Heroes 6. What the hell, Ubisoft?!

[Amaror]

So i bought Heroes 6 in the steam sale.
There are a lot of common complaints around heroes fans about the game.
There are only 4 ressources left, including gold; Heroes get abilities and spells with an Ability tree; The City managment screen isn't as pretty or detailed as the one from Heroes 5, i think it didn't even exist in the release version; Population growth is always global, so you can access all your troops from one city as long as it has the right type.
But i didn't care as much about this stuff. When i want to play Heroes against other players or just an ai skirmish i usually always play Heroes 3, because it's simply still the best of all of them.

But i still really enjoyed the campaigns of Heroes 5, the missions were great fun and the story was pretty nice, too.
And now i come to the big complaint about Heroes 6. The Balance. You won't believe it, the game has the most horrible balance i have ever seen in any game.
Keep in mind: This is the singleplayer campaign i am talking about. YES, they actually managed to screw up the balance in the singleplayer campaign.
The big issue is that the AI is stupid as hell, which wouldn't be too horrible, but ubisoft knew this and lets them cheat. Like crazy. I wouldn't mind if they just got more ressource, like in Heroes 5 for example, but they get way more troops, too.
So you often end up in a situation were you own the entire map except one city and the enemy still produces more troops then you. That's rediculous. Plus before that the enemy keeps spawning giant armys out of thin air. While i am good at the combat when i keep having to fight armies that have 3 times as many troops as me, i will loose pretty fast too.
It's just incredible, the game is out for a fu***** year and allready has an expansion and it's practicly not possible to beat the first(!!!) level of the necro campaign in a normal way on easy.

I looked online and many people say that you have to basically rush through the levels, just focussing on capturing cities and nothing else. But i don't want to have to do that. That's not fun to play at all.

Sorry about the rant, guys, but i just had to vent a little. It's particullary frustrating because i actually really liked the story in the game. (Well at least the beginning)

 

[DoPo]

So i bought Heroes 6 in the steam sale.
There are a lot of common complaints around heroes fans about the game.

As a person who somewehat liked the game, I'd just like to address each of the points and talk about them.

There are only 4 ressources left, including gold;

I've got mixed feelings about this. On one hand, managing your lumber, gems, sulphur, etc was a big thing in all previous Heroes games and was quite cool, too. But after playing the H6 demo and liking the feel of it, I started wondering - is it really needed. I still don't know. I mean it comes down to the games having a very different focus - H6 is more light on the overmap management aspect, which is not exactly bad, but certainly slightly different.

At any rate, the change fits within H6. Also, I like that it balances out the races a bit, as in H3 the resource requirements were all over the place - I never play Tower, for example due to the insane resource expenditure needed there, while I still maintain Castle is too easy and it's partly because of the low resources needed for them (it's pretty much just gems).

Heroes get abilities and spells with an Ability tree;

This is great! No more praying to the RNG to get an OK character. H3 and H5 are both my favourite Heroes games and they both fail here - in H3, there were skills that were simply useless - you would never want to touch them ever, others were not entirely useless but not desirable most of the times as they had very little benefit - however, due to the RNG, you might get stuck with something you don't want or even need, while something that you, you don't even get to pick. In H5 they did a good job of boosting the abilities - most were good, however the complexity introduced was too much. I cannot play the game without consulting the skill wheel - not possible to plan otherwise. And the complexity increases the chance of you not getting the skills you don't want.

In H6 you just get a skill point and allocate it wherever you please. It's good - cut out the RNG and now you can get more deep into actual strategies for skill builds and this base your play more heavily on them.

The City managment screen isn't as pretty or detailed as the one from Heroes 5

I hated the city screen in H5. Yeah - it's the city in 3D and stuff, and you can turn around but it was simply too detailed. Yes, I do complain about that - it is so vast that it gets to the point you can't actually use it. The buildings are scattered all over the place, some you may not see if you moved your view, and hunting down the correct thing to click on becomes a chore. The menu in the bottom corner was how I did everything, as it actually gives you the option to access what you want when you want it - something the city screen fails to do. H3 had the right idea - get a landscape picture with clickable prominent items on it. Simple and useful. Now, true - the screen wasn't there in the beginning, but at least the city was usable, if a bit on the ugly side but then it managed to get the best things of both H3 and H5 - you get a picture of the city with an alternative easy to use menu to manage it.

Population growth is always global, so you can access all your troops from one city as long as it has the right type.

Again, mixed feeling on this but I'm largely in favour. No more requirement for Town Portal or such crap to use your cities that are out of the way. And also - they can be better defended, too. The caravan mechanic in H5 was good but not entirely enough - I feel this is better. It also plays on the aspect the game wants to emphasise more - your troop management.

And now i come to the big complaint about Heroes 6. The Balance. You won't believe it, the game has the most horrible balance i have ever seen in any game.
Keep in mind: This is the singleplayer campaign i am talking about. YES, they actually managed to screw up the balance in the singleplayer campaign.
The big issue is that the AI is stupid as hell, which wouldn't be too horrible, but ubisoft knew this and lets them cheat. Like crazy. I wouldn't mind if they just got more ressource, like in Heroes 5 for example, but they get way more troops, too.
So you often end up in a situation were you own the entire map except one city and the enemy still produces more troops then you. That's rediculous. Plus before that the enemy keeps spawning giant armys out of thin air. While i am good at the combat when i keep having to fight armies that have 3 times as many troops as me, i will loose pretty fast too.
It's just incredible, the game is out for a fu***** year and allready has an expansion and it's practicly not possible to beat the first(!!!) level of the necro campaign in a normal way on easy.

I looked online and many people say that you have to basically rush through the levels, just focussing on capturing cities and nothing else. But i don't want to have to do that. That's not fun to play at all.

Sorry about the rant, guys, but i just had to vent a little. It's particullary frustrating because i actually really liked the story in the game. (Well at least the beginning)

Bah, I won't lie - the campaign is dreadful in terms of gameplay. Now, there are times in previous games where the AI has popped up with troops it literally could not possess and playing the campaign is like this but all the damn time. However, the story is nice, or at least OK. I'd say better than other Heroes games, even, though a bit cliche. What I did was, I used a trainer to give myself essentially infinite resources. Note that even then, I had battles I almost lost - heck, I had to resort to other features of the trainer, like resurrecting troops because of the fact that I'd even get Pyrrhic victories that would cripple me. I seriously suggest doing the same - the campaign almost feels like playing a roguelike otherwise.

 

[Amaror]

Bah, I won't lie - the campaign is dreadful in terms of gameplay. Now, there are times in previous games where the AI has popped up with troops it literally could not possess and playing the campaign is like this but all the damn time. However, the story is nice, or at least OK. I'd say better than other Heroes games, even, though a bit cliche. What I did was, I used a trainer to give myself essentially infinite resources. Note that even then, I had battles I almost lost - heck, I had to resort to other features of the trainer, like resurrecting troops because of the fact that I'd even get Pyrrhic victories that would cripple me. I seriously suggest doing the same - the campaign almost feels like playing a roguelike otherwise.

I honestly never had ressource problems ever. Although i didn't play it THAT much. What my problem is is that i am getting near to no troops every week, while the ai seems to spawn a huge deathstack everytime it gets bored. Which is all the time!
The fact that ubisoft hasn't fixed this is just pathetic.

 

[DoPo]

Bah, I won't lie - the campaign is dreadful in terms of gameplay. Now, there are times in previous games where the AI has popped up with troops it literally could not possess and playing the campaign is like this but all the damn time. However, the story is nice, or at least OK. I'd say better than other Heroes games, even, though a bit cliche. What I did was, I used a trainer to give myself essentially infinite resources. Note that even then, I had battles I almost lost - heck, I had to resort to other features of the trainer, like resurrecting troops because of the fact that I'd even get Pyrrhic victories that would cripple me. I seriously suggest doing the same - the campaign almost feels like playing a roguelike otherwise.

I honestly never had ressource problems ever. Although i didn't play it THAT much. What my problem is is that i am getting near to no troops every week, while the ai seems to spawn a huge deathstack everytime it gets bored. Which is all the time!
The fact that ubisoft hasn't fixed this is just pathetic.

No, it's not about resource problems - it's about building up your armies almost at the same rate as the AI. See, apparently what the AI does is along the lines of this - it's getting a lot of army and if you have more (or over some amount - not sure), the AI gets a bonus. It also gets further bonuses every few weeks. So even if you manage to overall be on par with the AI in terms of troops, you certainly won't manage to keep it up all the time, due to the large influx of creatures it gets. The only way to actually manage that is either by blitzing through the maps, which might actually land you in some hot water towards the end, if you do the wrong decision in week 3 or something, or you might miss some legendary weapon, too. Or you could just get wiped by chance if you take the wrong turn and go towards the place you should be going later. It's really either this or vastly outmatching the pace of the AI, which is somewhat doable at the start of each campaign and even then only for a limited time on the map itself - the AI can still overwhelm you if you take too long.

So I introduced a new way - getting an assload of resources, so you don't need to spend extra time picking them up (this normally DOES slow you down significantly enough for the AI) and you also get vastly more army than you're supposed to. Sure, the AI would get a bonus for it but it's not as significant as the "oh shit, it's too late" one.