Posts from MMH5.5 - Heroes of Might and Magic 5.5 Auto-translated

1. These are new objects on the map that add an army. I haven't figured out how they work yet, but it seems like they randomly add tier 1-4 creatures, with the number of creatures increasing each week. I hope the increase in creatures in these "banks" is fixed after a certain week; otherwise, it would be profitable to capture this bank before attacking an enemy Castle to get the maximum number of units. If the growth of the bank is not limited by the number of weeks, then this is not correct because it loses the meaning of defending it in the early weeks. I think this bank should grow to a maximum of 4 weeks (1 month) in the starting zone and another 4 weeks (2 months) in the treasure zone.

2. These are new mechanics: city rebuilding, a portal to the city, and dragon blood crystals, as well as a large number of artifacts (I hope the game has many powerful artifacts for each faction, and not just a few that everyone wants to get, as in the original Heroes 5). I don't understand why the hero's equipment was changed if it doesn't add an additional slot for an artifact. It seems like work was done for the sake of work.

4. The new magic system seems balanced at first glance.

Now, what I didn't like or what breaks the balance:
1. The most annoying thing is that there are overpowered heroes, practically for each of the factions, sometimes there are 2 per faction.
If you've made so many overpowered heroes, then let's make one overpowered hero for each class; otherwise, it will be impossible to start the game with a random hero, and everyone will choose the overpowered one. I'm talking about overpowered heroes who clear the map without losses, very quickly.

2. The mod authors have made it possible to capture cities and rebuild them, which is great. BUT, in the first month on the Jebus map, I captured 2 cities and rebuilt them. In 2 months, I built 3 cities, made all the improvements in my main city, but I didn't have enough money to buy all the creatures, even though I captured all the gold mines (2 on the respawn) in the first week. I built a Capitol, the maximum building in other cities. I cleared the treasure zone and the respawn, sold artifacts, but it wasn't enough to buy all the creatures from the three Castles. I don't think this should happen. I can suggest that when you make a contract with mills, they bring in 5000 instead of 1000 once a week. Naturally, the contract amount should increase to 2500. You can also add gold mines near additional Castles and allow the construction of a Capitol in a non-native city.

3. There are skills that are very weak and don't give a choice in upgrading! (The mod author wanted to avoid this, but repeated it similarly to the original).
The first thing I noticed is in a skill that is important for all factions, such as Battle Machines. The First Aid tent is very weakened and doesn't make sense to upgrade; it heals very little and cannot resurrect a creature of level 6-7 on week 2. The Plague tent doesn't make sense at all because it's better to use the shots from the tent to resurrect, which is very little. The Ballista always wins against the Plague tent and the tent in general.

If the author works on these points, then this mod can become the best among similar mods. Thank you for your attention.

Strength of opponents grows with time.
Creature given as a prize is flat so you wont get more troops later in the game. However the quantity is randomized in a specific range so there is a bit of luck too.

You can check all artifacts in the manual. It is currently only in English but next release will include Russian translation too.

Please provide a list of the heroes and description why they are IMBA. I can agree some heroes are stronger than others.
Also if you have any proposals on how to improve them without removing the specialization of the hero will be welcomed. I cant promise we can make it but we are dedicated to make the balance better as soon as it does not break the lore or make the heroes too similar.

This is done on purpose. Limiting gold makes resources important through the whole game not just early game like in heroes 3.  Resource deficit forces the player to choose where to invest his income, this brings a whole another set of choices. This also makes heroes with Resource/gold specializations very important.

In regards to Jebus template, any advice on how to make it more like Heroes 3 Jebus is welcomed! Our experience with Jebus in H3 is not much.

- Plague tent is a weak perk - we know that and we are working on a solution.
- First aid skill was nerfed to 3 casts but the overall healing strength was improved so currently those 3 casts heal as much as what used to be 10 casts in ToE. This change was needed as expert players used it to snowball the army potential. Even at 3 casts it is the most desired skill by Might heroes. Furthermore since RC15B2 version First Aid skill gives the hero "Medical supply bag" artifact. It revives some of the tier 1 and tier 2 creature losses after every battle for a small amount of mana.
- Ballista is a good skill but now after the RC14 change where all creatures got 25-30% more HP it has its edge reduced in terms of killing stacks.

As you have a tournament background I would also want to say that we have a maps only for duels, you can read more about them here. 

This is important information for me; where can I read about the mechanics of banks and their bonuses?
Okay, I'll wait for the Russian manual for artifacts.

I quickly read about some of the specializations for the Dwarves, and Bart stands out; he's a mega-imba with the appearance of elementals after the death of units, and he doesn't even need a tent with that specialization. You are encouraging gameplay with summoning + light magic, which includes regeneration and resurrection + logistics, but the Inferno race doesn't have light magic and has a useless tent. Any Inferno hero won't be able to gain levels and defeat large armies as quickly as Bart can for the Dwarves without significant losses. I haven't looked at the other races much yet; it's too early to say.

I haven't encountered any heroes that bring in money; you've created a significant amount of randomness that will affect the final battle. Either the map isn't suitable for PvP. I played on Jebus, which is installed with the mod. I've already suggested increasing the income from mills through contracts or adding buildings to the castle or placing two gold mines near each city. In the second month of the game, it's impossible to buy all the upgrades from all the castles, and I don't think that heroes with a specialization in money will help fix this, especially since the cost of hiring a hero is 5500!
If the income from mills isn't increased, then more banks for money should be added to the starting map, and also create full-fledged maps for other castles, where there will be mines, banks for money, and banks for creatures.

The attempt to strengthen the tent with an artifact is unsuccessful because you have added many artifacts that are much stronger for creatures than this artifact, which takes up a valuable slot on the Hero's equipment. Otherwise, you must significantly strengthen the artifact so that the player prefers it to the others. You weakened the ballista and the tent, but these were important tools for races that don't have access to light magic to minimize losses in difficult battles in the early and mid-game when tempo is important. If you gave dark races necromancy, let raising the dead work for Undead as well. This will be an analogue of regeneration. Or allow regeneration to be learned without knowledge of light magic. In any case, the army of a good player in Heroes will always grow like a snowball; you need to make sure that this growth is approximately the same for all races and not favor anyone in this indicator.

2. The mod authors made it possible to capture and rebuild cities, which is great. BUT on the Jebus map, I captured 2 cities and rebuilt them in the first month. In 2 months, I built 3 cities, made all the improvements in my home city, but I didn't have enough money to buy all the creatures, even though I captured all the gold mines (2 on the starting location) in the first week. I built a Capitol, the maximum building in other cities. I cleared out the treasure and starting locations, sold artifacts, but it wasn't enough to buy all the creatures from the three castles. I don't think this should happen. I can suggest that when you make a contract with mills, they should bring in 5000 instead of 1000 once a week. Naturally, the contract amount should increase to 2500. You could also add gold mines near additional castles and allow the Capitol to be built in a non-native city.

Now, what I didn't like or what breaks the balance:
1. The most annoying thing is that there are overpowered heroes, practically for each faction, sometimes there are 2 per faction.
If you made so many overpowered heroes, then let's make one overpowered hero for each class, otherwise it will be impossible to start a game with a random hero, and everyone will choose the overpowered hero. I'm talking about overpowered heroes who clear the map without losses, very quickly.

I haven't looked at other factions yet, it's too early to say.

1. The most annoying thing is that there are overpowered heroes, practically for each faction, sometimes there are 2 per faction.

This is your observation specifically for this large-sized map (1vs1) that is initially in the list of available maps. One can partially agree with this; there isn't enough money for everything. But in this case, this resource limitation forces you to spend them wisely, on the necessary goals, and not to buy the entire army and all buildings every day. But for other maps created in the generator, this is not the case.

In general, this map is very small (although it is called large), and the initial settings for the strength of the monsters are very weak.

Try to familiarize yourself with ARMG Manual V2.3, creating large-sized maps, adjusting the number of resources and buildings, as well as their value. And, accordingly, the strength of the monsters. Follow the recommendations from the manual when creating, everything is described in detail there. And in the future, based on your experience, make the game more difficult for yourself by increasing the strength of monsters to >1, reducing the number of resources, reducing the number of artifact locations, and increasing their value.

Everyone probably has favorite heroes to whom they give preference (but in this case, such heroes exist in every class of each castle, and not just one specific hero). And some are good for a quick start and a fast game, while others are only good in long games. And in general, the developers did a good job balancing.

And criticism is good, but it should be constructive and based on a thorough understanding of the game.

You didn't read what I wrote. I wrote that it's impossible to buy out the entire army from three castles when all zones and territories have been cleared, for the final battle. Furthermore, you suggest spending resources wisely, but as I mentioned before, I didn't buy out the entire army; I fought all battles using fire elementals and two stacks of archers. Regarding not building structures daily, you consider this a correct strategy. Heroes 5, even from the original game, encourages players to build daily because the races are very unique, and the game doesn't encourage mixed-race armies, unlike Heroes 3. If you don't like this or don't understand it, you should play a different version of Heroes. Moreover, in this mod, this necessity is increased due to the ability to convert enemy castles into your own. Any reasonably good Heroes player will strive to build all creature tiers as quickly as possible, with Necropolis being a possible exception. Regarding the map, the mod author himself recommends it for PvP. I started playing it only because of this, and after playing it, I left my feedback here on the forum; what's wrong with that? I'll try ARMG, but if the template is the same, I don't think much will change. Regarding the strength of monsters, balance is also needed here. If the monsters were stronger, playing against Gnomes with Bart as Inferno would be even more unbalanced, and the income of money would slow down even more.

Of course, there are favorite Heroes, but if you constantly play with the same hero, the game will get boring faster, and this is not balance if there is one hero who is stronger than the others. I liked that the mod has a division between strength and magic; this is great, but playing as a strength hero for Inferno immediately puts you in a less advantageous position compared to a hero with summoning. Darkness won't help much at the beginning of the game; only machines will help. I think this skill is essential for strength heroes, but machines are very weak; why? And magic is very strong in the mod. Also, the mod author has increased the number of Heroes, which makes it impossible to choose a random hero before loading the map because if you're unlucky, it's a 100% loss. I think it should be possible to add an option to choose a random hero from one class, if possible, before loading the map. This mod has been in development for a long time, and the fact that the author has started paying more attention to balance is pleasing.

Even back in Heroes 3 (or perhaps even earlier, as my acquaintance with the series began with the third installment), cities were divided into production (army) and income (money) types, with magic sometimes being an additional option.
Moreover, in Heroes 3, this distinction is even more pronounced, as even the starting (production) city is not advantageous to develop into an income city (unlike secondary cities) – this conflicts with the pace of building production facilities.
In Heroes 5, due to the limit on building levels, developing production does not conflict with income in the starting city (unfortunately), but nevertheless, the division into income and production cities is still relevant for secondary cities.
Why should all cities be production-focused and aim for a complete buyout?
And why should all tiers be built and purchased immediately in production cities?
This can only be explained by the desire to extract the absolute maximum from all cities, but then the question arises: why should this be easy or even achievable?

Why should all cities be production-focused and aim for a full buyout?
And why should all tiers be built and purchased immediately, even in production-focused cities?
This can only be explained by a desire to extract the absolute maximum from all cities, but then the question arises: why should this be easy or even achievable?

Good afternoon!
It is known that QuantomasAI does not work when playing in LAN. I am creating a multiplayer map (216x216) for 6 players. I understand that it can be played with fewer players as well. Are there any AI mods that are compatible with LAN games and, in particular, with this mod? If not, I don't want to go off-topic, but are there any alternatives to solve the problem of the dumb AI on large maps in the context of the 5.5 mod? (I am proficient in scripting).