Is there a fun style of expert play *other than* no-loss?

[Rhygadon]

So. I love both KB:TL and KB:AP, and I've enjoyed every HOMM game since the beginning (and even played the original KB, though the memories are very dim!). The Disciples series too.

One problem with all these games, though, is that if you're playing "seriously" (i.e. on high difficulty, and aiming for stringent goals like high scores or low completion times) they all collapse into a certain very finicky style of play, and in particular they all wind up requiring an emphasis on no- or nearly-no-loss battles.

This problem is particularly severe in KB, since even if you have plenty of money, replacement units may not be available, and even if they're available, traveling back across several continents to replace them is just *tedious*.

No-loss play is certainly fun, and gives that feeling of utter mastery. But it has at least two disadvantages: First, it's quite slow (more reloading, more scouting for unguarded resources, more extra turns spent delaying the end of a battle to dig up chests, kill small stacks with traps, &c.). Second, it narrows the range of fight experiences, since you never wind up fighting truly overwhelming enemies. The question you have to ask yourself before starting a fight is "can I dominate this opponent so completely that I emerge unscathed," rather than "do I have a chance of winning this fight at all?"

I also have this nagging feeling that no-loss play winds up narrowing the game, since many interesting spells/items/units just don't fit that style of play. (Most obvious are the units with powers triggered by loss of half the stack, but there are plenty of others.) Similarly, some choices (Resurrect, Inquisitor, Paladin, Sacrifice) become dominant almost regardless of your hero and army type.

So my question is: has anyone found a style of *interesting*, *challenging* play that doesn't involve such concern about losses? For example, I'm considering starting a game on Normal difficulty, but completely banning reloads and kiting, and using a chess clock or something to make myself play quickly during combat. Has anyone tried something like this?

Basically, I'm looking for a way to play that won't get me mired in the usual slow perfectionism. Any ideas?

[Zechnophobe]

Only use units level 1 to 3. It's a pretty decent challenge, that will also make you use a lot of units you've never touched before.

[bladeking77]

Well, how about this (Both for TL, and AP):

-First condition is that you play on Impossible.
-Second no Retreating, no Loading once you go trough a scenario you don't like (eg. you lose too much army, so you load and play better next time.) and no losing ( you can lose army, but not all of it, so you wouldn't get the Defeat screen. )
-No kiting of course.
-You can use any Spells, Items and units you like.

Remember the second condition, it is most important. That way you get a fair game. Once you're dead, you have to start over. You'll have to choose your opponents wisely.
That's how I played both of them, and it was fun every time. :)

[loreangelicus]

So. I love both KB:TL and KB:AP, and I've enjoyed every HOMM game since the beginning (and even played the original KB, though the memories are very dim!). The Disciples series too.

One problem with all these games, though, is that if you're playing "seriously" (i.e. on high difficulty, and aiming for stringent goals like high scores or low completion times) they all collapse into a certain very finicky style of play, and in particular they all wind up requiring an emphasis on no- or nearly-no-loss battles.

This problem is particularly severe in KB, since even if you have plenty of money, replacement units may not be available, and even if they're available, traveling back across several continents to replace them is just *tedious*.

No-loss play is certainly fun, and gives that feeling of utter mastery. But it has at least two disadvantages: First, it's quite slow (more reloading, more scouting for unguarded resources, more extra turns spent delaying the end of a battle to dig up chests, kill small stacks with traps, &c.). Second, it narrows the range of fight experiences, since you never wind up fighting truly overwhelming enemies. The question you have to ask yourself before starting a fight is "can I dominate this opponent so completely that I emerge unscathed," rather than "do I have a chance of winning this fight at all?"

I also have this nagging feeling that no-loss play winds up narrowing the game, since many interesting spells/items/units just don't fit that style of play. (Most obvious are the units with powers triggered by loss of half the stack, but there are plenty of others.) Similarly, some choices (Resurrect, Inquisitor, Paladin, Sacrifice) become dominant almost regardless of your hero and army type.

So my question is: has anyone found a style of *interesting*, *challenging* play that doesn't involve such concern about losses? For example, I'm considering starting a game on Normal difficulty, but completely banning reloads and kiting, and using a chess clock or something to make myself play quickly during combat. Has anyone tried something like this?

Basically, I'm looking for a way to play that won't get me mired in the usual slow perfectionism. Any ideas?

Hmmm... no-loss is not a requirement, but minimal losses is. Case in point, the final score doesn't even count no-losses, and you only need a certain number of no-loss victories to take advantage of a particular medal.

You did mentioned two disadvantages to no-loss, and I have to disagree with you on both.

First, while it may look that you have a slower game, you are actually saving time by not running around trying to replenish you troops. Sure, you could keep changing your lineup to what's available in the continent that you are in, but that means you can't build your items/skills to any specific army type, weakening your army and making battles harder/slower.

Second, no-loss doesn't mean kiting/collecting drops first/fighting the enemies from weakest to strongest. I have a no-loss impossible warrior game that I finished in 7 days; running around kiting/collecting drops first/fighting the enemies from weakest to strongest was not an option.

As for impossible/no-loss/high score games being confined to a particular playing style and troop type, this is partially correct only. The reason why players who play such games seem to use the same tactics/troops/play style is because some tactics/troops/play styles are simply superior/better over others. What makes them superior/better is that using them makes for an easier and faster game. For example, if I played with an army of level 1 movement 2 troops as a warrior and didn't use Resurrection/Sacrifice/Time Back at all, even if I didn't care about massive losses my game would be slow going indeed.

But no one here is restricted in how one wants to play the game; to each his/her own joy. :) I honestly believe everyone here ("serious" players included) plays KBAP to have fun; it's just that each one has one's own definition of "fun". :)

[MaroonMaurader]

I've never actually found a fight which I could win, but not win no-loss. If you restrict yourself to avoiding any infinite-mana loops, then I've had several fights like that. And I agree that those can be some of the most interesting.

As far alternative play-styles, have you considered playing with an all-shooter army? Some of the boss-fights will be near-impossible to do no-loss (I might not even bother trying), but overall your game will be significantly faster, and it would provide a very different style of play.

[Razorflame]

you can do all battles without loss with a single stack of any unit:)

best unit to use for this is EGD :)

invisiblty + spells from the mage = gg on enemy ^^

[ckdamascus]

I read about an all shooter army thread on here once. I could not get it to go without some losses.

I then added Paladins, and was able to almost achieve no-loss. I only slipped up against Baal and was too lazy to try again since I considered it a successful enough run. :)

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14286

My mage version of it seemed a bit more tedious so I stopped that. But the mage build allows you to get a little bit more sloppy thanks to Higher Magic (dual cast).

That said, if you don't mind losing a few units, this build is sick. You might want to replace the royal garbage, er griffons with Black Dragons to improve effective initiative even more for the other shooters since you don't care about losses.

The real power of the units was achieving 100% critical rates.

[copcod]

Hi, I am new to the game but my idea is probably good.

The dfferent types of troops available may be well playetested and balanced but abilities that allow resurrection of troops and summoning of additional troops stand out as more powerful than others.

Using a point system to limit the kinds of troops that you can deploy on the battlefield can make the game more challenging and might make players even use some units they haven't chosen before.

If the expert players on the forum could put their heads together and come out with a list of all the units with a point value, It could create alot of fun competition over winning the game with different point caps.

for example, you could have a point cap of 9 points while employing several different squads of 8.75, 8.9, 8,5 point value under rev. 1.0 of the troop rating list.

being able to combine troops only in certain ways would add some depth to the game as well.

It would be nice to have an interface mod to go along with this to speed things up when changing your squad makeup.

[ckdamascus]

Not necessarily true. It depends on how your character is developed and how you use your troops.

Archdemons have no resurrection, yet due to their fast initiative, with a Mage-Amelie you can cast invisibility and spell-nuke everything. But if you were a Warrior-Amelie, you wouldn't have enough mana to do this.

Black Dragons are great to help avoid enemy heroes from nuking you, yet again, more useful with the Mage-Amelie. Again, no resurrection or summon.

Trolls with peacefulness and stoneskin and at night might be one of the most deadly tanks out there. No resurrection or summon here either.

Range Style play requires the most damage output (basically, destroy the enemy so fast, they can't retaliate anyway). Too many summon units would hurt that sort of build. I only used paladins to help restore the ranged units en-mass. Another guy on here relied on skeleton archers (which cannot be resurrected by paladins), and royal griffins (which never work well for me).

So you can't assign a universal weight since I can make bowmen into the most powerful unit for my type of game play, yet they will be total junk in your game. Or someone will make black dragons incredibly strong in their game too.

About the only unit in the game with infinite resurrection is the double droid stack build. While you can set artificial limits on that, taking eons to kill the enemy alone is punishment enough in my book. :)

That's why I went with the ultra fast damage range team. Took out Ktahu in 12 rounds, impossible-mode, no losses.

But that is part of the allure of this game. Being able to maximize a unit's abilities to suit your particular game style. I think we need to simply introduce more viable gamestyles rather than artificially limit ourselves.

[Zechnophobe]

Actually, archers do about the worst damage in the game. The only advantage they have is of course that opponents have no way to retaliate against them.

Also, Turn back Time is a great ressurrection tool for level 5 units (Still no black dragons though). And you can rezz trolls and archdemons with inquisitors.

[ckdamascus]

Actually, archers do about the worst damage in the game. The only advantage they have is of course that opponents have no way to retaliate against them.

Also, Turn back Time is a great ressurrection tool for level 5 units (Still no black dragons though). And you can rezz trolls and archdemons with inquisitors.

They are a "decent" alternative to skeleton archers, whom I cannot resurrect with paladins.

It is all situational. My most "effective" unit being the hunter, but with raw damage, who wins? Assuming no range penalty (e.g. they are close enough), assuming I will max out the attack / defense gap (helplessness against the tough defenders, plenty of attack buffs), we have

Archer Leadership / Avg Dmg = 3.5/50 dmg = 7% damage per leadership.
Hunter Leadership / Avg Dmg = 9.5/150 dmg = 6.33% damage per leadership.

Throw in astral bow and whip of fire, +2 damage

Archer = 5.5/50 = 11% dmg per leadership
Hunter = 11.5/150 = 7.67% dmg per leadership

Both range units always do critical hits (barring double negative effects) with my setup too.

Also, even if you do more damage (the skeleton archers actually do the most damage per leadership, but I can't do mass resurrect with paladins with them), the hunters are probably better.

But you can't quite say the archers do the worst damage. The lowest damage units benefit the most from the +X damage items. The setup matters the most. The no-retaliation girl power team probably does a ton of damage too with the right items too. :)

Of course there are so many other factors to consider as well. That's also why I said "with my style of game play" in my previous post to hopefully preemptively dissuade claims of what is normally a piss-poor damage/leadership unit.

Yes, you can also resurrect level 5 units with demonologists too. I think we have proven quite thoroughly that you really can't put a universal weight on the units since one man's garbage is another man's treasure.

[copcod]

If you establish universal unit weights, they woudlnt need to be perfect.

You have to start somewhere, playtest and revise.

This is the way to create a new artificial limitation forcing you to adapt in a new way.

You suggested that artificial limitations arent helpful but "no loss" and the various difficulty levels of the game are in themselves artificial limitations.

[Zechnophobe]

I was talking about archer style units, not "Bowmen" specifically. Ranged units simply don't do the damage that melee units do. Low level units tend to do more damage per leadership, but also die a whole lot faster per leadership.

I'm currently playing a 'level 3 or lower, no droids' game on Hard, to try it out, my lineup is:

Fire Spiders
Royal Snakes
Lake Fairies
Dryads
Gorguanas
Scoffer Imps (reserves)
Bowmen (reserves)

This game had Two snake boots (+1 move, +1 init for snakes) and the Skraash (+9 atk and Def for spiders, +1 morale and speed for spiders, spiders always crit). Even with the Fire Spiders always critting, the lake fairies (with demonesses whip) still out damage them.

[KongMysen]

Archer Leadership / Avg Dmg = 3.5/50 dmg = 7% damage per leadership.
Hunter Leadership / Avg Dmg = 9.5/150 dmg = 6.33% damage per leadership.

Throw in astral bow and whip of fire, +2 damage

Archer = 5.5/50 = 11% dmg per leadership
Hunter = 11.5/150 = 7.67% dmg per leadership

Both range units always do critical hits (barring double negative effects) with my setup too.


Even thougt Zech meant ranged units and not particulary Bowmen, you should still consider the attack and defence bonuses when estimating dmg output

The hunters have 11 more attack than the archers. That means if both units attack a unit with 16 i defence, the dmg output will be 11% pr leadership for the archer and 10.47% per leadership for the Hunter. And that is with both the bow and the whip. Close call I'd say and without the items the Hunter would win with 8,65% vs 7%.

However if you didn't focus so much on crits the two skills on the archer unit can come in handy lots of times. I bet the you've used both the cold and flame arrow alot even though skills can't make critical strikes.

EDIT: Comparing the Hunter with the Black unicorn proves Zechnophobes' point. They are both elves and both have 27 in attack. But the hunter only does 9.5 dmg on average where as the black Unicorn does 16,5 on Average. Adding to this that melee units are better defensive, you only need 5.13 Black Unicorns to kill a single Hunter with one average strike. Vice Versa you'll need 13,40 Hunters to kill a single Black Unicorn with one single average arrow. I didn't consider crit chances though...

"Ranged" is such a strong ability that both offence and defence has been nerfed to balance the units.

[Metathron]

As for the topic of the thread: How about using only creatures of one race, at a time? This sounds like it could be both interesting and challenging, but it's off the top of my head.

[KongMysen]

I did that with both Elves and Demons in KB TL. Elves actually have a decently balanced team although it can get quite tedious, ressurecting late battle, because your fairies fall like flies.
I did no-loss endgame in my warrior impossible game. Paladins and physically resistant allies makes this quite easy as well...

I'm not sure if I'll ever do a 3rd run through on AP, but if I do, I think I'll join Loreangelous' "only lvl 1-3"... Or maybe a "no-spells - no pet - no unit abilty" game.

[Rhygadon]

Only use units level 1 to 3. It's a pretty decent challenge, that will also make you use a lot of units you've never touched before.

Hmm, I like this one. Most of my army designs seem to be defined by a few "key" high-level units, so this should shake up that pattern. It'll also make it possible to play around with some of that specialized unit-specific gear. And cheap/ubiquitous units should make re-stocking a bit less of a pain ...

[Rhygadon]

Well, how about this (Both for TL, and AP):

-First condition is that you play on Impossible.
-Second no Retreating, no Loading once you go trough a scenario you don't like (eg. you lose too much army, so you load and play better next time.) and no losing ( you can lose army, but not all of it, so you wouldn't get the Defeat screen. )
-No kiting of course.
-You can use any Spells, Items and units you like.


I can see the theory behind this, and it makes sense, but I think I want to go in a different direction. Impossible+no-reload calls for careful, technical play, which is what I'm trying to get away from (though it's my natural style!).

I do think I'll adopt a ban on "scouting combats", though - in other words, no entering a fight just to see how tough it is or to test out a strategy, planning in advance to reload. I won't start a fight unless I plan to finish it. ;)

[Rhygadon]

As for the ranged-combat army, that's what I was playing with recently, and I agree that it's fun and can be reasonably strong with enough +crit gear. (I went with hunters, archers, inquisitors, paladins, and either catapults or cannoneers depending on the situation.) One of the advantages of the ranged approach is that it gives you a surprising amount of freedom in how you use your spells. In some fights you can focus on direct-damage spells or buffing your attackers, and in others you focus more on disrupting the attackers' movement or distracting them with summons. So even though your own units are mostly just standing there and shooting, the fights have more variety than I had expected.

But then I found all the pieces of the Ogre set and decided to play with that, so now I'm stomping around with ogres, giants, shamans and assorted puny little human assistants. After all the cowardly ranged plinking, smashing things around with clubs has been quite satisfying!

[Rhygadon]

I did that with both Elves and Demons in KB TL. Elves actually have a decently balanced team although it can get quite tedious, ressurecting late battle, because your fairies fall like flies.


I just wish the elves were available earlier; all-elven armies have some interesting possibilities, but by the time you have access to enough different types of elven troops, there's almost always something better available.

One of the biggest disappointments in KB:AP was when I realized that the order of unit availability was going to be almost identical to KB:TL (humans and animals and low-level undead, then dwarves, then elves and high-level undead, then demons), and that the new Pangolin units would be unavailable for almost the entire game. I'd really love to experiment with demons or elves as a starting army, but apparently the laws of nature forbid it. :evil:

[BB Shockwave]

I think it's fun replaying the game with a certain army line-up in mind. For example, I have already played the game with an all-Lizard army, and an all-Undead one, now I'm playing with an all-elven army... Meaning, I won't use other creatures at least, until I can get the desired units.

It might be hard to get all the units you need (for example, even though I played no-loss I soon ran out of Gorguls to recruit), therefore I think "cheating" is allowed in this case - if you cannot find a unit at all on any map (or even on its homeland map), using the console to give one to yourself is allowed.

For example, in KB TL, I was playing an all-undead army (Werewolves allowed, for a while) and I found no Ancient Vampires anywhere - not in Demonis, or Death Land, not even after beating Karador to see whether his castle sells them. So, I used the console to give myself undead army, dismissed all but 1 of the Vamps (so I could say I got this one from a Coffin) and patiently used sacrifice in battles to build them up to my leadership level. :)

Playing with some rarely used unit types could also be fun, like using only Pirates or Robbers...

[copcod]

This mod will let you recruit any race units on debir.
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=14769

It does provide a large amount of each unit so you would want to restrict yourself to keep the challenge up.

Maybe you can choose 5 types of units, no substitutes and you have to stick with them for the entire game.

If you suffer too many losses (say you are playing with low level units and no healers.) your forces just dwindle until you cannot win any more battles and lose.

The idea for the point based armies came from this thinking. having to use lower level units. but not all lower level units are as strong as each other. so I figured that you would want to rerate each unit to have a more effective level limit system.




So. this would make warriors very unpopular. That is why 3 versions of this all races mod need to be made with an appropriate variety and quantity of units to choose from. Seems a simple matter of decompiling the loc files with kbedit, changing the numbers of units in each ushop and recompiling it. the 2 mod files are nice and small.

[BB Shockwave]

you can do all battles without loss with a single stack of any unit:)

best unit to use for this is EGD :)

invisiblty + spells from the mage = gg on enemy ^^

The trouble with Emerald Green Dragons is their quite low intiative/speed. Against some enemies, like Archdemons, you cannot act first with them. I am currently trying to beat Bhaal no-loss in The Legend, and he is very hard - due to his castle being on Lava terrain, all his demon troops have incredibly high defense for my Mage's army to fight against, even with the Demon-killer sword.

[BB Shockwave]

As for the topic of the thread: How about using only creatures of one race, at a time? This sounds like it could be both interesting and challenging, but it's off the top of my head.

I'm doing that, albeit in Legend and AP too.

In AP I went with the Lizards first, since I wanted to test the new race. Sadly they are only available on Reha and it takes quite long to get there - you have to get to Montero first and defeat the lizard queen in the castle to get your wings, even with kiting I was only able to land on Reha around level 25.

That said, from there it was a cakewalk. :) My lineup was Tirexes (tanks), Gorguls (main damage dealers, often you can finish the battle by using only them, in fact I killed Bhaal with just one stack of Gorguls - easier to resurrect), Gorguanas (decent ranged unit and of course, Mark of Blood), Hayterants (great skirmishers and can summon fodder, also block ranged units with the eggs), and Brontors (very versatile unit, can be tank, skirmish to block ranged units, or be a shooter itself). I tried the Chosa a few times, but they are quite useless IMHO, being restricted to only spawn worms and do nothing else. They were usefull in the Giant Spider fight, though.

In Legend, I used an all-undead army (with a small mod that gave me a spell to resurrect them so I can use no-loss). Firstly starting with skeleton archers, zombies, ghosts, vampires and werewolves (I allowed only them as living units in my army), I later replaced the zombie-tanks with Black Knights, the wolves with Bone Dragons, upgraded the ghosts and vampires. I also use Necromancers of course. Cursed Ghosts and Skeleton archers I often swap depending on the enemy line-up.