Posts from The Road Back

The fog should be removed during battles.

I played the map version 1.0 (1? - in the topic header/text #45) for 133 days as a "hero." I will largely repeat what was written here before. I liked the overground map (4+). The additional quests are uninteresting. The "Master of Siege" quest is frankly detrimental and a waste of money. I took it, looked at it, and then continued playing without it. It is impossible to befriend the elves. The structure of friendship is excessively complex. First, the elves themselves are aggressive; you can't avoid fighting them. The prison is located in such a place (it's a real pain) that it's easier to kill the turquoise hero than to free him from it. Finally, having 4 of your own castles is better than 2+2. It would be good to limit the number of turquoise heroes and their resurrection after defeat. In a week, I killed Iris, Dugald, and some other pair three times each. They keep popping up like cockroaches when their time comes. The fact that the turquoise faction places huge garrisons in mines is not something I particularly like. A small cockroach runs up and, bam, there are more troops in the mine than he has under his command. You have to drag the main hero to retake the mine; there can be no help from the second or third hero; there is nowhere to hide them from the enemy. The mentor could have been placed in a more convenient location, for example, near a two-way teleport.
I played a version where the elven castles remained under the player's control. This is not a bug; it's a feature. Without it, playing in the Dungeon would be very boring. The Dungeon gets a 3. I don't know what the buttons were like in the first version, but I strained my eyes trying to find them in this one. Why? As a result, I found two myself and two in the editor. Why should only the main hero press them? What's the point of this rubbery feel and pointless running around? If you don't play in one sitting, you can't remember whether the button is enabled or not; it's unclear how many times it has been pressed. Rebuilding the dwellings of demons near their castles is a pointless endeavor; it just wastes resources. Summoning troops from there is a recipe for disaster; it will block all movement for an indefinite period. The demon heroes are made according to the same patterns as the human ones: they are resurrected quickly and with huge armies; each has their own thousand demons. In this regard, Edward's special ability shines with its uselessness like the star of Bethlehem. The battle revolves around one thing: managing to cut down as many demons as possible before their first turn. If you succeed, the losses will be small; if not, you're done for. In any case, you can't handle more than one battle a day; you get exhausted. The demon heroes strangely change the grades of their troops on the move: demonesses become temptresses, and so on. Perhaps it would be better to create the Dungeon as a separate map (from the overground map) or to seriously rework it.
The final battle lifted my spirits. I saw it live: he took a very sharp sword and killed himself. The commander of the garrison has a lion's mane, excellent leadership - inspiration, retribution, and with his first spell, he turns everyone into vampires. What is the morale of the undead?
In the Dungeon, during the dialogue with the priest, a piece of text ("For such cases, if you forgot to check, an exit was created, but when the demon attack occurred, I closed the portal with a barrier.") went beyond the bottom edge of the screen.

Where do the Elves come from, and why is it impossible to befriend them?

What can you suggest about the earthquake? What's wrong with it?

The concept of resurrecting heroes was taken from the previous map, where there were almost no complaints about it, and it worked well.

Do you have any suggestions for reworking the Dungeon?

I don't quite agree with the final boss: even though he loses morale, the troops cannot be controlled, and as soon as the vampire curse is removed, everything will return to normal.

I replayed the map. I finished it in 103 days. I encountered a bug. I captured an Elven town and hired a hero there (the main hero's turn ended, and he was not in the town). I moved him to the town rebuilding button, the town rebuilt, and I was given a loss. If you rebuild the town first and then hire a hero, everything works normally.

In terms of siege, this doesn't give any advantages. The hero is pushed back on the scale – that's a minus. Destroying the walls works against the player. Walls reduce ranged damage and knock out towers, primarily targeting low-level creatures. Edward's archers are weak; they are not like Dugald's. It's only convenient to play with them using high-level creatures; otherwise, regeneration won't save you, and the hero's resurrection is not very effective. Monks/Inquisitors shoot poorly; the presence of walls is not so significant for them. Angels can fly over fences, and cavalry can only pass through the gates. But the defenders have free passage across the entire front. There are more of them, and they have the opportunity to immediately attack with all their forces. In the normal AI mode, understanding its advantage in numbers, it tries to bring everyone out into the open, but the walls interfere; as units pass through the gates, they spread out. This circumstance helps to better implement the hero's special ability.

There's some incorrect premise here: the player will definitely use "Darkness." I posted my replay; the battle is won with moderate losses without the second school of magic. "Darkness" is convenient when a small army faces a huge one. On the map, you can gather a very large army. Even without training in the cities, I barely managed to buy all the units, and everything that brought in money was used. At the end, I sold a lot of artifacts and resources to upgrade the troops. Second, who will remove vampirism? I don't need it. My troops with high morale attack several times more often, deal more damage, and cut down the enemy like chickens; why spoil things. Edward's special ability works even better on vampires.