Hero usefulness, and races.

[mordo]

Id be interested in hearing how others use and rate their Heroes and races.

Hero wise, i rate Priests with aura of heal at top, closely followed by Warriors, in particular those that can wear Helmet of guard. (Ice/fire resist +20)
And then whatever has some strength/stamina for remaining slots.

I nearly always use Heroes as one 5 men group, and primarily for camping.

Race wise is not as clear cut, i really like Troll hurlers with ice upgrade, strong and with high stamina, but require hours to gather stone, iron, and food.
Materials that tend to be scarce, they work best in conjunction with Orcs for food and iron production.

Ork totems work like a charm If they have a tank in front to absorb attacks, like myself or later the Titan. Fast to gather resources and low demand on resources, has boar breeding for infinite food production.
Vulnerable vs spell casters, most notably in the Rift, where they must be lined up on hold to just barely reach/fry monsters attacking the tank.
Actually only works well with Hold command.

Elf Windarchers with ice strike upgrade combined with Druids works very well, and production as well as consumption is very manageable, except for food production.

Human & Dwarf, well, i use them and it works, not more and not less, i use mostly distance fighters
like the other races.

Dark elf, Warlocks are very strong vs very few very high lv monsters, and Havoc is the best there is vs relatively low lv monsters, most notably the shadows in firefangs, where a group of just 8-10 Havocs on hold can defend a fire over night, the spectres frying any shadow gettting close. But useless vs high lv monsters.
Tricky for camping tho, as they produce skeletons that will destroy the spawn if in proximity.

[Androdion]

I always use heroes with a lot of variants. Avatar and troops level vs hero level, hero abilities/spells, hero ability to use specific armour, the usefulness of each hero in the group as a separate unit. For instance in BoW I tend to use the Lv.13 healer for a long time even though I can use Lv.17+ heroes because he's the only one in range with AoH and he can use the set that makes auras cost less. I normally ignore Mentalists and Elementalists unless they have Fire/Ice spells, specially Ice. Between Warriors and Fighters there isn't much difference as between Rangers with crossbow/bow, it depends on which is the best equipment I have for them. I like having a priest with me all the time if possible, if I can't I try to have some mages with Boons auras such as Strength/Endurance/Regeneration to compensate. Again I use it that way in BoW.

This works more efficiently below Lv.30 though. When in SotP heroes become real big real fast and normally it's easier to have just melee than mages or healers, but it depends on who or what your up against.

As to races I could write a whole dissertation about them! Light races are all pretty decent alone but every one has major flaws. Humans are the only race that can't fight well at night which is a big disadvantage, their better units are very resource consuming (Paladins) and their mages suck! Elves have magic as their middle name and boy are they good! Archers, plated melee and mages all with ice spells... Beware any Dark one that approaches. Now seriously they have two major flaws, one is that they're still pretty weak in terms of stamina and then there's the whole "I need iron as there would be no tomorrow" thing. Dwarves are resilient as hell, for me they're the toughest race alongside Trolls, but with much better design and playability. The downside is that they're a race of small time (pun intended ) melee fighters with no magic at all and only one ranged unit, and that's only true if you purchase the upgrade. In conclusion if you're playing individually with any of these races there will be times where you'll cringe as to why there is that or the other limitation, because they do show up! Now if you happen to play with two of the races, let's say Dwarves + Elves then prepare to have the time of your life as they compliment themselves as no other races do! And if you happen to play with all three, in Co-op for instance, then it will be a blast to choose which units to produce on an "only" 80 units army!

Dark Races now. Personally apart from DE I find them all pretty weak as compared to Light ones. They too have major flaws but the thing is they're much more noticeable than on the Light ones. Orks are pretty weak, they only have three decent units which are Totem, Fireblaster and Veteran. They have no ranged units at all (read rangers) which is compensated by strong mages but they're pretty weak in melee since they use pretty much wood for everything. They're comparable to Elves in terms of race design but Elves take much more advantage of Iron and have more different and balanced units. Then you have the mighty Trolls. Mighty and dumb as hell... They're not that bad but it's a pain to play them as they're very resource intensive and their units take a long time to be built. Champion units take forever actually. They don't have mages, but do have a lot of magic upgrades for weapons. They do have some of the best ranged units, Thrower and Hurler with their Fire and Ice upgrades slash through armies pretty hard. They're comparable to Dwarves and this is a though choice to make as they're much alike in terms of power/resilience.

And finally the DE! The most advanced race of Eo IMO. They're the best, most elegantly designed, most powerful, best balanced race in the game...considering you have an almost infinite amount of resources! This is their major flaw, they're resource intensive on everything. And I mean everything! Apart from that they have some of the best, if not truly the best, units in the game. Even the Assassin unit which is the base of the food chain and the "simplest" unit in the army is a pretty decent unit. IIRC apart from sorcerers every other unit has an upgrade, normally an ability, which makes DE a fearsome race. Once you've spent enough resources to make all upgrades you'll find that slashing through the enemy with a DE army is as easy as cutting butter with a hot knife. They're that good! Havocs for me are simply the best unit in the game, they're so amazing. I've never tried an army of Havocs because it would take forever to produce them and gather enough resources, but I have heard other users claiming they did, and I can only imagine the outcome. They're very good in melee and apart from that they summon Specters with Pain spell. They lack ranged units, true, but with so many magic abilities you won even notice it. You have Sorcerers (Pain), Warlocks (Death) and melee units Darkblades (Lifetap), Necromancers (Undead Goblin with Lifetap), Havocs (Specter with Pain)...So what do you want more?! Apart from a mountain of Moonsilver of course!

In the end DE are the only race that stands in their two feet without the need of support from another race. Every other one in the game needs support from another race to excel, be it in gathering resources or covering design flaws. DE don't need that. Maybe that's the reason why they're so elitists!

[mordo]

I think you will appreciate Trolls more if you build 7+ maces, it'll produce fighters as fast as any other race. (many food stores helps mana users, like totem)
I was in awe of DE both in echo swamps, where lv 3 warlocks fried lv 20 frogs,
and even more in firefangs, where a mere 8 Havocs on hold command can fend off shadows AFK over night, warlocks making short work of fire angel.

But they let me down badly in mosaik in SotP, two full armies was crushed by the mummies/skeletons, i used warlocks and battlemasters, as spectres couldn't hurt those high lv monsters, in fact i couldn't notice any particular impact from warlocks even. and that's sayin something.
Not until i built as many mind towers as could be fitted, and then squeezed in sorcery towers between the mind towers was one DE army almost enough. That's beside i handled the top of mosaik alone.

Elves at half strength (40) worked better there, and worked better vs the goblin water thieves too.
Totems would likely be useless there, but perhaps branders could work, havn't got much experience with those.

[Free Flinker]

There are some more faults with DE's IMO. Such as the warlock, for example, becomes a spider on death. That spider is not only weak but takes up a troop slot and for the same aria cost as the upgrade you could have 4 more warlocks. I have mentioned before that DE towers seem to have a slower RoF to me. I can't prove it but it seems that way to me. Having two types of tower can almost be a drawback when one does no damage while being undeniably beneficial to build - they work well together but it does limit your tower fire power somewhat and of course they're expensive.

Trolls and DE's we've discussed once before, Androdion, with other people. Trolls are awkward to build, owing to the space that their buildings take up and the disadvantage of their food production, which could have changed but did have some sort of bug that meant you had to micro food collection. As you say, units take some time to build too. Of course, you could improve production speed but only you can fit another of that building type in there.

Orcs, fully agree with your assessment.

With the light races, I could happily avoid human units if the other two races are available. But then I like to turtle, with archers and towers positioned behind a row of meleers. Humans are well-rounded IMO, just not as good at specific roles as elves or dwarves. I'd say that they were suited to playing as a solo race on a map but they aren't, not particularly. That's because I'm just as happy to play dwarves or elves solo. Humans are the most versatile food producers, better even than DE's IMO, who might lose building space to troll architecture.

Then again, map design is an important part of this. If the map contains only one race then it'll be built so you can play that race well enough. If it's built for more races it's a little trickier, balance-wise, but you can usually hold out with towers and heroes until you can build your favourite units. Same for any map really, since SF1 tends to supercede units you gain earlier in the game with better versions of melee, ranged and magic units you get later. They may cost more to build or you might even have to wait until the next race becomes available but I've never had a problem in avoiding units I don't really want (and if I do build weaker units I usually end up hitting K on them to make room for better). Once some defences are in place you can usually take your time, adding to that defence as resources become available.

For that reason alone, any race can stand on it's own two feet, assuming the map is built for that one race. If it can't then the player did something wrong or the map was badly built. You might struggle a bit with dwarves, owing to having no towers so it's a bit of a change if towers are what you're used to. Similarly, you might struggle with trolls due to them requiring more space to build and more time to get the army you want. They aren't insurmountable obstacles, though, and can even be a fun change of pace. The only race I wouldn't choose to play are orcs but if all you have are orcs on a campaign map then it's not really that bad. Says nothing for the race, only for the overall map design but there's no escaping that. It's not like SF1 was built as a PvP game so map design takes on the aspect of most important balance factor IMO - a race can suck, as long as the map you play it on compensates for that.

As for heroes, I tend to pick ones that most compliment my current skill-set, irrespective of level. At least until lower level heroes start getting killed too fast or their low level abilities start to become marginal. I don't think any hero skill is essential though, unless you count needing one with the ability to use a ranged weapon at the end of BoW but even that's not necessary if your avatar has RCA.

[Androdion]

Yep I agree that map plays an important role on the assessment you have of each race. Each map is made for a certain race and that depends on the part of the campaign you're at. Don't get me wrong, all races can stand on their feet and are playable without support on maps, what I meant to say about DE being best is that they're the one race that doesn't need support in terms of...well, anything really! Elves need support for collecting Iron but "create" wood and are the fastest one collecting it, Humans (as you say) produce food like no other race, Dwarves excel on melee but fall short on everything else, Trolls are, well Trolls and Orcs are the least interesting race, as you agree with me, in terms of playability/race design.

DE have the problems described above, they demand much more micromanagement than any other race as if I'm not mistaken they're the only race that uses four different types of resources. As to Warlocks becoming spiders on dying, that's an upgrade and as so it's optional. If we're talking about upgrades how about the Necromancer's? If he dies he comes back from the dead at midnight, so in reality you build one and get to use him twice until he dies again. Not that Necromancer is an amazing unit, far from it, but it's still a favorable point.

I know we've discussed Trolls and DE before so I won't bore you to death with details...again!

@ Mordo - It's kind of natural that a Dark Race doesn't work that good on the Mosaic. Mosaic creatures are high-level Skeletons so it's just normal that they have a pretty high resistance against black magic wouldn't you agree? IMO the best way to deal with high-level enemies is this, if they're "dark-sided" use White/Elemental Magic (Paladin for Hallow, Elves for Ice Magic), and if they're "light-sided" Black Magic (any will do really).

PS: DE's Mindbreaker Towers near to each other tend to shoot at the same enemy and then switch to another one until all are hypnotized. So in my experience you should build always more Sorcery Towers and just a few Mindbreakers to stop enemies from attacking them. And BTW when it comes to building design, placing buildings that is, I find DE building to be very easy to use. Their towers at least are very "thin".

[mordo]

I don't know other versions, but food production trough hunting seem vastly more manageable going from v1.01 to v1.52, and a troll army of 60 can be created within reasonable time now. Stone production remain a limiting factor.
I'm also quite sure Druids casts hallow in v1.52.
I don't think a single stone thrower could be fitted in the mosaik area, but i also don't think an army of hurlers and a few bouncers would need one.

That map is a good leveler, i have heroes camping wolf nests until i have ~60 DE units, and camp goblins with elf and hero until i completed mosaik.

By now i'm rather certain that the lv 45-50 mind blobbers in city of souls is available for leveling from avatar lv 46.

[Free Flinker]

Yet the purpose of upgrades is to make a unit better. Therefore, any that aren't worth it become comparative disavantages to that race.

And sure, towers are thin but so are elf towers and by only doing one thing well, damaging, seem that bit better by comparrison. I wouldn't leave mindbreakers out of a DE defence but the damage output of a DE defence will be lessened. I wouldn't know where to start explicitly comparing elves with dark elves in terms of a defensive position, not least because they mostly appear on different maps with different opponents and at different levels, but my personal opinion is that an elf defence > DE defence. An elf defence is cheaper to produce, with greater ranged firepower and no reliance on mana.

Elves do lack food production though, which is usually compensated for by either offering sufficient forage plants or allowing dwarves and/or humans on the same map. DEs are definately more self-sufficient, though to some extent it could be said that map design tends to homogenise all the races in terms of efficiency (though not in style of course).

[Androdion]

Originally Posted by Mordo

I'm also quite sure Druids casts hallow in v1.52.

Don't know if it's different in other versions but I can confirm that for me (I have PE so version 1.52), they do. The thing is as they do they run out of mana in a matter of seconds which is troublesome considering they're heal through aura. Paladins can cast Hallow a couple of times and bash the enemy with melee and fireburst on top of it, so my choice any day definitely!

Originally Posted by Free Flinker

Yet the purpose of upgrades is to make a unit better. Therefore, any that aren't worth it become comparative disavantages to that race.

True. I get your point. And I also concur that probably Elf towers are more efficient than DE's, because of two things. One the correspondent Elf tower for the Mindbreaker shoots iceburst, so as Mindbreaker towers stop mobs Elf's also stop them but cause cumulative damage. And two, as you stated before (in a previous discussion I believe), their RoF is higher. In fact Elf towers may have the highest RoF of all races in the game thus making them more efficient.

This now is speculation but considering Co-op maps I find it easier to use DE towers, probably because of enemies susceptibility to BM hence making them more efficient than others that cause physical damage, as Elf's do. But this is mere speculation though.