Inferno Strategy Thread

[Banedon]

Depends on the map ofcourse, but in a Heroic first 2 weeks I think a Deleb Inferno against neutrals can only be matched by Dungeon. Switching to Hard would decrease that advantage.

Yes but then you have to get a large advantage from early-game to win the game. I just played this game on Island of Desire, which is a large map with aim to capture a town and hold it for two weeks. There're six players, 3 islands with 2 players on each island, and one more island with the town to capture . Played on heroic, using Necro.

I amazed myself with how smooth Necro early-game is. It's so effective, I moved at essentially one week's speed advantage over some earlier runs with Sylvan. The speed advantage saw me being the one to invade the AI instead of vice versa - my Sylvan runs for example always has the AI invading me, me defeating him and then me invading him. The question then becomes whether or not this speed advantage is worth using Deleb as a hero. To be honest, I don't know. There's a lot to be said for being really fast, but just thinking about what I'm giving up - +20% gated creatures from Nymus for example, essentially a free Gate Master - makes me balk. Also: Deleb is essentially duplicatable if you're lucky and get War Machines, wherupon she would have almost no advantage.

I don't know, right now I've simply let the race rest. I might revisit Inferno again in the future though. Just curious, if you play Inferno with free hero choice, do you go for Deleb?

[Mirez]

no I prefer grokk

[lumpoor]

Unless you are able to hit like 5 more enemy stacks with meteor rain then you would with fireball it's really not worth the mana.
Don't let yourself be fooled by flashy graphics.

Umm, it costs twice as much mana, so you just need to hit twice as many enemies, not to mention it doesn't take as many turns. Of course if I hit 3 enemies with fireball and 5 enemies with meteor shower and it's a long battle, I will of course use fireball

[wimfrits]

Just curious, if you play Inferno with free hero choice, do you go for Deleb?

Yes. But I tend to select heroes on early game effectiveness as I usually get bored after the first 2 to 3 weeks of play

Funny that your Necropolis game ran so smoothly. I think Necropolis is the least able faction in early creeping. What was your general combat strategy?

[Metathron]

Necropolis least able?? I must echo Banedon's thoughts and say creeping with them is very smooth with raise dead, eternal servitude and necromancy. For me they are definitely near, if not at, the top.

[wimfrits]

Note: I'm talking about heroic level only.

A faction needs some kind of edge to deal with high odds fights. Necropolis starts with slow units only without any special feat. Raise dead only compensates for Necro's low stats.

Their edge comes with either vampires or lich masters. With vampires, this is a force based edge and in my experience requires around 15 vampires or 10 vampire lords to run 'sort of smoothly'. Or a couple of Lich masters.
In my games, Necro's smooth running starts in week 3 to 4; if it is able to pull the first 2 weeks off reasonably..

[sylvanllewelyn]

Meteor shower costs twice as much as fireball, yes, but it doesn't need to hit twice as many enemies to make it worthwhile. It's the benefit of hitting your enemies so you can reduce their offensive and defensive potential now, not later.

To say it's not worth it is like saying warlocks should never cast empowered spells because you're paying twice as much mana but only 50% more damage. They even run out of mana after 2 spells, why do it? Don't be silly.

[Mirez]

that's because a warlock tends to have enough mana for multiple spells and because a warlock doesn't get the chance to cast more then 4 times the avarage fight

pit lords however have plenty of time to cast atleast 2 times

[cjlee]

I agree with most of the posters here, including the first one.

Inferno offers a lot of possibilities, but you really need to think and plan. I'm awful at this faction which reflects on my abilities.

Even the simplest battle involves positioning your dogs and horses right, deciding when to gate, using dark magic to out maneuver the enemy, etc.

It's not like Sylvan where you already know: defend archers and druids with trees and unicorns, always cast buffering light spells, etc.