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Kings Bounty Hunter
11-10-2008, 09:47 PM
Anyone know?

Sandsai
11-13-2008, 09:09 PM
There is no such thing as the best unit. Some are far more valuable for certain battles or for certain classes. But really, the beauty of this game is that no matter what units you get in the shops, you can still make it work and do just fine. On a side note, I would say that any female units along with Anga's Ruby are a bit overpowered imo, + 3 morale is way too much, not including +3 to damage. So if you are looking for an overpowered army, go with a female army with Anga's Ruby.

Smash
11-13-2008, 10:18 PM
He ask about units Sandsai and yes they existing in this game, units that you pick up instantly when skip others until you have no others choice.

Lets started:

Horseman aka cavalry aka champion (for homm3 fans :P) - really do i need explain?

Alchemist - even if poison is worst damage type (plants, undeads) they still can attack up to 3 units in row and have nice bombs even if poison bomb has low damage, cons are their leadership cost.

Evil Beholders - no need to explain.

Inquisitor - great against undead and support, just better version of priest.

Archmage - well i don't like them but that will not change that they have usefull shield, telekineses so your knights can get one more target for they circle attack and with last thing they can even do some damage and paralyze (reduce to 1ap).

Royal Snakes - seriously, no need to explain.

Robbers and Marauders - great for safe attacks and treasures.

See dogs - worst version of helldogs but still great to use.

All Bears - great units that not only can tank but dish out lots of damage.

Shamans - no comments

Necromancers - too much good thing in one place.

Driads and all sprites with no retaliation - cannot cover this

All Dragons - but especially emerald.

Giant - aoe damage every second turn, nice hp.

Cyclop - nice resistance, great abilities, full shooter.

Royal Thorns - you can only wish you find them :/

All demons army except Archdemons are awesome.

Controversial - Black and normal Knights, Black and White Unicorns, griffins, Both Elves shooters, Cursed Ghosts and Vampires Brotherhood plus skeleton archers this units can be good with some item, talents, spells help.

Did i miss something? But i don't know what devs pick up as best sorry :/.

Sandsai
11-13-2008, 10:37 PM
Well my point was more aimed at exposing the fact that most units in this game are really geared for specific roles, thus while it may seem really good for that particular role by no means is it a best unit. For instance Archdemons are great at killing dragons because of their fire resistance ability. Emerald dragons are great for getting mana. Shamans are simply awesome mid game for battle control and do relatively well in putting out damage and taking on a tanking duty if necessary. But again, it really depends on what you want accomplished. Evil beholders are great against some enemies but are pretty weak against undead as most of their abilities are negated due to undead being immune to mind control. Likewise elven archers a force to be reckoned with but pale in comparison to other ranged units when going up against undead due to the skeleton ability to mitigate archer damage. Likewise dragons are awesome, especially against fire vulnerable enemies like ents, thorns, or one of the lake fairies but are not so great in killing demons due to the fire resistance ability. So my point is that a unit's worth is measured relative to what it is that you want accomplished and as such, there is no one best unit or units. As I pointed our earlier however, some units are more susceptible to being 'exploited'. Female units with Anga's Ruby fit that bill, the only weakness is dragons and other fire damaging enemies, but that can be dealt with the right artifacts and spells.

Smash
11-14-2008, 05:16 PM
All demons has fire resistance and archdemons are overall worst choice.
You forgot that evil beholder do magic damage which is great against skeletons archers, warriors or ghosts.
As you see i post best units overall which you can use most of the time without a problem.

Zhuangzi
11-14-2008, 09:43 PM
After playing this game through nearly four times, the units I have used the most are these:

EARLY GAME

Royal Snakes
Griffins

MID GAME

Orc Shamans
Elven Archers
Hunters
Dryads
Demoness
Lake Fairies
Sprites
Horsemen

LATE GAME

Emerald Green Dragon
Red Dragon
Black Dragon

There are others, but I seem to come back to these over and over again. :)

Kings Bounty Hunter
11-17-2008, 12:27 PM
After playing this game through nearly four times, the units I have used the most are these:

EARLY GAME

Royal Snakes
Griffins

MID GAME

Orc Shamans
Elven Archers
Hunters
Dryads
Demoness
Lake Fairies
Sprites
Horsemen

LATE GAME

Emerald Green Dragon
Red Dragon
Black Dragon

There are others, but I seem to come back to these over and over again. :)

How many? I can only have 6 black's which is useless really

Calinda
11-17-2008, 01:49 PM
What do the game devs consider the best units?
Anyone know?

/sarcasm
No idea, I don't know any of the game devs ...

kadrzys
11-17-2008, 06:45 PM
How many? I can only have 6 black's which is useless really

I can have 9 and still useless, I'm in Demonis right now and prefer my 350 Royal Snakes than 9 Black Dragons. And dragons make fire damage, demons=fire resistance:/

Metathron
11-17-2008, 07:27 PM
Well, don't use red and black dragons in Demonis then, hmm?

I said before that these dragons seem much more threatening when you face them as adversaries than when recruited to your own army, but I am now starting to appreciate their high initiative which lets me start first, and their durability which lets me soak up retaliation.

kadrzys
11-17-2008, 11:18 PM
I'm not using Dragons in Demonis^^ their might be great and I'm starting with Emerald ones, especially for their mana sucking option:P but Red&Black ones with their abilities might be cool too.

Gatts
11-18-2008, 12:49 PM
Griffins:
1. easy to replenish (ressurection, sacrifice works fine + divine armor, armor of the gods etc. - you can buy zounds of them - store them in the spare back up slot and re-fill if you play impossible - still you won't lose any battle)
2. endless retaliation - enemy mostly have many units - more than 5, more than 10, returning attack to most of them gives your unit additional hidden damage ratio (like you would have 5x griffins on the battlefield)
3. split - if you fight many but weak stacks - you may finish them much faster
4. flying
5. natural resistance (not as good as of cyclops, but still good enough)

Vamps:
1. steal life - I never fought army (other than pure undead) that didn't have at least one "living" stack.
2. flying
3. cheap and plenty of them to up-hire in back up stack (for battles with undeads - where the steal life is not working)
4. mind immune
5. even if ressurection does not work, still works sacrifice - if you don't have enough money, but you have sacrifice spell - use it on vamps to replenish other vamp stack - the one that lost units can gain them from blood sucking.

For both of these units is very good to know:
gain additional XP by using only these units + armageddon - your XP will grow because you would be "weaker" compared to the neutral stack, but using god armor on griffins + ressurection, or using steal life of vamps - will make you the victor with minimum loses, even if your enemy was ranked "impossible", just imagine how it is to get 11000 xp instead 500 :)... each time...

Zhuangzi
11-18-2008, 10:34 PM
To use Dragons effectively, you need to pretty much prevent them from being hit. There's no way you can allow them to cop a 2000 damage hit, because half your stack is gone right there.

At the end of my recent game I had 12 Reds, 15 Greens and 9 Blacks, as well as Dryads and Hunters. This is NOT for Demonis. As has been discussed, Dragons suck in Demonis due to Demons having fire resistance. I don't consider Demonis to be late game - I am referring to Haas' Labyrinth/Murock.

Dragons can't be your shock troops (i.e. the one that absorb hits) but they do massive damage if used correctly. With Onslaught and Tactics (and sometimes Haste too) they have full range over the map, which allows you to choose exactly how and where they will attack.

RED DRAGON:

I actually like this guy the best because I prefer his special ability to the Black's. This can be very devastating in certain circumstances. The best circumstance of all was against General Karador and his crystal, all of which can be fried with his special fire attack. You can use Gift to get the ability back, and Glot's Armor or Time Back if you are going to be hit/have been hit. With normal attacks they hit two enemies. This is important. You need to attack the weaker enemy to line up with a strong one. With high initiative, you will fly off next turn before the stronger enemy has a chance to hit you. You can also Heal them fully for 1 point of mana (level 3 Healing) so you needn't lose any if you're careful.

BLACK DRAGON:

Awesome resistance, but high leadership and a slightly less useful special ability (flying fire). This still works when used correctly, but I prefer the Red's ability. The other problem with Blacks is that you can't use Healing on them. So they ARE tanks, but you do need to be careful. Time Back is always useful though if you do lose a unit or two.

GREEN DRAGON:

Some people swear by these but I have yet to grasp how good they can be. I prefer the fire attack, although the Target Capture and Mana Drain are excellent abilities. Someone else can explain how to use these properly.

So basically I used to share the opinion that Dragons were overrated and easily killed. Well, they are easily killed, IF you let them be hit. But the whole point of getting better at this game is that you don't want to be hit. This is where Dryads are so damn useful with their Lullaby and Summon Thorns abilities. They make a perfect complement to a team of Dragons. :cool:

milo
11-19-2008, 12:18 AM
Emerald dragons are good for a couple of reasons, their drag attack works really well with no retaliation and can be combined with a spell like trap (think in my mage game trap was doing 6000-7000 damage). Their mana drain ability allows you to recoup huge amounts of mana against large stacks. Even if you are not using the cheap and cowardly invisiblity tactic with emerald dragons, they have high initiative and speed, in most battles they can wait for enemies to move, then fly amidst them and use mana drain or drag attack then fly to safety at beginning of next round. A single stack of emerald dragons can win virtually every battle with no losses. Glot's shield armageddon combo is excellent with this troop.

I hope in the upcoming expansion there is some rebalancing of some of the troops, ideally each racially based army should be viable. Presently very large stacks of low level troops are more viable than higher level stacks.

Gatts
11-19-2008, 01:46 PM
I am glad that the limited "usufelnes" of black dragon fire flight is brought up - when speaking about rebalancing, I would love to at least get the option of selecting the path of the flight - would this be selectable hexagon by hexagon - it would be at least as effective as the red dragon fire breath.

Rebalancing the green dragons is not needed IMHO - even if they can be used in some clever tactics that could lead towards 0-loss policy, still it takes a lot of time to do so - so I say who is ready to spend his time in one battle 5~10 rounds longer + his own time with preparing and "carefull-stepping", be my guest.

Roman
11-19-2008, 07:44 PM
Hey Gatts,

I noticed that you are from Slovakia and I am too!

Mozem sa spytat v ktorej casti Slovenska sa nachadzas? Ja som z Bratislavy.

sours
11-25-2008, 01:15 PM
I also think green dragon is the best of the dragons.

If you take each dragon stand alone you have to pick black. Once you start considering spells red and green become better than black.

A green dragon combined with phantom is a wrecking ball. Right out the gates, I just fly over and drag a unit to make a semi circle or full circle if I can. Then, make a phatom of green and place the phantom inside the circle and drain mana. This gives me mana for another phantom next turn.

Remember phantom is not just a copy - it is also a refresh of all skills. phantom = target me copy + gift basically

By turn 3, you'll have a massive meat shield from just one unit.

Black cannot have any magic on it. Red cannot be phantomed.

Metathron
11-25-2008, 08:45 PM
How come Red dragons can't be phantomed?

Smash
11-26-2008, 04:09 PM
They can be phantomed.

Metathron
11-26-2008, 05:33 PM
I thought so; I don't remember them having any magic immunity.

Sherwood
11-27-2008, 03:51 AM
Well my personal favs are

Elven archers
dryads
emerald dragon
griffons
Evil Beholder
Demons (just the level 4 version)
Royal Snakes
Inquisitors
Archmages
Shamans

sours
11-27-2008, 08:26 AM
Strange - in my game red dragons couldnt be phantomed. Maybed I was doing something wrong.