How do you beat acadamy

[wtfnamestaken]

Hey

Me and my friend both have TOTE and have played HOMM since the 2nd (except for 4) and while i have always played all the races he has stuck with the wizards (now acadamy) In this one (number 5) i havent won a game yet, his basic stragegy is a pretty simple one (self explanatory having 3 ranged units 1 @ T7). He gets the hero talents like archery and no matter what race i pick i always lose the big battle.

If i sit back i get slaughtered by his MASSIVE ranged damage and if i try to get in there fast to quell the ranged when i get there i get slaughtered anyway because not all my units are that fast.
Anything i use to try and tie up those titans gets mega hurt by there no melee pen and if they survive theres plenty of other units there to make sure they dont last the round

I`ve tried Necros with there great summoning and raise dead but Necro units are so much weaker than acadamy and with acadamy having good ranged so early on its very rare for him to loose anything while creeping so my stacks are only slightly higher. Then theres the dungeon army and even with the massive spell power it isnt enough to even out as the only decent ranged unit they have is extremely fragile for a T6 unit and low in numbers

Anyone know how to counter them?

[Wolfsburg]

Hi bud! Welcome to the RT.

Could you be a bit more specific about your opponent? For instance, what heroe(s) does he usually choose within academy? What are his regular skill picks? What kind of magic school does he tend to master?

About the maps you play: do you guys usually play on large maps? Abundant in resources? High difficulty? Plenty of artifacts?

If you can inform us a bit more precisely we could give you some more acurate info on the specific strategies.

W.

[wtfnamestaken]

Ok

His main hero is Havez because he starts with lots of gremlins. He always improves his war machines and gets attack and archery whenever he can and the flaming arrows upgrade for the ballista.

He also gets logistics for march of the golems and teleport assualt and gets the light school to make his light spells mass.

After that its a toss up between leadership, luck and summoning whichever comes up first but the game is normally over by this time.

Difficulty is always high and the maps are the randomly generated ones and the resources and xp are set on the middle setting, creeps are the one higher

8 player map and we tend to put a comp between us otherwise we always go straight for each other

Is there anything else i could possibly tell you in order to help?

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Ok

His main hero is Havez because he starts with lots of gremlins. He always improves his war machines and gets attack and archery whenever he can and the flaming arrows upgrade for the ballista.

He also gets logistics for march of the golems and teleport assualt and gets the light school to make his light spells mass.

After that its a toss up between leadership, luck and summoning whichever comes up first but the game is normally over by this time.

Difficulty is always high and the maps are the randomly generated ones and the resources and xp are set on the middle setting, creeps are the one higher

8 player map and we tend to put a comp between us otherwise we always go straight for each other

Is there anything else i could possibly tell you in order to help?

A wizard's chance of learning attack/leadership/logistics is only 2% so he'll have a hard time developing that way every time.

Concentrate on learning one faction well at first. What faction do you like the most? Strategy will vary somewhat dependant on what faction you play.

Are you being aggresive in attacking neutral stacks and using a squire to flag mines and pick up treasures and such?

[Wolfsburg]

Ok, here we go,

I kinda expected that answer. Havez is one of the classical early creeping choices from academy. And in resource rich maps, academy WILL have plenty of mini-artifacts which will make their units even scarier. Even for experienced players, it is no easy task playing against academy, so dont expect a walk in the park.

If you guys don't ban any spells, and his favourite go is light magic, then divine vengeance will further impair the odds for you to wining the final battle (reason why its banned in most PvP games, by mutual agreement). If you dont have a formal decision on it, I would advice you guys to do so. By the way, please let me know if you guys ban any specific heroes as well, ok?

Enough said, here it goes my first suggestion.
In case you are playing with other computer players and plenty resources, Necros can be a good call. If you take AI's castles and bring their troops to your Forlorn Hall, they will be turned into undead troops, increasing enourmously the size of your ranks.

Secondly, a well developed dark caster can cause enough fuss by means of using their own troops against each other (just be aware of Havez turn on the initiative bar, because expert light casters can dispell your curses easy as cake), and he will most surely do so. Characters with high initiative and high offense are the perfect target for spells such as Frenzy and Puppet master (Djinns are ideal). You should also acknowledge, aid tents remove up lvl 3 curses, so dont go wasting mass confusion if his tent is about to act. Because the titans will be ready to shoot again in a second.

Raise dead is normaly the last step of the fight, normally to buy you time. Dont count too much on it in the early stage of the fight.

In case you get it, Vampirism can be deadly. Choose a strong stack of wraiths or dragons (the next one thats having a go)and cast it on them. They can get insanely enduring and hard to kill.

If he chooses summoning as support magic, and summons a phoenix, remember it can be puppeted as well, and the wraiths (independent of their number) love to kill phoenixes with Death touch. Put your own phoenix into battle if you have one. Thats a nice choice of spell in early combat. Necros have a good spell power and can make some quite scary birds in late game.

Last, artifacts also have to be well chosen. Initiative boosting equip (specially Staff of the netherworld) can reduce a bit the advantage of the mini artifacts.

Please let me know if you have any questions or ideas, I'll be glad to answer if those are within my reach.

[wtfnamestaken]

I`ve played a lot of dungeon and necs

with the dungeon i take sinitar even tho his ability no longer benefits him at level 15 (i think) having spells that do lots of dmg vs anything is very useful considering mana isnt plentiful altho after lvl 8 or so mana vs creeps isnt a problem.
I get blood furies as fast as possible because there high dmg, awesome int and have amazing speed so there ideal for fight no ranged creeps without taking losses.
For ranged units i use the stalkers and do as much dmg and kill off as many stack as possible b4 the invis wheres off
If its slow then its dead easy but when i have to kill off something like nightmares to get a crystal mine because they can get across so fast i normally lose 2 weeks of troops if they attack stalkers, i keep the blood furies out of the fight as they die so easy

I used to play undead but i always lost the final fight, i`d get slaughtered at ranged and the units are too weak and slow to fight there respective tier units not that i sent my t6 at there t6 and my t7 vs there t7 but you see what i mean. I tired a range of heroes, zoltan to try and quell his buffs on units (his units beat mine unbuffed anyway) i then tried naadir for his starting talants and free ghosts and that was the closest i ever come to beating him because he kept missing them

[wtfnamestaken]

No we dont ban any Heroes or spells

would you say that Naadir is a good choice and having Dark, Summoning, Logistics (a must because being disadvantaged in hero movement is crucial), enlightment to have even more spell power and take intel and would you bother with swift mind?

[Wolfsburg]

Normally Naadir is my favourite for medium and large maps. Not only for its starting skills but also because much of the battle is about unit placing, and if you can position your ghosts well, you can prevent large units from coming close to the shooters, or use them to prevent ranged units from shooting. So, ideal for creeping as well for dueling.

I, and thats very personal, dont always take logistics with necro, and even when I do, its not because of Swift mind. I tend to think that casting high level Dark spells is better after the opponent hero had its turn, for it will be active for considerably longer till he can cleanse it. And besides, you have to sacrifice some hard earned skill points to get Swift Mind, which I consider of more use when spent somewhere else.

By the way, never underestimate the value of fire trap for early creeping, with expert summon, as spell power goes up you can put some insane large walkers down. I remember once I was tossing out 480 A mine with Naadir. There is nothing sweeter then watching that large group of cyclops walking right into it.

The skills I never take with necro are war machines (for it benefits from Knowledge and Attack, two weak spots of necromancers) and destructive, because although necros have lovely spell power, destructive spells by themselves will rarely be meaninful in late game (unless when wilded by warlocks and their deranged buffs).

Dark and summoning are almost permanent choices to me.

[Wolfsburg]

The dirty way to win if you guys don't ban any heroes is learning to play Sylvan's Wyngaal.

With decent luck, attack and enough arcane archers and dragons they will make your opponent understand why this small elf ranger was banned from almost all official tournaments...

Now THAT is unfair advantage.


First I recommend trying the friendly way.

W.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

As necro I assume you are developing necromancy immediately and grabbing eternal servitude and mark of necromancer? Dark, summoning, enlightenment, sorcery and logistics/defense. Summoning will help your raise dead and elemental balance will give a free phoenix if your opponent summons one.

I also assume you get skeleton archers pronto and that you make good use of your dark energy when deciding whether or not to raise a stack after battle (skellies, vamps, wights prefered.) Make sure your other necromancers visit any Dolmen of Knowledge to increase your dark energy pool. If you get mentor from enlightenment obviouly put it to use on those secondary heroes as soon as possible to boost your dark energy pool.

Yeah, Zoltan could prove very annoying to your Academy buddy. Lucritia could make those vamps terrifying though. Naddir starts with both summoning and dark and the special can help early the special lacks zing later. Starting with summoning helps your raise dead and if you get fire trap in your guild you'll be sitting pretty against walkers.

[wtfnamestaken]

Well the "big fight" took place at his walls because he got attacked 6 or 7 times by bigger armies so he only had 4 weeks worths of troops where i hadnt lost anything throughout the whole game due to necromancy but i found that i had massive problems for wood and ore early on because the top tier unit structures required so much.

But in the fight i was lucky enough to have expert summoning, dark, enlightement and sorcery and altho he had his light magic he didnt have clense which meant i could puppet master, slow and with vamporism my useless dragons could actually stand up to his titans so it seems that this build would actually beat him anyway as my hero got more than twice as many goes as his guy, distraction meant -15% for him, expert sorc meant 30% more for me and my dark spells only used half my turn

Thnx for suggesting necros as i had given up on them

[Wolfsburg]

Im glad to hear strategy worked! I hope the game was fun to everyone.

In case you have further PvP strategy questions feel free to ask them, per PM or simply by creating a new thread.

If I for some reason do not know the answer, we have other members in the RT who are actually much more experienced then myself in multiplaying, such as Elvin and Phoenixreborn, among others, who happen to be commited and helpful members too.

So, time to try out a new faction against your friend then?

Good games for ya!

[fiur]

well there are good Academy players and REAL good Academy players

first of all I got close to 120 multiplayer games by now as Necro on toh...

and yes you can for sure beat Academy with'em......
here is a few tip:
Skills/perks:
Dark Magic/Master of Mind,Master of Curses,Master of Pain
Summoning magic/Master of Earthblood,Fog og veil,Master of Conjuration
Logistics/Scouting,Swift Mind(you need Arcane Intuition from Enlightenment for that one... but I bet you take that skill too...
Defence!!/Evasion,Last Stand,Vitality

Okay with that setup I'm pretty sure You gonna survive longer against Range attack (Evasion/fog of veil help you alot...)
what spell... well... Mass confusion/supported by swift mind.... is really nice, and with some luck with the ATB bar you might find that mass slow also helps you....
and for sure mass suffering/weakness do the trick...
but as an first spell... mass confusion
for you Arcane Armour/Vampirism is real good... but be warned... if he has Magic Mirror Wampirism could hit his army also...
my army is usually like:
Skellie Warrior
Rot Zombie
Spectre
Vampire Prins
Arch Lich
Wraight
(depends on map but I rarely use dragons.....)