How do I win a tournament on Hard? (Single player)

I just finished one today, and I have played quite a few.

To be honest, I think your problem might lie just in playing Sedna, or trying to play a healer in general.  Unfortunately, the single player game GREATLY favors stacking damage / attack speed / criticals as much as possible, since the AI is very bad at judging when to retreat.

Keep in mind that winning the tournament requires you having the most favor, not just winning the majority of games.  The game favors stacking damage partly for this reason in Single Player - you rack up more favor by getting more awards, and getting the "Damage, Deaths, Kills, Kill Streak, Winner" awards will give you a HUGE amount of favor.

It is a bit of a flaw in SP, but the builds that function well in multiplayer just don't do as well in single.  It's certainly possible to win on Hard with any demigod and nearly any build, but it makes it MUCH harder on you to try to win with a assist-style build (like healer sedna)

sedna is not a healer, she is a tank ^^ 

Some thoughts:

- I've never had issues with my computer allies not carrying their weight throughout an entire tournament, at least not consistantly - some games they under perform, other games they don't.  The key is to always get more favor than anyone else, so as long as you are your team's top performer, you'll be okay.

I would get currency for your team ASAP, but otherwise let the upgrades slack until you can go straight for cats and giants.  This depends on the game mode, obviously.  Big maps mean not getting unit upgrades until late, small maps mean push hard and fast, focusing on holding flags and pushing to giants.

How are you upgrading yourself?  Health stacking, especially as Sedna vs AI, can make you an unstoppable force.

If your AI is sucking it up, feel free to tail them and use them as an HP sponge while you do the damage.

I would recommend playing UB, as his build is straightforward and is a very strong 1v1 demigod late game.  A straightforward build will let you focus on improving your meta game tactics.

Lastly, play with some friends over Ventrilo!  You'll start seeing ganking opportunities, techniques, and other tactics you can apply to single player.

Nothing is an instant win - especially with random allies and opponents you can't talk to - so don't stress and have fun.

 The Rules of Gaming (qouting Miyamiya ):

1. If you are dead you did something wrong.

2. If you are not in danger of dying, 
   you are doing something wrong.

How are you upgrading yourself?  Health stacking, especially as Sedna vs AI, can make you an unstoppable force.

Usually the first upgrades I get are the bonus armor and +25 weapon damage.  After that the next upgrade I try and go for is something to improve my mana flow, since I'm frequently healing myself while out in the front lines.  After that I pick up a few small upgrades here and there, while trying to save for the $8k artifact that increases my weapon speed, damage, and adds life steal.

The flipside of that is that my citidal doesn't get any upgrades.  I find I can either afford an artifact, or afford to do structural upgrades.  The problem is if I spend the money at the citidal I quickly get underpowered compared to my opponents.

My upgrade advice:

Starting:  Buy the +HP armor, wait about 15 seconds, then buy the +Mana item.

Then buy Nimoth's plate and Vlemish, the order depending on whether your mana or your health is the bigger issue.  If your needs are immediate, buy currency!

After that, buy priests of some nature (make sure you don't get the same kind as the citadel upgrade so they stack).  Wand of speed is also a nice pickup.

I would lay off the mage slayer (the artifact you mentioned).  Its more important to have a set of five items + wand of speed than it is to buy an artifact.  Stay away from armor-only items, and any item with a small % chance of doing something, and you'll be fine.

(English is not my first language I am sorry for any misspelling/bad grammar)

I have found that the AI after a few games is hugely predictable and stupid. it will NEVER retreat when it should, or it follow you past several towers - thats when you turn around for the kill. Before I started playing multiplayer I won a tournament on hard with every DG. In the beginning I had a few retrys, but in the end the computer was very easy to beat with any DG. My approach was to spec my DG as if I were alone and, if I was playing a DG that was weak in the beginning, let two AIs duke it out a little and then move in for the kill. 

Avoid getting killed and cheat your allied AIs from the kills and you should soon overtake hostile AI. Soon you will find that you can kill any one DG at will.

Good luck!

P.S. I stil lost a few rounds on crucible when the objective was to kill 10 enemy DGs. Before I had abovementioned superiority my allied AIs had been killed.

CAVEAT: Overconfidence from horsewhipping the AI can lead to crushing defeat against almost any human opponent. NEC TEMERE NEC TIMIDE  

I've won the tournament on hard with Rook, Sedna, TB, and UB. 

I almost always get the award for spending the most on citadel upgrades and I ALWAYS get the award for capturing the most flags and I'm usually double everybody else. 

I go for flags, upgrading citadel, and survivability when playing.  There have been games where I'm Rook and the first half the game all I'm doing is upgrading the citadel (the first gold upgrade is my #1 priority).  It really just depends on the game though.

I most definitely don't win every game, I just end up on top at the end.  I lose a lot of slaughter games because my allies are usually terrible.

MY adviece

1. Stack HP

2. CONTROL THE FLAGS (especially the experience). This will cause your allies to not die as much due to their slightly higher life/mana/level.

3. Imo, the most important part is to just dominate the enemy AI early. This way they will be lower lvl than your AI and less able to kill them. When i play a hard tournament, usually half my allies half more kills than deaths. I on the other hand usually end up with 15-30 kills and 0-2 deaths.

I found that playing online a bit helped me win the tournaments.

Yea babysitting your AI teammates during early and midgame is very important for them not to be outleveled and not feeding the AI to much. Besides from that a combination of what most people write here is required to beat the Hard difficulty.

The tournament on Hard and Nightmaremode is currently imho mostly a game of "helping your AIs" and "preventing their AIs" and not that much of strategy as you could hope.

One of the most anoying things about playing on hard is that either all AIs on the oposing team gets some really large speedboost starting at around 10+ lvl. This makes it hard to get away from then when not playing a melee DG.

I would like to see a more advanced control of the AIs cheat in tournaments like you could in Supreme Commander. It would for example be nice if you could set sliders with gold income modifier, speed modifier, hp modifier etc. You should also be able to change this for your teams AIs.

I like ur avatar, is it fooly or is it cooly?

Sedna is Sedna, the other demigods arent in the same league.

Playing a single player tournament is different than in multiplayer, obviously.  When I played through all the single tournaments on hard (including Sedna) I did the following:

1) Max out your citadel upgrades for XP.

2) Expend extra effort to control any XP flag.

This helped to offset how badly your AIs underperform.  Also, get the gold upgrades.  These citadel upgrades you probably wouldn't bother with in multiplayer, but they are a good way to get your AIs up to par in single player, I found.

Well as an update (I'm the original poster) I actually managed to beat hard mode last night, with a little help of the posts here.  My biggest improvement was however was swapping Sedna for Regulus.  By picking up the 15% speed boost favor item, and picking up the 10% speed boost boots as my first purchased item, I was able to quickly maneuver myself around the maps to keep on top of the flags, and to harass the opposing demigods. 

Regulus just obviously suits my playstyle better, because we comfortably one every game except conquest Mandala, and the only reason I lost that one is I had demigods continually capturing the portals on both sides of our base, where obviously I could only re-capture one portal back at a time.

However I think my error before this tornament was not keeping on top of the flags, especially the experience ones.

Thanks for the advice guys, you've all helped a new player to develop in the game.

Taking swift anklets + boots of speed at the start that means you have no hp, no hp regen, and no mana regen, and in an online game you will be pushed out of your lane instantly. Best case scenario you lose control of that lanes flag. Worst case scenario you have to continually go back to base and heal just to survive = no exp = gg.

If you intend to only play single player tournaments ever, then ignore the above post ^^

i think all of this advice is of the wrong type. you can personally play perfectly and be totally dominant but because your AI team-mates are so badly handicapped in the single player tournament you are almost guaranteed to lose certain game types on certain maps. there's almost nothing that can be done. 

If you kill the enemy enough and keep the flags, then your teammates WONT die nearly as much.This is because your allies will end up being a lvl or two above the other AI and therefor able to defend themselves somewhat.

As I said in my previous post, half my allies usually end up with more kills than deaths .

Just wreck them -- AI fails at not getting killed so do what it takes to rape them early and they won't recover.  Slaughter can be hard because your crappy AIs only can die ten times to their not-as-crappy AIs, but just be sure to get some of the favor awards on that one.  And push like hell; they won't try to stop you.

1. Adjust the speed.

     If you turn the speed down to -1, -2, or even less, than it becomes easier to make smart moves in duels against the computer.

     Not only will this help you against the AI, but it will also help you to learn moves, techniques, and strategies that can be brought over to the multiplayer. You will have to learn next how to use these moves at the regular speed though.

2. Control the Artifact flag

     The AI will accumulate way more gold than you. No real way to control this. If they get artifacts, the will pwn you. If you can deny them the artifact shop, then they will not be able to use their excess gold against you.

Sure, single player will not make you a multiplayer master, but it's a good way to learn the DG's.

Wait til you get to nightmare...

1. Invest in citidel upgrades first. Get the gold and exp upgrades for your inferior AI partners. Once they get gold, they will help buy the rest.

2. As said above, continously caplock critical flags.

3. Don't go fight solo. Watch who is the weakest DG on your team (often rook) and go out to fight with him when he marches forth. Superior numbers win.

4. /pwn

My tips if you're struggling is to play all-out-items and kills. I beat the nightmare campaign by pure killing, not spending a single upgrade on citadel or defense-items. When you get 10+ kills you start to afford good items, which will give you 20+ more kills, which will make you be able to roam free killing towers and enemy dg alike. Just get speed items and damage+ and start killing. The point is that the enemy will kills your allies alot, and they get more gold than you, so they will become really strong really fast. But if you kill them faster, you will win. Sadly, as someone pointed out, you can't play like a team, because your team sucks.

Hope this helps