Heroes of Might and Magic V Q&A and Preview

GameSpot has kicked up a new two-page feature for Ubisoft’s Heroes of Might and Magic V, which includes a Q&A with creative director Alexander Mishulin and a short preview of the Academy faction. An excerpt from the Q&A:

Q: Could you explain how unit generation will work? Will new units become available from unit-producing structures daily, like in Heroes IV, or will they only be available weekly, like in Heroes I-III? Will there be random astrological weeks that will cause certain unit-producing structures to produce extra units, or “plague” weeks that will cause fewer units to be produced, like in the earlier games?

A: Unit generation happens weekly, as it produces an additional inside cycle in the game. Of course, some may say that visiting town every week in order to get new units is not convenient, but this provides for a better balance. Weekly generation better fits the whole concept of the series: traveling, adventures, and fights. This way, after a big army defeat, you will have to plan your actions, say, whether you should stick around to the closest city, gathering the resources and waiting for the next army to generate, or whether you should ride full speed to another town.

The number of units “being born” each week depends on many factors: the buildings in the town (not only dwellings themselves, as there are certain buildings affecting unit generation), the captured buildings on the adventure map (say, if you have a peasant dwelling on the map, it will also slightly increase the number of the peasants in the town), and “astrology.” If a week is announced to be a week of a certain creature, the generation of these creatures will increase. There are also other pleasant and not so pleasant events associated with the beginning of a next week.