Posts from The Hero's Path

You can earn a million gold in a single day.

With auto-combat, there will definitely be some losses in each battle, and fighting weak heroes yourself dozens of times is hardly enjoyable. And earlier, screenshots were posted showing how 3 million was accumulated in the bank. Whether it takes a day or several months is not that important – the game is usually completed over years.

I also wanted to note that the deployed units do not disappear from the map.

Does this mean that you place a unit on the map, then click on it, choose to take all the creatures, the creatures join you, but the unit does not disappear from the map? And what happens if you click on the unit again? Are they displayed in the list of deployed creatures (in the address book), and if so, in what quantity? Does this always happen, or only occasionally? If this is some kind of bug, I would like a precise description of the sequence of actions that led to it.

There will definitely be some losses in every battle on auto-battle.

No, there won't be :) - if you have the Cloak of Death and the Staff of the Underworld, the speed and initiative of enemy units are reduced, so having only archers and paladins in your army, you can destroy all enemies even on auto-battle before they start their turn, and the tent, if needed, revives those killed by the enemy hero (attacking spells are somehow not used by anyone except the Dark Elves). I'm attaching an example of such a battle (I didn't do anything manually).

Regarding the years of in-game time, I'll check tomorrow, but it seems that it took only a couple of months to complete the game (if measured in local days equal to weeks, or a little over a year in standard time).

As for the deployed units that have already been taken back, they don't disappear anywhere, they just stay in place, and if you click on them a second time, nothing happens, the cell remains blocked and you can't pass through it, as if there was some item there. The screenshot is attached - the unicorns have already been taken (there are none left), but they remain on the map, and it is impossible to pass by them or destroy them; when you attack them, a sand timer appears for a while, and then everything returns to its original state. They are not displayed in the notebook (second screenshot).
This has always happened to me, so I tried to deploy units either in places where they wouldn't interfere, or I simply banished them (if I was sure that they would no longer be needed).

Yes, the battle was clearly unwinnable. I think I should introduce a limit that prevents players from entering the arena if the army's strength is significantly higher. On the other difficulty levels, do the enemies at least deal some damage? With attacking spells, heroes have a real problem; I don't want to force these things with scripts, but no matter what magic I give them, they still refuse to use them.

Regarding the deployed units, I suggest you first try loading a save file – if it works for you, it will be the easiest way to find the bug. You can also start the map from the beginning and immediately try deploying someone – to see if the bug occurs during the game or if it's an inherent issue.

If you play manually, with a bit of luck, you can win without any losses, even against a madman. As for the units, I tried replaying, and after disembarking from the ship, I immediately deployed the armored infantry and took control of them. But they just stood there, unable to do anything. Here's the save file; it's too large to upload directly, so I've put it in a file-sharing service: http://hdd.tomsk.ru/desk/tyeyspoe#

I apologize; it was my mistake due to insufficient testing. It turned out that the standard function that places creatures on the map sets the quantity based on the difficulty level – fewer on Recruit than specified, and more on Hero. I store the set quantity in an internal variable, so when removing all creatures, I assume there shouldn't be any more, and I prevent interaction with them, even though the unit continues to stand on the map. Thank you for pointing this out; I will fix it when I get around to the next major update (perhaps within the next 2-3 weeks).

Regarding the arena, the balance issue is always that if the opponents are too strong, it will discourage weaker players, and if they are too weak, it will be boring for experienced heroes. If you have any ideas on how to elegantly please both groups, please let me know.

If anything, I only tested the map with the "Hero" unit; I can't say anything about other levels.

Added 5 minutes later
Regarding the arena, I think after a hundred wins at the "Squire" level, it should simply be banned, as well as with the "Hero" unit, and in the end, only the "Berserker" should be left.

Harsh, but fair. Maybe not even after a hundred, but after 20-30. Still, players who just come to the arena "for fun" won't reach that number.

I replayed the final battle, so I'm posting the cutscenes and its replay. It really took almost two years (in standard time), considering that in the last two months (more than a week in local time), I was circling Kabeleh and systematically burning his army with "dragon's flame" (it can only be used five times a day, so I had to waste time).
Last time, I attacked almost immediately, and the battle was very difficult (I barely managed to win), but this time I overdid it with the burning, so I won in one turn with almost no losses.

P.S. Yes, I didn't solve three quests - with the water at the Khan's (I still don't understand where to find the water elementals), with the trees near the elves (I didn't want to waste time (in-game) sitting in an ambush), and with the triangle (I also felt sorry for wasting time (but this time real time)).

P.P.S. To summon to the guild, I invited an elf; I wonder, to invite a demon, did I have to study the summoning myself?

I might have overdone it with the art preparation, but it's permissible in the final battle. The time seems to be roughly the same for everyone, almost two regular years. On a medium-sized map. In the Khan's quest, you only need to swim back and forth along the river near the city; elementals appear randomly. And the orcs only give another quest after you complete this one.

But to summon a demon, did you have to learn the summoning spell yourself?

That's one option, but it's enough to simply buy 3 runic spells and all the combat spells of levels 1-2. The catch is that one of them isn't sold by the demon but in a completely different place. You can also temporarily equip a staff with a summoning spell; that should also work.

Here's the game version I had on another computer, where I saved the complete stats and the final battle (finalniy_boy1) – I'm attaching it.

Also, on this computer, I tried to replay the battle with almost no artillery preparation (it was nice to see that I even managed to avoid any losses). As a result, the war took only 505 days (the first page of the stats for this version and the stats for the "arena" are provided last, and the final battle is called ese_final).
Conclusion: the last 100 battles in the arena were pointless, because a hundred and fifty unicorns, two thousand goblins, and azure dragons remained unused (although it didn't take much game time, or real time, to use them).

There was a version in which I managed to complete it a week earlier (I wrote about it above) – in 498 days, but unfortunately, I couldn't find the save file for that one. In that version, it's not possible to defeat the demoness with the first shot, and they manage to halve the army with their counterattack and their own attack, resulting in a very epic battle, although I was still able to win it.

P.S. I think that with knowledge of the map and its requirements, it is quite possible to reduce the completion time to one standard year, you just need to spend money wisely – hire those who are really needed and fight only with those you need to fight.

P.P.S. I was thinking about the water thing, but I just didn't want to waste time leisurely swimming down the river.

Oh, thank you for the complete statistics. It's immediately clear that you didn't bother with alchemy, but instead made good use of the chaotic runic magic. Your army has a fairly common focus on humans and light elves. You missed out on a few quests, but there's room for improvement in future playthroughs. You weren't seen at the hippodrome. The entire game is laid out before us like an open book.

P.S. I think that with knowledge of the map and its requirements, it's quite possible to reduce the completion time to one standard year.

I can introduce a separate achievement for those who reach the big boss in less than a year. It's a small thing, but it would be nice. Although, I'm not sure they'd let you into the Hall of Fame even with that result.

They even allow it, but it puts you in last place, it's almost embarrassing :)

P.S. Regarding potions, yes - I didn't bother - I fought all the battles except the final one without this stuff :)
In the final battle, I used all the accumulated potions :)

P.P.S. By the way, I only started using Chaos magic right before the final battle, because it's impossible to win that battle without it, and before that, I fought all the battles traditionally without potions and runic magic.

As for choosing an army, I would gladly switch to Dark Elves, but the hero doesn't allow it; during the game, I sometimes had the thought that it would be good to turn the entire army into undead and re-specialize into a Necromancer, but there's nowhere to do that :(

Not all potions are created equal; there's a very useful resurrection potion – you can fight without worrying about losses and then revive everyone. It might not be very sporting, but constantly monitoring every battle to avoid losing even a single, insignificant archer is too much for me personally.

Well, after 20 years of playing Heroes, I've gotten used to taking care of my little soldiers like they're family and protecting those who are needed. I did use crossbowmen as "cannon fodder" because I didn't know they could be retrained as archers in the elven city. But I didn't lose a single archer (neither human nor elven) throughout the entire game; I was very upset when an elven archer was crushed by a pine tree in the quest involving the ballista, and I replayed it several times, but it didn't help. I considered deploying all my troops as units and using them as sacrifices, using goblins (2,000 of whom joined my side as a result of betrayal in the battle with cyclops on the way to Binum and were placed as a unit because they were no longer needed), but seven units cluttered up the map (especially since they don't disappear afterward), so I abandoned that idea.

These are the words of a true commander. As for the "crushed" effect, it's simply a quirk of the random number generator – it operates according to a standard formula, and no matter how many times you run it, it will always produce the same result. In this case, you just need to do something else that uses randomness. The simplest thing, perhaps, is to wait for the next night – there, each turn, it is randomly determined whether there will be fog today.

As for choosing an army, I would gladly switch to the Dark Elves, but the hero doesn't allow it;

What exactly prevents you from choosing Elves? You can easily create a traditional Dark Elf warrior with Furies/Lizards/Witches.

During the game, I sometimes had the thought that it would be good to turn the entire army into undead and retrain as a Necromancer, but there is no way to do that.

In the graveyards, you can turn everyone into skeletons :) (I considered transforming them into equivalent creatures, like in the Necromancer's Castle, to be unnecessary). I once assumed that the army would actually be lost in battles, and periodically, after difficult campaigns, it would be possible to rejuvenate it with new units, including quite cheap undead. But if you play without losses, then, of course, it's a pity to disband a huge accumulated army and start gathering troops from another Castle again. Although, on the other hand, if you play without losses, then you should have more money than usual. And there is also the "Necromancer for an hour" item – having dark magic in your arsenal, it would be a sin not to try it.