Posts from Effect of the butterfly

And another thank you for the map; it's quite good and engaging, but this time there are a couple of "buts."
The first half of the game, focused on defending your territory and capturing others, was extremely dynamic, thanks to the numerous teleports and the absence of a "town portal," especially the moment when two secondary heroes (mine and the brown one) raced to recruit an army of mercenary nomads, only to immediately lose them in battle (it should be noted that the game featured a single WOG modifier that allowed creatures to accumulate in outer dwellings, meaning each hero had around 500 nomads).
The second half of the game began shortly before the brown player was eliminated after capturing one of the connecting points and obtaining the coveted "Town Portal," after which the tedious search for tents began. Before my patience ran out and I resorted to the map editor, my hero had reached characteristics of 65+ and commanded an impressive army of 1500+ phoenixes and 2000+ sorcerers (a Dragon, who unexpectedly appeared in the tavern, helped). With the help of a force field, the "thousand-strong" garrison was cleared, and after obtaining Sandro, the hero, who had been painstakingly developed for so long, became obsolete – the immense army of liches that was constantly being generated defeated everyone, and fortunately, the enemy armies weren't that scary, resulting in a rather simple and uninteresting ending, with the final battles taking place in automatic mode. In total, 482 points and three evenings spent playing the game – quite good! Thank you!

This is what the power of habit means: you got Sandro, who was still quite "green," and immediately switched to him, even though you could have continued and completed the game perfectly well with a hero who had initial stats of 65/65/65/65 and a decent army of 1500+ phoenixes and 2000+ wizards! And how many months, if it's not a secret, did you "level up" Sandro to make him so "cool"? ;)
P.S. Oh, yes, you mentioned that you were playing with WoG! Well, it significantly changes the gameplay, the balance of power, and allows you to win much faster, especially with specifically selected options.

I didn't level up Sandro at all; as soon as I got him, I used his starting army, only adding some phoenixes (I didn't even replace the wizards right away), and sent him into battle. Because it was too much of a hassle to drag him around with the main hero, just as a key-opening unit. His army quickly devolved into just liches, and the phoenixes remained. And I specifically mentioned WoG because the only modification enabled from that expansion was the accumulation of creatures in dwellings, as I don't like having to run around everywhere every week with a bunch of small heroes.

And another thank you for the map, it's quite good and engaging...
Total of 482 points and three games, which were very well spent! Thank you!

You're welcome.

I don't understand where to get 3000 Azure Dragons. The walkthrough is stuck, and I spent 20-30 minutes in the editor but couldn't find them. And, as I understand it, you can't complete the game without Azure Dragons.

Yes, it seems impossible without them. And if I'm not mistaken, they are given by the Seer.

There are a lot of Seers there.
Could you please tell me where that particular Seer lives?

There are a lot of seers there.
Please tell me where that seer lives.

Near that guard who asks for dragons :)

P.S. Good camouflage if they didn't even find him in the editor :smile08:

Well, I finished the map. I played it casually, a couple of hours a week, so the process took a while. It's a pretty good map, although there are quite a few challenges with the quests. And it's annoying to have to click on the teleporters 50 times. It would be nice to design a map so that the player initially knows what to do and where to go. Otherwise, I ended up killing everyone, and then realized that I needed 3000 Azure Dragons and started running around looking for quests. I didn't want to look at the map in the editor beforehand and figure out how to complete it. And another point – I always encounter this problem on almost all maps. First, you develop, and then you get the Restoration + Blindness spells, which allow you to kill armies that are 10 times stronger than yours without much difficulty (and there are usually no such armies among the enemies). So, I recommend either removing these spells or making the enemies Earth Magic Experts + Restoration, and giving them primary skills of 30-40 right at the beginning of the game, so that you have to fight for survival from the beginning. Also, give them 2-3 times more castles than the player, so that their weekly growth is much higher, which will force the player not to stay in one place. And make the Necromancer enemy with Necro artifacts very powerful, so that by the time you get to him, he has a couple of thousand Liches. But overall, I liked it, thanks! P.S. Everyone writes that the difficulty level of the map is "VERY DIFFICULT," they should all be renamed to MEDIUM difficulty. P.P.S. And if you play with WoG or something similar, this medium difficulty level turns into Easy

started playing with interest, but then quit. The structure of the landscape was boring – all sorts of vertical and horizontal stripes, as if it were made on a plotter. After all, this is Heroes, magic... elves... it just wasn't enjoyable.

Arkhont, the "geometric" style of maps doesn't appeal to everyone (it doesn't appeal to me either, for example), but playing on samatron's maps is actually interesting (and sometimes not easy), despite this!

What a terrible map. It lacks one of the most interesting tactical elements: on a high difficulty level, you need to build capitols right away, otherwise, when the enemy arrives, you won't have enough troops and won't stand a chance. At the very beginning, messages kept popping up, urging me to move forward and promising that the portals would lead to treasures. As a result, I gathered monsters near all the portals, but no one ever turned towards my castles during the entire game. I calmly explored the entire map, visiting all the towers that increase stats, quickly captured everyone who wasn't protected by keyholders, and then spent a long and boring time gathering troops to break through the garrison and obtain artifacts to get 3,000 azure and Sandro. By that time, there was no enjoyment left; I just wanted to finish it as soon as possible.

I wanted to thank the author for all the maps, without exception. I played through all of them during my business trip, one after another.

Guys, in this map, the main thing isn't the structure of the landscape, but the fact that the map isn't too empty. Personally, I don't like maps where the roads aren't narrow and there are more than two or three empty spaces between them. Take, for example, the maps: Epic, Total War, Heroes, or Beautiful World. These maps are made beautifully and compactly, which is the main thing. There are no empty spaces there, even when you clear all the locations with artifacts and other resources. So, this map is very well made, and Samatron is simply a guru of mapmaking. In my opinion, all his maps are simply amazing, because, as they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." And I have a question for the creator of this map: Samatron, what was your idea behind giving people a shield that provides +6 defense near their castle? I started this map with friends. Naturally, I chose humans, one of my friends chose elves, and the third chose demons. They started complaining about why they don't have something similar, but humans do. This shield can be obtained on the very first day and without any losses. An Archangel with 12 archers and 9 improved monks can't be countered.

Where the roads are narrow, a lot of monotonous landscape begins, as even simple objects won't be enough for the entire map – both due to the limitations in the editor and the compositional mess that arises when there are too many duplicated elements.