Holy crap-You MUST see this! (academy strat)

[Shauku]

Not to mention that the dramatically reduced costs for the mages guilds in recent versions of the game make it a much more viable strategy. But still it's just as easy to get word of light and arcane armor and then where are all these victories?

Exactly.Its a risky and very luck dependant strategy.

It seems somewhat so (in theory, as I doubt you have tried it out yet). But I wouldn't call it very luck dependant, as that is exactly why you go for multiple magics, to increse the changes to get spells that will win you the day (Library). You can adjust to the spells you get by mini-arties (if you get Armageddon for example)
What I am unsure is to how early should one take the schools...leveling summoning first seems like a good way to start as there is a guarantee of some level.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I'm not surprised. It's what I've said all along. With Academy you have to sacrifice creature dwellings to go for magic and mini-artis. It's where you excel, so you've got to do it.

When somone posts a build that works consistantly on heroic on non-resource rich maps I'll readily admit that the academy can win with few creatures.

I don't believe you can win making significant sacrifices in creature dwellings particularly since a wizard's spellpower is decidedly unimpressive.

One of your 3 magic schools would be summonig I presume. With few creatures light magic may not be your best choice (your gargoyles and golems can be resurrected but you may be forced to take it to avoid junk skills and it does have some nice spells to help you protect your few creatures. Dark magic with its debuffs and controlling spells would be more beneficial. Destruction would come a distant third.

Don't forget that sorcery will have to be developed early, probably after/during summoning development.

It is usually best for a wizard to take summoning to expert asap. If you get fire trap it will be enough for early creeping of walkers. Pray that you get phantom forces, firewall (for shooters) and summon phoenix.

You will need a rather significant amount of ore early as the mage guild levels, gremlin, gargoyle, and golem dwellings/upgrades all require ore, not to mention the rares and ore for the mage's guild and artifacts to buff your creatures.

GOW

[Jolly Joker]

Well, no again. You don't need ore for upgrading the Gragoyles, for example.
Now I admit that things change with patching. But the main thing stays true. You cannot beat the opposition with might because your hero doesn't have it. So you can beat the opposition only with magic and the racial and instead of lamenting the fact that you cannot beat the opposition by playing with THEIR rules it might just pay to play the game the Academy's way. Full stop.

[ThunderTitan]

I think GOW is saying that the Academy way isn't up to par.

[Campaigner]

It sounds great but fact remains that Sorcery unfortunetly doesn't affect mass spells AND MotW! If it did affect MotW it would be great.

Without gold you can't build up anything. You will have no army! And I don't understand how they beat the guards of the first couple mines....and Titans and minartifacts?!?! And one Wizard had a whole lot of resources in week 5!! They mean to tell me that they didn't NEED those resources??

So far I'm pretty much baffled....

Koreans own at StarCraft, Chinese at Heroes...OMG they're gonna take over the whole e-sports world!

[Sir_Toejam]

@DL
I question these myself.As I do with titans on week 5.

didn't anybody else find it odd that the author talks about a strategy focusing on mages and NOT building titans or rakshasas, then in the screenies where he compares battles, we see a stack of titans?

the whole thing is full of ridiculous inconsistencies.

let's see, you go up against a warlock, who focuses on spell power (note a defense of "4"!), and then you put in a stack of titan's with an expert level minfact with 70% magic protection on it.

..uh, yeah. great comparison there.

Personally, i read the whole thing, and the first page of comments, and found it a waste of 15 minutes of my time.

[Elvin]

@JJ
I don't recall you saying academy had to skip dwellings to be effective.You did say it needed to utilise magic-mostly light/summoning due to power-and mini artifacts but did not give a solution as to build dwellings AND mage guilds/arties.And what full stop?You mean that to be competitive one must use rushes and hit and miss tactics?Thank you very much I doubt even Nival thought of that.And as ever I hate factions that need to play in ONE specific way so as to avoid defeat.Don't you go 'I told you so' here,academy is not ok yet.

As for me I usually play Jhora.What you may have heard about her supernaturally fast casting are just tall tales.She just has easy access to exp sorcery and as for her bonus you can only hope you get to play first,it's not so great.
Sorcery except for speed helps with mana costs(which are increased as of lately) so it's pretty much essential.And favours mostly summoning and destructive.
Summoning is not just summon phoenix/elementals.You NEED wasp swarm,phantom forces,raise dead with motw as well as fire trap.Fire wall is not bad too in 2.0.Wall of fog can be your saviour.
Destructive doesn't feel right for a wizard but it's one of the best ways for creeping.NOW it's almost sure you'll buy power artifacts as well as fire/earth spell enhancers which along with the added boost from enlightenment makes it worth it.Throw master of [...] in and motw and you are good to go.Armageddon with crazy res arties?
Then it's either light or dark.My initial thoughts on that were that dark compliments more academy-and I still believe that.It just works better to curse your opponent than buff yourself.Mass haste or slow?Not to mention that motw works crazy with blindness,frenzy,puppet master.If you could get the right spells... Risky
Just the basic skill of enlightenment is enough,even at lvl 16 for attribute bonuses.

Let's see how that works out now

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Well, no again. You don't need ore for upgrading the Gragoyles, for example.
Now I admit that things change with patching. But the main thing stays true. You cannot beat the opposition with might because your hero doesn't have it. So you can beat the opposition only with magic and the racial and instead of lamenting the fact that you cannot beat the opposition by playing with THEIR rules it might just pay to play the game the Academy's way. Full stop.

OK, you'll need ore for everything else I mentioned but not upgrading gargoyles then.

Also, I did not mention building the library which will be necessary in a 3 magic school build and to do that you need to build the mage's tower too.

Building the academy creature dwellings is not playing "the might way." Heroes are defeated withour creatures. Playing a wizard "the might way" would be getting the might type skills and abilities for him.

The academy needs tweaking.

GOW

[tb5841]

I think this would work. Most towns play the same way every time, but with artificer/many magic schools you can adapt to your opponent much better than with any other town. And early game, magic is probably more useful than creatures for creeping, so academy can get the resources it desperately needs - and building mage guilds needs a lot less gold than building creature dwellings.

[Banedon]

One night's of sleep and a lot of new ideas...

I think, at this point, the person we need most is csarmi. Though he may be a thorough pain, he is - to use his words - almost never wrong. That's why I was so pleased to corner him that time.

He has me on ignore however (I think). Can someone else send him a PM?

[asandir]

My biggest problem, as the guys mentioned on the last page of the thread is that it's not apples with apples, the academy hero has expert everything while the other hero has a smattering of basic and advanced skills, no cold steel, no battle frenzy, etc, etc - these skills change the complexion of the scenario completely (plus there seems to be some concern over some of the artifacts that they got)

[Banedon]

But if you look at the original Academy vs. Dungeon battle, the Academy hero learns the magics, not the subskills. That's why, I guess.

Anyway if anyone visits their forum and wants to know what they're saying, I can translate. Just indicate which post you want to know and I'll do it.

PS: 4 more hours to exam...*shudder*

EDIT: I read through a few of their posts and:

1. They sure seem serious. One of them even linked to the topic here and said, 'bring the fires of war (revolution in Academy thinking) to the Round Tables'.
2. If you look at the original topic nevermind challenged one of them to a game; they are seriously discussing it.
3. All that has happened definitely appears to be true. There're lots of people all agreeable on the same strategy, which means it's highly unlikely to be faked.
4. They are racist(!). They view foreigners as enemies.
5. The appear to have tried to counter this strategy, found nothing and therefore are now totally behind it. And they have brought that same attitude to the discussion. Their discussions are peppered with implicit references at the intelligence of those who disagree.

#5 is vexing. I align myself absolutely against this strategy, and even if it works I will refuse to use it, and will try to find a way around it.

[asandir]

thats not the point, if you are necro player you will build up with the skills that benefit your troops .... and the builds he showed were far from optimal, and this will change the nature of the competition

[PhoenixReborn]

I don't play on heroic but somebody do a quick think...somebody more familiar with resources costs than me...can you get 5 titans and a level 5 mages guild by week 5? Consider that you start with 0 gems on heroic. And a level 20 hero? Also, that Jhora build doesn't have luck so no resourcefulness.

[Sir_Toejam]

like i said earlier...

who cares? the introduction to the strategy specifically mentioned NOT building raks or titans, and lo and behold the very first battle they put screenies of to demonstrate their 'strategy' shows a stack of titans with uber minifacts on them.

totally pointless.

[Banedon]

like i said earlier...

who cares? the introduction to the strategy specifically mentioned NOT building raks or titans, and lo and behold the very first battle they put screenies of to demonstrate their 'strategy' shows a stack of titans with uber minifacts on them.

totally pointless.

What about the other battles?

I sent an e-mail to csarmi as well, hope he has something to say.

[asandir]

that would depend on the map I would think, but it wouldn't be easy I would think .... remember also that he had 5 of them! 1 in first week, 2 each week after .... so by my maths the initial dwelling would be needed in week 3!

[Shauku]

Sir_T. It said the strategy doesn't need Titans, and the fight you are referring to had no Rakshasas so they have been skipped. If you get the money, sure you will build Colossi->Titans rather than just sit on the money. Common sence is allowed, and actually recommended.

Someone do care about strategies in a strategy game, for your information.

[Sir_Toejam]

my point is if you are going to say you can win with low level creatures only... why on earth show screenies from battles with titans?

I don't know what the hell kinda map he was playing on, but to have 5 titans with full minifacts THAT early in the game seems pretty unrealistic, besides.

the who cares part was as to how the player managed to get the titans so early to begin with, as it sure doesn't happen on most of the maps i have played.

saying to focus on magic instead of might for academy was always a given after patch 1.2, I even remember the thread one of the mods here made about trying out magic strategies instead of golems/gremlins early on.

as to skipping raks, hell I always do that, again, nothing new there.

Instead, i pump up the defense and offense and speed on the djinn.

really, i did read the whole thing and the comments, and not only did i see nothing new, i DID see a whole lot of inconsistencies.

[Banedon]

my point is if you are going to say you can win with low level creatures only... why on earth show screenies from battles with titans?

I don't know what the hell kinda map he was playing on, but to have 5 titans with full minifacts THAT early in the game seems pretty unrealistic, besides.

What about the other battles?