Posts from 3rd annual offline tournament "Best of the best"

By the way, do you know why Vanya quit? Did he run out of time? Or did he not manage to make it work with the auto-battles?

He couldn't make the auto-battles work, so he gave up on everything and just played the SOD without auto-battles.
First, he rushed Necropolis on the map, then Ananias freed the Stalker, and he took almost all the cities on the first day.
Basically, he wanted to create a clone strategy, so he didn't worry too much – he just used low-health skeletons and whatever else he could find, turning anyone with more than 35 health into a ghoul.
Well, I had some unexpected events in real life, so I couldn't finish the game, and I got stuck at the end of the first day.

I prepared Nimbus with expert scouting and wisdom. If you buy Islina, he appears on the second day in the green tavern and, according to the plan, teaches the clone scouting.

I also planned to prepare Galtresh, he also comes to someone with scouting and wisdom on the second day, I don't remember exactly who. And, like, if I manage to get two companions to buy two Necromancer experts on the third day, and then "generate" wisdom and scouting for them in the tavern – I don't even know how many zombies I'll end up with... I think it will be far more than 200k.

If anyone is interested, I'll post the 231st save from the first day here, but otherwise, sorry, I couldn't finish the game. It feels a bit awkward...

The scheme is simple to the point of being ridiculous...
We put any Necromancer with expert Necromancy + Cloak of the Undead King (60%) in a Castle. We attack with 10000 Liches. We Clone and die. The computer raises 12000 Liches. We finish them off with 100% Necromancy and get 12000 Zombies. (+20% out of thin air) and if we force the computer to clone, we get 24000! (+140%) That's all the math. And here you are going on about some millions... :D

By the way, I planned to just give the computer Boots and a Cloak, forget about those Liches. And, like, if a Necromancer or a Death Knight shows up in the computer's tavern, it will be Vidomina or Isra (we just buy the rest for ourselves at the end of the turn, and these two go to the Dismissal). I didn't want to shove Isra and Vidomina in on the first day, because I rushed to buy them out and didn't have time to level them up properly under the Dismissal (I thought I'd level them on the second day against garrisons).
Then you keep, say, 500 Liches for yourself, and on the computers you breed Skeletons in a progression. Then, with basic Necromancy at the end, from those Skeletons you take Zombies once...

We put any Necromancer with expert Necromancy + Cloak of the Undead King (60%) in a Castle. We attack with 10000 Liches. We clone them and die. The AI raises 12000 Liches. We finish them off with 100% Necromancy and get 12000 Zombies. (+20% out of nowhere) And if we force the AI to clone, we get 24000! (+140%) That's the math. And here you are going on about some millions...

As I understand it - they either decided to attack with zombies, or to buy them off))..

pretty interesting method!! =)

The scheme is ridiculously simple...

Go ahead and demonstrate your "master class" if you can. After all, all these Tournaments and their discussions exist so that everyone can learn.
What does "putting any Necromancer in a Castle" mean? Are there any rules for this, or is it just a matter of chance? If we lose one of our Necromancers to the computer, what guarantee is there that he will appear in the computer's tavern? Because to use your scheme, you need to kill this Necromancer in the Castle every time. What happens then? Do you dig him up, lose him in battle again, and wait for the computer to buy him? Or what? You're talking about a geometric progression, so you can repeat the cycle more than once or twice, right?
And there's another unclear point. If you attack with 10,000 Liches, why then convert them all into Zombies? After all, you could defeat these 12,000 Liches with your expert, like Vidomina, for example, and raise 12,000 Liches instead of Zombies, and use them for the next round. Or is the scheme you described a one-time thing? But then it's not clear why you would convert 10,000 Liches into 12,000 Zombies. After all, to create these 10,000 Liches, you need to defeat neutral creatures. And from these defeated neutral creatures, you can immediately raise the same 12,000 Zombies, or even more. What's the advantage? Or am I missing something?

After purchasing a hero, a specific class of heroes becomes available as companions. There are many companions, and you can plan accordingly. For example, after purchasing a green hero, a Necromancer becomes available! :smile20:

And another point of confusion. If you attack with 10,000 liches, why then convert them all into zombies?

This is just for illustration. Of course, you can breed liches and repeat the cycle. Zombies are the final stage before saving!

No, the quests are fine. Regarding the zombies, I have 72785 + 5542. This is either a bug, or I missed something significant.

Hold a "master class" if you can. After all, all these tournaments and their discussions exist so that one's experience can grow.
What does it mean to "put any Necromancer into a Castle"? Are there any rules for this, or is it a matter of chance? If we feed one of our Necromancers to the computer, what guarantee is there that he will appear in the computer's tavern? After all, to use your scheme, you'd need to kill that Necromancer in the Castle every time. What then? Dig him up, feed him again in battle, and wait for the computer to buy him? Or how?

You take a sniffer, skip a turn, and at the start of the next day, check who is in the computer's tavern.
If it is not a Necromancer (or whoever you need), but for example, some Mage (never mind - Astral), if you roll back one turn and buy Astral, the computer will get a different Mage.
What to do?
You need to roll back, buy all the Mages, and stuff them into your own towns. Then check: did a Necro appear for the computer? What, still some random guy? Yes, roll back, buy up all of that class again.
If it doesn't work, and your towns are full, "work on" the next computer.
If a Necro finally appears: dismiss the Necro you want to give to the computer, buy up all other Necros for yourself.
If you succeed, for example, in forcing Vidomina into the computer's tavern this way, then if you approach his town closely with an army and give him gold, the computer usually hires two heroes, putting the hero with lower stats outside and the one with higher stats and an army inside.
If Vidomina comes to him with higher stats than the hero in the adjacent slot, he will buy her.
If she has lower stats than, say, his main hero sitting in the town, then Vidomina will remain "outside" (which is desirable, as it's easier to pawn a Necro off on one of five computers than one of four, but not mandatory, as other computers remain).

Next: you attack Vidomina, lose, but clone the army.
Well, as I thought: for example, you have 100 skeletons and a Bone Dragon, Medal of Vulnerability, and all spells from Pandora's Box. And Nimbus (my green player's Nimbus is first) has Scouting and knows nothing beyond level 1. You clone the skeletons, lose the army, and retreat with the Medal and Bone Dragon. Nimbus raises however many - (30Necro+10Cloak+15Boots)%x2x100=110 skeletons.
Then attack, beat him, he should make a clone.
You, with the dismantled Cloak of the Undead King, raise 100%x2x110=220 skeletons. So in one day, you simply doubled your entire skeleton army from nothing. And this is on a bad day, when you only stuffed one Necro for one computer.
And so you keep spinning this carousel until the time comes to raise zombies.

By the way, this manipulation has already been banned on Portal ;)

Incidentally, it doesn't have to be a Necro for the computer. If there are two Cloaks of the Undead King, then from a hundred, a non-Necro computer with the Cloak of the Undead King raises 60 skeletons, your Necro with the dismantled Cloak of the Undead King then raises 120... So you grew the army by 20%...

You take a sniffer, skip a turn, and at the beginning of the next day, you check who the companions are in the tavern... And then you keep repeating this cycle until it's time to raise zombies...

Yeah... if I had seen such a post five years ago, I would have thought it was a meeting of ward number 6... :D But now, it's just a detailed explanation... They've really dissected the game into its smallest parts... But hey, we're still holding on, "because offline!" :D Vanya, bravo! :smile13:

Yeah, they've really dissected the game piece by piece...

Exactly... I had the same thought. Maybe in another 5 years, something else will come to light.

And variations on the theme of "inserting a hero into the computer's turn." There is such an option (a button in the game) - to show or not to show the computer's turn during the turn transition. Showing and not showing gives completely different hero classes for the computer in the tavern... Regarding the clone: the effect of raising undead from the clone is completely nullified if, after the clone, a player or AI casts the "summon elements" spell. In this case, undead are not raised from the clone, but are raised from the summoned elements... Damn, I had to experimentally figure out what the ban "raising undead from summoned elements" means, and I once read in Amber's reference that it was a RoE feature, and it was fixed in SoD, but whoever asks will get "a lot" of information. Again, the mechanism of raising undead from clones of different unit stacks has not been studied (like cloning liches and skeletons in one battle - I think it won't work... but: I didn't bother checking, because it's a bug, and it would be useful for science. I think only one of the clones will be counted for one of the stacks, but how and what - I don't know.

Thanks to the guys who didn't give up and spent a considerable amount of time "analyzing this game." Especially to Eldgernon for such a detailed description; I immediately saw all my mistakes on the first day and understood why things didn't work out. Well, to see the "castle-oasis-thieves" triangle, you had to look and think, but figuring out how to multiply the victory using the computer – that would have required me to strain my brain. So, bravo, guys. My respects. Sorry for not supporting the project.

I realized where I messed up. I thought I could just start raising zombies right away. I didn't have enough imagination to create more liches. Well, at least it was interesting.

And by the way, I want to say to other participants who didn't send in their save files: don't be shy or afraid. My result is funny compared to others, and I knew that would be the case. But I still submitted it. It's not good. Only four people participated in this tournament. People need to learn to support the spirit of competition!

Congratulations to participant Eldgernon on his well-deserved victory, who, moreover, scored the indicated number of zombies in just 4 days. The winner is awarded a medal to be displayed under his avatar:We would also like to note the results of Perpolken, as well as the debutant in the offline tournament, Oelm, who took 2nd and 3rd places with a small gap from the leader.
A special thank you to player archerpit for participating. Study the playthroughs of the winners and improve your game, we look forward to seeing you in new tournaments on HeroesWorld!
Thank you!