Pit lords's summoning ability - gimmicky or no? (HOMM3)

[pikeman93]

Are pit lords really worth their 700 costs? Or are you better off using Inferno's other units?

I've tried using demon summoning to the games advantage, and it seems very weak because you can only use it once per battle, and you need a large horde of pit lords to summon enough demons. With the same price, you could afford more demons. I don't know, do people commonly use demon summoning?

Otherwise inferno seems even weaker than Fortress. At least Fortress has master gorgons. Inferno has umm... just the Efreet sultans?

[Salamandre]

I had the same ignorant approach until I tried it successfully. Needles to say, it is not a tactic used in multiplayer because no time, but in single games inferno becomes a little necropolis due to pitlords. One of the most famous map out, To Kill for power, gives to the human only inferno towns, and by the end, if you plan carefully, you end with 15 000 demons, and they deal more damage than all your devils. Last week I got 12k demons on the Lone Knight, playing Xarfax.

However there are strict restrictions, the summoned number can not be higher than the dead creatures so better bring tones of low level creatures than 250 behemots for example, as you will get only 250 demons at best.
This tactic is a bit tedious, and you need town portal to use it optimal, but in the end it pays very well.

And both towns, inferno and fortress are very good, each one with its own advantages. A level 7 with no retaliation can make you jump a bunch of levels instantly, if you are lucky to fight hordes golems or walking deads.
And once you get force field...

[Tress]

For normal play they are tedious(against AI on normal maps(ones that aren't deliberately made extremely hard)) to use, and generally not very useful, however it's potential is even more frightening than necromancy, thus they are usually(along with inferno caslte) banned from tournaments, for both being op and requiring increased time to use. Exact word for demon raising ability would be "broken" rather than gimmicky. I doubt NWC i ntended demon raising as core mechanic for inferno(unlike necromancy), but in the end it's extremely effective while very unpractical to use.
Aside from that Inferno units are generally lacking - it's shooter imo is one of worst in game(personal opinion, i believe some might disagree), with efreet being first really useful unit(if not counting pit lords with their raise ability). Devil's also are extremely useful(not very powerful though, compared to angels for example) due to their no retaliation ability, that combined with wait action can decimate almost unlimited armies of non-shooting, slower than devil's units.

[Pitsu]

Me too almost never use the demon farming and not because it is weak, but because of being too much micromanagment for my taste. Devils are one of the best creeping units in the game IMO and occasionally can take extreme odds. In SP inferno really needs no additional demons. Pit Lords themselves are decent units, however, and if efreets and devils are not enough, pit lords and cerberi would be my first choices for support.

[GreatEmerald]

Huh, do you always keep the demons? Somehow I thought that they disappear after the battle. I guess that would mean that it would pay to have a suicidal squad of imps equal to the amount of pit lords you have and you can upgrade them to demons easily. But then, as you said, you need Town Portal to upgrade the demons and/or buy more imps.

[Qurqirish Dragon]

Huh, do you always keep the demons? Somehow I thought that they disappear after the battle. I guess that would mean that it would pay to have a suicidal squad of imps equal to the amount of pit lords you have and you can upgrade them to demons easily. But then, as you said, you need Town Portal to upgrade the demons and/or buy more imps.

Actually, since imps have fewer HPs than demons, you need a stack of them with HP equal to the HP of a demon * # of PLs.I think that is roughly 7 imps per PL.

[GreatEmerald]

Oh, so it checks the lowest from the number of demonised creatures, number of hitpoints those creatures have and number of pit lords doing it?

[Kristo]

I think each Pit Lord is capable of summoning a certain number of hit points. The total number of Demons summoned is capped at the number of creatures in the dead stack or the total HP of the dead stack, whichever is lower.

[Qurqirish Dragon]

OK, I dug out myu H3 quick reference card, so I can get the correct numbers:
Pit Lords have 45 HP each. Demons have 35.

A stack of PLs, when raising demons will create the lesser of:
a) the number of creatures in the raised stack
b) the number of HP/35 of creatures in the raised stack
c) the number of HP/35 of PLs doing the raising.

Thus, if you have 10 PLs (450 HP total) then you will raise:
From 100 imps (400 HP):
(a) 100 (b) 400/35 = 11.4 (c) 450/35 = 12.9
Since (b) is smallest, you raise 11 (I think it rounds down, but I cannot be certain)

From 50 gogs (650 HP):
(a) 50 (b) 650/35 = 18.6 (c) 450/35 = 12.9
since (c) is smallest, you raise 12

From 10 efreeti (900 HP):
(a) 10 (b) 900/35 = 25.7 (c) 450/35 = 12.9
Since (a) is smallest, you raise 10

Basically, if the creatures individually have more than 35 HP, the number of creatures or number of PLs determine the quantity raised. If they individually have fewer than 35 HP, then the total HP of the stack determine the number raised.

Note that if you have stacks of demons and PLs in a 9:7 ratio, then the PLs can raise the entire stack of demons from their own corpses!

[BoardGuest808888]

Demon raising is also good if you got several different towns and want to save creature slots in your army (this usually means very large or very long map though). By sacrificing everything and raising them as demons, you got a whole mass of them for otherwise not usable troops.

Otherwise, it be a long and tedious work to do.