Posts from "The Art of Strategy," a section for reports.

Kolobokk (Fortress) defeated Gastello (something like Haven)

The opponent surrendered around week 3 or 4, and that was pretty much it.

Yeah... I'm sorry.

barma21 (red, Necropolis, Vlad) lost to moz (blue, Haven, Vitia + Dougal) 2-1-2

Vitia spent the entire game roaming around with 5 upgraded vampires, which he acquired in the first week at the camp – he managed to level up to an Archmage with Battle Mage specialization. Dougal started to gain ground when I upgraded my Archmages at the beginning of the third week. The game was going well – regeneration, speed, and various minor buffs. In the 4th week, Dougal was already level 23, with 50 trained Imps, and was planning to jump into the Treasury, but at the very beginning of the 5th week, a powerful Black Dragon broke through from the Goblin camp and came to my castle, where I met him. Despite having a very good and strong summon (a Phoenix with 2k HP and 130 attack), and being level 30 against his level 23 (combat stats were roughly the same), the Black Dragon fell in the castle.

P.S. I'll upload the replay later. Basically, this is what I expected; I've lost many such games before, having a pure summon, without Darkness or Implosion, there's nothing to be done here.

Raykkonen (Necropolis, Zoltan) won the moz (Dungeon, Iran) match 2-3-3. 2000 skeletons weren't enough for moz to break through with magic. He besieged him in the Castle. He attacked with spells and counterspells. They played for about 3 weeks, so I don't remember everything. Perhaps Hitrany could have helped.

1850 skeletons, 440 zombies, 90 ghosts, 110 vampires, 40 liches, 20 pit fiends, 12 dragons, 17. 20, 40, 30 stats. Everything died, only 300 zombies remained (2 are enhanced with cold – but I ran out of mana..., and by that time, I also ran out of troops).
Definitely, I should play in THE. I don't want to spend time summoning 2k skeletons.

I confirm Moza's report – that's how he wanted to win, but he attacked the castle for no reason. He couldn't break down the walls in 6 turns and was heavily bombarded under Moza's acceleration spell. He should have taken the second spell, even better, Chaos. He had Cold 42 instead of an attack spell, but I was amazed at how my little black guys fell – from the archers. Moza has an attack of 12, and my defense is 25, fully upgraded.

immortal (Blue, Necropolis, Zoltan) defeated Moskovskiy_1 (Red, Magic, Razaz) 2_2_3. Necropolis is really strong – I felt that, and I haven't had the chance to play with it in a while. I found a slowdown on the 3rd week; before that, I had already upgraded the Mind Lord, and from that moment on, there were no more impassable neutral creatures. I explored both resource centers; one was without roads, and I found a red spider there and killed it. I couldn't see the enemy's hero. I went to the other resource center to look for treasure. The search was unusually unsuccessful – I explored almost all the portals, both city zones, my resource, my adjacent resource, and only at the end of the 5th week did I realize where the treasure was. Before that, on the 4th week, the opponent started taking very long turns, and I guessed that he was already moving around in a treasure. I expected chaos, so I wanted to find a couple of dwarven artifacts. Although I already had an ice shield and -20% damage from chaos in spellcasting, I was still a bit afraid. On the 5th week, I also found a necromancer's amulet in one of the city zones, and I was just missing the dragon set ring. In general, I was thinking of spending the 6th week in the treasure, collecting skeletons up to around 1.8K, and then going after the mage. But, unfortunately, he miscalculated his strength in the battle for the staff -20 initiative. Thanks for the game.

Twarуna (Red, Elves, Ossir) lost to Adv (Blue, Necropolis, Deidra) - 2-1-4

Confirmed. I squeezed the most out of this match. But it was impossible to defeat the Necromancer here. Thanks for the game.

Hero_of_heroes(red, Dwarves, Erling) defeated KillAndAction(blue, Necropolis, Lucretia) 2-3-5
From the very beginning, I decided to focus on Chaos magic, and the game itself confirmed this decision: I started with Inga and Erling, and my starting artifact was the Phoenix Cloak, plus I found Chaos magic in the Witch Hut. :)
I rarely play as Dwarves, so I don't have a good idea of how to progress with them, and I also didn't get Logistics, so I leveled up very slowly. However, I found an experience bonus in a resource town, which helped me go from level 20 to level 27 in weeks 6 and 7. In the center, I found a shop with spells, but since I already had Armageddon at home, I didn't even look inside. On the first day of week 7, I teleported to a town to go through the Gate of the Elements. I was a little scared to go straight to the guard, so I tricked it with a few Chain Lightning spells. I scouted the next guard with Inga, because going into the unknown was even scarier than attacking the first guard. :) There was nothing dangerous there, and I easily defeated it. I leveled up to 27 on this guard, and finally got the Lucky Charm artifact. :)
I collected a few upgrade items and went to the enemy town. I decided to buy the entire army, but I was a little short on money. After passing the turn, I saw the enemy's main hero. I thought it was over, because I didn't have enough money to bribe him. My hero only had Dwarves, Swordsmen, and Priests, while the opponent had a full army and was level 30 with a lot of artifacts. But what initially seemed like a hopeless situation turned out to be hopeless for the opponent, because he didn't have defense against Armageddon.
Here's the replay; it might be too intense for some:)
Download Hero_of_heroes_vs_KAA_final_1.sav
Thank you for the game.

:eek:

Confirming the Hero of Heroes report.

Leveling and building went great: by the 4th week I was level 24, and the capital was fully built by the 12th day. :) Battles went normally; throughout the game I lost about 50 skeletons, 23 zombies, 12 ghosts, and 2 vamps. Moreover, battles were fought without Subjugation or Berserk, but with Phoenix and Vampirism. On the 5th week, I found a treasure zone. There I found: the Death's Embrace set (without the amulet, actually), Ring of Initiation +20, Boots of Travel, Ring of Sarcophagus, Dwarf Helmet, and 3 items from the Dragon set. I bought Subjugation, Berserk, and Unholy Word. And in the Dragon Utopia there was a ring of +2 health.:D
The finale took place on the 7th week and it was a one-sided affair: the GG of my respected opponent cast Armageddon 5 times and that was it. :( I didn't have time to do anything. Although perhaps instead of Mass Dispel I should have used Subjugation on the priests so that my Counterspell wouldn't be removed. Then again, by deploying everything and holding out, I lost 60-70 percent of my army. And in the opponent's city, at least another 60 percent of creatures remained.

Level 30 Lucretius build:
3 racial - all
3 logistics - up to War Path
3 darkness - lords of pain and mind
3 summoning - lords of charms and life
3 sorcery up to Counterspell
3 education - magic attraction.

THX for the game!

immortal (Red, Dungeon) defeated Lady Revan (Blue, Gnomes).
Since the opponent doesn't have much time to play, she decided to give me a technical victory...

immortal (Red, Dungeon) defeated Lady Revan (Blue, Gnomes).
Since my opponent doesn't have much time to play, she decided to give me a technical victory...

I confirm and apologize for not being able to play. I have a lot of work until the 4th. And there wasn't much point in playing anyway, I've never played as Gnomes, only in duels.

dmitrik (Dungeon) won, Lady Revan (Inferno) lost.
They played for two weeks, took a break, but Lady Revan didn't have time and forfeited the game.

Adv (Red, Inferno, Marbas) defeated Lutii (Blue, Necropolis, Deidra) 1-3-4
I really wanted to play with Inferno on this map... but the game didn't work out... :smile51:
We played for 4 hours, it was a simultaneous game, we didn't save manually, and on the 3rd week, we got a desynchronization :eek:
This is the first time this has happened to me in 3.1 when playing in HotA... autosaves didn't help...

At this point:
Marbas, level 20, 20-8-7-11
3 Racial - Sign
3 Machine - Ballista
3 Darkness - Mind Lord + Darkness Seal + Darkness Weakness
2 Logic - Find Path + Path of War
2 Defense - Reflection
1 Attack - Devil's Strike

In the end, we decided not to start a new game, because our desynchronization with Lutii in real life is even worse - 6 hours!!!,
and today was the last opportunity to finish the game before the end of the group stage...

Lutii gave me the victory, and I have great respect for him:smile02:

alex_nv (red, Haven, Krag! + Myv) defeated Smerti_Po (blue, Academy, Ora + Razak) 2-3-6

Week 7...
I have Krag (level 27) and Myv (level 25), and he has Ora + Razak.
There were two clashes with Ora (she tried to hit-run my ice creatures under a >1000 HP mark), and we broke through (snow).
We are maneuvering in the mini-centers, found a secondary treasure, but it's far away... I'm looking for antimagic... I have all mass spells except punishing. I'm training 74 horses (lost 9 in the first clash with Ora, and he killed all the ghouls). I took a portal and was just about to go to the secondary treasure in the hope of finally finding antimagic...
The opponent announced a surrender :( He got tired of manually breaking through portals with Ora in search of treasure...
But I really wanted to finish the game! Thank you for the game.

alex_nv (red, Haven, Krag! + Myv) defeated Smerti_Po (blue, Academy, Ora + Razazak) 2-3-6

Week 7...
I have Krag (level 27) and Myv (level 25), he has Ora + Razazak.
There were two clashes with Ora (she tried to hit-and-run my ice creatures under the mark with >1000 HP), we broke through the Gate of the Elements (snow).
We are maneuvering in the mine centers, I found a secondary resource with a treasure, but it's far away... I'm looking for antimagic... I have all mass spells except for punishing. I'm training 74 horses (lost 9 in the first clash with Ora, and he killed all the ghouls). I took a portal and was just about to go to the secondary resource with the treasure, hoping to find antimagic...
The opponent reported a surrender :( I got tired of manually breaking through portals with Ora in search of treasure...
But I really wanted to finish the game! Thank you for the game.

In the clash with Myv, Ora could have killed all the horses if it weren't for morale :). But in the end, I had to pay off on day 7, with time running out. I found Ora only on the 5th day of the next week, of course, without 300+ gems. But that wasn't the problem. The problem started after that. In 8 minutes, I could only move Ora, and not always a full move. I had to give up on the leveled-up Razazak, level 20, with attack, defense, and darkness, because there was no time left for him. Ora only had a simple ice spell from the chaos spells. In the end, I just got tired of losing time and momentum every turn.
At level 27, Ora still had a free base for defense :smile52:.

Thank you for the game.