Hero strategies - Viable?

[RodriguesCIA]

Do hero strategies work on this mod? How would you guys do hero strategies? I've been tinkering, and so far, the conclusion I arrived at is that my usual pump up normal units strategy seems far superior. Despite heroes being quite buffed, good artifacts seem just too expensive. For a mediocre artifact, I waste enough mana and turns to buff up an entire stack.

[Seravy]

Yes, hero strategies are (still) the most powerful. Even without a good sword, my Paladin hero is killing great drakes in a single hit in the game I'm playing right now. I usually use whichever items I find, and only make items to fill the holes or when something is absolutely necessary like flight or invisibility.

[Nelphine]

While I suspect they're very strong, I'd be hesistant to say the strongest. Mass normal units with strong buffs just don't appear to be something the computer can deal with. (But I haven't tried heroes in a while. I'm busy trying to find any spells that I can play with anywhere near the effectiveness of halberdiers + buffs.)

[namad]

The question doesn't really make sense. Heroes improve normal units :-p

Yeah, on hard settings casting create artifact is probably a waste, just steal the artifacts from a cheating ai, or find them in nodes/ruins. Imo create artifact and enchant item are almost never worth casting for me ever (unless in MoM you're exploiting it for infinite mana)

Heroes cost you less than most normal units would, there's no real reason you wouldn't use them, although personally I prefer supporting heroes over attacking heroes, it just depends on the books you've got.

A "hero" strategy is something like taking tactican and famous retorts both, which seravy has tested and says is good, but I haven't personally done. Too all-in for me.

Otherwise why wouldn't you just use heroes every game? Feel free to reject the ones that don't fit with your strategy, my favorite low tier heroes are all mages because they can support my normal units. Although if you're playing with buffing books the attacking heroes can be good too.
A high level hero though is the strongest unit in the game. By a large margin.

[Nelphine]

I dunno. A unit of magic immune, flying, true sight, 6 figure, melee 23, ranged 5, flame breath 9, defense 21, 9 health, resistance 18 hammerhands is pretty disgusting.

Although I haven't figured out how to get the units health higher than a hydra yet.

And unlike heroes, I can get multiple stacks of the hammerhands.

[Seravy]

I dunno. A unit of magic immune, flying, true sight, 6 figure, melee 23, ranged 5, flame breath 9, defense 21, 9 health, resistance 18 hammerhands is pretty disgusting.

Although I haven't figured out how to get the units health higher than a hydra yet.

And unlike heroes, I can get multiple stacks of the hammerhands.

This does sound pretty amazing, especially as ranged and fire breath are mutually exclusive on a unit :D
Joking aside that's probably as good as a hero, except for these things :
-It's vulnerable to dispel magic and dispelling wave. Items on heroes are not. Yes, Spell Lock exists but dispel can and will be used twice eventually.
-It doesn't move 10+ tiles in a turn both overland in combat. Combat is especially problematic as it gives plenty of time for your opponent to cast nasty spells. Or for their units to just walk away from your hammerhands.
-It won't buff your entire army and won't cast spells (though not every hero does that)
-You can't make it ignore armor or have abilities from realms you do not have. For example you won't have Wraith Form on it to protect from Crack's Call if you don't play Death, while on artifacts you'll eventually find it. Same can be said for Regeneration, assuming you are playing Life+Sorcery only, with 3 realms the risk of not getting important spells is too high.
-A hero can easily reach +7 to hit. A normal unit, probably stuck on +2, or 3 if you have prayer.
-If a hero dies and you raise dead it, you lost nothing. If a buffed unit dies, you probably won't even bother to raise it, as enchantments will be lost anyway.

I think the main problem with the buffing strategy is, the needed spells are in 4 realms if you want something as good as a hero. Chaos for boosting attack, Life for most buffs, Sorcery to keep it alive, and Nature for regeneration and iron skin.
The other problem, casting all of this on a unit costs like, idk, 1500 mana? At that price there are other options that might work just as well without being vulnerable to dispelling.
That said, buffing normal units is a very strong strategy, but heroes are move versatile and cheaper (unless you want to create artifacts with maxed stats in every slot). Also when they die you can keep the artifacts and reuse them unless you lose the entire battle.

[Nelphine]

True enough. My point was more that buffed Nirmal units are stronger, although heroes are certainly stronger for a more reasonable investment.

[Nelphine]

Also, chaos channels (with breath ) plus focus magic is currently valid. Not sure if that's intended, but my hammerhands did have both. And those ones had.. I want to say +4 to hit and -1 to enemy defend? And yeah, I think I had 18 books (plus 6 retorts) in that game. But, just like heroes, you don't need the full investment to make them work. Even just a few life books and 2 books from one other realm, is plenty to make monstrous hammerhands.

And while I had no death, stacks of 9 with flight mean I didn't really care about cracks call.

I think that's the single best thing. You only get 6 heroes, but you can have as many stacks of 9 hammerhands as you have time to buff.

[namad]

Also, chaos channels (with breath ) plus focus magic is currently valid. Not sure if that's intended, but my hammerhands did have both. And those ones had.. I want to say +4 to hit and -1 to enemy defend? And yeah, I think I had 18 books (plus 6 retorts) in that game. But, just like heroes, you don't need the full investment to make them work. Even just a few life books and 2 books from one other realm, is plenty to make monstrous hammerhands.

And while I had no death, stacks of 9 with flight mean I didn't really care about cracks call.

I think that's the single best thing. You only get 6 heroes, but you can have as many stacks of 9 hammerhands as you have time to buff.

Breath and ranged attack are supposed to take up the same slot. If this is a bug, and if it needs to be fixed, what's the correct result? nothing happens when cast focus magic? The unit gets +3 breath damage? or the unit's breath attack is converted into a magical ranged attack?

[Nelphine]

No I went and checked. The focus magic switches to boosting the breath, and the ranged attack disappears.