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[Scatty]

The computer opponents receive periodically every now and then moderate boosts of mana which they probably spend in exchange for gold and to upkeep and summon their units. If you ever saw the weakest of the opponents who's laughable at best positioning 5-6 sky drakes or 5 death knights in their capital city you know where the wind is blowing.
It is cheating indeed, cheap replacement for the lack of good AI, but that's the way the game continues to stay challenging (a bit at least) and interesting anyway. Noticed the same thing already long ago in Transport Tycoon, seems to have been a usual tactic to program the computer opponents back then when making a good AI would otherwise make a huge game.

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally Posted by Oskatat

it destroys great wyrms (very usefull at nature nodes) and heroes. If you dont collect life books, it is near impossible to get those heroes and their gear back

Come on, you have Flight (and in gear in can be priceless), and you have Regeneration. Blue and green. You also have Diplomacy,that can give you practically everything, that opponent can offer. My last game was four books of four colors - and when opponent learned Cracks Call, I had Resurrection, Regeneration, Flight and... darn, I forgot, what spell resurrect hero outside of battle?.. Anyway, with this four spells my heroes very rarely abandons me.

BTW, interesting notice for munchkins:

1. Computer didn't count spells and gears on hero.
2. Outcome for terrain battle (node, chapel, ruins) often (if not ever) depend of ratio "enemy army:your army" (it definitely was here for every battle, but I don't remember, was I experimenting with that before 1.31 or after, sorry
3. One overhyped hero can slay almost any node guardians single-handed.

1+2+3=Any terrain battle means lot of fame, with very good chances for several spellbooks, prisoners and very rare artifacts.

Of course, it works only for late game, when you have powerful spells, and nodes have powerful guardians. And of course, slaying must occur from first attempt - outcome counts only for current army. If you killed seven wyrms, retreated and killed single bear for second battle, you will receive reward for that bear only.

[Zaru]

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

It is basically not a problem. Cracks call don't work on flying opponent. (...)

Yeah, but if the enemy wizard has Cracks Call, he will very likely have Web spell that can bring down flying units back on the ground for the entire battle. And if he casts it, guess what's coming next...

[Smiling Spectre]

I know. But now we speak about not very frequent situation: "He have Web, Cracks Call, he have time for all of this, and we have unit, that under Web (or without Fly), and needed exactly in that combat" (Because Flight is way of counter Cracks Call, but Recall Hero, Regeneration, Raise Dead and Resurrect counters it too - but hampers combat possibilities). Anyway - what made Cracks Call ultimate spell, that overcome somewhat like Meteor Strike, Disintegrate, Lightning Storm or Fireball?

[krokots]

Hi, i have problem with sound - it does not work. And when i launch install.exe there is no configuration button. What to do now?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Are you running the game in DOSBox?

[krokots]

Yes

I wanted to ask if the 1.31 patch is the newest one? The game is still very buggy; from stacked units getting random loads of abilities all of a sudden, to the screen getting scrambled whenever I view a tile of changed terrain. Both of which crash the game shortly. If no official patch has been made, has anyone tried making their own patch?

[Borodin]

Originally Posted by Nivm

I wanted to ask if the 1.31 patch is the newest one? The game is still very buggy; from stacked units getting random loads of abilities all of a sudden, to the screen getting scrambled whenever I view a tile of changed terrain. Both of which crash the game shortly. If no official patch has been made, has anyone tried making their own patch?

1.31 is it. Mind you, I've never experienced any random ability loads, or screen scrambling with it. Perhaps others have.

What system do you run? I have a Windows 2000 with the "patched" version from here. My system can only run the basic 640x400 resolution option, although fullscreen=true makes the point moot. Do you know of any more options I might be able to tweak to get it working properly?

On the list of glitches, I'm very sure now that what causes the "ability overflow" is when I stack any group with numerous abilities (my main 3-hero, 2-magician, 2-cavalry team) with a boat or other transportation device (including when they are just passing through). Many of the abilities listed shouldn't exist, like Lionheart +{insert ridiculously large number}, and going into battle with them or examining them crashes the game. This makes my main group of troops totally useless.
The "spastic lines and shapes" seems to happen in places where something should refresh, but doesn't correctly for some reason. It first happened when I used "Change Terrain", the terrain in question began randomly flickering between all possible terrain types and causing everything to slow to a crawl when it was viewed, while simultaneously causing vertical lines of near-random color to appear. Because of this, it's not worth it to ever use that spell (transmute works fine though, but Gaia's Blessing is dangerous), and my main priority is to find and wipe out any nature opponents before they can use it.
There is a second, although less common, time when the "spastic graphics" appear; when I am about to select a new spell for research. All but the mouse freezes up and and the color-lines start dancing along the screen left or right, while the letters for each spell get randomly scrambled. Luckily, it only happens about 2-4 times per game, so I can ignore it.