Posts from [ARTICLE] Troop Experience

It's strange how you all react so uniformly to everything. You've even started to simplify the morality system, which affects battles (why is this interesting, since morality works in combat?), and you've also introduced these "swarms." But! No one seems to notice that the current experience system practically removes mages from the game. Because with experience, a fighter will always be stronger than a mage. In principle, an encounter towards the end of the second week will be roughly equivalent to casting a protection spell against all types of magic (damage is reduced to 50%). Let's not forget about the possible 30%+ resistance from a "Pope" unit. What do we get more of – advantages or disadvantages, merits or drawbacks? I've made my choice, as have many others. There is a clear trend towards linearity in the game (which, by the way, increases its repetitiveness). By the way, the permanent surplus of money again leads to an undeniable advantage for fighters. Why did they remove the 20% armor? This also fits into the concept of linearity and simplification. P.S. I'm not a chess player, but I've heard of something called Fischer chess (isn't this the same attempt to move away from the standard rules of the game?)

I wrote my opinion about experience a long time ago.

I want to summarize my thoughts on experience.
Negative aspects:
1. Simplification of the game (simplification of map exploration). 2. Difficulty in predicting the strength of an army. 3. Difficulty in predicting the first turn in the fast game. 4. Battles add an additional bonus, i.e., by fighting a battle, the player receives:
a) a bonus in the form of experience for the Hero
b) a defended object
c) and additional experience for the monsters.
5. Increased influence of randomness: one player gets five stacks of zombies, golems, and mummies, while the other gets five stacks of archers and fast flyers, and according to point 4, the imbalance will increase.
6. Weakening the importance of high-level monsters: with a Miner and two trog nests, you can only build mushrooms, a portal, and a Castle; nothing else is needed.
7. Accumulates a bonus in the 1st place without any difficulties or tactical maneuvers, i.e., by fighting battles in a chain:
a) the experience will be gained not by the main hero, but by the one who fought in the chain
b) the defended object still needs to be visited/transferred/used
c) but the experience will be credited to the monsters and will accumulate their strength.

Positive aspects:
1. Acceleration of the game (but at the expense of simplification)
2. Increased skill factor (but again, at the expense of points 4 and 7).
3. Reduces the importance of high-level monsters.

It's quite interesting to refresh old thoughts.
http://www.heroes-iii.com/tree.php

toAlessandro:
Let's do something about Bronh

6 disagree. With experience, it actually makes more sense to repeatedly request something.

Experience is a "papal" feature because it simplifies dealing with the map and complicates dealing with the opponent. And morale is the opposite – it complicates dealing with the map and simplifies dealing with the opponent. Therefore, it is a "lame" feature.

How does it complicate dealing with the opponent? It depends on the situation; sometimes it complicates, sometimes it simplifies. But it really simplifies dealing with the map. Morale doesn't simplify anything, IMHO.

P.S.: In any case, experience is not a tool for creating balance. IMHO.

6 I disagree. With experience, it's the opposite; there's more reason to "moosh" (rush).

What do you disagree with? Why build Medusas or Cats when you have a super-stack of Trogols with cosmic damage?

What kind of nonsense are you talking about, Kostyan? Imagine two Dungeon armies in contact: one with a massive stack of Trolls, and the other with all available levels purchased. Scorpions with +30% health and paralysis will definitely be useful, and I don't even need to mention how effective Medusa's Stone Gaze can be.

P.S. I know how to defeat a massive stack of Trolls, but I have no idea what to do with a stack of upgraded Black Dragons.

What kind of nonsense are you talking about, Kostyan? Imagine two Dungeon armies in contact: one with a super stack of Trolls, and the other with all available levels purchased. Scorpions with +30% health and paralysis won't be superfluous, and I won't even mention how Medusa's stones can solve the problem.

P.S. I know how to kill a super stack of Trolls, but I don't know what to do with a stack of upgraded Black Dragons.

Yeah... looks like you've never played with experience before....

Asm: :D :D :D

(To be honest, there aren't many games, but the super stack of Archons with experience is impressive).

Asm :D :D :D

(To be honest, there aren't many games, but the uberstack of heroes with experience is impressive).

So, test a strategy in single-player using Dungeon with experience, generate a random map with 2 troll nests, and play in two ways; the difference in price and quality will be obvious.

How does it make the confrontation with an opponent harder? It depends on the situation; sometimes it complicates things, sometimes it simplifies them. But as for the confrontation with the map, it really simplifies it. morale doesn't simplify anything, IMHO.

There is this interesting observation that the more balanced a game is, the harder it is to play. Because there is no minor luck or bad luck; everything depends only on you. In a fully balanced game, you have to strain all your brain resources to win—one small mistake and you've fallen behind. And conversely, more complex games are usually more balanced than simple ones; these factors correlate strongly.

An example is the mirror match. Sometimes I find it hard to force myself to play it for fun, simply because I understand that you can't just cruise through it relaxed; you'll have to sweat. And sometimes you just want a low-stress run of some mm6, catch some freebies, and if you lose, blame the generator (at least to yourself).

Another example is fixes. Playing them is much harder than randoms. For the same reason—much less one-off luck, practically a pure confrontation of intellect and home-prepared strategies.

One more example—the 2 hardest games I've played in Heroes were 2 matches against Cobra on Jebus Cross. Because we played with native secondaries, and I played as Stronghold. Hard because with 3 behemoth nests and practically inevitable behemoth caches, any ГО is easily crushed on 121. But!—this must be executed. That is, build all those behemoth nests, find money somewhere for buying/grading, not fall behind in tempo, build the most complex chains, all so that "papa" is already standing before the ГО by 117 and preparing to receive the army for a breakthrough into the center. And the price of an error is high: one day's delay—and the opponent with 45 vamps (Kober played Necro) will push through the center. Moreover, they'll practically certainly push through; unlike on a regular Jebus Cross where you can reach 122-123 and still manage to do something, here it's either 121 or "so-so".

But at the same time—purely formally, native secondaries simplify the game, simply because it's easier to break everything with hordes of behemoths, and you end up with significantly more wolves.

This is the effect I'm talking about—"papa features" are those that simplify mastering the map but complicate achieving victory.

So experience does exactly this—beating the map with it is easier, but because the opponent also has experience, you have to put in effort not just to clear the map, but to level up your troops more than the opponent. You can't just buy everything there is; you still need to boost them somewhere, which significantly complicates both the general strategy and chain management.

That's why playing with experience is harder, it's harder to evaluate the army's potential, harder to choose the right leveling strategy, harder to prioritize money/leveling/tempo—all this makes experience a "papa feature".

For the same reason scripts for new cons were made—to increase the game's difficulty. Although at first glance the game even simplifies in some ways—various horses, despite their smaller number, look much more powerful than wyverns; by the 3rd week (and often by the 2nd), with proper activity, any guard (including Dragon Utopia) is wiped out by a "loser" on quick. But to assemble this army, to do it faster than the opponent and with fewer losses than him, requires a lot of skill and hard work.

That's essentially why I have such a dismissive attitude toward true SoD players and those wt-players who try to simplify their lives by disabling "papa features". Because this isn't making the game harder; on the contrary, it's simplifying it.

Let's take an average spherical Heroist in a vacuum. By what rules would it be easier for him to win against someone like Alex? On sod-sm with all these morales, 10 gnolls and other nonsense? Or on a "all inclusive" mirror match? Naturally, on sod-sm; there is a non-zero probability of driving Alex into the dirt or waiting for him to fail due to morale. But on a mirror match, the score will be strictly N-0 for any N.

That's why sod-sm is simpler; it's the most accurate criterion for game simplicity/complexity. And all these arguments about "playing with morale is freaking hard" are nothing more than excuses (censored). Sorry if I offended anyone.

[ARTICLE] Troop Experience

I've always appreciated Vik's trolling style. It's subtle and tasteful.

I always liked Vic's trolling style. Subtle and tasteful.

Well... :D

By the way, regarding the aforementioned Fischer Random Chess. Some may not know, but professional chess players believe that Fischer Random Chess is much easier to play than classical chess. Even though classical chess is just one of the 960 variants of Fischer Random Chess. In light of the above, it becomes clear why this is the case.

Vik, you have some kind of picture on your first page; where can I find the same one? Or is it only available in World of Xeen?

I wanted to write a lot about the experience and the class of players, but Vic did it all for me. He did a great job. P.S. I'm currently playing a mirror match against Therm. I'm giving it my all, 110%. I recommend the build, by the way. I didn't like it at first, but now I seem to be enjoying it.

Vik's post is quite amusing; it seems the "coward" faction is really getting to him, probably even haunting his dreams. However, SOD gameplay isn't about morality; it's primarily about the diversity of development options. In SOD, for example, there can be situations where you want to take a difficult objective, but you know it will cost you 3-4 units, and you'll suffer significant army losses. So, you think about whether it's worth it, or if you should come back in two or three days and take it with some other tactic. In TE, such questions usually don't arise because, due to the troop upgrade system, such exchanges are usually not profitable.

For example, here's a save from WT (8mm12 template) - at the end of day 121, 10 angels, 8 vivs - 60 grandees, and all the resources. I understand that this is a lucky setup, but in SOD, with morality and without experience, it would be more difficult and take longer to achieve.

P.S. Asm, stop talking nonsense about the Dungeon.

+1
probably an attempt to turn the game into some kind of cocktail with other games, which only spoils it.

+1.
This is an attempt to turn Heroes into Disciples, but an unsuccessful one. Where have you seen that even the troops that are in the castle and do nothing level up, at the expense of those that are constantly in battles?