u/huydinh282

I was always under the impression that in homm 3-5, a fully econ’d town can sustain itself, i.e., can buy all units every week without external gold mines. Whereas for OE it seems you need two towns to sustain the growth of one. So I gathered some data.

In HOMM 3, Castle, you need 4,225 per day, while a capitol town will give 4,000. Very close to self sufficient. Rampart needs 3,800, so well above self sufficient.

In OE schism, you need 6,500 gold a day to fully buyout all upgraded units. A full econ town will give 5,500 (1,000 main building, 1,500 from bonus choice, 1,000 from bank, 2,000 from treasury).

Right off the bat you’re running quite short in OE. Compounding to this is the fact that treasury is a very expensive building, requiring 15 rare resources, while the econ building in h3 only requires common resources, and only gold in h5. Additionally, external gold mine contributes less now, 1/6 of required income instead of 1/4 like in homm3.

This means that in normal situations you might be getting only half of the required gold, requiring you to selective drop a lot of units, unless the game goes into multiple months and you start with lots of resources.

I do like this change, and it forces you to pick a comp instead of buying everything. Any thoughts on how this would change gameplay and strategy?

The previous season finale of The Boys teased a sweeping upset of the stakes - only for the new season to revert to status quo. The team is back to business again and it’s back to villain of the week.

This is in stark contrast to Pantheon’s commitment to its plot-line. In S2 we get to see how drastically the world has changed without the internet, and how Maddie is forced to deal with the loss of her father. Casper is never really brought back after his sacrifice, and when he was, his relationship with Maddie was not the same anymore. And then the finale!

I think a hallmark of good writing is that the world and the characters realistically react and cope with the changes brought about by the plot. It takes a lot of skill and understanding of the previous world-building and relationships to ‘model’ it accurately and create something meaningful. It’s easy to raise the stakes… not so much to follow it through.

I’ve been working towards beating 200%/apocalyptic AI in a few different templates. Some of them are quite fun, especially where you don’t have to meet the AI in the first 2 weeks.

The issue for me is in templates where early fights are forced (exodus), or really poor templates where the combination of starting economy and 200% neutral squad really forces you to dick around without doing anything meaningful for the first week.

Thinking of doing custom game difficulty. Any thoughts on the settings to make it both challenging and fun?

I’m a casual fan of the series, and just managed to beat 200% for the first time by the skin of my teeth.

I loaded in the AI’s pov to see how it did better than me, and lo and behold… it did not. Uncleared camps, uncaptured dwellings, artifacts lying near the road, idle army stationed in towns.

Really took the wind out of my celebratory mood. The bonuses and cheats helped it build up a strong army, but seeing what it left behind really outlines how suboptimal it plays the overworld. Mistakes in building heroes, tempo, timing is a lot more palatable than this.