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Specifically, last night we played Orc vs Necro... we played on one computer, but we only told each other what was happening on our turns after certain events, which I'll mention later...
I played Necro: the tactic was as follows—since the opponent knew I usually focus on Dark Magic, I decided not to level it up at all :D Otherwise, it was standard: attack, defense, summoning, and education.
The Orc captured all necessary mines by the first week.
In the first week, I only captured ore; I didn't have enough troops for the rest. I accumulated them, and by the start of the third week, I got wood. Mercury started dripping from the warehouse starting from the second turn))
The Orc cleared the territory, built up an army, and developed the hero. He reached level 17 and, naturally, developed resistance to Dark Magic, fearing a Berserker with Mind Control. He also developed Luck, Attack, and if I'm not mistaken, Defense, all to the Expert level.
I leveled up to 20—could have gone higher, but I only attacked 1-2 target squads at the start of the week to increase my troop count... after that, I simply ran out of Dark Energy. I entered the Orc's territory, started capturing his mines, and looped back and forth. At that point, I had slightly less than 1k Skeleton Archers, about 100 Vampires, 2 squads of 350 Zombies, 20 Death Knights, and about 40 Liches. The opponent started chasing me; the terrain was a bit confusing. In short, I forced the opponent to move more than one turn away from the castle, used Teleport across the mountains, and took the castle. The opponent essentially surrendered and asked for a rematch)) After that, we started acting strictly by agreement just to test the balance. The opponent attacked; his army consisted of ALL the creature growth since the start of the game—he had a bottleneck in building the level 6 creature dwelling, but otherwise, everything developed normally.
150-180 level 2 creatures (Centaurs),
14 level 7 creatures (Cyclopes),
about 70 level 5 creatures,
about 16 level 6 creatures,
I don't remember the rest...
All the opponent's troops were upgraded, mine mostly weren't (I hadn't been in my town since level 12))). In short, I had to run; the Orc's losses were 1 Cyclops and all the Centaurs. THAT'S ALL!!!
We decided to replay again. The scenario: I return to my town, collect all troops from the town, upgrade those I have—basically maximizing everything—and return immediately. Considering there was NO MIND CONTROL, NO BERSERKER (didn't level Dark Magic), and not even Phoenix summon (got some celestial shit, damn it))), and mass spells weren't leveled up, the battle was still won, though with heavy losses. I had 39 Harbinger of Death, 21 Dragons, 1k Archers, 750 Zombies, about 67 Liches, and 182 Higher Vampires. At the moment of my return, the opponent had:
18 level 7 creatures
37 level 6
94 level 5
52 level 4
177 level 3
196 level 2
368
The fifth level proved to be the most problematic; only the Zombies survived until the end (slow and steady wins the race)))) and plus I restored 210 archers by the end of the fight... In short, the balance is ideal: two players roughly equal in strength, at the same level of temporal development, on an absolutely asymmetrical map, played an absolutely equal final battle... perhaps I should have ignored the plan and leveled Dark Magic; then the victory might have been a bit more tangible, but I'm sure not by much...
But there is this point: considering that my army grows in number faster than the opponent's, and if he has just reached the maximum creature growth level, then my maximum continues to increase with the hero's level. In a few weeks, I could be raising significantly more, and if this battle turned out roughly equal, then later the advantage could shift to the Necro, at least in terms of army strength. Perhaps again the number of troops would be compensated by the increased Rage of the Orc, but that's not the point; the point is that in the late game, Necro looks quite good against the Orc... not necessarily dominant—it's not supposed to, and SHOULD NOT, look dominant... the main thing is that the tilt in either direction would be insignificant, which speaks to a fairly high level of balance in the game, where subtleties decide the outcome, and making a mistake in them puts the victorious outcome of the duel in doubt.
