Heroes 3 HOTA 1.7 Factory faction review and comments

[cjleeagain]

This is by no means a definitive review, as I am just starting to explore the new Factory faction.

I personally don't like this faction in the slightest. But I'll try to give an objective basic rundown for other players.

Factory faction has what I consider to be serious balance issues. If you don't like Conflux because of the balance, you'd like Factory even less. I think this faction will be banned in most multiplayer games.

Firstly, they have eight units. Two of which are level 7s. You get them at the same number as other factions, meaning you get 2 level 7s of each type, or four in total, per week. In a short game between human players I imagine this won't be a problem due to resource constraints. In a long game between multiple human players on a big and resource rich map, the imbalance will show. Factory will literally be an army of juggernauts that steamrolls everyone else.

Secondly, they have unique abilities that the AI can't handle.

The Mechanic/ Engineer is a level 2 creature that can repair your mechanical units in the field. And the Engineer can do 20hp of repairs per Engineer in the sack. In a late game scenario you only have to throw your mechanical units (Automatons and Dreadnoughts) forward, and effectively resurrect them with the Engineers. And since the Mechanic/Engineer has a breath attack (flamethrower) they are also potent fighters. I can't imagine how other level 2s (Zombies? Gargoyles?) can hope to compete against them.
It costs only 140 gold to hire a Mechanic, as opposed to 100 gold for Walking Dead. Even if you halved the cost of Walking Dead, the Mechanic would still be more worth it.

The Automaton/ Sentinel Automatons are a level 4 creature and can be set to detonate to damage enemies around them when they die. Moreover this works on Clones. And the upgrade, Sentinel Automatons, even have no retaliation. I'm sure all human players can imagine how this is going to be very problemmatic.
Fortunately the Automaton is a 2-hex big creature, so it isn't easy to protect with a force field. Otherwise You only have to slap a force field, and every other turn can be sending Sentinel Automaton clones out to defeat the AI.

The Sandworm is a level 5 Factory creature. It starts out looking like H7's burrowing creature, the Dungeon Faction's Troglodyte. Same abilities (cannot blind or use stone gaze to petrify). No big deal? Just upgrade it. Now you get the Olgoi-Khorkhoi, which can devour corpses.
The devouring ability is already a huge problem for other human players. We all know how nasty it is when your enemy can raise or resurrect the dead. Human players who are trying to circumvent the raising, are forced to move units over to stand on top of the dead.
But now they can remove this ability from other factions by consuming the bodies. Pit Lords' Summon Demons ability is effectively negated. Opposing player can't stop them from 'raising' their own dead in game, because as long as the Mechanic/Engineer can move to the mechanical unit, they can repair and resurrect.
I also foresee a huge problem when laying siege to a Factory castle. Human players might want to lock the enemy inside, by destroying their own catapult and putting a sacrifical unit in front of the drawbridge to die, thus preventing the drawbridge from lowering. But the Olgoi-Khorkhoi can go anywhere with their burrowing, and they can get rid of the corpse for their player.
To add to this problem, Olgoi-Khorkhois can save up an additional strike with each corpse they devour. So if there are five bodies in the field, they can eat them all, making five saved strikes. Then attack an enemy six times. (The first being the regular attack, and the other five will be the additional strikes that come after the enemy retaliates.)

My list of complaints extends to the next unit, the level six Gunslinger/ Bounty Hunter. The unit itself has low HP for a level 6, and base growth is same as other level 6s. But these guys have Preemptive Shot, which allows them to shoot BEFORE an enemy ranged unit shoots them.
Are you kidding me?
Gunslingers can only Preempt once, but Bounty Hunters are unlimited. Which means that if they are strong enough to take out a ranged unit with one shot, you can creep them against a bunch of enemy ranged units and take zero damage.
As a result of these overpowered abilities, the AI seems to target Bounty Hunters with religious fervor.

Level 7 creature is the Couatl and Crimson Couatl. They're on the weaker end of the Level 7 scale, but still better than Bone/Ghost Dragons any time of day (and faster too).
They have a skill called Meditation that allows them to turn invulnerable.
Couatl invulnerability requires them to skip a turn. But this is ridiculous, because even one Couatl can be strategically placed on the battlefield and it will effectively stop enemy walkers from getting to your other units (eg the vulnerable Bounty Hunter).
The Crimson Couatl can still move and attack after Meditation. I haven't had a scenario to try this yet.

Another Level 7 creature is the Dreadnought/ Juggernaut.
As a standard level 7, they are more powerful than most conventional level 7s. There is a series of videos on Youtube that show them basically defeating all level 7s except the Titan and the Behemoth.
And they could be repaired in the field.
And they are mechanical, so cannot be mind-spelled or killed by death ripple.
And they have an area attack called Heat Stroke, which can hit many nearby hexes and cannot be retaliated. In other words, they are extra powerful Hydras.

Looking at this scary list of overpowered abilities, I think a human player would be able to exploit Factory's abilities effectively against the AI, allowing a human player to expand quickly.

[cjleeagain]

Someone has a video on the cost efficiency of the Engineer vs the other factions



They lost in 6 out of 10 confrontations with the other 10 factions (Cove included).
Troops employed were based on both sides spending 1 million gold each.

However the Engineer has abilities that the other Tier 2s don't.
Of the Tier 2s, only the Dwarf (spell resistance), the Magog (area of effect attack), the Harpy (strike and return) and the Storm elemental (cast protection from air) have abilities that might significantly influence the tactical situation.

These abilities are generally of modest use.
Most players know better than to target the dwarf with spells.
The Magog's AOE attack is useful only to destroy cloned enemies most of the time.
The Harpy's strike and return is great against AI but human opponents will just blast harpies out of existence with spells.
Storm Elemental's Protection is useless in most battles except for casting on each other to protect from lightning spell.

The Engineer can repair his own side's mechanical losses, and he can also attack 2 enemies at the same time with his breath attack. I would say that his abilities are better than the other Tier 2 abilities.

[cjleeagain]

Here's a follow up.

I have been playing Factory a bit, as well as against Factory. The build tree allows you to focus on Organic creatures, or Mechanical creatures. Or both, if you have sufficient resources, but since Iron Ore and Crystal are both needed for the Coatls and Juggernauts, it's not likely early in the game.

I find that there are four main paths to playing Factory.

First is the aggressive, fast moving playstyle. Since this kind of player moves fast, tier 7 isn't really necessary. You just grab whatever units you can hire, and move out and storm your opponent in the first couple of weeks. I'm not a fast player, but I believe Factory can support this. Their lower tier units are fine.

Next is a playstyle focused on organic creatures. You can go Halfling, Mechanic, Armadillo, Sandworm, Gunslinger, Coatl. This is a slightly weaker play that gives you more attack but requires more skill to keep your forces alive. As I have noticed, the AI targets Gunslingers with religious fervor. Coatls and Sandworms are great for attack but a bit more fragile. I can play this combo first to build up my heroes. Then after the Coatls, Sandworms and Gunslinger are decimated, my castle should be fully built up and I can buy the rest of the creatures.

Then we have a playstyle focused on mechanic creatures. You go Halfling, Mechanic, Armadillo, Automaton, Juggernaut. The Mechanic can repair your mechanical units in the field. It's more robust but also more defense-oriented. I haven't been able to play this combo effectively whether in mid or late game. Of course, since I'm the human player I still win in the end. But it wasn't easy.

Last is my default playstyle, which is to move slowly, explore everything, build up my heroes thorougly. I like to conserve resources at the start and go for all tier 7s.
Factory can support this also.

Their Tier 7s are not extremely strong on their own. In particular, the Juggernaut's slow speed makes them a favorite target for the Slow spell which really cripples them. So fielding both Crimson Coatls and Juggernauts together isn't overpowered unless you have good spells like teleport, mass haste, clone and so on. But since it costs a lot of resources to get both level 7 dwellings and upgrades, it's not that easy to stampede your enemies with mass tier 7s AND level 4 spells.

Overall I think Factory is fairly versatile but I'm still very far from thoroughly understanding it.

[Pol]

Thanks, I think that such analysis are very helpful.

Normally, when I joined these forums, 24 years ago, they were full of it. Also endless discussions about artifacts, templates and modding. Life was different then but more pleasant.

But we don't have any forum backup from strategyplanet but we do have timemachine

[cjleeagain]

Glad to contribute my part towards keeping this forum alive!

That said, I still haven't gotten used to the Factory faction. So this is just meant to give readers a glimpse. There are a lot of better players than me!

[cjleeagain]

Update:

Having played several Factory games over the weekend, I have more to contribute:

Like Conflux, Factory Heroes are mostly mediocre. None of their specializations are must-avoid, such as Eagle Eye or Mysticism. But except for one hero with Armorer specialization, most of the rest are just meh. Victoria has Landmine specialization, which probably won't be interesting until she gets to level 30 and has a ton of mana for laying lots of landmines. I tried playing her until level 12 and it really wasn't worth the pain.
I also tried Melchior's Diplomacy specialization and never felt it worked exceptionally well. It might be formidable on a huge map, but on an M map, Melchoir never gets going strong.

Factory spellcaster heroes get offered Fire all the time and never Water. A big minus for me.

Playing actual games makes a huge difference from these Youtube videos.
On Youtube videos, Juggernaut is very strong against other units. It is invulnerable to mind control and bad morale, and it can do area-attack without retaliation. But it's actually as hard to use as the Hydra because of the slow speed and the AI wisely avoiding direct confrontation with Juggernauts.
I have noticed that the AI does know how to play Automatons and Sentinel Automatons. They often activate their detonation function, and once activated they know not to crowd with their own side anymore. I have seen Automatons pull back from a melee several times and stand away from their allies.
Also the AI knows how to use mechanics. As long as mechanics are in the opposite side, your first attack on Automatons in any game is always negated because the mechanics will come and repair/ resurrect their Automatons.

Fortress faction gets the Teleport spell fairly easily. But Factory has to luck in, because their heroes can't get water magic on their own.
The Crimson Coatl is interesting. It's not a very strong unit, but it is priced accordingly. And it's fast enough that it can fly into the middle of an enemy formation and turn invulnerable for once per turn, thereby completely disrupting enemy strategy or allowing you to cast damaging spells on the area.

Overall I think it is the sandworms that are the best all-rounders for damage, speed, versatility.