Wicc
Auto-translated
To raise your level of play, you don't need games; you need training. Games against strong opponents foster a general vision of the game and the will to win. However, simple technical-tactical actions are devised and practiced in a calm environment. And it is precisely these that serve as the foundation for victory.
Recently, I have had the opportunity to look at saves from many matches, including those in SoD, and the quality of early development was depressing in some places—the lag behind the optimal development schedule often reached 30-40%.
To improve your level of technical skill, the following is necessary:
1) Analyzing a match after it ends, including by other players. You can simply give another player your Day 1 save and ask them to play through it for a week or two. Then compare.
Even just reviewing daily saves can often point out major strategic errors. This could be done openly on the forum—for example, why wouldn't participants of a past match post their daily saves so that other forum members could look and point out mistakes in the play.
2) Practicing the taking of various banks. Roughly what I did when writing the article about Castle. I significantly advanced my understanding of playing as Castle during this activity. You draw a "polygon" map and practice taking various banks with a Week 1 army, a Week 2 army, etc. Specific battle-tasks can be posted on the forum; solving and analyzing them greatly expands one's horizons regarding methods for genocide of the maps' native population.
Moreover, you should practice taking them both with the "folder" (main hero) and "lochs" (secondary heroes); in games by good players, having a couple or three level 7++ heroes (and often 10++) is normal—because to save movement tempo for the main hero, many battles are fought not by him, but by the secondary ones. Sometimes it happens that the secondaries even surpass the main hero in leveling speed.
It's painful to watch people break Dragon Utopia on Week 3, which I myself, playing from their starting save, could break on Week 2—perhaps with slightly higher losses, but with a colossal gain in further development tempo because of it.
3) Playing against the computer. Start a single-player random map and play for 2-3 weeks, striving to accomplish as much as possible in that time. Because 5-10 such games take about as much time as one game with a human, but provide many times more benefit for technique. Separately, you can practice "running"—the same thing, but monsters on wogfrodo (I'm not sure what the SoD cheat code is for instant battle victory) are passed through (of course, only those that can actually be beaten with the current army), with the main focus on building chains to devour as many "treats" as possible. Many players have a significant deficiency in this component.
4) And simply discussing game strategies on the forum. Lately, this hasn't been very popular; the main themes of the forum are reports and organizational issues. Although if you dig through old threads of many Heroes forums, you can gather enough material for several good articles on strategies, with an abundance of facts and ideas unknown to the modern generation.
Recently, I have had the opportunity to look at saves from many matches, including those in SoD, and the quality of early development was depressing in some places—the lag behind the optimal development schedule often reached 30-40%.
To improve your level of technical skill, the following is necessary:
1) Analyzing a match after it ends, including by other players. You can simply give another player your Day 1 save and ask them to play through it for a week or two. Then compare.
Even just reviewing daily saves can often point out major strategic errors. This could be done openly on the forum—for example, why wouldn't participants of a past match post their daily saves so that other forum members could look and point out mistakes in the play.
2) Practicing the taking of various banks. Roughly what I did when writing the article about Castle. I significantly advanced my understanding of playing as Castle during this activity. You draw a "polygon" map and practice taking various banks with a Week 1 army, a Week 2 army, etc. Specific battle-tasks can be posted on the forum; solving and analyzing them greatly expands one's horizons regarding methods for genocide of the maps' native population.
Moreover, you should practice taking them both with the "folder" (main hero) and "lochs" (secondary heroes); in games by good players, having a couple or three level 7++ heroes (and often 10++) is normal—because to save movement tempo for the main hero, many battles are fought not by him, but by the secondary ones. Sometimes it happens that the secondaries even surpass the main hero in leveling speed.
It's painful to watch people break Dragon Utopia on Week 3, which I myself, playing from their starting save, could break on Week 2—perhaps with slightly higher losses, but with a colossal gain in further development tempo because of it.
3) Playing against the computer. Start a single-player random map and play for 2-3 weeks, striving to accomplish as much as possible in that time. Because 5-10 such games take about as much time as one game with a human, but provide many times more benefit for technique. Separately, you can practice "running"—the same thing, but monsters on wogfrodo (I'm not sure what the SoD cheat code is for instant battle victory) are passed through (of course, only those that can actually be beaten with the current army), with the main focus on building chains to devour as many "treats" as possible. Many players have a significant deficiency in this component.
4) And simply discussing game strategies on the forum. Lately, this hasn't been very popular; the main themes of the forum are reports and organizational issues. Although if you dig through old threads of many Heroes forums, you can gather enough material for several good articles on strategies, with an abundance of facts and ideas unknown to the modern generation.