building up your town. a process longer than ever?

[Arzang]

so I played hotseat vs myself (read: three AIs).

and I tried to build my haven town up to max and it struck me that it took longer than ever.

you don't start with any dwellings and not even a fort. aside from that there seems to be more buildings than before and isn't the reasource cost higher as well?

and, at least to me, it seemed like you'd have a very formidable low level force by the time you got up to level 7 units.

and the sacrificial pit in inferno is garbage. it's not so easy to use early game (would you really sacrifice your own townbought units for experience?) and late-game it's not so effective.

that's it for now.

[Gaidal Cain]

Starting without anything in your town seems to be somewhat common among nival maps. Fortunately, the Fort is much cheaper now. Still, it isn't likely that it'll be standard for usermade maps. As for more things to build- paerhaps, but only a few extra buildings per town. Certianly not enough to prolong the satge on it own. What is new is that upgraded dwellings are generally more expensive, which means that the last part of the building is going to take a while. Rushing for higher levels or capital is also no longer possible with the city levels. I haven't decided on whether this is for the better yet.

[Orfinn]

and the sacrificial pit in inferno is garbage. it's not so easy to use early game (would you really sacrifice your own townbought units for experience?) and late-game it's not so effective.

Agree its quite useless late on. For balance sake you should get experience depending on type of lvl the creature is from different towns. Lets say you get 500 exp to sacrifice 5 Assassins from the Dungeon town, 300 exp for sacrificing 5 Imps from the inferno town.Short said, the more costly the unit is thus more exp do you get. And you should get quite an amount of xp since troops is just as important, a bit hard to balance but its possible.

[Thelonious]

And you should get quite an amount of xp since troops is just as important, a bit hard to balance but its possible.

Troop that aren't your alignment aren't important. And anyway balancing experience on creature cost is quite balanced so I don't see a problem there.

[Derek]

Starting without anything in your town seems to be somewhat common among nival maps. Fortunately, the Fort is much cheaper now. Still, it isn't likely that it'll be standard for usermade maps. As for more things to build- paerhaps, but only a few extra buildings per town. Certianly not enough to prolong the satge on it own. What is new is that upgraded dwellings are generally more expensive, which means that the last part of the building is going to take a while. Rushing for higher levels or capital is also no longer possible with the city levels. I haven't decided on whether this is for the better yet.

As of right now I enjoy it. Most of the upgraded dwellings in Heroes III just seemed there just for the sake of existance. I tried getting the Chaos Caverns upgrade for my Hydras...that didn't go as planned. It makes people choose more as to what unit they want, and I like that.

Getting the capitol is now, I think, quite an accomplishment. Odds are that it's going to be late week two or even week three. By then you've likely expanded enough so that the building does not just seem like a token structure, but now it may mean something. Although now the blacksmith/marketplace are useless structures, IMO.

[Orfinn]

And you should get quite an amount of xp since troops is just as important, a bit hard to balance but its possible.

Troop that aren't your alignment aren't important. And anyway balancing experience on creature cost is quite balanced so I don't see a problem there.

Yeah you right I forgot to note that.
The balance is good but it could be just a bit better. I guess theres always something to fix.

[Arzang]

Still, it isn't likely that it'll be standard for usermade maps.

ah. the deal with usermade maps. I always seem to forget them whereas the rest of the community say they're the core of homm singleplayergaming.

What is new is that upgraded dwellings are generally more expensive, which means that the last part of the building is going to take a while. Rushing for higher levels or capital is also no longer possible with the city levels. I haven't decided on whether this is for the better yet.

yeah I noticed upgrades were expensive as hell. but my main gripe was that on the maps that are with the game so far, precious resources are very scarce. sure you start with a lot of them but getting your hands on more of them was pretty hard. especially since the marketplace seriously rips you off, capitalism-style.

the city level thing is a good thing IMO. but I'd like them to bring back a city plan which is more old school. the one they have now is highly functional, but the old one should be included for nostalgia. building without using the city plan is icky though.

Troop that aren't your alignment aren't important. And anyway balancing experience on creature cost is quite balanced so I don't see a problem there.

I agree. I mentioned the sacrificial pit randomly. it's not something that bothers me. it's kinda like the training grounds to me: I can't see how I'd use it. unless I have a ridiculous abundance of creatures/money.

it's nice to see someone sharing my thoughts on the capitol. I just thought I sucked since it took quite a while for me to get my hands on everything.

what REALLY bothers me though is that it tries to be complex and unique for each town but there seems to be many similarities when looking at the cityplan. I'd love it if it got more diverse.

@orfinn: I don't think you should get more XP. not at all but I think you should get more exp for sacrificing your own units than you get for sacrificing units of another alignment. the bigger the morale penalty is for including them in your army, the less exp you should get. my reasoning behind this is the same as thelonius. personally; I never liked using mix-alignment armies.

[Infiltrator]

I myself like the slower pace, especially the expensive building upgrades - in heroes 3 you hardly ever saw any un-upgraded units in the enemy players' ranks.

[Malicen]

As long as all towns are equally crippled to upgrade I'm cool with that. I remember upgrading Castle in H3 so I could have Angels by the end of the first week. If I remember well you needed to build MAgic Guild lv. 1, Monastery and then you could build Angel structure, I forgot how it was named back then.

[Gaidal Cain]

Mage guild, blacksmith, barracks, monastary and Portal of Glory (archer tower as well?). Certainly not an easy task, with 12 of each rare resource required.

[Symeon Star-Eyes]

I kinda like the new building scheme. Sure it'll go slower than before, but as was mentioned before - if it goes slowly for all factions, then it's ok.
It does seem as though deciding between buying more troops or a new building or upgrade will be harder than ever.

The only thing that worries me is whether all the upgraded creatures are so much better than their unupgraded counterparts that it justifies the (often) extremely high cost of upgrading dwellings.
For instance, the upgraded Rakshasa dwelling costs 10.000 gold plus resources - including the original dwelling it makes for a grand total of 16.000 gold plus resources. More than most HIV lvl 4 dwellings.

[Infiltrator]

Well, the upg. Rakshasa is easily the best all-around level 6 unit. Huge HP, No retaliation and a self - buff that sky-rockets their initiative is well worth 16000 gold + resources.

[RK]

it's no biggy imo. the pacing is fine. unlike H3 where u rush for lvl 7 dwellling at the first week to get the double pop advantage by 2nd week's start.

I appreciate their effort to slow down the pace but wondered why the heck they made efforts to quicken the combat.

[Orfinn]

it's no biggy imo. the pacing is fine. unlike H3 where u rush for lvl 7 dwellling at the first week to get the double pop advantage by 2nd week's start.

I appreciate their effort to slow down the pace but wondered why the heck they made efforts to quicken the combat.

Its called balance Quick combat + Slow building pace = medium-fast/slow gameplay depending if you build alot or battle alot.

But yeah I like the new building style And the building lvl system keeps eager 5-7 lvl rushers to slow down, a great asset!!!!!

[DaemianLucifer]

Really whats the point of speeding up battles so much,and then slowing down the building?I like it like this though.Slower is better for me in this case.

[Arzang]

slower is definitely better for me as well. and as 'Cain said; not all maps need to start with the town at scratch. if a mapmaker wants the game to proceed more quickly he could make the towns start with some key buildings. like the mage guidl, fort and such..

and if all towns have it slower then there's really nothing to complain about.

[Gaidal Cain]

Really whats the point of speeding up battles so much,and then slowing down the building?

Can't see the relation here. Even if buillding up a town takes 2 months, the time that's spent on doing that isn't much when compared to the time spent in battles.

[Thelonious]

He means that if you want games to go fast you'd have to be able to build up your town fast as well. But this is really no argument as longer time to a fully build town means longer to get 7th level units, means less units, means less time on battling...

[DaemianLucifer]

He means that if you want games to go fast you'd have to be able to build up your town fast as well. But this is really no argument as longer time to a fully build town means longer to get 7th level units, means less units, means less time on battling...

No,it just means less strong units,but well still have an abundance of low levels.