Tactics Skill Very Poorly Done

[shep61]

It's very frustrating when something that works on one version is undone in the next. That is what they have done with "tactics":
1) First, you now have to use up a skill point to just get the ability to arrange your troops. Why? This is new to HOMMVI. I have no problem with the extra area being a skill up, but why the basic ability to arrange?
2) #1 might be OK, if there was any intelligence in the arrangement done automatically, but no. It just spreads out every stack evenly across the field. This means that you have to use your first move to get any benefit from abilities like Sentinel's "guard" and to protect ranged units. You are already losing the battle if you use your first move to arrange your units, so you would never do this.
3) Once you have used the skill point and have the ability to arrange your troops, the game forces you to arrange them in EVERY battle! This has to be the most tedious part of the game. Why can't the arrangement from the previous battle be the starting point for the next battle? That's how it was in HOMMV!
There was clearly no thought put into this. It would have been so easy just to leave it alone and have it the same as HOMMV!

[maltz]

I heard that patch 1.2 will be able to memorize the previous battle layout.

[shep61]

That would be great. Funny that it takes a patch to get it back to what the previous version already did.....

[Macros the Black]

Looking at it from a non-gameplay point of view, I can definately see how an army without a tactically inclined commander would be disorganised in every battle. Imagine an Orc army for instance, who just walk up to an enemy without any for-thought and just start attacking. Or when you get ambushed or attacked and you had no guard to warn you about it. In either case, your army would be a mess.

Gameplay-wise, I agree that it's annoying that the game doesn't AT LEAST remember your previous setup.

[hellegennes]

You cannot apply reason or excuses to a game, when something is impractical. In the real world, a lot of things happen but this is not what you want from the game. This isn't Sims and even Sims isn't RL. If something detracts from the fun, I don't care if it's realistic or not.

[wimfrits]

Looking at it from a non-gameplay point of view, I can definately see how an army without a tactically inclined commander would be disorganised in every battle.

True. Yet, currently without the tactics skill the army is organised in a more or less fixed pattern depending on the types and number of creature stacks. Blackhole's tactics instead of the player's

[Kristo]

Older Heroes games didn't have the Tactics skill (H1 didn't even have skills) but we did just fine without it. The best you could do was pick between a few preset formations. H5 was unique in that everybody effectively got Tactics for free.

[shep61]

A few preset formations would be fine, especially if they were designed to take advantage of units with skills that depended on the formation, like "shield" in Haven. I could live with that.

I'm not clear on the previous point about bad battle commanders having their troops in poor formation. That's the point. A good commander in real life would not be ambushed with his ranged troops in front or his troops in scattered formation....... I would like the ability to be a good commander........

[jigsaw2008]

I heard that patch 1.2 will be able to memorize the previous battle layout.

Yes. it memorizes the previous battle layout.
I think it is a good feature a hero without tactics to have his troops in random battle positions. This makes a battle more enjoyable and the game more strategic. I think in the previous series of the game tactics was a skill useful in might factions. Yes it was good and for defence strategies but I think that most players arrange their troops in a similar way that it is usually predictable by the opponents.
Now, the players can't predict how their opponents arrange their troops because it is random and so this make the game less boring with a lot choices to make. I think in H6 the tactics skill is a defence skill rather than attack skill that allows you to protect some creatures especially in tactics II.

[hellegennes]

Older Heroes games didn't have the Tactics skill (H1 didn't even have skills) but we did just fine without it. The best you could do was pick between a few preset formations. H5 was unique in that everybody effectively got Tactics for free.

Ahem... hello! Heroes 1 didn't have initiative and the formation was simply in the order of your hero's slots (i.e. the first slot would be the top unit).

And what you are all talking about? The positions in H6 are not random at all. You can either arrange them to your liking by changing their position in the hero's slots, only they way large creatures are arranged can mess things up.

[Ell1e]

Can you clarify this please? I didn't notice the slots had anything to do with the random placement, I always thought it had to do with army size (how many slots are filled) and shooter/melee.

That's what I've observed so far: Shooters get placed in the back row (unless they're upgraded Haven), small melee in the front row. If you only have a small army, like two or three slots, they'll be grouped together in the middle, bigger armies spread out more, two shooters will be placed as far away from each other as possible.

For example, if you have the three basic necropolis troops, skeleton, ghoul and ghost, the ghouls will always be in the middle, the skeletons stand behind them and the ghosts are a bit further away. Splitting the skeletons in two stacks will place the skeletons on opposite sides of the battlefield, about two squares away from the end, with the ghouls and ghosts guarding one stack each.

[Elvin]

The placement used to be bugged in earlier versions hence the complaints.

[wimfrits]

I think it is a good feature a hero without tactics to have his troops in random battle positions. This makes a battle more enjoyable and the game more strategic.

As said earlier; there is nothing random about troop positioning. Without the tactics skill troops are organized in a fixed pattern. Blackhole's shot at guessing what the player likes.
Personally, I don't like Blackhole's guess at all. If my slot choice decided troop positioning (like in previous games), my army would be 250% more effective than it is now. And then the tactics skill would increase effectiveness with another 50%. That's fine for a single skill.

Now, because of Blackhole troop positioning for a hero without tactics, this single skill increases my potential with 300%. Tactics often makes the difference between total defeat and flawless victory. That's just too much for a single skill.

[Mirez]

I agree tactics is a must on some factions (haven) but I can do fine without when playing stronghold.

[hellegennes]

Can you clarify this please? I didn't notice the slots had anything to do with the random placement, I always thought it had to do with army size (how many slots are filled) and shooter/melee.

That's what I've observed so far: Shooters get placed in the back row (unless they're upgraded Haven), small melee in the front row. If you only have a small army, like two or three slots, they'll be grouped together in the middle, bigger armies spread out more, two shooters will be placed as far away from each other as possible.

For example, if you have the three basic necropolis troops, skeleton, ghoul and ghost, the ghouls will always be in the middle, the skeletons stand behind them and the ghosts are a bit further away. Splitting the skeletons in two stacks will place the skeletons on opposite sides of the battlefield, about two squares away from the end, with the ghouls and ghosts guarding one stack each.

Yes. Let's say you have a ghoul, a skeleton and a vampire. Try switching them in the hero's slots and you will see that they switch in combat. Not randomly. If you switch skeletons for liches in their slots, their positions will be switched in battles. The only thing amiss here is that units which take up 4 blocks instead of one, cannot be easily switched with small units. The army positioning WILL change, just not in an exact manner, if you have a full lineup.

To clarify even more, let's say you have Vampires in top corner, then Liches, Skeletons and Fate Spinners. Try and change the latter with the vampires and they won't switch, because the liches occupy the next block. Instead, Liches will be put first, then skeletons, the spiders and then vampires.

In order for the formation to hold, you should not garrison your hero or the slots will automatically rearrange. Instead, you have to drag and drop new units to your army.

Note that the slots do not have a standard sequence, at least as far as I have noticed. You have to first see the initial formation and then make changes. When you add units in previosuly empty slots, the formation changes.

If the server lets me play, I may post pictures.