Some people tend to see metagaming as cheese @belgarathmth, that's probally their point. Well to me they should keep their point to themselfs, as not metagaming is an option and not something to be imposed to others.
"who don't learn with history is fated to repeat it".
Why should i hit my head in the door to open it, when the window at the side of the door is opened?
Imo every game needs a little cheese whiz on it. Just because cheezy tactics are there doesn't mean you HAVE to use them. Personally I feel some games need a bit more cheese than they have, especially ones with a single-player focus to them. Typically when I play I have a "serious" game and a "cheese" game going where tactics are used accordingly. Some days I feel like being a hardcore power gamer, but other days I really want to run around and be silly and do things such as be a boots archer. Its silly and I enjoy it. Considering this is a game I play single player, what is the harm in that?
Besides, you can make an argument that just about every tactic in the game is cheesy anyways.
Let me expand on my earlier statement. I didn't mean to imply that the AOE spells were cheesy in and of themselves. I would define cheese as being this:
Any perfectly effective tactic which is used to effectively bypass any nonstandard encounter.
In other words, it's any combination of abilities that, through their use or overuse, that an enemy cannot resist and cannot offer any effective resistance to. Thus, someone having their party mage memorize only Web at second level, and then using that in conjunction with a fully-loaded Cloudkill Wand and/or Fireball Wand, and then using this combination to short-circuit any encounter with a unique mob or mobs (such as the various assassins or mercenaries you encounter in the wilderness).
It may seem counterintuitive, but failure, and mistakes, are important in learning. By choosing to use spells and methods which are less than perfect, and limited, you force yourself to strategize more, and weigh tactics more deeply as a battle unfolds - i.e., if my enemy saves against this Hold spell, what am I going to use to keep his mages pinned; will I rely on spell interrupts through timed damage or will I try another crowd control spell, like Command? Will Sleep work on this group of enemies? Can I fall back on Blindness to reduce the effectiveness and range of their attacks? These are question you will never explore, or even ask, if your solution to every difficult fight is to simply cover the area in Web and Cloudkill, every time.
Never liked HoMM 3 much, i prefer Heroes of Might and Magic 4, when the serie ended, cos the 5 and 6 sucks (with all due respect to anyone who like these ones). A complete hero barbarian in HoMM 4 was alike an army of one man, at later levels with 5 epic heroes in the army you didn't need an army anymore (But few campaigns allowed this to happen).
The best campaign for me in HoMM 4 was the necropolis one, with gaudouth the Half-Dead (or something like this). Demonologist (necromancy+nature) rocks.
Never liked HoMM 3 much, i prefer Heroes of Might and Magic 4, when the serie ended, cos the 5 and 6 sucks (with all due respect to anyone who like these ones).
You're probably the only person on the entire planet that prefers the fourth one out of all the series.
So the most awesome thing just happened. When you're leaving Candlekeep the second time, you encounter a group of adventurers you have to fight in a cave. This fight is always a huge pain in the ass, and one where the temptation to simply blow them away with Web/Fireball is very high - the close quarters of the cave and the difficult firing positions make getting a good angle of attack on them difficult, and without cheese you're almost always guaranteed to get badly bloodied fighting them.
Unless something like this happens.
After Tiax got the lay of the group in stealth, my CHARNAME angled around the cave, looking for a good spot to play whack-a-mole: namely, hit someone with an arrow, and then withdraw behind an obstacle to draw the group into a constrained space to take them down piecemeal at point blank. The first part goes as planned, but the second part goes even better.
This group's mages tend to love spamming Lightning Bolt, which can be very effective in close spaces - hit an enemy just right, and it will damage them, then ricochet very rapidly off a nearby wall, almost instantly killing anything. A misaimed lightning bolt, however, can backfire spectacularly, sometimes killing the caster.
In this case, two of their lightning bolts almost instantly killed off everyone in the group but the leader, who my CHARNAME then tore to pieces with Spider's Bane. I laughed my ass off for like five minutes. It was a resolution I would never have had the pleasure to experience if I had fallen back on the safer, even more effective Web/Fireball combo.
It's a thing that is best left for each person @Terzaerian, i from my part i like to always get the banters before the fights, so i normally refuse to attack my enemies while they're still in blue circle, unless their banters trigger even if they go red.
But then i can prepare the place with 5 skull traps and glyphs (priest spell lvl 3), have my banter and then squash the enemies ! But then, my gameplay base itself much in my main char normally, if i'm a tanker agressive fighter as main char, i don't waste much time in preparing and i go straight, if i'm an thief i metagame and prepare the environment before i engage combat and therefore on...
Comments
"who don't learn with history is fated to repeat it".
Why should i hit my head in the door to open it, when the window at the side of the door is opened?
I don't know. I would just open the goddamned door... ;]
Besides, you can make an argument that just about every tactic in the game is cheesy anyways.
Any perfectly effective tactic which is used to effectively bypass any nonstandard encounter.
In other words, it's any combination of abilities that, through their use or overuse, that an enemy cannot resist and cannot offer any effective resistance to. Thus, someone having their party mage memorize only Web at second level, and then using that in conjunction with a fully-loaded Cloudkill Wand and/or Fireball Wand, and then using this combination to short-circuit any encounter with a unique mob or mobs (such as the various assassins or mercenaries you encounter in the wilderness).
It may seem counterintuitive, but failure, and mistakes, are important in learning. By choosing to use spells and methods which are less than perfect, and limited, you force yourself to strategize more, and weigh tactics more deeply as a battle unfolds - i.e., if my enemy saves against this Hold spell, what am I going to use to keep his mages pinned; will I rely on spell interrupts through timed damage or will I try another crowd control spell, like Command? Will Sleep work on this group of enemies? Can I fall back on Blindness to reduce the effectiveness and range of their attacks? These are question you will never explore, or even ask, if your solution to every difficult fight is to simply cover the area in Web and Cloudkill, every time.
@terzaerian, most enemies in the game doesn't resist to ctrl+y attacks as well, they don't complain against it either.
The best campaign for me in HoMM 4 was the necropolis one, with gaudouth the Half-Dead (or something like this). Demonologist (necromancy+nature) rocks.
Unless something like this happens.
After Tiax got the lay of the group in stealth, my CHARNAME angled around the cave, looking for a good spot to play whack-a-mole: namely, hit someone with an arrow, and then withdraw behind an obstacle to draw the group into a constrained space to take them down piecemeal at point blank. The first part goes as planned, but the second part goes even better.
This group's mages tend to love spamming Lightning Bolt, which can be very effective in close spaces - hit an enemy just right, and it will damage them, then ricochet very rapidly off a nearby wall, almost instantly killing anything. A misaimed lightning bolt, however, can backfire spectacularly, sometimes killing the caster.
In this case, two of their lightning bolts almost instantly killed off everyone in the group but the leader, who my CHARNAME then tore to pieces with Spider's Bane. I laughed my ass off for like five minutes. It was a resolution I would never have had the pleasure to experience if I had fallen back on the safer, even more effective Web/Fireball combo.
But then i can prepare the place with 5 skull traps and glyphs (priest spell lvl 3), have my banter and then squash the enemies