Unread postby Qurqirish Dragon » 03 Jun 2007, 14:51
Since my last post, I have gone through two more nature missions. The "save the tigers" mission was interesting, and I focussed mainly on getting a strong army, as Elwin was still not quite strong enough to handle neutrals on his own, and the castles had huge forces. Fortunately, portals of summoning were constructable in this map, so I was able to play with the huge number of troops available. Unfortunately, I found most of the extra creatures useless, so I just let the summoning power build up and purchased only the stronger ones. Indeed, I only hired water elementals, wasp-worts, and mantises from the portal. I found that leprechauns are only useful for the fortune spell, but since they can only cast it once, I much prefer to have elwin cast fortune directly, and use the creature stack for a better force. Even more so once I learned mass furtune.
I continued with the one-hero, six-stacks army, to get myself up to maximum level (which occurred only one or two battles before the end of the map, and I cleared out everything) This caused a little back-tracking, but fairly early, I have enough creatures stored in the towns that I could defend any of them without returning.
Once again, the final battle was anticlimactic, as I fought the necromancer outside his town - making it very easy for my ranged troops to mop the floor with him. The battle didn't even last 2 full rounds!
Map 3 was the artifact quest, and had very little to do. Indeed, I cleared off everything and only gained 3 of the possible 6 levels during the map (and one of THOSE was from a treek of knowledge!) Fortunately, I did get expert life magic from one of those levels, so I picked up mass healing and regeneration. I haven't used them yet, but they are there. This map also began the solo-hero adventure. With my expert summoning skill, and summon spells calling 13 elementals at a shot, I didn't need to hire any troops until near the end of the map (I don't think I even needed them then, but with hundreds of thousands of gold, might as well by the 100 waspworts or the 20 mantices that had been gathering in the 6 towns, right?)
Thus, I found the main strength of the preserve. I though the summoning portal was it, but the summoning spells in nature magic make even those creatures superfluous. Perhaps a might-nature hero would have made the opposite true, as with a small magic supply, the stronger creatures would be more important.
I will say that from the magic side, all three types I have played so far play very similarly. They each have one or two spells and an abilitiy that dominate. (for life, it was resurrection skill and guardian angel/mass heal; for order it is charm an the illusion spells; for nature it is summoning and summoning spells- particularly the summons for my preferred creatures above)
Hopefull in the mext map I will finally be able to get level 4 troops. Although the level 3s are nice, only the level 2 elves actually became a normal part of my force. Mostly summonned and creature-portalled troops were more useful. But this looks more like a flaw with the campaign. The creature portal lets you get level 3 and 4 troops, while the towns have only allowed (generally) one level-3 troop, and no 4s.
I think I am almost ready to give my final verdict on H4, but I will refrain until I have finished all the campaigns. However, I may be making fewer reports here. Likely one after map 1 of each of the remaining campaigns, and one at the end of each.
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