Posts from Fun in Michurinsk

Oh, I would give you a hard time on Lost Continent! ))

I had a friend in university, and all we did was play Heroes II. We skipped quite a few classes because of this map.))))
He was the only one who could compete with me, but he only played his favorite map – Lost Continent. ...for about 5 years... I don't know how many games I played on it, but it was probably more than on all the other maps combined. :-)

P.S. The most interesting battles are Sorceress against Barbarian (my favorite faction on this map is Sorceress, and he always liked Barbarian).
However, the actions of the computer-controlled factions play a very important role on the map, who gets the Builder, who gets the Warrior, and what they build in their castle. If you don't agree beforehand on how to use "these resources," the game is quite dependent on luck.

P.P.S. Thank you for the reports; it was very interesting to read, especially about this map!

2 Dust. Lesha, you're missing out on the fun, Sasha and I had a great time. Today we'll play 7 Lakes again, although we don't quite remember it. I'll try to write a report too. By the way, we should play Lost Continent together online sometime, it's an excellent map.

We're not living our last day – we'll meet again. I really want to visit St. Petersburg again and soak up some culture. I was planning to go this year, but I couldn't bring myself to disappoint my dad – he had a special trip to the taiga planned for his 70th birthday, and he only gets one vacation.

We're not living our last day – we'll meet again.

Definitely. :smile08:

We played on the Seven Lakes map, he played as the red Barbarian, and I played as the blue Knight.
It was a flawless game from both sides, and we agreed to a draw on turn 144.
I'll write a more detailed report later. Yes, I got my fill of my favorite Heroes II, I played enough, and Sasha did too, plus we had a good rest.

I was thinking about it for 2 days. It seems that the growth rate of dragons and titans needs to be reduced.

And why not reduce attack and defense accordingly?

Because the main imbalance still lies in the amount of HP. Titans without the "ranged attack" skill deal no more damage than average level 6 troops. If the stats of black dragons are reduced to that of green dragons, they will still outperform all the others. But with a change in the growth rate, everything changes. Let's take a closer look at Nagan-4's expert assessment.
Here's what he writes: "The growth rate of dragons and phoenixes is the same, and 6 dragons will defeat 11 phoenixes or trade blows, which is also not in my favor."
"And then a secondary hero with 5 Black Dragons attacks me. Now I'm in shock; it turns out the Warlock built dragons as early as week 1, just to defend, buying only two. By week 131, Horn became a potential owner of 5 Black Dragons.
Later, he carefully moved around with two of them, just in case, fearing my attack from the shadows and keeping money for a ransom. Although, if the phoenixes had attacked, one would have definitely been taken out with the first blow.

The final battle was short.
Mine: Hero 7, 2, 2, 2. 8 phoenixes, 5 druids, 12 elves, 11 + 11 sprites.
Horn: Hero 1, 2, 2, 4, with artifacts. 5 Black Dragons, three level 1 gargoyles.
Of course, it would have been better to arrange the phoenixes as 1+7, but as we saw later, that wouldn't have saved him. The phoenixes took out one Black Dragon, and that one, with luck, retaliated - minus 4 phoenixes. That's it."
"Due to an incorrect assessment of the number of Black Dragons, I lost on day 135; with a more correct game, I could have prolonged it for about two weeks with the same result."

As Nagan-4 rightly writes - "with the same result." Let's see what would happen if the dragons' growth rate was 2 per week.
We won't discuss the specifics of the growth rate formulas now; we'll just conditionally state that Horn would have had 2, not 5, dragons. In this case, without a week of phoenixes, on the third week, Nagan-4 would have 3 phoenixes (it could have been 4). 4 phoenixes are definitely weaker than two black dragons, but not much weaker than two green dragons. And with a week of phoenixes, 8 phoenixes easily defeat two black dragons, and 11 phoenixes can fight against 4 black dragons.

Friends, I would leave everything as it is in the game. :) In Heroes of Might and Magic III, they reduced the excitement by 30 percent precisely because they simply made higher-level creatures have the same hit points. I don't accept the innovations of Town Enhancement (TE), War Tent (WT), etc., which further homogenize castles into a single template; that's why I stopped playing Heroes of Might and Magic III. After all, the whole appeal of heroes lies in the fact that the castles are different. The Romans fought with heavy infantry, while the Persians used light cavalry; English archers against Italian crossbowmen, Swiss halberdiers crush knightly heavy cavalry. The most interesting wars are when armies are fundamentally different, not necessarily equal in strength. I played three out of four games as the Knight castle, supposedly the weakest, but what prospects there were during the game: fast construction and expansion. If I had played as the Wizard, on the contrary, I would have chosen positional battles, fought for resources, and built Titans. The Sorceress and Necromancer each have their own advantages. On fixed maps, there is always a key point, capturing which gives an advantage. Later, I watched my third game against Horn; I should have immediately moved down with Phoenixes from level 131; then, at level 141, I took the Wizard castle with 4 unbought Titans and a magic tower. Afterward, I tried it again, and it worked easily. At the beginning of the fourth week, with proper play, I had 11 Phoenixes, 4 Titans, Sasha had 9 Dragons + a couple of Djinns, minor details don't matter. He got one Dragon in Dragon Utopia. I have a clone; I can clone a stack of Phoenixes. Hit single units of Dragons with a Phoenix, then with the main stack of Phoenixes, then with the cloned Phoenixes... after that, depending on how Sasha arranges his Djinns and Dragons, and how the Djinns attack, we could have had a big final battle. Or someone might make a mistake before the final battle. I will try to write a description of the fourth game; it was quite instructive. A draw was fair, but if we had more time, we would have fought even longer. Now about the results of the games: 1. There is no need to be afraid of large maps. Lost Continent is a huge map, and the games lasted two weeks; the longest one could have lasted up to four weeks. Teleportation maps were played for 2-3 weeks; 7 Lakes was harder to start, but only because there were two major setbacks, one by Sasha, another by me, otherwise, we would have finished earlier. 2. Something needs to be done about the connection when playing online. Either everyone should get the same English version or buy a disc with Platinum Heroes. If we all have the same versions, we can safely hold a tournament. 3. We can and should organize an online tournament. The main thing is that there are people who still care about the game – at least Dust, Queti, Horn, Nagan... even 4-6 like-minded people are enough. :smile13: Create a list of maps, 5 or 7, big and small, so that each person can remove three unwanted maps. Don't slack off; there aren't many of us, we all know each other, skipping games and throwing partners in such cases is almost impossible. Write reports. Detailed ones, so there will be something to read. I am ready to discuss this topic; IMHO, the second installment of Heroes has not lost anything over the years.

Есть ещё Deep Mike и DR28/Reanimator.

Friends, I would leave everything in the game as it is. :)

Exactly.
And I'm all for a tournament. I have images of both the English and Russian platinum editions – I'll share them if anyone doesn't have them.

+1 for leaving everything as it is))). This is what makes G2 interesting and dynamic. The balance can be adjusted by modifying the starting positions within reasonable limits.

We could organize a tournament; I think we could have some fun with it during long winter evenings ;-)

We played one game on Lost Continent, I was a Knight, Sasha was a Necromancer, I got a little lucky and won, now we're playing the second game.

Great victory for Sasha, but I also had a lot of fun playing.

Very good report!!