My thoughts so far on Heroes 5

[Minmaster]

ok after playing hours and hours of H5 (mostly scenarios), here are my observations/thoughts:

*loading times and autosaves slow down the game bigtime. i turned autosave off and they came back to bite me in my ass later when i made a mistake. i'm still playing with them off and using lot more quicksaves. pressing F5 before a big battle.

*some scenarios can be beaten without achieving the mission objectives. in some maps where i had a specific objective (capture mystic vale), i was able to win the game by just defeating all enemies/taking theirl towns instead of completing objectives.

*AI has a big problem defending their towns if they have more creature types than slots in the castle. for example, if AI hero has 2 non-aligned creatures that they just happened to have around, they will leave the town with its own creatures and go outside with those dozen or so crappy creatures and fight outside castle walls with them. this is a big problem because the hero would have better chances inside the cozy confies of the castle and disbanding the crappy dozen creatures, but i dont think the AI knows how to do that. instead, since those crappy creatures cannot have fit inside the castle, and must have a hero to exist, the AI makes the decision to take hero out of castle and station them infront of the castle with the leftover creatures. high level AI heroes will die this way often.

*cursor should also show # of days to the destination when reaching castles, dwellings, etc. not just on land. sometimes you think you can reach the castle but you cannot and the cursor is not clear on it without a numbe (eg. 2, 3+).

*i dont like the H3 way of picking up weekly creatures outside towns and visiting windmills/watermills, and i really miss the caravans. it makes the game more tedious and adds about half more amount of time spent playing. the H4 caravan was invented to alleviate this H3 nuisance and evolved the game, why go backwards now?

*summon creatures can be a powerful spell indeed, and i dont mind that 1 mana/ 1 creature rule, but this spell is pretty much useless when you have multiple towns, especially different factions. i guess the smart thing to do is to use this spell before capturing a new town.

*instant travel is a great spell when blocked off to parts of map by thin strip of mountains, but its a very hard spell to execute because of the 3D terrain. (takes a lot of rotating cameras to find a good spot over mountains)

*autocombat is horrible because the AI wont use wait when they should and instead charge into enemy frontlines to get striked first, instead they could have delivered the first strike if the waited. also auto place units in tactics phase is horrible too, especially when facing area damage enemy units because they seem to place my shooters all bunched up together. i take control and spread out my shooters so they cant hit 2 at once.

*i dont quite get the placement order in ATB as they say its determined by initiative and random factor, but its hard to predict. sometimes taking couple troops out during tactics phase changes the order of battle totally. also, what exactly happens (their next turn) when creature waits is different. i think i need a better understanding of this, and understand why some creatures attack twice before another gets his first action. also it wouldnt hurt to add when a griffin battle dive comes to play on the bar.

*big exploit i found is while using imperial griffins, when facing big stack of range/direct damage magic units, take all of your non-griffin units out during tactics and just use your griffins to avoid any other units getting killed. when battle starts, your griffins will be likely to move first, just use battle dive, and your enemy will have no creature to attack. then your battle dive will come down and kill the creature. if the enemy moved, your griffin will likely have another move before the enemy's due to his high initiative.

*i have no idea how this elemental chain works even after reading the explanation few times.

*zombies and squire/footman are pretty much the worst units i have played with so far. because of their low initiative/speed, i rarely get to use them and they never factor into battles.

*when upgrading, they should show how much it costs when you cant afford it, (instead of "not enough resources") so that you can try to make it that amount. it makes me go back and forth from market

*is there a morale penalty for mixing factions?

*defintely needs high score section.

overall, i think the game is well made, but it definetly could have used more polishing. im happy to hear that game will be refined in the future through patches. missing tooltips, small number of scenarios show that more time couldve been helpful. i like the foundations though. true, the graphics slow down the game a lot, but they make the game what it is. otherwise, it would be playing H3 pretty much with new creatures/factions.

as a scenario heavy player, (i rarely play campaigns) i hope the editor patch comes out soon. also, i hope the random map generator is released free as a patch instead of being part of an expansion. in H4, we never got the RMG, and i hope they come through with one in H5 even if it creates unbalanced maps.

[DaemianLucifer]

*zombies and squire/footman are pretty much the worst units i have played with so far. because of their low initiative/speed, i rarely get to use them and they never factor into battles.

Squires are among the best slow tanks.They can take a lot of punching,and I do mean a lot.Their defense is imense.And they reduce the range damage done to surrounding troops.

*is there a morale penalty for mixing factions?

Yes there is.I think it is -3.

[autoaim.cfg]

as a scenario heavy player, (i rarely play campaigns) i hope the editor patch comes out soon. also, i hope the random map generator is released free as a patch instead of being part of an expansion. in H4, we never got the RMG, and i hope they come through with one in H5 even if it creates unbalanced maps.

As a scenario player myself, I could not agree with you more. This is the reason I still play H3:WoG while H4 is mostly collecting dust in my bookshelf. The Random Map Generator is the prime reason why H3 has an almost unlimited lifespan and still remains one of my all time favourites and highest valued game.

[Gaidal Cain]

*AI has a big problem defending their towns if they have more creature types than slots in the castle. for example, if AI hero has 2 non-aligned creatures that they just happened to have around, they will leave the town with its own creatures and go outside with those dozen or so crappy creatures and fight outside castle walls with them. this is a big problem because the hero would have better chances inside the cozy confies of the castle and disbanding the crappy dozen creatures, but i dont think the AI knows how to do that. instead, since those crappy creatures cannot have fit inside the castle, and must have a hero to exist, the AI makes the decision to take hero out of castle and station them infront of the castle with the leftover creatures. high level AI heroes will die this way often.

Haven't noticed that myself yet, but for this to happen, the AI would have also needed to hire another hero to stand inside the castle, blocking the former hero. I do think the Ai tries to put the strongest of the two inside the castle.

*cursor should also show # of days to the destination when reaching castles, dwellings, etc. not just on land. sometimes you think you can reach the castle but you cannot and the cursor is not clear on it without a numbe (eg. 2, 3+).

Indeed. THat's quite irritating.

*i dont quite get the placement order in ATB as they say its determined by initiative and random factor, but its hard to predict. sometimes taking couple troops out during tactics phase changes the order of battle totally. also, what exactly happens (their next turn) when creature waits is different. i think i need a better understanding of this, and understand why some creatures attack twice before another gets his first action. also it wouldnt hurt to add when a griffin battle dive comes to play on the bar.

Units with higher initiative will act more often. The order at the start of combat is random, but after that, the only random happenings that can affect order are morale. And griffins dive will happen when the griffin otherwise would have had it's next action. However, if the AI uses it against you, you can be sure that it knows that it will hit with it- your only chance to avoid it would be with a Haste spell.

*big exploit i found is while using imperial griffins, when facing big stack of range/direct damage magic units, take all of your non-griffin units out during tactics and just use your griffins to avoid any other units getting killed. when battle starts, your griffins will be likely to move first, just use battle dive, and your enemy will have no creature to attack. then your battle dive will come down and kill the creature. if the enemy moved, your griffin will likely have another move before the enemy's due to his high initiative.

Wouldn't call that one an exploit myself- unless it's only one enemy stack, the griffin will land after its dive right in front of the shooters, who'll get a free round of target practise before dying...

*i have no idea how this elemental chain works even after reading the explanation few times.

Sounds like you've found the explanations for how it worked in the beta. It has changed since. Now all you need to do is to attack a creature with one of the opposing element, or with a suitable spell. You can see the elements of different creatures as small icons in the initiative bar, if you have the proper skill/building in a castle.

[Minmaster]

*big exploit i found is while using imperial griffins, when facing big stack of range/direct damage magic units, take all of your non-griffin units out during tactics and just use your griffins to avoid any other units getting killed. when battle starts, your griffins will be likely to move first, just use battle dive, and your enemy will have no creature to attack. then your battle dive will come down and kill the creature. if the enemy moved, your griffin will likely have another move before the enemy's due to his high initiative.

Wouldn't call that one an exploit myself- unless it's only one enemy stack, the griffin will land after its dive right in front of the shooters, who'll get a free round of target practise before dying...

well actually, the exploit only works great in certain situations where you are facing 1 big stack rather than a lot of stacks. this happened when i was fighting about 50 sultans (all in 1 stack). everytime i attacked with my full forces, he always got in a shot and killed a bunch of my marksmen and paladins before i got him. so i replayed the battle, took out all my units except 1 stack of like 50 imp. griffins. and just battle dove on my first turn while he had no enemy to shoot at. and when griffin landed, it was over.

also for battle dive not showing up in ATB, i know it should be the griffin's next turn when the dive happens, but the griffin that is battle diving disappears from the ATB. at least for me it does. they should leave it in.

[DaemianLucifer]

*is there a morale penalty for mixing factions?

Yes there is.I think it is -3.

I just checked this one:Theres no penalty for mixing creatures,but there is a penalty for mixing aligmnet.For example,my agrael has +3 moral,butr when I add sylvan creatures their morale drops to -3.Also if I add demon units they dont get any morale.Havent checked in battle though.

[Kaboth]

What about hero speed is it altered by the speed of creatures they are carrying because I didn't notice a difference?

My hero had griffins and priests. I dismissed the priests hoping he'd move further but it didn't seem to make a difference.

[HenL]

I dunno if it really does, but the manual says that the hero moves as fast as the slowest creature. Dunno if that means initiative, speed or both either.

So vexing and perplexing that they didn't include tooltips to show what affects stuff like morale, luck and creature growth.

[Minmaster]

I dunno if it really does, but the manual says that the hero moves as fast as the slowest creature. Dunno if that means initiative, speed or both either.

So vexing and perplexing that they didn't include tooltips to show what affects stuff like morale, luck and creature growth.

at least on the adventure map, it seems like slow creatures dont affect map movement points. actually, creatures dont have adventure map movement points, so the saying that the hero moves fast as the slowest creature makes no sense at all.

what i did notice is that you can transfer creatures from an army with no movement points to another army with a fresh hero and you can move the creatures again. if heroes are placed right, i think you can have a crazy unit supply chain.

yea tooltips are horrible, and they need to update it in patches. whats the worst is try telling on the battlefield what spell creatures have on them and what exactly it is doing. you gotta double click and it is on a separate screen than creature stats tooltip which is not very intuitive like H4 was. in H4, you can tell everything about the creature and what spells were affecting it by a simple right click.

[HenL]

at least on the adventure map, it seems like slow creatures dont affect map movement points. actually, creatures dont have adventure map movement points, so the saying that the hero moves fast as the slowest creature makes no sense at all.

They don't need adventure map movement points.. It was like that in H3, speed of the slowest creature at the end of the turn(+any artifacts\logistics of course) = hero movement speed.

[Wolfshanze]

what i did notice is that you can transfer creatures from an army with no movement points to another army with a fresh hero and you can move the creatures again. if heroes are placed right, i think you can have a crazy unit supply chain.

I guess you started playing HOMM with the fourth version, because if you'd played Heroes III or earlier, you would know of the infamous "Hero supply chain" that allows a hero at the front lines to get troops sent to him from his home castle several moves away by a chain of properly placed heroes.

The same is true for Heroes V... it's JUST LIKE Heroes III in regards to a stack of monsters moving from one end of a map to the other by way of well-placed heroes.

[HenL]

Did some testing.. No matter what I did the hero moved just as far.. The fastest unit I had was 6 speed 11 initiative though, while the slowest was 4/8. Yet another detrimental non-feature which could easily have been included .

[Gaidal Cain]

Actually, it might be just as good. Finally those zombies and treants won't be left behind so the army can go faster...

[DaemianLucifer]

what i did notice is that you can transfer creatures from an army with no movement points to another army with a fresh hero and you can move the creatures again. if heroes are placed right, i think you can have a crazy unit supply chain.

This crazy chaining is the one thing that bothers me the most.Basically you can cross the whole map in a single turn.And considering the maps are smaller now,youll need less heroes to do that now.And lets not forget that AI still doesnt know how to chain properly,so it is again at at disadvantage.

[innokenti]

it would be playing H3 pretty much with fewer creatures/factions.

Fixed. (Well, plus initiative, skills etc).

Yeah, the hero chain is not something I welcome back, neither having to run to the windmills all the time and collect creatures from dwellings. This was returned however I believe at the request or wish of fans. Obviously some very crazy fans but I do know that they are out there and believe that it adds something to the game.

Yes. Mind-numbing trudging.

[ThunderTitan]

This was returned because H4 = BAD. So everything must be like in H3 or at least different from H4.

[Asjo]

It annoys me that when you choose a spell to cast, pressing escape doesn't cancel casting (so that you can attack instead). I had to enter the spell book and press cancel there instead.

Also, when you are digging for a grail it is really annoying that once you have pressed to move somewhere (without having moved yet), you cannot cancel the movement trail, and the option to dig never appears. I liked the 'adventure map option' thing from previous heroes game, some things in this game seem inflexible. Why should I find the puzzle map under the objectives menu?

Also, caravans would have problems when it's not possible for creates to be on the adventure map without a hero. It would create many complications (when the castle is full).

Edit: Also, when I enter a crypt, I find it rediculous that I'm not fighting in a crypt, but instead the terrain layed at the entrance.

[ThunderTitan]

It annoys me that when you choose a spell to cast, pressing escape doesn't cancel casting (so that you can attack instead). I had to enter the spell book and press cancel there instead.

Press right-click on nothing. It should cancel the spell.

Also, when you are digging for a grail it is really annoying that once you have pressed to move somewhere (without having moved yet), you cannot cancel the movement trail, and the option to dig never appears.

Use the mouse to click your hero. The trail sould be gone and you should ba able to dig.

Also, caravans would have problems when it's not possible for creates to be on the adventure map without a hero. It would create many complications (when the castle is full).

They could always implement a temporary lock on the creature spots when a caravan is coming. And have a 3rd Caravan Bar.

[Asjo]

ThunderTitan, you might be right about the first thing with the spellbook, but what you suggest for the second thing, is what I tried - desperately. Didn't work for me.

And your suggestions about the caravan might not be as forward as you think. I think new elements introduced such as a caravan lock and other necessary things might just confuse players.

[ThunderTitan]

ThunderTitan, you might be right about the first thing with the spellbook, but what you suggest for the second thing, is what I tried - desperately. Didn't work for me.

Not on his icon, but on the hero right on the map. And i'm not sure what mouse button or how many times you have to do it.

I think new elements introduced such as a caravan lock and other necessary things might just confuse players.

As opossed to all the things in H5 that are so neatly explained in the manual? If it's done right and explained in the manual it shouldn't be very confusing.