A MAJOR FLAW IN ALL STRATEGY VIDEO GAMESThere is a major problem in strategy video games, such as Heroes of Might and Magic, or Civilization.Especially in Homm when you and opponents (AI or humans) start with one town/castle/base.Imagine that there is a map in the game.And there is 8 players (for example 1 human + 7 AI) and there is 8 castles and each player gets one from the start.If you gain someone else castle, you gain a huge advantage, because you get income from two castles and creatures from two castles.But if you lose your only castle, this will be a catastrophe (if you don't recover the castle).Now, when all 8 players start with one castle each,why and when would they go and attack opponents castle?Because to successfuly attack opponent you need-to have much powerful army (25% more powerful)-or you need to grab the castle when opponent hero is taking army and vising places far from castleHowever, if AI is made to be good (or if humans play),nobody might go far away from castle, to not risk that someone will take his castle (without battle).All players will just sit close to the castle, collect income and buy all army they can buy.This will make that all players will have similar power in army and nobody will attack anyone.The game will play like this forever and nobody will win or lose.
How to solve this problem?-make that AI is not playing maximally good, but make their behaviour so they leave castle far away and go attack someone but human player will be able to exploit that and take AI castle without battle also, this doesn't solve online multiplayer when only humans play-make that if there is 8 castles on map, there is only 4 players, and they start with one castle each, but they have to find nearby empty castle, get it and build it but this has flaw: it is not the best player who will get second castle first, but lucky player. because one player will explore map to the right and he will not find a castle, another player will explore map to the left and he will quickly find castle solution: make that second castle is guarded so every player will find it early but they will not be able to take it over instantly, but when they have stronger army problem: if all players/AI play equally good, they will get the second castle in almost same time/turn, so the players will still be equal, and nobody will be able to successfuly go and attack opponent-make that AI and human players do not have the same skills/difficulty but variable, one AI is great while other AI is only good etc problem: the player who will have dumb AI as his neighbour, will have advantage, as he will quickly gain his castle, while other player will not be able to take second castle, because his neighbour is AI that has high difficulty-make that the castles in game are not so powerful, and that you can get army and income from other sources than castles, or make that player can build a castle somewhere (as in civilization)-make that the player is able to make many strategic decisions, long game, before he meets opponents or before he is forced to attack, this long game will make that if one player made many better strategic choices, he will have compound advantage enough to attack someone. problem: won't work if AI players have same skills and game map is balanced, fair
>>1845667>-to have much powerful army (25% more powerful)you're a scrub, utilize the magic part of the might & magic titleyour whole schizo breakdown is meaningless because its based on a false assumption that comes from being bad/inexperienced at the gamethe entire purpose of overworld gameplay is to EXPLORE therefore if players are not exploring they're not playing the game, they would collectively have to refuse to play the game to "invalidate it" or whatever the fuck you claim>>1845670holy fucking ESL. Sage in all fields
-make that map is not fair, and some players are advantaged over others. this will make the advantaged players to attack disadvantaged players this seems unfair and luck based, however, if player will play large number of scenarios, like 20, he will be advantaged in 10 of them and disadvantaged in another 10, so over many games it is not unfair in multiplayer games, it can be made that players play 4 matches, in 2 they are disadvantaged, in 2 they are advantaged. if the result of match is 2:2, they we can say that the winner is the player, who beat the other player in less time (turns actually). this type of matches are also cool because they will test defensive strategy and offensive strategy of playersThere are similar situations in other games than Homm.In Settlers 1, if you play with AI at high difficulty (you start with tiny resources, AI starts with huge resources),then you need to build your city and make huge number of strategic decisions, for about 5-10 hours, before you are in position where you can attack your opponent.But in settlers 1, you build many buildings over open map, while homm has small number of strategically important castles and you cannot build them.In Civilization,the players can build "castles", many of them, over open map, and it will take time before they attack and try to destroy other enemy.Also, in Civilization the map is unfair and unequal, some starting spots are better than others,but this is not good to decide the result of match by randomness...
In chess, there is no such problem like in homm, because-you have many soldiers, and a single soldier is not as powerful as a castle in homm, you can play openly and lose one soldier while you kill other soldier of your opponent. but in homm if you lose your only castle it is game over-in chess you are forced to move and explore map and this automatically causes battles between soldiers and so that one player gains advantage if he wins more battles -in chess the pawns move forward, towards the opponent and this causes battlesHowever, in chess there could also be situation when two players decide to be passive and not attack each other. but it doesn't happen because-the match would be stopped and decided as draw-in chess, even if you have slight advantage, it is optimal to attack. in homm it isn't. you cannot attack enemy that is a bit weaker than you, because you will also lose some of your soldiers, and this will make you weak compared to other enemies. chess is 1 vs 1, in homm there is more players.
THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION:If there are 3 players: A, B, C.If player A attacks B, they both lose some of their army, power.This makes player C most powerful and C can attack weakened A or B.This problem results in situation where nobody will risk attacking anyone. And they game will not progress and there will be a draw.In Chess this doesn't happen because you can successfully make attack when you don't lose anythin, and also because in Chess there is only two players on the table.
Another problem:Even when we make that AI/humans will go and attack others for some reason and try to get their castle,there is a problem that, the player who will first get second castle,he will have large advantage (double income and army growth),and this early advantage will make him so powerful that he will keep getting more castles, and he will be even more powerfulHow to solve this?-when one player gets ahead, make that AI and humans conspire together against the most powerful player-make that when you gain castle, it is ruined/broken and it will take time before it gives you much income and army-make that players start with 2 castles, so when one player gets one extra (=3 castles), he doesn't have double income and army but 50% bigger
>>1845667>>1845670>>1845675>>1845681>>1845719>>1845737
HommBut "closed maps" partially solve the problem.If you can leave your area only in one or two directions with narrow passages,you can go away from the castle without risking that someone will steal it.But what are you going to do?If you go attack enemy castle,even if you win you will have major losses,and this vulnerability for some time (two weeks?) could be exploited by other enemies,they could attack you.
>>1845667>nobody might go far away from castle, to not risk that someone will take his castle (without battle).>All players will just sit close to the castle, collect income and buy all army they can buy.*sigh* Have you ever watched any serious HoMM3 PVP games? You are COMPLETELY missing the entire point of having a map around the castle that is littered with important resources. And the farther away from the castle the greater amount are the resources. Using the HoMM3 example there are gold, wood, Ore etc. but there are also neutral enemy stacks to defeat for XP which is one of the most important resources in the game which increase you hero's power level. To fight neutrals you need to use your own army and even sacrifice some your own army to defeat the enemy.This is how you trade resources 1) spend gold, wood etc. to buy your army 2) spend your army to gain XP by defeating a neutral armies. Spending it as effectively as possible by minimizing your combat losses.3) Defeating neutral armies will also open up access to you for more resources that the neutral army was guarding.While all that in mind the player must also be able to plot their movement routes because they only have a limited amount out movement per turn and must plan their.Plus borders between Castle areas are usually guarded by an extra strong neutral stack which keeps their borders safe for the early game. So while doing "the break" is risky move which a 100% risk averse player will delay but ultimately a necessary one. If nothing else because the massive XP reward from the break.Because one doesn't know how well the other player(s) is doing. The other player can behind and an easy to beat or ahead and too risky. However the more time goes by the more one needs to take the risk because if they ran out of resources on their own land they are risking that the opponent already is ahead and they will fall behind.
>>1845667>This will make that all players will have similar power in army and nobody will attack anyone.>The game will play like this forever and nobody will win or loseAbsolutely false. This could only happen if almost every possible variable remains the same, everything remains equal all players have access to the same amount of army XP and other resources. And if there is no incentive to players to leave their land, and there are no barriers to prevent easy access to each other castles. NONE of those is true. There are different factions, different heroes, different skills, different armies, different resources, different random neutral armies, different random map layouts, different random items and so on. This where the luck/skill/knowledge of players comes into play because they need to be able to judge when is the right opportunity to take on the hardest fights and must plan their moves several turns ahead. And considering the massive amounts of variables above there is very rare chance for these total stalemate scenarios to happen. The players will eventually need to take the risks because the games are also have a limited turn count by design as well. Also neutral stacks grow as time goes by giving another limiting factor because it can mess up the cost-benefit of fighting them if you loose too much the enemy will be stronger and the XP gained will not be enough to level the playing field.Not even mentioning that player will need to spend turns to return to their castles to pick up their armies/spells/other bonuses as the new week happens. Which on the offensive they also need to time to take an opponent's castle to deny the opponent the fresh troops. Also even furthermore the advantage defending a castle provides starts to fall off as armies grow bigger. While at the same time building fortifications to castle require considerable amount of gold+wood+etc. which then the player will NOT spend on buying armies causing them to fall behind.
>>1845719>THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION:>If there are 3 players: A, B, C.>If player A attacks B, they both lose some of their army, power.>This makes player C most powerful and C can attack weakened A or B."Divide and conquer" baby's first grand strategy idea.>This problem results in situation where nobody will risk attacking anyone. And they game will not progress and there will be a draw.Ever heard of "Fog of War?" None of the players will have accurate information on the others (despite the thieves guild being a thing) Which all 3 of them can use to their advantage. It can happen that A rushed down B early and C has no idea about it at all and still thinks A and B are in the stalemate.Maybe C somehow knows that A defeated B and is weak at the moment but C still need to do "the break" towards the area of A or B but doing it risk loosing so much of their army that it will be unsure if they can defeat A, even at A's weakened state, while at the same time A has a larger area to control and information about the area and may be able to retreat to a better position while C has no information about the area since they are just exploring it.>In Chess this doesn't happen because you can successfully make attack when you don't lose anything, and also because in Chess there is only two players on the table.You are forgetting that Chess has perfect map/army information available to both sides and no randomly generated variables. HoMM3 is the opposite it is chock full of random variables and accurate information about enemies is scarce.
>>1845982Hello, 2020 wants its memes back.
Why do we keep getting these weird schizophrenic people here?
>>1845965>*sigh* Have you ever watched any serious HoMM3 PVP games?No, I don't watch gamers.But HoMM3 PVP is fake.It only has 1 vs 1 player. If you have 2 players, one player can attack the second, even if he has small advantage, such as 15% better army/hero/spells. Because, even if he loses 75% army, his opponent loses 100% army. There is no third player to exploit the fact that "winner" lost 75% of army. But if we made matches where 3 or more humans play on single map, the problem and paradox that I described will apply. No player will risk attacking the other. Another problem is, if 3 humans would play on one map, two of them could conspire against one (better) player. They could first defeat the better player, then fight between each other.Also, what about single player, on a map with 8 players (human + 7 AI)? Why would anybody risk attacking enemy and losing 75% of army and being weak and vulnerable? And if all 8 players start with one town, they will have equal strength of the army even after 2 months, and nobody will have power to attack the other player.If you have HoMM3 PVP 1vs1, the players can just build their armies and heroes to prepare for last final battle.>You are COMPLETELY missing the entire point of having a map around the castle that is littered with important resources. And the farther away from the castle the greater amount are the resources.If you have a map with 8 players, you are only collecting resources close to the town, because you need to protect it and recruit army every week. If you go for adventure you risk losing your town without battle, enemy will take it for free.And if there is only AI players, 8 AI players on map, why would they risk losing their town? If they play by optimal strategy, they would protect their castle, hero, army.
>>1845965>Using the HoMM3 example there are gold, wood, Ore etc. but there are also neutral enemy stacks to defeat for XP which is one of the most important resources in the game which increase you hero's power level. To fight neutrals you need to use your own army and even sacrifice some your own army to defeat the enemy.If you go far away to collect the resources, you will lose your town without battle, which is bigger loss than stupid resources you collected.>Plus borders between Castle areas are usually guarded by an extra strong neutral stack which keeps their borders safe for the early game. So while doing "the break" is risky move which a 100% risk averse player will delay but ultimately a necessary one. If nothing else because the massive XP reward from the break.Yes, because of the closed map design on most maps, you are allowed to collect stuff and fight monsters on your area.But then if you go away and leave your area, you risk losing your town.So why would players, especially AI, go out and risk?And what if HoMM maps were less closed and more open?>Because one doesn't know how well the other player(s) is doing. The other player can behind and an easy to beat or ahead and too risky.If all AI players are set to High intelligence and the game is balanced, then all AI players would do about the same (+-10%), there are no reasons to assume that one AI player is 30% weaker.If game is balanced and AI is high quality, nobody will be behind.If game is not balanced and AI is random or low quality, then it's not strategy game but a casino.>However the more time goes by the more one needs to take the risk because if they ran out of resources on their own land they are risking that the opponent already is ahead and they will fall behind.If you take risks, you can lose instead of gain, when someone takes your town without fighting your main army.And AI can assume that nobody is ahead, because there is no way to get ahead (if the game is balanced).
>>1845968>NONE of those is true. There are different factions, different heroes, different skills, different armies, different resources, different random neutral armies, different random map layouts, different random items and so onDoesn't matter. If game is balanced, all factions have equal power, all heroes and skills have equal worthness, etc.If game is not balanced and one player has luck and can get ahead, that means the game is not a strategy game but a casino simulator.>And considering the massive amounts of variables above there is very rare chance for these total stalemate scenarios to happen. No, stalemate can happen easily. 8 players on map, all have one town. No player will risk losing his town. And if all players are close to town, you aren't able to attack any town.The only reason this stalemate doesn't happen in HoMM3 is because AI is not good enough, it doesn't play the optimal strategy, but it has randomness and "personalities" (builder/warrior/explorer).But if AI in HoMM3 was improved, and played the optimal strategy, stalemate would occur. If stalemate got broken, that would be because of luck, not skill.In ideally balanced game, like chess but modified so that both players move at same time (in chess white player starts first so has advantage), if two equal or ideal AI would play, they would end up in a draw.World is deterministic and mathematical, all problems can be solved by very complex and powerful computer and AI. There is ideal way to play all kind of games, except purely random/luck games (which aren't games).The stalemates are rare in HoMM3 because it's a casino simulator and AI are not designed to play the optimal strategy.But what if someone improved HoMM3 AI?
An 8 player map in HoMM3 usually has about 40 castles.Did you even play the fucking game?
what even is this thread
>>1845968>The players will eventually need to take the risks because the games are also have a limited turn count by design as well.If you eventually take risks you can lose your town and game. Rather than losing, AI or players can play defensively and wait for draw. Draw is better than losing.>Also even furthermore the advantage defending a castle provides starts to fall off as armies grow bigger.It doesn't matter.Even if there were no arrow towers and moats, if game is balanced then you have similar army strength than your opponent has. If you go and attack him, even if you win you will lose 90% of your army, this will be suicide battle. Then a player C, that didn't take part in this battle, he will come and destroy you, because he has 10 times more powerful army, because you lost 90% army in the battle.>While at the same time building fortifications to castle require considerable amount of gold+wood+etc. which then the player will NOT spend on buying armies causing them to fall behind.Not in HoMM3. In HoMM3 you have to build fortifications (citadel and castle) because they give you army growth (2x army growth).In HoMM3 you were building arrow towers and moats separately. This added depth of the strategy.
>>1846044A schizo decided to lecture the board on a game he never played.
>>1845667What about neutral castles?
JOIN THIS THREAD even if you don't play Heroes of Might and Magic.This paradox is applicable to all games and real life and wars.3 players/countries: A, B, C. They have similar power.If A attacks B, even if he wins, he suffers big losses (both A and B have major losses).Then C can use this situation to defeat A, then B.This problem makes than A B C are in stalemate and nobody will risk attack.
>>1846077>nobody will risk attackExcept in those game everyone does.
Hurr durr what is a Nash equilibrium
>>1845974>"Divide and conquer" baby's first grand strategy idea.Yes and if the AI of game is good, it will not fall into divide and conquer.>Ever heard of "Fog of War?" None of the players will have accurate information on the others (despite the thieves guild being a thing) Which all 3 of them can use to their advantage. It can happen that A rushed down B early and C has no idea about it at all and still thinks A and B are in the stalemate.Yes, possible, but not in HoMM3.There are thieves guilds, while they don't give out army strength in the beginning of game, they show how many towns each player has. If you see that Red now has 2 towns and Yellow has 0 towns, that means Red successfully attacked Yellow, and possibly both Red and Yellow have weak armies (if there was a battle).You can quickly go to Red if he is your neighbour, attack him and steal his towns, you can finish off Read and Yellow.Even if thieves guild didn't exist, players could send out weak scouts to spy on such things, like who owns each castle, what army he has etc.>Maybe C somehow knows that A defeated B and is weak at the moment but C still need to do "the break" towards the area of A or B but doing it risk loosing so much of their army that it will be unsure if they can defeat A, even at A's weakened stateWhat break? Powerful creature that is standind between two areas?If A defeated B that means A had to also defeat such powerful creature first, then attack and defeat B.If A could do this, then C can also do this.
>>1845974> while at the same time A has a larger area to control and information about the area and may be able to retreat to a better position while C has no information about the area since they are just exploring it.And what will A do when C is coming to him? Hide in town? C will destroy him because A has now weak army. Run away? "A" can run away but he can run into another opponent D, even if not, A will lose town and will not be able to get gold and army.C will easily find town to attack because roads are leading to towns. You just need to find road.>You are forgetting that Chess has perfect map/army information available to both sides and no randomly generated variables.I don't think this matters much in the beginning. If you play in HoMM and the game is balanced, you actually have information that every player has similar army power.And you can open Thieves Guild in town every turn to see when it shows that number of towns owned by players is changed.>You are forgetting that Chess>no randomly generated variables.Actually, there is one. Who plays whites, who plays niggers.But chess players can play four times, two times you play whites, two times niggers.>HoMM3 is the opposite it is chock full of random variables and accurate information about enemies is scarce.In the early game you can assume all players are almost equal (if the game and map are balanced).Later you can use Thieves Guild and scouts.If there was no information available at all in HoMM3, it would be a casino simulator.For example, if there was no way to see what army is in the enemy castle, you would never attack.
>>1846041>An 8 player map in HoMM3 usually has about 40 castles.No, you are crazy.How would that be possible? The map would have to be XXXXL in size to have 40 castles.And how would you play the game? Attacking 40 castles would take forever. And if you owned 35 castles, you would have to scroll so much on castle list and you needed to check out all castles and build stuff there. How would you remember where to recruit creatures (from which castle)?This is impossible.Also, when I played HoMM3 I used to generate random map of size M and 8 players. This generated a single town for each player.The game on such map basically was about you trying to take enemy castle without fight, when he moved away from the town (and they did).But if AI was better, they wouldn't allow this and there would be stalemate.Why M size and 8 players?Because:S size is too small to be fun, you quickly discover map and there is nothing to discover, no towns to conquer etc.L size is too big, I would have to play one week to finish a single map and my attention and motivation is not long enough for this.So M.Why 8 players? Because when there is many AI players the game is cool and interesting. I often open Thieves Guild and compare AI players, how much stuff they have, how they grow in power. You can also meet so many different enemy heroes of many classes, you can visit different towns of many types, you can fight and use many types of creatures. AI players also fight other AI players.Small amount of AI players and small amount of towns = boring.But 8 players and towns on M map is too big, but I played this.>Did you even play the fucking game?Yes, 25 years ago and also few years ago.
>>1846041>An 8 player map in HoMM3 usually has about 40 castles.It doesn't.But.We can consider many scenarios.1. A map with 8 players and 8 towns (one town per player).On this scenario good AI would just take stuff close to the town and stay close to town to defend it, they wouldn't risk attacking any other town. Stalemate.2. A map with 8 players and 16 towns (two towns per player).This changes the situation somewhat, because now, a player could take 1.5x or 2x army (where 1x = army from one town) and he could make attack on enemy town, if it had 1x army or less.However, there are many problems. If player would put so much army into his hero, his other town would be undefended. If player would go to enemy territory, he would leave his two towns without defence.Then, if he goes to enemy town, what if the enemy also has 1.5-2x army on it? Then he won't be able to attack and will have to go to the second town of this enemy. So he will be even further away from his own towns, they will get attacked and conquered.But if this player somehow attackes or steal town, what about his other two towns that he left? How is he going to defend 3 towns (in different places)?The alternative is, that all players will put 1x army in each town. If they do this, they will not be able to attack other towns.
>>1846167Continued:3. A map with 8 players and about 12 towns.The players start with one town per player. But there are 4 neutral towns.A and B players are close to first neutral town, C and D are close to second neutral town, etc.This will make a competition, A and B might try to take first neutral town. They might go after it on similar day, but one of them will be faster.When player A enters the neutral town, the B will not attack him because they have equal power armies.But B can go after A's original town, because it's undefended. But then A could go after B's original town.It ends up in players taking their undefended towns from each other...But the players don't attack each other armies.It's a mess. Not a strategy.There is no way to solve this situation because A and B armies are equal in power, so they can't fight.And also, on average, they will control the same amount of towns (when they keep taking them from each other).However, one player will be lucky to own two towns (out of three) during first day of week, and buy creatures from two towns while other player will buy from one town.But this is not strategy, this is luck.If HoMM grown creatures every day in small amounts, this wouldn't happen and their armies would grow about the same.So the stalemate can be broken with luck, making the game a casino simulator.
Sir, do you have unironic untreated schizophrenia? You're doing the graphomania thing that I see actual legit schizos do.
>>1846096>What break? Powerful creature that is standind between two areas?Have you EVER watched any competitive Heroes3 PVP? Since you do not know what "the break" is I assume you have not. You did not even bother to watch people in action that actually know what they are doing while you are here pretending that you know this game. The break means opening access out of a player's starting territory by defeating an extra difficult stack that guards the way out. This could lead directly to another player's starting territory or a neutral territory that is in-between 2 player's starting territory.
>>1846169I have proven with perfect logical clarity than strategy games and Heroes of Might and Magic are broken. If you don't understand this then you are a retard.HoMM games with more than two players are fully broken and unplayable, they cannot be won. And HoMM is a casino simulator.
>>1846174Guess all those match people played must have been a reptilian simulation then.Tell us OP, would the vaxx's microparticles prevent the aliens from frying our brains with fake memories of playing HoMM with pals? Or would just re-aligning our chakra do the trick?
>>1845667>>1845670Apply yourself
>>1846044>what even is this threadAll strategy games with more than 2 players (AI or humans) on a map, are fundamentally broken and unplayable, there is no optimal strategy that could make you win, there is only draw strategy.
If you don't agree with me, then imagine a Heroes map with 4 players (humans or AI), with one town per player (or more towns) and give me THE STRATEGY, what could the player/AI do to win and not lose, what is the strategy with positive expectation?There is only draw strategy - stay around your town to not lose it, keep buying army and put on your hero.If any player will risk and go somewhere or attack anybody, he will lose.The game is unsolvable.
>>1846098>In the early game you can assume all players are almost equal (if the game and map are balanced).Yes but due to many randomness the balance can shift dramatically, that is where player skill and knowledge comes into play. To know that you are not supposed to attack in a ranged stack even if you can take them because the early losses will hamper all your further battles and which can cascade into falling behind irrecoverably. Falling behind early in H3 due to random spawns or a simple mistake can snowball into a loss that is why in PVP games players are given a chance to remake the game.>Later you can use Thieves Guild and scouts. Thieves guild has some very minor information if you only have one town the guild only tells you how many towns other players have. Okay so you know that player A has 2 towns, so you can deduct that A has beaten B and you could make an attempt to attack. But you have no idea about the position, stats, items of their main hero nor their army size/best creature. All of it crucial information to judge your chances. With one tavern only the creature stacks are shown but not their numbers.You should also assume that A took down B in a timed assault just before the new week. Meaning A will potentially have access to fresh troops from 2 towns the next turn. While you would also need to return to your own starting town and pick up your fresh troops risk having to attack without your full power. Or stand in your town ready to move out which takes time reach the border from your starting town location. Both of those gives time to player A position themselves to be safe and/or get the fresh troops from both towns. Timing your attacks and planning turns ahead of time is so important in H3 why are you not acutely aware of this?As for the scouts the opponent can, and will, use their scouts and stop you from gaining scouting information. But in order to scout ahead first you will need to do the break first.
>>1846070>What about neutral castles?There could be no neutral castles. Even if there are, they don't change much, if the game is balanced and all players have equal chance to get neutral town.Here is what can happen:>>1846168
>>1846174>I have proven with perfect logical clarity that..And ignored all valid counterpoints and information the rest of the people in the thread provided for you, because you ignored most of the game's features and described a childishly oversimplified version of it.
>>1846040>Doesn't matter. If game is balanced, all factions have equal power, all heroes and skills have equal worthness, etc.>If game is not balanced and one player has luck and can get ahead, that means the game is not a strategy game but a casino simulator."Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Your are intentionally oversimplifying your worldview in two polar opposite extremes and refuse to accept anything in between.
>>1846083> >nobody will risk attack> Except in those game everyone does.Only if you play against AI that is flawed, or if you play against human but in 1 vs 1.If you would play with 4 expert humans or 4 expert AI (better than in the game), nobody would attack.The AI in HoMM3 is flawed and it doesn't play the "optimal strategy" but it has "personality" (builder, explorer, warrior).If AI was improved and only did the most optimal strategy, it would end in stalemate and nobody would attack anybody.Everybody would just protect their town and maybe sent some weak hero to steal town without fight on day seven, but this won't work because enemy main hero is in town or close to it.The current AI in the game is just a toy AI so the game is fun for noobs and human competitive matches are 1 vs 1.
>>1846246>If you would play with 4 expert humans, nobody would attack.This is the kind of hilarious shit that happen when a 80IQ try to imagine how a 120IQ would act.
>>1845667schizo postthe wealth comes from controlling territory. if you control only your castle you will get macro'd to death
>>1845667Let me give you a small pro tip just so you don't get your ass handed to you again the next time you play "Good to go" scenario against Easy AI:>use more than one heroCongrats, you won the game!
>>1846087> Hurr durr what is a Nash equilibriumYes. The Nash equilibrium, when 4 players/AI are on single map, is to protect their town and not attack opponent. Stalemate.If player A attacks B, they both lose army, player C and D are powerful compared to them and can finish them off.>but you can take enemy town without fightBut this is luck based, casino simulator.And when you do this, another player can take your home town, and this is a net loss, because you have a Castle army but you are stuck in Dungeon town and you have to mix the army, you cannot combine dragon and angel into a single stack.
After powerful battle with losses, I got this. Can I now attack my enemy? Does this powerful item change the Nash equilibrium?
I'm just happy this schizo is actually obsessed with actual strategy, unlike the politics obsessed one that haunts PDX threads.
>>1846270It's not a Nash equilibrium because the other three players could decide to team up against you.Diplomacy is a very important part of any strategy game.
>>1845667The resources get farther away as you use them up and then you end up fighting over resources not castles. Have you ever played a strategy game?
holy schizo threadyou have discovered why most competitive HOMM3 formats are 1v1 only - because playing even a 1v1v1 FFA game will introduce a situation where taking offensive action first almost always leads to a loss for you assuming equal skill levels, which makes for a shit gamehence, most people don't play shitty formats like FFA and stick to 1v1s instead, where victory is determined by how well you are able to gather resources, convert them into an advantage, and use that advantage to push for a win with a timing attack or defense against a poorly-judged timing attack of your opponent
there's all sorts of strategies, but that's where he's right that casino rng may not give you what you need to properly run them. then again, on a large enough map played long enough, with enough skilled players playing a stalemate strategy, one might use artifact merchant etc to piece it together. depends on how much territory there is to control, how effective raids on mines are and so on. But HoMM3 isn't played like a quasi 4x, it's played as Jebus Cross forever, so we'll likely never know.>no town portal=lose. >Inferno 5th level spell sacrifice=lose>hota resistance ban=awfulbased schizo thread, he's not wrongbut can he also tell me how this applies to chinese checkers?
>>1845667>to successfuly attack opponent you need>-to have much powerful army (25% more powerful)Ok dude, keep us informed.Fucking LMAO
>>1846337>But HoMM3 isn't played like a quasi 4x, it's played as Jebus Cross forever, so we'll likely never know.This is only true if you are HotA faggot....well, are you?
>>1845928seventh post best postThe greatest crime the British Empire committed was not eradicating every subhuman living in that peninsula
>>1846357This was true even before HotA and lobby is full of custom games that are neither Jebus nor Duel. Faggots will be faggots regardless of the game version used
>>1846347how much is that in peasant units
>>1846365>HotA-specific bullshit, which didn't emerge until pretty advanced stage of HotA, actually predates HotAWay to expose yourself, zoom zoom.Actual human players just randomly seed the game, without any Jebus bullshit.
>>1846369Over 9000
>>1846374>HotA-specific bullshit, which didn't emerge until pretty advanced stage of HotA>Thread: Beginers Guide to Jebus>posted May 25, 2007 09:58 PMhttp://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=22565>HotA-specific>posted May 25, 2007>didn't emerge until pretty advanced stage of HotA>2007U good, retard?
>>1846170>Have you EVER watched any competitive Heroes3 PVP?No. I tried one time and it was an old Slavic guy waiting 10 minutes for his opponent to finish turn, and during the wait he was drinking vodka and talking some shit to the camera.When it was his turn, he just quickly clicked on various stuff, like in Starcraft, without any strategy or plan, using his powerful army to just defeat enemies with auto battle.I turned this shit off and didn't see a battle between two humans. It was probably at the end of the game.And human matches in Heroes3 are 1 vs 1.My paradox does not apply to 1 vs 1, but if there is more than two players.
>>1846170> The break means opening access out of a player's starting territory by defeating an extra difficult stack that guards the way out. This could lead directly to another player's starting territory or a neutral territory that is in-between 2 player's starting territory.Cool. But it doesn't change anything.At the start of the game, all players are too weak to defeat guard.If the map is balanced, they will gain about the same number of levels and army, assuming they have similar expert skills, or if they are expert AI.Then, one player is the first to attack the guard (someone has to be first, as this is turn based game).And now what, what he does?He (player A) goes to a territory of player B. And what he does? Tries to steal a town. But if player B is close to town he will fail. If he attacks player B, both players will suffer massive losses, and player C and D will come there to finish them. Players C and D can easily defeat their guard (that block the areas), if player A managed to defeat the guard, player C and D can also do this.But what if player B is not close to his town and A can steal his town without fight (except getting a few turns of castle towers)?-but why would player B be far away from his town if he cleared his area from resources?-even if this happens, and A takes B town almost for free, what if B now goes to A's town and takes it over (with minor fight)? If this happens, then both player A and player B lose, because now they are stuck in different town, of different faction than their army, and this makes player C and D stronger compared to player A and B.
>>1845667>The game is so balanced if everyone plays perfectly that one mistake can cause people to lose, the threadWow
>>1845674please don't lump us with this pathetic excuse real ESLs are masters of homm games
One solution to the stalemate is:To make the game unbalanced on purpose, for example one player starts disadvantaged and other advantaged, then the play similar game on different map, but now the other player is disadvantaged and other is advantaged.Then we check, how long did the player A defend when he was disadvantaged, how quick did he win when he was advantaged.And this would be compared with player B.This would test both their offensive and defensive skills and the game would be different and interesting, when you play advantaged and when you play disadvantaged.However, this can be used mostly on 1 vs 1 player.If there is more players, like 4 players, they would have to play at least 4 times, on each game one player would be advantaged while others disadvantaged.The advantaged player would know he is advantaged at the start of the game, but others wouldn't know (but they could deduct this after few weeks in game pass).The winner of match is the one who who won the game the quickest when he was advantaged.But this is not good, with 6 players it needs at least 6 maps to be played.And what about single player playing with AI? He would play 6 times (6 maps) just to win once, a single match.
>>1846413No, if there is more than 2 players, the disadvantaged players could just conspire against the advantaged.But this could be fun mode to play in 1 vs 1 match.But this could work when played with AI with 3 players (2AI + human), if AI was forbidden from working together.
>>1846396>he just quickly clicked on various stuff, like in Starcraft, without any strategy or plan, using his powerful army to just defeat enemies with auto battlethe more reasonable assumption would be that he had the strategy and plan thought out so he didn't hesitate in executing it, as well as evaluated his army's likely autoresolve results before ever going to take battlesdo YOU verbalize and re-think your strategy every time you turn comes up? do YOU take a long time to play out the actions you've done many hundreds of times as you've played the game a lot? why would you assume that playing fast means there's no strategy behind it? do you think his powerful army materialized out of thin air, or could all of thopse circumstances be the result of his strategic play up to this point?really, you proudly admitted that you don't have the faintest idea about how the game is played at a high level of competence, and you dismissed the tell-tale signs of experienced play as playing "without any strategy or plan"in short, you don't know what you're talking aboutfucking casuals
>>1845667You never played FFA in heroes in your life, did ya?
>stalemateYou can break the stalemate if you are lucky to get this 4 level spell.
>>1846357I liked 80% of HotA but the other 20% was so intolerable I went back to regular, shame because the new towns were neat looking
Heroes of Might and Magic, it's not a strategy,it's a toy, it's a casino simulator, it's a... video game.
If the game AI will be great and equal for all players and game is balanced, then either the game will end in draw/stalemate, or a random AI will win because of his luck/RNG, and all AI players will win about the same amount of times if they played 100 times.There is no other option.And human player will always lose against ultimate AI that calculates every possibility. Or human player will rarely win if he had more luck.If HoMM3 is deterministic, and it is, it is possible to generate final ideal AI, that will have perfect strategy and that no human will be able to beat it (meaning, to win more than 49 matches per 100 matches).And it's not just HoMM.You, human, you are AI/NPC/robot, human brain is a computer algorithm run by physics and physics are deterministic. You are automata. And life is worthless, effort is worthless, you go to work for 45 years of your life for what purpose? To make rich people more rich? Everything is worthless, you shouldn't go to work and do any effort, but only play video games, die, be in non existence forever.HUMANS ARE DETERMINISTICHUMANS ARE ALGORITHMDo not go to work, do not pay taxes. THEY are exploiting you.
>>1846466Part 2And you know what is Mixed Martial Arts or UFC? Human cagefighting.In the first UFC events, they had karate fighters, boxers, wrestlers, grapplers, each of them had different style and they fought each other.But over the years, MMA continued evolving and improving.And now, after years, we don't have karate fighters or only grapplers anymore, the best MMA fighters are not training karate but they are training "MMA".Basically a mix of wrestling, kickboxing, grappling.And this is the optimum strategy in MMA fight, to use all tools, but if your opponent is lacking in something, for example wrestling, then use wrestling against him.And back to HoMM3, in HoMM, AI has 3 styles (explorer, builder, fighter). However, if we improved AI, for example with machine learning, it would drop the styles and it would develop a single, optimal style, called Mixed Heroes Arts (MHA).And if all AI players and human players adopted this best style, on maps where there are 3 or more players, nobody would attack anyone and nobody would steal anyone's town. It would be a draw and stalemate.The reason this doesn't happen now is because AI is not good enough for this, it is playing in open, risky, fun way.
Take this secondary skill in your main hero and you are guaranteed to break Nash equilibrium in stalemate.
>>1846449What 20% you didn't like, honest question? I love every bit and consider it to be a true unofficial expansion continuation of SoD and never looked back, it's that good. I don't even play multi, just comfy scenarios and random maps.
>>1846177> Guess all those match people played must have been a reptilian simulation then.Matches are 1 vs 1.Show me matches with 4 or more humans on one map. If they are good enough and game is balanced, they will not attack and be in stalemate.Or a match of 4 AI fighting with zero humans. But not HoMM AI but better AI, that is playing the maximum optimal strategy.
>>1846496tl;dr that last 20% of HotA that bleeds into everything else good about it is the fact that HotA is a Jebus Cross mod and not a HoMM3 mod. I can get more specific (i haven't played in awhile) but it's the same "competitive multiplayer" malaise that infected virtually all video gaming past a certain point. Interference/Resistance is a symptom, not a cause. Some of the priorities are strange, Eagle Eye and Scholar didn't get touched, Tower got a build order rework and cost rebalance, Inferno got very minor tweaks despite its general reputation as a weak(est) town, Fortress gets 5 extra gnolls and a dragonfly because napkin math said so.
1>>1846212>Yes but due to many randomness the balance can shift dramaticallyThere is a game with randomness called Poker.However, in Poker you do not play a single map, in Poker you play 100 times in a match, so the randomness evens out, sometimes you are advantaged sometimes disadvantages.In HoMM and other strategy games you play one map in a match. If there is randomness and lack of balance, then it's not a strategy game but a casino.But if HoMM will be balanced, if there is more than two players on map (humans or AI), and if they have good strategy, there is no reason to go out and attack any other player, because you will lose if you try to do this.>Falling behind early in H3 due to random spawnsIf one player has mine guarded by shooters, other player has mine guarded by zombies, and the zombies do not have so much more hitpoints than shooters (only 50% more, not few times more), that means the game is unfair and unbalanced.And this makes it luck game and casino, not strategy.Also, small randomness will not solve my paradox. Because even if player A gets 15% stronger army and hero than player B, it is not enough to attack B, if there is player C waiting for A and B to be weakened from battle.You need a massive advantage to be able to directly attack a player in 3+ player games. And such advantage will not happen.>Thieves guild has some very minor information if you only have one town the guild only tells you how many towns other players have. Okay so you know that player A has 2 towns, so you can deduct that A has beaten B and you could make an attempt to attack.So even a one thieves guild gives a large information, very important information.
2>>1846212>But you have no idea about the positionWrong, in HoMM3, even if your area is separated from other player area by mountains, you will see some of their area, and you will see the player color. So you will know that player green is north from your area, player blue is south.There could be many players, even 8. But if you see from thieves guild that player blue gained a town, you know where to attack. You go there, you attack him if he is in a town, if he isn't that's even better, you take town for free, then you wait for monday and buy all creatures and it might be enough to defend against him (+ castle towers, moat, walls) because he is very weak after attacking other player.Now you quickly go back with your main hero to your base town to defend it. Now you have two towns and one enemy eliminated.But what if you see from thieves guild that blue attacked green and stole his town, but blue is not your neighbour? Then you cannot exploit this, but other expert human player or expert AI could exploit this if they are close to blue.So on maps with more than two players, launching attack is a suicide, a recipe for a loss. Game is not winable by attacking.>stats, items of their main hero nor their army size/best creature.You know this. If game is balanced and all humans and AI are very intelligent and skilled in the game, that means all players are almost equal. All players have similar army size.>With one tavern only the creature stacks are shown but not their numbers.You do not need this information.If game is balanced and players are competent, they have similar army. But if you see from guild thieves that blue stolen red's town, you know that both blue and red are now weak from the battle.
3>>1846212>You should also assume that A took down B in a timed assault just before the new week. Meaning A will potentially have access to fresh troops from 2 towns the next turn.But A is away from his town and doesn't have the creatures from his base town. The creatures from B's town are not much useful because they are from different faction.Also, it's monday and I also get new creatures, I buy them all and then start going to player A.Even if secondary hero of A would bring weekly creatures to A in time, A will still be weak because he lost 50% or more creatures in attack on B.And when I launch attack on A, I can steal B town and A town, two towns, because how is weak A going to defend his two towns?I would get 3 towns. Some other players could steal some of them, but not instantly.But they could see I got new towns and they could come trying to steal some of them.But this would turn game into a mess, AI players would just try to steal each other towns that are undefended. But the towns wouldn't be of benefit as you cannot buy a Behemoth and combine it into your stack of Angels. When you switch town to a different faction you lose.>While you would also need to return to your own starting town and pick up your fresh troops risk having to attack without your full power. No, I didn't need to go back to my starting town because-in the early of game I collected most of mines resources etc, so I don't have reason to be outside town-I decided to go back to my town on saturday, at end of sunday I am in the town. I did this so I can buy creatures on Monday. Then monday happens, I buy creatures, but I also find out that A attacked B, so I go to player A>Or stand in your town ready to move out which takes time reach the border from your starting town location.I takes time, but it takes less than one week, so A will not buy any extra creatures.
>>1846549I mean you basically won't feel changes like that in casual play vs AI. Even in casual multiplayer with friends in hot seat or over gameranger they're not even that noticeable so who cares? I liked the changes that were made to Necropolis and Conflux because instead of being banned by default, people actually can play them now and it feels fair (and I'm not talking Jebus or Duel, just standard 200% no water templates). Most complaints I've heard re HotA come from some die hard SoD purists because of Interference (how dare they touch muh Resistance skill?!?) but I like the new skill and sometimes even include both (it's really just Armorer vs spells). New terrains, map objects, Cove and Factory, all are awesome and fit the existing stuff like a glove. I know I sound like a cheerleader, but I'm happy like you wouldn't belive that even 25+ years after the game was released there are passionate, true homm3 fans, still diligently working to make the game better than it was and novel. Prior to that it was either vanilla or schizo WoG shit. Balancing things takes a lot of work and careful approach which HotA crew have been doing consistently for years now and even though I can't say Eagle Eye etc. will ever be on the menu, they fixed Estates, they fixed Mysticism, they made Logistics/Necromancy/Intelligence more fair, so who knows? Sorry for the rant, I'm just excited for more great content down the road and I think the good outweighs the "bad".
4>>1846212>Both of those gives time to player A position themselves to be safeHow? What is the safe option for A if he-just lost 70% of his army on attacking B, he is weak-he has two towns to defend>and/or get the fresh troops from both towns.This will not give him much because-he just lost 70% of army on attacking B, so one week of army will not make him strong-the second town is of different faction, you cannot buy Behemoth and put them on your stack of Angels, combine them>Timing your attacks and planning turns ahead of time is so important in H3 why are you not acutely aware of this?Timing and attacking on sunday will not give him much because I will also but army on Monday then run to him, and he will only buy one week army with this>As for the scouts the opponent can, and will, use their scouts and stop you from gaining scouting information. But in order to scout ahead first you will need to do the break first.If A is able to attack B, that means he broke the guard that protects areas from each other.If A was able to defead guard with small or no losses, then I can do this too with my army.All players have army of similar strength, and all area guards have similar strength, that means all players are able to break guards about the same day.
>>1845667The only way this makes sense is if every single damn unit, faction and players are the exact same.Hint: It's in the TITLE. STRATEGY. You will take different strategies. The one with the best strategy wins. For example, trying to rush someone as soon as the game starts is a risky move, where if the other player prepared their defenses (defenses usually being stronger than offense per resources spent or at least what you started with), you will lose, and without your forces, probably be left wide open for an counterattack. But if the other didn't prepare, then you win.It's really not that hard.
>>1845667If i can try to interpret what you're saying hereBasically, you're saying that defenders advantage in strategy games leads to stalemates?Yes, that's true. But devs know that so they purposely make several ways to deal with that.Supply cap: You can't build army forever, eventually you hit a limit and can't make more units, thus waiting any longer becomes detrimental and the player has to attack to maximize their advantage.Limited resources: If bases mine out, you can't just sit there building army forever. You'll run out of resources if you don't go claim more territory.Resources on the map: Players have to use their units to claim territory on the map to gain more resources. If they "play it safe" other players get the resources and get ahead and win that way.Limits of control: if you build up too many units, you might not be able to control them all properly, blunting your numbers advantage. So sitting around building army forever isn't always ideal.Finally, there are tech systems. If every player sits around and builds their army in these games they're also advancing in tech: high-tech units might be powerful enough to overcome defenders' advantage. For example, in starcraft properly set-up siege tank lines are insanely powerful against ground units. But if Protoss is allowed to tech up to carriers and build a fleet, they obliterate the tanks and win.also: if you're referring to MP games with more than two humans, diplomacy is always the ultimate option. Sure eight players can be in a stalemate, until someone says "ally?" and the whole game topples over into chaos.
I SOLVED THE PROBLEM. ACTUALLY it's a semi solution because it makes major change in multiplayer gameplay.But it is better than no solution and stalemate.My solution makes that multiplayer games with more than two players are possible and don't result in stalemate and are very fun.But, I will not post my idea here because someone could steal it and make a game using my idea and earn 100 million dollars. I can sell my idea to you for 20 million dollars. You will still earn a net 80 million dollars.And there is still one flaw in the solution that has to be solved.
Imagine that you are a programmer and you got the job to improve HoMM3 AI.What should the AI do in the following situation:Small/Medium map with 8 towns, 8 AI players, each town is of different faction. What should the AI do to win the game or get more than one towns and keep them?Or alternative:Same map and number of players and towns, but you play as human against humans or AI.What can you do to win and to get other towns and keep them and not lose your town?
>>1846852Team up with others and then backstab them in the right moment.
>>1846852>Small/Medium map with 8 towns, 8 AI players, each town is of different faction. What should the AI do to win the game or get more than one towns and keep them?It is impossible for AI to win if game is balanced and all AI players are set to Highest intelligence.So, we could make in game, that not all AI players are set to Highest, but some are set to Medium.However, the players who are close to Medium AI, will be advantaged, compared to players who are far away from Medium AI, surrounded by Highest AI.
HoMM3 is just a digital version of Risk which also never ends in a stalemate because of the diplomacy between players is the main part of the strategy.
>>1846859nope, everyone just passes turn going back and forth in their territory because OP is mentally ill and thats how the world works in his head.
>>1845667So from what I understand you were too stupid to realize you can use heroes as psuedo-caravans.
There are only two options possible.If game is balanced and all AI players play at maximum intelligence then1. Nobody wins, game is a draw.2. RNG/luck in game makes that one of the AI wins, but all AI players have same probability of winning and win about the same number of games.Option 2 seems to solve the draw problem and it seems to be fair, but there is a problem.The problem is that players play a single game/match on scenario map, the map is not repeated 5 times to find the one who wins the most times.And if you play campaign against AI, if you lose a single map because of RNG/luck, it's game over. Campaigns have 7 maps, so it's likely you will get bad RNG/luck at least once.
>the schizo is still talking to himself
Another evidence supporting my theoryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess>GM Larry Kaufman notes that in amateur games, the draw rate is low, but rises above 50% (in classical games) at the master level:[19] in 2017 and 2018, the draw rate of players rated over 2750 surpassed 70%.[20] In top-level correspondence chess (where engine assistance is allowed), the draw rate is much higher.[19] Of 1512 games played in the World Correspondence Championship finals and the Candidates' sections between 2010 and 2013, 82.3% ended in a draw.[21] Since that time, the draw rate in top-level correspondence play has been rising steadily, reaching 97% in 2019.[22]>wrote in 1889, "It is now conceded by all experts that by proper play on both sides the legitimate issue of a game ought to be a draw.">Similarly, British grandmaster and World Championship challenger Nigel Short wrote that "... with perfect play, God versus God ... chess is a draw".>Lasker and Capablanca both worried that chess would suffer a "draw death" as top-level players drew more and more of their games.>Rules prohibiting an early draw by agreement have been tried, but they do not address the problem, which is that chess is drawish enough at high levels that draws are too common even if one or both players is playing to win.This also applies to 1 vs 1 games.But in HoMM they don't end up in draw because HoMM is a casino simulator, you toss a coin and you get morale bonus and second attack.But in 3+ player games, even casino will not help, as there is a stalemate.All deterministic games are solvable by strong algorithms.And world and humans and physics are also deterministic.
>>1846904>because HoMM is a casino simulator, you toss a coin and you get morale bonus and second attack.Imagine if chess had a feature that after every move, player throws dice, and if it throws six, you get extra move.This is what happens in all "strategy" video games.
>>1845667Heroes of might and magic 3 has no major flawsReleased in 1999 and never surpassed. Heavily played to this day.You are an idiot.
>>1846905Who are you even trying to prove this to?
>>1846909Mostly himself and the reptilians.
>>1845667You go to the middle, get absurdally stacked and if yotur town is actually threathened just town portal or chain army and artifacts back home.
>>1846560>If there is randomness and lack of balance, then it's not a strategy game but a casino.Is this your only argument that your keep parroting over and over and over? You are fixated with the two extremes of "perfect balance" or "total randomness". There is no perfect balance not in games nor in life it simply doesn't exist outside theory. Humans are also random and flawed beings so they will never create any video game that is completely balanced. Simple reason is that there must be a way to break stalemates there must winner eventually or else nobody will play the game and then the game's existence is pointless.Furthermore, by your simplistic and extreme logic, you could call everything that exist a just an all random casino. >Perfect balance or Casino there nothing can exist in between.This is the argument you keep repeating. Then even chess is just random casino because white has the first move advantage so therefore it is NOT perfectly balanced, let me repeat this for you, by your logic applied to Chess makes Chess = Random casino. And also by your very own same extreme logic that you keep repeating, your own entire theory doesn't worth anything since everything is just casino. And no matter your solution your problem is also meaningless and no super AI can fix it for you. Theorycrafting is nice and all but, by definition, theories are not real they are theories until real life proves them right and your theory simply cannot be proven right. Because, by your own logic that you keep repeating over and over, everything is a casino because perfect balance doesn't exit in real life.What are you even trying to prove here?
>>1846560>There is a game with randomness called Poker.Poker is not H3 don't compare apples to oranges. A player that is great in one will not automatically be great in the other.>In HoMM and other strategy games you play one map in a match. There are multiple maps and even randomly generated maps. And usually players play multiple matches, as said earlier they are even entitled to a map reset once every game.>But if HoMM will be balanced, if there is more than two players on map (humans or AI), and if they have good strategy, there is no reason to go out and attack any other player, because you will lose if you try to do this.Again you are ignoring the majority part of the game where the player measure their skills against the neutral monsters and themselves. You talk as if every player is the same, every faction is the same, every hero is the same and every army is the same. None of that is true.>Also, small randomness will not solve my paradox. Because even if player A gets 15% stronger army and hero than player B, it is not enough to attack B, if there is player C waiting for A and B to be weakened from battle.You do not know this.>You need a massive advantage to be able to directly attack a player in 3+ player games. And such advantage will not happen. Again, you do not know this.Armies are not the only thing the matter armies are not the same blobs where bigger number size decides things. Army composition matters, ranged units have range advantage, flying units have movement advantage. Not to mention hero stats provide 5% offense and defense respectably. And also have magic spells to influence the battle.You are completely ignoring the Heroes in a game where Heroes are the core of the game, without the heroes the game cannot even function. You cannot take towns you cannot even more your army without a hero.
>>1846560>So even a one thieves guild gives a large information, very important information.It only gives you that a player has more than 1 towns, it does not tell you anything the number of heroes, the resources, the army, the items, the level or stats of the other players. Those are way more important information.>Wrong, in HoMM3, even if your area is separated from other player area by mountains, you will see some of their area, and you will see the player color. So you will know that player green is north from your area, player blue is south.You will not know the position of their main hero. The main hero that has the army, which may be moving faster than your main hero and thus it can outrun your main hero using the terrain. And if you move towards to take their city they can also move in your city's direction and take take your first town. Your forgot that you own starting town is left helpless because you moved with all your army to take their town 2nd and since you did the break for them they can reach your town faster and then they still have 2 towns and you have one town you are still behind. You why do you keep ignoring the main features of the game? The Heroes? The map? The movement? The positioning? The factions? The spells?
Only niggers play HoMM or Civilization competitively online.It is a game supposed to give fun and adventures.It's better to just play on big map against 8 AI than to play stupid game 1 vs 1 with humans and wait 10 minutes after each turn.>playing strategy games online in competition>playing random number generators in competition and thinking you are winning
>>1846572>But A is away from his town and doesn't have the creatures from his base town.Yes but after they took the creatures they can hire the creatures in their 2nd town go back to their starting town and you won't be able to catch them because 1) You didn't even do your break yet. You only know that A has 2 towns you don't even know the terrain.2) And they have a head start on you in the travel distance and also know the shortest route to their starting town while you have the fog of war to hinder your movement progress.So then A will have fresh creatures from 2 towns and you only have 1 town worth of creatures where you did not even go back home to buy your own fresh creatures. So you are behind by 1 week of creatures and A is 2 weeks worth of creatures ahead of you.>The creatures from B's town are not much useful because they are from different faction.Now you are moving your goalposts? Up to now you are the one that treated all creatures and armies as an identical blob. Now you are changing your mind and claim other creatures "do not matter"?
>>1846938>Your forgot that you own starting town is left helpless because you moved with all your army to take their townYou are literally retarded and have never played a game of heroes in your life, kill yourself
>>1846581>Both of those gives time to player A position themselves to be safeHow?By moving behind a map feature that you cannot cross and thus you cannot catch them. Unless you can somehow corner them but they know the terrain already you have the fog of war against you so you can only guess which routes to take.>-just lost 70% of his army on attacking B, he is weakYou do not know this, your only information is that they have 2 town. The rest is just assumptions. And people do not always loose exactly 70% of their troops because some player are better than others and they outplayed each other.Plus you also lose some of your troops because you have to do the break otherwise you cannot even enter their territory.>-he has two towns to defendBut you also have 2 towns to capture, if you capture one town A can move to your starting area and capture your first town and you are back where you started. You also cannot be in 2 places at once just like them>Timing and attacking on sunday will not give him much because I will also but army on Monday then run to him, and he will only buy one week army with this.But if you rely on the thieves guild to know that they have 2 towns then that means that the play ALREADY owns the town. The only way to get to A is to immediately reach their 2nd town before the next day and 1) You do not know where it is because fog of war2) You need to break before you can even start searching3) The town is always farther away than 1 day's worth of travel so you won't make it on the same day.
>>1845928That's one way of putting itNow I don't need to reply to this thread, thanks
>>1846944>You are literally retarded... >...kill yourself.Very thoughtful points there, good job!Let me try again so you understand. If you take most of your army from your starting town to attack A and take A town then you will have no army to defend your starting town. So if A moves in to your starting town with their main army then they can take it because you will never have enough army to both attack and defend. It is literally just switching places what is so difficult to understand about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game#Perfect_play>In game theory, perfect play is the behavior or strategy of a player that leads to the best possible outcome for that player regardless of the response by the opponent.>Perfect play can be generalized to non-perfect information games, as the strategy that would guarantee the highest minimal expected outcome regardless of the strategy of the opponent.Perfect play can be implemented to HoMM AI.What will happen then?1. Nobody will win, draw.2. Random AI will win due to game randomness. This is also bad.
>>1846957Are you okay, dude? You're talking to yourself in circles, whining about casinos and shit.
>>1846217>And ignored all valid counterpoints and information the rest of the people in the thread provided for you>people in the thread90% of posts in this thread are made by single person.>And ignored all valid counterpointsI provided counterpoints to counterpoints and defeated them.>because you ignored most of the game's features and described a childishly oversimplified version of it.Number of features doesn't matter, because all players can use them and all players start with same resources.>>1846229>"Only a Sith deals in absolutes." Your are intentionally oversimplifying your worldview in two polar opposite extremes and refuse to accept anything in between.There isn't anything between. There is, but isn't.a - game that is fully equal, zero randomness, strategy can win, equal strategy = drawb - game fully random, tossing coins to decide "winner"You say HoMM is something between. This is similar to Poker.However, in HoMM a map is played once and the winner is decided at the end of map. The "winner" might not be the best player, but someone who had luck.In Poker, you play many maps, 100 maps, then you decide who is winner. The random effects even out.Also, the randomness in HoMM does not defeat the stalemate that I described.If there is map with 8 towns and 8 AI players, players cannot win and attack opponent, even if they have a bit better luck and 10% stronger army.HoMM is a stalemate even with randomness it has.It is impossible to win any man in HoMM that has more than two players. And 90% of maps on HoMM are 3+ players. So you can only use 10% of the game maps.
>>1846008this is "just" autism>>1846044sperg thinks what's going on inside his damaged head is of interest to anyone else
>>1846954You just keep proving you never played a multiplayer game of heroes, possibly any strategy game ever. Follow through on the advice given and help us cleanup the genepool of your single digit IQ, you brazilian mongrel.
If HoMM was not a casino, then a perfect playing AI players should draw or be in stalemate.If any player can win, then the game is a casino.I don't see other option.You have zero arguments against my steel logic.
>>1846249If you're so smart then explain, how could a human attack opponent, on a map with 4 expert human players and 4 towns.You won't because you're just a noob who plays with AI on easy difficulty.>>1846252>the wealth comes from controlling territory. And how can one player control more territory than other player, if game is balanced?How does controlling territory will give you free army and steal your opponent town?>if you control only your castle you will get macro'd to deathWhat?>>1846265>use more than one heroAll AI and humans can use more than one hero. So how will I gain advantage?And how can more heroes be used to break stalemate when 4 players play on single map?By collecting free wood from the ground? Because secondary heroes are only capable of this.If I make a shitty second hero and steal unguarded wood from the grass I will now win the game?
This genuinely feels like you've never played a competitive strategy game.Play a 1v1 or FFA RTS and see how far always mirroring the opponent takes you.
>>1846310> It's not a Nash equilibrium because the other three players could decide to team up against you.> Diplomacy is a very important part of any strategy game.In HoMM there is no built in system into the game where you can make alliances during the game.Such system could be added.Human players could team up against others if they communicate somewhere to do this and they trust each other.But if humans or AI made alliances how would this be enforced? What if they back stab? When could alliances be disbanded? If players in alliance could back stab, why would anybody make alliance and trust the partner?However, the thing is, such alliances are cheating, and people who will make them will not win with skills but by cheating and luck.If there is 4 players on map, which player should make alliance with which player? Why should player A choose B and not C?If player A chooses by random, it makes the game luck based.Alliances will allow to weak players to defeat better player, this makes the game not a strategy. The game will not let better player to win.And what if there are 4 players on the map, player A makes alliance with B, player C makes alliance with D? The game will still be in stalemate.If there are 3 players on the map. Two random players will make alliance and the third player will lose, even if he is the better player and should win in fair match.Or they will play without alliance, but when someone gets ahead, two losers form alliance to beat the best player.
>>1847000>90% of posts in this thread are made by single person.Yeah, you.
>>1847123If a player can't make an alliance then he's a shit player and deserves to lose.
>>1846314> The resources get farther away as you use them up and then you end up fighting over resources not castles.And how are you going to do this? If you take your main hero with army to fight neutral creatures and take resources, other players will steal your unguarded town.Also, all players can go farther and take resources. How are you going to win by doing this?And you are wrong about resources. In HoMM, towns are the most important, they generate you army and gold. Two towns = double army, and +50% gold.> Have you ever played a strategy game?I play strategy games for 20 years, more than you are alive. I am expert. I found with logic and mathematics that all strategy games are broken.
>>1847063>So how will I gain advantage?>Because secondary heroes are only capable of thisWow. Just wow. Literally no comment. We are not here to teach you basic gameplay you braindead moron. You "conclusions" and your "questions" betray you for a no-game retard that you are. The "strategy" and "strategic considerations" you keep raving about do not exist in Heroes of Might and Magic. These are a product of a delusional mind that has never played a single game of homm multiplayer. So stop wasting everyone's time and hold breath until incapacitated please.
>>1846332>you have discovered why most competitive HOMM3 formats are 1v1 only - because playing even a 1v1v1 FFA game will introduce a situation where taking offensive action first almost always leads to a loss for you assuming equal skill levels, which makes for a shit game>hence, most people don't play shitty formats like FFA and stick to 1v1s instead, where victory is determined by how well you are able to gather resources, convert them into an advantage, and use that advantage to push for a win with a timing attack or defense against a poorly-judged timing attack of your opponentSo 3 or more players on one map break the game and make it impossible to win.Only 2 players can play game (2 humans or 2 AI or 1 AI with one human).But game is full of many player stuff and promotes such play. Click on any map in single player and it is 4, 6, 8 player map. And in hot seat multiplayer, it promotes to put as many people as are in the room.And when I was a child, we played HoMM with kids on one computer with many kids. It didn't result in stalemate, but this is because, we were just buying cute monsters in medieval castles and we were killing each other to see blood and death, there was no grand strategy or optimal algorithm there.I always chosen Necromancer town in HoMM3, not because it was good or overpowered, but because it had cool skeletons that looked cool and made cool sounds, and the town allowed you to collect skeletons after battles.But if you have people smarter than kids or you have strong AI, and they try to apply most optimal strategy to win and to avoid loss, it results in stalemate, unless game breaks it with heavy randomness, casino, or one player is dumb and makes mistakes.So, you agree with my conclusion, that game is fully broken with more than two players?But some people in this thread disagree and they keep attacking me.Most of HoMM3 maps are 3-8 player maps. So they are unplayable.>FFAWhat is FFA?
>>1847195How to modify HoMM or other strategy games, to make it possible that more than two players can play? Or is it impossible?
>>1846337 >no town portal=lose. >Inferno 5th level spell sacrifice=loseAnd you have zero control what spells will you get from Magic Guild. So the winner is chosen randomly.> but can he also tell me how this applies to chinese checkers?What is Chinese checkers?
>>1846347Then how much army advantage you need to attack?
>>1847388You've never played Heroes, have you?
>>1846030>you will lose your town without battle,anon you do know you can garrisson defenders in the town, right? those army fight if the town is attacked, so you make a misplay by not recruiting army to garrisson while your heroes are exploring and looting far away places on the maptry gitting good and at least winning worldwide championships before you write a treatise on why you think a game is bad, because i guarantee you, better players than you have written better words than you could ever, on the topic of why the thing you think breaks games is actually a non-issue, and how to work around it from both player and maker side of the game.
>>1846174Consider the following problem:>You want to win the game by conquering the enemies, but also you don't want to lose your towns. What do you do?Now here's another problem of a similar type:>You wanna get to work on your car, but also you don't wanna waste too much money on the fuel. What do you do?If we use your coward strategy for problem 1, and apply it to problem 2, we'd get that the best way to go to work is to stay in your house, lose your job, and lose the wage, thus losing all the money that you didn't use on gasoline. That is ridiculous, and thus the cowards' "solution" to problem 1 is not a solution at all.Q.E.D.
>>1845667Don't give the AI any bonuses, but make it as smart as you possibly can.
>>1845667>A MAJOR FLAW IN ALL STRATEGY VIDEO GAMESshut the fuck up retard fuck off back to plebbit you stupid child
>>1846337>But HoMM3 isn't played like a quasi 4x, it's played as Jebus Cross forever, so we'll likely never know.What is "played like 4x" and "played as Jebus Cross"?>>1846357> This is only true if you are HotA faggot.No, the base game is also broken. All maps that have more than two players (human or AI) are broken and unplayable, it is impossible to win.
>>1847615>doesn't know what jebus cross is and tries to speak like he knows the secret truths of HoMM>doesn't know what a 4X is and tries to speak like he knows the secret truths of strategy gamesunironically, go apply yourself and play more and research even more. You are like a flat earther who's trying to prove something by not knowing evidence to the contrary because he doesn't know actually anything beyond what his religious dad told him is in the big bibley book.No I will not do your research for you, fuck off.
>>1847195>What is FFA?oh my god this whole thread is gold, like a car crash in slow motion
>>1846427>do YOU verbalize and re-think your strategy every time you turn comes up? do YOU take a long time to play out the actions you've done many hundreds of times as you've played the game a lot?Yes. My turns take 15 minutes or more.And before I start the scenario I spend 10 minutes choosing the starting town.>why would you assume that playing fast means there's no strategy behind it?Strategy requires slow thinking and analysis.>do you think his powerful army materialized out of thin air, or could all of thopse circumstances be the result of his strategic play up to this point?He just spams mouse clicks in memorized manner. The game is not about strategy but repeating the same overpowered things. Exploiting bugs and imbalance. For example, you always choose offense skill but never eagle eye.>really, you proudly admitted that you don't have the faintest idea about how the game is played at a high level of competenceHow would you play at high competence, if there is 4 players, each with one town. And all of them are competent. How do you win?>fucking casualsFucking powergamer exploiting bugs and spamming mouse clicks.>>1846432> You never played FFA in heroes in your life, did ya?What is FFA?
>>1847684...are you right now complaining about APM in a turn-based strategy game? Am I correctly reading this? I just want to make sure before I start laughing in your face for all eternity.
This thread is fucking gold. Look at this retarded, schizophrenic ESL.
>>1847684Strategy does require thinking, but if your thinking is slow, that's called a skill issue. Git gud.Knowing from experience that the "build building X" button is always located in the same place is not a bug abuse. It does lead to less newbie-friendly watching experience though. The only answer to "How do you win?" is, as always, one word: 'depends'. The true answer depends on so many factors I don't even know half of them, and it includes both the units, spells, equipments, both yours and the opponents', and even terrain features like the mana refill whatever it is, or neutral unit production and how far away it is from both the towns and the frontlines. And you never have perfect information, there is always a fog of war between you and the things you'd wanna know to never lose. Even the best pros sometimes get caught blindsided by something in the fog of war.>What is FFA?may Google have mercy on your soul.
>>1847711ESL play this game more than anglophones, stfu
No matter how much you nigs try you'll never make a thread as entertaining as this one10/10
>>1847709Turnbasedbros... it's over. Our pure strategy game is now a gookclick- I mean slavclickingslop. Now we have only chess, unless the gookclickers will start moving pawns at incredible speed too
>>1847875>Now we have only chess, unless the gookclickers will start moving pawns at incredible speed tooIt's fucking over bro.
>>1846549>I can get more specific (i haven't played in awhile) but it's the same "competitive multiplayer" malaise that infected virtually all video gaming past a certain point.I want to know more about "competitive multiplayer" religion.>Interference/Resistance is a symptom, not a cause.Resistance is bad. It is luck based, you are rolling dice.If you want to play a casino just play a casino. Or you want a casino but with medieval castles, archers and dragons?>Some of the priorities are strange, Eagle Eye and Scholar didn't get touched, Tower got a build order rework and cost rebalance, Inferno got very minor tweaks despite its general reputation as a weak(est) town, Fortress gets 5 extra gnolls and a dragonfly because napkin math said so.It's made by russians, they are not good at math and logic.>>1846579>I mean you basically won't feel changes like that in casual play vs AI. Even in casual multiplayer with friends in hot seat or over gamerangerMultiplayer with more than two players is impossible in HoMM it is fully broken. It results in stalemate.>I liked the changes that were made to Necropolis and Conflux because instead of being banned by default, people actually can play them now and it feels fairNow, they are still not playable.They "balanced" Conflux by giving you 3 firebirds per week instead of 2. But other towns still get two. So conflux gives you 450 hp per week in 7 level creatures, but other towns give you 300-360 hp. This is balanced?I don't know if they balanced necromancy, I don't think so. On small maps necromancy is useless, on long games it might still be overpowered because it is exponential.>Cove and Factory, all are awesome and fit the existing stuff like a glove.NO, IT DOESN'T, NIGGERIt's crap, soulless and doesn't find anything. Low quality russian slop.
>>1847969>doesn't find anything.doesn't fit anything
>>1847969>Resistance is badI love it personally, but it is true that Resistance is a "no-skill skill" that can ruin or win games. Interference is a much better solution for competitive play. As I said, I'd love having both in.>Multiplayer with more than two players is impossibleYou never played a homm game with more than two players, have you?>Conflux T7Entirely wrong information for both Firebirds/Phoenixes:>Growth reduced to 1 (basic/citadel)/2 (Castle)/3 (Vault of Ashes); it was 4 in AB/SOD (2 basic + 1 with Citadel + 1 with Castle)>Price gauged from 1500g to 2000g and 2000 + 1 merc to 3000g + 1 merc>Firebirds lost fire immunity and have a 50% fire res instead, meaning they are much less effective Armageddon activator.And this is just regarding their T7 creature, without mentioning other Conflux changes (new terrain, hero rebalancing, build order and structure/creature prices etc.). So meticulous and thoughtful balancing definitely took place and the town is now much more fair in terms of power when compared to other factions.>NecromancyAll values for the skill and related boosters (artifacts/buildings) were halved, except for the Grail building (Soul Prison). So you definitely need more time to get that skeleton snowball rolling but it's still powerful when you get it going.>It's made by russians, they are not good at math and logic.>NO, IT DOESN'T, NIGGER. It's crap, soulless and doesn't find anything. Low quality russian slop.Wow. I get it if you have some personal dislike for the faction themes or aesthetics used, or even being butthurt about Russians for whatever reason. But objectively speaking, both Cove and Factory have great and interesting gameplay and are the most lore-compliant fan made towns ever with quality that rivals the original games. They did an awesome job and I hope they'll keep doing it, their work is definitely one of the main reasons why the homm3 scene is still so active and alive.
What if the AI was programmed in such way, that a draw is also considered a loss? This would make AI take risk even if the AI risks losing.But if human player will play with such AI players, he can easily exploit that AI take risks, and attack weak AI after it had battles with other AI players.The game would be easy to play:1. In the beginning of game do nothing but defense, keep your town.2. Wait for AI to battle each other.3. Go and conquer weak AI players.
>>1846686>The only way this makes sense is if every single damn unit, faction and players are the exact same.No. Even if there are small differences in players, it doesn't matter, there is still a stalemate.If one AI or player (A), will go to another AI area (B), what is he going to do? The other AI (B) is protecting his town. If A attacks B, both A and B will lose 80-100% of their army. Then C and D players could exploit that and finish them off and steal their towns.And if B was not protecting his town, and A steals the town without fight, then B or (C, D) could quickly go to A's town and steal it without fight.If A has 10-15% stronger army and hero than B, it doesn't matter, A would still have massive losses if he attacked B in his town.If A has 50% stronger army than B, that means the game is extremely unbalanced and a casino. If it's not a casino, players of similar skills will have similar strength of army and hero, and they will be in stalemate.>The one with the best strategy wins.And what is the best strategy? If there is 4 players or AI with similar skills, the strategy is to stay in your town and protect it, so you don't lose. If you go far away from your town (with the army) or you attack your opponent (who has similar strength of army), you are going to lose the game. Losing is worse than draw.>For example, trying to rush someone as soon as the game starts is a risky move, where if the other player prepared their defenses (defenses usually being stronger than offense per resources spent or at least what you started with), you will lose, and without your forces, probably be left wide open for an counterattack. But if the other didn't prepare, then you win.But the others did prepare.There is 4 players or AI, and they stay close to their town and keep buying army every week with all their money. All players keep slowly growing their armies, and all are close to their town so they can go inside if someone is coming close.
>>1847822Yeah this was pretty good. His entire argument falls apart with Necro doomstacks but I decided not to say anything for a while.
Any other anons played Lords of Magic? It’s a comfy TBS like Disciples, Age of Wonders, HoMM, etc, but what sets it apart for me is that most of the maps are literal globes. You can start with a party at your home city, start going north, and eventually if you keep going north far enough you’ll travel the entire world and end up back at your home city again. When you conquer other territories, you aren’t just taking over a randomly-sectioned piece of map in a sandbox, you’re literally taking over part of the planet. Any other TBS’s, or mods for existing TBS’s, for this feel?
>>1848101>But the others did prepare.To prepare vs a city rush you need to give up on exploring and getting your resource game on, but that's fine since the rush player is also too busy attacking to explore and get resources, right? Not really. Without getting your early resource game on, you are never surviving a late or even a midgame push if it's done properly. And you don't know which strategy the opponents are doing, and they can only be doing one strategy at a time. Hidden information and most of the resources starting outside of city bounds makes sure there is no "perfect play" that ensures you never lose or always win. Staying in or near your city means the rest of the resources on your "side" of the map are open game for other players once they realize you are using coward strategy, and once that happens your income and army will never catch up to them. Stop being a cultist and face the facts: you don't know jack shit about strategy, and people don't wanna hand-feed the retard. So go apply yourself and research and learn.
>>1848101You just don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, do you? There are people out there easily and consistently winning 1v7 games against allied 200% impossible AI, playing as Inferno, on random maps. The theorycrafting you're engaging in doesn't match up to reality, tactics and strategy don't work like that in heroes3. Go and play an actual homm multiplayer game instead of fellating yourself over your own delusional assumptions and faulty conclusions.
>>1848175That's not a globe, that's a torus/donut
>>18466941> Basically, you're saying that defenders advantage in strategy games leads to stalemates?> Yes, that's true. But devs know that so they purposely make several ways to deal with that.No. I am not saying this.Defenders advantage can also lead to stalemate for some time in 1 vs 1, as player A who has slight advantage (+10% army and hero) will not be able to attack player B who hides in his town to defend. But if the game continues, A could gain more advantage than +10% and break stalemate.I am saying a different thing.There is a map with more than two players. 3, 4, 8, etc. Now, what to do, what is the winning strategy?If player A will attack player B, even if A wins, he will have massive losses (85-100%). He now owns two towns but has very weak army. Player C and D see that A took another town, so they assume he has weak army and they come to destroy him. They destroy him. Now A and B are out of the game.And if all players will be close to their town, nobody will be able to take other player's town without strong battle.This results in stalemate when nobody will attack other player and take his town.
>>18466942Second option is:The players do not protect their towns so much and they walk farther from town. Player A could try to take player B town without fight. However, whether he succeds is luck based. Player A might come to player B town, but on this day player B is close to his town (with his army). Then on another day Player B might come to player A town, but find it unguarded. So the result of this is luck based. Not strategy. Someone will succeed in stealing enemys town, but this is because of luck.Also, if player A steals player B town without battle. Now player B, C, D, they could quickly go to player A (who was two towns) to steal his town, because player A has only one army, so one town is undefended. Player A could make a different army allocation though, what if Player A splits his army into half, one half is in first town, one half is in second town. Then player B, C, D could still attack him, both of his towns, because they can defeat him without major losses when they have two times stronger army.So this possibilities make that player A will not try to steal player B town.Stalemate.>Supply cap: You can't build army forever, eventually you hit a limit and can't make more units, thus waiting any longer becomes detrimental and the player has to attack to maximize their advantage.HoMM doesn't have this. Even if it had, it wouldn't change anything. Supply cap would hit all players equally, it changes nothing. You still can't attack because you will lose.>Limited resources: If bases mine out, you can't just sit there building army forever. You'll run out of resources if you don't go claim more territory.If you go out to claim more territory with your army, you will lose, someone will steal your town.Also, all players could go out to get more territory. It still results in a draw.
>>18466943>Resources on the map: Players have to use their units to claim territory on the map to gain more resources. If they "play it safe" other players get the resources and get ahead and win that way.If you do not play it safe you can lose all your towns and lose the game.>Limits of control: if you build up too many units, you might not be able to control them all properly, blunting your numbers advantage. So sitting around building army forever isn't always ideal.Then players will put some army into other hero and go somewhere with him.But they will all do the same thing, so the game is still a draw.>Finally, there are tech systems. If every player sits around and builds their army in these games they're also advancing in tech: high-tech units might be powerful enough to overcome defenders' advantage.All players will be advancing in tech.And even if you can make successful attack on your enemy's town, you lose 80% of your army. Then player C and D can make attack on you as you are weak.>also: if you're referring to MP games with more than two humans, diplomacy is always the ultimate option. Sure eight players can be in a stalemate, until someone says "ally?" and the whole game topples over into chaos.Diplomacy is a scam and flaw of the game. It's a casino.Because, why should player A choose player B as his ally and not player C? By random, throwing dice?If there is three players, A, B, C. If two of them make alliance (A and B), then C will lose the game. But C was not in ally not because he was worse player, but because he had bad luck, he wasn't picked into alliance (by throwing dice).This turns the game into a casino, not strategy.Another problem is, two weak players could make alliance against one better player. The better player would lose, even though he is the best player and should win.Also, what if four players play the game, A and B make alliance, C and D make alliance? Stalemate.
>>1848304>>1848306Bro, play a fucking game of HoMM instead of this delusional theorycrafting shit
>>1846856> Team up with others and then backstab them in the right moment.There are 3 players, A, B, C.Why should A ally with B and not C? How should he make a choice? By tossing a coin?If A tosses a coin and chooses B, then C loses the game.But C loses the game not because he was worse, but he was unlucky during tossing the coin.This is not a strategy game but a casino, with medieval castles and dragons.Option B: there are 4 players, A allies with B, C allies with D. This results in stalemate.>>1846859> HoMM3 is just a digital version of Risk which also never ends in a stalemate because of the diplomacy between players is the main part of the strategy.Diplomacy and alliances are shitty and they destroy the game. Not best player wins but most lucky player. Read what I wrote above.The player who fails to get good alliance will lose the game, because he was unlucky.Also, Risk is shit because map is not balanced, some players start in better parts of the map.
>200 posts>strategy noobs still didn't defeat OP's logic and evidence>20 people vs one OP = OP still wins
>>1848369who are you quoting?OP has had rebuttals to his posts, he just chose to ignore them because he's a coward with a coward strategy of "not losing = winning" which is not how strategy games work.Also, those numbers seem pulled out of your ass, please don't do that when trying to talk about the supremacy of "logic and evidence"And speaking of evidence, the fact that pro games of HoMM3 never end in stalemates, nor in random casino wins (you can verify that thru statistical analysis if win/loss ratios of all players) is plenty evidence to OP's logic having a flaw. Finding that flaw is left as an exercise to the reader.
>>1848369>pretending to be someone else>>1848348What is the point of this rambling? Nobody is going to create your hypothetical le perfect balanced game that is not casino[sic].
>>1848369OP strategically defeated 20 npcs on 4chan
>>1846872> So from what I understand you were too stupid to realize you can use heroes as psuedo-caravans.?>>1846908> Heroes of might and magic 3 has no major flaws> Released in 1999 and never surpassed. Heavily played to this day.> You are an idiot.No major flaws?-if the map has more than 2 players it is unplayable, there is a stalemate and nobody can win-factions and creatures are very unbalanced, necromancer gets 2000 skeletons for free, conflux gets DOUBLE the amount of 7 level creatures-secondary skills are very unbalanced, you always just pick the same overpowered ones, it's boring-game is luck and random based, you go to attack your enemy town on Sunday but you lack one movement point so you can't attack, then next day the town is full of army-magic is retarded, you spam mass haste/slow (1 lvl spell) in every battle and pay 4 mana points for this, while there are 3-5 level spells that are worthless-instead of building army and having strong epic sieges, you just steal town from AI enemies when they go away from the town with their army-AI is too weak and doesn't play good strategy-most battles are boring and consist of you destroying skeletons and zombies with 20 dragons and titans, epic battles are rare and mostly at the end of scenario-might heroes are overpowered, magic heroes are shit. barbarian can spam mass haste/slow in every battle and pay 4 mana points, he can also cast 5 level spells, and he gets big attack/defense bonus compared to magic hero>never surpassedYes but that's because other games are shitty and crap. And since games are becoming worse with every year it will stay as top game for next decades, or forever.
>>1848469>if the map has more than 2 players it is unplayable, there is a stalemate and nobody can winyou have never played homm and it showswhat the fuck is even wrong with you?why are you going on these bizarre screeds about a game you've never even played you fucking schizo
>>1848469all that whiny wall of text can be summarized with two words: skill issue. Git gud instead of running around in circles of your own piss, shit and semen
>>1848409not sure if a schizo can be called out for samefagging because even though he's replying to his own posts, in his mind he's probably arguing with differeent people
>>1845667The solution is not to play FFA
>hota is balancedhttps://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Town_ComparisonFactory57292 AI value per week (army strength per week)other towns40000-50000 AI value per weekhttps://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Factory6th level creature has 160/200 hp and 25-45 damage>balanced
>>1848542Divide it by the Troop Cost / Week value and they are below average.You're not getting 35770 gold per week to buy out all troops when the City Hall only gives you 14k per week.
>>1848542Are you like a medically certified retard or just intentionally dishonest? Pic related is their T6. The stats you posted are for their unupgraded T7, the Couatl, which is at the tail end of their tier, lower than fucking Firebird or even Hydra. Factory has the highest AI value of all towns because they get two lvl. 7 creatures, but you know what else that means? That Factory is the most EXPENSIVE town in the freaking game, more than Dungeon and even more than Tower. Please stop making an idiot of yourself, it was fun at first but now it's just second-hand embarassment.
>>1848542>AI valueliterally worthless stat because as you yourself are saying the AI sucks and i agreego play vs other players idiot
>>1845670>make that AI is not playing maximally goodstopped reading right there. you do know that difficulty is adjustable?
>>1846924> You go to the middle, get absurdally stackedEverybody is stacked with army.And what do you do? You are going to attack enemy's town with your army and lose 90% army?>and if yotur town is actually threathened just town portalTown portal is cheating.And there is no town portal in the early and mid game.Also, you get town portal based on chance, luck.One player will get town portal, the other will not.The player who gets town portal will win. That means HoMM3 is a casino simulator but with dragons and castles.> or chain army and artifacts back home.1. chain army is cheating, you are exploiting a bug, it should be fixed and banned.2. if all players and AI will use chain army, everybody will just keep their army in town at the end of their turn, so nobody will be able to get enemy's town.
>>1848639>Town portal is cheating.>chain army is cheatingah, now the true colors of the autismo come outnext you'll say that castling and en-passant in chess is cheating too
>>1848101>No. Even if there are small differences in players, it doesn't matter, there is still a stalemateGood thing they aren't small and can be ridiculously massive, then.>If A attacks B, both A and B will lose 80-100% of their army. Your made-up assumptions are not facts.>And if B was not protecting his town, and A steals the town without fight, then B or (C, D) could quickly go to A's town and steal it without fight.Your made-up assumptions are not facts (x2)>If A has 10-15% stronger army and hero than B, it doesn't matter, A would still have massive losses if he attacked B in his town.Your made-up assumptions are not facts (x3)>If A has 50% stronger army than B, that means the game is extremely unbalanced and a casino. If it's not a casino, players of similar skills will have similar strength of army and hero, and they will be in stalemate.Your made-up assumptions are not facts (x4)>And what is the best strategy? Depends on the game, but in a balanced one, there is no best strategy retard. Holing up means you lose resources. Rushing means you risk. And so on, and so on.
>This is the impossible hoom3 FFA experience. You may not like it, but this is how every heroes 3 game with more than two players looks like.
>>1848666wheres the neutral enemies? wheres the neutral resources?you're map sux, i'd rather jebus cross (and i hate jebus cross)
>>1848672neutral enemies and neutral resources would be cheating so we're not including that
>>1848639>Also, you get town portal based on chance, luck.>One player will get town portal, the other will not.>The player who gets town portal will win. That means HoMM3 is a casino simulator but with dragons and castles.He's got you there
>>1848696>what is spell research
>>1848701Horn of the Abyss is not HoMM3
>>1848639>HoMM3 is a casino simulator but with dragons and castles.Yes? There's a reason why even the most basic bitch strategy game is called "Risk" and involves throwing dice. Strategy and tactics, both in games and in real life are casino, but if you lose you die. You can play optimally to minimize risks and maximize rewards but without casino strategy games aren't strategy games, they're puzzle games.
>>1848710it's way better than vanilla, correct
>>1846927> There is no perfect balance not in games nor in life it simply doesn't exist outside theory. Humans are also random and flawed beings so they will never create any video game that is completely balanced.I am not a human.> Simple reason is that there must be a way to break stalemates there must winner eventually or else nobody will play the game and then the game's existence is pointless.In HoMM3 it is impossible to break stalemate with more than 2 players on map.Also, it is not fair to toss a coin who should win. If all players play equally, the game should end in a draw.>Then even chess is just random casino because white has the first move advantage so therefore it is NOT perfectly balanced1. In chess one player starts with whites, but then they play again and the first player has blacks now. The winner of a match is the one who scored more over few games.2. In chess there is one dice roll (you start with white or black), in HoMM there is 1000 dice rolls in game, and some of them have extreme results, for example one player rolls to have Town Portal in magic guild, the other rolls to not have it.>And also by your very own same extreme logic that you keep repeating, your own entire theory doesn't worth anything since everything is just casino.But there are levels to casino, some games and stuff in the world is fully based on dice rolls, some stuff has 50% dice roll, some stuff 0% dice rolls.Also, in casinos like poker game, you play 100 games in a single poker match, so the randomness evens out (one player has advantage about 50% of time versus his enemy),but in HoMM3 you only play one game, and the winner of game is said to be winner.Also, on maps with 3 or more players in HoMM3, there is a stalemate and nobody can win, even with the casino mechanisms.
>>1848989>In HoMM3 it is impossible to break stalemate with more than 2 players on map.But this is literally false.>the rest of your incoherent, broken English-having schizobabble, including claiming you're not humanWhat?
Homm gambling addicts will never recover
>>1846935>Poker is not H3 don't compare apples to oranges. No, it is.In poker you get random cards, then you use strategy to get as much money as possible (or lose as little as possible) with the cards.But, in poker you play 100 games in a match. The winner is who played better in 100 games.In HoMM3, you get random spells, random secondary skills, random morale and luck, random creatures defending mines.But in HoMM3 you only play one game in a match, so if you are more lucky than opponent, you win.Also, in HoMM3, if there is more than 2 players on a map, the game is in stalemate and nobody can win or do anything. In poker there is no stalemate.>There are multiple maps and even randomly generated maps. And usually players play multiple matches, as said earlier they are even entitled to a map reset once every game.A single match has a single map, and the winner of map is said to be winner of match. In chess, people play many times to decide the winner. In poker, they play 100 games.>You talk as if every player is the same, every faction is the same, every hero is the same and every army is the same. If one player gets 20% stronger faction then the game is unbalanced and scam.Also, the stalemate that I described, also happens even if one player is 10% stronger than other player.
>>1849198Are you the Indian who made the HoI4 thread and the INDIA STRONK BEFORE 900AD thread?
>>1846935> >Also, small randomness will not solve my paradox. Because even if player A gets 15% stronger army and hero than player B, it is not enough to attack B, if there is player C waiting for A and B to be weakened from battle.>You do not know this.I do know this.All good AI players are checking Thieves Guild every turn, if they see that player A gained town and player B lost town, the player C and D are launching attack on player A towns, because he is weak from attacking player B.And humans should do they same if they are good.> >You need a massive advantage to be able to directly attack a player in 3+ player games. And such advantage will not happen. >Again, you do not know this.I do know this.If player A has 10% stronger army than player B and he attacks B, then player A will win the battle but lose 90% army. Then he is very vulnerable to attack from player C and D.So player A needs 70% stronger army than player B and this will not happen on balanced map.>Army composition matters, ranged units have range advantage, flying units have movement advantage. Not to mention hero stats provide 5% offense and defense respectably. And also have magic spells to influence the battle.If the game is balanced and fair, all players of similar skills will have similar overall power.
>>1849214Nobody wants a perfectly balanced game. This is retarded and you should touch grass.
>>1849217>Nobody wants a perfectly balanced game>nobody>there is 1 billion chess players in the world and other board games>at the same time shitty casino simulators like HoMM and Civilization have 10k active players.
>>1849223>one billion people play chessLike once per year?
>>1849241Yes.How often do 1 billion people play HoMM and Civ, per year?And HoMM and Civ have complex rules and a lot of options so it's hard to play the game if you are new, but in essence they are just casino simulators.
>>1849250How are they casino simulators?I can play heroes and win every time. The casino would throw you out.
>>1849250You're retarded.Video games will always be niche, le perfectly balanced games existing or no.
>>1845667You allow players to team up
>>1849273Alliances are cheating. See >>1847123
>>1849417Cope by players not good enough to make and break alliances at the right time.
>>1846938>It only gives you that a player has more than 1 towns, it does not tell you anything the number of heroes, the resources, the army, the items, the level or stats of the other players. Those are way more important information.No. You can deduct a lot more information. If you see that player A has now two towns and player B zero towns, that means A attacked B and now A has 80% weaker army. It's time to attack A and take his two towns.>You will not know the position of their main hero.I do not need that knowledge, I only need to get to his towns, and towns have roads leading to them.> The main hero that has the army, which may be moving faster than your main hero and thus it can outrun your main hero using the terrain.No, if the game is balanced all heroes will move at same speed.>And if you move towards to take their city they can also move in your city's direction and take take your first town. Your forgot that you own starting town is left helpless because you moved with all your army to take their town 2nd and since you did the break for them they can reach your town faster and then they still have 2 towns and you have one town you are still behind.Yes but this can also happen, when A tries to steal town from B, B can go and steal town from A.This will result in two options:1. Nobody will be able to take any other town.2. Everybody will keep stealing other player town from each other, nobody will keep two towns for any long time.>You why do you keep ignoring the main features of the game? The Heroes? The map? The movement? The positioning? The factions? The spells?Features don't matter because all players have equal access to them and players can have equal skills, especially AI players.
>>1849429> Cope by players not good enough to make and break alliances at the right time.No.Imagine there is 3 players: A B C.Two players can make alliance against third player. Which two players will make alliance and why will they pick players in alliance?You will get into alliance or you won't, but not because of your skills, but because of luck. You have 50% chance to be in alliance in this situation. If you have bad lack and your are out of alliance, you will lose.If we have 4 players: A B C D.Then A can make alliance with B, C with D. This will result in stalemate.
>>1849436BUT IT DOESN'T RESULT IN A STALEMATE IN PRACTICE YOU FUCKING SCHIZOWE'VE SAID THIS A THOUSAND TIMES BUT ALL YOU'RE DOING IS MAKING A RETARDED THEORY THAT, LIKE MARXISM, DOESN'T PAN OUT IN REALITY
>>1845719your simple explanation is buckets; the complexity is the key.Simple example; there are players A,B,C,.....Z1000. With 10^10 players in the game, what are the odds that nobody is attacking? ~0? Therefore if you do not attack, you will eventually get eaten by the winners of other battles.This is only true at large numbers, which is why your example is bullshit, & you are an intellectual fraud.
>>1849436It is not up to luck. Players have the ability to communicate and observe how the game develops. They can incentivize other players into joining their team and change alliances at opportune times.Players don't roll dice at the start of the game to decide who to team up with nor do all players have equal skill. Your arguments are theoretical and have no basis in reality.>Two players can make alliance against third player. Which two players will make alliance and why will they pick players in alliance?Usually the two weaker players will team up against whoever is perceived as the strongest, and the player who is most actively communicating will get a player on their side. At some point the weaker of the teamed up players should turn against their teammate or they'll be left at a disadvantage when the strongest player is defeated.>Then A can make alliance with B, C with D. This will result in stalemate.Except something will eventually shift because humans aren't robots so A: there will be a skill difference, B: they can't keep up the same level of play forever and C: they want to finish the game at some pointExceptionally gay and retarded post.
>>1848989>I am not a human.then you're not allowed to post on human forums and play human videogamesgo away demonic entity
>>1849223>>there is 1 billion chess players in the world and other board gamesand Chess is not perfectly balanced, white has 2~5% advantage over blackand other board games are also not all perfectly balancedand HoMM is old so compared to other old games HoMM is actually one of the most played
>>1846943>1) You didn't even do your break yet. You only know that A has 2 towns you don't even know the terrain.How do you know I didn't?Even if I didn't I can do it now, attacking a neutral creature does not consume all your movement points. I just kill guard and go into A's territory.>2) And they have a head start on you in the travel distance and also know the shortest route to their starting town while you have the fog of war to hinder your movement progress.If the A goes back to his start town, then I can go to his new town (that he took from B), but also I could simply attack main A town with him being inside, because he is weak after he lost his army during attack on B player.>So then A will have fresh creatures from 2 towns and you only have 1 town worth of creaturesYou forgot that A lost 80% of his army after attacking B. He bought one week creatures after the attack.Meanwhile I have army I collected over 7-10 weeks. Who is goind to win the battle?>So you are behind by 1 week of creatures and A is 2 weeks worth of creatures ahead of you.He is behind 6 weeks after he lost most of his army during attack on B.Also, his army is only in one town. I could take the other town.>Now you are moving your goalposts? Up to now you are the one that treated all creatures and armies as an identical blob.If you ever played HoMM you would know there are many factions. And if the game is balanced and interesting it should give each player a different faction.
>>1845667you've riled up a hornets nest of autists now OP.
How did this get 200 replies. I dont even understand what OP is saying.
>>1849726half of those replies are the OPhis argument is literally "i read a book on game theory in math and 'winning ways in mathematical games' and now think i am strategy expert, therefore 3+ player games are impossible to make fair because either teams happen or randomness happens" and he ignres everyone else's posts and points
>>1849726This but for >>1827665
>>1846944>You are literally retarded and have never played a game of heroes in your life, kill yourselfIf you are so experienced in HoMM then defeat my theory with logical arguments.>>1846948>By moving behind a map feature that you cannot cross and thus you cannot catch them.I can go everywhere A can go.But I don't even need to catch him, I can just steal his towns and maybe put some army in towns.It will be hard to him to regain the town because he just lost 80% army from attacking B.>You do not know this, your only information is that they have 2 town. The rest is just assumptions. Assumptions are correct so they are knowledge.If A attacked B, he had to lose 80% army, because A and B had similar army power, because game is balanced.> And people do not always loose exactly 70% of their troops because some player are better than others and they outplayed each other.No. All AI players have the same skills. Human players also, because multiplayer mode will have ranking system, so you play with humans that are ranked on your level, just like in chess.>Plus you also lose some of your troops because you have to do the break otherwise you cannot even enter their territory.Player A also had to break and he lost some troops, before he even attacked B.
>>1846948>But you also have 2 towns to capture, if you capture one town A can move to your starting area and capture your first town and you are back where you started. You also cannot be in 2 places at once just like themYes but he has lost 80% of army and I didn't, so I could have some weak army in towns defending, or I could just go after him after I take his 2 towns and attack him, even in town.Also, even if this happens, and players keep stealing towns from each other, it results in stalemate or luck (because one player will be lucky to own town on day one and buy army).>But if you rely on the thieves guild to know that they have 2 towns then that means that the play ALREADY owns the town. The only way to get to A is to immediately reach their 2nd town before the next day and No, I don't need to attack A on Sunday. A will attack the town of B on Sunday and win. Then on Monday I will be in my town and I will see in Thieves Guild that A stolen B's town. Then I will buy all army from my town and go to hunt A. I have 7 days for this.
I was looking for a comfy homm3 thread but this clearly isn't it.
>>1849432>You why do you keep ignoring the main features of the game? The Heroes? The map? The movement? The positioning? The factions? The spells?>Features don't matter because all players have equal access to them and players can have equal skills, especially AI players.But they DO NOT. THEY LITERALLY DO NOT! Why do you so stubbornly refuse understand this? These are literal facts! This is the exact point of the entire game! That there are subtle differences between all those features and the players must learn to play around them and use them to their advantage.That is why there are NINE FACTIONS with DIFFERENT ARMIES. With SEVEN UNITS PER FACTION.With SIXTEEN HEROES PER FACTION.Wit ha huge selection of 80 spells that can influence a lot in the game.Not to mention that players are different people and thus have different skill levels and AI have different scripts to pick from. They are, by definition NOT IDENTICAL!Why do you keep COMPLETELY IGNORING 90% of the game? What is your problem?
>>1849887>No, I don't need to attack A on Sunday. A will attack the town of B on Sunday and win. Then on Monday I will be in my town and I will see in Thieves Guild that A stolen B's town. Then I will buy all army from my town and go to hunt A. I have 7 days for this.But you don't exactly know where their main hero is, you have to hunt for them and they can avoid you.>You forgot that A lost 80% of his army after attacking B. He bought one week creatures after the attack.Meanwhile I have army I collected over 7-10 weeks. Who is going to win the battle?Again you DO NOT KNOW they lost 80% of their army. If they are good players they can loose much-much less than 80% some Neutral fights can even be done with literally zero losses. Plus you are forgetting that even if they did loose a big portion of their army they still won a major battle meaning they have got tons of XP and thus levels over your own hero making their army way more powerful. Either by the raw stats of a higher level hero and skill like offense/armorer/archery or by being able to cast Chain Lightning that will instantly destroy 10% of you army ever turn. Or cast Expert Berserk which will cause your army to attack each other or start chain summoning Elementals every turn that will slowly overpower your army. Or just cast Expert Slow on your army and kite your army around with ranged attacks because you will be shot to death before you can reach into melee. Or just hide in their town behind walls and destroy you catapult before it can make a gap in their walls and then your army is stuck outside of their castle save for flyers.Also how do you know they will wait 7-10 weeks to do something ? Good players usually start attacking at like week 2-3 to make use of low level creatures and low level spells before the higher level creatures make the low level creatures obsolete. They will use all the advantage they can get instead of patiently waiting for that long to start doing something worthwhile.
>>1848989>>I am not a human.You are definitely a troll, go away!
>>1849882>Assumptions are correct so they are knowledge.Assumptions are only knowledge if you can verify them. It is impossible for you to verify how much they lost because you haven't seen the battle nor their armies.>If A attacked B, he had to lose 80% army, because A and B had similar army power, because game is balanced.Where do you even get this 80% number how do you know it is not 90% or 70% or 60%?
I briefly skimmed through this thread, if you guys think losing 80% of your army is acceptable in a fight you either never played this game or you're the type of player who struggles against 80% AI.
>intrigued by schizo argument>start homm3 8 player ffa against myself>random xl map>fortress gets an ore pit and shrine of power with an eagle eye witch hut while boxed in a corner by basilisks and medusa queens>stronghold gets a free gem mine and logistics witch hutcasinooooooooo
>>1846954> It is literally just switching places what is so difficult to understand about this?And this can have two results:-the game will be a draw-player A and me will lose the game, while C and D will get stronger, because they don't keep switching their towns to each other>>1847020>You just keep proving you never played a multiplayer game of heroes, possibly any strategy game ever. If you played so much, then defeat OP's theory with logic and arguments.>>1847021this>>1847081>This genuinely feels like you've never played a competitive strategy game.If you played then defeat OP's logic>Play a 1v1OP's theory does not apply to 1v1 but at least 3 players playing on a map.In 1v1, it is possible to win if you have a little stronger army and hero.>or FFA RTSWhat is FFA?> and see how far always mirroring the opponent takes you.With 3+ players on map, mirroring works.
OP is a genius. His theory is genius. He defeat all strategy games with a simple thought and math.Retards in this thread either-do not understand his simple theory and logic-they turned fully defensive and try to defend strategy games (casino games) using insults, manipulations, anger.YOU GOT DEFEATEDSTRATEGY GAMES ARE OVER, DEADNO GAME WILL BE RELEASED AFTER THIS THEORY
>>1850037>defeat OP's logicDefeat your logic, you mean? You know this whole pretend to be someone else schtick doesn't work if you can't speak English, just like OP.
>>1850041hail victory
how is this thread still fucking going. Stop enabling mental illness
>>1849902OP's problem is autism and a desire to put his "game theory" degree he got off youtube videos to good use
>>1850041theory only leads to theoretical victory, not practicalwake me up when he gets a 10-win streak on FFAOP's strategy is one of cowardice, so while he cowards away in his town I and other players will capture resources on the map and use the resources to build up a fuckhuge army to defeat OP's cowardicesimple as, QED, and all that
>>1850106This isn't autism, it's schizophrenia
>>1850037>What is FFA?nigga stop pretending to be someone else and just GOOGLE ALREADY>defeat logicok, i will defeat the theory with practice.last time I played in 4p game, someone won. after the game i talked to the players, and nobody (except me trying out the "perfect play strategy") sat on their towns, nobody felt like they got screwed over by RNG.everything OP complains about was not a factor, and his strategy (employed by me) was not perfect. Thus, evidence shoiws that the theory does not match with reality, even when all the extraneous factors (alliances and RNG) were removed from the equationQ.E.D.
This has to be bait. I refuse to believe someone is this stupid.
>>1850114What is 4p?
>>1850502Not much, what 'bout you?
>>1850248What if OP is genius and you are the stupid one? If a nigger saw microprocessor design plans he would just use the documents as toilet paper.OP has strong arguments and theory while his opponents just shout "he is dumb" "he's wrong". Who is the dumb and nigger one?
>>1850519>OP has strong argumentshis first post states it's the most optimal play in HoMM3 to wait by your base rather than explore to gain vision, experience, and resources "strong argument"
>>1847155> If a player can't make an alliance then he's a shit player and deserves to lose.Whether you make alliance does not depend on skills, but luck.The game picks 3 random humans of similar ranking for online match.Which players (A, B, C) should form alliance and why?A & B? B & C? A & C? Why? And whatever happens, one player will be without alliance.And what if AI players play instead of humans? How should they form alliances?>>1847182> These are a product of a delusional mind that has never played a single game of homm multiplayer.Then explain how would you win a multiplayer match with 3 human players.Also, why all online matches are 1v1?
>>1850519>OP has>strong>argumentsOP arguments hold zero water to actual gameplay and game mechanics. And they are so crazy, they don't even fall for "shit that a newfag after 2d6-1 gams would say", it's just pure schizoid fabrication that describes a game that HoMM3 isn't.t. playing 3 since it came out and on competitive level since '11
>>1845667After reading Based Schizo OP theories I've realized that strategy games are over.It's over strategysisters... There's no point for me to play strategy games anymore. OP is right. "Strategy" games are just gambling games, and strategy players are gambling addicts. OP solved the genre forever with a single schizo thread.It's joever. It's doever. /vst/ is an anonymous gambling addicts community, you can just rename the board into /gacha/ or /casino/ at this point./vst/ is a community for gambling casino addicts to cope with their addiction. We are just playing slot machines. Billions must try. Millions must dice.
>>1850519>while his opponents just shout "he is dumb" "he's wrong"And they also provide evidence to why OP, that is, you, are dumb and wrong. There is no strong arguments, there's just a flatearther who thinks they're right and ignores any evidence that does not agree with his assumption. Stop pretending to be someone else.
>>1850502wow, what a strong argument, you don't even know what you're arguing aboutso amazingask me "what is FFA?" too while you're at it
Simple question, faggots.3 players on map: A, B, C. Each has one town.You are player A.How are you playing the game to win? How can you take your opponents town? How can you attack anybody? When will you attack?Impossible. Stalemate.
>>1850037>If you played so much, then defeat OP's theory with logic and arguments.It was done already by multiple anons with multiple examples showing why both your premise, arguments and conclusions don't match up to reality of homm FFA. But instead of engaging the constructive criticism, you instead choose to ignore it, deflect, move the goalpost, gaslight yourself and others, continuously restating your spiel ad absurdum. At this point I'm actually starting to doubt you have the bare minimum of intellectual acuity necessary to comprehend what other people are saying in response to your delulu claims. Thanks for letting the whole board laugh at you I guess, at least that's why I'm still here
>>1850949He's right you know.
>>1850949in a game of pure strategy with no variables beyond the players' actions, such as Diplomacy, my strategy would be as follows: at the same time do two things:>ask B for alliance>ask C for alliancethere are 3 outcomes (technically 4 but two are mirror opposites of one another):>if both accept, backstab them both with a cheeky set of lies and setups>if one accepts and the other one rejects, fight the other one 2v1 in a team with the acceptor until the rejector is not a threat anymore, but also try to take least losses so i can win the 1v1 later on easier.>if both reject, win with pure numbers advantage as usually the only time an alliance is rejected is if you're winning and they don't wanna help the winnerPossible. Winnable. But only if you're not a retard.HoMM having variable factions and variable map setup and fog of war adds so many layers of complexity on top of this simple plan that going on a case-by-case basis like this would be silly, so i'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. Hell, I'm sure a better than me HoMM player would be able to just solo-win a 1v2 no problem through clever usage of fog of war and spells while carefully rationing his army. I however am a noob to HoMM and despite thinking that i'm ok at other strategy games i can't offer advice any deeper than "sittin in your corner of the map means you're not taking resources from the enemy corners of the map and that gold and gems could be very useful to make a bigger army" but maybe it doesn't work like it would in Supreme Commander where map control is directly proportional to resources, who knows.>>1850989He's wrong you know.
What is FFA?
"Free For All"
>OPs point about the best strat being to do nothing and let others tire themselves out being dismissed with "lol just use broken op strats no one likes"Strategy is dying, retards who want "i win lol" buttons took over.
>earth magic or losestrategy is finished
>>1851268>broken op strats no one likesControlling the map, getting more resources and thus more army, and using the resulting numbers advantage to win, is not a broken OP strat. You are just bad at strategy games, and can't refute this point.
>OP's point>OP's point>OP's point>OP's pointNot a samefag I swear
>>1851450Your post has 4 of the 5 times that phrase comes upAre you legitimately schizophrenic? Are you seeing posts that aren't there?
>>1851466You're ignoring every other time the schizo pretended to not be the one who posted this thread
>>1847201> How to modify HoMM or other strategy games, to make it possible that more than two players can play? Or is it impossible?You would have to make that when player A has just 10% stronger army than player B, player A can win battle with B with near zero losses. But this would make the game shitty.>>1847430I play Heroes for 25 years and I am an expert.>>1847575>anon you do know you can garrison defenders in the town, right? those army fight if the town is attacked, so you make a misplay by not recruiting army to garrison while your heroes are exploring and looting far away places on the mapYou can put 50% army to your hero and 50% to garrison.But then, how are you going to win the game? You will not capture any town if your enemies will also put 50% army into their towns. Also, if you walk your 50% army hero close to enemy town, enemy can take his hero army plus garrison army and attack you and you will lose.>>1847582This is wrong analogy. If you stay in your town as a coward, you will collect 4000 gold every day and buy full army every week. If you go and take a risk you will lose your town and army.
>>1851577>I play Heroes for 25 years and I am an expert.so why are you making such retarded mistakes that someone who has played HoMM shouldn't makerangeban indians
>>1851577Where are you pulling these retarded absolute percentages from lmao? 50% this 80% that? You're positing your shit as if every hero, unit, skill, stat, spell and artifact in the game are equal and play equally and they do not. Play a game for a change instead of schizomaxxing all the time
>>1851577>you will collect 4000 gold every dayLMAOOOOO HE'S A CAPITOL RUSH RETARD ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
>>1851641He's playing right, especially as Rampart
>>1851664He's doing everything except playing, least of all right. Pic related is OP's IQ
>>1851577>If you stay in your town as a coward, you will collect 4000 gold every day and buy full army every week.gold is not enough for full army in HoMM3, stop being a liar or at least remember that both a) other resources, and b) upgraded units that need those other resources, exist.exploring also gives access to army recruitment options outside your city, such as dragons, and that is numbers you should use if you wanna win, and as someone who's trying to win (not a coward who tries to not lose) i will use the out-of-town resources and unit production to have a numbers advantage, and that's before we factor in the spells and items and other assorted nonsense your "pure look at strategy" always forgets>If you go and take a riska "risk" implies a chance of failure. if i'm fighting vs a coward like you then there is no failureif i have heroes scouting around looking for enemy heroes' appearances so i could stop exploring and start defending, then there is no risk and no failure>You will not capture any town if your enemies will also put 50% army into their towns>ifthat "if" is doing a lot of work there, you know.. How do you know all my enemies play exactly as I do? How do you know they don't have a different strategy such as baiting someone into taking the town, wasting some of their units into the defencive force that deals more damage than it should thanks to the walls, then take the town back when the first players turn is over, now that the second player knows both the army composition for first players' city army, and the damage sustained by it? How do you know that the other players won't try something even more ridiculous as their strategy? You simply cannot know..Also, don't pull numbers out of your ass. 50/50 split is the worst one out of them all when it comes to balancing aggression / defence. The exact number also depends on what turn it is and how big the map (or rather the average distance between towns) is.
>>1851732>i will use the out-of-town resources>if i have heroes scoutingEnemy can attack your isolated scouts with entire army and you will still lose.>How do you know all my enemies play exactly as I do?OP's premise is the 3 players are all equally skilled, illiterate retard.
>>1851775on your own premise they won't attack the scouts so as to not leave their town ungarissoned, you are a loser by choice retard
>>1851775>Enemy can attack your isolated scoutsand i will see that, and i will see that they ungarrison their town to attack an actual nobody with a single peasant, and i will use the window of opportunity that you claim exists if one decides to leave their town ungarrissoned>equally skilleddoesn't mean their strategy is exactly the same. even with equal skill they still might prefer one gameplan over another because it fits their favorite faction more, or because the map dwellings support that strategy more, you dumb cretin, you absolute moron, go play the game before being stupid online without even knowing what a FFA is
Okay OP, how about you try to host a game and get some people in it? Surely there is at least 8 of us including you, and after some matches we'll see how your theory holds up
>>1851888>Surely there is at least 8 of us>888The gods will it. Make it happen.if i wanna join in, how does it work? is it live online games only? or a PBEM/one turn per day sort of deal?
i too will play in the Homm3 STRATEGY IS OVER tourney if i don't have to use discord and get rampart+Thorgrim
>>1851920You'll have my autism as well. Back in the day I used to play SoD over Gameranger but nowadays the easiest way would be to just play HotA since they host their own lobby/ladder and it works like a charm.
>>1847584>Don't give the AI any bonuses, but make it as smart as you possibly can.It will result in stalemate.>>1847709What is APM?>>1847763>Strategy does require thinking, but if your thinking is slow, that's called a skill issue.No. Fast thinking = no strategy.>Knowing from experience that the "build building X" button is always located in the same place is not a bug abuse. It does lead to less newbie-friendly watching experience though. If the game was strategy, the guy wouldn't be able to spam the same actions in every game, he wouldn't need to stop and think on every turn.>The only answer to "How do you win?" is, as always, one word: 'depends'. No, all HoMM games and maps are they same. There is only one strategy.>And you never have perfect information, there is always a fog of war between you and the things you'd wanna know to never lose.Wikipedia says that there is a perfect strategy for games without perfect information.>Even the best pros sometimes get caught blindsided by something in the fog of war.Then the game is a casino.
>>1852225Stating that something is true without proof of it being true is not a good argument. Especially when you're responding to someone who has proof on their statements being true.
>>1852225
>>1851977I second that, HotA makes it very easy to host games and it allows simultaneous turns which make first few days/weeks go way smoother especially with a lot of players involved.
>>1845667
>>1852273too bad it ruined the rest of the game
>>1852390
>>1845667Some nations are better at attacking than others retard. HoMM is asymmetric
>>1852225>No. Fast thinking = no strategy.prove that it isn't just you being slow at thinking>spam the same actions in every gameare you sure he was "spamming actions" and not "using the interface quickly thanks to his familiarity with it that he gained over years of playing, while inputting different things in different games"?>all maps and games are they(sic) sameincorrect, the maps are different in a) size (self explanatory), b) amount of stuff in the middle (aka outside of town, some have more some have less) and c) layout (some are straight corridors, others are open plains, others yet are a labyrinth maze). All of that affects strategy, and that's just the map. Faction choice, enemy factions (that you don't know until you meet the enemy), the stuff you get in your slice of the map, out-of-town dwellings... There's a lot of things that impact strategy, actually.>Wikipediaa) not a reliable sourceb) citations needed>game is casino just because you can use strategy that the good players don't expectso you think everything is casino since at any moment i can do something you didn't expect? oh i can just imagine what your schizobabble will evolve into:"REAL LIFE IS OVERA MAJOR FLAW IN ALL REAL LIFESThere is a major problem in real lifes, such as mine, and i am OP of this threadImagine that there are people outside of my room, at least 2 but maybey moerAnd these people I cannot know what they're goning to of doReal life is casino since you not know what people actions take how can you win with best actions?I'm right you know. Also, what is "etiquette"?">>1852352brilliant meme, i will save it
>>1852390what did it ruin, beyond nerfing necro resurrections in half?
>>1852575NTA but there's one really awful change in one of the latest HOTA patches that shows that developer prioritizes balance over fun.You know how in SOD you can sometimes find high level enemy heroes that you've previously beat and can now fight on your side? Well that's gone, it is practically impossible to hire anything but level 1 heroes in the tavern now. All in the name of balance. And there's no opting out, this is forced upon you with no way to change it.
>>1852606>Version 1.7.0 (31/DEC/2023)>[+] Added a mechanism that prohibits powerful dead heroes from coming to the tavern. Powerful heroes can only come if no other heroes are availableNTA [2] but I guess this was done in favor of fairness. I mean, it does suck if someone else can just pick up a developed hero for 2500 gold, and you're on the receiving end. Usually you have to at least fight a guard and release them from prison (and these come with random i.e. suboptimal skills). But yeah, focusing primarily on multiplayer balance can affect the fun factor definitely. In reality this change just means they'll appear as late as possible because I still encounter powerful heroes in my RMG games, just it's usually at the 1-2+ month mark or even later.
>>1852575>I don't think this is "Logical" at all; dwarves still have the same kind of Resistance, as do unicorns,>Almost everything in the game is luck dependent, from damage to morale and luck bonuses. In fact, by adding negative luck, they are Enhancing randomness.>The only logical conclusion is that a main guy at HotA REALLY hates resistance. Maybe one game in their youth got lost to his childhood rival due to resistance triggering or something like that. Or his older brother made him cry by using the rampart Resistance specialist, Thorgrim.>In any case, Resistance effect is no more radical than the enemy Black Dragons getting Morale or Luck (Or both!) in a turn and completely trashing your army with their breath attack. Resistance never is quite radical, it's just feel-bad to them coz "waaah muh spell".>Live with it, resistance was a well balanced and useful skill and never OP unlike Logistics, Offense or Armorer (which they have no problem with). Furthermore they keep useless things like Mysticism around mostly unchanged. So both useless and OP skills are ok, as well as even more random skills like Luck and Morale - that don't have a single "counter or not" check but also vary in usefulness according to round they trigger AND creature they trigger with (which are also integrated on events, artifacts, buiildings etc.), and bad morale is much more feel bad...>No, from all random mechanics and useless or OP skills, only resistance isn't OK and a huge chunk of effort is used to erase it, compared to tweaking Eagle Eye values that are a single byte and continue untouched. Eagle Eye is also random, BTW, and nearly completely useless, and there are 7 heroes with that as specialty and 8 with it as starting skill -which also f*cks you over in random hero games- Why didn't they replace THAT with something useful by coding a new skill instead?
>So the only explanation is irrational personal bias.>There is another HUGE evidence to the "Thorgrim trauma" theory. Not only did they took Resistance out, but they took Thorgrim out of the game completely. This is basically offensive (but Interference is already a pretty offensive skill, and not as in "Offensive capabilities" but as in "Offensively bad").>If I ever fight a HotA developer I will only use Thorgrim is every game. But they probably will refuse to play the actual game because of being cowardly anti-resistance bigots ; )>Join the campaign! Resistance IS NOT futile!>And by the way Resistance is a completely defensive skill that can be easily bypassed by an intelligent caster. Even against high magic it may be useless. Yes, you read that right.>Resistance only partically protects your creatures from directed damage and curses, but does nothing when the enemy uses his magic to buff his own creatures, or to affect the battlefield.>So against buffs like Prayer, Bless, Hasta, Frenzy, against stuff such as Teleport, and even against field offensive spells like Force Field, Earthquake, Fire Wall, Quicksand, Land Mines, and even the damage-dealing Armageddon, resistance does absolutely nothing.>Even a midly smart caster can thus skip the "oh-so-demolishing" 20% chance of resistance (or 40% with a level 50 Thorgrim, ohhh, scary! pfff), effectively making it 0% just by using the right spells.>Even if you are playing wrong by using direct offense against resistance, even if mass damage and curses are partially resisted (like Mass Slow), they will still affect 80% of the enemy units on average... and random? ZERO random on over half of spells!>So, cry me a river! Restore Resistance now!
>>1852814who are you quoting?
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=46555
>>1852814>>1852815So a shitty inconsistent skill was replaced by a useful and consistent skill? Got it.
>>1852814>Maybe one game in their youth got lost to his childhood rival due to resistance triggering or something like that. Or his older brother made him cry by using the rampart Resistance specialist, Thorgrim.
>>1852814>Eagle Eye is also random>nearly completely useless>there are 7 heroes with that as specialty >8 with it as starting skillhow come we never get an answer about why this has been untouched for years?
>>1852848Because Eagle Eye was fubar on release? It's inconsequential to the point of being non-existant, no one ever picks it except on meme builds, might as well not be in the game. I don't see why we should have an expectation from the HotA crew for them to fix every single 3DO/NWC fuckup, no matter how big or how small. Some things are just easier to fix, some are not worth fixing at all.
Based schizo thread
>>1852814HOTA devs also nerf skills in a really stupid way. Logistics and movement artifacts are now weaker but so what? It's still practically a must have skill for any reasonable main hero.So what exactly was the point of that nerf?
>>1848014>I love it personally, but it is true that Resistance is a "no-skill skill" that can ruin or win games. Interference is a much better solution for competitive play. As I said, I'd love having both in.No, the are too similar, there is only place for one of them. So Interference, because it's better and less luck based.>You never played a homm game with more than two players, have you?I don't need to, because I have theory. My theory proves that such game is impossible.If you play with more than two humans and it's not a stalemate, it is not a proof of anything, because humans that play your game are not equal in skill and humans are not rational creatures.But if we played game with only top skill humans or top skill AI, it would make a stalemate.>Entirely wrong information for both Firebirds/Phoenixes:>Growth reduced to 1 (basic/citadel)/2 (Castle)/3 (Vault of Ashes); it was 4 in AB/SOD You just proved what I said.They give you 3 Firebirds per week. In other towns you have 2 firebirds per week.If you play Conflux, after 10 weeks you have 30 firebirds, while other players have 20. You think this is fair?> So meticulous and thoughtful balancing definitely took place and the town is now much more fair in terms of power when compared to other factions.It is slightly more fair but it's still overpowered and should be banned in current state.>Necromancy>All values for the skill and related boosters (artifacts/buildings) were halved, except for the Grail building (Soul Prison). So you definitely need more time to get that skeleton snowball rolling but it's still powerful when you get it going.The situation is still not good.On small maps and short games, necromancy is useless and simply wastes your skill slot. If you have expert offense instead, it would be useful immediately, even on small maps.But if you play on very large and long map, necromancy could still give you very big effect at the end of the game.
>>1848014>But objectively speaking, both Cove and Factory have great and interesting gameplay and are the most lore-compliant fan made towns ever with quality that rivals the original games. No. Objectively speaking, they are low quality shit that doesn't fit the game at all.Mechanical creatures? LGBT dragons? You think this fits the game?
>>1853017>rainbow bad
>>1853017>LGBT dragonsGet off twitter and /pol/ for one day, it'll do a world of good
>>1853006the point with the Logistics nerf was that both the skill and arties were ridiculously OP to begin with. Heroes without the skill vs the ones with expert logistics, let alone loga specialists, had ZERO chance of ever catching up with them. The difference was effectively double movement for those with vs those without. You could literally run circles around them and laugh. Now it's much more even and you can catch up with the heroes that have expert loga just by having a loga artifact and smartly using your units and/or adventure map locations to boost base movement.
HotA fixed the game so much you still have to Might hero or lose!trash sonic the hedgehog recolor mod
>>1853047Stay mad shitcaster, might makes right and magic is for nerd losers
>>1852225>No. Fast thinking = no strategy.
>>1853012fuck off and eat shit troll
>>1852814>>1852815>>1852817Is this you? This reads like some butthurt midwit PvE retard sperging and projecting, pissed off because someone that actually plays the game rightfully took a crap on his favorite RNG toy. None of his complaints even make sense lol.
>>1851664Rampart rushes grand elves and centaurs so they can clear creature banks
>>1853012>theory provesA theory, by definition, is not a proof. Praxis is proof. The act of applying theory in a real environment.People had a theory that the Earth was round. So they did tests, from stuff like looking at how high the sun is in different parts of the world at the same time, to going into space so you could see the entire spheroidal Earth with your own eyes from very, very far away. There was also a theory that the earth is flat. But the experiments and reality did not support the theory. So the theory is false.Your theory of the best gameplay possible has not been tested. You can't prove anything, and furthermore people have evidence of the opposite happening which shows your theory to be as false as the flat Earth theory.
>>1848215>To prepare vs a city rush you need to give up on exploring and getting your resource game onNo, you can leave 40% army in town and 60% in your hero, this will allow you to explore nearby terrain.You can also use scout hero to discover terrain around your town, then you can walk your main hero, because you will see when opponent go to your town.But the question again is, how could one player take over another town and keep two towns and win the game?>Without getting your early resource game on, you are never surviving a late or even a midgame push if it's done properly. If you go with your army too far away from your town, someone will take your town and you will lose.>And you don't know which strategy the opponents are doingYou know. There is a "perfect play" strategy, and all great AI and human player will be doing it.>Hidden information and most of the resources starting outside of city bounds makes sure there is no "perfect play" that ensures you never lose or always win. Not true.All games that are not fully luck based, have perfect play strategy. Even casino games like HoMM3.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game#Perfect_play>In game theory, perfect play is the behavior or strategy of a player that leads to the best possible outcome for that player regardless of the response by the opponent.>Perfect play can be generalized to non-perfect information games, as the strategy that would guarantee the highest minimal expected outcome regardless of the strategy of the opponent.But, perfect play in HoMM3 will not guarantee that you win and not lose, but it can give you best probability for win and least probability for lose.Just like perfect play in poker will not guarantee you that you win every time, if you got bad cards.However, the problem is, I am suggesting that perfect play in HoMM3 leads to stalemate. Read the first post in this thread.
>>1848215>Staying in or near your city means the rest of the resources on your "side" of the map are open game for other players once they realize you are using coward strategyIf they are playing open way and moving army far away from town, I or other players will steal their towns.
>>1853338>>1853339nigger
>>1853338>All games that are not fully luck based, have perfect play strategyfrom that link you cited>Perfect play can be generalized to non-perfect information games, as the strategy that would guarantee the highest minimal expected outcome regardless of the strategy of the opponentthis means that you can't always have a winning strategy, just a strategy that always does above average no matter what the opponent(s) doand that strategy is to attack, as by attacking you get more map control (thus more neutral dwellings and resources for a bigger army, as well as spells and items) and it's the only way to win (playing to prevent loss has a hard limit in the stalemate you think is the be-all-end-all of strategy, but attacking will ensure someone wins)i concur with other anon though, you're a total nigger
>>1848260> You just don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, do you? There are people out there easily and consistently winning 1v7 games against allied 200% impossible AI, playing as Inferno, on random maps. The theorycrafting you're engaging in doesn't match up to realityThe only reason they are winning is because AI makes major mistakes, AI doesn't play optimal strategy.My theory is about, what if AI played the best strategy.Also, 7 allied AI might now even be harder than 7 non allied AI, because allied AI will not take away towns from other AI, so no AI player will have strong army in main hero.>>1848409>OP has had rebuttals to his posts, he just chose to ignore themNo, nobody has posted theory how to win the game with 3+ players.All "rebuttals" are just "bro you wrong I play the game against my 5 year old nieces and I win so your theory is wrong".>And speaking of evidence, the fact that pro games of HoMM3 never end in stalematesPro games are only 1v1, my theory works for 3+ players. What a coincidence they don't make 3+ player games...>nor in random casino wins (you can verify that thru statistical analysis if win/loss ratios of all players)No. If a better player wins 70% games against other player and losses 30%, that's still a casino, because in some games better player losses because he had bad luck with spells or map (mines and stuff protected by strong shooters).In Poker this is solved by playing many times in a single match. But in HoMM3, a match is a single game on a single map, the announced "winner" is the one who won on this single map.
>>1853642nigger
>>1848409>OP has had rebuttals to his posts, he just chose to ignore themHere are examples of rebuttals:>>1850248> This has to be bait. I refuse to believe someone is this stupid.>>1853084>fuck off and eat shit troll>>1853401>nigger>>1853416>you're a total nigger>>1853657>nigger
>>1853666satan nigger
>>1853666you ignored all the actual rebuttalshell, even >>1853416 has some worthwhile points but you just focused on the n-word
>>1853642>nobody has posted theory how to win the game with 3+ playersbecause there's practice that proves the theory wrongmy theory is objects float when i let go of themi let go of hammer and it fall on my leg, ouchpractice proved theory wrong even though in theory i should've been fineREAL LIFE IS OVERA MAJOR FLAW IN ALL REAL LIFEMY THEORY PROVES RIGHT (despite the fact that a theory by definition is never a proof, only a belief that something is true, despite lack of evidence supporting it)
>>1848477>you have never played homm and it showsThe fact that you played means nothing.If you played with better AI that plays the best strategy possible, you wouldn't be able to do shit, conquer any town or leave your town. It would be stalemate.If you disagree the explain how can you take away town from another AI.>>1848518> The solution is not to play FFAWhat is FFA?HoMM3 online matches are all 1v1.But maps sold with HoMM3 are for 3-8 players. But the game doesn't work if map has more than two players. So 90% of content in the game is unusable.>>1848547> Divide it by the Troop Cost / Week value and they are below average.> You're not getting 35770 gold per week to buy out all troopsIt doesn't matter.1. You can have money from other towns and places. If you have a lot of gold from some sources, then you can buy out all Factory army, and you will have stronger army than your opponent that has Inferno, even if he has as much gold as you.2. You can buy only 3-7 level creatures. And high level monsters have better value for gold. You will have stronger army than someone that buys army from Inferno.> when the City Hall only gives you 14k per week.Capitol gives 28k per week plus you collect gold from the map. You can buy 3-7 level monsters from Factory. You will get stronger army than other players buying army for 28k per week from other towns.
>>1854159>1. You can have money from other towns and places.don't forget: the premise is everyone has only 1 town. you set the premise, so follow the rules you set>if you have a lot of goldyou won't have a lot of gold. and tier7 units also need other resources which are even rarer, so good luck fielding those dragons mr "i sit in town all day and never even seen a gem mine">you collect gold from mapthen, by your own words, your town gets taken from you and you lose. Please, if you make up a premise, stick to it, or else your argument has no weight and your theory can't prove anything.>what is FFA?GOOGLE IT ALREADY IDIOTYES I AM CALLING SOMEONE WHO CAN"T GOOGLE AN IDIOT AND YOU WILL BE AN IDIOT UNTIL YOU LEARN TO RESEARCH
>>1854159
>>1854183Future Farmers of America?
>>1854227Free for all
>>1848559>Factory has the highest AI value of all towns because they get two lvl. 7 creaturesBut can you buy both 7 level creatures at the same time? If yes, then HOTA are niggers and retards.> That Factory is the most EXPENSIVE town in the freaking gameIt doesn't matter. If it gives more AI value than other towns, when player has a lot of gold he can buy out that AI value. Other factions cannot do this even if they have a lot of gold.>>1848564> literally worthless stat because as you yourself are saying the AI sucks and i agree> go play vs other players idiotAI value estimates what is the worth of creature, so it does matter in single player too.>>1848583>stopped reading right there. you do know that difficulty is adjustable?What if player sets AI to maximum?What if great human players play? They will end up in stalemate.Eventually all human players will realize it's better strategy to stay in town and nobody will win.
This thread is why God no longer speaks to us.
>>1848658>Good thing they aren't small and can be ridiculously massive, then.If differences in players armies are not small, then the game is unbalanced and a casino.>>If A attacks B, both A and B will lose 80-100% of their army. >Your made-up assumptions are not facts.Facts. If you are player A and you buy army from your town for 8 weeks, then you attack player B who also has army from 8 weeks, then you will lose 90-100% of your army in the battle.>>And if B was not protecting his town, and A steals the town without fight, then B or (C, D) could quickly go to A's town and steal it without fight.>Your made-up assumptions are not facts (x2)Facts. This doesn't happen in HoMM play against AI because it is too weak and doesn't exploit this. But better AI could exploit this situation.>If A has 10-15% stronger army and hero than B, it doesn't matter, A would still have massive losses if he attacked B in his town.>Your made-up assumptions are not facts (x3)Facts. If you want evidence then make two heroes, one with 10% stronger army, and make them fight, and try to win the fight with both heroes, make most damage.>>If A has 50% stronger army than B, that means the game is extremely unbalanced and a casino. If it's not a casino, players of similar skills will have similar strength of army and hero, and they will be in stalemate.>Your made-up assumptions are not facts (x4)Facts. If game is balanced and fair, and similar skill players/AI play, they should have almost the same army strength. Otherwise, it's a casino.>Depends on the game, but in a balanced one, there is no best strategy retard. Holing up means you lose resources. Rushing means you risk. And so on, and so on.If there is no strategy, then the game is not a strategy game but a casino.All strategy games have best strategy.
>>1854415>>1854418
>>1848101>If one AI or player (A), will go to another AI area (B), what is he going to do? The other AI (B) is protecting his town. If A attacks B, both A and B will lose 80-100% of their army. Then C and D players could exploit that and finish them off and steal their towns.This is only true if towns are the resource providers. Basically map control must bring you resources, then turtling in your town becomes counterable by just taking more resources and eventually outscaling town defenses of everyone who isn't out there taking territory. It's a pretty classic gameplay loop that has been around almost since the inception of strategy games.
>>1854418You're rambling in circles about casinos and stuff.
>>1846044For once a case of genuine autism
>>1846169I think he might have asperger's. Obsessing over stupid shit no one cares about.
>>1848666HoMM3 map have mountains that separate areas and holes between mountains, protected by creatures.However, this changes nothing.>>1848696This.>>1848701Spell research is not in HoMM3, and even if it was, one player will get town portal instantly from magic guild, while second player will have to use spell research 4 times to get town portal. Is this fair?>>1848721>Yes? There's a reason why even the most basic bitch strategy game is called "Risk" and involves throwing dice. Strategy and tactics, both in games and in real life are casino, but if you lose you die. You can play optimally to minimize risks and maximize rewards but without casino strategy games aren't strategy games, they're puzzle games.So chess is a puzzle game, not strategy game?Also, casino itself isn't that big problem, if you play many maps in a single match, like in Poker. But in HoMM3 you play single map in match and it takes 10 hours, then winner of map is winner of match. In Poker, during 10 hours you will play 50 maps, so the randomness evens out.
>>1854887
>>1854887>So chess is a puzzle game, not strategy game?In theory yes, but for people I'd say it works, sinceiIt's not outwardly obvious because the number of permutations is very big and people sometimes make really big mistakes but the fact is chess is essentially a solved game - not by people but by machines. Even basic bitch chess engines running on your PC locally have the ability to beat the best humans because there really isn't anything to it but figuring out all the possible moves and picking the ones that make you win. It's advanced tic-tac-toe.>But in HoMM3 you play single map in match and it takes 10 hours, then winner of map is winner of match. In Poker, during 10 hours you will play 50 maps, so the randomness evens out.I don't think anyone plays HoMM3 competetive matches with timers like that. Also, there's a lot of randomness involved in general, not only "m-muh town portal", so it balances out overall in the match, although you can just get stupid unlucky but that's life. In war, luck is half in everything.Nevermind the fact the argument operates under a false premise of "hurr durr you can't leave town or die".
>>1845719wow, games that arent 1v1 arent balanced, what a surpriseenjoy turtling for 60+ minutes in a sc2 ffa to lose.
324 posts of pure autism (even for this board)
>>1848992> >In HoMM3 it is impossible to break stalemate with more than 2 players on map.> But this is literally false.It's true. If you think it's false, then explain how to break stalemate.>>1849217> Nobody wants a perfectly balanced game. This is retarded and you should touch grass.If you do not want balanced game, then you are not strategy player, you are gambler. Go to casino.Also, even in somewhat unbalanced game like HoMM3, my theory still predicts a stalemate with 3+ players. If one player is 15% stronger than other players, he still can't attack.>>1849262> How are they casino simulators?> I can play heroes and win every time. The casino would throw you out.You cannot win. If you played with very strong AI or humans on a map with 3+ players, you won't be able to win a single game. The best you can do is play for a draw (by protecting your town). If you go attack anybody or visit his terrain, you are going to lose.The reason you "win" is because you play with HoMM3 AI, which makes major mistakes and doesn't play best strategy.>>1849265>Video games will always be nicheWhy? Everybody can buy a computer for 100 dollars and play HoMM3.
>>1855346NTA but the core premise of your argument is wrong. I assume someone has explained it to you already because fuck reading through it all but even having cursory knowledge of HoMM tells you sitting in your town is retarded because you need to leave and collect resources, units and artifacts from places on the map or else be absurdally outpaced by someone who does. Even if you only relied on your town units you cannot buy out more than a fraction of them without leaving your town.Sure, you are leaving your town pretty much undefended without your main stack but the enemy has to fight through the entire map to get to you and one of big advantages of actually exploring is that you'll have early warning when someone shows up on your explored screen. There are ways to move stuff around quickly like chaining heroes but none of them let you travel quickly to where you haven't been before and those that help considerably like Fly aren't guaranteed and their use tends to be banned or restricted in serious play.Even dismissing memes such as Dragogeddon or hiding behind 7000 skeletons (or liches) there are actual combat strategies that let you maximize the kill to death ratios of your units so you might not need a 25% more powerful army.A lot of the maps people play usually involve your home territory having worse stuff than the areas between players but even on completely random ones it still holds true.That being said I'm pretty sure by now that this is a disingenious argument aimed at trying to stir up shit but w/e.
>>1854887>>1848696>The player who gets town portal will win. That means HoMM3 is a casino simulator but with dragons and castles.>He's got you thereTown portal is a 4th level spell. To use it you will need to upgrade a mage guild to level 4 which takes 20Wood/Ore, and 18 of ALL other resources. Where are you going to get all those resources? You will not even have money to build your town or hire creatures if you buy those resources with gold. In a serious game by the time you even get close to 4th levels spells there the game is long over unless you find them from adventure items.You will also need a hero with Advanced wisdom just to actually learn it, if you min max you will need a level 3 caster hero that already knows wisdom from the start like warlock or specifically Jeddite who starts with Advanced Wisdom. That is the earliest you can learn it.
>>1855346
>>1849450> BUT IT DOESN'T RESULT IN A STALEMATE IN PRACTICE YOU FUCKING SCHIZO> WE'VE SAID THIS A THOUSAND TIMES BUT ALL YOU'RE DOING IS MAKING A RETARDED THEORY THAT, LIKE MARXISM, DOESN'T PAN OUT IN REALITYIt does. If you think it doesn't, then explain how stalemate can be broken on a map with 3 or 8 players.>>1849451>Simple example; there are players A,B,C,.....Z1000. With 10^10 players in the game, what are the odds that nobody is attacking? ~0?>Therefore if you do not attack, you will eventually get eaten by the winners of other battles.>This is only true at large numbers, which is why your example is bullshit, & you are an intellectual fraud.If they are AI players, then no AI player might attack, even if there is 1000 of them, if the AI thinks that attacking is bad strategy.If they are human players and have various level of skills, some will attack.However, the ones who will attack will die and lose the game, while their neighbors will take their towns.So it still doesn't make sense for you to attack.
>>1855765
>>1849455>It is not up to luck. Players have the ability to communicate and observe how the game develops. They can incentivize other players into joining their team and change alliances at opportune times.It is luck. If there are 3 players, why should two of them make alliance against the third? And which two players should form alliance?It's a casino.Even if the players will wait for one to get ahead and then two weaker players will make alliance, this will still ruin the game, as the better player is going to lose while being better.>Usually the two weaker players will team up against whoever is perceived as the strongest>At some point the weaker of the teamed up players should turn against their teammate This is horrible.First, the strongest player will lose, even though he is the best.Second, the players will play weak and pretend to be weak before alliances form, so they get alliance. Nobody will want to be ahead.Third, how will the players know which one is weakest and which one strongest? Thieves Guild doesn't show you much at the beginning of the game.Fourth, what if there is 4 players and they make two alliances (each of two players)? Or if there is 5 players, one is dead and then there are two alliances, each of two players?>Except something will eventually shift because humans aren't robots so A: there will be a skill difference, B: they can't keep up the same level of play forever and C: they want to finish the game at some pointA: There is no skill difference because players will be chosen by rank. What about AI players, they have the same skills.B: Why not? They will just keep buying army every week and controlling similar amount of mines. Also, even if one player has 20% stronger army, it is not enough to attack and control two towns.C: So they are going to make losing move (attacking) just to finish game? Then it's not best player who will win, but the one who has more time.
>>1855785
>>1855833what the fuck, I look and dress like that.
>>1855845pic or it didn't happen
>>1855765>then explain how stalemate can be broken on a map with 3 or 8 players.Players wanna win so they attack. This breaks stalemateOr better yet: players fight for control of neutral resources. In early games when armies are small and the army losses don't matter in the grand scheme of things, but the resource gains for the winner will matter. This avoids the stalemate before it has a chance to happen.>the ones who will attack will die and lose the gameFactually incorrect. I won my last two games while attacking first. You just gotta know how to attack.Stop playing like a coward, you coward nigger.
>>1849482>and Chess is not perfectly balanced, white has 2~5% advantage over blackDoesn't matter because you play 6 games, 3 times you play white, 3 times black.>and HoMM is old so compared to other old games HoMM is actually one of the most playedHow many people play HoMM compared to chess?>>1849902>That there are subtle differences between all those features and the players must learn to play around them and use them to their advantage.Doesn't matter, even if you have 15% stronger army, there is still a stalemate.>Not to mention that players are different people and thus have different skill levels and AI have different scripts to pick from. They are, by definition NOT IDENTICAL!No, the game should be balanced and when human players play they should have similar rank.AI players should play "best strategy" and not random scripts.
>>1856230>AI players should play "best strategy" and not random scripts.Why should they? Because otherwise your theory doesn't work?The only thing you are repeating here is that >"All players should play exactly the same and be exactly the same!" Because that is the only hypothetical situation where your theory works. However that is not how reality works and no strategy game in reality works like that. Neither H3 nor Chess nor any game that was made in reality.Your next argument to that is:>"If everything is not the same then it is casino randomness and your theory doesn't apply." By your definition then everything that exists in real life is a casino and thus your theory cannot be applied to reality. Thus by setting this constraint to your theory, you disproved your own theory yourself.
>>1854415>estimatesyeah and it's bad at the estimation thus unreliableplus this is a thread about multiplayer, not singleplayer. In singleplayer it's you vs the stupid AI so you might as well set all 7 of them to the same team vs you on your team alone.
>>1856230in HoMM you also don't just have one battle where you lose 80% of your army, instead you fight multiple smaller fights because that's strategically advantageous. Figuring out the reason why is left as an exercise for the reader.>if you have stronger army there's a stalematenigga stop playing dumb, it's not about the size of your army, it's about how you use itWhile you have your army bunched up in one hero, I have four smaller stacks capturing camps and getting gear and finding resources and spells, therefore getting a multiplicative advantage over a slower-expanding opponent such as yourself. Your strategy does not "break 3+ player HoMM", only thing broken about it is the fact that it doesn't work, much like some broken fridge or what not. Try using your strategy in a real match, get your ass kicked, then rethink your theory as you've proven that it does not match reality
>>1849919>But you don't exactly know where their main hero is, you have to hunt for them and they can avoid you.No, I can just follow roads on his territory. Roads are leading to town. I will go to his town and steal it.Then I can put some army (but not much) into town and go back to my town (or not).Because he is too weak now to regain his town.>Again you DO NOT KNOW they lost 80% of their army. If they are good players they can loose much-much less than 80% some Neutral fights can even be done with literally zero losses. I know. If map is balanced and player A attacked player B town and won, that means A lost 80-90% of his army. It is impossible to have smaller loses when you attack opponent of similar strength.>Plus you are forgetting that even if they did loose a big portion of their army they still won a major battle meaning they have got tons of XP and thus levels over your own hero making their army way more powerful.He will have just 2 levels more than my hero and I am having 5 times stronger army. I will destroy him.
>>1849919> Either by the raw stats of a higher level hero and skill like offense/armorer/archery or by being able to cast Chain Lightning that will instantly destroy 10% of you army ever turn. Or cast Expert Berserk which will cause your army to attack each other or start chain summoning Elementals every turn that will slowly overpower your army.This cannot be done in early or even mid game.And Expert Berserk is cheat code and should be removed from game.>Or just cast Expert Slow on your army and kite your army around with ranged attacks because you will be shot to death before you can reach into melee. Or just hide in their town behind walls and destroy you catapult before it can make a gap in their walls and then your army is stuck outside of their castle save for flyers.1. Not possible in early game and even mid game (destroying catapult).2. Will not make him win when he has 5 times weaker army.3. I will also have shooters (and 5 times more than him).4. Without catapult I still have shooters, fliers, spells, and he has 5 times weaker army, so that's enough.>Also how do you know they will wait 7-10 weeks to do something ? Good players usually start attacking at like week 2-3 to make use of low level creatures and low level spells before the higher level creatures make the low level creatures obsolete. Then how is player A going to win a siege against player B who also has 2-3 weeks of army plus one or more archer towers plus moat and walls?Even if somehow he wins this he will only have 1 week army (that he bought after siege on Monday) and I will have 3 week army so I can still attack him. If he had 2-3 week army and defeated enemy that had 2-3 week army, then I can and much easier defeat him (having 1 week army) with my 3 week army.
>>1856571>A lost 80-90% of his army.if A lost most of his army then A is a retard and took a bad fight and should've fought better, which is actually possible despite what you might think.an actually good player would never lose all of their army so fast.your premise is faulty which results in faulty theory, stop being a dishonest geocentric flatearther nigger
>>1856735>an actually good player would never lose all of their army so fast.OP's premise relies on all the players being of the same skill level. If A doesn't lose most of his army then it's not a fair game so there's no point in playing. Strategy games are dead.
>>1856762>waaaah i was outplayed by an opponent who didn't doomstack all his troops on one hero he was supposed to be as dumb as I am waaaaah unfaaaaiiiirgit gud at the game before you can say anything about it being bad or over.
>>1856813not an argument
>>1849928>Where do you even get this 80% number how do you know it is not 90% or 70% or 60%?A and B have similar strength of army. If A defeated B, that means A has massive losses, 80-100%. It cannot be 60%.>>1849930> I briefly skimmed through this thread, if you guys think losing 80% of your army is acceptable in a fight you either never played this game or you're the type of player who struggles against 80% AI.It is not acceptable, except 1v1 match and your main army attacks your enemy main army.And you know what that means?That means, in 3+ player map, player A will never attack player B, because he would lose 80%+ army, and this would make him lose.That means, there is a stalemate, nobody can attack anybody.Only in 1v1 this doesn't happen, because there is no third player that could exploit the fact that you lost 90% of army.All matches in HOTA online multiplayer are 1v1. What a coincidence...A coincidence that proves my theory.IF MY THEORY IS WRONG THEN WHY ALL MULTIPLAYER MATCHES IN HOTA ARE 1v1?3+ player maps in HoMM are just toys for children, but they are unplayable in any serious match.Yet, 90% of maps in HoMM are 3-8 player maps.90% of game content is unplayable.>>1850024>fortress gets an ore pit and shrine of power with an eagle eye witch hut while boxed in a corner by basilisks and medusa queens>stronghold gets a free gem mine and logistics witch hut
Wow, you just discovered FFA games are not balanced or fun to play if you care about winningEveryone else knew this decades ago
>>1856835but it is an argumenttheory is proven wrong by reality being different. that is the entire argument and OP struggles to even understand this.>>1856966>all matches in HotA are 1v1clearly you're not searching for the 3p FFA rooms, dingus.>muh seriousif you're not gud enough to get a winstreak on FFA then you aren,t allowed to talk about HoMM since you clearly don't know anything about it.
>>1850108> OP's strategy is one of cowardice, so while he cowards away in his town I and other players will capture resources on the map and use the resources to build up a fuckhuge army to defeat OP's cowardiceNo.1. If you leave your town and go far away, I will steal your town.2. Even if I and all players will move around map and take resources, how are you going to attack anybody? If all players have the same army.>>1850114>last time I played in 4p game, someone won. after the game i talked to the players, and nobody (except me trying out the "perfect play strategy") sat on their townsYou played with weak players.>nobody felt like they got screwed over by RNG.They don't know what other players got from RNG so they can't compare.>everything OP complains about was not a factor, and his strategy (employed by me) was not perfect. Then tell me what is the best strategy? Going far away and stealing resources?And what will happen if all players used this strategy? Who is going to win? Who is going to steal other players towns and how?
>>1857222>1. If you leave your town and go far away, I will steal your town.Fog of war. You don't know if I left my town or not, all you can see is some heroes, but not all of them. You have no way to know where my full army is at all times, best you can do is guesstimate>2. Even if I and all players will move around map and take resources, how are you going to attack anybody? If all players have the same army.The players have different armies because they're using different towns, or had different neutral enemies and thus took diffent attrition damage, or they found different items and spells. The strategy is in adapting to the unknown and facing it head-on. The simplest way to do so would be to take a hero with just one tier 1 unit, and slam him into the enemy, to see the exact army composition, and if you're lucky you might even have time for a spell like a fireball on his big stack of archers or something. That is strategical play enabling a tactical play. But of course, this is only one way, and probably not the best.>what is the best strategyBeing adaptive to the circumstances. See someone with a lot of defence? Stack penetration. See someone with high attack? Stack speed and hit first, or use slowness/stuns to make sure the enemy can't attack. Of course, there are many different "positive things" like this you could have, and each has multiple counter-plays.Similar strategy applies to positioning. Someone in your area? Politely ask them to leave, with your sword (they probably spent a lot of resources trying to break through the neutrals). Someone hasn't even touched the neutral creatures between you and them? There's got to be a reason, either he's too weak, or doesn't wanna waste his units on neutrals. Or maybe he has teleports and can just bypass the neutrals? Who knows, gotta stay alert just in case. Or maybe it's a fake-out and bait? Now the mind-games begin.And that's just the tip of the iceberg of complexity. The rest is yours to discover.
Simple question, faggots.3 players on map: A, B, C. Each has one town.You are player A.How are you playing the game to win? How can you take your opponents town? How can you attack anybody? When will you attack?Impossible. Stalemate.>>1850792Then defeat his theory with arguments.You are not giving any arguments, you are appealing to authority.>I played HoMM3 since 2011 so OP is wrong
>How are you playing the game to win? >Impossible. Stalemate.protect him at all costs
>>1857607your question has already been answered, you just chose to ignore the answersby rejecting Truth, the Truth has also rejected yourepent, sinner
>>1857617I mean I kinda get his argument, if everyone picks the same faction and the map is entirely symmetrical and all players do exactly the same moves, then it's a question of turn order, who goes first wins. But he doesn't want to remove himself from this abstraction into the reality of how complicated the game actually is, and how much changes depending on the matchup, plus fog of war messes with everyone at least a bit, and so on. What a pity, to waste ones' strength in pursuit of obsession.
>gets morale in just the right time>breaks your stalemateheh nothing personell
>>1857607I throw a suicide Armageddon pawn at one dude and wiping the other with my main stack.GG no re.
>>1845667Barbarians
>>1848167That and constantly talking about FFA games with humans without realising they tend to be self balancing, see dominions for a good example
>>1848639> You go to the middle, get absurdally stacked>Everybody is stacked with army.>And what do you do? You are going to attack enemy's town with your army and lose 90% army?Take your main army and sit outside his town, forcing him to not ever leave. Set up reinforcement chain so he never gets an army advantage. Claim all resources and mines on map, eventually build giga army that can overpower defenders advantage (one town on its own can’t support full unit production)
>>1851014>if both accept, backstab them both with a cheeky set of lies and setupsWhat if they backstab you faster than you backstab them, or at same time>if one accepts and the other one rejects, fight the other one 2v1 in a team with the acceptor until the rejector is not a threat anymore, but also try to take least losses so i can win the 1v1 later on easier.But do you realize that if one of the players accepts alliance with you, it is luck and coin toss? You win the game by coin toss.There is 50% chance you will get alliance with B or C. There is 50% chance B and C will make alliance without you. It's a toss coin and it decides who loses the game. It's a casino.>if both reject, win with pure numbers advantage as usually the only time an alliance is rejected is if you're winning and they don't wanna help the winnerNo, you could be rejected not because you are stronger, but you could be rejected at start of the game, because you were unlucky with coin toss.>Possible. Winnable. But only if you're not a retard.It's not a win when you "win" by coin toss.>HoMM having variable factions and variable map setup and fog of war adds so many layers of complexity on top of this simple plan that If factions are balanced and players/AI have equal high skills, they will still play a draw even if they have different factions.>Hell, I'm sure a better than me HoMM player would be able to just solo-win a 1v2 What if players/AI have same skills? What if all players play with best strategy?> i can't offer advice any deeper than "sittin in your corner of the map means you're not taking resources from the enemy corners of the map and that gold and gems could be very useful to make a bigger army"Even if it's better to go somewhere outside your town and collect stuff, what if all players will do this?How can they take other players towns and keep control of two towns? How can they attack other player and win battle without losing 90% army?
>>1858191>if one of the players accepts alliance with you, it is luck and coin toss?No, it is a result of decisions that other players took. No luck here, only skill and strategy, and consequences of player choice. Look up what "the Prisoners Dilemma" is when you have the time, ok?
>>1858427No, this is luck.There are 3 players. Only two can form alliance (against the third player). There is zero skill in forming alliance. You will be lucky and get alliance or unlucky and not get alliance.How can you make that you will always be picked into alliance?What if all players have skills like you and they will do the same things to get the alliance?This problem happens not just in HoMM3 but also in Civilization. Both games are fully broken. They are toys. For children. But the result of the game is random.
>>1858438You didn't look up what "the Prisoners Dilemma" is, did you? Never reply to me again until you do your research.
>>1858454I did read>The prisoner's dilemma is a game theory thought experiment that involves two rational agents, each of whom can cooperate for mutual benefit or betray their partner ("defect") for individual reward.>two rational agentsIt doesn't apply at all.I described situation with 3 players, not two.The optimal strategy is:At the start of the map, every player offers alliance to every player, hoping he will get alliance (of two players) against third player. This increases his chance of winning. Because they can defeat or make third player weaker and then they will fight each other (so there is 50% chance of winning instead of 33% if all players play without alliance).But only two players can get alliance, alliance with 3 players doesn't make sense and will not benefit anybody.How will be decided, which two players make alliance? By luck, random, tossing a coin. There is no other method.So one player will instantly lose the game because of a coin toss. Homm3 is a casino. It's a fact. I destroyed the game. It's over. Final.
But actually, I don't know if HoMM3 alliances actually do anything.Even if two players have alliance against third, they cannot attack him because they cannot combine their armies into single hero. If allied player A gives player B his army (so B attacks C with double army), then B can just steal A's army or even attack A.Alliance could give security to A and B so they think they will not be attacked so they can go farther away from town. But this is false sense of security because allied player can be betrayed and his town stolen by allied player.
>>1858454>never reply to me or my wife's son ever again
>>1851262> "Free For All"this doesn't explain what it is
>>1851268> Strategy is dying, retards who want "i win lol" buttons took over.There are no strategy games after 2000.
>>1858995There are two agents: player B and player C. Their dilemma is wether or not to ally with player A (that's us). If neither allies, they both have a 33.33(3)% chance to win (three players are fighting). If only one allies, they eliminate the other together with us, and their chance to win is 50% for the ally and 0% for the non-ally. But if both try ally with us, then we give them bad info and manipulate and sabotage both their armies to weaken them enough for us to 1v2, giving them both a 0% chance to win (and thus victory to us).Each of those two dilemma players knows that if their opponent doesn't ally with us, they'll have better odds of winning by allying. And if the opponent does ally with us, then there's no change in expected win chance. Thus, they might as well ally, or at least pretend to for some time until the backstabs come out>but when do you backstabDepends on a hundred little factors, from map layout and army positioning to just vibes in the correspondence.Also, your "FFA is luck" argument falls apart when we do a 2 player game. Assume both are equally skilled. Which one wins? Whoever gets first turn? That's RNG, casinogame. No different from 3 and more players, except less fun because less players.Apply yourself before talking outta your ass.
>>1859219But it does, retard. It's a battle that is free for all. No restrictions like teams or anything. Fight anyone you wanna fight.
>>1849217I doubt that because the devs on gates of pyre are putting in lots of work.
>>1856571>He will have just 2 levels more than my hero and I am having 5 times stronger army. I will destroy him.How do you even have a 5 times stronger army? How do you know they are just 2 levels over you when you have no information about that? Also 2 levels can make a big difference.>>1856575>And Expert Berserk is cheat code and should be removed from game.So your theory only works if the game directly caters to your theory and drops everything else. Instead of comparing your theory to real life which is how theories should be working in the first place.>1. Not possible in early game and even mid game (destroying catapult).You just said there is a 7-10 wait time before you make your move that is a huge time to build up an army and that can easily destroying a catapult.>2. Will not make him win when he has 5 times weaker army.Yes it will since he can stay behind walls destroy your catapult and you are trapped your only chance is either retreat and loose your army, pay a huge amount of gold to retreat with your army or wait for the 200 combat turns to pass where the battle just forcefully ends during which time the city's towers will slowly kill most of your arm and the opponent's shooters can also have free shooting.>3. I will also have shooters (and 5 times more than him).How will you have 5 time more? He has towers, spells that can focus on your shooters and can defend. And shooters have a limited ammo capacity unless you buy an ammo cart.>4. Without catapult I still have shooters, fliers, spells, and he has 5 times weaker army, so that's enough.How do you know it is enough? He could have higher stats and have expert archery making their shooters way better different arm composition from yours and again shooters have a limited ammo capacity withYou always just assume you automatically have 5 times the army than anyone else, how do you even get 5 times the army? Are you cheating?
>>1860733>You always just assume you automatically have 5 times the army than anyone else, how do you even get 5 times the army?Do even you read the post? It is impossible to come out of any fair battle with less than 80% losses. A attacked B so he must have taken 80% of losses. I did not fight anyone yet so my army is at 100%, while A is at 20% so I have 5 times strong army. It's basic math.
>>1861257>It is impossible to come out of any fair battle with less than 80% lossesonly if you're bad at the game
>>1861420>only if you're bad at the gameNone of you read OP's premise. We are considering a fight between equally skilled players.
The people who are against OP are paid shills hired by publisher of Civilization, HoMM, Europa Universalis. And some of them are strategy players who are biased and want to defend their stupid hobby at all costs. You are ignoring OP's arguments and manipulating, because you already have a premise that OP must be wrong.
>>1861428They can be equally bad and lose all army, or equally good and know how not to lose all your army in every engagement. Losing 80% of your troops happens only if you're bad at the game. I don't know how to make it clearer to you, OP.>>1861493So not only are you bad, you're also a schizo? Cool. So when are we doing that game where the good players show you good player tactics and strategy and you see your stalemate crushed? Don't try to pretend to be someone else, that's the definition of being a "shill".
>>1861493there is no argument, just a headcanon reality that doesn't exist. OP's "thesis" was destroyed in the first post reply. This thread is an elaborate troll and you're complicit, sage in all fields
>>1861428>>1861493>t. Not OP
>>1861505> They can be equally bad and lose all army, or equally good and know how not to lose all your army in every engagement. Losing 80% of your troops happens only if you're bad at the game. I don't know how to make it clearer to you, OP.You don't understand anything, so I will repeat for the 100th time:There are 3 players, A, B, C. They start on balanced map, with one town. They are very good at the game and strategy and have same/similar skills.There are two options that they can do:1. Player A (and other players) just keep attacking neutral creatures and collecting stuff, but they do not attack opponents (B, C) because they have as much strong army as he has (A). This leads to stalemate and draw, they will just do some boring stuff for 1000 turns but not attack each other.2. Like above, but player A decides to attack player B to steal his town and defeat B. Even if A wins, he is going to lose 90% army. Why? Because B has as much powerful army as A and similar battle skills. The armies do not have to be 100% the same powerful, just similar in power. A will lose 90% army but he will win. What then? Player C can see in Thieves Guild that A now has two towns and B has zero towns. So C assumes that A attacked B and he has massive losses. So C goes quickly to A to destroy him because A has now 5 times weaker army than C (because A lost 80% army during attack on B).Because of what happens in point 2, the good players (AI or humans) will not attack and we go back to point 1, stalemate.It's basic logic. HoMM has massive design flaw and 90% of maps are unplayable, except 1v1 maps. The game is 25 years old and we had to wait 25 years until genius like OP realized this and developed his theory. Now the only thing we can do is to uninstall HoMM from our hard disks.
>>1861632>he is going to lose 90% army. Why? Because B has as much powerful army as A and similar battle skills.Wrong. You can stack all your army on one hero, and lose it all in one go, or spread the army out, and only lose one fifth per every lost combat, and less than that per every won combat, thus lowering attrition. HoMM IS A GAME OF MANY COMBATS, NOT JUST ONEYOU HAVE A LOT, AND I MEAN A LOT LOT LOT OF SMALL SKIRMISHES IF YOU'RE A GOOD PLAYER, AND YOU DON'T LOSE MOST OF YOUR ARMY IN ONE BATTLEIf this is too difficult for you to understand, try playing games like Candyland or Snakes&Ladders, they should be more suited to your cranial capacity.
>>1861632Also, you still haven't answered how the stalemate is avoided in a 1v1 scenario, if we follow your logic then even 1v1 should be a stalemate as neither player wants to lose 80% of their army and they don't wanna risk attacking because they might lose. Otherwise it's a casino game, casino genre, and even real life is a casino. But that'd be ridiculous, so the starting premise (aka all your logic and theory) is wrong.
>>1861632>genius like OPnigger you are clearly the OPstop blowing your own horn
People are still debating the shizo retard who is too stupid to play a turn based game decently.You can literally see that he makes excel calculations of his headcanon and then gets crushed in multiplayers by noobs and comes bitching.
>>1861632Yo retard, use actual stats and not rounded numbers.
>>1861709i think it's fun/funny, that's why i add the fuel to the fire
>>1851285>earth magic or lose>strategy is finishedThe game is unbalanced. It could be balanced, but then there is a problem of stalemate.>>1851381No, in HoMM3 you win if you get Town Portal first while your opponent fails to get it.
>>1851641>LMAOOOOO HE'S A CAPITOL RUSH RETARD ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSENo, I don't rush capitol, but I build it eventually. It pays off after 5 days.
>>1845667>Everyone will just cold warIt only works like this on paper, in practice, games are limited in duration because most people don't have time to sit around for 16 hours being a fucking turtle. Even without that, fog of war forces imperfect intel, and therefore provides impetus to risk sending a force out to gain an advantage.
>>1845667It's as if you've never played a strategy game competitively ever. There are games with explicit balance issues (paradox slop), but in an actual game like Civ or Stars!, generally the 6 other people can see that you've just eaten a nation, and will try and stop you from winning if they are competent. Now sometimes people form big mega alliances, but if people are competent, these alliances break and change as necessary.
>>1845667It's as if you've never played a strategy game competitively ever with a competent group. There are games with explicit balance issues (paradox slop), but in an actual good competitive strategy game, generally the 6 other people can see that you've just eaten a nation, and will try and stop you from winning, exploit your power, take advantage, so on so forth if they are competent. Now sometimes people form big static mega alliances, but if people are competent, these alliances break and change as necessary.
>>1862459>>1862462That is the autists' argument though. Knowing that the sword of damocles would be above your head, if you were to eat another player your army would be temporarily weakened and everyone will unite to fight you, why would you ever go attack anyone if all it gets you is a gangbang straight to loserville?To which the actual answer is having 2+ players' worth of map control and resources is usually enough to offset the increased threat of attack from otber players, and the more army you manage to save, the more defences you manage to build before they arrive, the easier the late game will be for you. Thus everyone wants to attack, as aggression and victory are rewarded with snowballing which lets you get away with more aggression and more victory and more snowballing. And if fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even if OP's theory forbids it.
>>1862900nuh uheveryone sits home and does nothing foreverstrategy games dont make sense at all
This thread is like a team game of one autistic anon who sucks at communicating vs everyone else teaming up against him because he's gay and retarded.I can see why he doesn't like team games.
>>1851732>gold is not enough for full army in HoMM3Then just skip level 1 and 2 units, or some other units that are only useful for town defense. But buy as much army as you can with weekly gold.>exploring also gives access to army recruitment options outside your city, such as dragons, and that is numbers you should use if you wanna win, and as someone who's trying to win (not a coward who tries to not lose) i will use the out-of-town resources and unit production to have a numbers advantage, and that's before we factor in the spells and items and other assorted nonsense your "pure look at strategy" always forgetsIf you go exploring with your main army, you will lose the town, which is a bigger problem.Also, what if all players do what you do? How will this break stalemate?How will eventually someone attack town and control two towns?>a "risk" implies a chance of failure. if i'm fighting vs a coward like you then there is no failureWhat if you play clones of yourself and they play risky like you do?>if i have heroes scouting around looking for enemy heroes' appearances so i could stop exploring and start defending, then there is no risk and no failureWhat if all players do this, send out scouts (some of which will die after being attack by enemy heroes with army) to see terrain and when enemies are? You will be able to go a little more outside your town and collect some stuff, but all players will do this. But if you go too far away, they can rush and take over your town (with main hero or with scout hero).How to break stalemate and be able to go far away or steal someones town and control two towns to win the game?>that "if" is doing a lot of work there, you know.. How do you know all my enemies play exactly as I do?Because if enemies are AI they could play the best strategy possible, if you play with humans the multiplayer server will match you with humans that have the same rank as you (=similar skills).
>>1863638>If you go exploring with your main army,Then you are a fool who doesn't understand "divide and conquer". If you only have one stack roaming on the map, it can only control(and thus explore) a tiny bit of area. Multiple smaller armies exploring multiple places is the way, as proven by countless better players doing that.>what if all players do what you doThen you have the fun part of small skrimmages and smaller, not full-army battles. And the song-and-dance of retreating to do army transfer before battle, only to see that the opponent retreated too. Better skilled player wins battle, controls neutral dwelling or resource producer, can level their town up faster, and win a war to control more towns and eventually snowball to victory. >what if you play clones of yourselfWill never happen because all people are different, even at the same skill level. Plus, the fog of war reveals only a part of the map, other players see different things than I do so they take different choices even if their skill level was exactly the same as mine.>what if all players scoutThen whoever's the better player wins, obviously.>How to break stalemate?Wrong question. Ask, instead: "How do i ensure i never end up in a stalemate?" And the answer is aggression multiplied by adaptation. Be flexible, but be fast. Take control and hold on to it. Win from the first day instead of cowardly stacking all your troop in the same place.part 1 of 2 since my full comment is too long
>>1863638>>1863668cont.If you wanna get good at straregy in the general theoretical space, go read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" right now. It's a collection of basic nuances of battling that might not be obvious to you, but have a proven track record of two world wars and a countless smaller wars. In fact, here's a few quotes from it that are applicable to the points in this [actually previous because i had to split them in two] post:>He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.>Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.>Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack.>Great results can be achieved with small forces.>Opportunities multiply as they are seized.>Be where your enemy is not.>In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack--the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.I will not explain the statements further as they should be sufficiently self-explanatory. And if you still long for context, the full book awaits your reading. Or listening, there's audiobook style readings of it in full on Youtube if you're pleb enough for that.
Can we doxx this guy and hire local junkies in his area to collect his foreskin and harvest soul?
>>1863672He'll just hire 2 more groups of junkies and either they all stalemate, leaving him safe in his home, or they attack each other (closest target) and lose 80%(no more no less) fighting strength before the autist swoops in on his steed (a broom) just like his one and only army hero would. No chance of them allying together because that'd be casinolife, what if all the junkies allied with the autist except each of them one at a time (i swear this sentence made sense before i typed it out)?Autists need to be nourished, taught, and raised like you upgrade your town, until their autism can be directed toward the good of the world, and not being angry at videogames he doesn't understand.
>>1851732>How do you know they don't have a different strategy such as baiting someone into taking the town, wasting some of their units into the defencive force that deals more damage than it should thanks to the walls, then take the town back when the first players turn is overNo, you cannot bait a good AI like this. If they attack your town with their main army, you will not be able to regain it with your hero, as your main army has similar strength to theirs. If you live decent defensive force in your town (40-50%), they will not attack your town, but they could attack your main hero, even if they don't, you will be limited in what you can do if your main hero has only 50% army.Also, if you leave your town with very weak defenses, they could take over your town even with secondary hero.>How do you know that the other players won't try something even more ridiculous as their strategy? You simply cannot know..Because AI and humans are trained to play the best strategy, not ridiculous strategy. (actually, not in HoMM3, but in theory the AI could be improved to play the best strategy).>Also, don't pull numbers out of your ass. 50/50 split is the worst one out of them all when it comes to balancing aggression / defence. The exact number also depends on what turn it is and how big the map (or rather the average distance between towns) is.It doesn't matter. Whatever the perfect number is, great AI and human players will all use this perfect ratio. How are you going to win?
>400 posts>they still did not defeat OP's theory
>>1863751They did just OP ignores those posts.OP's theory only works in a vague hypothetical situation which is impossible in real life. And thus the theory fails right there already. And as such OP's theory is not applicable to Heroes3 nor any strategy game that exists in real life.
>>1863751but they didand OP didn't defeat the countertheory of 1v1 games stalemating for the same reason 3+ player game stalemates
Countercountertheory: if exactly equally skilled players play against each other the game SHOULD be a tie, because they players are equally skilled.
>>1863780>>1864095OP is fellating himself, literally nobody agrees with him because it's a stupid theory at even a cursory glance. He has to pretend to be other people for it to hold any weight. No one joins online games just to sit around and do nothing, no one is that afraid of losing that they think stalemate is a viable strategy except for OP. OP most likely just plays against easy computers and turtles up for several hours before pumping out one type of ultimate unit to end the game, and assumes everybody else does the same thing.
I am not reading all that.Summarize your lecture to a single paragraph of 30 words of less.
>>1864330I'll do it for him.OP is risk averse and assumes all players will opt to defend their starting position rather than risk gaining an advantage by sending forces out.
>>1851888>Okay OP, how about you try to host a game and get some people in it? Surely there is at least 8 of us including you, and after some matches we'll see how your theory holds upNo, this will not work because we have too different level of skills. My theory only works if players have similar skills and they are high skilled. Human or AI players.
At this point it's fair to say strategy is over. Really he proved it weeks ago.
>>1864306And gets upset at the AI for not doing the same thing as well
>>1865197>my theory only works if blah blah blahIn that case, it isn't a fatal flaw in all strategy games, but you being a sperg
>>1848726Retard
>>1852436>Some nations are better at attacking than others retard. HoMM is asymmetricThen the game is unbalanced and casino. As attacking is more useful than defending, because to win the game you need to attack other towns 10 times but you only need to defend 2 times.But the difference in attacking performance of each town, is not enough to break the stalemate. You need 150% army strength of your opponent to attack him in town. So the game is still a stalemate. Strategy games are over.
>>1866289>So the game is still a stalemate. Strategy games are over.So... the winning move is not to play?
i'm gonna highjack this thread and ask how do i git gud at the game as it isthere's so much going on at every single time that i just get lost and then get my ass handed to me in battlesdo the campaigns teach you how to play or are they cheese factories where you can figure out what unit to spam then spam that unit forever?
>>1866850I don't know how to learn HoMM, I started playing it when I was few years old with other kids, they told me what to do and we watched each other playing and learned.Then I continued playing solo for next 20 years and I improved my strategies.Then after 20 years I reached a final strategy and realized that game is broken and stalemate and since then I cannot win any scenario because it's impossible due to stalemate.
OP in this thread is the greatest ad for condoms
>>1866863It sounds like you just suck at video games
>>1845667Just because I have nothing better to do with my time. >And there is 8 players (for example 1 human + 7 AI) and there is 8 castles and each player gets one from the start.On a well made map, there will be neutral towns for for the players to expand into.>If you gain someone else castle, you gain a huge advantage...But if you lose your only castle, this will be a catastropheYes, that is risk vs reward.>why and when would they go and attack opponents castle?Some factions are better at different stages in the game due to how quick they can get their units and how good they are.>All players will just sit close to the castle, collect income and buy all army they can buy.If the map is well made, there will be incentives to expand. Such as resources, other towns, and artifacts.
>>1866863cool story but I asked actual HoMM players and not you, OP
