General LotA thread-Thoughts and opinions thus far.

[Marzhin]

Then to my surprise the demons showed up 2 weeks earlier(i thought itd take 2 months????).

Well actually the objective is supposed to mean "you must resist Lysander during two months", the arrival of the demons is an "unexpected" turn of events, so it kinda negates the previous objectives.

I'm not sure this sentence makes much sense... ^^'

Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the maps

[Akul]

Completed 5/6 maps. The 3rd map was fairly easy, IMO. Emilia beat the crap out of Lysander every time

[loran16]

Mission V.

The first part of this mission is easy. Of course, im impatient as hell, and despite knowin how powerful the dragons are and whatnot, i decide to attack them fairly early, and defeat them.....only to have purple come with an army way more powerful than me.

I knew purple was there, but with the restrictred starting town, i assumed it would be a lot weaker. Even with multiple frenzys i dont have enough power to take it down.

Personally, the first town being limited seems silly. Just means you've got to spend a lot of extra time on the map building up forces....an effect i dont really get the point of.

[loran16]

Mission V complete. As i said before, now that i knew the purple force was that large, i simply built up the haven castle, and annhilated everything easily. This time however, i got Maluster up to level 26, and more importantly, i achieved all the requirements for Urgath's call.

I am guarenteed to achieve the ultimate upon my next level up in mission VI.

On campaign structure as a whole, while i haven't gone through mission 6 yet , seems rather weird.

Mission I and II were fairly simple. Both of them were solved by quick rushing the purple player, and then building up as necessary. Mission 3 was harder for sure, and required strategy. There was plenty of opportunity to mess up and make strategic plays.

Then Missions 4 and 5 seem to be mostly lacking in that department. The storyline is terrific, but it seems a progression in difficulty would be nice here.

BTW, are we oing to have new heroes in book 2, or will maluster and the others return? Because if maluster returns, he's going to be more or less a super hero for me, and impossible to beat.

[Akul]

Looking at desctiptions of the books, we will have new heroes.

As for the Purple Forces, in my cause Ebora slaughtered theme before I could get my hands on theme

[loran16]

Marzhin, question....how is it that ebora (and a previous inferno hero rescued from a prison) have ignite? And why'd you give them that?

Did you adjust the skill circle?

[Marzhin]

Marzhin, question....how is it that ebora (and a previous inferno hero rescued from a prison) have ignite? And why'd you give them that?

Did you adjust the skill circle?

Absolutely not, when choosing her skills in the editor Ignite was there and it just seemed... fitting somehow (And she did pass some times learning the secrets of the dwarves, after all )

At least Malustar, Ebora, Solmyr and Gauldoth will show up again in the next books, (mainly books 3 and 4). Some of them will take center stage, others will be antagonists. I won't say anything more

Thanks for your input by the way, you put your finger on many things that may need a few changes. When Book 2 is released it will include an improved version of Book 1.

[Elvin]

In the meantime I did not continue. Will the missions I won be unlocked or will I have to play them again if I try the new version?

[Marzhin]

In the meantime I did not continue. Will the missions I won be unlocked or will I have to play them again if I try the new version?

Normally the campaign progress is still saved in your profile (that's another reason to play LotA with a different profile, as I said in the readme). On my computer when I added the second book the maps of the first were still unlocked.

[loran16]

So, about 3 weeks into (maybe 4) the mission.

Both starting areas were explored. Ebora's fire elementals are rediculous (Her stats are nuts, skills are meh), and makes her a good castle defender imo...

I just got urgath's call, taking malluster via boat to the sylvanas ancient by the tan border master's tent. If you've ever had the call before, you'd know how rediculous it is. As it is maluster's forces which are only 2 weeks old are really really powerful.

Yellow is going after maluster's starting town, and may get it, but maluster will be there in 2 days, and yellow certainly can't hold it against the urgath's call enhanced hero. Seriously, castle sieges shouldnt be tough at all.

(Oh, and the path to the ultimate got me expert luck and swarming gate (and deadman's curse isnt bad either), expert logistics and teleport assault, expert dark and mass slow/confusion. ,and of course expert attack and mass haste from power of speed. Pretty good skillset for an inferno hero regardless. Now what 5th skill should i get....)

Glad to be of help marzhin. I like the campaign, as it's really brought me back to H5 again. I actually never noticed certain patch changes since i stopped playing for a bit after i finished Hof, such as the power of speed granting Mass Haste (A H-yuge bonus)

[loran16]

Well, so far so good. Yellow's forces are decent, with a very interesting creature base.

Still, The pirate creature base makes them unsynergetic really, and their heroes are REALLY REALLY Underpowered.

Now mind you, even a level 20 hero at this point would be child's play, due to Malluster's Urgath's call. All the weaknesses of the inferno lack of range and firepower in castle siege's all of a sudden are negated. Only water elementals can irritate me by taking down decent quanitties of creatures at this point, and in the 3 sieges of the yellow castles, i managed to gate in forces in such appealing places so as to make the elementals ring of ice my summoned troops rather than my real ones.

So eliminating the pirates (yellow) was easy as pie. Now just time to find the damn staff.

[loran16]

Campaign Finished!

Final thoughts.

On the last mission. There were 2 cartographers i found. 1 of which i couldnt seem to use. THe other one i could indeed use, and once i used it, it became obvious where to go. I had gotten the red tent already, and as thus that made it easy as pie.

The final battle against water elementals and the like wasnt that bad as were the rest of the battles. It wasnt really that difficult, especially with malluster having urgath's call.

On the campaign itself.

Storyline was effective, but sadly , the campaign wasn't structured particularly well. The standard formula is usually a medium to easy start, then levels that either build in difficulty or dont decrease as such. Most of the time, in order to accomplish this, you have scaling enemies, who grow stronger as the missions go on as your hero grows stronger. This worked well in mission 3, where the 2 enemy heroes were certainly of decent builds and levels, while their forces weren't small either.

But mission 4 was hardly an issue. Mission 5 did have a boss with a large army, but not that large, and once you failed the mission once, all it took was to wait inorder to build up to beat him.

And mission 6, the boss was nonexistant. I'd have prefered that a pirate hero (a pirate lord or king?) had found the artifact first. You know, you finally find the chamber where the staff is, kill the water elementals guarding it.......and a pirate hero of large level comes up to fight you.

Or you could've put the last mission on a timer (till pirate reinforcements metnioned that you cannot handle come), and you have to win by say the end of the 2nd month.

Personally id like it if both of these were combined. it would be like the last HoF mission but with it being more interesting than just a bunch of heroes buildin up to take the dwarf before the 2 months are up (in that you're searching for something you don't know where it is).


These are just my thoughts. THe story is terrific, but while the campaign was certainly epic, it wasnt too difficult. Granted it might be a lil harder on heroic, but i cant imagine by much except for maybe mission III.

(Though having malluster at level 27 with the ultimate urgath's call to start Mission 6 was awesome and might have biassed my view of that mission.)

[Akul]

Completed the campaign.

Mission 1: Good start, but I would have prefered a bit more texts.

Mission 2: Again, more text would be better. And I found the story here a bit boring. Malustar just comes and crushes his enemies, without any complications. With Gauldoth controlling the armies (even if from far), you would except some dirty trick from him.

Mission 3: Harder then the first 2 and more interesting. The suprising demon attack was a godo idea, IMO. The story was good until I found out that Gavin Magnus wasn't killed. I find it difficult to believe that Emilia didn't stab him with the sword. In fact, the whole point of H4 story dissapears with this since the Sword of Gods is un-used.
If Gavin alredy needed to return, he could have returned in a magical/SF way.

Mission 4: While the boss battle was great, the irritating portals destroyed the fun factor. I never met greater pain then waiting 10min for AI to end his turn of irritating me with portals.
The another thing I here is the fact that in story Solmyr walks alone while in game he has a huge army. This destoys the connection betewen game and story in a way.

Mission 5: Not Malustar again... the guy's shallow personality is anoying me. The map was too easy as well. The best thing about this map was the fact that there was much story in it.

Mission 6: Everything with Malustar is boring since he makes the game too easy. Ebora doesn't help either. The battles are over-easy and starting heroes over-powerful. I agree with Loran16 here, a deadline would have been a good thing. Or arrival of pirate reinforcement fleets every here and then. First fleet appears three weeks after the beggining of the map, a greater fleet three weeks later, even greater three weeks later... would have been good as well.


Overall: The story in global is good, but it fails some details. Malustar is a shallow character. He lives only to conquer the world and that is so cliche and boring. There are also no suprising betrayals, no interesting twists, no new memorable characters, Armageddon's Blade doesn't seem to be used well enough and some political part of story would have been nice in Map 3.

Sorry if I sounded rough, but I would lie if I told that I didn't except more from the story. Still, this is just the beggining so I hope that I won't be so dissapointed in future books.

Be it as it may, I enjojed playing the campaign and entusiasticaly wait for more

[loran16]

Completed the campaign.

Mission 1: Good start, but I would have prefered a bit more texts.

Mission 2: Again, more text would be better. And I found the story here a bit boring. Malustar just comes and crushes his enemies, without any complications. With Gauldoth controlling the armies (even if from far), you would except some dirty trick from him.

Mission 3: Harder then the first 2 and more interesting. The suprising demon attack was a godo idea, IMO. The story was good until I found out that Gavin Magnus wasn't killed. I find it difficult to believe that Emilia didn't stab him with the sword. In fact, the whole point of H4 story dissapears with this since the Sword of Gods is un-used.
If Gavin alredy needed to return, he could have returned in a magical/SF way.

Mission 4: While the boss battle was great, the irritating portals destroyed the fun factor. I never met greater pain then waiting 10min for AI to end his turn of irritating me with portals.
The another thing I here is the fact that in story Solmyr walks alone while in game he has a huge army. This destoys the connection betewen game and story in a way.

Mission 5: Not Malustar again... the guy's shallow personality is anoying me. The map was too easy as well. The best thing about this map was the fact that there was much story in it.

Mission 6: Everything with Malustar is boring since he makes the game too easy. Ebora doesn't help either. The battles are over-easy and starting heroes over-powerful. I agree with Loran16 here, a deadline would have been a good thing. Or arrival of pirate reinforcement fleets every here and then. First fleet appears three weeks after the beggining of the map, a greater fleet three weeks later, even greater three weeks later... would have been good as well.


Overall: The story in global is good, but it fails some details. Malustar is a shallow character. He lives only to conquer the world and that is so cliche and boring. There are also no suprising betrayals, no interesting twists, no new memorable characters, Armageddon's Blade doesn't seem to be used well enough and some political part of story would have been nice in Map 3.

Sorry if I sounded rough, but I would lie if I told that I didn't except more from the story. Still, this is just the beggining so I hope that I won't be so dissapointed in future books.

Be it as it may, I enjojed playing the campaign and entusiasticaly wait for more

Agreed on Maluster. personally, i wouldn't mind him growing mad due to the power of armageddon's blade. Still, i think it's nice that instead of the foolish town hero being manipulated by others, it seems maluster plays that role a bit (manipulated into attacking the wizards foolishly, and i get the feeling he's being manipulated by ebora to some end).

Speaking of the blade, it was more or less always not used by me. The -2 morale penalty is Huge and was not worth the +2 Attack and spellpower.

I don't mind solmyr with an army/whatnot, a lot of heroes campaigns ignore that point in their storylines....you could mention i guess that solmyr leaves his soldiers outside when he goes into each adventure house. And yeah, the portals in mission 4 are godawful. Just get rid of them please, itll slow down the computer but will save us headaches.

[Akul]

I forgot to comment on the Pirate Faction:

I found the Pirate creature line completely weird and without any connection to the pirate faction from H4 or betwen the creatures themeselves. Not to mention that the faction itself doesn't feel vicious. In fact, it feels too chivalrous.
Should you use the Pirate faction again, here is my opinion of how it should look like:

Tier 1: Scout - like the one from Dungeon
Tier 1U: Bandit - retextured scout; orange or red color; double strike; poison attack
(the elven ears could be removed in order to make the unit look human)

Tier 2: Archer - like the one from Haven
Tier 2U: Crosbowman - the renegade unit; collor fits and the mask is a nice detail as well

Tier 3: Minotaur - like the one from Dungeon
Tier 3U: Minotair Guard - like the one from Dungeon; red or orange collor retexture

Tier 4: Griffin - like the one from Haven
Tier 4U: Battle Griffin - the renegade one

Tier 5: Hydra - like the from Dungeon
Tier 5U: Chaos Hydra - orange/red Hydra model; different abilities

Tier 6: Effret - recolored Genie
Tier 6U: Effret Sultan

Tier 7: Shadow Dragon - like the one from Dungeon
Tier 7U: Black Dragon - like the one from Dungeon

Most of thiese units served Tawnsi in past and the fighting against theme would mean more to those who played H4. Since renegades are overpowered and some of new units could be made strong, 6th map would be a bit more challenging with is a +!
And all thiese units are evil as it fits the evilest main hero from H4.

This is just IMO.

[loran16]

I forgot to comment on the Pirate Faction:

I found the Pirate creature line completely weird and without any connection to the pirate faction from H4 or betwen the creatures themeselves. Not to mention that the faction itself doesn't feel vicious. In fact, it feels too chivalrous.
Should you use the Pirate faction again, here is my opinion of how it should look like:

Tier 1: Scout - like the one from Dungeon
Tier 1U: Bandit - retextured scout; orange or red color; double strike; poison attack
(the elven ears could be removed in order to make the unit look human)

Tier 2: Archer - like the one from Haven
Tier 2U: Crosbowman - the renegade unit; collor fits and the mask is a nice detail as well

Tier 3: Minotaur - like the one from Dungeon
Tier 3U: Minotair Guard - like the one from Dungeon; red or orange collor retexture

Tier 4: Griffin - like the one from Haven
Tier 4U: Battle Griffin - the renegade one

Tier 5: Hydra - like the from Dungeon
Tier 5U: Chaos Hydra - orange/red Hydra model; different abilities

Tier 6: Effret - recolored Genie
Tier 6U: Effret Sultan

Tier 7: Shadow Dragon - like the one from Dungeon
Tier 7U: Black Dragon - like the one from Dungeon

Most of thiese units served Tawnsi in past and the fighting against theme would mean more to those who played H4. Since renegades are overpowered and some of new units could be made strong, 6th map would be a bit more challenging with is a +!
And all thiese units are evil as it fits the evilest main hero from H4.

This is just IMO.

Personally, i disagree. I like the pirate forces being made up of random creatures (rogues) from other factions, as well as water elementals. But i'd have given the pirates increased growth rates of their forces, and have their heroes not only be more around level 20, but with specialties fitting pirate units. Heck, if possible, a pirate hero with zehir's specialty, but only summoning water elemtnals, would be perfect.

But that's just me.

[Akul]

Yes, mixed creatures can be nice, but Tawnsi never used those creatures and neither did any of pirates in H4. I woudn't have problems if at least two creatures found the way here. But there is no bandir, no orc, no minotaur, no medusa, no effret, no nightmare, no hydra and no dragon. And certanly no pirates. This way, it looks like Queen Tawnsi totally changed her population by slaughtering old refugees and ordering new ones.

I just posted the line that looked most like a descendant from H4 Asylum as an advice in order to make the maps more realistic and lore-correct.

[Marzhin]

Yes, mixed creatures can be nice, but Tawnsi never used those creatures and neither did any of pirates in H4. I woudn't have problems if at least two creatures found the way here. But there is no bandir, no orc, no minotaur, no medusa, no effret, no nightmare, no hydra and no dragon. And certanly no pirates. This way, it looks like Queen Tawnsi totally changed her population by slaughtering old refugees and ordering new ones.

I just posted the line that looked most like a descendant from H4 Asylum as an advice in order to make the maps more realistic and lore-correct.

I didn't wanted the pirate town to be Dungeon-bis, but to feel piratey (the blade dancers and dwarf brawlers for instance were born to be pirates ) The Asylum faction from H4 had nothing pirate in it, only a few neutrals aligned with this faction did. It was like "hey, for a change let's do a pirate campaign ! OK, what faction is left ? Asylum ? OK let's go."

Anyway, my point wasn't to redo H4. It was to continue the story with what H5 has to offer. And by the way, I can't add new creatures (Efreet for instance) at will you know... I'm not saying this isn't possible, just that I can't.

Edit : I already corrected a few things for the 1.1 version. The changelog can be seen here : viewtopic.php?p=177866#177866

[Akul]

To tell you the thruth, I don't feel that this faction looks like a pirate one either. And the fact that there are just goodies and neutrals doesn't help in pirate feeling since pirates are meant to be vicious.
Just my opinion

[loran16]

Just a question, are the witch huts random in the scenarios?

In my play through on heroic, ive gotten dark, expert dark, and attack from them.

Which is quite nice (On pace for level 24 ultimate).

Also, one hut gave me the same thing as it did in my normal run-through. Are these nonrandom?