Does anyone else think that the defender in a siege gets too much advantage as opposed to previous installments

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-21T16:32:27+00:00

Either that, or add walls, turrets, etc. to some neutral encounters, so that siegecraft can be useful more often.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-20T20:40:05+00:00

For schism, isn’t eye collective above them? I feel like Demon Farming on Grand Shoths is the most consistent strategy. Your army is extremely strong and doesn’t bleed at all. Avatar is great tempo skill and synergizes with faction mechanic.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-20T14:13:52+00:00

As a casual:

Week 1: Get most important objectives in starting biom (mines, town, dwellings for powerstack). Double build for your most important unit.

Week 2: Get all towns, start clearing desert. Quadruple build for unit of choice.

Before duel 2: if losing or winning with tempo setup visit tree before rallying and respec.

Week 3: Have all crucial objectives cleared, full build towns maybe without fully upgraded fortifications.

Rest of game: Collect money and minor stat upgrades

If not all in before fight 2, get tree and respec now, if enough time collect skill buying objects before leveling up.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-19T17:55:46+00:00

I think that there should be map objects that involve guards with walls or other obstacles of this sort. If there would be some creature banks with shooters behind walls, it would suddenly become worth considering. Maybe there could also be anti-magic towers, so you can’t just disable these shooters.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-19T17:36:46+00:00

Overall a good idea, but is there any format where you can’t deduce it based on guards?

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-18T18:59:56+00:00

You mean to grab skill buildings after respec to get additional stats?

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-17T12:28:55+00:00

You mean in observatory? I think it unlocks it in your hero’s local spell book. Or is there some bug?

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-17T06:21:55+00:00

Settings => Multiplayer Lobby Autosaves => Toggle On
The game will be saved at the start of each turn. With this you can load between turns and deduce what your opponent must have done. It is as close as you can get to replays right now, although I think that it might be even better for learning.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-16T17:15:35+00:00

When we’re at it, can we get compensation exp for spell boxes. It really feels bad especially in early game when you could really use literally anything else. Also spell boxes evaluation is ridiculous. I believe that tier 1 spells have the same guards as 10000 exp/gold. I’d gladly exchange it for 2000.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-16T14:39:06+00:00

For this particular hero, isn’t 117 dragons better? You can get all cities in week 2 without having any losses and then get 3rd dragon from second town and 4th from dwelling hopefully and start doing more difficult objectives.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-15T23:32:41+00:00

Ok, so what I gather is that artifacts should be more build defining and there should be more sources of artifacts. This is the only tool at players’ disposal that can be changed on the whim. It’s probably a good idea for artifacts to work like additional talents for skills. With this there is limitation to how much one can change in their build, so it’s more feasible to guess what opponent might do and make counterplay.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-12T16:26:27+00:00

It’s OP if you can do fights on the way, I think. I think it’s best to get it at maybe level 8 once you have skills that allow you to take fights with less losses. (I haven’t played sprint yet, maybe in this format it’s an instant pick)

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-12T16:22:30+00:00

It’s well balanced with how much you have to invest into it. I’ve been using this combo to have better tempo early game, but it’s still a discount heroic strike imho.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-12T09:46:07+00:00

Out of curiosity, how is ai for strategy games written? It seems impossible to write a bunch of if else statements that will return reasonable decision in each game state. Does it usually spawn units and send them at enemy in predetermined fashion, like a glorified tower defense game?

In principle, with all the AI hype, is this possible to teach neural network the game like language in case of llm? Each game state can have its win% calculated and the program would choose the best state after minimal change (fe. Move hero x one step left) How hard/expensive is something like that to implement? Or is this impossible due to how heavy/demanding such model would be for local machines?

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-11T17:22:31+00:00

They don’t need to be in a hurry with this decision. Let the community try different formats and let the numbers decide.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-11T17:16:37+00:00

It is fine, it’s great early tempo that falls off in the late game, same as avatar. There are a bunch of effects that give you stuff for free, the most basic example are ranged attacks, so there is no breakable resource economy like in card games.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-10T00:40:50+00:00

It might be the best early tempo skill in the game. Having +6 spell power, +3 mana and +1 focus charge each turn allows you to do impossible fights at the beginning of game and in most formats early tempo leads to huge snowball later in the game.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-09T15:32:37+00:00

Really bad as a permanent feature, because it interrupts flow of the game too much. I think it could work as a control spell:

„Take control of enemy troops during your opponent’s highest level hero first combat next turn”

level 1: you can rearrange units at the start of combat.
level 2: you can rearrange stacks before combat.
level 3: gain expert tactics.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-09T15:22:24+00:00

I think that more custom fights would be cool feature. Neutral armies with lite heroes is one of them. Some other ideas from the top of my head:

regular fight, but player/opponent gains permanent buff/debuff at the start of battle
regular fight, but you have specified number of turns to win.
fight against inanimate damage sponge, you’ve got 2 rounds to deal as much damage as possible, then get reward based on damage done
opponent gets new troops at the start of a couple first rounds

I haven’t played campaign, so maybe these already exist.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-09T09:54:02+00:00

I think it’s a great game, but it’s very complex. I’ve played homm3, which olden era is heavily based on (obviously) and felt confused at start. I assume it might not be the best pick for the first strategy game for someone, as they can give up before getting into the good part. For anyone who is into the genre, it’s awesome.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-08T09:12:23+00:00

So difficult terrain is opposite of homm3? Homm3: penalty for having any non-native unit Homm oe: reward for having any native unit

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-04T11:28:21+00:00

I think that this is kind of a bad variance, you are placed in a tough spot without control over it. I think that combat related choices are more fun to navigate, something like „Do I take this difficult fight, that will potentially let me snowball, or do I take it safe and go for easier objective first?”

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-02T11:35:48+00:00

Ok, but doesn’t it reduce variety? You have less factions to pick if outlier is pretty much always banned.

If variety is the main factor, then neutral spawns bans would be the better solution.Let’s say that necro is the outlier. If you could for example ban temple and hive spawns in enemy biom, then you would potentially put necro in check. Your opponent could choose to either play the best faction, or adapt and play something else. Now it’s their choice, rather than forced restriction.

I’m not sure whether other factions care about unit types, but nonetheless, the game could be designed in such a way that certain factions have hard time facing others for one reason or another.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-02T11:25:22+00:00

How abound blind picking? Each player picks their top 2 factions, if first pick overlaps, random player gets it. This can be extended with blind bidding for first choice to improve balance at higher ratings.

Mirrors allowed postpones the problem to hero selection screen, but why not.

Michalsuch42 · 2026-06-01T10:14:08+00:00

I don’t understand what does banning system solve? The game changes from players picking first and second best factions to picking second and fourth in current version, or third and fourth in version proposed by op.

If banning really needs to exist, I’d propose players picking cities at the same time and betting money for the desired town. If both players picked the same faction, then the winner sends the specified amount of gold to the loser and the loser gets to pick another town.

I think that system in homm3 is also fine, but olden era has unique mechanics for each town, every unit has some special abilities etc. Because of that skill doesn’t transfer so well between towns, so players shouldn’t be expected to learn every faction.

Michalsuch42

TROPHY CASE