Maciek's H4 Quizzes

[Kalah]

Maciek has sent in a big quiz-series for H4 lovers. The first round can be seen here.

Also note his instructions: "Level 1 heroes in this quiz are taken straight from taverns, so they can only know their starting spell (if any). Higher level heroes can have all the spells they have required magic skills for. Game difficulty is heroic. Try not to reload too much. The questions were all tested in Equilibris although, other than question 5, I think it doesn't matter weather Equilibris is used or not."

[Kalah]

Questions are pouring out, answers are pouring in. It's been a long time since the H4 fans were discussing battle techniques with such verve.

[cjlee]

Okay, here’s a suggestion on how to beat the BDs. I’m rusty at HOMM4 here, please forgive me – I don’t know which order the Black Dragons will attack and I could be absolutely wrong. But if I haven’t become senile and forgotten everything, they normally hit the weakest/ the stack with the lowest retaliation; something significant because in Heroes IV retaliation is done simultaneously. This should mean that Black Dragons will prefer to kill illusions or summons everytime as they hurt less.

The following are probably indispensable regardless of which 4 heroes you use:
Wand of Illusion, Staff of Summoning, Staff of Wizardry, Mage’s Robe (1 for each of 3 spellcasters), Halberd of the Swiftwatch (for the barbarian).

You probably need a Crusader (max morale to start the fight although he is primarily a Nature spellcaster here and should hold the Staff of Summoning); a Warlord (more melee damage); a Nature magic caster who purely summons; a Life or Order magic caster who creates illusions.

These are not that important but you will have inventory space so may as well max out on whatever Maicek lets you have: Ring of Cobra’s Eye to help increase damage; Leprechaun’s Ring for luck; You could give the arrow of stunning, poison arrow, arrow of slaying and barbarian throwing club to a caster.

The ‘logical’ choice, Shield of Order and Armor of Order, don’t work here due to the overwhelming power of one million BDs. Even if you took only 1% damage from them they would still kill a level 70 hero with one attack. Likewise, healing is useless. You can only Resurrect, use Guardian Angel or Divine Intervention to protect your heroes. These are way too mana-expensive so you have to avoid using them by avoiding being hit. Wand of Illusion is for only 1 hero - I don’t want it for all 3 spellcasters because they need to cast other spells periodically.

Assume you have reduced mana costs to just 1 for each summons/ illusion. Let’s say you have 1000 mana on each spellcasting hero. You could probably cast a summoning or illusion spell 1000 times. With 3 spellcasters that’s 3000 times. You’ll get more casts in with Wand of Illusion, but 2 other spellcasters will be buffing periodically so they get fewer illusions/ summons cast. I figure it comes out to around 3000.

Assuming the barbarian kills 10 black dragons (5 dragons x 2 attacks) every turn with the black dragons only attacking the illusions and not getting retaliated, he needs 100000 turns to wipe out BDs.

Your mana cannot be devoted 100% to summoning or illusion. You must open the fight with Mass Fervor to ensure that you can always move before the BDs. You could also use purely Nature and Barbarian heroes to reduce morale penalty and have a stack of morale-boosting artifacts, but I think it’s cutting things a little close here because you really cannot afford to have the dragons move first. I personally think you should have a Nature, an Order and a Life (with Nature) spellcaster.

Since Ring of Greater Negation is not in play, I see no use for a Chaos spellcaster (Confusion) and not much use for a Death caster (no dead to animate). I don’t think a demonologist is useful because Ice Demons freeze their enemies 1/3 of the time for 3 turns (ie can keep Black Dragons out of action 1/3 of the time at best, not enough to justify their minimum 2 mana cost to summon.)

You could increase the number of BDs killed by casting Retribution on your summons/ illusions, but that’s nowhere enough to close the gap between 100000 turns needed by the barbarian and 1500 spells. So you should take it for granted that at some point, you will run out of mana and be forced to flee. But you should have killed 30k black dragons at least.

Returning to your base ‘in disgrace’, you will be restored to full health and mana but have few movement points. So your turn ends for the day. The next day you will sally forth, visit all luck, moral and spell point boosters available and hammer the dragons again.

In HOMM4 there are 28x12= 326days in a year. Killing 30k dragons per day, by the end of the week your enemies should be at 800,000. Population growth of 10% brings them back to 880000. Knock off another 200k in week 2 and you have 680,000 on day 7 which becomes 750,000 in week 3. It won’t take over 2 months to wipe them all out.

If you only have freshly-levelled heroes without any stat boosters, level 40 barbarians are not capable of killing 10 black dragons a turn so my assumptions must be tweaked down and you need the entire year that Maicek gives. If you have the kind of level 40 hero that shows up in most players' games (ie a really powered up barbarian like Dogwoggle or Mongo), you should be able to meet expectations.

[Karmakeld]

with some of these quizes in mind, I'd like some help for a "boss fight " ofr a campaign i'm working on (in equlibris). What I'm looking for, is some ideas for special spell combos or simular special tactic needed to defeat the 'boss', based on the diff. kinds of magic, life/death/chaos.

Players hero is a mage. I'm thinking of giving the oppertunity for the player to choose to carry one of the following books to battle; tome of death, life or chaos. The hero will be limited to casting level 4 spells of any kind.

The boss is gonna be nightmarish person, so I'm think he's gonna have the 'terror' spell. As he's feeding on your fear, he might as well get Ring of Regenration. I'm also thinking of giving the hero 'ward' against which ever kind of magic tome the player chooses (e.g. tome of death = armor of life). The boss will also drain 2 mana each turn and have at least exp. resistance and combat.


My fear is that if the opponent is too strong he'll just keep healing without ever decreasing enough for the player to kill him. Thus making some kind of spell combo needed.

[Maciek]

I guess You will give this hero a lot of defense via scripts.

Chaos - see Q14, Q9 and Q15.

Life - Holy Water can affect Death based heroes, so here You have some damage. Perhaps this damage won't be enough with high enough MR. Another idea: at the beginning of the battle You can cast an Illusion that can barely withstand a hit. You cast it several times, then add defensive buffs, so that You can effectively summon it faster and eventually make it large enough to kill the hero before You run out of mana.

Death - it has spells that decrease defense, it has a mana draining spell and it has Unholy Song(only works on Life targets) that increases magical damage done to the target and decreases its attack and defense. Add Poison, Plague, Ice Bolt/Life Drain and some Death Call/Raise Vampires or Illusion to actually do some damage. You may increase defense and magic resistance of the boss high enough for player to need most or all of these. There's also Life Ward, so You may sometimes resist his Terror.

Also, it is possble to steal some permament effects(like Blur from a Shadow Mage) if that enemy has also some temporary boosts(like Bless) active on him. Those permament effects won't be gone from the enemy, but your hero/creatures will have them too.

Nature plus Mirror of Revenge or Chaos. The boss has extremely high defence(let's say, 1 million; not sure if it can get that high:p) and some 99% magic resistance(for example level 63 with master MR), but often casts some buff on himself. Then You can summon many stacks and cast Magic Mirror on them(or steal it from the enemy's Mirror of Revenge; Steal Enchantment can't be resisted). Then cast Inferno several times on a group of of magicmirrored stacks with the enemy in the middle. remember that stacks can also be gained through Order and Death Magic.

Life plus Siren(s): instead of Hypnotize plus Martyr combo we get Charm plus Martyr. 1 Siren probably won't be enough, so You may need to make Illusions of it. Sirens' Charm can't be resisted.

[Karmakeld]

hey maciek.

thanks for the reply.

I'm planing on making it 1 vs. 1 combat so no creatures (and as our hero hasn't got nature magic there can be no summonings). Also the boss is gonna be chaos. Likely a sorcerer. But I haven't yet decided what class (class bonus)

[Dalai]

We discussed your quiz in Russian forums. One guy (Univanger) misunderstood the question about maximum number of stacks on battlefield - he ignored "same type" condition. Here is what he came up with



It's not all that is possible, but he ran out of battlefield space!

What is extremely interesting - NWC did foresee this unbelievable case! They created an error message for when it's impossible to place a new stack. I will post screenshot with it as a followup.

[Duzeom_]

Now just press the auto combat mode

[Maciek]

Must have taken quite long to do that. I think I wouldn't have the patience to summon so many stacks to the battlefield. But it seems Univanger didn't have the patience to do that all with just one hero instead of 2. Or did he forsee that space would be the limiting factor?

By the way, I've seen a similar screenshot somewhere here.

I guess not many people have ever seen that warning yet. I'm looking forward to it.

Anyways, I thought I would count all those stacks, so I saved the image on my disk, opened it in paint and then put white rectangles over groups of 3 colourful bars with numbers, adding 3 every time. I counted 137 stacks, including the 2 heroes. Sure, there could be some more if there were less obstacles and some smaller creatures were used instead of larger ones(for example, there are quite large Behemots on the battlefield but I can't see smaller Medusas anywhere).

There exist 17 living creatures that can be summoned with Nature Magic or through Demonology. Multiply this by 2 sides of the battle, and then by 4 for Illusion, Raise Dead, Death Call and the summoning spell itself to get 136 stacks and I didn't count any Elementals, Ice Demons summoned by Devils, Raise Skeleton/Ghost/Vampire spells or the real armies and Illusions/Raise Deads/Death Calls of these. When I look at the picture with this in mind, I find it quite possible that space will be the limiting factor no matter what.

Now, add 1 huge stack to the battlefield, redirect damage from all those stacks to it and cast Armageddon. I wonder how large a stack could be killed with one Armageddon this way, but I doubt anybody would have the patience to cast Martyr over 130 times, skipping long turns every time.

[Dalai]

Now just press the auto combat mode

That was my first idea too

I guess not many people have ever seen that warning yet. I'm looking forward to it.

I bet

Anyways, I thought I would count all those stacks, so I saved the image on my disk, opened it in paint and then put white rectangles over groups of 3 colourful bars with numbers, adding 3 every time. I counted 137 stacks, including the 2 heroes. Sure, there could be some more if there were less obstacles and some smaller creatures were used instead of larger ones(for example, there are quite large Behemots on the battlefield but I can't see smaller Medusas anywhere).

There exist 17 living creatures that can be summoned with Nature Magic or through Demonology. Multiply this by 2 sides of the battle, and then by 4 for Illusion, Raise Dead, Death Call and the summoning spell itself to get 136 stacks and I didn't count any Elementals, Ice Demons summoned by Devils, Raise Skeleton/Ghost/Vampire spells or the real armies and Illusions/Raise Deads/Death Calls of these. When I look at the picture with this in mind, I find it quite possible that space will be the limiting factor no matter what.

According to his calculations there could be up to 180 stacks. I didn't check though. He started with 1 hero in each army.

Now, add 1 huge stack to the battlefield, redirect damage from all those stacks to it and cast Armageddon. I wonder how large a stack could be killed with one Armageddon this way, but I doubt anybody would have the patience to cast Martyr over 130 times, skipping long turns every time.

You never cease to amaze me with your unorthodox ideas

[Maciek]

180? Actually, I think that it the battlefield was large enough, this number would've been a lot higher. Here are the calculations:

First of all, notice that Raise Dead and Death Call spells produce different stacks and that with the Ring of GN equipped, they can affect Elementals too.

You need only one hero(Hypnotize plus Mirror trick), that's one stack.

Then, 13 real stacks.
That makes 14.

Add 6*13=78 for Illusion, Raise Dead and Death Call from both sides on each of those stacks.
That makes 14+78=92.

Next, Nature has 16 Summoning spells, Demonology has 5 and Death has another 3: Raise Skeleton/Ghost/Vampire. From both sides. That's another (16+5+3)*2=24*2=48 stacks
That makes 92+48=140.

Like before, add Illusion, Raise Dead and Death Call spells that can be casted on Summons. From both sides. That's another 24*6=144 stacks. (24 and not 48 here, because Summons from both sides are the same type of creatures)
That makes 140+144=284 stacks.

Is that all? No! There are also 2 stacks of Ice Demons summoned by Devils from both sides. We don't add more Illusions and Raises since we already have Illusions and Raises of Ice Demons.
That makes it 286 stacks. Of course, I might've missed something.

[Dalai]

I guess not many people have ever seen that warning yet. I'm looking forward to it.

Here it is:
[img]https://www.celestialheavens.com/equili ... r_imps.jpg[/img]

After you try to summon imps, you get the message, but still lose your turn as if it was used. A little unfair

That makes it 286 stacks. Of course, I might've missed something.

Impressive!

[Maciek]

Thanks. That's nice. Both Univanger's patience and the fact that the NWC guys created such warning are impressive. It seems the 5 mana points are also used(the hero has 154 mana in this screen, but 159 in the PotD). Would the imps appear after you destroy one or more stacks? One more thing: is battlefield the same size during sieges?

[GreatEmerald]

Well, a warning like that is not necessarily made for players, but could also have been used in debugging, to figure out why the game thinks that your imp spawning should fail, for instance.

[jeff]

So what's next, hit autocombat and watch the slaughter?

[Kalah]

I hope somebody does and gets it on video. I'd host it.

[Dalai]

Well, a warning like that is not necessarily made for players, but could also have been used in debugging, to figure out why the game thinks that your imp spawning should fail, for instance.

Probably you are right.

I hope somebody does and gets it on video. I'd host it.

I've done it on my rather old desktop PC just after making second screenshot - animations require a lot of resources and the battle was not so great as I expected. I'll try to launch it on my modern laptop and record video.

[Kalah]

I received your video files, but since they are so huge I need to work on them. I think I found out how to do it; the Macbook Pro is currently chewing on the files in iMovie - working so hard that the fan is actually running continously to cool it ...

[Kalah]

Here it is on youtube.

(23:14 min, 193.7MB)

The sound was just incredible noise, so I removed it during the editing process.

[Dalai]

Considering what you started with - impressive result! Thanks!