Originally posted at heroes community, by myself.
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=19208

So alot off ppl consider Inferno to be the underpowered race. Maybe thats a fact maybe its not. I dont think so. I win with them more then 50% (at ToH that is so not completely noobs I play with) if it makes me a good player or inferno not underpowered I cannot say. I think many ppl dont see the possibilities with inferno and what makes them a good faction. Therefore I thought I would write this guide or strategy guide to encourage ppl to use inferno and see its possibilities without deleb. Just some weeks ago I only saw Deleb myself but during the last weeks intense playing I began to realize what I think inferno is about. I havent even played 50 MP games so far maybe not even 30. However allmost all games have been with inferno. I dont know that much about the other factions (except how to counter them) but I
consider myself to know quite alot about inferno. OK enough intro talkin, I will talk to much BS during this guide anyway. Here goes.

--Intro--:
Alot off ppl complain that infrno is week vs neutrals and hard to build. I dont agree. Firstly resources you have on hard are enough to build key structures and you can get capitol as soon as you reach town lv 15 (gotta take some gold from chests) and at the same time have castle before that next week. Its often necessary to build a resource silo in week 2 or three depends on how much gold you have, but often much easier then capping a sulfur deposit. On heroic inferno have a hard time but I think this isnt the "standard" difficulty so I will treat this starting guide and the rest of the
guide as if it was played on hard. Thats normal difficulty for me and many others. Also ppl say their creatures lack, but I will give my opinions on them later.

[Infernos strategy]
Its all about their racial special. Hellfire + consume corpse and gating. Even that "awfull" mark of the damned helps you.It says hellfire depends on SP and stack size but I havent noticed that much. 1 imp can deal more then 100 damage with searing flames early lvs. Thers nothing better then seeing one gated imp kill 10-15 conscripts.

--The Start--
The start is a bit "micromatic" but very doable, lots of gating, lots of planning not to get the imps killed. The very first thing you should get is hellfire. If there are some XP shrines or chests for free get them before anything else. You really should get hellfire before doing anything else if you can, if you cant get it take mark of the damned. At latest you should have hellfire at lv 5. taking one "wrong" gating ability, one starting skill ability. And another lv gating + hellfire. Hellfire is key prioritize it, ignore whatever else is offerd.

[Fighting neutrals]
Gate and make use off hellfire. Shield you creatures with gated units, steal retaliations with the gated units or demons. Demons are expandable, ask youself what good they ever did in end game battles anyway. With their low initiative and low speed and crappy damage their best usage is to save the rest of your creaures. Often they get to act in time to steal that retaliation =) They can also be used as shields for your creatures instead off gated units as high initiative creatures will reach you before gating is complete.

Slow melee units: easy, hellfire + gating do the work
Shooters: Make small stacks off imps ~5 each. gate them in and hinder the shooters. attack them with the 1-2 gated creatures hope for hellfire. Have one large stack demons, shooters sometimes attack them instead othertimes the imps. Move the demons near shooters or gate them. Move imps to. watch out for ranged melle range as they will often target "real" creatures before gated ones. Your gated creatures might die before all shooters are gone. At this stage you might loose some imps to shooters to take those first important mines but its ok.
High initiative melle: the biggest threat as you have no shooter and only slow gating and slow shielders for you imps, demons. You will have high losses vs them. Either wait untill later or sacrifice some off what you got. Try keeping demon losses high and rest low.

* Several stacks off imps = more chances off hellfire both from gated and normal units. still not to many, about 3-4, so you cant have them protected. Having 1 stack outside protection might be a good idea to steal high initiative units retaliations. If it gets hellfire even better.

* Grawl shines with his searing flames early game, get it! 100 bonus damage to marks men with a gated unit consisting off one imp is NICE =)

--Early game--
As I see it there are two paths to go.
* Cerberus
or
* Succbi mistresses

[Cerebus] = no retaliations, high initiative.
Vs slow units many small groups, gate them all and attack.
Vs ranged, 6 groups off 1 cerberus. You must have tactics here. Spread them out across the field. Attack with all 1 cerberus hope for some hellfire. If not they still block shooters. You often dont loose more then 4 cerberus this way, sometimes 1 or 2. Gate the main stack to where it seems to be needed, next turn be ready to attack or move it closer where it seem to be needed, not in melee range though. It can be a good idea to bring demons. Use them in that hard fight, usually someone guarding something you need badly, like access to underground in peninsula. Guard your cerberus with demons untill you get some gated stacks, then when time is right strike with full force.

Consider the hero nebiros, his special is great for this purpose as he starts with tactics. + 1 luck is ok, many ppl obviously never tried this hero out, they think his special makes the opponent unable to place his creatures (I thought that to first), its not true, he can place them as everyone else. Well then you think; he sucks! Well that aint true either. It negates the tactics ability so if the hero have tactics you can still use tactics with nebiros (and the other hero cant), something you VERY much want for those cerberus and this tactic. And a special thing you can do later in game as I will talk about later.

[Succubi mistresses] = chain shot, can attack 4 groups and have 30% chance hellfire to everyone off them.
Split in 3-4 stacks. Have equal groups or, 1 in 2 or 3 stacks and one main stack. Havent decided whats best yet really, think it might depend on what you are facing, for shooters stacks off 1 in each, keep main stack out of combat or split equal, try what works best vs what. Guard them with demons (loseable right) you wont use them much later anyway. Watch out for inferno neutrals they are immune to chain shot and most off them are high initiative. Cerberus is porobably your worst lv3 enemy.

Heroes off choice:
Grawl, for that easy access to searing flames.
Nymus, luck, if succubi get luck they deal double damage to all creatures in the chain very nice.
Maybe Jezebeth aswell, she does improve later on, now Im just focusing on the start. I never use her though, sorcery is just a bad skill for inferno.Remeber that its the first hit that counts with succubi, if this is within the full damage range the next creature will deal half that damage no matter the distance. Hellfire doesnt count, has individual chance of extra damage on every hit. So if theres a stack with one creature left in range and other stacks at half damage range, pick the nearest creature, you kill it + deal as much damage to the next stack anyway.

So just bash those neutrals with you chainshots + hellfire and searing
flames.

* Only bring either cerberus or mistresses to the field to begin with, its enough for you basic needs and keep the unupgraded at homePtherwise you gotta to some hero chaining and mess around to get both later on and it will mess upp your quick expanind wich is very important.

--Early - Mid Game--
As you got a sulfur resource silo at some point you should get succubi
mistresses and cerberus. Have a hero, hopefully you can get grok in town at some point delivering the new creature. After this point dont keep demons on main hero.Get attack and get tactics with your hero ASAP this lets you deal with shooters and even some casters. When you amassed larger numbers off cerberus you can take mages pretty easy, maybe even druids? havent dared taking them on yet. Learn what numbers you need to take pack and lots etc without risking to much. Normally you dont need to attack these kind of creatures, resources you find often keeps you castle developing if not it might be worth sacrificing some cerberus to get that resource, same goes for nice artifacts.

A hero with 20 cerberus and 4 succubi can be enough, off course at this point nothing is stopping you from having a larger army. 20 cerberus can get alot of work done especially with grawl. With other heroes you might need more off them, still in week 3 beginning of 2nd month you have 32+ at you disposal more then enough. More succubi might be needed aswell, depends on size of neutrals, get the feeling for it. Dont have a larger army then you need. There are some reasons for this I get to it later. Scout the terrain, build your hero as fast as possible. Get resources, not mines, (unless they are guarded by something you can handle) just the resources lying around in map.

Hellfire drain lots of mana, try not to cast spells, use mark of the damned and when a stack dies corpse consume it. you see how good all those abilities fit with one another?! Almost makes you wanna cry.

--Mid Game--
Your starting to lurk around in terrotory that belongs to no-one. Anytime your opponent my pop out from the dark and attack you.
Well you are doing fine scouting and boosting your hero with you low army. It might feel threatening to have an army consisting of 4-10 succubi, 20-30 cerberus. At this stage off the game theres no need to worry about units like green dragons or mages with alot of initiative, so if you are attacked you wont be in any trouble at all, in fact this is what you want.

At this point in the game you shouldnt only lurk in "neutral" territory you should lurk in the enemies as soon as you can. With that small army? YES! Dont bother much about your own territory go straight for his at this point, pretty much directly after getting both mistresses and cerberus. The reason doing so? You will boost you hero on his land, taking his chests etc visiting those arenas.

So you are attacked! What know?

If enemy hero have high initiative and high speed creatures. Split cerberus in groups off 1s, have 1 main group staying behind and one group succubi. If not split them in equal stacks on the front line, succubi still in one group. Spread them out along the line, try to figure out whats the best way to place them to ensure as many as possible can attack.

Combat start: Attack with "all" cerberus. If you get one three headed attack that 3*30% making a hellfire. so there are some chances getting a hellfire. ~3 hellfires are theoretically what you should get thats more then 300 damage at this point. If not vs faction with high speed units count those 20-30 cerberus in aswell, unless he is dumb enough to not realize whats going on and kill one stack with 1 cerberus then your 16 others will deal that damage anyways

Vs Haven and Dungeon nebiros has a great advantage here. Even though they have tactics you can use this strategy. All other heroes tactics would have been nullified. There is some risk necro can have this but in my experience they most often go for other skills and even other abilities within the attack skill. Even without tactics and nebiros you will reach if his creatures are at the second row, like large creatures, or blockers. But having 1 more step can make the difference between a threeheaded attack and hitting just once.

VS others Grawl is abosultely awesome here, searing flames + cerberus
booster.

After you attacked with all off them, or as many as you could before he can hurt you. You retreat and pay him money so that you can escape with your creatures. (he wont have schackles at this point). So whats the cost for this? 1 cerberus is 80 gold. 20 = 1600 and about 200 for the 4 succubi. 1800 gold thats nothing! Lets say you dealt 300 damage (this is probably minimum damage with grawl, and the shield of ince crystal suck on emeny hero ) during that attack it probably equals, the amounth you paid, in losses for him. And still he lost creautres and you lost nothing. Well if he has high initiative creatures you might loose one or two cerberus :evil:

Now you returned to your home, now its time to buy whatever army you need to feel safe, and start getting boosters from your territory and chests etc etc. Before all that happens its important not to let enemy hero slip through and towards you castle. Scouting is very imporatant. If somehow something should go very wrong, attack whatever hero or enemy town you see and pay retreat and go home.

Live of the fat of the land. Your land. Just boost hero. Buy upgrades, mage guild.

--Late game-- (this is lv 15-17 usually as I see it)
After getting what you need at home, spells, creatures, maybe also that artifact that was guarded by high lv creature wich you had your eyes on the entire game its time to attack. Hopefully you will be better off at this point considering you killed some off his army before and that you have a better hero, stat, artifact and spell wise.

--Creatures--
So infernos creatures are week? lets have another look at them.

[Imp] ok lv 1 unit, nice initiative.

[Familiar] have more damage then some lv 2 units! 50% more hp then its cousin the imp and 100% damage! Dont use them to much without upgrading even if it might be necessay early game. Its much better at dealing damage then your demons. Great initiative to. Their mana stealing ability compliment the hellfire ability very well. If you get jumped and is low on mana they will bring some for you. Also they steal enemies mana great vs lopw knowledge factions.

[Horned Demon]
This unit is only good for one thing as I see it, trade losses in other creatures for it. Steal retaliations, guard you week cerberus and imps. In that way it is good Because if you only once make a misstake and your imps or cerberus get attcked you will suffer great losses. It has almost as much HP as the cerberus and better defense make use off it.

[Overseers]
I never upgrade to overseers there are better things spending money on. Thats just me maybe someone have excellent use for them?

[Hell hound]
A pretty week creature. Damage is ok. Initiative is great. Upgrade before you ever use them.

[Cerberus]
No retaliation, three headed attack, 13 initative, 8 speed wich is enough to reach enemy front lines directly, not enough to reach neutral shooters, get tactics or if you see windstrider boots nearby. Works excellent with hellfire vs neutrals in many stacks.

[Succubus]
Well an ok ranged creature nothing much to say about it. upgrade asap

[Succubus Mistresses]
Chain shot + hellfire = excellent. If you get bless in mage guild keep 2 stacks with 1 in these are for hellfire procs. And a 3rd stack with all the rest, cast bless and increase damage output.

[Hell Chargers]
Low hp. Awesome initiative, nice damage, fear attack.
As doomforge says they can make some nice things with soldiers luck =)
enough speed to reach enemy front lines.

[Nightmares]
Better hp, better damage, frightaura. Since they have so low hp they will get killed quickly however with swift gating you might be able to gate and attack before they suffer to much losses. You should never gate them if you dont have swift gating. Charge in block a shooter if you can, make use off fright aura. This creatures atrributes are perfect for attacking and weakening the stack of your choice. Initiative ensures it will always act first in combat

[Pit fiends]
Not exactly my favoutire creature, their initiative isnt that good and their spells arent super, mid game they can bring some punch but later they are almost better to teleport assault and attack in melee with. Gate them always nice getting some extra tank on the field and another vulnerability caster.

[Pitlords]
Same as pitfiends but better
They both compliment inferno pretty good, standing in the back while rest is at fron attacking.

[Devils]
Most often you wont get them. They are ok. they have 7 speed. Meaning that if planed carefully you can attack with nightmares and cerberus in a way making a creature move so that you devils can reach them when its theri turn.

[Arch devils]
I never had them in MP cant say anything about them.

[Summin it upp]
Most creatures have low health, more damage, and great initiative. Make use off it either by swift gating or by attacking directly. Compliment the attacking units with the others. Inferno is the attacking faction the other one defends, base your tactics around that. Inferno should attack ASAP to make best use of hellfire and their two best upgraded craetures, cerberus and succubus, after that the opponent can only grown in strength compared to you and hellfire and by upgrading his creatures.

Faction counters

[Haven]
vs haven I really like deleb. She has another ranged wich is just so
important. Haven also is a very strong faction wich is pretty easy to expand with also they like to use their archers. Having better economy, upgraded cretures, swift gating and dark magic is very important. Attacking them straight on might be suicide. Imps will probably drain most off haven heros mana.
"The ballista will be targeted first" many say this well thats wonderfull haven have 2 units this early in the game that can kill it - archers, maybe priests/inquisitors aswell. Archers initiative is 8 if you got mass slow expert lv its reduced to 4!! So even if they do attack it you can feel safe for awhile. Gate in all your creatures. Haven have three main damage dealers this early in game, cavaliers, archers and griffins. With swift gating they wont kill as much as you gate in. Debuff with dark magic, use ballista and first aid tent wisely. And you have a VERY good chance.
You have room for 1-3 skills more after. logistics + swift gating and dark magic. use them for luck or leadership.

[Sylvian]
Mass confusion or mass suffering is nice if you get it it really helps. Mass spells overall are nice. Sylvian with light magic is the most dangerous you can face. Trust your cerberus and nightmares to deal much damage, try and avoid archers double range if you can. Focus on archers and unicorns. Hopefully using above strategies he might not have higher lv spells yet becuase he havent been to town, like righteous might so if you get suffering its awesome.
Heroes - alastor he must get dark magic, abit of gamble. He can atleast drain the druids even without it.
Grawl works fine so does other heroes.

[Necro]
Dark magic Is good vs necro. wekness-slow-suffering all good vs those archers.
Block liches.
If raise dead hero, spread damage first, then focus on one stack, when its dead stand on it and consume corpse =) Get to archers as quick as possible.
Any hero really.

[Academy] Dont know really just owned them ones vs a not very good player, seems to be played not that much.

[Dungeon]
Greatest threat is sinitar as I see it. Gating doesnt work here.
Nebiros might be a good choice not tested yet though. Becuase you gotta get your creatures spread out within his lines so he cant AoE spell you to death.
Blood maidens often die extremely quick no real threat. gate pit fiends you need vulnerability vs hydras. Block shooter.

Now Im getting tired its damn late =)
Hope this inspired somone.
Goodnight.

Might add some pictures and more info later.
added creature section.

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

I still think that Inferno is "weak" on at least heroic difficulty. Your arguement that you win fairly often on hard difficulty is very strong IMHO and shows that if played well the faction isn't too bad.

I agree that many player's default difficulty is "hard". I however prefer to play almost exclusively on heroic because I like the slower build process.

From my experience [on heroic] the limited resources hurts this faction far more than other factions. [I.E. on War of the Worlds you might not be able to even build a Castle because the Sacrificial Pit requires resouces that you simply may not have after you build Succubus Mistriss or other structures]

From reading the strat guide it seems like you have to be very careful, split stacks exactly, get exactly the right mix of skills, etc. to take out the stacks that you see on hard difficulty and do it reasonably fast.

The same tactics do work on heroic (I esp. use them against slow walkers that I couldn't beat otherwise) but you should be prepared for double or triple the losses you're projecting.

Another thing is that you have to be very careful to get the right skill mix. It's very possible that you simply won't be offered the right skills / abilities until it's too late. [Tactics being a key skill]

On maps that have mines / paths guarded by "lots" of random L3 or L4 creatures you'll see tons of hunters, druids, mages, cerebi, etc. If you get the wrong mix of creatures it's game over before you start [it might even be game over if a large stack of assassins is blocking both wood & ore --- I just resign when I see that ]

With the extra 25% guardians on heroic compared to "hard" it's almost like the difference between day & night.

While I agree that the faction isn't weak on Easy and Normal because there aren't many roadblocks to get you going it's a lot harder to play this faction on hard & heroic effectively than the other factions.

Here is my alternative guide how to play inferno.
In first turn, leave the game asap. At least you save a lot of time and you would lose anyway.

The resource cost is very unpleasant in this town, which result in slow town development on hard/heroic lvl. Besides, 1 imp does not do 100 dmg unless you have some spellpower, but in week 1-2 you will get hurt alot vs neutrals

I assume you didnt read my post galliard. And you dont have to play them if you do not want to.

And one imp does do 100 damage with searing flames.

And here is my guide to you out of this thread, stop flaming plz.


I never have problems with building captiol and citadel when I reach town lv 15 and 16 week 2-3, when depends on town starting lv. And castle I always build the week after that and pitlords. You get sulfur from resource silo and the other resources are pretty evened out. You just have to find some extra piles off them during first weeks, this has never been a problem for me.

Alamar I agree with you on heroic this faction has some serious trouble. So dont play it on heroic if you can avoid it. Im well aware off that the whole strategy would fail in heroic. Mainly because you cannot even upgrade you cerberus without resource silo, and getting castle is a pain.

Regarding skills. What you need is hellfire
searing flames is nice, grawl gets this easy.
Tactics - there is a hero starting with this one, thats why I recommended him.
Attack is offerd very often to inferno and at some point you will get it. Just ignore all other skills untill you get it. When you get it you can deal with shooters better then any other faction.

And yes you have to be very carefull and plan every move just right. But when done right it works very well. And this is what called strategy and heroes is a strategy game. So only by using the best tactics you will do the best. You wouldnt attack cerberus with haven and let you archers stand alone in the middle of the field, no? Splitting inferno stacks, gating, steal retaliations with gated creatures, its the same, another strategy for another faction, a bit more complicated but it doesnt make the faction weaker, just more "micromatic". Like GLA in generals =)

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

GREAT POST MAN! I really learnt much about inferno , and like i always say to people unless you played about 50 online games you can't tell if something is balanced or not , biggest example i have is inferno in homm3 which was considered by far the worst town by most simply becuase they didn't know how to play it right , when you do play it right for me inferno in homm3 was up there(and even better) with castle , many of the best players argued that with me but anyone that played inferno against me i proved him wrong .. anyway great post! If there other people who knows a particilar town that well and can post a strategy guide i'll be happy to read it

Yeah, I agree that's a great guide Izzachar. I am no expert on things and this opened my eyes up about playing Inferno.

Funny thing, though, I started a game with random sides with me choosing Inferno to try things out, and the first side to attack me... was another Inferno town. (Hellfire, etc. doesn't work against Inferno creatures.)

how about give the Horned bastards to Deleb she can easily clean out half the map with about 50 of them and give the main army to Grawl. That way you got 2 major forces.

Hellfire does work vs inferno creatures but chainshot does not.

Pavel I used to do that before, for some maps it works great. Deleb can clear parts of the map you wouldnt visit otherwise, get gold mines etc and give your town a good income. Also if something starts to get messy deleb can flee from a battle loosing some demons and return to castle. Its a good strategy but for some reason I prefer not starting with her as the other hero just seems to get better having most exp chests for himself. I mostly play smaller maps and the game settles pretty fast in smaller maps, you simply dont have time to lv upp two heroes before things start to get messy, one or two lvs might be the difference between having tactics and not. If its a larger map having deleb might be a very good idea doing just as you said having two forces scouting the map. Deleb I wouldnt use for anything else then a gold and resource income though at this point leave big battle for grawl.

Anyway main reason for this guide was to show that inferno can be good without deleb as starting hero.

I am curious if you are playing with Grawl starting with level 1 town on hard difficulty go through the day by day of the first 2 weeks. I still don't see an easy way out of getting by the first 2 weeks without Deleb.

And that pathetic Sacrificial Pit is ridiculous it should be optional, not mandatory and it costs a ton, doesn't do anything and has a level 15? prerequisite?

Also I disagree that Sorcery is useless, They have tons of mana so you can keep hurling Destructive spells much faster. Magic Insight could also be very useful with Confusion if you don't want to learn Dark Magic skill 50% less damage if I understand it right.

Ok.

day 1: tavern, get another hero, transfer units to grawl. Scout map with secondary hero. Get close chests or shrines with grawl, hope to get hellfire or mark of the damned.

day 2: buy imps take ore and wood mines. You will have losses but you will take them.

day 3: town hall or what its called

day 4. market place.

day 5. demons, might take some more easy neutrals at this point totally depends

day 6. Hellhound dwelling

day 7. mage guild, get your hero in town before week end to get full mana before next week.

week 2.
day 1. cerberus, you have 15-22 off them depending on, heroes cretures starting numbers, if you have grawl, if you lost any earlier. Now you can start taking all melee creatures lv 1-3. If you have tactics like with nebiros shooters 1-3 should be easy aswell. lv 4 creatures can be beaten in some cases but you gotta have a good strategy for them and you might get some losses. for lv 1-3s nothing else then demons should be lost, and not even many off them, or you are doing something wrong.

from there its not very hard. You gotta keep a fairly low profile first days but its nothing that stops your development compared to other towns significally.

your strag guide is pretty good
but your tactics mostly work on melee neutrals
sometimes if u get very lucky and get alot of ranged or spellcasting neutrals this tactic pretty sucks
cause u will always lose units

in the beginning your hard focused on gated units
a must have indeed
vs melee it's great but vs ranged it just sucks
cause you need to get to the enemy ASAP
but before u get there you will have taken2-3 shots depending on unit speed

Sorry that I was all "flamey" man.

I didn't mean to imply that your strat. guide was garbage or anything. On the contrary I find most of the things that you say are dead on.

I just wanted to say that I find Inferno too slow developing on heroic difficulty with low resource maps.

Ok just to add to this, I am a 'Deleb expert'

Which some may feel is cheating, (I have been accused after being a higher lvl than somebody could believe) I love inferno however so I may get around to trying some other heroes if deleb gets banned or whatever.

I've had around 30 online matches with Deleb vs anyone I can play and am yet to lose with her.

Consistent with Izzchar's guide I usually play on hard, which is probably the setting Inferno is best at, as it restricts other teams such as haven from having too many resources and Inferno has no troubles clearing the map.

If anyone wants my tips I'll be glad to share.

I play usually heroic and still some of those tactics are valid but;

-The sulphur demand cuts you to either upgrade to cerberi or build nightmares.Which is a serious choice.

-You would often not be able to build upgrade to succubus.

-ıts a good idea to upgrade to horned overseers if you have some extra cash and need some cannon fodder.Because it hugely improves the creature and makes it more durable.

-I usually get balista+mage guild(2.day) to minimize looses from neutral stacks in the first days it helps a lot.Also later first aid tent is a good idea to further minimize the losses with nightmares.

-Build till citadel and start buying.Bother with castle while you are away.

-Tactics is what ı usually try to get.

-Pit fiends are okay but trying to get them early doesnt help much.Try to go for the capitol instead since 2 pitfiends wont matter so much in the end game like 2 paladins would do(assuming that you didnt reach castle I usually dont).

-Try to keep the nightmare number high they are usually to most hitty troops even in low numbers in the final battles.

Really good guide, especially if you don't play Inferno much. Though I agree with KingAlamar that a bunch of low-level shooters guarding basic mines can make you give up at the start and that's the most sad part of the faction...

And the Faction counters section clearly misses Inferno itself
You'll need to add that too... Otherwise great job

I left all strategies considering Deleb out of this guide on purpose because otherwise it would turn into a "cant play inferno without deleb" thread like so many others.

In many peninsula games I had the gold mine in central map in week 2 deleb has been around lv 13-15 at that time and reaches lv 18-19 before going home, attack a stack and simply flee. To get there she only need 40 demons. One time I also got the location of tear of asha in that map and was about to dig it upp and a week of the plague killed all creatures I had saved for so long for deleb. This was my best game with deleb to that point, I had all dwellings even devils and this was week 4 and I would been having 30k gold to buy creatures with day 1 month 1. Theres no faction that can keep upp with such a development.

And I would love to hear your tips even though I consider myself as the Deleb expert :P

quote:

Sorry that I was all "flamey" man.

I didn't mean to imply that your strat. guide was garbage or anything. On the contrary I find most of the things that you say are dead on.

I just wanted to say that I find Inferno too slow developing on heroic difficulty with low resource maps.

The flaming part bit wasnt directed to you. No problem otherwise for what you wrote. You made many good posts in this forum and I respect you opinion alot.

quote:

And the Faction counters section clearly misses Inferno itself Wink
You'll need to add that too... Otherwise great job Thumbs Up

TBH I have no idea what strategies are good vs inferno if you are inferno

quote:

Originally posted by Izzachar:
TBH I have no idea what strategies are good vs inferno if you are inferno

High Attack vs Low Defense... never wait... just attack..

no idea... ahh... try to use frenzy... the high attack vs low defense is a pain with frenzy...

Yes attack might be good but its a gamble who get to act first. What if attack is you main strategy then the hero wins who get nightmares, cerberus to act first.

I think tactics and dark magic and luck maybe could be a good strategy or switch luck for logistics and swift gating. Get tactics, swarming gate. Place demons so they protect nightmares, place pit fiends so that they block cerberus. Use gating on all creatures and dark magic to lower opponents effectiviness. When everything is gated you attack.

Have no idea if it would work, just throwing some ideas out.

Ok here are a few of my strategies with Deleb. *note* this needs to be read as a whole, not as in sections or it won't make any sense. Also I have used the word 'skill' to refer to skills and abilities.

I usually play peninsula on hard if I make so I'll base this around that, but it should be applicable in most situations.

Day 1 check the tavern, if a hero with a tent is available then no need to buy blacksmith day 1. If not buy a blacksmith then get first aid tent.

Trade troops with secondary hero leaving only horned demons on deleb (unless there was a decent hero of another race such as havez, and take his gremlins also)

The first ability you should get is first aid tent if available followed by balista and expert war machines.

It is quite important not to chose other skills until you have these 3 otherwise you might be spammed with other choices and it can stunt your growth significantly.

Once these skills have been obtained, key skills which should be next in line are:

hellfire - for your cerberei, succubi mistress and nightmares,
attack - for tactics to enable your cerberei and nightmares to reach enemy shooters first turn

This is currently my favourate starting setup, as it allows you to take the shadow matriach's week 1, losing only about 5-6 cerberei.

Then I get 2 sidekicks to explore the sea in different directions taking all the gold and wood before the opponent has beaten the matriachs.

Another good skill to take is logistics - including pathfinding, but I find swift gating a bit unneccesary as i dont tend to gate often.

Logistics is especially good for Deleb because it lets you chase them down and level up faster. Ideally you want to attack week 3 or 4 when you are around lvl 15 and they are around lvl 10-12, if you leave it longer you are just letting them catch up which while sporting, isnt efficient.

Destruction magic - I like to get one level of this by lvl 10, to get the fireball or circle of winter spell, and often also master of fire + searing flames to boost my hellfire. Once at level 10 I return to town with a lvl 3 mage guild built, get the summoning spell and buy all the familiars and horned demons (as they come in numbers which can be difficult to summon all of) but leave the stronger creatures until later in the week when I can afford the upgrades and summon them to Deleb.

Other useful skills which I may pick up a few levels of later on if offered: leadership,luck and possibly sorcery if I have expert destruction magic.

Noteable omission: Dark magic, I find it's not really suited to the suprise attack style that Deleb fits with, also you need a level 4 mage guild to get spells such as frenzy and i generally prefer to strike before this point.

Gating is overated, except perhaps vs low knowledge races, to help you gate in more imps.

When fighting, split the cerberei and succubi mistresses up to give more chances of activating hellfire, also if the opponent has a little mana left after the familiars have claimed their share, gate them.

quote:

in the beginning your hard focused on gated units
a must have indeed
vs melee it's great but vs ranged it just sucks
cause you need to get to the enemy ASAP
but before u get there you will have taken2-3 shots depending on unit speed

Well, gating is good against ranged too.
Just gate then ASAP right in front of ranged units. You'll lose 1 turn for real units, but in next turn when gated units appear, they'll block range units from firing to your real units.