"To defeat evil, all you need is to conjure a more sinister evil"
The king has been assassinated.The northern lords each have declared the crown and the throne for themselves. You are the Queen's last hope. Defeat the northern lords, unite the realm and find out who is behind the king's death.
Author: V., 15-02-2017 01:43 Great! - The Ninth Circle A very nice map, I enjoyed it a lot! It was a much too easy for me, so next time I think I'll play without Orb of Vulnerability. Cloak of the Undead King should have been disabled, it's extremely easy with it.
Took me 148 days, score 496.
Author: Artanis (Moscow), 06-02-2017 17:41 Probably bug - The Ninth Circle Player can pick 120 archangels from his garrison in the very early game -- I consider this is a bug
The map is wonderful, I'm in the middle of the way for now
maygwan writes:
07-02-2017 08:28
it's not a bug - The Ninth Circle
You will need them to defend and to push forward, They just make the start of the map a little easier it's the end of the map that's tough.
Lauri writes:
07-02-2017 14:00
What? - The Ninth Circle
What do you mean? Pick them from where?
Lauri writes:
07-02-2017 14:02
Oh crap - The Ninth Circle
Oh my, oh my. I just realized.
Yes, that is -definitely- a bug making the map way too easy.
I've now fixed it, but won't upload the map before further changes.
maygwan writes:
07-02-2017 20:24
OH it was a bug lol - The Ninth Circle
I Think maybe it wasn't noticed because it only happens if you are a fast rusher on the map. If yo go slowly i think yog comes and kills them. Either way i wondered why the map was so easy at the start.
Lauri writes:
12-02-2017 20:46
Mistake - The Ninth Circle
Yeah, it was a mistake by my part. The angels were always there in the older versions also, but in these newer versions I gave the ownership of the garrison to the player instead of being none. I did this so that the player has some better control to fight the barbarian and, for example, choose to focus on killing his ranged troops with the angels before facing him with the main-hero.
I simply forgot to tag the troops are remoable option off.
Author: maygwan, 30-01-2017 08:34 Very good map - The Ninth Circle This was a well Designed map that was enjoyable. You need to rush the map from the start which i did and to be honest the start of the map is extremely easy. There are small invasions early game but nothing i could not handle. The key is utilizing multiple heroes.
Main hero advances while i had gelu defend and 3rd hero take care of water area. You can pretty much clear your area with a few champions easily upgraded with stables for free and plenty of dwellings. I only had to bring my main hero back for a fight with yog as he was a little too hard for gelu. Most of the enemies were easy with a few teal fights a challenge.
Now to the red onslaught, This was tough for me because i couldn't capture and kill one of the Fallen and all the others came through and united giving me a foe with a massive army of 20k pit lords 12k efreet sultans and 3500 arch devils. It's down to luck i guess lol and i was unlucky. Anyway it took me 3 weeks longer than i wanted. I would of done the map around 200 days but took me 222 days score 496pts.
Now because of the onslaught uniting i had to take the secret area which i wasn't going to do but to get there for players who couldn't you need after killing Selena take the hidden portals but the main portal is behind a one way portal so take 2 heroes through there to block the exits then it wont work for your third hero allowing the secret area.
You can also make the red onslaught super easy if you sit on all the exits so they cant come through and in 7 days you win.
Another note is you can hire all the red heroes from taverns giving you 80 stat heroes with Fly and DD. I tested this theory by not using shackles on some and next day they were mine muhaaaaaaaa.
You can also hire them all and sit them in your castles so opponent can't hire them.
Anyway great map and some tough fights, very well made and thought out map.
Author: Gorol (Poland), 15-01-2017 11:17 Score - The Ninth Circle Hi, great map, red player was very challenging for me, but I beat him eventually:)
I finished it on day 191 and for the score of 444 on impossible. You Guys wrtie that your score was much better, why's taht?
Voy (Polska) writes:
28-01-2017 16:19
Score - The Ninth Circle:re - The Ninth Circle
You probably didn't find the grail which would get you +50 points right off the bat
Gorol (Polska) writes:
31-01-2017 13:54
Score - The Ninth Circle:re - The Ninth Circle - The Ninth Circle
Dzięki. Rzeczywiście grala nie znalazłem:)
Author: Arecki (Frankfurt, Germany), 09-01-2017 21:53 Like Sercet Portal - The Ninth Circle How can I get into yellow Portal with Archangels and 2 Pandora Box?
Lauri writes:
12-01-2017 15:30
Secret! - The Ninth Circle
That's a secret for you to find out ;)
There are several secrets in the map, which all make the map a lot easier should you find them. You're not supposed to use them if you want to enjoy the full challenge of the map. That particular secret is the hardest to find, that's why the teaser of showing it to you. It's also the most powerful making the map pretty much instant victory. You can walk over any enemy after acquiring that secret.
Author: Voy (Polska), 08-01-2017 16:41 10 - The Ninth Circle Easily one of the best maps I've played so far, 10/10
My score was 494@199 days
Also there's a cartographer on Green's territory, dunno if that's intended or not :/
Lauri writes:
12-01-2017 15:50
Thanks - The Ninth Circle
Thanks!
What are you saying? You mean paying 10.000 gold just to see my name written underground isn't worth it?! Whaaaaat! That sounds more than a fair deal to me!
Author: Martin (Singapore), 08-01-2017 08:39 Discover a new level of playing : / - The Ninth Circle I've been playing Heroes for such a long time... and I can't find one way to beat this map, or even the very beginning!!! I'm getting wiped systematically by the first green hero -_-'
Maybe it's just too hard and I should find easier map, too bad because the overall feel of the map is amazing (story, design, etc)
Lauri writes:
12-01-2017 15:51
Thanks - The Ninth Circle
Yes, the map can be a bit hard at first. You can't stay idle for too long. You have to keep moving and capturing enemy towns in order to both weaken them and strengthen yourself. Each day you spend not doing so the enemy grows stronger.
Author: Lauri, 06-01-2017 14:38 Updated - The Ninth Circle Both this and my Fifth Circle map has been updated according to your feedback. Have fun!
Author: Homura, 30-12-2016 08:27 Question - The Ninth Circle I'm just a bit curious. Did you make "To defeat evil, all you need is to conjure a more sinister evil" this line yourself?
Lauri writes:
03-01-2017 22:40
Yes - The Ninth Circle
Yes. :)
This map is part of a story I've been building for over 10 years.
Author: Solmyr (Greece), 23-12-2016 20:12 Great work!! - The Ninth Circle Finished the map on 200% today, it was really fun. I especially enjoyed the red invasion, man they were a pain in the ass. I finished it with almost no army at all, well, because I chose to apply zero tactics in the end. I don't care about casualties, if I can win :P
Days: 228
Score: 442(I don't know how you guys got 480+, I thought score was a combination of days and difficulty)
Was there a way to get to this place, with great artifacts and 1000 AA?
(small) complaints:
I don't like it very much when the maker picks all skills for me, especially when they leave tactics out
the beginning was challenging, because, you had no idea, who could invade. Apart from that, there wasn't any real danger. If there was a way teal and pink could invade after some time, that would be terrifying and awesome.
Anyway, really good job, thanks you!
(Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to the story, I was 100% absorbed to the game ahead of me)
Solmyr (Greece) writes:
23-12-2016 20:17
Correction - The Ninth Circle
well, Teal could invade, but, by that time, he couldn't do anything really... Pink could be very challenging in the beginning though!
Lauri writes:
27-12-2016 19:57
Yeah - The Ninth Circle
Teal will invade if enough days go pass. Same with Pink.
But should such thing occur, it only means you've been way too slow. :)
Author: Daniel (Dobrich, Bulgaria), 13-12-2016 23:49 Is Kingslayer important for the storyline? - The Ninth Circle Hi! First of all, awesome map. Well done! However, something happened around week 20 and I'm not sure that was supposed to happen. Green was left with no towns, and his heroes disbanded (I noticed his strongest hero is named Kingslayer and I think this could affect the storyline somehow). Is Kingslayer important for the story, or I can go on without facing him (though I really want to explore every single detail in this wonderful map)?
Thanks!
Lauri writes:
14-12-2016 15:14
No worry - The Ninth Circle
No worry, he is not important. He is an easter egg, a secret you might find. Or more like he is guarding a secret which is now free for grasp should you find it ;)
Daniel (Dobrich, Bulgaria) writes:
14-12-2016 21:13
Snap! - The Ninth Circle
Oh, man, but I want to deserve it... I guess I'll have to start over :(
Lauri writes:
15-12-2016 14:23
No need - The Ninth Circle
Kingslayer is guarding a secret treasure, which you are supposed to get only once you defeat Green. You're not supposed to fight him or defeat him in battle. He is quite powerful, I'd say too powerful to defeat at that point of game.
What you did is exactly how you are supposed to defeat him, by having him banished from the lands with no towns left.
Author: Atanas (Sofia, Bulgaria), 09-12-2016 17:33 Perfect map! - The Ninth Circle I found this map after played your second one - Fifth Circle, which was really good.
But this one is even better.
Really nice challenging map!
I miss just one thing...Expert Water Magic :)
Thank you, you are very talented mapmaker. It was pleasure to play both maps!!!
Lauri writes:
14-12-2016 15:15
Thanks - The Ninth Circle
Seems like a lot of people are using Clones to finish my maps!
Might have to disable the spell in future maps! :p
Author: Lauri, 04-12-2016 00:19 Updated - The Ninth Circle The map has been updated with tiny changes.
I've also finished my second map: http://www.maps4hero es.com/forum/opinion s.php?map_id=1442&ga me=3
Go give it a go!
Author: Dan (Belgium / Roumania), 20-11-2016 09:43 A good and balanced map! - The Ninth Circle Heya hey!
A good and balanced map!
Pro - almost half of the map i have to play whithout Town Portal. Dunno if intended (although i guess so) but i got the TP spell from a quest.
- Also ressurect spell available only a bit later. This 2 things made the game very challanging at the beginning. Many time i had to return with my main hero from exploring to defend some towns
- invasion of red- challanging also to play against many hero equipped with Ring of Oblivion. Difficult not to lose troops.
Cons (but just some subjective opinions)
- too many castles
- too many Libraries of Enlightenment (overall main hero is at max long time before final battles)
- too few secondary quests
Finished in 267 day 490 score on impossible.I discovered about 98-99% of the map (few region didnt explored)
Overall i enjoyed spending time in this map. Thanx for that! :):):)
Author: Manu, 27-10-2016 13:47 Bug when reaching the first Prison? - The Ninth Circle Hello,
Can someone help me?
I have a bug when reaching the first Prison. The game crash.
As well when a i wan't to start a new game with h3era.exe crash as well since i install Hota...
Valery (Lyon, France) writes:
27-10-2016 15:02
+ - The Ninth Circle
Don't use same folder for Hota and Era, they are not compatible.
Manu writes:
28-10-2016 10:56
Bug when reaching the first Prison? - The Ninth Circle
Ok Thanks Valery.
So it means that i need to install it on a new install of SOD? and have 2 3DO folders?
Manu writes:
28-10-2016 15:52
Install Heroes complete or SOD - The Ninth Circle
One question: i think i need to reinstall a full version of heroes or SOD but i do not have the CD anymore. Can someone tell me where i can download it? Then i could install Hota?
Thanks again for your help guys
Author: kto-to, 24-10-2016 02:43 Bug - The Ninth Circle Bug. i win all enemy(except red). But Fallen not open gate. stuck.
Lauri writes:
26-10-2016 21:41
Hmm - The Ninth Circle
Have you defeated the first red Inferno castle yet? Once you defeat that, you get to the Capital south of your starting town.
Author: spaa (Ru), 13-10-2016 15:32 00 - The Ninth Circle It has been playing for 9 months. Not to say that it is very difficult because even I was able to get through. A very big problem of course was at the end of the game - the main thing is not to give the heroes unite forces.
Author: Mike, 04-10-2016 02:02 Very cool map - The Ninth Circle Many interesting aspects to this single-player map, including the inability to recruit heroes for most of the course of it.
I enjoyed the red onslaught at the end and congratulations on figuring out the timing with that - I will have to look into the map editor to specifically see how you did it because I love it.
This is a very difficult map and I was forced to reload several times to beat it. I try not to when I play these games but there are at least 20 battles in this map in which taking losses would really hurt your chances of winning. I did manage to beat it on day 280 for a score of 490, so it seems I was 1 day shy of the mapmaker's score :-) Still I did look at the Map Editor a few times when I was stumped regarding where the next keymaster tent was.
All in all though, very interesting storyline and game elements. My final army was entirely castle troops, I used the Roland hero as my "main" (and only, really, besides troop chains/shuttling). I relied heavily on Gelu upgrades and did most of my damage via sharpshooters with the combination bow.
A few notes to the mapmaker... one is that there is a Treasury available in one of the Rampart castles. This makes a few of the gold mine areas not very useful. I never equipped the Golden Goose and it sounds like there's a Cornucopia there somewhere that I never found.
The red heroes are a little too similar for my tastes, I would suggest making them a bit more different.
Anyways that's all I can think of now. Congrats on a wonderful and well-tested map.
Lauri (Finland) writes:
04-10-2016 17:29
Thanks - The Ninth Circle
Thank you. The "timing" depends completely on the player. There are two ways to activate the red invasion:
1. Defeat Darian and the next day the Onslaught begins.
2. Wait for 43 weeks.
Sadly the story was never finished, because I got so bored of updating the map.
The Cornucopia is a hidden secret along with a few other artifacts. You're not supposed to use them if you want the full enjoyment of the map, which kudos to you, you seemed to have.
The treasury is also on purpose. Originally I had it removed, but I noticed you will have extreme trouble with gold up-keep without one. Of course this means, if you can wait long enough without purchasing any troops, you will eventually reach a moment when you will never run out of gold.... but then again, if you can reach that day then good for you.
Red heroes (the ones activated during the invasion) are similar because I originally used copy/paste on them. I did a few changes to a few of them, but they are mostly cannon-fodder anyway.
Mike writes:
04-10-2016 21:59
Thanks! - The Ninth Circle
Sounds like you're no longer making changes to the map, so no worries on that. In any case, the way you've set up the red invasion (the prisons and tents) is amazing and clever and if someone did it 15 years ago it very well could have defined a generation of player-made maps. Best of luck on future mapmaking, I hope to see more!
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 14:05 Secret - The Ninth Circle Yeah, no worries. I was first thinking about making the guardian "impossible&quo t; so that you can only reach the secret once Green is defeated. But the point of the whole place is to make the map easier for those who have otherwise hard time with it. Just because it is there doesn't mean you have to use it ;)
Author: ks, 24-09-2016 13:56 hi - The Ninth Circle heh I will take little rest man :)
But I think u must double or more army in orrin (guarding secret area)
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 13:28 Updated - The Ninth Circle It is now updated. Let me know if the AI is still bugging. At least worked for me.
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 11:00 Got it - The Ninth Circle No idea why, but after testing tens of times, I think I fixed it. Had nothing to do with red or the changes I made in the last update... at least not that I found any. I don't understand why, but for some reason removing the one hero from teal fixed everything.
Makes no sense since he had always had those heroes, but whatever. Now it works. I removed the hero hidden in the necromancer's "secret prison". Sadly, this means there's no longer an option for player to free Teal ahead of time and force him to fight against the necromancers... which, I don't know if you found it, but was an option in the previous version. By finding the necromancer's hidden prison, you could release a teal hero, which takes a blue tent and allows teal to fight against the necromancers... which makes the task a lot easier for you when the two are focused killing each other.
O'well. A shame.
I'll let you know when the map is updated. Sorry for this previous farce.
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 10:08 Hmm - The Ninth Circle To pass the guard to Selena, you need to go to the Purple's land, go through the new red portal and find the quest hut that gives you Angelic Alliance. Then use it as a key.
I added a few quest huts, which I think you've missed. One you access through Necromancer lands, through a newly added subterranean passage and the other is through the red portal on the Purple's lands.
I've no idea why Orange bugged out for you. Never did that to me. Tried three times again, each time he captured all towns.
Teal, however, really seems to ignore that one prison and one town. Never did that to me before, but let's see if I can fix this. I guess it must be the underground red hero waiting to be released. Maybe the AI thinks it's too close and stays to defend the town instead of moving out, even though the red can't get to it. I'll try a few fixes. Let's see if I can figure this one out.
Author: ks, 24-09-2016 08:27 Like guess - The Ninth Circle I think you should remove the secret way to those extras (s.of.legion, cornicopia etc..) cos i think if the players have too early these, than ai starts playing different and sometime freezing. Or set good guards.
Author: ks, 24-09-2016 08:22 Like hi - The Ninth Circle Never met any red players cos i coudnt pass selena guard. I dont know whats happen, but never met selena also and she had no taken his towns. Maybe you need to set some ai parties. Teal beat easy and he left without castles 7days and i took barb hero from the prison in his territory
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 02:40 Hah - The Ninth Circle And looking at your screenshots, I just realized you were sneaky and found one of my secrets! Well done! :P
No wonder you were so much ahead of time. :)
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 02:31 Teal - The Ninth Circle And there were no nerfs made to teal. Quite the contrary. The last teal invastion hero is set to be released on Tan making sure Teal grows even stronger by capturing the extra barbarian towns. I guess it was easy for you either due to some weird bug, or the simple fact you were way ahead of time. I never had trouble with teal either, because I destroyed him with zero losses before he grew too strong. You're just getting too good at this map :)
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 02:21 Hero - The Ninth Circle What I don't understand though is how you got that barbarian hero for yourself... should not be possible.
Something fishy is going on in here. I have to investigate.
Author: Lauri (Finland), 24-09-2016 02:19 Weird - The Ninth Circle Hmm. That is extremely weird. The only real changes I did was to add quests and quest-artifacts, add three weeks to red invasion, and make sure that should you reach the second castle before the invasion, three hard red heroes will emerge with DD and fly. Did you encounter them? Alternatively, should you not reach them in time, red will grow heavily in strength and upon defeating the second inferno, the end-boss is released with highly boosted army. So basically, either way you will have a hard battle a head.
I've no idea why the orange AI hasn't captured all his towns... I have a feeling that this time, it's more about your game bugging out than the actual map.
In your last screenshot you haven't defeated Selena yet (first inferno) and that is why it says you're yet to find the one responsible.
Author: ks, 23-09-2016 20:55 Like screenshots - The Ninth Circle forgot:
http://s12.postimg.o rg/owc14ny7x/image.j pg
http://s15.postimg.o rg/ys2jqdprv/image.j pg
http://s13.postimg.o rg/zc6yy3713/image.j pg
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