This game is kind of ruined by the hero aspect

[The Coal Man]

Seriously, does no one hate losing an entire game (and having to redo the last hour) by having 3 units die out of your 200 unit army? Its makes sense in the RPG maps but in the other 80% of the campaign its a completely garbage mechanic. Give me penalties when they die, make my economy weaker, whatever, but dont make me completely lose just because a few of my "heroes" die in a massive fight.

I love both the RPG and the RTS game genres but this mechanic ruins for me what would otherwise be an amazing game. Its pure idiocy to force me to constantly babysit a handful of units that are supposed to be the best but in reality are the sole reason I lose the game 99% percent of the time. I play on hard and at this point I am specificly making army groups that exclude my heroes (because the devs didnt include this obvious feature) since any fight that is not a complete slaughter of the enemy means I could end up losing the entire game if a couple of units happen to take too much damage.

Its almost as if every single game is an "escort" mission, where I am force to walk braindead AI through waves of enemies whos only goal is to kill them, yet I am required to carry these braindead AI with me to accomplish any objective, no matter how small. A truly trash mechanic that I cant believe was playtested above easy difficulty, looking away for 5 seconds should clearly not force an instant loss in a game where matches against the AI can last for hours on end with constant meaningless skirmishes throughout the entire thing. Why not just add a penalty or prevent me from reviving the hero until I can reclaim them? Feels like the instant loss is just a lazy "new" mechanic to make it different from other games with a hero/general..

[NeoX]

Originally posted by Coleron:

Seriously, does no one hate losing an entire game (and having to redo the last hour) by having 3 units die out of your 200 unit army? Its makes sense in the RPG maps but in the other 80% of the campaign its a completely garbage mechanic. Give me penalties when they die, make my economy weaker, whatever, but dont make me completely lose just because a few of my "heroes" die in a massive fight.

I love both the RPG and the RTS game genres but this mechanic ruins for me what would otherwise be an amazing game. Its pure idiocy to force me to constantly babysit a handful of units that are supposed to be the best but in reality are the sole reason I lose the game 99% percent of the time. I play on hard and at this point I am specificly making army groups that exclude my heroes (because the devs didnt include this obvious feature) since any fight that is not a complete slaughter of the enemy means I could end up losing the entire game if a couple of units happen to take too much damage.

Its almost as if every single game is an "escort" mission, where I am force to walk braindead AI through waves of enemies whos only goal is to kill them, yet I am required to carry these braindead AI with me to accomplish any objective, no matter how small. A truly trash mechanic that I cant believe was playtested above easy difficulty, looking away for 5 seconds should clearly not force an instant loss in a game where matches against the AI can last for hours on end with constant meaningless skirmishes throughout the entire thing. Why not just add a penalty or prevent me from reviving the hero until I can reclaim them? Feels like the instant loss is just a lazy "new" mechanic to make it different from other games with a hero/general..

You should play SpellForce 2 skirmish. There the heroes were handled like special units and you had to pay huge amounts of lenya to summon them and after they died you had to "reproduce"/summon them again with the same amount of lenya to pay for them.

Because of the sector-system of the SF3 series, you always need a hero or you can not get any new sectors. Many are not happy with that design/gameplay design and abandened the series because of it.

[Brother PaciFist]

Nobody forces you to spearhead the attack of your army with your heroes. That works on normal and easy difficulty. You could even only use heroes on most maps if you are quick and have the right builds on normal and easy. The enemy units mostly target normal army units before your heroes. Even town centers do that. You do not loose instantly when you loose your heroes. You can revive them with your own heroes. And you have 4 resurrection points to respawn. You only loose if you have no respawn points left and your mc dies.

I did play on normal difficulty and the AI in the campaign seems to ignore resources and just spam like crazy in the first part of the game. After a while the waves stop coming. On its own merits the AI in this game seems to be completely handicapped. It can only become a threat if it gets insane amount of free resources.

On the higher difficulties you just get flooded with hundreds of units. The worth of your hero units diminishes with the difficulty boni the AI gets. 1 hero on easy or normal is quite strong. But against the hundres of units on circle mage, heroes are less and less powerfull. Healers and buffers are still very strong on those difficulties or a excellent tank. But you have to babysit your heroes all the time and build up your economy and your army at the same time. That is hard to do for many players including me.

Conclusion:
The hero mechanic is fine on normal. On higher difficulties you have to adapt to the difficulty. That is a very normal thing to do in a RTS game. The artificial difficulty is a normal thing too. I do not know any game that does not use extreme boni for the AI to win. Age of Empire 2 definitive addition is the only game i know that does not rely on heavy resource advantages for the AI. But the AoE AI is still omnipotent (can kite your units and fire like a god)and omniscient (knows the map and your units/buildings location from the get go, knows your unit composition). It is very hard to develope an AI that does not cheat AND is a challenge for human players at the same time.

[Paraleo]

I think the number of blood droplets is punishing in hard and circle mage, on top of making any gear you have useless because of the resistance penalties you and your armies get.

[Vaylor]

I always just rush the enemy base down on all of the maps with only my heroes. The only buildings I build are a few of the food production, then spam the default unit with the base because why not. After beating the enemy, you can go around the map and collect all the quests and bonus loot. A few of the maps can seem daunting at first, but if you rush fast enough the enemy never gets anything going for them really. This is on circle mage also.

[The Coal Man]

I might knock it down from the hard difficulty based on what you guys are saying. I prefer a hard RTS experience but only having 2 respawns is really killing it for me when my heroes bleed out in about 5 seconds (theres something reducing their bleed out time but im not sure what). Either that or just replace everyone with something tanky, I went with the standard RPG party composition and it seems to be too much microing to keep aggro and the tank and the squishy ones alive (since they seem to end up in melee despite being ranged heroes). Doesnt really seem necessary in this game anyway, as far as I can tell a unit can cast just as well in heavy armor as in robes so anything can be a tank.

[Paraleo]

for the dark elf one of the talents makes him bleed even faster, forgot what. Yeah on harder difficulties playing with melee it is definitely harder than with the ranged or the mages, especially on rts missions.

[Avarice]

Originally posted by Coleron:

I might knock it down from the hard difficulty based on what you guys are saying. I prefer a hard RTS experience but only having 2 respawns is really killing it for me when my heroes bleed out in about 5 seconds (theres something reducing their bleed out time but im not sure what). Either that or just replace everyone with something tanky, I went with the standard RPG party composition and it seems to be too much microing to keep aggro and the tank and the squishy ones alive (since they seem to end up in melee despite being ranged heroes). Doesnt really seem necessary in this game anyway, as far as I can tell a unit can cast just as well in heavy armor as in robes so anything can be a tank.

If you have Demonology you get a perk that increases damage for quite a bit in exchange of lowering your bleedouttime.

[GhostDragon/Uselesfear]

How they even die to begin with?
My heroes never die even if I solo the mission just with them....