A THREAD FOR NEWCOMERS!

They wouldn't make good musicians anyway, that's true. Several AIs on 200% - that's not out of a good life, of course. And the possibility of at least conditionally making the AI a full-fledged participant in the action.

AI has always been and remains a bystander on random maps.
There are gimmicks like the "orange computer" or giving it a head start, but their influence is minimal.
It's on single-player maps that it can show itself with a wild handicap.
Or in speedrunning. But even there, the competition is with people, who can beat the bot faster. Not against the AI as such.
As for a full-fledged participant, those are far-fetched stories.

By the way, I suppose you haven't seen how the computer plays in a while, starting from a small respawn. It's adequate enough. Especially when each computer has several heroes - they quickly clear the respawn and head to the neighbor.

I don't watch heroes in gosolo mode at all. When I still played, what mattered to me was how I played and how my opponent played.
But definitely not how the bot played. (All I cared about was whether it built me a municipality, a capitol, and how many troop levels it had)

And what do you mean by "quickly"? in your understanding.

But what we see on streams, say on 6LM10a - that is indeed a sorry sight. One hero, loafing around the respawn. In short, the valiant online players put the already not-so-bright AI in a completely hopeless situation.

For valiant online players, the AI is just meat. The only thing that matters is whether it built a municipality or not))

But what is the point of the accusation? I don't quite understand. Is it the online players' fault that it's programmed that way? Should online players worry about expanding the AI's hero pool?

What is their "GUILT" then? that they suddenly became so "valiant".

Well, I'll repeat myself, do you really think that if you allow the AI to hire more heroes, it will actually play better???
(Given that it doesn't know how to conduct battles or build chains).

For online players, the gameplay between two players is important. Not playing against bots. Although a bot can create certain inconveniences, and sometimes you can even throw the game against it. Still, it doesn't make the lion's share of the difference. It is NOT a competitor. You can throw the game against any other object too, like the Naga Bank, Griffin Conservatory, Dragon Utopia, etc.

The struggle is between two people. Bots are just bystanders.

No, it's simple here. One number in memory is changed for this, and that's it. I have quite a lot of similar preparations (mini-plugins). At some point, I'll gather them all together as a release. I hope so, of course. I don't count on HotA in terms of improving Heroes, since I have a much more conservative approach, but alas, much smaller capabilities.
For HD+, yes, it's quite suitable.

I can only wish you good luck. May it become easier for you. Since it troubles you so much. Most people won't even notice it (the expansion of the AI's hero pool). Or they will notice but not immediately. In any case, it's not substantial, personally I would be for it.

Seriously, the game is largely unexplored for one single reason - the weak AI. Theoretically, this situation could be changed in the future.

If you know C++, then in the vcmi project they are exactly working on rewriting the Heroes engine from scratch with an open source code, including working on the AI
https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi
https://h3vcmi.slack.com/messages/C2J9QFUDS/
https://builds.vcmi.download/branch/develop/Windows/
Although it's in an even more deplorable state there. A lot of things simply haven't been implemented yet.
If you're interested - join in.

I'll try to answer this question approximately. This is roughly what Gelimer wrote about

In them, players essentially compete as if offline, only arranging a "Finale" at the very end, after which they go their separate ways. For me, what's missing is confrontation, with city battles, sieges, positional warfare, breaking chains, gradually pushing the opponent off the map, etc.

If you want denser contact, then you should play more contact-oriented templates. And PvP with neutrals.

What's stopping Gelimer from doing this if he wants it so badly?

//And as for others not doing it on streams, (maybe the way he wants) well, excuse me, everyone does what they like, someone plays Jebus Cross, someone plays HotA, and someone...

That is, this is roughly the type of game that took place when we all were just starting out in Heroes. The AI was a full-fledged player back then, because we all played poorly, you wouldn't deny that, would you?

I do miss those times a bit. When I played Heroes in binges. It was very interesting. Now playing with the AI has exhausted itself. For me, at least.

Well, yes, the point isn't about the AI, of course, but about a sufficiently high density of full-fledged players. Not like sardines in a barrel, of course, but not like in online either.

Understand that your urge to shift everything to an M map will lead to absurdity. Encounters will be quick, which will increase variance, and cut the player off from any development. Players will essentially be fighting with starting armies

I am genuinely surprised at players - they complain about a number of aspects in the game (and write suggestions for its "improvement"), without understanding that a huge number of such aspects are precisely determined by the game format they are playing. The list could go on endlessly - skills too weak, skills too strong, etc., etc.

To understand this, you need to go through this path yourself. Otherwise, you won't understand. Play at least 50 online games with guys no higher than 1500 rating and you'll understand in your own skin that there's a point to it.
When they give you Eagle Eye to choose from with Navigation/Mysticism, and your opponent gets Earth Magic.

One moment they want to replace the angels in conservatories with god knows what, another they have some other "wonderful" wish.

Well, that's true, it's not canonical.

Returning, again, to the original idea of the game, I believe that the developers intended a balance between the creatures from the player's towns and the creatures from external dwellings. And such a balance does occur in a normal game format (the ratio of the number of towns on the map to the number of bushes and conservatories is simply increased - to a level of balance, making it also profitable to develop towns).

What balance on random maps, really? There isn't any, not even close. People play Heroes not for the balance, but to realize the luck of the draw. Everything else is just excuses. For some reason, one of the most popular templates is Jebus Cross, not a mirror. Well, I don't know for sure, of course, but that's how it seems to me.

Sometimes thinking and understanding Heroes players formulate it as "Heroes was designed for M maps".

And these "thinking and understanding Heroes players" - are they talking about online? And they themselves haven't played online? Who are we even talking about??

Actually, not for M maps, of course, but simply for a sufficiently high density of full-fledged players (on XL - 6-8).

If you want more contact-oriented Heroes, then you should look for more contact-oriented templates. That's obvious.
For example, this one /topic/at/441264/

Leader, don't panic. Everything is under control.

Really? 200% + 2 AI?