Final Consensus: Was Heroes V a step in the right direction?

The new Heroes games produced by Ubisoft. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.

Was Heroes V a step in the right direction?

Yes
46
64%
No, It was a step backwards from the NWC era
26
36%
 
Total votes: 72

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ThunderTitan
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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 23 Mar 2010, 09:41

lumpoor wrote:Well, that's the point of initiative. Some are tanks, and some are fast ones.

The thing with ini is that unlike attack/def, it won't protect you at all against retaliations, so even if you COULD attack more often, you will often find that your army would just be decimaed after the first attack, so all the other attacks aren't that great.

So just because you attack twice as much doesn't mean you deal twice the damage. That's the con of initiative, retaliations.
Yeah, it's such a total con, being able to do damage first and ensuring that the other stack doesn't do full damage to your stack because you killed half of it.

Even so, i'd prefer that speeds where closer to eachother, so that the difference between unit's survivability isn't as great just to make up for getting half the turns as others...
I remember when doing the necro campaign in TOE with Arantir, and he was an amazing hero. Both I and the enemy had big armies, with his a bit bigger. I saved before starting the fight, and fought him over and over, bt always lost.
Either his army was way bigger or someone needs to learn to play the game better.

Plus, sounds more like the unlimited retaliation was what got you, not it being so slow... actually the Golems being so slow is what allowed you to get that far.


Tip: Slow Golems + Hero's Normal attack + running around with your creatures = WIN! Just learn how to move so the golems won't reach you (take some trial and error).
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Unread postby Tress » 23 Mar 2010, 10:49

Quite hard to put answer in those 2 choices.
Comparing to homm4 I think HOMMV made right choices by stepping back from heroes on battlefield and numerous other wrong choices made in mm4, even more in addition to poor quality of last NWC homm altogether.
While comparing to Homm 3 i believe that ubi/nival made too much mistakes to consider fifth installment better than third. Whats worse Nival is really strange/unique dev company, they are talented, they have good artists, coders, good ideas, but they NEVER learn from their mistakes, and always manage to screw their games to make sure they arn't perfect and cant be enjoyed to their full potential. In addition to overall unnecessary "heaviness" of the game i consider it to be step back from third, but step forward from fourth.

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 23 Mar 2010, 15:21

While H4's implementation was pretty weak now i find the heroes just staying back and just dealing damage/casting spells kinda boring.
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Unread postby TheUndeadKing » 23 Mar 2010, 16:06

Agreed. Even if H4's implementation was weak, I believe it was a brave step in the right direction. :proud:
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Unread postby lumpoor » 23 Mar 2010, 16:32

Golems can't be slowed...

Well, even without unlimited retaliation stil think I would've had a hard time.

Yes, his army was alot bigger. Any normal gamer who has played any game for a significant amount of time isn't alot worse than others. You're suggesting that I'd be handicapped or just retarded in some way, if I couldn't defeat an army with many tries that anyone else would defeat in their first try.

And as I said, I was fighting academy. Hit-and-run would suck for me, since his hero with his academy mana would just blast my creatures. I've used that strategy alot, but it didn't work in that situation.

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Unread postby Tress » 23 Mar 2010, 17:06

On the countrary I find that heroes in HoMM 5 can really turn tide of battle due to their abilities. Sometimes I even wish that there would be option to sweep such dangerous figure from the board as hero like it was possible in HOMM4. Also their extensive skill wheels make each hero clase truly unique,(cant say balanced) and makes configuring hero quite interesting. in my view.

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 23 Mar 2010, 17:17

Well you can use spells to counter his magic... (Raise Dead, Magic Immunity etc.)

Golems can't be slowed...
I meant that Golems are slow...
Any normal gamer who has played any game for a significant amount of time isn't alot worse than others.
Right...
You're suggesting that I'd be handicapped or just retarded in some way, if I couldn't defeat an army with many tries that anyone else would defeat in their first try.
Looks to me like you're the one suggesting stuff now...


@tress

Who said they can't?!
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Unread postby vicheron » 23 Mar 2010, 20:47

lumpoor wrote:well, that's hard to pull off in a final battle.

For creeping, there are pros and cons to tanks and fast ones. Fast ones die, that's the thing. Creeping is about minimal losses. Tanks usually soak retals, so the fast ones can attack. I've never actually tried making dumy stacks, but that's probably because I aim for 0 losses when creeping, not 1.

I remember when doing the necro campaign in TOE with Arantir, and he was an amazing hero. Both I and the enemy had big armies, with his a bit bigger. I saved before starting the fight, and fought him over and over, bt always lost.

During the fighting I always prioritized attacking the golems last, since the archlich had some great death-cloud opportunities, and the skeleton archers wanted to focus on immediate threats.

But as soon as the golems got an attack in, I'd load and restart the fight, since I lost so incredibly much to basically something which shouldn't be a threat, meaning the lost ones went to waste completely.

The hero wasn't razzak by the way

After I fought many times and always lost I noticed a pattern. Constantly I killed off all of his non-golem units, and left him with only his golems left, almost completely healthy. My archers were usually dead or few by now. And I noticed I had no way of killing them. I couldn't attack him, because of his unlimited retaliation. The trade-off would be very bad for my part. Maybe kill 20 of his 500 golems and lose 5 spectrals at the retal.

I couldn't mind control him, which I would've done with any other brutal unlimited retal unit. I couldn't use destruction magic, due to his magic-proof. All I could do was use ranged attacks, which I didn't have left, vampires, which were usually dead by that time, and didn't like attack golems, since they couldn't leech rom, so eve early on I never attacked golems with them and Arantir's normal attacks.

The golems were lumbering toward me and I couldn't do anything to stop them.

So yeah, low initiative guys can be quite fierce too. I did win after many tries though, by saving my vamps for later, and basically through trial and error.
You know, you actually proved my point. As I said before, tanks are meant to protect weaker creatures by soaking up damage. Well, you were able to kill all the creatures that the Golems were supposed to protect, which means that the Golems didn't do a very a good job of being tanks.

You pretty much showed that the Golem's low initiative was a huge weakness since you were able to kill off the rest of the enemy army without much interference from the Golems. You only had a problem with the Golems because there were so damn many of them that you couldn't take them all down. But too many of any kind of creature can cause that kind of a problem. In fact, too many high initiative creatures is a much bigger problem since you can't just ignore them to kill off the enemy's other creatures.

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Unread postby Banedon » 24 Mar 2010, 06:47

I don't agree. Suppose Golems had double the speed and double the initiative. Would you still use them to "protect weaker creatures by soaking up damage"? I doubt it. Maybe in the final battle, but that's more a case of Golems being level 3 units and so weak in comparison with other stacks.

Nothing has changed from H3/H4/H5 etc by the way. In H3 you can absolutely ignore the Dwarves and Dendroids and go for the Elves - unless the Elves are in a corner and the Dwarves / Dendroids physically obstructing them. Same applies to H5. You can ignore Zombies and go for Skeleton Archers, unless the Skeleton Archers are in a corner and the Zombies split in 3 stacks, physically obstructing them. Slow units have always been weak, so nothing's changed there as well.

I can't answer the thread by the way; there're things H5 did better and things it did worse. More a step in neither direction.
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Unread postby jeff » 24 Mar 2010, 22:50

tress wrote: Comparing to homm4 I think HOMMV made right choices by stepping back from heroes on battlefield.


And that is what has permanently divided the Heroes fan base almost in half. I assume you have been around the forum awhile and that point has been debated ad nauseum and I will not restart here. However, I thought it was a good decision that needed more time to balance the game play. Besides the editor, UBI’s retreat on that was one of my biggest disappointments with the game, and one reason it was a step backwards. :D
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Unread postby vicheron » 25 Mar 2010, 05:53

Banedon wrote:I don't agree. Suppose Golems had double the speed and double the initiative. Would you still use them to "protect weaker creatures by soaking up damage"? I doubt it. Maybe in the final battle, but that's more a case of Golems being level 3 units and so weak in comparison with other stacks.

Nothing has changed from H3/H4/H5 etc by the way. In H3 you can absolutely ignore the Dwarves and Dendroids and go for the Elves - unless the Elves are in a corner and the Dwarves / Dendroids physically obstructing them. Same applies to H5. You can ignore Zombies and go for Skeleton Archers, unless the Skeleton Archers are in a corner and the Zombies split in 3 stacks, physically obstructing them. Slow units have always been weak, so nothing's changed there as well.

I can't answer the thread by the way; there're things H5 did better and things it did worse. More a step in neither direction.
Except that there were a lot of things from previous games that made slower creatures more useful and decreased the power of fast creatures. The size and shape of the battle field was one thing. In previous games, you could actually use a stack of tough creatures to block off shooters by putting them in the corner of the map. In Heroes 5, you would need 3 separate stacks of small creatures to block off a small creatures and it's pretty much impossible to block off large shooters.

The battlefield was much bigger in previous Heroes games, except the first one. In Heroes 3 and 4, there were very few creatures that could cross the battlefield in just one turn. There are a lot more of those creatures in Heroes 5.

The spell system also worked in favor of slow creatures in Heroes 1 through 3. There was the prevalence of the slow and haste spells in Heroes 2 and 3. Everyone can learn those spells and use them effectively. Haste made even the slowest creatures able to move at a reasonable speed and slow. Also, since heroes didn't have their own initiative and could cast spells anytime you wanted, you could cast haste or teleport during the slow creature's turn. You could haste a stack of Crusaders and they'll be able to immediately attack those Harpies that have been harassing your Archers. You could teleport a stack of Hydras right into the middle of the enemy army and have those Hydras attack immediately after they've been teleported. In Heroes 5, you couldn't do that. Even if you teleported a slow creature next to a fast enemy creature, by the time it was the slow creature's turn, the fast enemy could already be out of range. Even if you hasted a stack of Golems, they still wouldn't be able to reach those enemy Cerberi since haste doesn't affect speed.

The biggest difference is that in previous games, every creature got one move per turn. Slower creatures as much as fast creatures but at least they moved just as often. Slower creatures not being able to move as often as fast creatures in Heroes 5 is a huge detriment. In previous Heroes games, slow creatures could actually tank for your other creatures. You could have your Zombies soak up a retaliation for your Skeletons. It's much harder to do that in Heroes 5. As mentioned before, slower creatures can do a lot of damage with a little assistance from magic. Slower creatures can actually chase after average speed creatures. In Heroes 3, if you get a Zombie next to an Elf, the Elf has to run away for four turns before being able to safely return fire. In Heroes 5, not only is it much harder for a Zombie to get next to a Hunter, since Hunters sometimes get two turns for the Zombie's one turn, it's much harder for the Zombie to chase after the Hunters. Since the Hunters move 30% more often than the Zombies, they can get off a shot about once every two or three turns.

In Heroes 3 and 4, if you used up an enemy stack's retaliation, you get a maximum of six free attacks from your remaining army. It's different in Heroes 5 because creatures only get new retaliations after they've moved. So if you had used up a Zombie stack's retaliation, then your Imps, Hellhounds, and Nightmares, which all have about twice the initiative of the Zombies, each get two free attacks, and you end up getting up to 3 more attacks for eating up the Zombies' retaliation than in Heroes 3 and 4.

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Unread postby Banedon » 25 Mar 2010, 11:43

Two things: one, you can't block ranged creatures with one stack, you needed two. Two, there are plenty of creatures in H3 and H4 that can cross the battlefield in one turn, more with Tactics. Try doing a head count. Let's see: Archangels / Angels, Phoenixes / Firebirds, Dragon Flies, Efreet Sultans, Thunderbirds ...

Also, Crusaders aren't slow they are average (speed 6, if I remember right). You'll never cast Haste on Crusaders; you will cast Mass Haste. Still even if you Haste them you can't cross the map in a turn; you need two (unless you have Tactics, and are applying an all-out-charge strategy). Same applies in H5. You still need two turns to cross the map. Actually it's possible you need rather less than that since you can have high speed low initiative creatures that can hit some targets in a turn.

So you can't Teleport a stack of Hydras and attack immediately (you can still do that actually - Teleporting Assault). So what? You can't Armagaddeon-Black Dragons anymore either. How is that bad? It's just different. Also there's a good chance that you can teleport Hydras and have them move before some of the enemy moves, or you can simply Teleport Hydras to get at ranged creatures that your enemy can't move away. And since Hydras move fairly far (high speed), you can easily teleport them to a place where they can hit their targets no matter where they run.

You can still have slow units soak up retaliation for your other units. It's just a little harder. There aren't many creatures that have double the initiative of another, keep that in mind. There's also literally no way you'll get a stack of Zombies next to a stack of Elves in H3 unless something extraordinary has happened. It can't be done. If you use Teleport, you really should teleport something more durable than Zombies such as Dread Knights. You won't have the time to walk across the map, the battle will either resolve itself first or all the Elves will die first. Even if you get adjacent to the Elves, you will not block them for four turns - if the Elves are worth unblocking (not likely since they somehow managed to get blocked by Zombies) the rest of the Rampart army will hurl their weight into dislodging the Zombies, and since the Zombies are level 2 units they'll all be dead in a flash. Zombies have never been of much use. In H5, stacks of Zombies are free food for Sylvan's Sprites; he won't / shouldn't deploy Hunters.

As for stealing the Zombies' retaliation, there's no practical difference. In H5, you hit them once with the most disposable stack / a stack that can take their retaliation / gated stacks / whatever and pounce on them. They are not likely to live one round. In H3, you wait, then hit the Zombies with the most disposable stack / slowest stack / a stack that can take their retaliation / whatever, then pounce on them, then use the next turn to run away. Rinse and repeat. No practical difference.

Zombies are weak creatures, always have been and probably will always continue to be. They're bad in H2, they're still bad in H3, and they continue to be bad in H5 - although H5 did actually made them a bit (but only a bit) better because you can raise them with Eternal Servitude or with Raise Dead.

I'm not convinced that the initiative system biases against slow creatures. Certainly the high-speed-but-low-initiative creatures aren't something H2/H3 could offer. It's my experience that even if there are theoretical differences, practically there's no major change. I like the initiative system in general; the only major problem with it is that major battles can be decided by which hero moves first.
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Unread postby Pitsu » 25 Mar 2010, 13:50

Banedon wrote: I'm not convinced that the initiative system biases against slow creatures.
H1-4 can be seen as case where each creature initiative is fixed to 10 and it cannot be affected by spells or artifacts (ok, morale can make one move 2 or 0 times per turn). Introducing an inequality here, means that for keeping overall balance, other factors have to be overlooked as well. If you keep the other stats constant, but give the slow units bad morale for every second turn, of course the slow units will be less useful than before.
I can also remind that the earliest H5 betas had creature initiatives from 5 (or even less?) to 20. In that case the imbalance was so obvious that it was nerfed down soon. As said earlier even 2 fold difference in initiative is almost like one side getting good morale in every turn in H1-3.
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Unread postby difool » 26 Mar 2010, 21:36

Another long time player dropping by. In the main, despite some regressive (abandoned) features, it was a qualified success. The skill system has a lot of meat to it, plenty of valid ways to build a hero. Magic system not so much, as like the previous iterations it just boils down to a few useful spells that you keep popping off over and over, and Life & Dark are greatly superior to Summoning and Destruction (at least once the middle game matures and everybody who has a healthy main stack has 30+ LVL 7's).

The editor was mentioned upthread, and, if the implied criticism was aimed at the non-user-friendliness of it, then yeah. This has had the biggest effect on what passes for the fan mapping guilds. Those who played H2/H3 will remember some absolutely wonderful maps, lovingly crafted and fun to play, and often very challenging. Unique approaches abounded. In H5 there seems to be a series of mapmaking tropes that everyone sticks to (tons of magic items with no real restrictions on what can show up, huge neutral stacks, no real attempt to spice things up with-I don't know-some quests and such), little attempt to work with the AI and not against it (it will either rush you or go catatonic if it can't, ignoring huge swaths of treasure). Subtlety has been lost, brute force rules. Thus the masterpieces of the past are no longer in evidence (or at least I can't find them), which means unlike H2/H3 this game isn't destined to have longevity working for it.

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Unread postby vicheron » 03 Apr 2010, 12:46

Banedon wrote:Two things: one, you can't block ranged creatures with one stack, you needed two. Two, there are plenty of creatures in H3 and H4 that can cross the battlefield in one turn, more with Tactics. Try doing a head count. Let's see: Archangels / Angels, Phoenixes / Firebirds, Dragon Flies, Efreet Sultans, Thunderbirds ...
Other than Dragon Flies and Silver Pegasuses, those other creatures are high level. You're not going to get a lot of Efreet Sultans or Archangels by the end of the first month. In Heroes 5, there are a lot of low and mid level creatures that can cross the battlefield in one turn like Cerberi, Blood Witches, Vampire Counts, Imperial Griffins, even more with Tactics or the easy to acquire winged boots. Also, Thunderbirds in Heroes 3 have a speed of 11.

As for blocking off ranged creatures. In previous games, slow creatures actually got a chance to hit enemy creatures sent to attack the ranged units they're supposed to protect. In previous games, if you sent in a fast unit to attack a ranged unit guarded by a tank then on the next turn, you have a choice to make, you can either flee and allow the ranged unit to fire again or you can stay and risk having the tank attack you, use up your retaliation and open the way for more attacks. In Heroes 5, the risk of staying to continue pummeling the ranged unit is much smaller since even if the tank gets its turn to attack your fast unit, it won't be vulnerable for a very long time, it'll be able to flee before the enemy can attack you after their tank soaked up your retaliation.
Also, Crusaders aren't slow they are average (speed 6, if I remember right). You'll never cast Haste on Crusaders; you will cast Mass Haste. Still even if you Haste them you can't cross the map in a turn; you need two (unless you have Tactics, and are applying an all-out-charge strategy). Same applies in H5. You still need two turns to cross the map. Actually it's possible you need rather less than that since you can have high speed low initiative creatures that can hit some targets in a turn.
It's not about crossing the map, its about preventing fast creatures from kiting you. In Heroes 5, Blood Witches can still kite a hasted Squire but in Heroes 3, Harpy Hags can't even kite a Crusader with basic Haste.
So you can't Teleport a stack of Hydras and attack immediately (you can still do that actually - Teleporting Assault). So what? You can't Armagaddeon-Black Dragons anymore either. How is that bad? It's just different. Also there's a good chance that you can teleport Hydras and have them move before some of the enemy moves, or you can simply Teleport Hydras to get at ranged creatures that your enemy can't move away. And since Hydras move fairly far (high speed), you can easily teleport them to a place where they can hit their targets no matter where they run.
Hydras were just an example. Teleport worked well with all slow creatures in previous games, it doesn't work well with slow creatures in Heroes 5.

Also, how can you compare Teleport with Dracogeddon? Dracogeddon allowed you to kill entire armies. Teleporting Hydras lets them attack three enemy stacks at the most.
You can still have slow units soak up retaliation for your other units. It's just a little harder. There aren't many creatures that have double the initiative of another, keep that in mind. There's also literally no way you'll get a stack of Zombies next to a stack of Elves in H3 unless something extraordinary has happened. It can't be done. If you use Teleport, you really should teleport something more durable than Zombies such as Dread Knights. You won't have the time to walk across the map, the battle will either resolve itself first or all the Elves will die first. Even if you get adjacent to the Elves, you will not block them for four turns - if the Elves are worth unblocking (not likely since they somehow managed to get blocked by Zombies) the rest of the Rampart army will hurl their weight into dislodging the Zombies, and since the Zombies are level 2 units they'll all be dead in a flash. Zombies have never been of much use. In H5, stacks of Zombies are free food for Sylvan's Sprites; he won't / shouldn't deploy Hunters.
A creature doesn't need to have twice the initiative of another to get two moves in a row. A creature with an initiative of 12 or 13 will get to move twice about 1/3rd of the time when facing a creature with an initiative of 8 or 9.

As for getting Zombies next to Elves in Heroes 3, you have Tactics and Advanced/Expert Haste. Tactics puts you 6 tiles into of the battlefield. Advanced Haste adds 6 to your speed. Zombies have a speed of 4. 6 + 6 + 4 = next to enemy shooters.
As for stealing the Zombies' retaliation, there's no practical difference. In H5, you hit them once with the most disposable stack / a stack that can take their retaliation / gated stacks / whatever and pounce on them. They are not likely to live one round. In H3, you wait, then hit the Zombies with the most disposable stack / slowest stack / a stack that can take their retaliation / whatever, then pounce on them, then use the next turn to run away. Rinse and repeat. No practical difference.
No practical difference? Really? Not only is it harder for slower units to soak up retaliations, they soak up fewer retaliations. The big difference is that in Heroes 5, you get to hit slow creatures more times after you've soaked up their retaliation while at the same time you get to hit faster creatures fewer times after you've used up their retaliation.

Let's say that an Archangel decided to fly over and kill off all your Liches in the beginning of the round. You can have all your creatures wait and have your Zombies attack the Archangels to soak up its retaliation, then your Skeletons, Wraiths, Dread Knights, and Ghost Dragons all get no retaliation attacks on the Archangel. Let's say something similar happens in Heroes 5, an enemy Archangel decided to fly over and kill off all your Liches, if you have all your creatures wait until the Zombies' turn to attack the Archangels, then the Archangels' initiative will be full again soon and you'll only get to attack with one or two creatures before the Archangels get their move and runs.
Zombies are weak creatures, always have been and probably will always continue to be. They're bad in H2, they're still bad in H3, and they continue to be bad in H5 - although H5 did actually made them a bit (but only a bit) better because you can raise them with Eternal Servitude or with Raise Dead.
Zombies were just an example. Other slow units in previous games like Pikemen, Skeletons, Ogres, Golems, etc., were quite effective.
I'm not convinced that the initiative system biases against slow creatures. Certainly the high-speed-but-low-initiative creatures aren't something H2/H3 could offer. It's my experience that even if there are theoretical differences, practically there's no major change. I like the initiative system in general; the only major problem with it is that major battles can be decided by which hero moves first.
The initiative system doesn't have to be biased against slow creatures but in its current form, it is.

Practically, slow creatures simply can't do their job which is to soak up damage and retaliations. In previous games, if you have all your other creatures wait for the slow creature then they all get their chance to attack the enemy after the slow creature has soaked up its retaliation. In Heroes 5, if you have all your other creatures wait for the slow creature then by your slow creature's turn, the enemy will be able to move again soon and only a few of the creatures that waited get their chance to attack.

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Unread postby Banedon » 11 Apr 2010, 16:35

Vicheron wrote:Other than Dragon Flies and Silver Pegasuses, those other creatures are high level. You're not going to get a lot of Efreet Sultans or Archangels by the end of the first month. In Heroes 5, there are a lot of low and mid level creatures that can cross the battlefield in one turn like Cerberi, Blood Witches, Vampire Counts, Imperial Griffins, even more with Tactics or the easy to acquire winged boots. Also, Thunderbirds in Heroes 3 have a speed of 11.
You can, and should, have 5-6 Efreet Sultans at the start of the second week. Same applies to Thunderbirds (who can cross the map depending on Tactics / terrain), Wyverns are reachable as well, and the level 7 units can be gotten by week 3 latest (Firebirds are easily reachable in the first week too, actually).

Also honestly final battles are so frantic that there's no time to move a blocking creature away from the ranged stack, unless the ranged stack is thinned so much that it's no longer a threat. You don't leave because you want to avoid eating the inevitable attack; if you do leave because of that you open the ranged stack up to shoot again - counterproductive.
Vicheron wrote:It's not about crossing the map, its about preventing fast creatures from kiting you. In Heroes 5, Blood Witches can still kite a hasted Squire but in Heroes 3, Harpy Hags can't even kite a Crusader with basic Haste.
Remember that in Heroes 5 the hero can actually move and attack - so the Blood Furies will not be kiting Squires forever. Against neutrals, well, slow neutrals typically get massacred by whoever is doing the creeping (it certainly is a lot easier to creep a stack of Dendroids than Thunderbirds, for example), so it matters less.
Vicheron wrote:Hydras were just an example. Teleport worked well with all slow creatures in previous games, it doesn't work well with slow creatures in Heroes 5.
Good point here, although I'll point out that:

1) If you really want to teleport your units you have Teleporting Assault;
2) You usually have better things to do than cast Teleport.
Vicheron wrote:As for getting Zombies next to Elves in Heroes 3, you have Tactics and Advanced/Expert Haste. Tactics puts you 6 tiles into of the battlefield. Advanced Haste adds 6 to your speed. Zombies have a speed of 4. 6 + 6 + 4 = next to enemy shooters.
Your opponent is honestly playing badly if he's leaving his Elves open, and also you don't know which corner your opponent is sending his Elves to at the start.
Vicheron wrote:Let's say that an Archangel decided to fly over and kill off all your Liches in the beginning of the round. You can have all your creatures wait and have your Zombies attack the Archangels to soak up its retaliation, then your Skeletons, Wraiths, Dread Knights, and Ghost Dragons all get no retaliation attacks on the Archangel. Let's say something similar happens in Heroes 5, an enemy Archangel decided to fly over and kill off all your Liches, if you have all your creatures wait until the Zombies' turn to attack the Archangels, then the Archangels' initiative will be full again soon and you'll only get to attack with one or two creatures before the Archangels get their move and runs.
You sure can, except you'll soon regret it because it means the Castle army will be getting massive, boosted hits in before you can retaliate. The Castle hero will have spells and he will use them - Expert Prayer springs to mind as the obvious spell to cast, but there's also Expert Haste, Expert Bless, and so on. Also, by waiting, you are allowing the Marksmen / Zealots / Champions / Teleported Crusaders, if there are any to deal damage before you. Sure you get to kill the Archangels, but you'll lose the rest of your army for it.

Your point that you can wait for the slow creature to absorb retaliation with the old system but not the initiative system is a good one, but I can't quite think of a time when you'd want to do that unless it's a battle against neutrals ...
Vicheron wrote:Zombies were just an example. Other slow units in previous games like Pikemen, Skeletons, Ogres, Golems, etc., were quite effective.
Er ... Pikemen have their uses, you split them and barricade the Marksmen into a corner. Since they're level 1 units and you get a lot of them for recruiting a Knight, you have plenty of them to use as cannon fodder. Skeletons are great for massive Necromancy swarms, and they're unique in this sense because they can be raised in massive swarms. Galthran boosts their speed too. Ogres are fairly useless, you may use them to Bloodlust your other units. Golems are pretty useless as well.

PS: I think given your arguments I'll agree that the initiative system biases against low initiative creatures, but I'm not convinced that's an important difference. Rather like Dracogeddon.

@Pitsu - aye, but now initiatives are like 7-14, which is a lot more manageable. 5-20 will have the faster creature moving four times before the slow creature moves, which is a lot, to say the least.
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Unread postby difool » 15 Apr 2010, 02:13

There's one big difference that you guys aren't discussing-everybody has Tactics now (well some heroes have one more row of pre-battle squares to use that is). In previous games your slow guardian walkers may, or may not, have a chance to move into blocking position before the fast enemy units get to move-and even then the enemy could often waltz right past them and whale on your shooters anyway.

Now, not only can you completely wall off your shooters in many cases, you can also, since many of the fastest creatures take up 4 hexes, use just one tough guard to keep them off the shooters, and all that can be accomplished before combat begins. Only negative is the use of breath weapons can blast through the guard to the shooter-well we had that in the previous games too.

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 15 Apr 2010, 13:57

Banedon wrote:@Pitsu - aye, but now initiatives are like 7-14, which is a lot more manageable. 5-20 will have the faster creature moving four times before the slow creature moves, which is a lot, to say the least.
Twice is still a lot. (and from what i checked the extremes are 7 Plague Zombies - 16 Blood Furies)


Plus, what does it matter if slow creatures sucked in previous games too?! They should fix it either way.


You sure can, except you'll soon regret it because it means the Castle army will be getting massive, boosted hits in before you can retaliate. The Castle hero will have spells and he will use them - Expert Prayer springs to mind as the obvious spell to cast, but there's also Expert Haste, Expert Bless, and so on. Also, by waiting, you are allowing the Marksmen / Zealots / Champions / Teleported Crusaders, if there are any to deal damage before you. Sure you get to kill the Archangels, but you'll lose the rest of your army for it.
The new system doesn't even have to involve the wait function, the fact that under it the Archangels won't even get hit by the zombies before being able to return, meaning you're doing less damage from the get go.
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Unread postby Alamar » 22 Apr 2010, 17:12

Is there an option for 2 steps forward, 2 steps back???

I think some of the things done with H5 were improvements while other things were a step back so it's unclear which way H5 turned out for me.

My biggest issue is I could never get over my initial disappointment that little attention [care??] was given to the AI, the initial map editor was [while very flexible] wasn't as user friendly as it could have been, the documentation seemed to have been skimped on, some "customer service" issues that came up during the beta that can't be discussed, ...

Many things got fixed by users [thank god for user lead documentation efforts!!!!!!!!!!] but the things that could have been more easily fixed by developers never were [to the best of my limited knowledge].

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Unread postby MattII » 12 May 2010, 11:30

Apparently not, and nor does there appear to be a choice for 'good ideas but bad implementation'.


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