Are you really hyped?

[Elvin]

I only played hotseat back then but remember well enough the possibilities, combat had less options and variety. Its only 'advantage' was possibility of more than one heroes on the battlefield.

[Metathron]

More than one hero on the battlefield was a huge tactical advantage, allowing you to combine several spells in a turn, among other things. There was also the wonderful line of sight preventing shooters from attacking a hidden stack, simultaneous retaliation was also something that made a lot of sense to me, and so on and so forth.

[TheUndeadKing]

More than one hero on the battlefield was a huge tactical advantage, allowing you to combine several spells in a turn, among other things. There was also the wonderful line of sight preventing shooters from attacking a hidden stack, simultaneous retaliation was also something that made a lot of sense to me, and so on and so forth.

QFT.

combat had less options and variety

Care to elaborate a bit more?

[Elvin]

It's simple really, let's take sylvan.

H4 one had no retaliation sprites, double attacking wolves, first striking tigers or elves, bliding unicorns or always retaliating griffins and absolutely amazing phoenixes or kinda nice faerie dragons.. Plus creature portal where the only choices seemed to be water elementals, waspwarts, mantises and maybe fire elementals. From your lineup you'd have 5 units with griffins/elves hard to build and faerie dragons pretty inferior to phoenixes - leading to less options at times. Access to nature, chaos and life magic if I'm correct.

Now H6 sylvan. More units, more specials on every single one of them. More spell/unit or synergy between units like dryads healing treants, sprites cleansing arcanes or druids using endurance on savage treants that (indirectly) boosted their attack, pristines receiving sprite/hero light spells, druid channeling allowing for high spellpower magic schools etc.
Ranger can effectively use every single magic school effectively as opposed to being forced to summoning and MAYBE something else. Sure you could pick other hero classes for that in tavern but they could hint your plans all the same, you could never know with an H5 ranger.

His units could be tough or frail, damaging or not, build focusing on army or on hero spells. You can go full frontal charge and slaughter opponent in 1-2 turns, you can play defensively, you can use a warmachine build, you can rain down imbued spells on 3 targets ar a time, curse, buff, summon, destroy. Avenger alone and its perks offer new possibilities that H4 never had.

Did H4 not have many options also? Sure. But not nearly there.

[Avonu]

Now H6 sylvan. More units, more specials on every single one of them. More spell/unit or synergy between units like dryads healing treants, sprites cleansing arcanes or druids using endurance on savage treants that (indirectly) boosted their attack, pristines receiving sprite/hero light spells, druid channeling allowing for high spellpower magic schools etc.

Good to know that Sylvan will be in HVI explansion but bad that it will be the same Sylvan as in HV.

Ranger can effectively use every single magic school

Good luck with using destruction magic with Ranger, even with druids spell points boost.

[Elvin]

Lol sorry about that!

[Dalai]

It's simple really, let's take sylvan.

H4 one had no retaliation sprites, double attacking wolves, first striking tigers or elves, bliding unicorns or always retaliating griffins and absolutely amazing phoenixes or kinda nice faerie dragons.. Plus creature portal where the only choices seemed to be water elementals, waspwarts, mantises and maybe fire elementals. From your lineup you'd have 5 units with griffins/elves hard to build and faerie dragons pretty inferior to phoenixes - leading to less options at times. Access to nature, chaos and life magic if I'm correct.

Now H6 sylvan. More units, more specials on every single one of them. More spell/unit or synergy between units like dryads healing treants, sprites cleansing arcanes or druids using endurance on savage treants that (indirectly) boosted their attack, pristines receiving sprite/hero light spells, druid channeling allowing for high spellpower magic schools etc.
Ranger can effectively use every single magic school effectively as opposed to being forced to summoning and MAYBE something else. Sure you could pick other hero classes for that in tavern but they could hint your plans all the same, you could never know with an H5 ranger.

His units could be tough or frail, damaging or not, build focusing on army or on hero spells. You can go full frontal charge and slaughter opponent in 1-2 turns, you can play defensively, you can use a warmachine build, you can rain down imbued spells on 3 targets ar a time, curse, buff, summon, destroy. Avenger alone and its perks offer new possibilities that H4 never had.

Did H4 not have many options also? Sure. But not nearly there.

Even if Nature in H4 had only 3 units, it would tactically be far more diverse due to large battlefield. Even if Nature had no units at all AND a tiny battlefield (yes, I mean h5 batllefield), just diversity of heroes creates a way lot more tactical choices than the whole H5 system. Sorry if you happened to miss that.

[Elvin]

If you say so.

[Metathron]

Personally, I wouldn't put either game's (sorceress/sylvan) creatures above the other's. I think it would be fair to say that HoMM IV has the edge when it comes to heroes on the battlefield, whereas the greater diversity of HoMM V stems from its skill system.

Allow me to take a moment and engage in some reverie: A perfect HoMM game for me would be one with heroes on the battlefield + simultaneous retaliation + line of sight (HoMM IV), the polish and balance of HoMM III, the skill system and hero/skill/creature synergies of HoMM V, and the atmosphere/music of HoMM II & IV. Ah, one day, maybe.

[Blocks100]

I'm cautiously optimistic about this new Heroes game. There's a lot to admire about Black Hole's take on the franchise. The new Harpy is the finest looking unit I've seen in any HOMM game, and the ability to convert towns shows they are listening to fans.

On the flip side, some of the other units look a little over-engineered (Enraged Cyclops, anyone?) and simplifying the build structures in towns for the sake of 'accessibility' seems a backwards step.

And while the map does look more zoomed out than HOMMV, it still doesn't quite deliver that 'I'm ruling an Empire!" buzz than was so fantastic about HOMMIII.

Overall, Black Hole deserve plaudits for breathing life back into a franchise which I thought was dead and buried. Hope they give us a demo soon!

[Infiltrator]

Allow me to take a moment and engage in some reverie: A perfect HoMM game for me would be one with heroes on the battlefield + simultaneous retaliation + line of sight (HoMM IV), the polish and balance of HoMM III, the skill system and hero/skill/creature synergies of HoMM V, and the atmosphere/music of HoMM II & IV. Ah, one day, maybe.

Have you played Heroes 3 against (skilled) human opponents? On a high level - where randomness is minimized via specific maps, balance was the place where heroes 3 lacked the most. For example, in a 1v1 scenario with 2 skilled humans, picking Castle and Fortress, the Castle would win most of the games. Fortress would only have a chance if Castle made some costly mistakes or had horrendous artifacts.

Several friends of mine, one who owns an internet cafe named Heroes, have fine tuned a map for absolute balance, and guess what - the fortress guy would get a free cape of velocity at the start (among other things) to stay competent with the other factions. Initial testing has proven that even then, Fortress was a masochistic choice.

A perfect HoMM game would, in my humble opinon consist of:

Combat system, polish and art style from H3, diversity and tactical choices from H4 (all that it ever had, imo), Music quality from H2, Spell and skill system similar to H5.

[Metathron]

Have you played Heroes 3 against (skilled) human opponents? On a high level - where randomness is minimized via specific maps, balance was the place where heroes 3 lacked the most. For example, in a 1v1 scenario with 2 skilled humans, picking Castle and Fortress, the Castle would win most of the games. Fortress would only have a chance if Castle made some costly mistakes or had horrendous artifacts.

Several friends of mine, one who owns an internet cafe named Heroes, have fine tuned a map for absolute balance, and guess what - the fortress guy would get a free cape of velocity at the start (among other things) to stay competent with the other factions. Initial testing has proven that even then, Fortress was a masochistic choice.

While I have played hotseat games on occasion, for me HoMM has always been a single player experience, so I have not had the chance to experience what you say; I also haven't invested myself in HoMM III quite as much as the previous and later titles, but I did always have a "hunch" that Fortress was the weakest faction, and because of that underdog status I would often pick it, because winning would be so much the sweeter. But of course, as is always the case, playing against the AI can never be as challenging as playing against a human opponent. But I don't really mind or feel like I have missed out; challenge is only one part of the appeal of HoMM for me, and not the biggest either.

A perfect HoMM game would, in my humble opinon consist of:

Combat system, polish and art style from H3, diversity and tactical choices from H4 (all that it ever had, imo), Music quality from H2, Spell and skill system similar to H5.

I like that this thread got us to thinking in this vein. I might just make a separate thread out of it & see what other folks think.

[Kranyum]

A perfect HoMM game would, in my humble opinon consist of:

Combat system, polish and art style from H3, diversity and tactical choices from H4 (all that it ever had, imo), Music quality from H2, Spell and skill system similar to H5.

This. With the exception of the spell system which I think H4 also did it better.
I agree the skill system was best in H5.

[mr.hackcrag]

Music quality from H2

Oh, how I long for this.

[ThunderTitan]

art style from H3

WRONG!!!!!

H2 all they way baby.

[Infiltrator]

art style from H3

WRONG!!!!!

H2 all they way baby.

In an ideal world.

Realistically, next installments are going to be in 3D. Realistically, they could NEVER transition the H2 art style to 3D properly.

[ThunderTitan]

Yeah, i too didn't believe i'd ever see 3D that looks as good as well done 2D... then i saw Anno 1404... i thought it was 2D for a second even.

Hell, Heroes on that engine would totally rock.

[Infiltrator]

That looks a lot more like H3 than H2..

[Darkström]

Yeah, i too didn't believe i'd ever see 3D that looks as good as well done 2D... then i saw Anno 1404... i thought it was 2D for a second even.

Hell, Heroes on that engine would totally rock.

Wow, that game looks like a painting.

[Tress]

To answer question.
Hyped .. well enaugh to keep me interested what will game bring. I have my reservations on new features like resources or castle conversion as it is so unhomm like but I am willing to give it a chance, after all I can always play homm3 or 5 for more classic style game play anyway.