Posts from It has happened! The first club tournament for Heroes of Might and Magic II!

We ignored the three Teleport locations. I chose the first one, and selected the green one. I don't remember the exact color, but Horn is at the bottom, and Dust is on the right. We decided not to take the Warlock because of the maps with red dragons. Now, Dust chose first – he's a Wizard, Horn chose second – a Sorceress, and I chose between a Barbarian and a Necromancer – I took the Barbarian.

Immediately, I went up, on week 1 I cleared the mines, broke through the guard at the teleport, and cleared the snowy island. Damn, I didn't place Cyclops because of my stupidity; there wasn't enough wood – I didn't place the market on 116, there wasn't a market – I couldn't exchange 2-3 missing crystals.
But I captured the second Barbarian castle.
On week 2, I saw an enemy hero with an army; seeing mine, he went back. We played like that until week 3. I'll write more details later.

You got a pretty good start, guarding the teleport from the Hydras, and you have 2 of your own Castles :-) I didn't attack because your hero probably collected some good artifacts on the island, so we're waiting for the Titans and Colossus to appear, which I ordered on turn 127 and built in the first Castle, respectively. :-)

P.S. We've been playing on Horn for three days now, North vs. South, and I'm running out of bad words to describe this terrible map... and my game, too. :-)
...I'm tired, I've played enough.

Added 2 hours 36 minutes ago

We ignored the three Teleports. I chose the first one, I chose the green one. I don't remember the exact color, but Horn is at the bottom, and Dust is on the right. We decided not to take the Warlock because of the abundance of red dragons. Now, Dust chose first - he's a wizard, Horn second - a sorcerer, and I chose between a Barbarian and a Necromancer - I took the Barbarian.

The fan game on Teleporters ended with my victory because Horn lost (you could say, forced to lose) on day 3 at the gem mine; without it, he couldn't even summon Ponies... then Eric and I finished the game, skipping Horn's turns.
In the end, the Colossi and Titans I built decided the outcome, even though I was far behind in terms of Fortress stats because I didn't want to prolong the game and defend my artifacts on the island. Eric got there very early because the passage was guarded by Hydras! :)

P.S. Now, the Fortress battle with Horn is approaching, but I'm doing badly there; the map's stupidity is just annoying....

The fan match on Teleporters ended with my victory because Horn merged (one could say, forced to) on day 3 at the gem mine; without it, he couldn't even summon Ponies... After that, we finished the game with Eric, skipping Horn's turns.
In the end, the built-up Castles and Titans decided the outcome, even though he was far behind in the Fortress of Blood, as he didn't want to prolong the game and defend his artifacts on the island. Eric got there very early because the passage was guarded by Hydras!

On turn 135, it was practically the final battle. I forgot to bring a hundred goblins, but they probably wouldn't have changed much anyway; the Titans were just too strong.

Of course, there were many mistakes, but I warmed up well and at least played one game.

Somehow, I managed to win. Horn surrendered after the Djinns reduced his Phoenix stack by half, leaving him with 40%.
Overall, this happened because the Barbarian army, in terms of hit points, "outperforms" the Sorcerer's army, so he had to attack me, which meant "exposing" himself to the Djinns without Mass Haste.
Also, in recent days, I finally got Wisdom, which gave me Teleport for 20 Cyclops and a bunch of Ogres in the Fortress, and there were also prerequisites to learn Mass Cast, which, in battles with such a large army, certainly makes a difference.

Overall, the map is idiotic; I regret that we played the final on it. We were both tired, but at least the situation was roughly equal; if one of us had a native secondary town, it would have been a guaranteed loss for the other.
I think Horn played this map better overall in terms of development, except for a couple of important moments: he gave me 2 companions, which meant an income of 4k, allowing me to turn the game around; + there were moments when he should have gone to attack, but he probably thought that I had bought everything with that income.

I will try to write detailed reports when I get home; I don't have the energy right now. Overall, I am very happy that I played with such good players, chatted, and had a good time. Now, I just want to go home as soon as possible...

P.S. The title of the topic can now be changed :) With our combined efforts, we turned "While the project is in progress" into a pretty good tournament! Long live the wonderful game - Heroes 2!!! :cool:

P.P.S. PReDS sincerely regrets that his unexpectedly successful performance in the Heroes 3 tournament did not allow him to give due attention to Heroes 2 :-)

Somehow, I managed to win. Horn surrendered after the Djinns had reduced his Phoenix stack to half, leaving him with 40%.
Overall, this happened because the Barbarian army, in terms of hit points, "outperforms" the Sorcerer's army, so he had to attack me, which meant "exposing" himself to the Djinns without Mass Haste.
Also, I finally got Wisdom in the last few days, which gave me Teleport for 20 Cyclops and a lot of Ogres in the Fortress, and there were also prerequisites to learn Mass Cast, which, in battles with such a large number of units, certainly makes a difference.

Congratulations, Alex, on your victory. In a hard-fought battle, you proved that you are the best in this version.

P.S. The title of the topic can now be changed. With our joint efforts, we turned "Project in Progress" into a pretty good tournament! Long live the wonderful game - Heroes 2!!!

Yes, we held a very high-quality tournament. Of course, the main focus was on the final in the 3v3 format and the overall organization of the tournament. That's why I didn't have time to upload the saves from the 2v2 game. As soon as we finish the tournament, I will start sorting and uploading the saves. All of them.

I hope that the participants, after watching the saves, will write detailed comments on the games.

PREDS sincerely regrets that his unexpectedly successful performance in the Heroes 3 tournament did not allow him to give due attention to the 2v2 game :-)

;)

Well, gentlemen, even those who didn't perform as well are still great! Congratulations on successfully holding the tournament, and of course, **Lesha, congratulations on your victory!**

P.S. I'm waiting for photos from you.

My sincere congratulations to the tournament winner - Dust!

I'll write about the final round later. I've already described the third game, and I'll give a summary of the first two matches, as they were played on the same map and followed a similar pattern. First, about my choice of maps. Since there wasn't much time to prepare for the tournament, I removed the less common maps and those where experience plays a significant role. This strategy meant sacrificing some interesting maps and sticking with the predictably simple North-South, 3waycross, and slightly less simple, The Other Side. Of the good maps, I only had time to look at Beltway, as I was familiar with it from Heroes of Might and Magic 3, so at least I wasn't completely unfamiliar with the map's layout. In the end, I chose The Other Side, where the left side is, in my opinion, significantly better, although the host partially compensates for this imbalance. Why is the left side better? 1) It allows you to collect more treasures on the first turn, which means you can break through the lower guard on the third turn and then pass the army up the chain; 2) its scouting range covers the opponent's Castle; and 3) defending it happens "along the way," while the blue player has to specifically move a couple of heroes there. What, in my opinion, is important on this map and what should be done? The map is fast-paced and involves a lot of interaction – you need to develop a mage/mages and build the second tier of the guild; building up troops is secondary, and you can easily run into resource problems, especially with gems. The key moment is who wins the battle for the top, where there are a lot of resources and free troops. Since this will happen on days 3-4, it's important to choose a race with the strongest hero army. Here, two "warrior" races clearly lead – the Barbarian and the Warlock. Then comes the Wizard, for whom Hobbits are ideal, and it's better to use Boars to scout; followed by the Sorceress, the Necromancer, and last, as is often the case, the Knight. That's why I was very surprised when Gena chose the Knight. As a result, when he came to me through the bottom on the second week, I repelled the attack even without using any offensive spells (on the second turn, the only useful spell was Blindness) and without returning the starting army – only with the reinforcements that emerged from the Castle and Pixies and Gnomes from hidden spots. After that, all that remained was to reach the opponent's city and officially secure the victory. In the second match, Misha took the second-to-last Necromancer, but he gave me the Barbarian, so he didn't even try to fight for the top. And it's practically impossible to counter 270 Goblins and a Colossus on the second week, especially when there's a hero with Light/Cold magic and double mana behind them.

...
P.S. PReDS sincerely regrets that his unexpectedly successful performance in the Heroes 3 tournament did not allow him to devote proper attention to the second game :-)

Yes:(
I managed to play a game with Lesha on Beltuwe while simultaneously playing against Matroskin and partially Bayazet with a yellow wizard against a red necromancer. But it's already clear from the beginning that my thoughts were far from the second game: cooldowns for the red side are 100%, but giants for the yellow side are quite questionable, and that's how the game turned out. An artifact in the very first chest did not allow me to develop properly with 111 at the start with 2500, a forced risk, losing 1 hero - and only mages in the end of the first week. The purple hero generated as a Knight, so I considered his rush and development there unpromising. There was a Barbarian with a logo, and I could have prolonged the game by gathering djinn in the desert and then teleporting to the swamp, but I decided to give up, again, because of the very intense game with Bayazet in the third game. Congratulations to Dust, it was nice to meet Gena and Mikhail, it's a pity that we didn't have time to talk properly.

http://www.fayloobmennik.net/593026

Here are all the save files from the games played in the Heroes of Might and Magic II tournament. I ask the tournament participants to review them and provide descriptions for the games.
Sincerely.

P.S. The files for Heroes of Might and Magic III will be uploaded later.

So, in short, what I remember about my games:

Round 1:

Dust (yellow, Wizard, Barbarian) def DR28 (blue, Sorceress, Barbarian) 3 way cross

The setup was standard, and the same build of Sorceress vs Wizard is interesting; however, it requires very sharp and aggressive play from the Sorceress's side, with Phoenixes built on the first...
So, as expected, I fixed the Giants on the first, at 122 (I took quite a few money chests, which is the only way for a Wizard) already upgraded them and... then a stall. Nothing to do - we skip turns, save up for Titans, and things are moving suspiciously slowly! :confused: Right, it turns out my gold mine works like a mercury one :eek: Anyway, I barely managed to buy 2 Titans over 3 turns. In the second week, I painted the Dragon Utopia with 3 Titans; at the start of the 3rd week, I broke through the passage from 9 CD into the center (lost 1 CD and 1 Titan - alas, tempo :cool: ) attacking, I think, with 3 Titans and 3 CD. Next, I wanted to go to the opponent, but there was no money for one-time buyouts at all, and the Titans were idling in the castle, so we break the computer's CD (losing another Titan), collect its cash, the Dragon Utopia, the Castle; out of joy, we buy up all the "thunderers" and then go to the opponent.
It turned out DR28 didn't build phoenixes but tried to play a Warlock castle - built CD there, but it didn't help because I had already put out 3 Dragon Utopias, leveled up quite well, + Titans still shot...
Thanks for the game, the start has been made. :)

Round 2:

Dust (purple, Necro, Sorceress) def GreatGenius (blue, Barbarian, Warlock) Spellcasters

In my opinion, a strange choice of castles; playing as a Barbarian on this map is an incomprehensible choice to me... Although magic and a leveled-up hero decide here, Necro should be in favor with its CD on the 1st.
For my part, I messed up - I didn't notice that purple had no gold mine, while blue did - I thought there should be an equal number of mines in the original...
Alright, we started. My start turned out to be crappy. I picked Necro with one goal - to fix CD on the first, but it didn't happen; a total disaster occurred with gray (Grands on the mine and not a single stack) and dragons didn't spawn, only Liches and Vamps. But a decent artifact is visible - a Bolt amplifier by 50%, and lightning was given in the castle, so I thought - need to rush, and I ran. :smile13:
I upgrade Vampires, buy out Mummies + Halflings and some other junk led by 50 mana and a hit Bolt for 200 go through Paladins to visit the opponent. As luck would have it, an artifact of +3 attack taken from them is given only to the Leader; well, nothing, inspired by the amplified lightning, I boldly run to the castle, on the way even clearing chests left by Gena, leveling up... I approach the castle, 10 gr. Ogres, Wolves, lots of Centaurs, + something else attack me - well, this is all nonsense I think, aiming a bolt at the first target... :rolleyes: ...and then a letdown, Gena has 50% Lightning protection, and other damaging magic I've never seen in my life! :smile21: In the end, instead of victory in battle, only an exchange of armies, and further unclear prospects without a gold mine on my side. :confused:
But at the same time, a vile, sneaky plan was born to catch his GG with "Wave of Death" on gargoyles! :cool: I leveled up this magic for the loser, plus 3 SP so that a gargoyle could be taken out at once, I give him 4 zombies ;) and at the right moment I attack. Gena, not suspecting anything is wrong, gives me a cast - and that's it for the GG.
Interesting clash, and the map lived up to its name! Thanks for the game! :)

Parallel to Round 2, I played a game with PReDS.

Dust(red, Necro, Barbarian) def PReDS (yellow, Wizard, idk) Beltway

Well, there's not much to tell here, other than that it was pleasant to play with the future CIS Champion of "three" :) :) It's clear that Dima lost on the build. Of course, CD on the first on this map is easy, and they arrived at his place on the 2nd, but he didn't build Giants, and idk if there's even any point in them leaving... :rolleyes:

Round 3:

Dust (yellow, Necro, Knight) draw Horn (blue, Necro, Barbarian) 3way cross

There was already something similar to the description of this game above, so briefly. The start didn't go well for either. It's unclear who had it worse: Horn with payment and ranged guards, and without GG on the first, or me having the Sulfur and Gold mines completely blocked by a pack of gr. Champions. :smile21: In general, I could have surrendered if I hadn't built CD on the first, but still experiencing mega-stress, I barely managed to put them in without sulfur, gold, and those tasty resources that lay nearby... 75 coins left :cool: :p
Then it turned out that my secondary is native!!! Hallelujah I thought! :smile12: Experiencing the same mega-stress (since previous CD were placed after exchanging all resources completely), I still barely fixed CD in the second week and in the secondary + took red from Dragon Utopia! Everything seemed great!
Moreover, Horn declares defeat since he's losing in Dragon Utopia. I suggest auto; Sasha takes that Dragon Utopia, and I buy a double build with difficulty, not enough money. I break into the center as soon as I could buy up, and there Horn had already taken the 2nd Dragon Utopia - nothing to do, I attack. And I'm shocked by Horn's stats :eek: , the battle is lost.
The thing is, besides the fact that I wasn't given a single artifact for power stats, I had to take many gold chests to build CD on the first and second, which of course strongly affected the knight's leveling... Anyway, we decided to replay the game from scratch as North vs South.

Parallelly started playing Teleporters for 3 (though on the 3rd day Horn failed at the mine, so effectively played for 2 with Eric):

Dust (orange, Wizard, Barbarian) def Nagan-4 (green, Barbarian, Barbarian) & Horn (yellow, Sorceress, idk) Teleporters

I don't recall when I played Teleports as orange, but since my experience playing on this map is much greater than that of the opponents, I didn't particularly object; moreover, the first was allowed to choose a race from the 3 remaining - started as Wizard.
On the first, I didn't build Giants, but fixed red CD at the computer's - for tempo; Titans take long to wait for, and there's no point in buying out Giants. I rushed the computer without problems, leveled up GG, built chains of 2 castles, built Mages as support for CD, bought all this on the first day and rushed straight to visit Eric, leveling up GG on the way.
I arrived at the opponent's respawn with GG + a couple of losers with arrows, revealed that the passage to the teleport was already broken (there were Hydras), meaning Eric's hero is already decked out with goodies from the island and there's no point in attacking; I'll have to wait for Titans and CD growth! So I do that, hanging out/leveling up on the border of the enemy respawn. I don't want to go to my teleport, nor much to Horn's, because it would be kind of unfair, and I don't want to drag out the game since our final game with Horn was happening at that moment.
So I save up/upgrade Titans, transfer the whole army including CD, Liches, Mages, Birds GG and attack at the start of the 3rd. Eric's hero seriously surpasses mine in stats, but 4 Titans and 7 CD know their business; moreover, Nagan didn't build Cyclops on the first, which of course significantly reduced his chances of victory.
Thanks for the game! :)

Round 4:

Dust (yellow, Barbarian, Barbarian/Sorceress) def Horn (green, Sorceress, Barbarian) North vs South

Damn, what a stupid map!!! :mad: Why did we even start playing it!? :( No matter how I sped it up - no use, you can't out-power someone here!
I regret now that truly worthy maps weren't played, but such stupid ones were...
We already wrote about this game, so I'll remind you briefly.

My start didn't go well because a lot of stone went into building Trolls etc. - couldn't build the castle in my native village. Horn accordingly did this successfully and got a double build of Ponies as early as the 2nd week in addition to Phoenixes in his own; I only built Cyclops... (we were lucky that both had their native village, and the game didn't turn into a farce).
So Sasha's start was noticeably better, he significantly levels up GG on Phoenixes, he has more villages, higher income; my GG is still level 1, and the main army is operated by Sorceress with Loga - basically everything is a mess :( . But I still build up my native village to Cyclops, and most importantly on the 2nd I capture the upper computer, which gives +2k to income! Then GG gets smashed at his respawn and starts slowly leveling up. Mama-Sorceress floats off to take out the lower computer - Necro, which works out well = another +2k gold per day :) . The situation is already looking brighter; it's clear that I can buy out my double build with such income, but Horn - idk. Moreover, it seems to me that 2 Barbarian castles out-power (thanks to Ogres, and Trolls with Cyclops also grow okay :rolleyes: ) the "skinny" Sorceress, so I don't intend to attack myself. Horn understands this too.
So, the point of all this 2-day headache was that Horn was forced to come visit me; I met him with 5 single units of genies and one unit halved the main stack of Birds. That's when he surrendered.

It must be said that he could have killed me earlier (I couldn't buy out all growth) if he had known my situation, but it seemed to him that my income + free great upgrade of Ogres and Orcs allowed me to buy everything on time. Moreover, in one of the last days my GG finally gets Wisdom, which means Teleport 20 Cyclops, and Hordes of Ogres on the battlefield + I could also study Mass Hex as an option. In general, that's how we started for a funeral and ended for health. :)

p.s. I'm in a hurry, writing from memory; see all details in saves.
Also apologize in advance for excessive mistakes! :o

p.s.p.s. I am very glad that it finally worked out to play in a real club tournament for the second heroes! This wonderful game is already so many years old, and such a tournament, actually, is the first in my memory! Moreover, its composition, frankly speaking, was selected excellently; only a couple or three famous fighters were missing, who unfortunately could not come!

If Eric suddenly organizes a similar tournament for h2 - I pledge to defend my place in it! :)

But, holding a proper tournament on a proper map in St. Petersburg next year would be more than ideal for me.

I'm not against it. If there are no unforeseen circumstances, I can take on the organization of this event. I think we can comfortably accommodate 8-10 people. The best time for me would be in the summer, in July-August. So that I don't get distracted by work and can have a good time (meaning a walk around the city :)), go to Peterhof, take a boat ride, etc. Let's, while we have time, preliminarily estimate the dates and plan accordingly.

Now, a report on the last game with Dust on North-South. The map is terrible, but not difficult, and heavily favors the left position (and I chose the position, Dust was the host, which doesn't matter at all here). The advantage is that, after clearing out the neutrals near the castle, green can send 1-2 empty heroes along the road, who will clear out the entire upper part for him, as there are 2 Orc and Centaur stacks along the road. If you move a little to the side, there are also Gnomes, Goblins, and a 3rd stack with Centaurs. This is enough to take the village and the mine, and then with the Djinns... :cool: Thus, the entire army can calmly work on the lower direction, where the second village and the castle are conveniently located along the road. Due to this feature, I managed to gain a good advantage in development at the beginning: by the end of day 8, I had 3 castles + a village (I turned my original secondary settlement into a castle), 7 heroes, and an income of 4000, while Dust had a castle + a village, 5 heroes, and an income of 1250. By day 13, the income advantage was 6100 against 1500, and I knew this approximately. How? Thanks to the View Towns feature, which in Might and Magic II shows not only the color of the city's flag but also its type and development (village or castle). Therefore, I thought that time was on my side and started building Phoenixes - on the second one in the starting castle, on the 3rd in the secondary settlement. If I had ignored the Phoenixes, spent the money on upgrades and buying units, and attacked on day 3, I probably would have won. But my lack of online experience let me down; I didn't take into account the additional growth of the Barbarians and their relative cheapness. Lexa started bombing the computer-controlled towns and first caught up with me in income, and then surpassed me. After that, it became clear that further "arms race" would be in his favor, and I had almost nothing left to do on my territory. As a result, I sailed to him on day 4, but it was too late to retreat from the river; I wouldn't have had time to reach his cities by the end of the week. I had to wait for reinforcements. On 1.3.7, I was exchanging all resources, except for 4 mercury (for the Phoenixes), in order to buy units the next day, and it turned out that at the beginning of the 2nd month, an event takes away 5000 coins and 5 of all resources from the players. I'm afraid Qwerty glitched at that moment, because in the monologue about the appropriateness of such surprises on maps for multiplayer, only the prepositions were censored. :rolleyes: To avoid replaying for 2 days, we decided to skip 2 turns instead, and not use the "extra" money or exchange it on the market. After receiving reinforcements, I went forward. Even taking into account his advantage in magic, things could have gone differently in the battle - his Barbarian had parameters of 14/11, mine had 16/12, and I gained 2 more levels on his territory and became 17/13. Plus Archery, Luck, and Leadership in the secondary skills. But the problem of going to the enemy's territory is that all of his heroes are waiting for you. Accordingly, he can launch a hit-and-run attack or a crowd of kamikaze mages with some kind of Storm spell. That's why I took the witch with her first turn. But that wasn't enough against the Djinn rush. There was no Death Wave, no mass spells either. I managed to kill 3 Djinns out of 5, but the remaining ones had 36% chance to "do something," and the first Djinn turned 17 Phoenixes into 8. :( The game ended at that point, because my small units are no match for 20 Cyclops.
I made a lot of small mistakes in development; when trying to take the upper island from Lexa, I didn't have time to take 37 Orcs and 100+ Goblins with me, and the Djinns couldn't do anything; I was clearly late with visiting the opponent.
Well, Dust played better, and that's good in itself, that I managed to put up a fight and not get completely crushed. :) By the way, if it weren't for the 3v3 tournament, Alex the Great could have also claimed victory; he would have most likely won our unfinished game on Beltway.