Demon farming analysis

[u/SignificantDiver6132]

Inferno is generally seen as one of the weakest towns, but it does have one ace up their sleeve: Pit Lords' ability to summon demons from the corpses of fallen allies. This effectively allows them to upgrade most lvl 1-3 weaklings into Demons.

However, the conversion isn't much of an upgrade in most cases. This is because the conversion doesn't actually increase hitpoints and actually loses them if the amount doesn't exactly match the amount of Pit Lords doing the summoning or if the dead stack consists of mobs that have more HP than Demons themselves.

The best case scenario is turning a low damage, high HP mob into Demons. For example, 1.75 Dwarves turn their combined 3.5-7 base damage into 7-9 base damage of a single Demon, plus a couple points of extra Attack.

The worst case scenario is turning a high damage, low HP mob like Sprites. 12 sprites do a combined 12-36 or 24 average damage, which is about the triple what a single Demon does. You're also losing great speed, fly and no retaliation in the process.

Hit points are somewhat better protected due to Demon's base defense of 10, but in many cases this is only a few points of defence difference. Hit point artifacts and First Aid specialty heroes do help a bit on the hit point conversion rate.

Pooling creatures from several different cities and external dwellings into one superstack is pretty much the only remaining tangible benefit. And since the new Hota Patch, letting Marius boost a larger share of their entire army to new heights.

[u/imnotsospecial]

The worst case scenario is turning a high damage, low HP mob like Sprites. 12 sprites do a combined 12-36 or 24 average damage, which is about the triple what a single Demon does. You're also losing great speed, fly and no retaliation in the process.

1- You only have 7 army slots, sure sprites and many other low level creatures are great, but how many can you have in your army?

2- You under estimate how important "a few stat points" are. A demon has 10/10 compared to a sprites 2/2. If that doesnt sound like a lot, just remember that an A tier skill like offense is equivalent to 6 attack. You're losing HP and gaining tons of stats

3- Demons can be upgraded into horned demons for a 15% HP boost, so this allows you to use your gold to get even more HP

4- Demon farming allows you to use otherwise unusable army. Sure maybe you can fit sprites in there, but what about the other low level trash?

5- This is the most important point: a consolidated power stack beats scattered stacks. Demon farming allows you to have the best stack on thr battlefield 

[u/SignificantDiver6132 → u/imnotsospecial]

I see I didn't care to state that I come from a very specific culture of RMG templates that are built on the premise of having several equally important "main" heroes with armies that grow very much in lockstep with each other.

Being able to consolidate such powerful armies into a single one isn't less important there, rather even more so. In fact, finding a Necropolis town is the strategically decisive turning point as you can consolidate the separately weaker armies into a mega-stack of skellies.

So I apologize for making it sound like consolidating forces would not be important; I just took it for granted that there already exist an universal consensus on it.