Worst race in Heroes 5

[Mightor Magic]

You mean you will be able to upgrade only 7 units per week? That is kind of worthless... I mean... training only 7 archers per week is kind of useless...

Ok I agree you can upgrade stronger units... but an extra paladin won't do much difference, and those training buidings are pretty expensive to justify this kind of nerf. Personally I would like it if Training got nerfed only early on, stopping the dangerous rush haven could have done. But late game,I don't find upgrading all peasants into archers so powerful...

A more interesting nerf would have been having a limit of each unit per week. Say for archers: 10 archers + 10*number_of_the_current_week per week and for champions: 1 champion + no_of_week per week.... that way the power you gain by uprading would scale. Haven's strength lies in its army. And if haven can't raise a superior army when fighthing for example a strong spell-casting hero, their racial would be weak.

Another thing I am not satisfied with is the fact that when you train an upgraded unit into a higher rank you pay just as much you would of payed for a non-upgraded unit. I mean: if you want to upgrade a priest into an cavalier you pay just as much you would pay for training an Inquisitor, even if you payed already some extra cash to upgrade the priest into an Inquisitor. I think this should be looked into, and you should pay less money when training an upgraded unit...

You could try training melee Swordsmen into melee/ranged Priests. And why would you complain about training upgraded units if you're only training peasants now?

But I love the idea that Training Archers is synonymous with Training. No wonder I think Haven is the weakest Faction as I actually try to do something with Training other than training peasants. And I try to use Counterstrike as a skill as well.

Maybe Training and Counterstrike should be switched, creating Advanced Training and Expert Training. Haven seems to be headed in that direction anyway.

[okrane]

Never said I was only training peasants... When I had the money, I trained all that I could. Still I was saying that training peasants into archers really helps whereas training priests into champions is not too effective since you cannot train very many of them(due to the high costs). If a limit is to be imposed(which is really small i.e. 7 units per week), I think it would be wise to lessen the costs.

Training archers was the most cost efective thing to do... and I do not find it overpowered after a certain time. Early game is the only problem. So if this is to be nerfed I hope it becomes time dependant, and that end-game Haven gains back its training power.

about upgraded units: it is not logical to pay the same amount when you train upgraded or non upgraded ones, since you paid more for upgrades. I think you should get back the extra money you paid for upgrading....

I think it would be interesting to have some changes like:

a) make counterstrike the knight racial(only the retal stuff), and the hero would be able to train only if he has the Expert Training perk.

b) limit the training possibilities by the level of Counterstrike
(i.e.
Basic can upgrade only peasants into archers,
Advanced Archers into Swordmen and reduces cost,
Expert: Swordmen into priests and another cost reduction,
Ultimate priests into Champions and again cost reduction)

In this case the Expert Trainer perk should be revised(maybe give a spell like the Counterstrike from H3 that increased the number of retals).

[Gaidal Cain]

about upgraded units: it is not logical to pay the same amount when you train upgraded or non upgraded ones, since you paid more for upgrades. I think you should get back the extra money you paid for upgrading....

Of course it's "logical"- the priests have only recieved training to become Inquisitors, which has very little to do with the skills needed to be a succesful cavalier. You could argue that it isn't "fair", but that's a whole other thing.

[okrane]

about upgraded units: it is not logical to pay the same amount when you train upgraded or non upgraded ones, since you paid more for upgrades. I think you should get back the extra money you paid for upgrading....

Of course it's "logical"- the priests have only recieved training to become Inquisitors, which has very little to do with the skills needed to be a succesful cavalier. You could argue that it isn't "fair", but that's a whole other thing.

yeah right... and if we follow the same logic, creatures can fit all in a little place we like to call stack, wizards can create one miniartifact for no matter the stack's size, they can consume artifacts to resurect creatures, warlocks cannot shape their magic into not harming their own creatures, Necropolis towns can turn unicorns(which are some damn horses) into liches or treants(some trees) into wraiths... and the list can continue...
Asking yourself too many questions will won't get you far enough... it's just a video game... so I was saying it is logical, game-wise (i.e. balance wise, fair - if you wish)

[Gaidal Cain]

Exactly. So one tries to not rely on "logic" as the sole reason for doing something and instead invokes the much stronger "gameplay" argument.

[Jolly Joker]

Even in gameplay logic it makes complete sense NOT to get any money back, because that would be like "changing back" into the unupgraded units. Why doing it only for training then?
There should be some elements in the game where planning matters and you cannot do what you like and reconsider later without any consequences.

[okrane]

Personally I see this as plain stupid. I mean I am more than sure that Nival overlooked this aspect, in stead of making solid gamplay decision as you are trying to proove.

Take the training in H3 for example. When training sharpshooters or Enchanters the cost would scale if the unit was upgraded. No one complained, no one argued, all found it very good, and logical.

About planning... ok... you can argue about it in these terms, but I don't see the usefulness of introducing such an extra difficulty. You buy your inquisitors, you go fighting, you come back 3 days after, split one and have a champion...

There should be some elements in the game where planning matters and you cannot do what you like and reconsider later without any consequences.

Well, the fact that there should, doesn't mean that there are as many of them. With artificier you get back your resources, you don't have to choose between the creatures you build in your town(like in H4), you can go quick combat and if not satisfied replay the battle. So if there aren't such decisions to make in the game in general, why bring up this one? it's not that important... it is a really particular game aspect, which you use rarely, concerning just a single town type...

By the way... you haven't answered to the rest of my post....

[Jolly Joker]

There are certainly more ways to do things, but unless there's something very obviously wrong with the existing ones I don't see any reason to change things. The only thing that was generally agreed upon to be wrong was the chance to rush with hordes of Archers or marksmen early in the game, which has been corrected. There might have been other ways to correct things, but I don't think that there is another (as in even more) change necessary. If you start changing things just because it's a change that COULD be done, the game will never be finished, so I'm on principal against changes that are not strictly necessary.

[Mytical]

We really are getting off the topic again. Haven is not a bad town, in fact they can be really powerful. Personally I only train unupgraded units so I have never had the problem of upgraded training. Now a lot of people can make cases for their least favorite faction. Since essentially that is your worse faction (ie one you rather not play) lets here some of those

Edit : Made a little more friendly sounding.

[okrane]

There are certainly more ways to do things, but unless there's something very obviously wrong with the existing ones I don't see any reason to change things. The only thing that was generally agreed upon to be wrong was the chance to rush with hordes of Archers or marksmen early in the game, which has been corrected. There might have been other ways to correct things, but I don't think that there is another (as in even more) change necessary. If you start changing things just because it's a change that COULD be done, the game will never be finished, so I'm on principal against changes that are not strictly necessary.

All I was saying was training had good parts and bad parts. The bad part was the unstopable rush haven could do. That should have been changed. The good part was it supplied a good army later on, and it became a good strong point of the Haven alignment. That, being a good thing it should have stayed. And that's why I gave a solution in the page before this one...
about training upgraded units: I find it to be fair to get back your resources... if academy gets back all of them, why shouldn't haven?

You know there is a simple way arround this right? For instance, I never upgraded my peasants (and why should I, the gold they supply is much more valuable then the advantage the upgrade gives in combat). Now since the higher tiers are more expensive..just hire the unupgraded units to train. If nothing else, upgrade a few of those peasents all the way to the place you want them (though this is much more expensive). Since training puts them as unupgraded you can just use unupgraded units to train. Especially if they are going to start capping how many can be trained. While I agree that loosing the money you spent on an upgrade is bad, there is a way arround it, so on the list of bad things that need fixing I think it would be low.

Frankly it is not so complicated to change this... I mean it can be done in a few minutes by one single programmer, by modifying some constants... Why should we go around it. And it costs very much to upgrade a peasant into a champion... I think it is double the cost of upgrading a priest... I did go around it when I played.. but this raises still the issue...

[Jolly Joker]

There are certainly more ways to do things, but unless there's something very obviously wrong with the existing ones I don't see any reason to change things. The only thing that was generally agreed upon to be wrong was the chance to rush with hordes of Archers or marksmen early in the game, which has been corrected. There might have been other ways to correct things, but I don't think that there is another (as in even more) change necessary. If you start changing things just because it's a change that COULD be done, the game will never be finished, so I'm on principal against changes that are not strictly necessary.

All I was saying was training had good parts and bad parts. The bad part was the unstopable rush haven could do. That should have been changed. The good part was it supplied a good army later on, and it became a good strong point of the Haven alignment. That, being a good thing it should have stayed. And that's why I gave a solution in the page before this one...
about training upgraded units: I find it to be fair to get back your resources... if academy gets back all of them, why shouldn't haven?

1) Academy and Haven cannot be compared: you HAVE TO use resources for Academy (there's no way around that); if you wouldn't get resources back you'd never use the artifacts at all, but only in the last possible moment to make them as good as possible.
With Have no one forces you to train an upgraded unit. This is only the case if you have upgraded AND BOUGHT all eligible units - if you can do that a) where's your problem; and b) why did you do it in the first place if you want to upgrade?
2) The good part of training got even better now because the cost-efficiency calculations are more difficult now with the limitations in training, as soon as you have excess money should you train the allowed number of peasants (and I repeat that 7 is the limit only for the basic Training Grounds; the Hall of Heroes adds to that).

[okrane]

1) Academy and Haven cannot be compared: you HAVE TO use resources for Academy (there's no way around that); if you wouldn't get resources back you'd never use the artifacts at all, but only in the last possible moment to make them as good as possible.
With Have no one forces you to train an upgraded unit. This is only the case if you have upgraded AND BOUGHT all eligible units - if you can do that a) where's your problem; and b) why did you do it in the first place if you want to upgrade?

As I said, you buy them, you go fighting, say a Dragon Utopia to get money, then you come back to upgrade them...
I did not say the loss cannot be avoided. I say it is an useless extra difficulty, which I believe it is due to an omision rather than to a premeditated action...

[val-gaav]

The only thing that was generally agreed upon to be wrong was the chance to rush with hordes of Archers or marksmen early in the game, which has been corrected. .

Well I find that the upgrade to paladins is even more game breaking on big maps with several towns, becouse there you can have +6 cavaliers and get a free space in which you can put a 7 level form other castle ....

I would find it to be more reasonable to have a scalable limit like the basic growth of a unit per week

that means trainig only +2 paladins per week or +3 clerics per week and so on ....
but it's just me

The solution applied by Nival corrrects the peasant to marksman yes ... it will be ok with almost all MP maps because those maps are 1 player vs 1 player and in most cases games on them will not last enough long or give as much gold to alllow mass palladin training... Still for people who love long games on big maps with AI players the Haven will be overpowered just becouse of +6 palladins...

[Jolly Joker]

On big maps with "many towns you have other problems as well, most notably Necro being able to convert towns.

In general Heroes V doesen't work well with many towns and no matter the Haven training I wouldn't advise MP playing on maps with a high town density.

For the record, for MP games I would advise either strict random hero playing or a veto-right for each player against one specific hero of the opponent's alignment..

[val-gaav]

For the record, for MP games I would advise either strict random hero playing or a veto-right for each player against one specific hero of the opponent's alignment..

Well IMHO this should not be this way ... the game should be balanced so that there should be no so called "MP rules" .... already the HoMM3 has so many rules that I could not count them with my both hands ......

Uber heroes like Deleb should be nerfed or made campaign only .... It's Nival job to do so ....

On big maps with "many towns you have other problems as well, most notably Necro being able to convert towns.

Yep that is also a problem.... On big maps only those two towns are a good choice ... Now I do not play big maps so it's generally ok with me .... but some people like to play that way .... IMHO the game should be balanced for this also ....

[Jolly Joker]

No, I don't think it is either necessary nor even possible to balance the game for a much broader spectrum. Since MP needs time the majority of MP players will voluntarily settle for smaller maps with less towns because you want to finish games; big maps with many towns have Biiiig save files and things tend to slow down later. It doesn't make much sense to balance the game for things not many will play anyway.

For the veto-right, I don't mean this to correct imbalances, but mainly as a way to discourage mp players from always playing the same faction with the same hero over and over again. The best thing is, of course, random heroes, because that means, it's not enough to learn playing the Inferno using Deleb or maybe Grok, you have to be able to put up a good performance with all heroes, mainly. However, there might be those who don't want to play random heroes, and for those cases there should simply be a rule that an opponent can veto against starting with a certain hero. You can even have two vetos or so, and I would opt for that as soon as heroes are starting with different skill sets (no matter the specialization). In some cases you may simply want to veto against the level one creature specialist, for example, simply because of the creature amount and so on.

Of course I agree with you that the game should have to be played without special rules. Starting conditions allow different setup anyway, though, and I wouldn't see a necessity for a veto at all, if heroes would be picked randomly: some heroes would be stronger than others, maybe, but you wouldn't get, for example, Deleb that often, and in my opinion, since Heroes has a lot of chance elements it's a league play game anyway, where a single game shouldn't have too much importance. If you'd play a league in MP, playing let's say 6 games with each of the 7 towns against the other players of that league, you'd be able to play with 22 players, making two games against each of them. That would lead to a ranking and the winner of such a league wouldn't have 42 wins.

So the main "mistake" here is trying to force out chance elements in order to be able to make more specific statements after having played a much lower number of games, preferably ONE, because HoMM is not such a game.

[Elvin]

On big maps with "many towns you have other problems as well, most notably Necro being able to convert towns.

So ubi can place caps on necromancy and training but can't for an undead converter? There are solutions for balancing larger maps as well though it would take some time and effort which ubi won't spare. Even nerfing some heroes and buffing others could have an impact because as it is now I wouldn't play with random heroes. And I would definitely hate it if there weren't unique heroes as in H4.

[val-gaav]

No, I don't think it is either necessary nor even possible to balance the game for a much broader spectrum. Since MP needs time the majority of MP players will voluntarily settle for smaller maps with less towns because you want to finish games; big maps with many towns have Biiiig save files and things tend to slow down later. It doesn't make much sense to balance the game for things not many will play anyway.

So anyway you say that those who like playing big maps on fe. hot seat do not need balanced game ? and balancing game to a broader spectrum is possible. It is just hard ..... Anyway as for training I knew that it will be a bit too much and overkill just when I read that this will be Haven special ... I did not play the game yet , but still I knew that it was highly possible that this will be inbalanced ... Why? mainly due to my h3 experience .... I just wonder why the training gets a nerf now ??? Why ? after half year the game was published ... It should be done in beta .... heck there should be sb like me in Nival team who would notice the absurdness of this skill just when the idea was proposed ... This is sth that simply makes me doubt a bit about their game balancing ... why to nerf sth now why it was so obvious imba right from the start....

..................................................

Well there are already players on toh who play random heroes and ban the most powerfull ones (even if you get it by random or in tavern you cannot use it as main)

Fallowing this logic I'm pretty sure that eventually if nothing will be changed with for example Deleb then they will be just banned .... The same way logistic , necropolis or diplomacy is banned in h3 ....

I agree with you with the league play .... Sure you shouldn't base a game like heroes on one or few games .... and yes the system is as it is and it's ok if one player has a little advantage over the other one .... but there should be some proportions in it.

However you fail to see that most players play more for fun then points .... For me a game where inferno vs inferno ... we go random heroes and the other side get's deleb is not fun .... If I get Deleb it's also no fun, because it's easy win without chalange .... As you stated time is what is important . Yes and I do not have much time for games myself so when I play I want to enjoy it and not have a easy win or certain loss just because one side gets random Deleb.

To sum up sure there should be some randomness in this game because it's essence of heroes .... however this randomness should not give a big advantage to one player .... Basicly if one get's lucky it should never be more then 60% for win ... and 40% for the other unlucky guy .... the rest is skills and if the other player plays a bit better he may overcome the advantage.... and that is a game I enjoy when my oponent was lucky with sth but I still have a chance to beat him. I like the thing that Nival cares about the balance , changes the towns , racials etc .... It's really a very good thing which 3do almost never did with h3 .... I just hope that they will not come to a conclusion that heroes like Deleb do not need a change because players always may go random

[okrane]

I would like to say that I think a good multiplayer game should not be this random. I mean in multiplayers every player would like to proove he is the best. And randomness brings many problems.
Secondly I want to point out that when making a good playable multi-player game, extra rules should not be necesary. if we need to impose rules that means the game is not balanced. and it is the case of heroes 5.

even so, the introduction of a new option when starting a mp game: something like -ar(all random) will surely help, but as you said getting lucky should not mean wining the game in day 1.

[admira99]

give incorporeal to wraith ..... just kidding