Campaigning - the importance of creeping ASAP or waiting?

[Candalos]

Hi all, new here, and have a question on playstyle...

Generally speaking when playing in the campaign, how important is creeping? Is it better to whittle the AI down to a level where the constant raids becoming manageable before clearing the map, or do you guys tend to creep as you go along, clearing out sections before moving into new areas?

To give some context, I'm currently playing Sanctuary map 3 with a Tears Irina on normal difficulty with patch 2.1 installed, and I'm having a tough time. I tend to creep out an entire area before pushing forward, although I try to be expeditious about it. After liberating the first town the AI will usually send one hero via the whirlpool and another walks in from the top. The whirlpool invader tends to be quite weak and easily dealt with (or you can dance him between your two towns by keeping one empty and TP'ing the orc shaman hero back and forth), but the one who emerges from the top tends to be quite powerful and although beatable - seriously drains off my army to the point where it takes me a while to build up JUST to creep again! Also, by that time a second wave of invaders pops through and the process just repeats itself, and I find myself making very little progress, while the creeps just get bigger and bigger. I am beginning to think it might just be my playstyle because I had similar issues in Haven mission 4 (which took forever)

Any thoughts would be appreciated

[wimfrits]

Like you said, if possible, an early assault of enemy castle(s) makes the map easier to handle. Less enemy heroes and higher creature growth. You can always backtrack and clear conquered areas later.

I tend to do a mix of both. If you choose an efficient path through an area with your main hero while a second hero picks up the spoils, you can still enter the next area relatively early. You can let secondary heroes take care of logistics so that your main hero never touches the same ground twice.

Seems that your primary problem is damage taken. Assuming you have a magic Irina you should be able to come through unscathed with elemental summoning and a time stasis at the end of combat while regenerating lost units. With might it requires a bit tighter planning, but mind that you can disable enemy hero action for a turn with Taunt on his last unit.

That said, I recall that it was particularly tough to avoid injuries in Sanctuary map 3.
Good luck.

[havoc_85]

Earth Elemental can help you buy some time to heal back up with their Petrify ability (disables a unit).

Give some more information... How many heroes are you using?
What is the skill build you went for?
Is she a Might or Magic heroine?

You can link back your skill-build after you filled up the points. I'm no pro, but I (or the other nice people here) might be able to help you better this way.
https://www.celestialheavens.com/homm6/ ... index.html

[Candalos]

Hey,

Well good news is I finally got through the mission - it really was that initial raid that was hurting me - once I was able to get through that with minimal losses things went relatively smoothly. Just starting Mission 4 now.

As for my playstyle - for Mission 3 I had 4 heroes total - Irina, Changbo, the Barbarian Shaman and another one I purchased at the beginning to get more army (I was using the dynasty trait that lets me get them for 0). Later on I was using him for scouting / ferrying troops and mopping up resources on the map alongside Changbo, which made things move much quicker.

I kept the Barbarian shaman as a home guard - and was able to "dance" the first necro hero raiding from the whirlpool between the first two towns by teleporting him between the two as soon as he got close. It felt a little cheap as the AI was basically being played - it kept trying to go for the un-defended town and wasted all of it's time moving back and forth.

The other raider that comes via the land route was the one I was having issues with - but with time stasis / regen / serenity / tsunami I was able to come out of it losing only a few units (less than 10) which I was pretty happy with.

As for Irina's build - like I mentioned I'm playing her as a tears magic hero. I've got all the basics covered - serenity / time stasis / regen being my two oft most used abilities. Tsunami is nice, but eats up such a huge chunk of mana I rarely use it. I also have Summon Water Elemental but again, with all the disabling spells it's rarely needed now.

Dealing with raids was just a matter of TPing Irina back at the right moment.

Now in regards to my original question in regards to creeping - I've started making a habit of skipping over anything that isn't on my direct route towards the next objective, whereas before I'd make it a point to clear out an entire area before moving on. Usually, I have another hero scout ahead my route, and this also gives me an idea on AI forces. If they look manageable, I'll beeline towards them and creep only the ones that are in the direct path. If they seem a little too big for me to handle still at that point, I'll creep a little more while waiting for the following week. Usually town battles are where the majority of my troop losses tend to happen - so after taking a town I'll generally just do some light creeping around the area while I reinforce myself. This also gives my scout time to look ahead again and we just repeat the process from there

[havoc_85]

I don't know if there are any missions that you actually have to "rush" the objectives. I play pretty slowly and I never seem to get into trouble.
The last 25-30% of the battles have huge numbers in them but that just means I am leveling my Dynasty Weapons faster (which is still super slow IMO).



A little tip, have 3 types of saves while you play a mission:

Auto-saves - daily saves are good .You can configure them to range from monthly to weekly to daily.
Quick-saves - before battles vs enemy heroes or sieges that you might lose or end up with big losses I tend to press F5. Sometimes I use it when fighting neutral stacks that I hate...
Normal save - when you get to a good position in the mission but need to make a choice on how to continue or expect something to happen but not sure what in the near future and don't know how much time you will need to prepare for it. This way you have a good and reliable "restore" point (which I overwrite as needed).

I always feel like I am writing way too much here