HoMM 3 is pretty awesome, especially with the widescreen mod. Y'all should pick it up if strategy and loot and fiery efreeti are your thing.
Oh, also Cryostasis is awesome, which I bought alongside HoMM. Y'all should pick it up if ice and Russians and scares are your thing (unless you have an ATI card in which case it is apparently unplayable (although I have an ATI card and it works for me so (look at all these brackets))).
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
I thought 5 was a nice improvment over 4 but it's characters and campaign felt pretty flat compared to 2-3. Overall, I think 3 is a good starting point. It's an old game but it's UI and graphics are still appealing today (it's not one you need nostalgia to appreciate). And it comes with a hell of a lot of content in terms of maps and campaigns and such.
Though a quick warning: Heroes 3 has a freaking terrible non-skippable intro movie. Do not judge the game until you get past that! The actual in-game graphics are quite nice and do not resemble that intro movie.
Why is 3 considered the best? I've never played any of them, so I'm just curious. I like the way 2 looks. What changed between those 2?
Also what does TBS stand for? I saw someone say this is their favorite TBS fantasy game.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Everybody's hating on HoMM IV. Is there something terrible I'm not remembering about it? I remember enjoying it more than HoMM V. It wasn't HoMM III, but I still liked it.
my problems with 4 were:
1) The transition from excellent hand-drawn 2d art to crappy early 3d artwork
2) It was really unstable (perhaps was eventually patched but when I got it it crashed all the time). By the time they were making this game 3d0 was pretty far down the drain and their lack of resources showed.
3) I did not like the way the implemented heroes actually moving around and fighting in the battles (unlike all the other games)
4) Didn't like setting compared to 2 and 3
5) Didn't like the "mesh" like map in battles compared to the hex map of the others
6) A lot fewer unit types and fewer towns than in 3.
All the gameplay problems with 4 they thankfully dropped in 5 and 6.
Yeah I guess I liked, or didn't hate, most of those changes. The art was always kind of meh to me so the crummy 3D stuff never bothered me. I never played them because I thought they had great graphics. But I see your point. Never had issues with stability that I recall. The heroes in battle thing didn't really change that much it seemed and helped at times from getting nickel and dime'd by smaller armies. Was IV the one that got rid of the "two types for every unit" thing? If it was, I actually liked that change a lot. Having multiple units of the same "kind" often lead to really annoying logistical headaches that I didn't feel added much to game.
I do believe II and III had the best music by far.
Everybody's hating on HoMM IV. Is there something terrible I'm not remembering about it? I remember enjoying it more than HoMM V. It wasn't HoMM III, but I still liked it.
my problems with 4 were:
1) The transition from excellent hand-drawn 2d art to crappy early 3d artwork
2) It was really unstable (perhaps was eventually patched but when I got it it crashed all the time). By the time they were making this game 3d0 was pretty far down the drain and their lack of resources showed.
3) I did not like the way the implemented heroes actually moving around and fighting in the battles (unlike all the other games)
4) Didn't like setting compared to 2 and 3
5) Didn't like the "mesh" like map in battles compared to the hex map of the others
6) A lot fewer unit types and fewer towns than in 3.
All the gameplay problems with 4 they thankfully dropped in 5 and 6.
Yeah I guess I liked, or didn't hate, most of those changes. The art was always kind of meh to me so the crummy 3D stuff never bothered me. I never played them because I thought they had great graphics. But I see your point. Never had issues with stability that I recall. The heroes in battle thing didn't really change that much it seemed and helped at times from getting nickel and dime'd by smaller armies. Was IV the one that got rid of the "two types for every unit" thing? If it was, I actually liked that change a lot. Having multiple units of the same "kind" often lead to really annoying logistical headaches that I didn't feel added much to game.
I do believe II and III had the best music by far.
I love the music in 2 so much. Looking up info on it even taught me what a harpsichord is and now it's one of my favorite instruments to listen to ever.
I also love 2 more than three, partly because it was my first HoMM experience and also partly because I like its brighter colors and how it's less complex than 3.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
So this is going to sound like an odd question. Do the GOG versions of games work on older OSes? My laptop is definitely in need of repair to run games, but I can't get it repaired until the end of the month. But I do have a Pentium 3 running Window 98... so I could theoretically get BG1 and 2 running on it. I just don't want to waste the time downloading it if it's not going to work.
Win98 runs the games that GOG ports natively, both DOS and Windows. Most of the games are just wrapped through DOSBox, so you'd just need to find the original .EXE file.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
edited April 2012
Ok I have some HoMM 2 questions. Can 2 heroes fight the same enemy? If so how? And can enemies take back resources I've captured like saw mills and vice versa? To capture a castle do I just have to step on it without being killed? And how do I defend my castle with a hero? Do I just put him at the front entrance?
edit: One more. When attacking I noticed the cursor turns into a sword and points at different angles. Does this mean anything? Like how I attack or does it not matter?
Ok I have some HoMM 2 questions. Can 2 heroes fight the same enemy? If so how? And can enemies take back resources I've captured like saw mills and vice versa? To capture a castle do I just have to step on it without being killed? And how do I defend my castle with a hero? Do I just put him at the front entrance?
edit: One more. When attacking I noticed the cursor turns into a sword and points at different angles. Does this mean anything? Like how I attack or does it not matter?
I don't think multiple heroes can fight the same thing, gotta do it one at a time. Enemies can take backs mines and mills so you gotta watch them. You capture a castle by stepping in it and defeating the castle army, and to defend your own, yes you put yours inside the castle. I think the sword icon just shows what direction you attack from but I don't think it matters (no backstabbing or anything)
Ok I have some HoMM 2 questions. Can 2 heroes fight the same enemy? If so how? And can enemies take back resources I've captured like saw mills and vice versa? To capture a castle do I just have to step on it without being killed? And how do I defend my castle with a hero? Do I just put him at the front entrance?
edit: One more. When attacking I noticed the cursor turns into a sword and points at different angles. Does this mean anything? Like how I attack or does it not matter?
In Heroes 2:
- 2 heroes cannot fight the same enemy, each hero is his/her own army. 2 heroes can trade units though - this is a key strategy and most folks have one uber hero that runs around doing most of the fighting and a bunch of scout heroes that have just 1 low level unit
- Enemies can "flag" your mines/mills just by walking up to them. And they will. A lot.
- To capture a castle you walk up to it just like you are flagging a mine. If there are troops there (there almost always will be) you have to defeat them
- To leave a hero in the castle to defend, select the hero when he's walked up to the castle (you are in the castle screen and the hero's portrait is in the bottom row) and move him to the top row. If you park him at the front entrance he will not be "in" the castle during the fight. Even a weak hero "in" the castle can defend well due to the walls and arrow towers
Ok I have some HoMM 2 questions. Can 2 heroes fight the same enemy? If so how? And can enemies take back resources I've captured like saw mills and vice versa? To capture a castle do I just have to step on it without being killed? And how do I defend my castle with a hero? Do I just put him at the front entrance?
edit: One more. When attacking I noticed the cursor turns into a sword and points at different angles. Does this mean anything? Like how I attack or does it not matter?
Others answered the earlier questions but I believe the sword is changing position to indicate what direction you are attacking from. This matters only because it may cost more movement points to attack from that angle. It's a been a long while since I've played but IIRC this can be important as you may eat up movement points you need after the fight. Also the game may try to path you in some sort of round about way to the target such that you won't even get there.
Some general advice for overall strategy: Picking the time to fight is a big component of HoMM (the early ones anyway). It's very hard to just turtle up in your castle until you build up an overwhelming force. The enemy is often doing this as well and generally starts with a larger army. So you need to be out gathering as much stuff as possible. What you want to try to do is get the enemy's army when he is vulnerable, usually when he is out gathering as well. If your army is bigger than his he will usually run back to his castle the moment he sees you. Where if he feels he is stronger he will come after you. The trick sometimes is to sucker him in to fighting you on your terms. For instance using a weaker army, to draw him in, but have a stronger army some ways behind the weaker one. When he moves toward your weaker army (this is where you will have to be careful with those movement points so you stay just out of reach) move the stronger army up and attack or just transfer all of their units to the weaker army if there is a bottle neck.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
Thanks for the replies. I'm having fun with it. I also found out how to turn on the grid, and I like it a lot better. Is there any way to see how far enemies can move?
I don't know how to play HoMM 3. I've skimmed the 200 page manual but is there a beginner's guide or tutorial I could look at. I send 50 centaurs stacked on top of each other at the enemy and the enemy hits it and BAM! 20 centaurs dead. Maybe I'm supposed to split them into 5 groups of ten?
I don't know how to play HoMM 3. I've skimmed the 200 page manual but is there a beginner's guide or tutorial I could look at. I send 50 centaurs stacked on top of each other at the enemy and the enemy hits it and BAM! 20 centaurs dead. Maybe I'm supposed to split them into 5 groups of ten?
No no. Centaurs are incredibly weak/cheap units. If you get 50+ of them they will do serious damage to even top-tier units, but they can't take a hit worth beans (i.e., they're a glass cannon).
Basically keep building up your city, and save money to acquire bigger and better units, and then send those better units out into battle.
Everybody's hating on HoMM IV. Is there something terrible I'm not remembering about it? I remember enjoying it more than HoMM V. It wasn't HoMM III, but I still liked it.
my problems with 4 were:
1) The transition from excellent hand-drawn 2d art to crappy early 3d artwork
2) It was really unstable (perhaps was eventually patched but when I got it it crashed all the time). By the time they were making this game 3d0 was pretty far down the drain and their lack of resources showed.
3) I did not like the way the implemented heroes actually moving around and fighting in the battles (unlike all the other games)
4) Didn't like setting compared to 2 and 3
5) Didn't like the "mesh" like map in battles compared to the hex map of the others
6) A lot fewer unit types and fewer towns than in 3.
All the gameplay problems with 4 they thankfully dropped in 5 and 6.
I don't know how to play HoMM 3. I've skimmed the 200 page manual but is there a beginner's guide or tutorial I could look at. I send 50 centaurs stacked on top of each other at the enemy and the enemy hits it and BAM! 20 centaurs dead. Maybe I'm supposed to split them into 5 groups of ten?
In the game files itself there is a tutorial guide. However it's meant to be looked at alongside the tutorial mode, because it's just super convenient like that.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
I'm quickly learning that in HoMM2 I shouldn't attack any graveyards or boat wrecks unless I have a huge ass kicking army. Is this about right?
I'm quickly learning that in HoMM2 I shouldn't attack any graveyards or boat wrecks unless I have a huge ass kicking army. Is this about right?
Boat wrecks and graveyards are Ghosts, right?
You do not want to be fighting Ghosts unless you've got enough stuff to severely damage them with a first strike, which is quite difficult as they can cross the entire map in one go. If you go up against a decent number of Ghosts with mainly weaker creatures, they'll feed off of your level 1s and 2s and quickly snowball out of control. You need
I don't know how to play HoMM 3. I've skimmed the 200 page manual but is there a beginner's guide or tutorial I could look at. I send 50 centaurs stacked on top of each other at the enemy and the enemy hits it and BAM! 20 centaurs dead. Maybe I'm supposed to split them into 5 groups of ten?
Just post any questions you have here, I'll be glad to help.
As noted, Centaurs are a Level 1 unit, which effectively means that they are cannon fodder. They're actually one of the more durable L1s, but they're going to get slaughtered by anything Level 4 or greater. Level growth is mostly linear until the Level 7, which is roughly 3 times as strong as the Level 6 on average, and is your "ultimate unit". Higher level creatures have much better ATK and DEF stats, which means that they'll rip the hell out of lower-level creatures to a much greater extent than their damage stat would seem to indicate.
It's very important to keep all the creatures' respective levels and stats in mind; this is knowledge which you will quickly acquire, but can get from the manual for now. As the levels grow up, creatures become ever more powerful.
I'd actually recommend that you start up a game as every town, just to look at their creature stats and figure out what tier everything is. Don't play the whole game, but just get a feel for the creatures.
Also, a very basic tactic early game is to take your main stack of T1 creatures, and create as many stacks of just 1 creature as you have space for. These are called "fodder" stacks, and should be thrown at enemy stacks to absorb retaliation before your main stack of T1 moves in. This greatly minimizes early game casualties and massively increases your efficiency.
Another thing I recommend doing is turning on full creature information in the battle options; when you hover over an enemy creature, this will tell you how much damage your attack is going to do. Very useful.
I have class right now, but afterward I'll post up some basic HoMM III "pro tips" which will make your life much easier, and a visual guide on how to execute them.
When you take a hit and lose some units do you generally just want to go back to the castle and load up again?
Nah, you can get through fights with smaller armies, and you don't want your main spending the whole game playing Creature Taxi. Have secondary heroes for that.
I don't know how to play HoMM 3. I've skimmed the 200 page manual but is there a beginner's guide or tutorial I could look at. I send 50 centaurs stacked on top of each other at the enemy and the enemy hits it and BAM! 20 centaurs dead. Maybe I'm supposed to split them into 5 groups of ten?
No no. Centaurs are incredibly weak/cheap units. If you get 50+ of them they will do serious damage to even top-tier units, but they can't take a hit worth beans (i.e., they're a glass cannon).
Minor nitpick; Centaurs are going to be pretty crap against high-level units even if you've got a bunch. Throw 50 Centaur Captains, with 6 ATK and 2-3 damage, up against a Gold Dragon and they're going to do, at best, ~80 damage (a Gold Dragon has 250 HP). The Gold Dragon's going to kill 11-12 of them in return just on the retaliation. They'll be dead pretty quick and probably won't even kill the dragon.
Generally, you want to avoid using Level 1s against Level 6s and Level 7s; it's just not cost-efficient. Centaurs are fast and tough enough to go after higher-level units, but not the really strong ones, and they're the best Level 1s out there.
You should have one “main” hero, who does most of the leveling. Hero levels are extremely important; higher-level heroes give their creatures significant stat-boosts and have access to powerful magic. It may seem like a great idea to have multiple leveled heroes so you can conduct offensives in more than one area, or protect your castle, but the fact is that games of HoMM III are often decided by a single pitched battle between the bulk of each player’s armies. If you have two medium-leveled heroes, a single high-level hero will tear your hero apart in a decisive victory and go on to sweep your territories. Conversely, if the AI splits its levels, your main hero can easily run train on them.
Additionally, a single high-level hero will have a better chance at getting a great combo of “power skills” such as Offense, Armorer, Diplomacy, Logistics, and Tactics. Medium-level heroes will have less of these, and will be at a significant disadvantage in neutraling and hero battles.
Have a Troop Ferry System-Don’t Send Your Main Hero Back For More Troops
At some point, your main hero is going to need more troops. This might happen because a neutral stack kicked your ass, or you might just want that awesome new upgrade or Level 7. You’re going to be tempted to run your main hero back to your town. Don’t do this. The HoMM III adventure map is filled with resource, creatures, and artifacts, and whoever plays the map better will likely win the game. You can’t afford to spend a week having your main hero just hoof it back to town; that’s a whole week you could be leveling, gathering resources, finding artifacts, and capturing towns.
Instead, hire multiple Level 1 heroes to act as “troop taxis”. Set up a chain on the map so that they can quickly chain new troops from your towns to your main hero. Make sure every hero in the chain has a single fast creature when ferrying troops, for reasons I will detail further down.
Take Gold, Not XP, From Chests
Treasure Chests are all over the map. They can give your main hero lots of XP. This will be very tempting. Don’t take XP. This is one of the biggest mistake newbies make. You can get a level or two early on, sure. However, you will desperately need gold at all stages of the game. More gold = more creatures. More creatures = stronger army. Stronger army = access to new areas of the map and thus new resources, new artifacts, and more fights. More fights = more XP, which means that you get more XP as a result of taking the gold in addition to all the other bonuses.
There are situations in which you’ll want to take the XP, but as a general rule, take gold. You’ll always need gold, even if you’ve got a Capitol.
Have Scouts and Resource Gatherers
Exposing as much of the map as you can is vitally important for HoMM III. With the exception of Necropolis’ Cover of Darkness (and the accompanying adventure map structure), fog of war in HoMM III does not regenerate. This means that if you expose the map for a week’s travel around in every direction, you will have a week’s warning if any enemy heroes are coming. If you get to an enemy town that’s not a Necropolis, you will forever have LoS on that town.
Scouts should be given one (1) of your fastest creatures, and no more; if your scouts are getting in fights, you’re doing it wrong, and you can’t spare the amount of troops it’d require for a scout to actually clear neutrals. Most towns will have a decently fast low-level unit you can use for scouts. For example, if you’re playing Castle, Griffons make an ideal unit for a scouting hero. If you’re playing Rampart, go with Centaur Captains or Silver Pegasi.
In the same vein as scouts, you’ll want heroes to act as “resource gatherers” to clean up resource piles and flag cleared dwellings and mines after your main hero passes through an area. A main hero should not be taking time to gather piles of wood or ore; that’s wasting your main army while it could be clearing neutral stacks and breaking into new areas. These heroes can be a part of your reinforcement chain, which would in fact work rather well.
Be Mindful Of How Creature Speed and Terrain Affects Your Hero’s Map Speed
As a newbie, you’ve probably noticed how some heroes move faster than others on the adventure map. This is a direct result of two factors. Hero speed is determined first by examining the speed of every creature in your army. Let’s say you have a Gnoll with speed 4, a Wyvern with speed 11, and a Basilisk with speed 6. The army will move at the speed of the Gnoll; that is to say, they’ll receive an amount of movement points on the adventure map commensurate with that value. If you dropped the Gnoll stack, the hero will move at the speed of the Basilisk, and be able to move a significantly greater distance each turn.
What this means is that it's not always beneficial to take every creature stack with your hero that you possibly can. Very slow stacks such as Dwarves, Dendroids, Golems, and some L1 creatures are often best left at home.
Additionally, your hero's speed is calculated based on what creatures you have in your army at the start of a turn. If you start the turn with a Phoenix (speed 21) and then add in a Walking Dead (speed 3) your hero will still move at Speed 21 for that turn. As a result, anyone who's a member of a hero reinforcement chain should have a fast creature, and only a fast creature, so that when they receive reinforcements at the start of a turn they can move as far as possible.
The different types of basic terrain in the game (lava, underground, grass, dirt, sand, rough, swamp, snow) each impact your movement value in different ways; for example, swamp is very difficult to move through. However, if you have an army comprised entirely of creatures native to a single terrain type-for example, your army is comprised entirely of Fortress creatures, who are native to Swamp-you won’t have a terrain penalty. This gives towns such as Stronghold and Fortress a significant advantage, as the RMG will always spawn them on their native terrain and they can move over it far faster than enemy heroes.
Town Building
Don’t Rush Capitol-Build Creature Dwellings
Capitol is a really attractive choice. It gives you 4000 gold a turn. Awesome, right? Shouldn’t you try and get that as quickly as possible so you can get a really big army?
The answer is actually, “No”. Rushing Capitol is another classic newbie mistake, and quite an understandable one. The fact is that the Capitol has a large list of prerequisites, none of which are creature dwellings. If you rush Capitol, your army will be absolutely crippled; you won’t be able to clear the adventure map, and you’ll be denied tons of resources and XP. Build creature dwellings instead! Rely on gold from Treasure Chests to fund your army for the first week or two, and only upgrade the Town Hall when you absolutely need to.
Identify Your Town’s Critical And Skippable Creature Upgrades
Most towns have an upgrade or two that is either an absolute must-have or very good, and an upgrade or two that can be skipped for quite some time. As an example, let’s take Castle, since that’s a popular (and good) newbie town. Castle’s Level 2 is the Archer, and its upgrade is the Marksman. The Marksman gains the ability to shoot twice every time it attacks. This is an absolutely crucial upgrade, and one that makes your early game far, far easier. It’s worth getting very early on.
Conversely, the Halberdier, the upgrade to Castle’s Level 1, the Pikeman, confers only a few minor stat boosts and thus can be put off until much later.
Here’s some examples of “must-have” upgrades for some towns (ignoring Level 7s):
Necropolis: Vampire Lords
Fortress: Mighty Gorgons
Castle: Marksmen
Rampart: Grand Elves
Conflux: Sprites, Storm Elementals, Ice Elementals
Stronghold: Ogre Magi
Tower: Master Gremlins
Don’t Forget To Buy A Spell Book
Your main hero is going to come back to town at some point. If he’s a Might hero, he won’t have a spellbook. A mistake that even veteran players make constantly is neglecting to purchase a spellbook for a Might hero when they arrive in a town with a Mage Guild.
If you do not purchase a spellbook, your hero will not learn any spells when he visits town! This can be crippling later on when you go into combat expecting to have Haste or Slow and you have jack-all.
Don’t Be Afraid To Play A Town Just Because It Has A Level 3 Mage Guild Cap
Both Fortress and Stronghold have a Level 3 Mage Guild cap; they can’t build their MGs past Level 3. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, this is pretty bullshit, but so it goes. Nonetheless, don’t let their inability to build past Level 3 dissuade you. There’s tons of great spells between L1-L3, and what’s more, you’re likely to capture a second town at some point which will be able to build a L4 or L5 Mage Guild.
Additionally, Fortress and Stronghold have great magic hero classes (the Witch and Battle Mage, respectively), and the two best Might heroes in the game (Tazar and Crag Hack). They are very viable despite their weak Guilds.
Hero Skills
Might Heroes Are Stronger
Might heroes are stronger in HoMM III. That’s not to say that magic heroes can’t be viable, and indeed there’s some great magic heroes out there, but bear in mind that the top-end Might heroes (Tazar, Crag Hack) will most often steamroll anyone on the Magic side.
Why, you ask? The reasons are simple. First off, damage spells can be very powerful, but a high-level stack swinging with the full might of ~10-15 ATK and Expert Offense behind it will deal obscene amounts of damage to a magic hero’s troops, especially as their stats will be far lower. Secondly, some of the most powerful spells in the game are the basic Slow and Haste, which cast as a Mass spell at Expert level proficiency in their school. It is quite easy for a Might hero to obtain Expert Air or Expert Earth magic, and these spells are all a Might hero really needs to buff their army into an unstoppable engine of death. By comparison, a Magic hero can’t gain the strength of a Might hero-great stats and great Might skills-nearly as easily.
Still, if you want to play Magic, go for it! You’ll be fine. Just making you aware of this in case you decide to play competitive multiplayer or something.
Get as Many “Power Skills” As Possible
There’s some skills which are just plain flat-out awesome. Examples include Logistics (HUGE), Offense, Armorer, Tactics, and Diplomacy (insanely broken). Your main hero should strive to have as many “power skills” as possible, but at a bare minimum, you absolutely need Logistics. “Log-born” heroes, those who specialize in Logistics, are very powerful as a result of this skill. This is another reason Might heroes are generally stronger; they’re more likely to be offered these skills.
Avoid Useless Skills
There’s plenty of these, sadly. Eagle Eye is the quintessential example, but there’s others which just aren’t very good. You’ll get a feel for these quickly-avoid them. I don’t want to say any in particular as they’re often situational, or you might simply enjoy using them. Find what you don’t like and avoid it like the plague. For this reason, Witch Huts are best investigated by a secondary hero first.
Get A School Of Magic
It doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest Might hero in existence, and all you want to do is batter your foes into submission with your creatures alone. Get a school of magic. Every hero will be offered one at ~Level 5, I believe, and their importance cannot be overstated. I’m a fan of Air or Earth for Slow/Haste, but find what works for you.
Diplomacy Is Hilariously Broken
Diplomacy is one of the most OP skills in the game. With Expert Diplomacy, you will be getting tons of often-powerful creatures for free. It’s a very fun kind of broken as you can mass an incredibly eclectic army, but it’s broken nonetheless, so bear that in mind if you want a more “fair” game. Diplo is typically banned in any competitive game.
Magic Tips
Town Portal, Dimension Door, and Fly Are Hilariously Broken
All three of these spells give you insane adventure map mobility and are, again, banned in most competitive games. It’s once again a very fun kind of broken, but just bear in mind that these spells are real game-changers; if you have these and your opponent doesn't, the game is over.
Spells To Watch Out For
There's some spells which are incredibly dangerous, and which you should be mindful of at all times. The two foremost examples (imo) are Blind and Berserk, both of the Fire school. Blind can remove one of your stacks from the battle for an incredible amount of time, and Berserk will make one (or several-at expert level it's AoE) of your stacks attack the nearest stack (typically yours). Both of these can be dispelled with "Cure", a basic Level 1 spell, so keep that in mind.
Implosion is also very dangerous, as it's the foremost damage spell in the game, but you'll rarely find a hero who can cast that for its full potential.
Blind + Resurrection Combo
If you're playing a Magic hero and have Expert Earth Magic, you can pull off one of the strongest neutraling techniques in the game. Expert Resurrection brings back creatures permanently, not just for the duration of the battle, and can even be used to bring back dead stacks. When neutraling, take as many casualties as you want, and then just blind the final neutral stack and raise all of your troops back to life.
I'll post up some stuff on combat (with pictures) when I get a chance.
Lord_SnotЖиву за выходныеAmerican ValhallaRegistered Userregular
I really want Hogs of War to be released on GOG. I played that game so much on PS1, and the PC Version only runs on 95/98/XP or according to some people, only 95/98.
That game was so awesome, I'd love to play it again.
You should have one “main” hero, who does most of the leveling. Hero levels are extremely important; higher-level heroes give their creatures significant stat-boosts and have access to powerful magic. It may seem like a great idea to have multiple leveled heroes so you can conduct offensives in more than one area, or protect your castle, but the fact is that games of HoMM III are often decided by a single pitched battle between the bulk of each player’s armies. If you have two medium-leveled heroes, a single high-level hero will tear your hero apart in a decisive victory and go on to sweep your territories. Conversely, if the AI splits its levels, your main hero can easily run train on them.
Additionally, a single high-level hero will have a better chance at getting a great combo of “power skills” such as Offense, Armorer, Diplomacy, Logistics, and Tactics. Medium-level heroes will have less of these, and will be at a significant disadvantage in neutraling and hero battles.
Have a Troop Ferry System-Don’t Send Your Main Hero Back For More Troops
At some point, your main hero is going to need more troops. This might happen because a neutral stack kicked your ass, or you might just want that awesome new upgrade or Level 7. You’re going to be tempted to run your main hero back to your town. Don’t do this. The HoMM III adventure map is filled with resource, creatures, and artifacts, and whoever plays the map better will likely win the game. You can’t afford to spend a week having your main hero just hoof it back to town; that’s a whole week you could be leveling, gathering resources, finding artifacts, and capturing towns.
Instead, hire multiple Level 1 heroes to act as “troop taxis”. Set up a chain on the map so that they can quickly chain new troops from your towns to your main hero. Make sure every hero in the chain has a single fast creature when ferrying troops, for reasons I will detail further down.
Take Gold, Not XP, From Chests
Treasure Chests are all over the map. They can give your main hero lots of XP. This will be very tempting. Don’t take XP. This is one of the biggest mistake newbies make. You can get a level or two early on, sure. However, you will desperately need gold at all stages of the game. More gold = more creatures. More creatures = stronger army. Stronger army = access to new areas of the map and thus new resources, new artifacts, and more fights. More fights = more XP, which means that you get more XP as a result of taking the gold in addition to all the other bonuses.
There are situations in which you’ll want to take the XP, but as a general rule, take gold. You’ll always need gold, even if you’ve got a Capitol.
Have Scouts and Resource Gatherers
Exposing as much of the map as you can is vitally important for HoMM III. With the exception of Necropolis’ Cover of Darkness (and the accompanying adventure map structure), fog of war in HoMM III does not regenerate. This means that if you expose the map for a week’s travel around in every direction, you will have a week’s warning if any enemy heroes are coming. If you get to an enemy town that’s not a Necropolis, you will forever have LoS on that town.
Scouts should be given one (1) of your fastest creatures, and no more; if your scouts are getting in fights, you’re doing it wrong, and you can’t spare the amount of troops it’d require for a scout to actually clear neutrals. Most towns will have a decently fast low-level unit you can use for scouts. For example, if you’re playing Castle, Griffons make an ideal unit for a scouting hero. If you’re playing Rampart, go with Centaur Captains or Silver Pegasi.
In the same vein as scouts, you’ll want heroes to act as “resource gatherers” to clean up resource piles and flag cleared dwellings and mines after your main hero passes through an area. A main hero should not be taking time to gather piles of wood or ore; that’s wasting your main army while it could be clearing neutral stacks and breaking into new areas. These heroes can be a part of your reinforcement chain, which would in fact work rather well.
Be Mindful Of How Creature Speed and Terrain Affects Your Hero’s Map Speed
As a newbie, you’ve probably noticed how some heroes move faster than others on the adventure map. This is a direct result of two factors. Hero speed is determined first by examining the speed of every creature in your army. Let’s say you have a Gnoll with speed 4, a Wyvern with speed 11, and a Basilisk with speed 6. The army will move at the speed of the Gnoll; that is to say, they’ll receive an amount of movement points on the adventure map commensurate with that value. If you dropped the Gnoll stack, the hero will move at the speed of the Basilisk, and be able to move a significantly greater distance each turn.
What this means is that it's not always beneficial to take every creature stack with your hero that you possibly can. Very slow stacks such as Dwarves, Dendroids, Golems, and some L1 creatures are often best left at home.
Additionally, your hero's speed is calculated based on what creatures you have in your army at the start of a turn. If you start the turn with a Phoenix (speed 21) and then add in a Walking Dead (speed 3) your hero will still move at Speed 21 for that turn. As a result, anyone who's a member of a hero reinforcement chain should have a fast creature, and only a fast creature, so that when they receive reinforcements at the start of a turn they can move as far as possible.
The different types of basic terrain in the game (lava, underground, grass, dirt, sand, rough, swamp, snow) each impact your movement value in different ways; for example, swamp is very difficult to move through. However, if you have an army comprised entirely of creatures native to a single terrain type-for example, your army is comprised entirely of Fortress creatures, who are native to Swamp-you won’t have a terrain penalty. This gives towns such as Stronghold and Fortress a significant advantage, as the RMG will always spawn them on their native terrain and they can move over it far faster than enemy heroes.
Town Building
Don’t Rush Capitol-Build Creature Dwellings
Capitol is a really attractive choice. It gives you 4000 gold a turn. Awesome, right? Shouldn’t you try and get that as quickly as possible so you can get a really big army?
The answer is actually, “No”. Rushing Capitol is another classic newbie mistake, and quite an understandable one. The fact is that the Capitol has a large list of prerequisites, none of which are creature dwellings. If you rush Capitol, your army will be absolutely crippled; you won’t be able to clear the adventure map, and you’ll be denied tons of resources and XP. Build creature dwellings instead! Rely on gold from Treasure Chests to fund your army for the first week or two, and only upgrade the Town Hall when you absolutely need to.
Identify Your Town’s Critical And Skippable Creature Upgrades
Most towns have an upgrade or two that is either an absolute must-have or very good, and an upgrade or two that can be skipped for quite some time. As an example, let’s take Castle, since that’s a popular (and good) newbie town. Castle’s Level 2 is the Archer, and its upgrade is the Marksman. The Marksman gains the ability to shoot twice every time it attacks. This is an absolutely crucial upgrade, and one that makes your early game far, far easier. It’s worth getting very early on.
Conversely, the Halberdier, the upgrade to Castle’s Level 1, the Pikeman, confers only a few minor stat boosts and thus can be put off until much later.
Here’s some examples of “must-have” upgrades for some towns (ignoring Level 7s):
Necropolis: Vampire Lords
Fortress: Mighty Gorgons
Castle: Marksmen
Rampart: Grand Elves
Conflux: Sprites, Storm Elementals, Ice Elementals
Stronghold: Ogre Magi
Tower: Master Gremlins
Don’t Forget To Buy A Spell Book
Your main hero is going to come back to town at some point. If he’s a Might hero, he won’t have a spellbook. A mistake that even veteran players make constantly is neglecting to purchase a spellbook for a Might hero when they arrive in a town with a Mage Guild.
If you do not purchase a spellbook, your hero will not learn any spells when he visits town! This can be crippling later on when you go into combat expecting to have Haste or Slow and you have jack-all.
Don’t Be Afraid To Play A Town Just Because It Has A Level 3 Mage Guild Cap
Both Fortress and Stronghold have a Level 3 Mage Guild cap; they can’t build their MGs past Level 3. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, this is pretty bullshit, but so it goes. Nonetheless, don’t let their inability to build past Level 3 dissuade you. There’s tons of great spells between L1-L3, and what’s more, you’re likely to capture a second town at some point which will be able to build a L4 or L5 Mage Guild.
Additionally, Fortress and Stronghold have great magic hero classes (the Witch and Battle Mage, respectively), and the two best Might heroes in the game (Tazar and Crag Hack). They are very viable despite their weak Guilds.
Hero Skills
Might Heroes Are Stronger
Might heroes are stronger in HoMM III. That’s not to say that magic heroes can’t be viable, and indeed there’s some great magic heroes out there, but bear in mind that the top-end Might heroes (Tazar, Crag Hack) will most often steamroll anyone on the Magic side.
Why, you ask? The reasons are simple. First off, damage spells can be very powerful, but a high-level stack swinging with the full might of ~10-15 ATK and Expert Offense behind it will deal obscene amounts of damage to a magic hero’s troops, especially as their stats will be far lower. Secondly, some of the most powerful spells in the game are the basic Slow and Haste, which cast as a Mass spell at Expert level proficiency in their school. It is quite easy for a Might hero to obtain Expert Air or Expert Earth magic, and these spells are all a Might hero really needs to buff their army into an unstoppable engine of death. By comparison, a Magic hero can’t gain the strength of a Might hero-great stats and great Might skills-nearly as easily.
Still, if you want to play Magic, go for it! You’ll be fine. Just making you aware of this in case you decide to play competitive multiplayer or something.
Get as Many “Power Skills” As Possible
There’s some skills which are just plain flat-out awesome. Examples include Logistics (HUGE), Offense, Armorer, Tactics, and Diplomacy (insanely broken). Your main hero should strive to have as many “power skills” as possible, but at a bare minimum, you absolutely need Logistics. “Log-born” heroes, those who specialize in Logistics, are very powerful as a result of this skill. This is another reason Might heroes are generally stronger; they’re more likely to be offered these skills.
Avoid Useless Skills
There’s plenty of these, sadly. Eagle Eye is the quintessential example, but there’s others which just aren’t very good. You’ll get a feel for these quickly-avoid them. I don’t want to say any in particular as they’re often situational, or you might simply enjoy using them. Find what you don’t like and avoid it like the plague. For this reason, Witch Huts are best investigated by a secondary hero first.
Get A School Of Magic
It doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest Might hero in existence, and all you want to do is batter your foes into submission with your creatures alone. Get a school of magic. Every hero will be offered one at ~Level 5, I believe, and their importance cannot be overstated. I’m a fan of Air or Earth for Slow/Haste, but find what works for you.
Diplomacy Is Hilariously Broken
Diplomacy is one of the most OP skills in the game. With Expert Diplomacy, you will be getting tons of often-powerful creatures for free. It’s a very fun kind of broken as you can mass an incredibly eclectic army, but it’s broken nonetheless, so bear that in mind if you want a more “fair” game. Diplo is typically banned in any competitive game.
Magic Tips
Town Portal, Dimension Door, and Fly Are Hilariously Broken
All three of these spells give you insane adventure map mobility and are, again, banned in most competitive games. It’s once again a very fun kind of broken, but just bear in mind that these spells are real game-changers; if you have these and your opponent doesn't, the game is over.
Spells To Watch Out For
There's some spells which are incredibly dangerous, and which you should be mindful of at all times. The two foremost examples (imo) are Blind and Berserk, both of the Fire school. Blind can remove one of your stacks from the battle for an incredible amount of time, and Berserk will make one (or several-at expert level it's AoE) of your stacks attack the nearest stack (typically yours). Both of these can be dispelled with "Cure", a basic Level 1 spell, so keep that in mind.
Implosion is also very dangerous, as it's the foremost damage spell in the game, but you'll rarely find a hero who can cast that for its full potential.
Blind + Resurrection Combo
If you're playing a Magic hero and have Expert Earth Magic, you can pull off one of the strongest neutraling techniques in the game. Expert Resurrection brings back creatures permanently, not just for the duration of the battle, and can even be used to bring back dead stacks. When neutraling, take as many casualties as you want, and then just blind the final neutral stack and raise all of your troops back to life.
I'll post up some stuff on combat (with pictures) when I get a chance.
It's super late-game but I would add another fun combo: Black Dragons / Magic Elementals + Armegeddon spell. That spell does massive damage to all units in the battle - including your own. But both Black Dragons and Magic Elementals are immune to all magic and are not effected.
Posts
Oh, also Cryostasis is awesome, which I bought alongside HoMM. Y'all should pick it up if ice and Russians and scares are your thing (unless you have an ATI card in which case it is apparently unplayable (although I have an ATI card and it works for me so (look at all these brackets))).
Why is 3 considered the best? I've never played any of them, so I'm just curious. I like the way 2 looks. What changed between those 2?
Also what does TBS stand for? I saw someone say this is their favorite TBS fantasy game.
Maybe because H3's the one that most people played.
The gameplay mechanics and the art style changed a lot in HoMM3. Highly recommended game.
Oh duh. I should have figured that out. I guess I've just never seen it abbreviated.
Yeah I guess I liked, or didn't hate, most of those changes. The art was always kind of meh to me so the crummy 3D stuff never bothered me. I never played them because I thought they had great graphics. But I see your point. Never had issues with stability that I recall. The heroes in battle thing didn't really change that much it seemed and helped at times from getting nickel and dime'd by smaller armies. Was IV the one that got rid of the "two types for every unit" thing? If it was, I actually liked that change a lot. Having multiple units of the same "kind" often lead to really annoying logistical headaches that I didn't feel added much to game.
I do believe II and III had the best music by far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYjN4wFw4o&feature=relmfu
I love the music in 2 so much. Looking up info on it even taught me what a harpsichord is and now it's one of my favorite instruments to listen to ever.
I also love 2 more than three, partly because it was my first HoMM experience and also partly because I like its brighter colors and how it's less complex than 3.
I went ahead and got the second one because I like the artwork and sprites more. It's a beautiful game. I'm still learning though.
@Darmak I'm really enjoying the music in 2 as well. The gog version even includes the soundtrack, so that's a nice bonus.
Win98 runs the games that GOG ports natively, both DOS and Windows. Most of the games are just wrapped through DOSBox, so you'd just need to find the original .EXE file.
edit: One more. When attacking I noticed the cursor turns into a sword and points at different angles. Does this mean anything? Like how I attack or does it not matter?
I don't think multiple heroes can fight the same thing, gotta do it one at a time. Enemies can take backs mines and mills so you gotta watch them. You capture a castle by stepping in it and defeating the castle army, and to defend your own, yes you put yours inside the castle. I think the sword icon just shows what direction you attack from but I don't think it matters (no backstabbing or anything)
In Heroes 2:
- 2 heroes cannot fight the same enemy, each hero is his/her own army. 2 heroes can trade units though - this is a key strategy and most folks have one uber hero that runs around doing most of the fighting and a bunch of scout heroes that have just 1 low level unit
- Enemies can "flag" your mines/mills just by walking up to them. And they will. A lot.
- To capture a castle you walk up to it just like you are flagging a mine. If there are troops there (there almost always will be) you have to defeat them
- To leave a hero in the castle to defend, select the hero when he's walked up to the castle (you are in the castle screen and the hero's portrait is in the bottom row) and move him to the top row. If you park him at the front entrance he will not be "in" the castle during the fight. Even a weak hero "in" the castle can defend well due to the walls and arrow towers
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198006524737
Some general advice for overall strategy: Picking the time to fight is a big component of HoMM (the early ones anyway). It's very hard to just turtle up in your castle until you build up an overwhelming force. The enemy is often doing this as well and generally starts with a larger army. So you need to be out gathering as much stuff as possible. What you want to try to do is get the enemy's army when he is vulnerable, usually when he is out gathering as well. If your army is bigger than his he will usually run back to his castle the moment he sees you. Where if he feels he is stronger he will come after you. The trick sometimes is to sucker him in to fighting you on your terms. For instance using a weaker army, to draw him in, but have a stronger army some ways behind the weaker one. When he moves toward your weaker army (this is where you will have to be careful with those movement points so you stay just out of reach) move the stronger army up and attack or just transfer all of their units to the weaker army if there is a bottle neck.
No no. Centaurs are incredibly weak/cheap units. If you get 50+ of them they will do serious damage to even top-tier units, but they can't take a hit worth beans (i.e., they're a glass cannon).
Basically keep building up your city, and save money to acquire bigger and better units, and then send those better units out into battle.
Here's a good site full of stats and other information: http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes3/heroesofmightandmagic3iii.shtml
Right. As well as offload less useful gear I might have picked up/spread it to other heroes taking out minor threats/whatever
http://www.gog.com/en/page/witcherbackup
Also, not enough Sandro.
In the game files itself there is a tutorial guide. However it's meant to be looked at alongside the tutorial mode, because it's just super convenient like that.
Boat wrecks and graveyards are Ghosts, right?
You do not want to be fighting Ghosts unless you've got enough stuff to severely damage them with a first strike, which is quite difficult as they can cross the entire map in one go. If you go up against a decent number of Ghosts with mainly weaker creatures, they'll feed off of your level 1s and 2s and quickly snowball out of control. You need
Just post any questions you have here, I'll be glad to help.
As noted, Centaurs are a Level 1 unit, which effectively means that they are cannon fodder. They're actually one of the more durable L1s, but they're going to get slaughtered by anything Level 4 or greater. Level growth is mostly linear until the Level 7, which is roughly 3 times as strong as the Level 6 on average, and is your "ultimate unit". Higher level creatures have much better ATK and DEF stats, which means that they'll rip the hell out of lower-level creatures to a much greater extent than their damage stat would seem to indicate.
It's very important to keep all the creatures' respective levels and stats in mind; this is knowledge which you will quickly acquire, but can get from the manual for now. As the levels grow up, creatures become ever more powerful.
I'd actually recommend that you start up a game as every town, just to look at their creature stats and figure out what tier everything is. Don't play the whole game, but just get a feel for the creatures.
Also, a very basic tactic early game is to take your main stack of T1 creatures, and create as many stacks of just 1 creature as you have space for. These are called "fodder" stacks, and should be thrown at enemy stacks to absorb retaliation before your main stack of T1 moves in. This greatly minimizes early game casualties and massively increases your efficiency.
Another thing I recommend doing is turning on full creature information in the battle options; when you hover over an enemy creature, this will tell you how much damage your attack is going to do. Very useful.
I have class right now, but afterward I'll post up some basic HoMM III "pro tips" which will make your life much easier, and a visual guide on how to execute them.
Nah, you can get through fights with smaller armies, and you don't want your main spending the whole game playing Creature Taxi. Have secondary heroes for that.
Minor nitpick; Centaurs are going to be pretty crap against high-level units even if you've got a bunch. Throw 50 Centaur Captains, with 6 ATK and 2-3 damage, up against a Gold Dragon and they're going to do, at best, ~80 damage (a Gold Dragon has 250 HP). The Gold Dragon's going to kill 11-12 of them in return just on the retaliation. They'll be dead pretty quick and probably won't even kill the dragon.
Generally, you want to avoid using Level 1s against Level 6s and Level 7s; it's just not cost-efficient. Centaurs are fast and tough enough to go after higher-level units, but not the really strong ones, and they're the best Level 1s out there.
i should have bought it of steam
i should have bought it of steam
What would be the difference? It's the same game. It won't change your experience at all.
I honestly cannot comprehend why people are upset about this.
@emnmnme
Beginner Tips for Heroes of Might and Magic III
Adventure Map
You should have one “main” hero, who does most of the leveling. Hero levels are extremely important; higher-level heroes give their creatures significant stat-boosts and have access to powerful magic. It may seem like a great idea to have multiple leveled heroes so you can conduct offensives in more than one area, or protect your castle, but the fact is that games of HoMM III are often decided by a single pitched battle between the bulk of each player’s armies. If you have two medium-leveled heroes, a single high-level hero will tear your hero apart in a decisive victory and go on to sweep your territories. Conversely, if the AI splits its levels, your main hero can easily run train on them.
Additionally, a single high-level hero will have a better chance at getting a great combo of “power skills” such as Offense, Armorer, Diplomacy, Logistics, and Tactics. Medium-level heroes will have less of these, and will be at a significant disadvantage in neutraling and hero battles.
Have a Troop Ferry System-Don’t Send Your Main Hero Back For More Troops
At some point, your main hero is going to need more troops. This might happen because a neutral stack kicked your ass, or you might just want that awesome new upgrade or Level 7. You’re going to be tempted to run your main hero back to your town. Don’t do this. The HoMM III adventure map is filled with resource, creatures, and artifacts, and whoever plays the map better will likely win the game. You can’t afford to spend a week having your main hero just hoof it back to town; that’s a whole week you could be leveling, gathering resources, finding artifacts, and capturing towns.
Instead, hire multiple Level 1 heroes to act as “troop taxis”. Set up a chain on the map so that they can quickly chain new troops from your towns to your main hero. Make sure every hero in the chain has a single fast creature when ferrying troops, for reasons I will detail further down.
Take Gold, Not XP, From Chests
Treasure Chests are all over the map. They can give your main hero lots of XP. This will be very tempting. Don’t take XP. This is one of the biggest mistake newbies make. You can get a level or two early on, sure. However, you will desperately need gold at all stages of the game. More gold = more creatures. More creatures = stronger army. Stronger army = access to new areas of the map and thus new resources, new artifacts, and more fights. More fights = more XP, which means that you get more XP as a result of taking the gold in addition to all the other bonuses.
There are situations in which you’ll want to take the XP, but as a general rule, take gold. You’ll always need gold, even if you’ve got a Capitol.
Have Scouts and Resource Gatherers
Exposing as much of the map as you can is vitally important for HoMM III. With the exception of Necropolis’ Cover of Darkness (and the accompanying adventure map structure), fog of war in HoMM III does not regenerate. This means that if you expose the map for a week’s travel around in every direction, you will have a week’s warning if any enemy heroes are coming. If you get to an enemy town that’s not a Necropolis, you will forever have LoS on that town.
Scouts should be given one (1) of your fastest creatures, and no more; if your scouts are getting in fights, you’re doing it wrong, and you can’t spare the amount of troops it’d require for a scout to actually clear neutrals. Most towns will have a decently fast low-level unit you can use for scouts. For example, if you’re playing Castle, Griffons make an ideal unit for a scouting hero. If you’re playing Rampart, go with Centaur Captains or Silver Pegasi.
In the same vein as scouts, you’ll want heroes to act as “resource gatherers” to clean up resource piles and flag cleared dwellings and mines after your main hero passes through an area. A main hero should not be taking time to gather piles of wood or ore; that’s wasting your main army while it could be clearing neutral stacks and breaking into new areas. These heroes can be a part of your reinforcement chain, which would in fact work rather well.
Be Mindful Of How Creature Speed and Terrain Affects Your Hero’s Map Speed
As a newbie, you’ve probably noticed how some heroes move faster than others on the adventure map. This is a direct result of two factors. Hero speed is determined first by examining the speed of every creature in your army. Let’s say you have a Gnoll with speed 4, a Wyvern with speed 11, and a Basilisk with speed 6. The army will move at the speed of the Gnoll; that is to say, they’ll receive an amount of movement points on the adventure map commensurate with that value. If you dropped the Gnoll stack, the hero will move at the speed of the Basilisk, and be able to move a significantly greater distance each turn.
What this means is that it's not always beneficial to take every creature stack with your hero that you possibly can. Very slow stacks such as Dwarves, Dendroids, Golems, and some L1 creatures are often best left at home.
Additionally, your hero's speed is calculated based on what creatures you have in your army at the start of a turn. If you start the turn with a Phoenix (speed 21) and then add in a Walking Dead (speed 3) your hero will still move at Speed 21 for that turn. As a result, anyone who's a member of a hero reinforcement chain should have a fast creature, and only a fast creature, so that when they receive reinforcements at the start of a turn they can move as far as possible.
The different types of basic terrain in the game (lava, underground, grass, dirt, sand, rough, swamp, snow) each impact your movement value in different ways; for example, swamp is very difficult to move through. However, if you have an army comprised entirely of creatures native to a single terrain type-for example, your army is comprised entirely of Fortress creatures, who are native to Swamp-you won’t have a terrain penalty. This gives towns such as Stronghold and Fortress a significant advantage, as the RMG will always spawn them on their native terrain and they can move over it far faster than enemy heroes.
Town Building
Capitol is a really attractive choice. It gives you 4000 gold a turn. Awesome, right? Shouldn’t you try and get that as quickly as possible so you can get a really big army?
The answer is actually, “No”. Rushing Capitol is another classic newbie mistake, and quite an understandable one. The fact is that the Capitol has a large list of prerequisites, none of which are creature dwellings. If you rush Capitol, your army will be absolutely crippled; you won’t be able to clear the adventure map, and you’ll be denied tons of resources and XP. Build creature dwellings instead! Rely on gold from Treasure Chests to fund your army for the first week or two, and only upgrade the Town Hall when you absolutely need to.
Identify Your Town’s Critical And Skippable Creature Upgrades
Most towns have an upgrade or two that is either an absolute must-have or very good, and an upgrade or two that can be skipped for quite some time. As an example, let’s take Castle, since that’s a popular (and good) newbie town. Castle’s Level 2 is the Archer, and its upgrade is the Marksman. The Marksman gains the ability to shoot twice every time it attacks. This is an absolutely crucial upgrade, and one that makes your early game far, far easier. It’s worth getting very early on.
Conversely, the Halberdier, the upgrade to Castle’s Level 1, the Pikeman, confers only a few minor stat boosts and thus can be put off until much later.
Here’s some examples of “must-have” upgrades for some towns (ignoring Level 7s):
Necropolis: Vampire Lords
Fortress: Mighty Gorgons
Castle: Marksmen
Rampart: Grand Elves
Conflux: Sprites, Storm Elementals, Ice Elementals
Stronghold: Ogre Magi
Tower: Master Gremlins
Don’t Forget To Buy A Spell Book
Your main hero is going to come back to town at some point. If he’s a Might hero, he won’t have a spellbook. A mistake that even veteran players make constantly is neglecting to purchase a spellbook for a Might hero when they arrive in a town with a Mage Guild.
If you do not purchase a spellbook, your hero will not learn any spells when he visits town! This can be crippling later on when you go into combat expecting to have Haste or Slow and you have jack-all.
Don’t Be Afraid To Play A Town Just Because It Has A Level 3 Mage Guild Cap
Both Fortress and Stronghold have a Level 3 Mage Guild cap; they can’t build their MGs past Level 3. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, this is pretty bullshit, but so it goes. Nonetheless, don’t let their inability to build past Level 3 dissuade you. There’s tons of great spells between L1-L3, and what’s more, you’re likely to capture a second town at some point which will be able to build a L4 or L5 Mage Guild.
Additionally, Fortress and Stronghold have great magic hero classes (the Witch and Battle Mage, respectively), and the two best Might heroes in the game (Tazar and Crag Hack). They are very viable despite their weak Guilds.
Hero Skills
Might heroes are stronger in HoMM III. That’s not to say that magic heroes can’t be viable, and indeed there’s some great magic heroes out there, but bear in mind that the top-end Might heroes (Tazar, Crag Hack) will most often steamroll anyone on the Magic side.
Why, you ask? The reasons are simple. First off, damage spells can be very powerful, but a high-level stack swinging with the full might of ~10-15 ATK and Expert Offense behind it will deal obscene amounts of damage to a magic hero’s troops, especially as their stats will be far lower. Secondly, some of the most powerful spells in the game are the basic Slow and Haste, which cast as a Mass spell at Expert level proficiency in their school. It is quite easy for a Might hero to obtain Expert Air or Expert Earth magic, and these spells are all a Might hero really needs to buff their army into an unstoppable engine of death. By comparison, a Magic hero can’t gain the strength of a Might hero-great stats and great Might skills-nearly as easily.
Still, if you want to play Magic, go for it! You’ll be fine. Just making you aware of this in case you decide to play competitive multiplayer or something.
Get as Many “Power Skills” As Possible
There’s some skills which are just plain flat-out awesome. Examples include Logistics (HUGE), Offense, Armorer, Tactics, and Diplomacy (insanely broken). Your main hero should strive to have as many “power skills” as possible, but at a bare minimum, you absolutely need Logistics. “Log-born” heroes, those who specialize in Logistics, are very powerful as a result of this skill. This is another reason Might heroes are generally stronger; they’re more likely to be offered these skills.
Avoid Useless Skills
There’s plenty of these, sadly. Eagle Eye is the quintessential example, but there’s others which just aren’t very good. You’ll get a feel for these quickly-avoid them. I don’t want to say any in particular as they’re often situational, or you might simply enjoy using them. Find what you don’t like and avoid it like the plague. For this reason, Witch Huts are best investigated by a secondary hero first.
Get A School Of Magic
It doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest Might hero in existence, and all you want to do is batter your foes into submission with your creatures alone. Get a school of magic. Every hero will be offered one at ~Level 5, I believe, and their importance cannot be overstated. I’m a fan of Air or Earth for Slow/Haste, but find what works for you.
Diplomacy Is Hilariously Broken
Diplomacy is one of the most OP skills in the game. With Expert Diplomacy, you will be getting tons of often-powerful creatures for free. It’s a very fun kind of broken as you can mass an incredibly eclectic army, but it’s broken nonetheless, so bear that in mind if you want a more “fair” game. Diplo is typically banned in any competitive game.
Magic Tips
All three of these spells give you insane adventure map mobility and are, again, banned in most competitive games. It’s once again a very fun kind of broken, but just bear in mind that these spells are real game-changers; if you have these and your opponent doesn't, the game is over.
Spells To Watch Out For
There's some spells which are incredibly dangerous, and which you should be mindful of at all times. The two foremost examples (imo) are Blind and Berserk, both of the Fire school. Blind can remove one of your stacks from the battle for an incredible amount of time, and Berserk will make one (or several-at expert level it's AoE) of your stacks attack the nearest stack (typically yours). Both of these can be dispelled with "Cure", a basic Level 1 spell, so keep that in mind.
Implosion is also very dangerous, as it's the foremost damage spell in the game, but you'll rarely find a hero who can cast that for its full potential.
Blind + Resurrection Combo
If you're playing a Magic hero and have Expert Earth Magic, you can pull off one of the strongest neutraling techniques in the game. Expert Resurrection brings back creatures permanently, not just for the duration of the battle, and can even be used to bring back dead stacks. When neutraling, take as many casualties as you want, and then just blind the final neutral stack and raise all of your troops back to life.
I'll post up some stuff on combat (with pictures) when I get a chance.
That game was so awesome, I'd love to play it again.
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It's super late-game but I would add another fun combo: Black Dragons / Magic Elementals + Armegeddon spell. That spell does massive damage to all units in the battle - including your own. But both Black Dragons and Magic Elementals are immune to all magic and are not effected.