Posts from How to effectively use quick battles (autobattles)?

Displaying the remaining MP for your heroes and showing the skill tree for secondary skills for both your heroes and the opponent's heroes works perfectly.

That's it! We just tested it with vbn, and it really works – morale capture is possible, albeit in a slightly unconventional way, and it takes a bit longer, but it works! So, everyone, think about it :D

I stumbled upon a thread on Bay... regarding shooters—it was written incorrectly there. What was meant was that it's profitable to attack shooters when you also have shooters; then losses are generally lower (though that's not a guarantee, which is why I only do this if there's a restart and there's a lot of maxmen, for example, blocking the road, and I start as Castle... otherwise you could wipe out completely, and on tactics, almost everything would be lost, but the hero would remain intact). A living example—at a live champ with fixes in St. Petersburg, where an Expert attacked a pack of mages and lost next to nothing, whereas in reality it would be a total wipe or the loss of all shooters; but if you attack simply with an army—as I wrote on Bay—on quick combat losses are generally higher than a fight on normal tactics (against shooters). And losses will DEFINITELY be higher, and much higher, if you fight regular meat-grinder battles on quick combat. At the very least, in elementary battles where you'd get away without losses in reality, you'll end up losing an angel, for example, to a horde of ordinary kents of Order or 2 angels in a dorf-den (losing them!!! whereas in reality on tactics, you'd conduct this fight without any losses at all).

Also, there's sense in using a single angel to clear a lot of maxmen, for instance, because on quick combat you can clear a huge lot with a level 0 hero, but on tactics, if you fight, there's a high chance of wiping. But there are no miracles here either, and say, a horde of maxmen cannot be defeated by an angel of a normal level 1 hero whether on quick or on tactics..

And then there's the long-known trick with hydras. Other than that, there are no more advantages to quick combat; in the vast majority of cases, the computer conducts the fight much worse than you would, preserving all sorts of useless trash while losing strike stacks where nothing should have been lost... (I wrote a more detailed hypothesis on Bay as to why this happens). So what's left: fights in the first days of the game with shooting units against shooters with fewer shooter losses than if you fought on tactics (but even here, not always, and miracles like clearing a throng of maxmen with archers on day 1 starting as Castle won't happen; the battle is won in most cases even if fought on tactics, but on quick combat, far fewer shooters are consumed), and next—fighting with one angel against a lot of low-level shooters (maxmen, archers, gogs, lizards...). This isn't exactly a feature, as you'd likely clear them on tactics too (though you might wipe, whereas on quick combat you won't...). But if you risk it and attack a horde of archers, and it turns out to be large, the wipe will happen both on tactics and on quick combat, except on tactics you can retreat if you need that hero, while on quick combat, you can't. As for hydras—I believe there's no crime there; taking a hive with one hydra is genuinely useful, but few would risk various experiments with utopians etc. in a real game, because with 6 hydras and a decoy, you can break a utopian anyway, whereas it's completely unclear how the stupid computer will behave—because if you use a decoy, it will surely conduct the fight worse than a human, and if you use one squad of hydras, as I understand it, there's no guarantee they'll take one utopian, and in case of their loss, the utopian can't be taken even with the remaining trash on tactics (or it can be taken, but with losses much greater than with a hydra...). While playing SoD, generally, no one uses quick combat—why bother??? (time doesn't pass during battle...). (Unless it's the very first games with shooting blocks and strike units that are also shooters...). But in TE, you have to use it, and very often—not because life is good, but because you fall into a severe time crunch, and you hit weaker neutrals on quick combat, although sometimes tears come to your eyes from the stupid losses the computer makes, which wouldn't happen at all if you fought yourself... (like me: I attacked a horde of zombies with a level 10 fighter hero, a ballista, and an angel on quick combat in TE and... lost the hero... It's still unclear how the computer fought for this to happen, because after the game I conducted this battle on tactics—it was won while preserving both the angel and the ballista, and the angel was quite healthy, but on quick combat... (though it's obvious—the angel immediately flew forward to the zombies without waits, right into the thick of it, was surrounded by all stacks and beaten, and since the horde was maximal, the little angel was eventually killed off... )

Disable the use of quick combat rules if the main army stack has an ability to hit multiple stacks in melee (Hydra, crazy dogs). Naturally for SoD
I wonder if 3 Hydras and 3 Crystal or Azure Dragons would be able to kill them?
Imho, I believe that capturing own-towns and other structures with losses that are impossible to achieve in a real battle is just as much of a bug as 2x cast, unguarded Pandoras, etc., and a player using this is playing unfairly :smile48:

Let’s say you’ve convinced me… But I still disagree with the LM patch.

I played with the official patch, and I liked it. Is it possible to make it so that you don't have to launch a new executable, but rather add something to the data folder, like an animation speed booster, and everything would work?

P.S. I definitely won't play with luck and morale disabled because it's just pointless. It's like playing pre-flop without any passes.

I remember at a gathering in Minsk, Vasya and Alex made a bet: Alex claimed he could complete the third scenario with a Flux-based stack on week 2 with acceptable losses (I don't remember the exact criteria). They started, Alex built up with codes and leveled up Monty to level 7, bought/upgraded the necessary units, and found the desired stack. Then he said, "Well, for starters, I'll try it on quick battles, maybe the computer will handle it for me." He fought on quick battles – the losses were ridiculously small. Everyone was laughing, and Vasya paid up. Now it's clear what the trick is. I've tested this setup myself. Tactical battles still look better. I entered the third scenario with Monty at level 7 – expert offense, stats 6-4, without a book. The army consisted of 7 mages and a core of 15 archers, 10 earth elementals, and 4 harpies for distraction. On quick battles, 2 mages are killed. On tactical battles, not a single one (even if you fight without looking). It's enough to place earth and fire in the corner, and the mages slightly forward so that the stacks of griffins, which will attack the core, touch the mages; then the rest will wait or be defeated. The best result was that 7 earth elementals and 4 archers survived. This is, of course, unattainable on quick battles.

Try the same Quick Combat, but take only 7 Psionic creatures in one stack to the Hive.

I won't argue about the hives; it has long been standard practice to break them quickly. Here are the numbers: - In the near-maximum configuration, 7 mages + 6 units take damage, resulting in a loss of magic points, both in quick and tactical modes. - In the maximum configuration, the loss in quick mode is 1 magic point, and in tactical mode, it's 3 magic points.

Just a correction, this is tech info.

Yeah. I'm just not sure if those specific bonuses work with quick battles.

As for the canned battle, since there are no magic attacks, the health bonus isn't that important. However, there are 7 magic creatures instead of 6, so it might be a good idea to recalculate the numbers for SoD.

The setup in the canned battle is as follows: earth creatures - 1 stack - fire creatures - 1 stack - 1 stack - magic creatures - 1 stack. We're fighting on grass.

In the first round, the magic creatures attack the group stack first, then the group stack attacks the earth creatures.

The butterflies fly to the left-down (so that the griffins fly down), and one butterfly (for reliability, it's better to have 5 of them in this stack) flies to the upper horizontal and positions itself two squares to the right of the upper-left stack – so that when it attacks the butterflies, it shifts two squares to the right.

The griffins from the right flank fly forward, but don't reach anyone. The upper-left stack moves out of its corner, the earth creatures take its place, and the fire creatures position themselves below and to the left of them.

In the second round, the magic creatures attack the upper-left stack, positioning themselves under the earth creatures so that when the griffins try to attack the fire creatures, they come into contact with the magic creatures.

The group stack attacks either the butterflies or one of the elements. The remaining butterflies surround the fire creatures and magic creatures. The griffins from the right flank fly forward, but again don't reach (or rather, not all of them reach). The fire and earth creatures defend.

In the third round, wait with the magic creatures. The griffins finally reach and kill the butterflies, forming a nice circle. Where they happily get attacked by three magic creatures, who in the fourth round, with their first move, return to their starting position, again with an attack.

That's basically it. After that, defend with the elements and attack with the magic creatures.

Probably, they were talking about the Greater Hydra.

The upgraded Hydra solves all problems. But waiting for its upgrade is a very long process :D I also tried with Tazor (level 1), with an un-upgraded Hydra in the maximum Hive - it loses. Another interesting fact: Hydra + Hydra + 1 1 1 1 1 - complete defeat. But: Hydra + 1 + Hydra + 1 1 1 1 - victory with the loss of the Hydra. In general, I won't let anyone into the 50-99 level Dragonfly tree with just one un-upgraded Hydra (and not even the main hero, it's unclear when and under what parameters and skills he will win), because if it's at maximum, it will get thrashed. Although, any noob can take the 8th level tree.

There's no point in waiting for the Greased Hydra. As for the regular one, we need to think about it. Vidmio needs a hero who is at least somewhat leveled up so that the hydra survives the first round; maybe give it some artifacts... I think around 7 defense and expert armor should be enough; we need to test it.

Alex explained the process step by step:
In the first turn, all the flies attack the hydra, then they all defend until only 1 fly remains. This fly attacks the hydra again and dies from retaliation or a subsequent attack.
Therefore, the hero's stats should be such that he can withstand 5 attacks from full stacks and + 1 small attack from the remaining 1 stack of flies.

There is no difference between TE (Town Enhancement) or SOD (Skill of the Day) here for the AI.