NY Times is Addicted to HoMM5

<strong>[ Review ]</strong>

<p>A <a href="http://www.mightandmagic.com/HeroesV/us/home.php" title="HoMM5">Heroes of Might and Magic V</a> review popped up in a rather unexpected place today: The New York Times. They compared the game to that old journalistic standby, potato chips. Sour cream & onion potato chips, to be exact.</p><blockquote><p>Nival Interactive's turn-based strategy game Heroes of Might and Magic V is the kettle-cooked sour-cream-and-onion potato chip of video games. It's not the best game ever made, but once you start playing, it becomes almost impossible to stop. As the hours glide by you might tell yourself you will stop just as soon as your troops cross a guarded bridge, occupy a castle or find a magical artifact, but by the time a task is completed, another, just as pressing, has arisen. Once you finally reach the end of a mission you might decide to just play a few minutes of the beginning of the next level to see what it's like, and then play another four hours. </p></blockquote><p>Even odder is that they combined the HoMM5 review with a Lemmings review.</p><p>Read: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/technology/29game.html?_r=1&oref=slogin" title="Review">HoMM5 Review</a></p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p><a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/gallery.php?dir=HoMM%20V&file=Ho13.jpg"><img src="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/screenshots/HoMM%20V/thumbs/Ho13_thumb.jpg" alt=" " width="200" height="150" /></a>
</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.celestialheavens.com/index.php">Celestial Heavens</a></p>

 

It certainly deserves an award for best art direction and animation, that's for sure.

I've been playing a lot lately, too. I've also been playing HOMM 3. One thing I have about these games is there you don't do a whole lot. There aren't many major battles and the game takes such a long time to play. The major battles, between heroes that are within 5 or so levels of each other, are entirely decided by numbers of troops (a number which is severely limited by game design) and who has the spell Raise Dead (the only spell worth casting if you have it, in my opinion, except perhaps casting one mass dark magic spell at the beginning or benediction). I mean, there's a point where you can play for an hour, realize the game could go on for another hour but that there's no way you can catch up with your opponent and just have to quit.

I'm getting quite good with Necropolis, which is, in my opinion, the most powerful of the factions with the possible exception of a Dungeon player who hoardes his units (Dungeon units are so hard to kill, as they all have insane defense values, that if you have large stacks, unless you outnumber him by a power of two or so there's no way you can take them out before they wipe the floor with you). I've discovered that there's pretty much One Best Character Build, especially for Necromancer.

I usually play with the hero who has the bonus to Raise Dead per level.

Summoning Magic-
Important Spells:
Raise Dead (for a Necromancer, this spell acts like Ressurection, which is such a huge boon)
Firewall (Tired of people attacking your archers? Also, if fighting 2x2 enemies, it is so easy to make it impossible for them to get to you without hitting 2 or 3 fire walls)
Summon Pheonix (A unit with 900 or so HPs? Uh, yeah)
Arcane Armor (Also good to put on high-value units like Vampires or Wraiths or Liches if you're fighting casters)

Perk: Master of Life (bonus to Raise Dead and some other spelll)

Necromancy (You want to get this maxxed very soon)
Perk: Skeleton Archers (Skeleton Archers are your primary attackers late game. With other bonuses they get insane bonuses, and I can end games with 1200+ skelly archers in multiple stacks.)
Perk: Eternal Servitude (this will make fighting neutral stacks very easy since you can lose a few vampires or a wraith or a lich or two)

Attack
Perk: Battle Frenzy (With a stack of 500 archers, this means 500 bonus damage (I don't know if it is applied before or after range penalty).
Perk: Archery (20% more damage from those archers? Uh, hell yes)

Tactics, for Necromancer, is not worth it because your primary damage dealers are your archers, and wights and vampires (the only units which will not stay in your deployment zone) have very large movement ranges in the first place. You want the enemy to come to you so your archers don't have range penalties.

Logistics (Seriously, being speedy is almost a necessity)
Perk: Pathfinding (Most terrain is not paved, so this is useful)

Enlightenment (Makes your whole army better and gives you bonus XP)
Intelligence (Necros don't have much mana, so the boost is very welcome. It'll keep you casting Raise Dead and Fire Wall in long fights)

Now, here's the final slot. I pick Defense over Luck simply because a Necromancer won't need double damage to win, as his skelly hordes will do plenty.
Defense
Perk: Protection (very important, as the primary threat to your archers will be spells)
Perk: Vitality (Goes without saying)
Perk: Evasion (Shadow Witches suck, and sometimes large stacks of Hunters will get initiative over you)

Skills that sound cool but are useless:
Chilling Bone (If you follow my advice about Defense perks, you won't be offered this anyways)
Cold Steel (Weak! It's just too weak. It gives you one bonus damage per eleven troops. It's only useful if you didn't take tactics and you are very, very, very late in the game and have nothing else to take)
Soldier's Luck (Want to make your ghosts dodge more often? Too bad! Ghosts are still to expensive and wasting a slot just on them is just not worth it)
Sorcery (You aren't going to need your hero that often, just to cast raise dead maybe once a round. More is obviously better but you lose a valuable slot. On small maps you MIGHT replace logistics, but only if you want enemy heroes to run circles around you.)
Dark Magic - (Why are you casting Dark Magic when you should be casting Raise Dead? It's just not worth a skill slot)

More tips:
Don't buy ghosts. They're absolutely a waste of money.

Don't buy more than 100 upgraded zombies, more than that is a waste of money.

Don't buy Skeleton Dragons. They suck. Wraiths are better, spend your money there. Don't even buy the infrastructure, it costs way too much for what you are getting.

You can stick with normal Vampires until you decide to go on the offensive, then upgrade for the teleportation. Vampires are one of your major heavy hitters.

Wights/Wraiths - Use these guys to cut down enemy stacks of level 4 or below. Highest revive priority because they are strong and cost a shit-ton.

Skeleton Archers should be second on your revive priority right after Wights. In the end game, these guys will be doing most of your damage simply because of their obscene numbers. And when Raise Undead, especially powered-up, can revive 70-100+...
When you get 500, put them in two stacks of 250. Try to keep them equal, unless you need the room for other stuff from other towns.

Zombies- Their only use is to protect skeleton archers from 2x2 units, as the skellies should be sitting in a corner. Get the plague zombie upgrade, as when stuff heads for your archers, their plague ability is really useful. One exception: Against dragons. Use another unit and have a buffer around your archers. Dragons murder archers.

 

Good post. I haven't played with Necropolis yet, but I'll be sure to refer back to this when I do.

 

Just got the game today, I'll post my impressions as I go through it. I've only done one mission in the campaign so far, so I can't say much on actual mechanics yet but the interface, graphics et al are all extremely well done. 3D doesn't bother me too much, but I think it would've been pretty bueno if Nival went old school and kept the 2d look.

Like I said, I haven't got that far in so I'm not making any advance judgements but the lack of a random map generator is probably going to hurt it in the long term. There's a reason why I still go back to Shadow Magic and it's because of the fantastic random map gen. Of course, if Nival keeps on releasing map packs and whatnot then I guess it's not so bad but random gen should be pretty standard.

 

KC is a forum slut.

 

Yeah.

 

This thread gets the mathboy seal of approval.