I know there's the Tournament of Honor subforum but I'm not really searching for opponents, just gathering opinions and perhaps a bit of advice.
I hope not too many cobwebs and dust have gathered over any sort of interest in this topic ...
My own limited experience with Heroes 5 multiplayer extends to only three sessions against another player. However, we've run into a number of problems.
I guess that the main drawback is the weird limitation that doesn't allow for continuous simultanous turns. While this is extremely inconvenient and time-consuming on its own it becomes even more damaging because it seems to have encouraged mapmakers to keep the opponents separated for as long as possible, forcing you to wade through tons of monsters till you can hope to reach anyone.
Early assaults are apparently impossible (though likely not so much for elite players that can murder the poor neutrals by exploiting the computer's weaknesses ...) and when we humans finally meet each other, our towns are always well developed.
Furthermore, the standard for most 2 or even 4 player maps apparently is that each player is given exactly one city without any neutral ones to conquer (I know ... there are exceptions ... but they are somewhat difficult to find as the number of cities is seldom mentioned in the map descriptions). It certainly has the advantage of reducing the turn time yet I think a good deal of strategy gets wasted. Only one city means that there is hardly any need to split up your armies and that -even if there is a siege - it is probably the last battle of the session.
This touches another problem - while this is likely partly due to our inexperience, battles between players were far too deadly and game-deciding ... so there usually was only a single noteworthy confrontation - with hours of slow grinding through monster stacks preceding it.
I'm a bit at a loss trying to explain to my disgruntled fellow player how this could possibly be avoided. Even disregarding the difficulty of replacing your lost creatures, heroes are so immensely important in this game that losing your best one probably means instant or slow defeat. With only one city and - on every map so far - no creature weeks to provide easy experience fodder it can be very tough to train multiple heroes. Fleeing/capitulating might help a bit - but you have to get the timing right and, of course, town sieges remain deadly.
I love the game and would like to turn multiplayer sessions into a more satisfying experience so I'd welcome any advice, discussion ... or merely shared stories.
