I am a helepoli lover and have won many games using this weapon but you must play them against the right foe. Just over two months ago my friends and I started testing games to find out if hele's was the most deadly weapon. I always thought that if you could mass at least 20-25 hele's then your chances of winning must be around 85%. But against the real big boys (and some of my friends believe I am also one the the better players) I was soon put into my place. Follows is what happened in some of the multiplaying games we played. Please note that we normally play our muiti-games up at Wireplay (British based with some of the best players around), because of no lagging.
Or we play direct without a server. Anyway I played most of these testing games using Assyrians because of their speed and ofcouse their hele's. If Yamato came in early (as they should) I could normally hold on. The out come of this testing changed my mind about helepoli within hours not days. Against the best I was smashed time and time again. One of the best players called Enki beat me every time and in one of the games I amassed 25 hele,s and just as I started to attack I was hit by war elephants in three different positions and I thought no problem until I notice Priests following with cats (but not many) behind them. My hele's fell like stones, smashed to pieces. Enki had Priests healing elepants and cats (not converting my hele's) at the same time as he was attacking, I starting attacking his Priests but then out of the blue I was attacked from a forth position by Chariot Archers and though I used other units to attack back my hele's were now almost destroyed. The nice thing about his attack was that when my main units were destroyed his elephants just carried on and hit me lelf right and center. In a later game, also against Enki (by the way he used Egyptians in the game above), to prove he could use almost any civ (he only uses Yamato for attacking in bronze) he used Palmyram, a slow starting race and with weakened Priests. Again I was hit by elephants but this time they were Armored and them rotten Priests were still there. In the end he proved to me that Hele's can be defeated. To rub my face in dirt the next game he gave me no chance to even build up a mass of hele's. What he is good at is tactical planing, and this is something I am normally good at too. I did finally beat him but I used one of my old tactics and this maybe of some use to any of you who are reading this. I used Assyrian again making him think I was building hele's, but I attacked him with groups of Chariot Archers (15 at a time) and stopped him gathering the surplies he needed. After sometime he did come at me with elephants and Priests but my archers were too good. He started to moan that I was not using hele's as this was a test game too but within a minute I attacked him with 5 Hele's (yes only 5) to make him think my main attack had started. He pulled back some units to counter this only to allow me to hit him with heavy cats and heavy archers, I soon got the upperhand but the only hele's I used was them 5. So if anyone else believes helepoli can be defeated or not, I would love to hear your view. The above games were all 13-17 minute bronzes, iron age times are not needed because of the tactical play of the games. I end by stating that in no-way do we always play the same type of game, also, something to remember is that if you play against a player who uses hele's or cats, if that the case, that player needs gold and a lot of it too. That's where I errored in thinking hele's were great, by massing loads of Chariot Archer's you can hold on to your gold until you are ready to attack. Your archers only need wood & food and if you keep attacking tactically you could gain the time you need to hit back big.
Or we play direct without a server. Anyway I played most of these testing games using Assyrians because of their speed and ofcouse their hele's. If Yamato came in early (as they should) I could normally hold on. The out come of this testing changed my mind about helepoli within hours not days. Against the best I was smashed time and time again. One of the best players called Enki beat me every time and in one of the games I amassed 25 hele,s and just as I started to attack I was hit by war elephants in three different positions and I thought no problem until I notice Priests following with cats (but not many) behind them. My hele's fell like stones, smashed to pieces. Enki had Priests healing elepants and cats (not converting my hele's) at the same time as he was attacking, I starting attacking his Priests but then out of the blue I was attacked from a forth position by Chariot Archers and though I used other units to attack back my hele's were now almost destroyed. The nice thing about his attack was that when my main units were destroyed his elephants just carried on and hit me lelf right and center. In a later game, also against Enki (by the way he used Egyptians in the game above), to prove he could use almost any civ (he only uses Yamato for attacking in bronze) he used Palmyram, a slow starting race and with weakened Priests. Again I was hit by elephants but this time they were Armored and them rotten Priests were still there. In the end he proved to me that Hele's can be defeated. To rub my face in dirt the next game he gave me no chance to even build up a mass of hele's. What he is good at is tactical planing, and this is something I am normally good at too. I did finally beat him but I used one of my old tactics and this maybe of some use to any of you who are reading this. I used Assyrian again making him think I was building hele's, but I attacked him with groups of Chariot Archers (15 at a time) and stopped him gathering the surplies he needed. After sometime he did come at me with elephants and Priests but my archers were too good. He started to moan that I was not using hele's as this was a test game too but within a minute I attacked him with 5 Hele's (yes only 5) to make him think my main attack had started. He pulled back some units to counter this only to allow me to hit him with heavy cats and heavy archers, I soon got the upperhand but the only hele's I used was them 5. So if anyone else believes helepoli can be defeated or not, I would love to hear your view. The above games were all 13-17 minute bronzes, iron age times are not needed because of the tactical play of the games. I end by stating that in no-way do we always play the same type of game, also, something to remember is that if you play against a player who uses hele's or cats, if that the case, that player needs gold and a lot of it too. That's where I errored in thinking hele's were great, by massing loads of Chariot Archer's you can hold on to your gold until you are ready to attack. Your archers only need wood & food and if you keep attacking tactically you could gain the time you need to hit back big.
tetra46