General LotA thread-Thoughts and opinions thus far.

[loran16]

So I'm through the 1st two missions of Lota, and just wanted to give my impressions so far and hear others'.

I forgot how much fun i had with the inferno campaign of H5....inferno heroes don't generally appeal to me in concept, but i have great fun playing them.

Mission 1, i essentially just sent Malluster up top and had him quick rush purple. Fairly easy and got to cap quickly. I'm heading for urgash's call, and managed to get a witch's hut give me advanced attack (w00t). So far so good, and i have all 4 necessary basic skills for the ultimate before the end of the mission.

Mission 2 is disappointing a bit...i rushed Purple wiping him out fast, then just spent time building up till i had a strong army before i even went for the seer's huts to take on Green. The time inbetween purple's death and attacking green was a bit too long for my taste....i'd say this map is a bit small personally. Still, quite fun, and im happy with my level 20 maluster only a few away from urgash's call.

Mission 3, i start with solmyr my favorite hero of H3. WOOT! Okay, more later.

What's everyone else's thoughts so far?

[loran16]

Mission 3, Woah, now that's a difficulty level. Disappointingly,solmyr has the weaker army and i cant pick up troops from the garrison.

First week try 1-Lysander comes up, kills Solmyr.

Okee dokie, lets try something different.

First week try 2- Lysander kills Emilia.

Hmmm can we rush him?

First week try 3- Lysander kills emilia.

Guess that doesn't work.

I wonder if i have to more or less give up my small wizard town for a bit as lysander is too strong. I hate doing that.

[AllanPoe]

You have just enough time before Lysander comes (5 days) to give Emilia's troops to Solmyr, fight Lysander with Ssolmir and make him retreat.

[arturchix]

The first few battles may be tough, after that you should be able to beat him with small losses. Just make sure you immediately upgrade all dwellings in your main town first, upgrade titan dwelling too and after that do the same with your second Academy town. I didn't bother about the dwarven town except building a City Hall.

[loran16]

Okay, got through 1.5 weeks so far...defeating lysander in the 2nd week with solmyr.

some thoughts....stupid computer AI has lysander go after any weak hero in range. So he essentially kept moving close to my lower town, then attacking a level 1 hero i hired that i just sent out from my top town. Eventually, solmyr grew powerful enough to beat him.

Solmyr makes me cry....his specialty is now far weaker than it ever was in H3, as CL is meh, and wizards' spellpower isnt that good.

Planned builds for my heroes are-

Emilia-Sorcery-Enlightenment-Light-Summoning-Dark
Solmyr-Sorcery-Enlightenment-Light-Summoning-Destructive.

I got frenzy in my main town level 4, which should be nice.

Just curious, is the fortress town just there to give you destructive spells for solmyr? Because i noticed the main built up town has all destructive spells through the 1st 3 levels in addition to the normal light and summoning (L1-Stone spikes, arrow, l2-ice bolt,lightning bolt, l3- fireball, ice ring). Sadly, level 4's bonus spell from library was frenzy.

Sigh.

[tumorbane]

Mission 3, Woah, now that's a difficulty level.

First week try 1-Lysander comes up, kills Solmyr.

Okee dokie, lets try something different.

First week try 2- Lysander kills Emilia.

Hmmm can we rush him?

First week try 3- Lysander kills emilia.

Guess that doesn't work.

That's a general problem I have with campaigns or single missions with the criteria that the main hero(s) can't die. It shouldn't be a loss condition if you have to retreat. Retreating is a viable strategy. Can't they modify it so that your hero has to be re-recruited from a tavern within the next day or 2 rather than just stopping the game?

[loran16]

Mission 3, Woah, now that's a difficulty level.

First week try 1-Lysander comes up, kills Solmyr.

Okee dokie, lets try something different.

First week try 2- Lysander kills Emilia.

Hmmm can we rush him?

First week try 3- Lysander kills emilia.

Guess that doesn't work.

That's a general problem I have with campaigns or single missions with the criteria that the main hero(s) can't die. It shouldn't be a loss condition if you have to retreat. Retreating is a viable strategy. Can't they modify it so that your hero has to be re-recruited from a tavern within the next day or 2 rather than just stopping the game?

I don't mind that requirement. Though it'd be nice if you can carry through 1 recruited hero like in H3.

I'm at week 3 right now, having beaten lysander once more, explored a bit, only to have lysander ambush a weak emilia (I had to consolidate my forces to beat lysander under solmyr. Lysander was hidden just beyond my sight range and was in range of emilia. Crud!)

I'll restart and fix it....annoying part is the sulfur mine closest ive found is a bit out of the way to the south and can lead to you getting ambushed by lysander if you're not careful. Still, Solmyr should easily handle lysander when i restart. Incidentally, i think im going to charge purples' castles once week 4 comes....im already beating lysander with little difficulty, id like to prevent purple from growing too much, and gain other sources of light and dark magic.

[Akul]

That's a general problem I have with campaigns or single missions with the criteria that the main hero(s) can't die. It shouldn't be a loss condition if you have to retreat. Retreating is a viable strategy. Can't they modify it so that your hero has to be re-recruited from a tavern within the next day or 2 rather than just stopping the game?

They should have made it like in H4 where the retreating or surrendering hero appears in front of the nearest city.

[Marzhin]

That's a general problem I have with campaigns or single missions with the criteria that the main hero(s) can't die. It shouldn't be a loss condition if you have to retreat. Retreating is a viable strategy. Can't they modify it so that your hero has to be re-recruited from a tavern within the next day or 2 rather than just stopping the game?

They should have made it like in H4 where the retreating or surrendering hero appears in front of the nearest city.

The problem is, Heroes 5 has only one kind of trigger event which is "Remove Hero". The same event is used if the hero is killed, retreating or even dismissed. If there is a way to bypass this limitation, I'd be glad to know it, but I think I am not good enough at programming to figure it by myself, sorry.

[tumorbane]

Very interesting Marz. Thanks.

Back on topic, I did this mission last night. I unintentionally utilized the shield guard exploit....was heading Solymr up to retake the dwarf town when lysander pursued. I ended up keeping Solymr in the fortress all mission and Lysander kept on with endless sieges that weren't too tough with all the extra shield guards. Made for an interesting end battle with Emilia vs. the demons but she had enough to take care of it. Good map.

[Mozared]

Ack, I've just entered this map... wish me luck

[Metal Wolf]

I've posted a reply on the LOTA thread in the map-making forum about it...
Anyway - I'm on the last mission, and I really like this project - despite a few small problems - very well done!
The thing I like the most about LOTA is the overall look of the maps - easy to notice that every single tile was well-thought beforehand makes me want to explore the map and to enjoy its beauty, without even thinking about the objectives.

[loran16]

Ugh...so i normally dont mind missions like this....except h5 is a piece of crap software wise.

Each time i reload the game slows down tremendously (some major memory leak) and i've reloaded a bunch, and of course, if my computer isnt restarted before i start playing its still pretty slow.

Sigh....makes me cry.

[Pitsu]

Each time i reload the game slows down tremendously (some major memory leak) and i've reloaded a bunch, and of course, if my computer isnt restarted before i start playing its still pretty slow.

Same here. I try to avoid reloading as much as possible and when forced (hero gets killed for example) usually quit all together and make a longer pause in gaming. "End of peace" took me therefore quite some days to complete. Well, it was actually Quickcombat who saved my pityful butt from evil Malustar and "completed" the map. Not sure that could have done it myself :p. Heck, this map could be slightly (not much tough) easier.

About hero retreat scripts. It should be rather easy to build a script which causes player to lose when one of the heroes is not under players control for more than 1 day. To distinguish retreat from defeat in combat is more difficult. I am not too familiar with combat script properties. For a single combat it is possible as far as my imagination goes, but a general script applying to all combats.... dunno.

[Dabrinko]

The "Pirate Towns" in the last map is nice, but, the town view itself is "trembling". Won't stick to one place.

[Marzhin]

The "Pirate Towns" in the last map is nice, but, the town view itself is "trembling". Won't stick to one place.

I thought I had corrected this. Sigh...

[travelingoz]

Love the LOTA concept and it's always great to play a mission where the heroes carry over!

I'm playing on heroic and i thought missions 1 and 2 were a little easy but not too bad. Especially as i usually play Necro, it was nice to get a little breathing space and play around a little with different tactics and builds.

Then along comes mission 3... I almost never play Academy and it's showing! After a couple of reloads, i finally got some decent troops and managed to defeat lysanders first rush with just the troops in Arcadia's gate but i can't seem to get much further.

I managed to get Titans built in both towns by the end of week 2 but Lysander is too strong. (178 inquisitors) too rush and by week 3 he kills me. Once i gave all the troops too solymer and lysander stayed in his fort until the end of week 4 when the Kregans arrived and he was way way way too strong by then.

How's everybody else doing? What do you prioritise when building? What's the best way and what order do you all level your academy heroes? Any success stories yet?

Give me Kaspar and Naadir back any day!

[Darrow]

Love the LOTA concept and it's always great to play a mission where the heroes carry over!

I'm playing on heroic and i thought missions 1 and 2 were a little easy but not too bad. Especially as i usually play Necro, it was nice to get a little breathing space and play around a little with different tactics and builds.

Then along comes mission 3... I almost never play Academy and it's showing! After a couple of reloads, i finally got some decent troops and managed to defeat lysanders first rush with just the troops in Arcadia's gate but i can't seem to get much further.

I managed to get Titans built in both towns by the end of week 2 but Lysander is too strong. (178 inquisitors) too rush and by week 3 he kills me. Once i gave all the troops too solymer and lysander stayed in his fort until the end of week 4 when the Kregans arrived and he was way way way too strong by then.

How's everybody else doing? What do you prioritise when building? What's the best way and what order do you all level your academy heroes? Any success stories yet?

Give me Kaspar and Naadir back any day!

What worked for me was to have Emilia and Solmyr meet as soon as possible and transfer almost all of the early troops to Solmyr who then explored and opened the map to the point that he found the enemy castle and took it. I hired a new hero who then flagged everything that he could reach and bought up each week's production on day one. This gave Solmyr time to explore and power up while Emilia stayed in the Capitol and built up a large enough army that Lysander would not attack. I let the Fortress go early and caravaned all of the production from the other Academy to the Capitol each week. Lysander spent all of his time trying to reflag all that I had captured and then returning to his inaccessible castle to bulk up as my army grew. Once or twice I had to clean out a secondary hero who took the unprotected Academy. As the map opened up I almost capped out. As Red approached Lysander was near enough that I engaged him for the first time, prevailed and recovered some nice gear while reaching the cap. The key is to avoid Lysander until the very end. Otherwise he keeps regenerating with ever stronger armies that eventually wear you out. Save the Mage's Cache until you can get Puppet Master or Resurrection and then cross your fingers and go for it (I got Puppet Master which made the confrontation with Red rather easy).

[loran16]

Mission 3 completed.

How i did it? Well to start, i brought solmyr up top. At the start (while solmyr was weaker than lysander), lysander would chase any hired hero, and thus i lured him away from my 3 towns. After solmyr was felt by the computer to be too strong, lysander would flee to my fortress, so i attacked him and defeated him.

Emilia was not really used, and essentially i just built up solmyr, building up both castles. Originally lysander was hard until i got both castles up and running, and got expert summoning. I had been trying to make sure to have light, summoning, destructive, sorcery, and enlightenment and thus got expert summoning later that i probably should have. That was almost certainly a mistake, as phantom forces on titans made battles a ton easier.

I proceded to attack purple, siezing the siezable purple town, and wiping out lysander time and time again for experience (he keeps coming out iwth the default creature setup of 3 angel, 50 griffin, 60 marksman, 60 squire). I noticed that when near his towns, he doesnt run, and so you get his artifacts, ESPECIALLY The +2 morale, +2 luck artifact. THat makes him easy, and makes solmyr much better. Eventually, as 3 weeks were left in the scenario, i abandoned purple (solmyr hit level 19 here) and headed to my castle. Then to my surprise the demons showed up 2 weeks earlier(i thought itd take 2 months????). To complicate matters, lysander followed me, and killing him took me to level 20, but i had not ime to grab the +4 knowledge from teh library. It didnt really matter, solmyr's Knowledge was at 18 at that point.

Emilia hid, solmyr went and defended the castle. I hadnt gotten summon phoenix, but had resurrection just in case. I used my garrison forces to wipe out the imps of malluster (just to be sure) and his cerberi. A note, having malluster use armageddon's blade was cruel, as the -2 to his morale hurt (and i had lysander's crown for morale). Quickly wiping out the succubi, the devils were made short work and the misssion was done.

Just looked at mission 4, and its nice to see no emilia. Still, would be nice if i had gotten summon phoenix last mission.... Ah well, should be fine.

[loran16]

Mission 4 completed fairly easily with only 1 restart.

Couple comments.

I liked each quest being of a different nature. One thing though, i would remove the 2-way portals in this map. The AI for the computer (in my case, red player, who took over everything fast) will occasionally spend multiple turns in a row just moving every hero back and forth through the portals. Ugh. Painful.

A bunch of angels (3) joined me, which was terrific. Still, due to a near infinite amount of gold, i could've easily just stayed at the fortress and academy outposts and just recruited a good amount of creatures to easily win. Summon phoenix would've been really useful in the last battle, sigh.

BTW, did you program the orange AI to use counterspell on every opportunity? I took water elementals as my bonus, which made it slightly easier, but his forces, especially the raiders and assassins were pains in the asses thanks to counterspell. At first i used elementals and magi to dispell it and cast resurrection et al, but later i had to use mass spells to gain in iniative to get a spell in before he ran out of mana. Tricky battle this made it though.

As for the storyline, it is quite nice compared to H5 story, though

Spoiler

Magnus having sent the assasisn

was fairly obvious after the end of mission 3 and start of mission 4.

I got solmyr up to level 25, with 15 Spell power and 26 knowledge without bonuses. Fun times.

Well, back to maluster, a fun hero for me as i go for the ultimate.