[RU][Offline] HoMM2 Citadel of Heroes Tourney 2015 (Турнир Citadel of Heroes)

Citadel of Heroes Tourney (held by HeroesPortal.net)

Ссылка на турнир
Tournament link

The Citadel of Heroes Tourney is a bonus tournament held on HeroesPortal.net.

Every HeroesPortal user can participate.

Victory Condition: train the starting hero (lady Mylixel) to level 25. Killing all computer opponents and winning the scenario is not necessary.
Victory Criterion: the least number of days to achieve the victory condition.

- The final savegame must feature Mylixel trained to level 25.
- In case of the same results (the same number of days) shown by multiple participants, the winner is defined after summarizing the trained hero's primary stats without any artifacts worn.
- Maximum number of days is 300. This means that savegames after Day 300 are not valid.
- Members of all leagues are allowed to participate.

DEADLINE: 5th of August, 2015!

1. Victory Condition: train starting hero (Lady Mylixel) to level 25.
2. Not necessarily kill all the computer players and win the scenario

Thanks, necessary fixes are made.

All questions about turneys and rules of HeroesPortal can ask me at HeroesPortal chat if I present there (Reanimator)
PS If I can, my english is very poor

Don't worry, we are to help as much as we can.

Enrothians, I must note that it's only a week left before the tournament deadline. I myself will try to send my savegames in the following couple of days to join the participants.

It's 1 day left before the results!

Savegames sent:

Alias Dictus
DeathLust
Ghostly Rider
Gorislav
orzieorzie
Registr

I know it is late and in another forum and whatever. The map sounded intriguing and thus gave a try.so if anyone cares 38 days with rather wasteful micromanaging (I am not a fan of optimizing every little step).

It may be not late, and your result is very intriguing. Please post your savegame in this topic, I have asked DR28 if he is able to take your savegame into account. It seems that not, but we are all very interested to see the result anyway.

I hope you played the game on PoL 2.1, right? The winning condition was to train Lady Mylixel to Level 25.

Rules are rules and i am not going to join the competition. I am also convinced that many achieved the goal faster. If interested i can upload the final save once i go home tonight, but the map was IMO pretty straightforward on telling you what you are expected to do, no? I actually would have liked some larger stacks or sirens or trees of knowledges to offer more possible alternatives for experience gain.
Played on Good old Games version of H2 Gold.

The thing is that your result is the best.
http://heroesportal.net/land/glory.php?type=H2ch&id=1369&lang=english

Yes, GoG-version of H2 Gold is fine.
DR28 told me that it's too late to join because the results are already revealed, but still, I would like to see your savegame A LOT.
Personally, I played just for quantity, not quality, so my result was 152 days.

Uh. The only thing were i considered myself lucky is that on second try, after being badly surprised by AI hero in the first try, the AI was rather inactive and I could get his main town and kill heroes on day 8 (IIRC). After that It was to hire a warlock, get him advanced wisdom for mass slow and start feeding 2 groups of ghosts with first peasants and then elementals. Careful there as too many elementals could kill ghosts, so the power boosting artifacts had to loaded step by step to the warlock. Main problem was to have money to rehire the warlock after fleeing and to have druid and elf diplomacy run with the main hero at the same time. Too bad the ultimate artifact was not the goose :p. 2*4k ghosts give 160k exp and the rest of exp can be obtained by killing wandering monsters that are not elves or druids. Few hundred druids/elves with mirror images and mass slow for final battles.
Did I do something I should not have done? I can double check that i got the date right, but IIRC it was month 2 week 2 day 3.

Well, the only rule you seemed to avoid is the inability of a rehired hero to move on the same day (I.e. flee and rehire, then you can move the hero only on the next turn).

Other than that, awesome tactics. I myself forgot totally about that ghost trick, so I had to wait until creatures will grow naturally. I think I could go up to 90 days in my restarted game, but I didn't have much real life time.

Are you going to make it so that Ironfist and H3:SW take away most of heroes' movement points when they run or surrender?

I like the way H4 does it - if you have more than a few movement points you get automatically placed at a settlement that isn't blocked from where you're running or surrendering from, and reduced to two or three squares' worth of movement (or less), and if you had less you get none or what you run or surrendered with.

I think if you get attacked on another player's turn you get put back to the nearest unblocked settlement with that small amount of movement, and then when your turn comes up they get back to full movement. It's only a big deal when you run or surrender and then move on the same turn that you have to have minimum movement.

Would you consider having an option for running or surrendered heroes (and surrendered or basic armies) to automatically appear at the nearest settlement that is not the settlement they surrendered from (if they were in a defending siege)?

Unlike in H4, when you can have hero-less armies and you can block one town off to appear at another, you could just make the hero and army appear at the closest free square at or near the closest other settlement (or H2 castle only or H3 settlement with tavern only) if you want to prevent the hero escaping to places where you wouldn't be able to hire them back.

This would reduce the ability to run or surrender and be able to rehire at any of your H2 castles or H3 settlements with taverns anywhere on the map (which AFAIK is more important than the gold cost of hiring them back that you normally have to pay in H2 or H3, which is minimal in H2/H3 and a bit more expensive in fheroes2 for higher level heroes).

Indeed I moved the rehired hero after hiring. Whether it reduced the total time though, i am unsure,  since money limited me to 1 hire a day and at least one ghost group (unsure about the other) is within 1 day travel distance with all 3 movement artifacts equipped. But next time i'll take it into account that this is by default considered prohibited. Thanks for informing.

I will try to translate the Heroesportal rules as soon as possible. And we still wait for your savegames The community is always in need of such experienced players as you.

Steven Aus, I'll answer you a little later when I'll be at home if you don't mind.

Pitsu, it seems that the rules are more strict than I remembered.

http://heroesportal.net/land/rules.php?type=off2

HeroesPortal offline tournament rules wrote:

HEROES 2 TOURNEY RESTRICTIONS:

- moving the rehired hero after his runaway/surrender/death in the same day as he was defeated. You have to wait for the next day.

- (you still can rehire that hero in the day of his defeat)

- (if your hero escaped/surrendered/died while another player's turn, you can rehire him and move him on your turn freely)

- rehiring the dismissed hero with an army different from his starting one;

- dig Ultimate Artifact (UA), without fully opening puzzle cards;

- visit the cemetery, the caves of demons and ghost ships. Ships with skeletons can be visited;

- hire ghosts, and in tournaments of certain types (Wild Lands and The Citadel of Heroes) the use of "Haunt" spell is restricted as well as "feeding" the ghosts, i.e. it is allowed only to have only one battle with the ghost party in the whole game, and the player needs to save game before the battle and immediately thereafter;

- "miners" are strictly prohibited to dismiss all the other characters used by them who had a skill Estates, before sending the victorious save, and leave only one hero! Otherwise, save will not be counted;

- use endless positive events more than once. Refers to events that do not disappear after the first visit.

This means that this tournament (Citadel of Heroes) doesn't allow to "feed" ghosts. However, I still enjoyed your strategy because I even didn't think of a strategy of that type.

I will try to translate the HeroesPortal rules as soon as possible. Their own translation seems to be made from Google Translate so it can easily be misunderstood.

There are some other Heroes 2 tournaments to appear on the next week. HeroesPortal is a good old Russian resource which maintains the H1-6 tournament traditions for more than 10 years. It specializes on offline tournaments mostly (online tourneys for Heroes 3 are currently held on Heroesworld.ru, HotA online tourneys included).

So that I would like to see you active in some of the upcoming tourneys too. I'll be accompanying you there and providing translation help if needed - and everyone else is very welcome.


---

Steven Aus wrote:

Are you going to make it so that Ironfist and H3:SW take away most of heroes' movement points when they run or surrender?

I like the way H4 does it - if you have more than a few movement points you get automatically placed at a settlement that isn't blocked from where you're running or surrendering from, and reduced to two or three squares' worth of movement (or less), and if you had less you get none or what you run or surrendered with.

I think if you get attacked on another player's turn you get put back to the nearest unblocked settlement with that small amount of movement, and then when your turn comes up they get back to full movement. It's only a big deal when you run or surrender and then move on the same turn that you have to have minimum movement.

Would you consider having an option for running or surrendered heroes (and surrendered or basic armies) to automatically appear at the nearest settlement that is not the settlement they surrendered from (if they were in a defending siege)?

Unlike in H4, when you can have hero-less armies and you can block one town off to appear at another, you could just make the hero and army appear at the closest free square at or near the closest other settlement (or H2 castle only or H3 settlement with tavern only) if you want to prevent the hero escaping to places where you wouldn't be able to hire them back.

This would reduce the ability to run or surrender and be able to rehire at any of your H2 castles or H3 settlements with taverns anywhere on the map (which AFAIK is more important than the gold cost of hiring them back that you normally have to pay in H2 or H3, which is minimal in H2/H3 and a bit more expensive in fheroes2 for higher level heroes).

Steven Aus, currently Project Ironfist denies the movement points for every escaped/surrendered/defeated hero since it it a common practice in Heroes 2 tournaments. I don't know if it will be changed because it is convenient for everyone. The heroes available for hire are the same in every player's town and it's not likely to be changed because it's core H1-3 mechanics.

Concerning H3SW, we may consider this, but it's not of a high priority currently. The gameplay in H3SW is intended to be complex so this feature may have a chance to appear in future.

Thanks for your reply. I thought the way H4 did it was quite elegant, even if the tactic of blocking one settlement for running/surrendering/Town Gate spell perhaps was not predicted by the makers of the game. One other neat tactic in H4 was grabbing an artifact or treasure chest next to a monster group and then running to the nearest unblocked town (with no loss of troops), as well as using an expendable 1 unit army to pick up resources or treasure chests you didn't want to grant XP. At least there was no Town Portal or Dimension Door, which was a welcome improvement.

I agree that it would be too big a change for H2 Ironfist Standard, but could there be an option or a way to script it in? If not, no big deal. But it would be great for custom maps if you could intercept when a hero runs/surrenders/is defeated and then set rules for where that hero and his army is placed, or simply the nearest valid settlement (of player or ally) that is not the one the hero was defending in a siege.

Is there going to be any H3.5 commander-esque option in Ironfist?

I would think the option (either standard, or optional) would be a good match for H3:SW. We'll just see how it goes.

I think the Commander feature for both PI and Ironfist should go to the respective forums. Coincidentally, these forums need attention
The Commander feature for H3SW was discussed there. An idea of commanders for PI is welcome in the feature requests section. This forum engine doesn't seem to allow me to transfer posts which is terrible.

For now, let's wait for the results of both tournaments.

The next tournaments for Heroes 2 will start the next week. For now I will extend the section of Tournament Arena to feature also Heroes 1 tournaments. A pilot H3SW v0.8 beta tourney is also in plans.

I however do like how the forum gives you an option to modify your post when you starting writing one or editing your last one and newer post/s have been posted. That is a cool little option, and it appeared just then for my previous post.

If one can engage fight with ghosts only once that indeed makes my play illegal. But if the feeding occurs in the only time a ghost group is engaged, would it still be invalid? The trick would be to use mirror image for feeding (which as far as i know works). That way you can get even a single ghost to legion and thereafter killed for 20k experience in some 10 turns of a single battle.

Thing is, if you are engaged in a fight with a ghost party of 20 Ghosts, you will get only 400 xp for them regardless if they are fed up to 4000 Ghosts in the process of the battle and then killed. If you feed them and escape - then yes, the "nominal" amount of Ghosts will be recalculated in the game - but the tournament rules don't allow attacking them once again.

However, this specific rule with Ghost fighting is actual only for specific HeroesPortal tournaments: the Wild Lands and the Citadel of Heroes. Other tournaments (having other victory conditions) don't have this restriction.

Right. I got carried away by wild fantasies for a moment.

OK, had to try it with other ways. Got 73 days, and if you look at the final save, there is still exp left, suggesting that there was no need to wait as long. I am not used to save very often, but made a few ,if anyone interested.

Spoilers to logic: what ways there are to get exp on this map? Killing units and killing heroes/capturing towns. Killing enemy heroes or capturng town gives 500 (?) exp in bonus to monsters killed in the battle. So, the best way would be if AI would constantly give me heroes to kill and towns to capture. The AI however is dumb, and does not easily understand what he has to do. A singe phoenix seemed weak enough for AI to attack me, yet strong enough to give me win every time. Since only one town can be used to hire heroes and AI has problems with money income, the main dance was to change the owner of village(s) as often as possible.


dropbox savefile archive

Very impressive. First I thought about the same strategy, but I was too lazy to get things done so I sent a savegame just for quantity. I especially like the idea with sacrificing the towns including Lady Mylixel's home town to get more effective XP gain.

I insist you to participate in the next tournament session (next week) - you have awesome chances to demonstrate your skill and frankly, you're the first English-speaking contestant who showed such brilliant results which are not only comparable to some HeroesPortal maestros, but also are definitely able to prevail.