Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

by the way, could someone who knows advise me on how to beat the tricky Chinese map Xiedu? It doesn't look very aesthetically pleasing at first glance, it's quite rough and linear, but the battles and gameplay are engaging...

The beginning is normal:
On the 1st turn, Sandro stands on the portal, and the other hero approaches the passage guard.
(If you stand in the portal, you won't be immediately attacked by an enemy hero after the 1st turn)
On the 2nd turn: I kill the hero in the tower without any losses and immediately retreat, pass the passage guard, and then the game basically becomes normal, Sandro stays in the castle and waits for the main forces to visit the red tent.
Then the game develops normally, gradually...
BUT after some time, such powerful forces appear at the main spawn point that you can't run away from them or hide...

You need to leave the starting location after some time.

by the way, could someone who knows advise me on how to beat the tricky Chinese map Xiedu? It doesn't look very aesthetically pleasing at first glance, it's quite rough and linear, but the battles and gameplay are engaging...

HOWEVER, after some time, such powerful enemies appear at the main spawn point that you can't outrun or hide from them....

There are guides for this wonderful map, I think even in this thread.
The general idea is that the starting location cannot be held. Both heroes, after developing, must leave the initial spawn point - one to the Necropolis lands, the other to the Archers.
There were discussions about luring enemies into the water and burying the shore so they couldn't get out, but I think it's not realistic. And it's pointless, because you can only get stuck on this spawn point and not continue the game. I tried staying at the initial spawn point, running from castle to castle, even buying a couple of archers, but I still can't kill the computer.

Is there anywhere I can read a description of the earthquake bug?

A small clarification regarding the effect of the earthquake bug on phoenixes.
A stack of phoenixes killed by this bug can be resurrected (even in the gates, where, according to Fizmig, no resurrection is possible). But only if there are unkilled towers in the city at the beginning of the next turn; during their turn, the phoenixes are resurrected. At the same time, the defender should not have the artillery skill; otherwise, automatic resurrection does not occur.
The resurrected phoenixes can be killed by an earthquake again, but this killed stack can then be resurrected with regular spells.

Added 2 minutes ago

We discussed options for luring enemies into the water and burying the shore so they couldn't get out, but I think it's impossible to do. And it's pointless, because you can only get stuck on this map and won't be able to continue the game. I tried staying on the starting map, running from castle to castle, even buying a couple of archers, but I still can't kill the computer.

This Walkthrough is possible; I played it this way.

Another clarification regarding the effect of the bug on phoenixes. If the phoenixes are cloned before dying from the bug, then after the clone is killed, they are resurrected regardless of the presence of artillery, towers, and the number of turns since they died from the bug.

upd
It turns out I lied; in reality, the resurrection of phoenixes occurs after the death of any stack. Whether it's an attacking stack or a defending stack (even the last one, even the machines).

Added 1 hour 26 minutes ago
And that's not all. If the stack "killed" by the bug was incomplete at the time of death, and therefore you can cast resurrection (on undead) on it, then the stack "comes to life" after the spell and you can play with it normally.
But if the stack "partially killed" by the bug is finished off with something, i.e., only a pile remains on the ground, then nothing can be done with this pile.

I wanted to ask hardcore map enthusiasts, and not only them, but everyone – what do you think about "increasing" the difficulty of battles through RNG? For example, there's a battle that can be won using a specific tactic, let's say, hiding archdevils behind a cart or a tent, blinding the unit that approaches them, and tricking the AI into spending all its mana, followed by gradually destroying the enemy army through attrition. If all the enemy units are vulnerable to blindness, then the player just needs to figure out this tactic, and they will win the battle. There are "normal" ways to make this battle more difficult, for example, making some of the enemy units immune to blindness, so the player has to figure out how to position the units and kite them so that the archdevils are attacked by the stack that is vulnerable to blindness. You can also make the stats and number of units in the enemy army such that all enemy stacks, except one, one-shot the devils, so you also have to figure out how to fight the battle effectively; the essence here is roughly the same. And then there are "sadistic" ways to make the battle more difficult, and I'm talking about adding a pinch of the infamous RNG to this battle. For example, giving the enemy hero a secondary skill called "Resistance," so that if a unit has a resistance to blindness, the player will have to replay the battle every time, and it will be a frustrating experience. You could even make the enemy Thorgrim with a huge level, so the battle would be theoretically winnable, but practically, no one would have the nerves for it. On the other hand, it would be incredibly satisfying for the player to win such a battle after spending so much time and effort on it. Another option is to add units to the enemy army that directly depend on RNG, such as pixies and enchanters. Replaying the battle if the pixies get a chain, replaying the battle if the enchanters get a heal – all of this is present in many maps to a sufficient extent. A third option is to make the battle depend on certain units having certain abilities proc, such as the venom of a wyvern or the paralysis of a scorpid. In short, my question is: where is the line for you between adding an element of RNG to a battle being an "interesting challenge" and it being outright sadism on the part of the map creator? For myself, I have formulated the following position on this issue: if, knowing the ideal tactic for winning the battle, and taking into account all RNG factors, the player wins the battle in more than 50% of cases, then everything is fine; otherwise, this battle is unacceptable sadism. Finally, I want to give two examples. The first is the fight in Rampart 1-1-1 on Metatux. When BioBob first released the map, this battle seemed incredibly difficult to everyone, but it is only difficult until you know the tactic for winning it. You can lose if a catapult destroys the wall in two hits, but the probability of this is acceptably low; it has never happened to me. This battle is good and interesting; it is designed so that the player will think about the tactic for winning, rather than trying to replay the battle, swearing, and waiting for the key units to have the right abilities proc. And another example: I recently finally got around to starting Season's Lord Rings, and I came across a battle where you have to defeat 28 upgraded gorgons with two angels on the first week. This is just awful. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but even if I use single units to minimize the gorgons' attacks on the angels, this battle will still be won in 5-10% of cases. After that, I want to, excuse me, unleash a torrent of three-story profanity on the map creator and never launch it again. I thought that this battle should be won not on the first week, and not with such troops, but, judging by what happens next, it is supposed to be that way. As a player, I think that such battles are absolutely unacceptable, and I believe that there is nothing wrong with opening the save editor in such a case, adding units to myself, and deleting them after the battle. On the other hand, as a map creator, I understand that the player will be much happier to win a battle if there is an element of RNG in it that will ruin several attempts. I wanted to know your opinion.

This is a relevant question, but it is more of a worldview and even philosophical one. In our time, experienced players are no longer interested in ordinary maps with ordinary battles, and now they are looking for more intense experiences. It seems that almost all Chinese maps (from those I have seen or read) stand out precisely because of their pronounced tendency towards BDSM hardcore, since not only do you have to fight enemies that are many times stronger than you, but the authors have also deliberately introduced elements of randomness, making the battles winnable, even after determining the winning tactic, only after several or many attempts. Usually, there is a whole range of random factors: magic resistance + artifacts that enhance it, Wizards, mythical dragons, creatures with special abilities, and finally, morale and luck. And after seeing so much of this, authors from other countries are also practicing sadistic battles on their maps. Everyone decides for themselves what level of hardcore is acceptable for them. Another factor often turns out to be decisive: the presence or absence of time to replay battles, given that most of them usually take a considerable amount of time. Multiply ~30 minutes by the number of attempts in one battle – how many people are willing to go through that?

In short, my question is this: where is the line for you between adding an element of RNG to a battle being an "interesting complication," and when it becomes outright sadism on the part of the map creator?

I can understand and accept a fairly strong RNG, but with the understanding that, in addition to this RNG, there is some interesting idea in the battle or on the map as a whole.

If, with the player knowing the ideal tactic for completing the battle, and taking into account all the RNG factors, they win this battle in more than 50% of cases, then everything is fine; otherwise, this battle is unacceptable sadism.

The problem is that this RNG most often prevents the development of the necessary tactics. For example, you need to see how the AI will act in round N, but to check this, you have to go through the RNG, which takes N minutes each time. The more varied the battle, the more time it takes to check. In the end, it may meet the criterion of "more than 50% of cases," but this will still put many people off. :)

Of course, this check time can be reduced (cheat menu, save editing, fixing the random number generator, etc.), but most people won't do that.

I wanted to ask hardcore map enthusiasts, and not just them, but everyone – what do you think about "increasing" the difficulty of battles through RNG?

I can consider myself an expert on this topic, at least in the practical field, not in calculations.
As Marmot rightly pointed out, this is a partially philosophical question and depends on the player's needs: what do they expect, a playthrough on the first attempt or catching a favorable set of circumstances?
For me personally, battles with well-thought-out tactics are more interesting than simply killing everyone on the first attempt. There is no limit to the number of replays for me.
I can say that there are individual maps that I have played through, and I have previously made reviews of them in this thread, which are based on the principle of RNG, in particular:
1) the presence of resistance in the enemy unit + 3 artifacts for resistance, and +/- in the same battle, RNG with unicorns / stacks of fairies or sorcerers (both yours and the AI's),
I can name even more twisted models on which battles are built:
1) on Xylo, there was a battle in which it was critically important for me that the AI, after over 100 rounds in the battle (and before that, there were also random events), would start summoning WATER elementals to spend mana, and not earth or air. Since water elementals are two-hex units, and I was sitting behind a force field with an Archdevil (for speed) and a Ghost (for -2 mana per turn). I couldn't explain to myself the principle of summoning a specific type of elemental, because by the time they are summoned, I and the AI have the same armies and the same buffs/debuffs.
In general, only in every 8-10th battle did it summon water elementals, so that the battle could be won.
2) catching unreal combinations right away in one battle (I also described this before): in a battle with the enemy - Solmyr, you need to catch your own "resistance" to his chain lightning spell in the first two of his consecutive casts. In the battle, there are about 120 Archdevils, and about 10-15 die from one chain lightning. At the same time, frenzy is applied to your Archdevils, and again, in the first round, you need to definitely catch double morale (under frenzy), ideally with luck :). Otherwise, the army of Archdevils will die in the first 3-4 rounds, and there is no resurrection.
another similar example: on one of the maps, to complete the battle against Lacus, you need to simultaneously catch double fear from the opponent's phoenixes on your azure dragons, and under frenzy, deal double damage with Archdevils on morale.
another example: when attacking a Castle, kill the opponent's sorcerers with archers, while scaring another specific stack of the opponent, so that the third stack moves to the location of the killed sorcerers, and the AI does not make sacrifices.
3) RNG with the passage of dynamic maps (management of the AI hero's movement) - where they will go, in which direction, where they will spend the night, what we need, etc. A separate topic, see reviews of Woxin maps.
4) RNG of how a 30-minute battle will go, and how much mana the AI will have left (0 or 1-2 for teleporting from the Castle when the catapult is destroyed).
or an attempt to conduct a battle for 20 minutes, and then, without amulets, try to make sure that the AI does not run away. It is quite a challenge to plan the last 2-3 rounds of the battle in such a way.
In short, I think everyone can come up with many examples.
There are individual maps that are designed for the random occurrence of certain factors. This is what makes Heroes interesting, in my opinion!
Coming up with such a task for the player is not easy. But completing it is interesting!
Such variability, in my opinion, shows that the map author understands complexity and introduces an element of interest.

What you wrote is utter nonsense, and as a mapmaker, I would never include something like that in my maps. Take, for example, your second point – the chance of getting a "Fear" spell is 10%, and the chance of getting a "Double Fear" spell is already 1%. Then, you say that morale also needs to trigger, and even with the maximum value, the chance of that is 12.5%. The total chance of winning the battle is 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.125, which means, if I understand the map author correctly, such a battle is won in 1-2 out of 1000 cases. There should be a meme here with Doctor Strange looking at different future scenarios, but I'm too lazy to Google it and attach it. I agree that it all depends on the player's needs, but I have an analogy: creating an interesting battle with a non-trivial winning tactic is like giving the player a difficult math problem, and solving it will give them pleasure from their own ingenuity. Forcing the player to chase a lucky, unlikely RNG is like making them play in a casino until they get 777. Of course, when those numbers finally come up, it will also bring pleasure, but of a different kind, as I said, that's not for me.

What you wrote is utter nonsense, and as a mapmaker, I would never include something like that in my maps.

I can only partially agree, because:
1) Map authors don't often force us to engage in such battles. Perhaps at the beginning of the map, but that's normal, and there's nothing particularly crazy about it.
However, the examples I gave usually require this to maintain the pace. That is, no one forces you to move your units across the map at a walking pace, let alone a gallop. I completed Wayfarer in 6, 9, and 12 months, even though it seemed like the same map. Therefore, it's easier to defeat the enemy with a larger army. And with a smaller army, you sometimes have to struggle. So, you can simply accumulate strength and crush the computer without needing to get the perfect RNG.

2) There's also a theory of "pseudo-randomness" being discussed in this thread, which essentially states that if you repeat ALL actions on the battlefield with complete accuracy (who, where, to which cell, etc.) and at the same timing, then ALL other actions will be repeated 100%. As far as I remember, the HD+ mod (or its absence) has a slight influence on this. Therefore, if you catch a pattern in the first 2-3 turns, you need an algorithm, i.e., by understanding what will happen on the 4th turn, you can repeat it, albeit with some effort. This is easily verified; for example, if you place Wizards in the 1st stack with the 1st speed, they will cast the same spell. But if they have the 2nd speed in your army, then, depending on how quickly (this is the main thing), and where you place the stack with the 1st speed, the Wizards may already cast different spells. So, with pseudo-randomness, you can catch the desired "randomness," at least in the first 1-5 unit movements. After that, it becomes much more difficult.

P.S. Difficult battles with RNG influence can probably be considered those where it should manifest itself some time after the start of the battle. In the first few rounds (10-30 seconds), this is not very important – you can simply restart the battle. But if you spend a couple of minutes in battle, and then the computer, instead of resurrecting its Phoenixes, casts speed+prayer, and the battle doesn't progress due to speed, or if the computer resists a debuff, then you can, of course, get frustrated. That is, even 5-7 attempts of 2.5-3.5 minutes each is already 15-20 minutes, which is a long time. I can recall a couple of such battles. For example, in Xy'ed, I chose a VERY good terrain for the battle, where you can hide part of your army (this is not the well-known "safe cell"), but you had to play for 20-30 rounds, and only then could the computer either spend mana on buffs for itself (which is what we need) or heal/remove spells from its blinded units (which would kill our archers). Such battles are, of course, mentally exhausting, including because of the time wasted.

By the way, if anyone is interested in randomness in HotA. It might also work in SoD with HD+, I haven't checked. Recently, I also completed a map in HotA - Ville'de'Porte. It's an RPG map with small battles at the beginning and large ones towards the end (well, there's also one big battle in the middle). In my opinion, the most challenging battles are clearing 2 garrisons in the underground with a single Asp, against Elementals and Necro troops. The large battles are much faster; the final boss was almost defeated on auto-battle, thanks to 3 casts of Armageddon dealing 4k damage each, although we don't have Anti-Magic, but we have a lot of Asps that can withstand that much damage for one or two rounds, which can't be said about the Companion. At the end of the map, there is a certain freedom of action because you are given another hero, and you can choose who to attack/defend against. I completed the final battle with Manfred, due to his Fire Magic expertise. Personally, I enjoyed the initial battles the most, which need to be fought with Pikemen and Archers. You can lose as many Pikemen as you want, but not Archers. It was interesting to try to complete it with minimal losses. We have the "Spirit of Despair," but it's more beneficial to remove it and rely on the HotA randomness, which can also be countered to a certain extent. Battle with Kyra. The main initial problem is to eliminate both stacks of Archers as quickly as possible and lure the entire enemy army to a single unit. With a successful setup, we get a critical morale boost for the lower stack of Pikemen, who need one more turn to close the gap in the Archers' defense. Meanwhile, the large stack of Pikemen should be positioned so as not to aggro the Naga; the main rule is that the Naga will aggro if it realizes it can reach the large stack in 2 rounds; if not, it will go for another target. This target is 1 Pikeman, who lures all the enemy troops, waits, and after receiving a Haste spell, runs away. The next problem is to quickly kill the Gargoyle stack so that the Pikeman doesn't die prematurely. Here, again, morale comes into play - you need to cast Haste on the Pikeman, and do it specifically on the turn of the Archers; otherwise, there will be no morale. We cast the spell, get the morale boost, and shoot twice. In the end, the remaining Gargoyle dies from the counterattack of 1 Pikeman. The Naga kills the Pikeman, but he has fulfilled his task. The enemy troops are getting closer; we shoot down the stack of Iron Golems. Now, the large stack of Pikemen takes over the role of the lure; the task is to draw the Naga and have time to shoot down the Golems. The second task is completed - the remaining Golem cannot break through our defense. The Pikemen run upwards, escaping from the Nagas; the Archers receive a luck boost and finish off the Naga on the last step. Battle with Nagas. The large stack of Pikemen is placed in the middle, so both stacks of Nagas will not reach us in the second round. It turns out that morale can be obtained if you start shooting in the first round, which we do. Then, it's just a matter of technique. Battle with Iron Golems. Another quite instructive battle. The main problem, as in the battle with Kyra, is to eliminate the Archers and distract the enemy with a lure stack. However, there are not many Golems here, so they start aggroing on single units instead of the large stack, which means we need to divide them more evenly. The covering stacks are 7-7-5-6, and the distracting stack is nine. Then, everything is simple - we run back and forth and shoot. You can see that at some point, the weakened Golems realize that the nine is no longer a match, so they start aggroing on the lower five. One such stack reaches and attacks; we stand in defense and survive with 1 HP. The remaining battles on the map are fought with one unit, with the exception of the large battles, of which there are very few.

Regarding the randomness in battles, there's another interesting point: is it really true that the author intended a specific algorithm with exploiting random chance in a particular battle, or is it just something we've imagined? Those who played "Ira the Mage" probably remember the section with breaking through the anti-magic garrisons with dragons on the water. I myself was sure that the idea of completing that section involved exploiting morale, but no. The author of "Ira," as it turns out, despises the randomness in Heroes and completed her map without any reloads in a very short time. And we shouldn't forget that often, if not completely avoiding the influence of randomness on the course of the battle, we can significantly reduce it. For example, placing fearless units behind a force field against enemy Azure Dragons, or not building a strategy based on blindness when we are facing Thorgrim, etc. In general, my point is: sometimes the author isn't a "sadist," but the player themselves chooses to keep banging their head against a wall and blames the author instead of themselves.

Added 10 minutes later
And in general, given the presence of turbo animation and an understanding of how to manage randomness, the RNG problem shouldn't seem like such a big problem. Personally, randomness only really bothered me when playing "Limes Inferior," and even then, it was because of the 200% difficulty, but otherwise, everything was always tolerable in this regard. Except for perhaps some occasional difficulties that I remember now.

Added 4 minutes later
In "Lord of the Rings," by the way, I don't remember any problems with defeating the cows at the beginning of the game; you can even take archers with you into the battle :smile32:

Basically, what I'm getting at is: sometimes it's not the author who's a "sadist," but the player themselves who chooses to repeatedly try the same thing and blames the author instead of themselves.

I agree 100%. In most cases, we either rush or don't see alternative ways to progress.

Has anyone played the Chinese remake of the TEW2 map? I can’t seem to beat Iona in it right now. The date, if that matters, is 236.

Regarding the randomness in battles. The randomness is incredibly frustrating, especially when you need to avoid a demoralization effect that reduces morale by -3. Considering that it occurs quite frequently (around 25%), you need to have a very strong mental fortitude to win a multi-round battle and not mess things up.