Tips
The power of Teleport and... Displacement!
While playing the order campaign, I have discovered the power of the order spells 'teleport'(lv3) and 'displacement'(lv1). I have had many success in the battles using the following tricks!
Normal battle: in a normal battle, when you fight against some strong ranged stacks, use displacement/teleport to push/transport your melee stacks towards them. It's also quite good to move the rangers to your side with teleport, so that you can attack them with all that you've got!
And when strong melee foes walk too fast towards you, use teleport to put them back to where they came from (bye, bye:))
Attacking a town: Here come the really nice tips! When attacking a town, use teleport to transport a strong defending stack to the other side of the wall. Now you can eliminate it much easier (beware a sudden break-out when you do this). With displacement you can push defenders against the wall, so that you can shoot them with your ranged attackers. This way, you don't have to break down the gate! It's a shame this trick doesn't work at all times, because the defenders could walk back in time, but it surely is worth the try! (Ed: You are more likely to get a chance to shoot at your displaced victim if you wait with your mage and range troops, then cast Displacement after the victim has given up its turn for the round. If nothing else, your mage should have a chance to ice-bolt the victim at the beginning of the next round!)
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Fog of War is rather transparent
Vanatage points are great, but after visiting them you can see only structures and objects - not enemy or creatures.
But if you will right-click at the correct spot on the map you can find out information about army standing there even though you can't see it's picture because of Fog of War.
It's usefull e.g. to decide - should you go for the artifact or is it defended too well... :)
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Quicksand in Action
Quicksand is a rather more useful spell in HOMM4 than HOMM3 - though it isn't always trivial to cast. In particular, Quicksand is useful against large stacks of melee creatures when you have significant ranged attack. You can use stacks of single water elementals (or summoned elementals) to cast the spell repeatedly, surrounding the enemy with strip after strip of mud, and as they crawl through it you shoot them down (hoping to kill them before you run out of arrows or they get through the last strip of mud and kill you.)
The interface when casting quick sand requires you to click where you want the mud to start, click whereever you want the strip of mud to bend, and click where you want it to stop ... you can't lay mud where obstacles already lie. Save a game and give it a try.
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Avoiding 'One-more-Turn' hypnosis
When you're planning to quit the game, save (and quit) at the end of the turn, not at the start! (This means you don't get distracted by any end-of-turn battles, and any 'start of next turn' messages, etc etc ...)
-- Largo LeGrande, at heroescommunity.com
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Use Army Singles
Level 1 creatures cost very little to hire, and make wonderful gofers. You can collect nearly all the resources near your starting town in just one or two days, by sending out stacks containing just one level one creature. And if it gets caught by a wandering stack, no big deal; it didn't cost you very much. Sprites and imps are good for this because of their speed; Bandits are still better, because they can sneak past L1 creatures to pick up resources and artifacts behind them. Note that if your army single picks up an artifact, you need to take much better care of it until you can get the artifact to a hero.
They're also useful on Day 1 when you're trying to work out how best to use your main force's limited movement. Just send out the single creatures in every available direction, scouting out the location of mines and suchlike. Keep the explorers going til you reach the limit of your territory; then bring them back and allow them to rejoin your main army at some time when they're not going to destroy that army's movement. You'll deploy them again when your main army breaks into a new area.
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Hero Skills
*** Magic skills you can't get
"Might" basic classes (Knight, Lord, Death Knight, Thief, Archer) are denied magic from the two opposed towns. This (generally) is lifted when they advance into might-might (such as the scout-archer "ranger"). If they advance to might-magic, the non-offered two classes shift to the ones opposed to the hero's magic.
"Magic" classes initially face no restrictions. After learning a second magic, the one opposed by both becomes unavailable. If your hero learns opposing magics he will have no restriction.
(=Fnord= reporting on Gus's comments on Round Table)
*** Choose second skill carefully
Save your 2nd main skill, because THAT's what determines what your advanced class is. Meaning if I wanted to be a Liche, and was a Necromancer, I have to hold out till I can find something to teach me Chaos Magic otherwise no Liche for me ;)
=KodiakAsh=
Editor's note: Obtaining the second skill tree of your choice prior to level-10 is nearly impossible. As Kodiak suggests, finding the proper skill-granting structure(s) is vital!
*** Steal some experience
from H4 manual, p.35
As a special bonus, a character who uses the stealth skill effectively and sneaks past an army will gain a portion of the experience he or she would normally gain if he or she had defeated that army in combat.
"I have such a hero (Ranger), and he has spent the past 4 months going up to every neutral stack."
=John DiFool=
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Adventure Map
**** Army Order
When army order is messed up after loading a game, etc, you might suddenly have a sleeping stack as the "first" stack. That means you will have to press H to get to your main stack. If you are working with just this one stack, it can be incredibly annoying. But if the new "first" stack is anywhere around your main stack, just let the two stacks meet, and move every single unit into the opposite army. And look! Now your main stack is on top again! For a while at least...
=Malta=
Editor's comment:
To prevent the problem from recurring, always keep priority unit(s) and/or main hero in the original stack during a split.
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Battles - reducing damage
**** Healing through potions
(potion of immortality) - Can be used before battle.
(healing potion) Not as good. Requires an action during combat, and the user must still be alive.
**** Summon to avoid retaliation
(Nature magic: summon spell)
The summoned stack hits the target first. A "real" stack can then follow up without fear of retaliation.
**** Healer-Warrior combo
(healer) + (unit with high health and defense)
You need a hero with a spell that restores health (requiring life magic), and a monster type (or hero) that's big and tough.
While the healer is low level, the healer restored damage after being inflicted. At higher level, damage can be healed before it occurs.
"Martyr" is the key. The level-two spell transfers damage from fighter to healer, which in turn enables "Heavenly Shield" (also L2). High defense reduces damage, which in turn gets subtracted from a large reserve. The healer may find time to do things other than healing; in addition, the healer has protection of his own. To heighten the combo, try spells such as "Celestial Armor" (L-3, all allies get +25% Def) or "Regeneration" (on the healer, to recover between shields).
=Will Wei= (early basics)
=Warren Smith Jr= (advanced combo)
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Artifacts
**** Victor's Spoils
>The new artifact system is a bit annoying. If anyone
>finds a way to instantly collect ALL artifacts from an
>enemy instead of having to drag every single artifact
>(usually including dozens of potions) to your heroes,
>please let me know.
If you have only one hero in the army, or want all of the artifacts to go to one hero then just click the OK button and move on. All of the artifacts will automatically be given to either the first hero, the hero you've highlighted or the first creature (if there are no heroes) or the creature you've highlighted. Personally, I find it easier to dump all artifacts in one hero then open up the army dialog and move things around from there. Later in the game I'm not so interested in what the AI has - I usually have much better.
==Jennifer Bullard (Maranthea)==
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