Dev Diary provided by Fabrice Cambounet, Producer at Ubisoft:


1. Alternate upgrades

Why / how did you decide to create alternate upgrades for each creature in Heroes V?

The alternate upgrades is the major innovation that we had planned from a long time to include into "Tribes of the East". This feature was actually hinted at in "Hammers of Fate", with the renegades being the alternate upgrade for the Haven troops. It does increase the number of playable creatures by +50% - logically – and helps us smash a total of more than 170 creatures overall.

The basic gameplay idea behind the alternate upgrades is to give the players a new range of tactics, and to be able to adapt to each battle situation. Each range of upgrades has its own orientation, and you can easily mix any type of creatures to create your perfect tool on the battlefield.

Regarding the access to all upgrades, we have chosen to leave a complete liberty to the players. You are free to choose at any time which upgrade you want to buy, for a similar cost. You can also retrain your creature to change the upgrade, for a reduced cost. So you can adapt your army between each battle if needed.


Do they imply a lot of new tactics? Can you hint at some of them?
Can you give us some examples of new creatures?

All creatures have a new way of playing and fighting with the alternate upgrades
Take for instance the alternate gremlin who will fix during the battle your faulty golems – quite a handy man ! Or the skeleton footman who will complement the archer quite well, being more resilient and more aggressive. The elven sprites alternate upgrades have a use similar to the gremlins : they can heal your treants while healing themselves – you wont need them much until you get these treants, but they will be critical afterwards !


2. Other improvements

Are you creating new special abilities for creatures? Can you give some examples?

We are introducing a very specific capacity for the Dungeon alternate upgrade : invisibility. It works like a stalking ability. The creatures will not be seen by the enemy when they are placed on the battlefield initially. It can last up to three turns, which is highly enough to reach the enemy lines. The creature is revealed when attacking, but can also be spotted with magic abilities.


What other improvements can player expect from Tribes of the East?

There are many improvements to be expected ! We have been working extensively on the storytelling tools. The jump in quality is clear from H5 to Hammers of Fate, and you can expect the same kind of quality leap from HoF to Tribes of the East. This is critical to deliver a perfect ending for the story arc covering all of the campaign chapters started with the demon invasion.
A small but interesting point for the fans is the addition of an adventure building that will allow the heroes to redistribute their skills
Another important point is of course the inclusion of the Orc faction, with their own special blood rage ability

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ubi_Rickas,

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with the renegades being the alternate upgrade for the Haven troops.

Thats interesting... wonder if that means they are still in?

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Originally posted by Normandy09:

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with the renegades being the alternate upgrade for the Haven troops.

Thats interesting... wonder if that means they are still in?

The way I'm reading it, I definitely understand as him saying the Renegades are in fact the alternate upgrades for Haven. As long as they understand some of them need their abilities fixed, I'm fine with it, even though I would have liked to see 7 more new units. The more, the merrier in my opinion.

Yeah, but atleast we wont have to worry about getting crappy looking units or names. I absolutely loved the looks and names of the renegades, but in the Alternate upgrades for haven thread about the renegades, I posted how easy it is to make the renegades unbelievably powerful.

But the way it was stated that they were giving us a little sample of the alternates, does make it seem as if they are in. But we'll see in a week, unless we can get an answer from them before next tuesday.

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Originally posted by Ubi_Rickas:
A small but interesting point for the fans is the addition of an adventure building that will allow the heroes to redistribute their skills

Pretty cool

I hope this ability to detect Invisibility is not common, or else yet again the Mistress will get the short end of the stick.

Good news overall One question though:
How could we now prevent hit&run tactics vs dungeon casting implosions with 6 1-stalker stacks? Before you get fried the only option seems to cast holy word which you may not get. Or wait until 3rd round and hope you are not decimated...

Holy Word doesn't work against Dungeon.
Be creative! If you sweep the map with large creatures (1 large creature per stack) you can sweep the whole map and detect them. Furthermore each town should have their ways to react: Single Pit Lords, Imperial Griffins and so on. Lastly you need a higher level hero with expert destructive for that, so you must use a higher level hero.

Uh huh. And the factions that have no aoe of fast large units? Say necropolis?

It doesn't matter in any case, at best you can make him retreat after he has cast 2 empowered spells which he can keep doing over and over again.

There will be an easy solution: refuse to play against those who are going to use stalkers and mistress.

In the case of the Stalker this is open to abuse, because it's a first tier unit and easy to acquire. In the case of the Mistress, I disagree. She's 6th tier and has no remarkable abilities aside from being an improvement over the Matriarch. With this ability she'll actually be worth the money she costs to buy now.

Yep plus her dwelling is hard to upgrade. It would require good planning.

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om H5 to Hammers of Fate, and you can expect the same kind of quality leap from HoF to Tribes of the East. This is critical to deliver a perfect ending for the story arc covering all of the campaign chapters started with the demon invasion.
A small but interesting point for the fans

It sounds awesome....BUT....

Will the AI still take eons to play their turn??

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Originally posted by Moragauth:
In the case of the Stalker this is open to abuse, because it's a first tier unit and easy to acquire. In the case of the Mistress, I disagree.

Shadow Mistress repersents almost the same problem than stalkers: sure you can get stalkers the first day, but if you ban starkers only and not mistress too, the enemy will still rape you with hit&run.

The new ability is cool, fits well in dungeon and so on, I agree, but such thing combined with a hero who doesn't need creatures to destroy a full army, is the stupidest balance mistake I've ever seen.

In my opinion that ability needs serious reworking.

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stupidest

But really. Everyone is always caught up with dungeon. It's crazy. First academy vs. dungeon (which went on and on and on), to dungeon being invincible. All of this hit and run stuff if stupid.

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The creature is revealed when attacking,

I dont see how you guys get this whole, "hit and run" from. They hit you, and you hit back. The only difference is that you cant see them before they hit you. So the hit and run thing is unlikely, unless they can hit you, and somehow after ending their turn get another turn right after, though possible, again, is unlikely.

Now I do agree with the fact that they can stay invisible while the hero shoots spells. Which is really annoying, because then the only way to find them is through magical abilities. What will happen to the Orcs when they dont get any spells? Or any of the other more might based races? This part needs some tweaking or something, unless the magical ability is like an adventure spell, but that would still make it to easy to see them.

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Originally posted by Final_Boss:

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Originally posted by Moragauth:
In the case of the Stalker this is open to abuse, because it's a first tier unit and easy to acquire. In the case of the Mistress, I disagree.

Shadow Mistress repersents almost the same problem than stalkers: sure you can get stalkers the first day, but if you ban starkers only and not mistress too, the enemy will still rape you with hit&run.

The new ability is cool, fits well in dungeon and so on, I agree, but such thing combined with a hero who doesn't need creatures to destroy a full army, is the stupidest balance mistake I've ever seen.

In my opinion that ability needs serious reworking.

Unless Nival creatively reworks the ability whilst retaining its power for the unit, it will either have to allow the imbalance or remove it in favour of some other ability. The ability is crucial to the Mistress, so I hope they do the right thing.

I have to agree with Final_Boss on this one. 3 free turns of empowered spells is too much. Even if an opposing hero can effectively nullify the invisibility immediately it still means creeping is too easy.

Either they haven't explained the ability well, or everyone will want to play dungeon.

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Originally posted by Normandy09:
I dont see how you guys get this whole, "hit and run" from. They hit you, and you hit back. The only difference is that you cant see them before they hit you. So the hit and run thing is unlikely, unless they can hit you, and somehow after ending their turn get another turn right after, though possible, again, is unlikely.

Hit & Run doesn't mean that you hit something with a creature and then leg it... (LOL!!!) In HoMM, Hit & Run is a strategy consisting of a brief attack with a powerful destructive caster + a couple of expendable creatures, followed by a quick escape before all creatures are dead and the hero is defeated. Then you repeat the process till you run out of expendable creatures or till the enemy dies deserving you a scrotum cancer with his last breath, whatever happens first.

I hope you understand now the problem of having together the best destructive caster and a creature who usually cannot be killed the first 3 turns.

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Originally posted by PhoenixReborn06:
3 free turns of empowered spells is too much. Even if an opposing hero can effectively nullify the invisibility immediately it still means creeping is too easy.

Yeah, that is maybe another problem, but I think that was Nival's intention when they were making the ability: They wanted a equivalent of Mark of the Necromancer/Wizard creeping tactic for Dungeon. In any case, they haven't considered the huge side effects of Invisibility + Warlock combo.

Whatever Nival does I hope they do it in such a manner that the Shadow Mistress is not disadvantaged.

Don't get overboard - they must become invisible first since they start visible, and they will be dead obviously, if and when they meet a force with some reasonably fast shooters before they become invisible, so against a hero this will run the risk of getting completely destroyed. Moreover there are obvious ways to kill them even IF they are invisible and every hero doing a hit-and-run against another hero runs the danger of being killed.
Against neutrals you have the problem that you'll have Stalkers on 1st or 2nd day, but at this point you'll have 10 spell points only which won't be enough for any serious abuse. On the other hand a stack of stalkers against some Druids will probably help - if they move FIRST to become invisible, that is, which is a big risk.