>What am I missing about Hordes from Hell?
I was reviewing this thread and just caught this and it's worth answering.
HfH is outstanding for a varitety of reasons.
While the imps are weak, they do hit twice, they have a high defense, and since they are small they often gain bonuses from making multiple attacks versus their targets. I wouldn't stack them up one on one versus elite heavy troops, but I would consider them to be fairly good light troops.
Keep in mind that they don't eat, and as such you can stack up an unlimited number.
They have no upkeep, so having a bunch hanging out doesn't hurt you.
They fly, and as such can exploit fast movement and province jumping.
They can be summoned anywhere. The potency of being able to drop troops exactly where needed (including on enemy provinces) should never be underestimated.
The Devil leader is pretty strong. Not pretender or big blood summons strong, but not bad either. Since it's a leader it has item slots, and it can be pumped up fairly significantly.
It's not at all hard to work up enough blood magic to summon two HfH per turn. That's 2 devils and 50 imps. More than enough to blow through a lightly defended province. It's easy to say that you don't mind losing provinces, and that they can be recovered, but it's not a happy situation. When the "war" begins the HfH player can drop 50 imps into your rear. Losing gold and gems is never happy. Next turn another 50 pop up in a percieved weak spot, meanwhile the first 50 fly up to three provinces away. Third turn 50 more show up while the first two manuver. This is a very slippery slope! It's hard to maintain a war while this sort of nonsense is grabbing your provinces and only getting worse and worse. It's very hard to regain the inititive once this starts happening. In fact every time I can recall this being reversed on me it involved my enemy sending in potent Gateway counterattacks, a tactic that is no longer available in Dom2. I'm not saying that it's invincible. What I'm saying is that HfH is effective and not easily dismissed.
Beyond this I often use HfH to snag rear forts from players. Often the forts in the "rear" are almost empty. I like dropping as many HfH on the forts as possible. This often leads to a swift capture before my enemy can respond. At the very least, it gets their attention!
On a similar note, HfH are great for stacking up the "numbers" needed to break down fort walls. Plus once the walls are breached, having troops that can fly over the walls during battle can *really* make life easier during the assault.
I like Hordes from Hell.
