in the first place. You'd play in his/her ground.

And if you find another player with same faction as you are and he/she maximize that faction's strength, then your trying to compensate weakness will be nullifyed by overwhelming strength he/she employed. Your troops wouldn't get better by trying to be everything, but get no good at all instead.

Of course, you can also compensate weakness of your faction against neutrals (PC). But then again, against such you don't need to emphasize anything at all because they're easier to battle.

Note that by trying to emphasize/compensate strength/weakness of a faction, you should know first the machination of how that faction works, how it would play, whatever their troops design do, what their castle provide, what amount of resource they need, etc. Trying to simplify that in offense/defense capability options is IMHO, a rather too simple justification.

[Odish]

@BoardGuest...

Mostly I do agree with you, since taking defence with a warlock would never match the defence of a knight.
Maybe I should have explained myself better. I first thought about it the other day when I played warlock and got defence- I wasn't sure it was a good choice. then I also wondered what to choose: knowledge which I knew I'll be in short supply of, or sp which I Knew I'll have enough, but maybe there's no such thing as enough sp when you're a warlock.

Note that by trying to emphasize/compensate strength/weakness of a faction, you should know first the machination of how that faction works, how it would play, whatever their troops design do, what their castle provide, what amount of resource they need, etc. Trying to simplify that in offense/defense capability options is IMHO, a rather too simple justification.

Here I agree completely, This was a simplified question, Just to make thing clearer and simpler. feel free to complicate things as you wish

[Wolfsburg]

All of the posts are going somehow in the same direction. "Trust in god by lock your car". That means basically, improve with great emphasis your strenghts but compensate at least one of your weaknesses.

Thats what I do when I play my dear Necropolis, take their poor attack rate and buff it up with attack skill, archery and battle frenzy, but next to it improve the skills in which we are natural with, such as dark magic.

Put all youve got in your strenghts is a kamikaze technique that works better with people that like to surprise and rush their adversaries.

But if you do the same in a larger map, or a longer game, where the adversary can manage his losses and understand your tactics, you will regret your Aquiles ligament dearly.

[Corribus]

I all the HoMM versions I've play, I have always strived for balanced Heroes. If I'm a little weak in one stat, and strong in the other, and I have a choice of which to improve, I improve the weaker one. So I guess that would be a "compensate weaknesses" strategy. I never like to give the enemy an opening, and would rather sacrifice my own strength than give the opponent an obvious weakness.

[Kilop]

i CAN TELL YOU THAT ALL GENERALISATION ARE WRONG!!!


that s a fact, and it is important to see that saying such things as "what do you prefer wiher to make you strengths stronger or your weaknesses average " is a non sense.

I ll take 2 examples:
the firt is haven, a strong might faction with some ability in magic. You are never going to give your hero the destructive school. ever.

second let s take a academy vs dungeon match, and watch dungeon s possibilities: if there is razzak or calib as the main enemy hero it is useless to emphasize destruction thus forcing you to play the might way.

As a conclusion, this is a strategy game where you have to adapt to your oponent to hope win the game, no one tactic will work forever ( well, apart from necro and dougal prior to the nerf )

hope it was clear enough
have fun, and keep on praying, maybe academy will receive worthy alternates...

[PhoenixReborn]

second let s take a academy vs dungeon match, and watch dungeon s possibilities: if there is razzak or calib as the main enemy hero it is useless to emphasize destruction thus forcing you to play the might way.

Galib can't mirror meteor shower. Destructive is very much always a viable strategy for the warlock.