HOMM5 demo out

[screwtype]

I just tried a custom game. Dang it sucked. The AI was just sitting in its castle doing nothing but recruiting a humongous army. When I arrived I thought I could handle it, but it had like 1k of most units, 120 angels... No attacks, nothing just sitting there.

That doesn't sound good either. In fact it sounds quite worrying. How the heck are you going to conquer a town with that many units???

I neglected to mention in my previous post that although it took me a considerable time to finally find and conquer the enemy city at the opposite end of the map, I was suprised to find in my travels that virtually ALL the infrastructure I encountered on the way hadn't yet been conquered by the enemy. Was this done deliberately in the demo to give you the fun of conquering stuff for the first time yourself? I don't know, but again, it doesn't appear to say a lot for the AI.

In fairness though, it did conquer stuff after I had first conquered it, so it appears it was programmed simply not to attack neutrally held infrastructure. I'm just wondering though, was it only programmed this way for the sake of the demo, or is this going to be a feature of the game? Because if the AI doesn't attack neutrals, it's obviously going to considerably weaken its powers of expansion.

Then again, that might have been deliberately done to better balance the gameplay. But coming from an Age of Wonders background, where the AI goes for everything just like the human player, it does seem a little strange.

I hope the limitations is something put on by the demo, like you cant recruit more than 1 hero (in custom) not tavern etc.

Yeah, maybe it was specific to that scenario. But when you say you can only recruit one hero, I assume you mean you can't have more than two heroes total? Because you'd need at least one to hold the city and one to wander the map, wouldn't you?

[screwtype]

Finally played it just now. Everything was going well, until it crashed when I tried to leave the town I had captured. 15 minutes down the drain, grrrr.

Did your PC slow down horrendously around the demon town too? Mine practically slowed to a crawl.

Having just spent $800 upgrading my PC to an Athlon 64 3000+, a gigabyte of RAM, and a newish video card, I was kind of annoyed to see a game behaving the way games used to behave on my humble old 1 Gig Celeron. There's a sense that one never quite catches up, because the better the hardware gets, the sooner game developers are pushing the limits of the current hardware again so you end up having to run just to stay on the same spot.

BTW, how did you find the map scrolling? I found it so sluggish and unresponsive I was starting to rant at the screen toward the end, which is never a good sign!

The problem is you move the cursor to edge of the screen and nothing happens for a second, or two, then it starts to move. But then sometimes it decides it doesn't want to move at all, so you wait that couple of seconds and NOTHING HAPPENS. Then having run out of mouse mat, you have to reposition it and start all over again. I HATE that.

Now that I think of it, I might try zooming the map out a bit from the standard height. Maybe that will help a bit.

[Ironside]

I just tried a custom game. Dang it sucked. The AI was just sitting in its castle doing nothing but recruiting a humongous army. When I arrived I thought I could handle it, but it had like 1k of most units, 120 angels... No attacks, nothing just sitting there. I hope the limitations is something put on by the demo, like you cant recruit more than 1 hero (in custom) not tavern etc.

Yeah I tried that one too. Considering how important heroes are for recruiting, being limited to one hero sucks. Got lucky, as when I ran back to my city to recruit some troops from those extra troop buildings, the army ran out and started conquer stuff. The wierd part was when I stole the city, by running part the army. The comp didn't react to try to retake it so I won after a week.

BTW screwtype FYI the comp only got one hero too in this scenario and Sjakihata does seem to be a slow player, the army was bigger than mine but not by much and had 12 angels or something.

But then, the very next turn, what happens but the arch demon Agrael turns up with a humungous army at the doorstep of my newly conquered, weakly defended town - then simply rushes past on its way, presumably, to mount another futile attack on Dunmoor at the opposite edge of the map!

Yes, when the enemy ignores a crucial, weakly defended target like that, I think it safe to say the AI has a problem!

That particular incident has to do with the ending of the scenario. You can really bug out the ending though, I defeated Agrael and greeted Nicolai (sp?) and that cimematic still showed up.

I can think that the comp doesn't stay in the city because he doesn't consider victory possible even when defending the city. Thus fleeing with his army gives a small chance of taking another city. That it makes a horrendous option instead of poor option is a problem though.

[frogbeastegg]

Did your PC slow down horrendously around the demon town too? Mine practically slowed to a crawl.

Didn't even get that far. I wandered about for a few turns around the starting area of the first campaign scenario, killed a few stray creatures and collected some loot, then went for the first town I found, the one very close to the starting area with an ore mine in front of it. I captured the town, and the game crashed when I tried to leave after looking about and making a few build orders.

BTW, how did you find the map scrolling? I found it so sluggish and unresponsive I was starting to rant at the screen toward the end, which is never a good sign!

Mixed bag. On the default speed it was fine; I didn't have to adjust anything in the options. However, the game itself was slightly jerky and the camera didn't behave as I expected/wanted it to. Oh, I've found all the camera controls, but no way does it move as I expect, so often I find myself staring off in the wrong direction. The more I zoomed out the worse the jerkiness, the more I zoom in the harder it is to get the camera to behave.

I'm not excessively worried about the game's performance. Yet. It's a demo of a work in progress, and my drivers are possibly a bit old for a new and demanding game.

The comments about AI do worry me. Can only hope it improves in the release version; correctly or incorrectly I gather the game itself is still unfinished and that this demo is more of a taster for veterans than a demo to sell to the public.

[Sjakihata]

I am now convinced that the AI is being suppressed by the demo. In all other hmm series the AI has been (somewhat) challenging and Im sure it will in #5 as well.

Now, I get the slow down in the inferno area as well, seems like bad coding. The only reason Im going to buy this game, is Im a die-hard fan of it and I enjoy playing it.


Have you guys tried out MP yet, that is some serious fun. I find the elves and tower races to be the better ones, but I occasionally get a defeat. Im called Skafsgaard and usually in channel #2

[screwtype]

That particular incident has to do with the ending of the scenario. You can really bug out the ending though, I defeated Agrael and greeted Nicolai (sp?) and that cimematic still showed up.

Wait a minute, you're saying that graphics of Agrael and his minions running past the city is a cinematic? I didn't realise that, I thought it was in-game.

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what to do next in this scenario though. I've captured the demon town, got Godrick to exit the map to find Nicolai, but I'm still stuck in the same scenario and being told I have to "defend Dunmoor" from demon attacks. What demons? If that scene of Agrael running past was a cinematic, there are no demon armies left to kill!

Edit: You were right, from that point the cinematics basically take over. You've just got to hit "end turn" a few times to finish the cinematics. Odd way to structure it, but it works fine.

I can think that the comp doesn't stay in the city because he doesn't consider victory possible even when defending the city. Thus fleeing with his army gives a small chance of taking another city. That it makes a horrendous option instead of poor option is a problem though.

I don't know about that, I didn't have that big an army by that time myself. About all I had left was 100 squires and 30 inquisitors.

BTW, I really hate those succubi! Don't you hate the way they attack every unit whenever you hit them? They are wicked. If not for them my losses would be a lot less.

I like to stomp them with griffin battle dives though

[screwtype]

Didn't even get that far. I wandered about for a few turns around the starting area of the first campaign scenario, killed a few stray creatures and collected some loot, then went for the first town I found, the one very close to the starting area with an ore mine in front of it. I captured the town, and the game crashed when I tried to leave after looking about and making a few build orders.

Okay. I didn't get a single crash in about three evenings of playing so far. But whenever I enter a town and see all those fancy swirling 3D graphics, I can't help but expect a crash any moment. I guess years of gaming having taught me that Pavlovian response

Oh, I've found all the camera controls, but no way does it move as I expect, so often I find myself staring off in the wrong direction. The more I zoomed out the worse the jerkiness, the more I zoom in the harder it is to get the camera to behave.

I'm notoriously reluctant to explore a UI. It usually takes me six months to find some essential UI feature that would have made all the difference to gameplay, LOL.

I've just got no patience when it comes to learning new software. Just hop right in and hope for the best

I'm not excessively worried about the game's performance. Yet. It's a demo of a work in progress, and my drivers are possibly a bit old for a new and demanding game.

It's not that bad. But as I said to you on the GalCiv thread, I just have a thing about games that don't scroll efficiently. It could definitely be a lot smoother.

The comments about AI do worry me. Can only hope it improves in the release version; correctly or incorrectly I gather the game itself is still unfinished and that this demo is more of a taster for veterans than a demo to sell to the public.

Oh heck, I thought the game had been released. Oh well, I guess I can save my money a bit longer then

Yeah, I hope the AI is improved too. But my experience with RTW makes me suspect that what you see in the demo is pretty much what you end up with in the finished game.

[screwtype]

I am now convinced that the AI is being suppressed by the demo. In all other hmm series the AI has been (somewhat) challenging and Im sure it will in #5 as well.

Hope you're right about that.

The only reason Im going to buy this game, is Im a die-hard fan of it and I enjoy playing it.

Sounds like a pretty good reason to me

Have you guys tried out MP yet, that is some serious fun. I find the elves and tower races to be the better ones, but I occasionally get a defeat. Im called Skafsgaard and usually in channel #2

I don't do MP. I live on the other side of the planet and whenever I've tried MP the lag has just made it not worth bothering with. And it's hard to find local MP opponents.

[econ21]

In all other hmm series the AI has been (somewhat) challenging and Im sure it will in #5 as well.

Not in Homm4. The battle AI was fine. But the strategic AI was braindead. Camping in towns, not picking up resources/mines, not combining armies and leaders and - worse of all - committing hari-kiri by attacking too strong wandering monsters. On some maps the only sign I would see of the AI was the graves of its fallen leaders. The Homm5 AI sounds inauspiciously familiar.

[screwtype]

Actually, in the second scenario the AI is helping itself to the map goodies. So I guess the reason it didn't in the first is that it was programmed not to.

[Ja'chyra]

Can someone tell me type of game this is before I download the 600Mb

Is it the Dawn of War, gather resources type or the MTW type?

[Mithrandir]

Gah!

I've not read this whole thread, but it seems I've got the time to read this entire forum,do background research on every topic I come across and write a few essays on my findings as well...

downloading the demo...665MB!! The first game was like 50MB.I've played 1,2,3 and 4. Despite all the bad comments on part 4 I liked it. Part 1 was nice, but ofcourse not comparable to part 2 or 3. I can't wait for the download to be complete... 6% so far.

-Mithrandir.

[Mithrandir]

ok, just finished reading this thread.

27% downloaded in the meanwhile...

as for the chain of heroes, in HOMAM4 there was no need, not becuase you didnt need heroes to move your units, but because of the brilliant caravan invention. You could build a caravan building, with which you could move units from other towns (with caravans) and lose recruitment point much faster than any heroe could walk.

On MP possibility :cool. send me a PM when you see me online to contac me for a game (starting tomorrow when everything is downloaded and installed).

-Mithrandir.

ps: 30% (95k/s)

[Sjakihata]

Not in Homm4. The battle AI was fine. But the strategic AI was braindead. Camping in towns, not picking up resources/mines, not combining armies and leaders and - worse of all - committing hari-kiri by attacking too strong wandering monsters. On some maps the only sign I would see of the AI was the graves of its fallen leaders. The Homm5 AI sounds inauspiciously familiar.

Ah, didnt play that much in singleplayer mode

[Mithrandir]

Installed it, and when I try to play it, I get the title screen with the demonhead, and then an error...

any help please?

[econ21]

Can someone tell me type of game this is before I download the 600Mb

Is it the Dawn of War, gather resources type or the MTW type?

None of the above, really. One key feature is that it is turn-based - both the strategic map (like RTW) and also the battles. The strategic map is rather like RTWs but resource gathering is a big deal - you flag mines etc. Exploration is also a large part. A big attraction is finding the "goodies" - lots of cute or characterful little power-ups, resources, artifacts etc and fighting wandering monsters to get experience to level up your heroes. Underlying it also is a TW style mechanic of "build up your city, tech up your army, mobilise and conquer the AI". But the preparatory wandering round, picking up stuff etc is fun enough that some people did not notice or mind that the Homm4 strategic AI was braindead (the Homm3 was very sharp - better than RTW).

One you get to the battles, you zoom to another map. But it is very stylised, like a chessboard. You have only up to 7 stacks, but these can vary from one imp to 30 archangels. There is a fair amount of tactics involved in choosing your targets, sequencing, spells etc. The AI usually can do a good job here so typically the battles are decided before they are fought - the stronger army will usually prevail. You can't reliably trounce the AI with an inferior force as you can in TW, but then again the battles are nowhere near as realistic or exhilarating as MTW.

[Ironside]

Wait a minute, you're saying that graphics of Agrael and his minions running past the city is a cinematic? I didn't realise that, I thought it was in-game.

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what to do next in this scenario though. I've captured the demon town, got Godrick to exit the map to find Nicolai, but I'm still stuck in the same scenario and being told I have to "defend Dunmoor" from demon attacks. What demons? If that scene of Agrael running past was a cinematic, there are no demon armies left to kill!

Edit: You were right, from that point the cinematics basically take over. You've just got to hit "end turn" a few times to finish the cinematics. Odd way to structure it, but it works fine.

BTW, I really hate those succubi! Don't you hate the way they attack every unit whenever you hit them? They are wicked. If not for them my losses would be a lot less.

I like to stomp them with griffin battle dives though

The supposed structure of the ending is:
Godrick runs for help.
Agrael comes running.
Nicolai shows up. Agrael and Nicolai battles, the true cinematic starts.
It's easy to kill Agrael before Nicolai either shows up or before he faces Agrael and thus messing up the ending. You'll finish the mission but the storyline will be somewhat broken (and killing Agrael before Nicolai shows up seems to trigger the same cinematic every turn for a few turns before the final one comes).

Yeah I usually melee or battle dive on those succubus. The chain attack does has it disadvantage though, it works on every non-demon unit, even those in your own army.

Edit: Didn't take long to download the demo BTW. I had over 1 megabyte/sec the whole time . The gamershell link worked wonders.

[Blodrast]

I guess that the initiative-based system has been figured out so far - it's not new, it's been there before. Not entirely intuitive, if you don't know about it beforehand, I agree.

About the tactical battles - even if they may not be documented, key shortcuts should work (D = done, W = wait, S = stand/defend, etc.). Although it's conceivable that they changed some of these.

About not being able to recruit more heroes thingie: I recall reading that there are some limitations intentionally imposed on the number of heroes you can buy in the beginning, precisely to prevent people from just getting a bunch of heroes with 1 (symbolic) unit as their army for scouts, right from the start. You can buy more, but not an unlimited number in a day, even if you can afford it.
There may also be some hardcoded limitations because this is only the demo.

What I'd like to hear about is how difficult it is to navigate through the abilities/skills trees - they seemed even more convoluted than in homm4... But I assume that the demo doesn't let you get far enough with the development of a hero to figure that out...

[Ironside]

About not being able to recruit more heroes thingie: I recall reading that there are some limitations intentionally imposed on the number of heroes you can buy in the beginning, precisely to prevent people from just getting a bunch of heroes with 1 (symbolic) unit as their army for scouts, right from the start. You can buy more, but not an unlimited number in a day, even if you can afford it.
There may also be some hardcoded limitations because this is only the demo.

The first campaign mission gives you the recuiting speed of 2 heroes/day up to 8 (or possible 6 on the field). The other (non-campaign) mission has no taverns at all = no available heroes to recruit.

[Meneldil]

Installed the demo yesterday. At first sight, the game is great, it has a HoMM3 feeling, while using the good ideas of HoMM4, especially the interesting skills system.
The towns are beautifull, so are the musics. The heroes are cool, and it looks like each faction can get unique skills. Too bad we can only play with the most boring factions (where's my dungeon ?), even if Inferno is much more amusing now.

Unhappily, the AI seems quite weird. Although it's doing alright in the campaign (mostly because it's scripted), it seems to have frozen in the custom scenario. As said earlier, the hero just stayed in his town, hiring lots of units and waiting for the (awesome) final clash. I also hope the 2 heroes limit is either a demo stuff, or can be increased once you get new cities (I think a heroes limit, like 2 with your first city, and an additionnal one for each new city captured, would have a positive effect on the gameplay and would help the AI, who sometimes hired lots of heroes that wandered on the map just to bug the player).

And well, yeah, make sure to save your game regularly, as it often CTD's when you exit a town or end your turn.

[Mithrandir]

Installed it, and when I try to play it, I get the title screen with the demonhead, and then an error...

any help please?

Still nothing..reinstalling didn't work...bah.

[screwtype]

What are the specs on your system?

[Rosacrux redux]

This demo is a huge beast! 665 MB??? How am I going to dld it? I haven't got a bloody broadband... maybe it's time to get one, huh?

And... chaining is back? Merde... I find this huge exploit extremely boring, intimidating, and frankly a cheat... was about the only thing I liked in HOOM4, the fact that they removed chaining. And it's back in 5? That sucks.

Other than that, it sounds like loads of fun, although there is this consideration about the braindead AI. HOMM4 anyone? I've seen dumb AIs in many games, but this was the first katatonic AI I've encountered in a strategy game! I loved #3 and #2, taking out the uber-fishy chaining. Actually I never used chaining in single player, but had to in MP (otherwise I'd lose every single game...). You know, HOMM3 is about the single game I've played online? Those times...

[Mithrandir]

What are the specs on your system?

Acer
AMD sempron 3000+
2Ghz,480 MB

[screwtype]

What about your GFX card?

I assume you've updated your drivers?

And have you tried the HoMM V forums for technical assistance? I don't actually have the url of the official site, presumably it's on Ubisort somewhere. Other than that, I really can't be much help. Here's hoping you can get it sorted out.

[Blodrast]

I haven't dl'ed the demo, so I'm mostly shooting in the dark, but here's an idea: from the docs that the demo comes with (if any :P), or from the forums, are there any command line parameters that you can run the game with ? Sometimes these let you run with reduced functionality (low res from the start, no sound, etc), and that might at least let you start the game.

Alternatively, you can try to temporarily disable/deactivate any firewalls/anti-virus/anti-spyware software that you may have running - sometimes they don't let software write to the registry (although they should ask you) or do "dirty" things.
Normally, you should get warnings/errors, but I've personally had many cases where various games (or applications) wouldn't install or run because of my antivirus/firewall/whatever.

good luck.

[frogbeastegg]

But whenever I enter a town and see all those fancy swirling 3D graphics, I can't help but expect a crash any moment.

Heck, yes! That town was incredibly beautiful. I sat there watching the flyby for a minute or so, admiring the castle, the river, the little town, the sky ...

It's not that bad. But as I said to you on the GalCiv thread, I just have a thing about games that don't scroll efficiently. It could definitely be a lot smoother.

The mildly amusing thing is that in both games I haven't had any scrolling problems at all. I too despise slow scrolling.

Actually, though, I meant the performance issues I was having - the crash, the jerkiness.


Mith, a poor idea from a frog, but it may help. Have you got a firewall? Mine interrupted the demo as it loaded about that point, demanding to know what privilages the demo should have. That interruption has crashed me many a game before now. Best to set the privilages before launching the game.

[screwtype]

HOMM5 just went gold UK release date 18th May.

Mithrandir, in case you hadn't found it yet, here is the tech help page for HOMM5:

http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/frm/f/4611096804

[Mithrandir]

Thanks,

Where can I check what videocard I have?
And in the systemlog I got the following error :

00003625 Loaded UI Game Root
00005438 <color=green>AUTODETECTED: Unknown card, DX7 class hardware
00005438 <color=green>AUTODETECTED: Speed: 3 Texture: 0 FSAA: -1
00005438 Executing c:\program files\ubisoft\heroes of might and magic v\demo\Profiles\default_profile\input.cfg
00006641 Executing ..\Profiles\autoexec.cfg

And froggy, don't think I've got a firewall..

*ducks from all invading hack-attacks*

[econ21]

Mithrandir, there's a nice website that let's you check if your computer can run particular games (it's got the HommV beta as one):

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

It will tell you about your video card. But you also should be able to find out by going to the control panel and looking at the display options, under settings.