I. General Strategies – written for a medium-sized map under normal difficulty.
1. Faction Overview. Here you will discuss in a general sense the biggest strengths of your faction, and also weaknesses you need to compensate for. Included here may be a brief highlight of skills unique to your hero, or what your army is good at, generally speaking. I would keep this section very brief. Paragraph or so.
Necropolis :
Faction OverView :
Well i've got the job of talking about the clearly overpowered necro faction , Like it was in h3 (and possibly in h4 i never played online h4 so hard to really say ) Necro is once again the strongest faction generally on most maps but now its beatable and less dominant then before , Especially with the revolutianry changes brought in patches 1.5 & 2.1 which clearly decreases necro's power in large maps but maybe in small rushing maps this change has actually strengthen them.
Faction Strengths:
*Virtually unlimited mana with mark of necromancer
*Necromancy getting more units
*All heroes starting with raise dead spell
*Immunity to mind spells
Faction Weaknesses:
*Weak faction at start(i mean really in the begining , on day 1 with just skellies and low mana every fight is hard )
*Huge resources demans
*No moral effect (can be good but i'll give moral a more plus affect then minus )
2. Build strategy. What are the biggest-priority builds for your faction, separated by week. I.e., what do you go for first week, second week. You can outline it day by day or in a more general sense.
One good thing about necro is money is a little less priority than other towns so you can put off that town hall for week 2 most times.
ok so first 2 things you wanna get are skelleton archers to help creeping and magic guild level 1, Since necro are the ultimate magic town (same as dungeon )
As last or pre last building for week 1 is pillar of bones ofcourse . To get more dark energy and raise more units from battle.
2nd week is for getting all dwellings , Don't forget to build Shrine of the Netherworld early so you tranform the units you saved from 2nd non necro heroes , Or other units you got in some way.
Try to get Forlorn Hall for Wights on this week altough on some maps that can be hard to do .
3. Creeping. What is the best way for your faction to eliminate neutrals while at the same time minimizing losses. Divide your discussion into flying neutrals, shooting neutrals, and slow walkers. Is there a priority you should give to mines/artifacts/treasure chests, etc.
OK Necro is the ultimate creeping town .
Against Flying units , You wanna use your ghost/spectres block your skelleton archers and use magic / skelleton power to finish them off , Use raise dead if block is dead to get more blocking time. (ghosts are the perfect blocking units of the game! )
Against shooting neutrals , I'll devide into ones with mana and those who don't have , Against units with mana all you need is 1 big stack of spectres use destructive/summoning to kill + move in the spectres to regenerate units dead from the mana of the units , Most factions fear magic creatures , Necro can handle most magic creatures easily!, Use raise dead on spectres if needed for some reason..
Against normal shooting units you might wanna bring your skellies too to help kill them , Again cuz of raise dead and mark of necromancer no need to worry about losses since you can ressurect all you want.
Against slow walkers , Letz talk about the big slow walkers like treants , hydras ,fire/magma dragons .
Here you wanna bring 1 or 2 single stacks of wraiths , With harm touch you can eliminate alot of these slow massive hard to kill units before they reach your lines.
4. Hero Development. Self explanatory.
Hero Development , Your priorities are like this :
1) Get Mark of the necromancer - Best ability there is ,Simply unlimited mana , Combine that with raise dead and you are almost invincible.
Now i can emphsize how important this skill is, You must get it asap .
To do this letz talk a little about picking out skills ,
Each level up we get 2 skills + 2 ablities offered , Our aim is to get mark of necromancer fastest
To do this with a necro hero is simple you need To not take any new skill until you got mark of necromancer , Now this might be hard to do (some good skills like logs or summoning and ect are hard to resist from taking )
But since it is the most vital ability you must have it , Latly i made a mistake of not doing this and got almost entire game with necro without it , SLOWED ME THE HELL DOWN. (I don't do these mistakes often
)2) Get summoning magic , Not only a great school also for necro is very important so your raise dead spell is more powerfull which is huge in creeping.
3) Pump summoning to expert - At basic is not very good at Expert this school is lethal.
Other 2 skills necro can use well cuz they are superior magic town are
Sorcery and Enlightment ..
If you interested in getting another school of magic (Altough for me summoning can be enough sometimes.. ) Get destructive ofcourse , In that path you can get cold death skill which can be nice to do a little damage each time.
That leaves us with 1 more skill , I would take logistics , Maybe Attack/Defense on some circumstances.
5. Player versus Player. I realize that some of you may not play versus other humans, but you may want to address how playing against another human changes things. For instance – winterfate I like your sprites/hunter strategy for neutrals. I’ll have to try it! But… it would probably never work on a human opponent. Things like this should be discussed.
Well Necro actually don't need to think much about other player strategy..
Using summoning magic which can't be countered ( Maybe need to worry with using pheonix if your playing another necro town or maybe academy too since academy can get banish skill (sylvan can also get it but frankly getting summoning magic for them is useless since their low magic power )
So basic strategy is rush everything get utopias first and everything first and just win
Hehe yes necro are overpowered .6. Tactics. Once you are on the battlefield, how do you win a battle against an evenly matched (human and AI) opponent? What creature abilities do you rely on most. Address this in a general sense. Faction-specifics will be discussed below.
Battle field tactics for necro :
archer skellies - very normal shooters not much more.
plague zombies - If they actually move and you can hit something, GO FOR IT
spectres - Here you have some tactics , place them in the front line try to get them closest as you think your opponent's unit with mana will be , Then go attack it by doing so you both drain his mana and making him use less magic and also regenerate some of the spectres lost while moving to attack it .
Vampire lord - once you lost some try to attack the unit with the lowest defense that way you do most damage and ressurect most vampires..
Archlich - Awesome spell caster First spell you wanna generally use is decay to get as much power behind it (as at first your stack is biggest ) but when you at lower size suffering can reallly damage the units attack , And weakness in the end especially for a unit with high damage output difference..
After 3 turns archlich can really cripple an opponent's High power unit..
Wraith - AWESOME unit!! , on the battlefield you should place it in a place that it will be most freely to move since it is a big unit doesn't fly and can be blocked from moving easily..
Your aim is harm touch on mass HP and defense units , Or since it also has nice damage get ride of pesky low level units..
Now letz talk a little about harm touch many people don't really understand how effective it is , Not only it can kill a unit instantly One of its less unknown and used action is it completly dispells unit positive spells!! , Letz take a scenario where you oppoent is haven with a monster 20-30 defense ,your units do little damage to anything you opponent has so you rely heavy on magic power , But your opponent ofcourse cast magic immunity on his most vital unit , What will you do? Move in your wraith , use harm touch and boom magical immunity is gone and when its your hero's turn you impolsion that unit's ass ..
Don't ever overlook how strong that ability is.Spectral dragon - Well since they cast weakness try to attack units with high damage output difference .
7. Map-specific Strategies. Obviously, the type of map will dictate to a large extent what your strategy should be. Address how a small map or XL map will change your strategy. Also, difficulty setting: how do you win on heroic? Other things you could address are: terrain, time limits, etc.
On small maps
II. Faction Specific Strategies.
1-7. In part II of your article, you will address how your faction matches up against other factions. You should address each other faction separately, under individual headings. I.e., a section for inferno, haven, etc., etc. You may also want to include a heading for your own factions (i.e., how would you play against someone also playing your faction!) How do you rely on your strengths and compensate for weaknesses against the strengths and weaknesses of other factions. You should speculate on what the weaknesses of the other factions are, and how you exploit them, both strategically (castle/town development, troop movement, etc.) and tactically (i.e., winning battles). In discussing battles, assume armies of relatively equal numerical strength. You can also consider different scenarios, such as whether certain terrains favor you or your opponent, whether you have tier 7 creatures, etc. In these cases, think about how you play against a human opponent.
