HoMM3

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A huge part of the game is approaching neutrals properly. The AI is occasionally a tard and wastes half its army on some overpowered neutral pack. Don't make this mistake. If you have less than enough troop types to fill all your army slots, fill in the rest with crap: 1 Pikeman can waste a retaliate, bait an attack or bodyblock a tile just as well as 500. Abuse the wait command constantly. Use spells; spell points are free, troops aren't. Not losing anything unnecessarily early on will put you ahead later on.

Probably irrelevant at your level of play but Attack is statistically superior to Defense as well as being practically superior (it has more of an effect per point, and damage reduction is capped while damage isn't). One of the many reasons Castle is a fantastic town.

jesus christ how horrifying

And why Crag Hack is the best hero in the game.

???

Alternatively you can always ask some [RU] guy to teach you.
Everyone in Russia is required by law to be master at HoMM 3.

Oh yeah forgot about Town Portal and Dimension Door, in multiplayer settings you don't see them too much, but in singleplayer campaigns you're almost guaranteed to get at least Town Portal and that spell is pretty much essential for most campaigns

Crag Hack is superior due to the combination of having the Offense secondary skill specialty AND being a Barbarian. Gundula also has the Offense secondary skill specialty, but she's a Battle Mage, meaning that her primary skill progression is well rounded while Barbarians mostly gain attack.

Depends which campaign. Both SoD and AB had campaigns where you specifically wouldn't get TP or DD or Fly.
Instead you'd get one way portal exit right near your town.

Also, an important thing to mention is that spells are way more powerful in singleplayer campaigns than in multiplayer. Not just on the adventure map, but in battle the AI is usually too stupid to cast spells effectively and efficiently no matter the difficulty level and usually won't even bother removing debuffs even if they have dispel or cure and they'd rather go for a damage spell for some reason, which is why fire magic is more useful in singleplayer, cast berserk on their most powerful stack and watch as his army slaughters itself while the AI feels that casting lightning bolt on your huge stack of lvl1 units is more important than curing/dispelling the hydras that are going to fuck up half his army.

Mass low level spells are your best spells.
Mass slow/haste/bless overall triumph over anything else.

The bonus from attack (or rather the damage bonus from the difference between attack and target's defense) IS capped but you should get as much attack as possible anyway, if you hit the cap they're dead anyway.

pretty much this right here

which of the nations are the best? I herd Castle/ Undead but i have no idea to be honest.

webm unrelated

Necropolis is banned-tier, Conflux is even stronger than them.

what makes them banned? they never semed hugely OP to me, tbh.

webm also unrelated

WHAT THE FUCK.

Necro - any decent player will be able to conjure up a ridiculous numbers of skellies in a short time. Now skellies are shit but having a thousand of them while still in week 2-3… well you get the picture, also Vampire Lords.

Flux has Sprites and yeah I know they can be killed by a gust of wind but fast speed = no retaliation on a lvl 1 is OP, they also get 2 lvl 7s per week and their creatures are all either quite good or at least better than the average of the same level

Skellies 4free.
LOT'S OF 'EM.

Their units are all well rounded, worse one being Zombies. Vampire Lords can reach a point of self-sustain in high numbers that they become nearly inmortal. Power Liches are great shooters, Dread Knights can both curse foes and deal double damage on their attacks. Ghost Dragons are meh as fuck, but if you manage to trigger their special ability on an important enemy stack it's fucking deadly, since it halves the affected unit life points.
Wraiths are alright, you can put them into smaller stacks to drain the enemy mana and re-fill yours.
Not to mention, that you can raise more than skellies after every battle.

1v1 me you motherfucker

Logistics
Pathfinding
Air
Earth
Offense
Wisdom

The above are more or less must-haves unless you want to slog around like a crippled retard who can't into spells. Diplomacy and necromancy can both be completely imbalanced depending on the map (if all neutral camps have been set to never flee diplomacy is worthless for example). Armorer and tactics are both very good and if you're heavy on ranged units then Archery is pretty much a no-brainer.

Offense > Logistics if I am to be quite honest with thee, my good man

l2p smh fam

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Thats a pretty cool video but how the fuck do you get so many lvl 6 units?

Necro has Necromancy, which spirals out of control quickly. Free troops are a massive snowball factor if you pick your battles and tactics right. Conflux has several units that are completely dumb, namely upgraded LV1, LV6 and LV7. Guaranteed access to any elemental magic skill you want. Also have strong heroes like Luna, who completely destroys neutral monsters. Aside from that Castle is strong mostly because of its high quality troops & inbuilt stable, and having Sir Mullich as a starting hero choice, but it's not broken like the other two.

Slav competitive ruleset mod forces necro specialists to never level up necromancy until they have no other choices, bans picking Galthran as starting hero, bans Necro Amplifier (and Vampire Lords by proxy). For Conflux, no upgraded LV1, LV6 and LV7 since all of them are whack, and forced random starting hero. Some other stuff like neutering diplo through forcing stacks to be always hostile, restrictions on dimension door, changing Cloak of the Undead King to something more tame, restriction on casting LV4/5 spells unless you have a leveled guild, forbidding cartographer/hill fort as well…

Thanks for the explenation
so what are the universal ones i should be avoiding if im playing just a random game

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All the towns are rather well balanced but Fortress sucks dick. Too few/weak FAST creatures and their tier 7 is a slow piece of shit you can't get any use out of unless you teleport the fucker next to the enemy's ranged units.

No.
Inferno.

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I'd call Dungeon bad too if you couldn't start with Shakti or Gunnar.

Honestly?
Nothing, just have fun
Yes, you can just go, pick your favourite faction and play a game for fun

inb4 the baiting user who always posts that there was a good heroes game after 3

Inferno is shit, but I honestly have fun playing all towns.

Stronghold iz da best.
Fite me hummies.

Nah bro, by simple virtue of devils being FAST inferno is by far the superior town.

I want H3 with H5's skill wheel and some of its unit ideas.

Angels >>>>>>>>>> Devil

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Yes, and?

Fortress Tazar given momentum to build up his armorer becomes a destroyer of worlds.

Agreed. All of the games after 3 were shit, but they did have one or two good ideas, which is even more sad. VCMI is looking pretty good though.

Your best hero is a humie, greenskin.

We're talking towns though, not heroes.

I thought you were saying that Inferno was good instead of saying that it was better than Fortress. My mistake.

Satanists go home

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Inferno sucks. The heroes suck, the units suck, everything is weak and expensive. Devils and efferti are overpriced but work well if you can afford them and that's about it. I'd take Fortress over Inferno every time.

4 had some good ideas but was a giant fucking mess overall
5 was ok even if it's pointless while 3 exists

DAS RITE

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WE WUZ ERATHIAN KANGZ N' SHIIIIEEET NIGGA

Every time I post that imagine, you guys go nuts about it.

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nine vagánias

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It's a wonderful game, but like you say, it will punish the shit out of you.

I've been playing it on and off since release, and I still suck. I play on Normal, sometimes Expert.

The thing is, that to git gud, you need to learn exploits and figure out how the AI cheats. There are ways to exploit the battle AI and get it to loop so that you can hammer huge stacks of enemy troops with basically nothing + spells. That's probably what the autistic fanbase is basing their damn near impossible scenarios on, where you start with 0 money and are being fucked over constantly.

I like to have my brain twisted, but I'm not going to go to autistic lengths to learn exploits in order to master the game. That sort of "reveals the nuts and bolts" of the game and ruins the immersion. It breaks the whole thing. Get what I'm saying?

If you play on Normal and Expert, you have a long learning curve ahead of you anyway, without having to destroy the game with autism.

Some clues for non-autistic playing:

Harmonize your primary and secondary skills. If you have a hero with Offense or Armorer secondary skill, you have a huge advantage. Now you can either amplify those with the corresponding primary skills, or balance it out.

Griffins retaliate twice. Royal Griffins infinitely. Exploit this. A high defense can make a stack of Griffins a force to be reckoned with.

Since you are new to the game, I would play single scenarios first until you learn the different factions. You also need to know your enemy and how their units attack, because you want to set up your strategy according to what you face.

I sort of wish I was in your shoes so I could experience the game all over again.

Fortress is weird in that the units generally suck except Mighty Gorgons sort of throw the whole thing out of balance if you know how to exploit it. You can punish the shit out of someone if you spread them out in many stacks and know how to avoid losses. Bye bye enemy level 7 creatures.

Autoresolve.mp4; Seriously though how he used the enemies own soldiers, and ammo cart against him is really fucking clever

HoMM 4 are fine and well written but style was ruined.

Why does everyone hate 5? I started playing it recently and it's pretty fun The skills are pretty cool too. I don't like the haven campaign's protag for some reason. It also seems very much like a tutorial campaign.

what anime 1st pic?

because they grew up with 3

If you look at the new HoMM games you will factually find that they have less complex mechanics than the previous ones. It's not just nostalgia goggles user. Not to mention HOMM3 was beautiful.

how to win at HoMM3:
1. Play Necropolis
2. Build Mage's Guild
3. Build Necromancy Amplifier
4. Level necromancy to expert on a character
5. Fight every enemy
6. Gain Skeletons from battle
7. Repeat steps 4 to 6
8. Steamroll everyone.

On some maps there is a haunted mine somewhere. It's usually a gold mine, so it pays off to grab it as fast as possible. Three different gold generating artifacts are very valuable for your secondary heroes too.

5 really isn't a bad game but it's more of HoMM3 with a different set of balance issues. The lore is a lot more simplistic and the artstyle doesn't measure up, but mechanically it's fun. I still play both but generally play HoMM3 and Horn of the Abyss mod since I like the Cove faction (fits Aesthetically, quite well lore-wise, and is pretty good and balance mechanically)

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stacking offense and abusing broken necromancy arent complex mechanics.

Hi user, I almost thought you wouldn't make it for this thread.

uhh how is life treating you

Pretty good, I've ascended from playing video games to modding video games.

Someone new to HoM&M3 here, interested in pirating it.

What do I need to pirate? Is there any major reason to use the HD version or can I use the original (I have a 4:3 Monitor for retro games so unless there's some major change to the HD version I'd rather use the original)

Any mods/expansions I should get also?

The HD version is a horrible joke. Get the Complete version from GoG. Get Horn of the Abyss (fan expansion) + the HD mod. You don't have to have the HD mod but its nice to have more viewable land area.

I don't hate it but 3 is just better

The only thing 5 does better are the hero skill trees.

Avoid the HD version, it's a piece of shit.

Yes the HD mod is free.

Horn of the Abyss is nice but there seems to be a lot of interest in nofunallowed balance changing versus new content now, so I'd get it for now, and then ditch it once VCMI incorporates HoTA.

Play skirmish. Campaigns are always retarded in homm.

i feel like each faction is overall more interesting as well. its a more gimmicky game but i like that.

I need to know the sauce for first picture user

So, Holla Forums HoMM3 multiplayer when

For what purpose?

Why is the OP given multiplayer advice? Capitol first is quite fine in campaigns, since many missions are long, and often you get army at the beginning and can transfer your old heroes, which will allow you to win battles anyway. The same with picking gold from chests - you get enough at the beginning and experience allows you to transfer better heroes to the next level.

The best advice is to not be afraid to fight early - it doesn't matter if you lose a few pikemen, and neutral troops are always weaker than they seem, especially if you bring strong heroes from the previous mission.

the devil is a part timer

halloween is coming up and we need some skeltan wars

thanks user

dont thank me thank the google image search plugin by bringeroflove. brought to you by the dairy farmers of america. support healthy bone growth and drink lots of delicious farm fresh milk.

Did I install this wrong? Shouldn't there be more then one campaign?

No, you can play original campaigns as custom campaigns, just copy the files.

Use the original launcher to play the other campaigns. Everything else, Hota can do, they just don't have support to play the other campaigns.

Well you don't buy THAT abomination, you get the one from GOG which has all the expansions.

Also, the HD remaster looks like shit. The original game was good enough. All that was needed was support for higher resolutions and porting it to newer OS so it runs well without crashing.

I wish I'd kept my old Pentium III with the Windows 98 OS. Heroes 3 didn't even crash once back then.

The whole "muh 3D" screws up the adventure map and the annoying rotating town screens and battlefields that become a huge mess.

Also, the demise from a hex grid to squares ruins everything, though Heroes IV started that trend.

OP here. Really appreciate all the feedback in this thread.

Finally beat the first campaign and getting ready for the next one. This game is absolutely awesome.

It's not like I don't like 5, I just like 3 more. 5's definitely worth playing.

Everybody loves HoMM 3.
When playinf Rampart, Dwarf Treasury is fucking broken when you get a mildly high income of gold.

Talking about Rampart, you can try to overwhelm in the first weeks the enemy with a fast moving hero + all your troops but dwarfs, even more if you manage to upgrade the elves and get a decent number of them.

Your troops early troops are so damn fast you will have the upper hand in combat, letting you launch your spells first and out-maneouvering enemy stacks if needed.

Dwarfs are fucking beastly if you need to defend something. The natural resistance to magic is to be feared, but if i remember correctly, your own magic can bounce off them.

Man, fuck HoMM 4 combat in general. It would've been a much better game if they redesigned that monstrosity at some point, the angle is weird, there is no proper grid so you can't tell where you can pass, shooting is weird, heroes get killed all the fucking time (good luck playing a wizard or a commander type), units look and move like crap, sieges are awful. 4 had some really neat ideas but it needed like 6 months of work and a group of testers who would tell the devs "this is awful, change it" every week or so, might have been the best HoMM game.

It's like you guys want to show the world you're newfags

Eagle eye is, at very least, situational.

So is Navigation.

Yes, if the enemy manages to break your resistance and put a negative spell on your Dwarves, the magic resistance might kick in when/if you try to cure or dispel them from it.

I love the two sidedness of that mechanic. What is a benefit could also be detrimental depending on the roll of a dice.

In this regard, the game has a lot of depth and unpredictability that can turn the tide in the middle of a battle.

The vanilla campaigns are all pretty easy once you get the hang of it. When you want a challenge try the Armageddon Blade campaigns, outside of the main one they're really interesting.

Definitely keen to play all three campaigns. The difficulty seems to be locked though. Do later campaigns allow me to adjust it upwards?

Also, are all campaigns these three mission formats? Can you ever transfer items/units to the next mission?

How many campaigns are in the main game and two expansions? I'm thinking somewhere like 15 - 20, which is great (took me like 10 hours to beat the first campaign)

The base game has 6 campaigns, 3 need to be unlocked. They get a little harder but it's pretty much the same format. The difficulty is locked and the AI is tied to it.

As a general rule you only transfer heroes (no armies or artifacts) from one mission to another but there are exceptions.

I think it's 18 (6 for the base game and 6 for each expansion), can't remember if they're all 3 missions long in RoE but that seems about right. Armageddon's Blade campaigns are longer, the main one is like 10 missions or something but IMO it's the weakest one. There are also Heroes Chronicles campaigns that were released as separate games back in the day, I think they're available for free now, that's another 8 or so campaigns.

Armageddon's Blade is where shit hits the fan. Shadow of Death lets you adjust difficulty.

Fuck, I can't wait.

Seriously you guys, I can't remember enjoying a game this much since god knows when. I'm enjoying this more than the original XCOM, Master of Orion 2 and Alpha Centauri.

God damn.

And when I say hits the fan, I mean god help you it's exploit time or bust

There's also Heroes Chronicles. It's eight campaigns that bridge HoMM3 and HoMM4.

gog.com/game/heroes_chronicles_all_chapters

Eh, outside of the Dragon Slayer you don't need to exploit and Dragon Slayer is designed with puzzle style fights in mind. The Dungeon and Stronghold campaigns in AB are probably my favorites.

I liked fortress the best. I messed it up the first time around because I only leveld the main hero, and I couldn't keep up on the last mission, what with the multi sided attacks.
I came back a year later with a power leveld crew ready to burn some skelies.
I feel like Festival of life could be made into a movie.

Fortress was nice too I only hated the mission on a giant map with underworld where you had to flag all dwellings on a time limit.

Oh I know what you mean. All we need is a Russian who will take the concept and actually make dwellings necessary to beating the enemy as well as the map objective.

Rate my Sandro

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user you need scouting to see the enemy heroes, and mysticism for mana regen :v)

Alright anons, I just pirated the gog version of HoMaM3. I only played through HC: CotUW/CotD, what am I in for?

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KEK really likes you user, keep up the chuckles

Best skills are logistics are diplomacy. They're so far ahead of every other skill that heroes that start with diplomacy are banned in online matches and logistics specialists are also banned. In single player games, they're far less important but still overwhelmingly strong: getting more resources faster means a stronger army faster means you can curb stomp the enemy faster.

Sorcery is actually a pretty bad specialty outside of small/medium maps where you can refill your mana pool every few days.

One think to add to this is that if you're using an armorer specialist, Defense trumps Offense by an extremely significant margin. A Defense specialist with Orb of Inhibition or Recanter's Cloak is the most OP bullshit in HoMM3, especially on maps where they can reach lvl 30+.

But the overall point remains the same: overwhelm and overpower neutrals instead of going for pyrrhic victories. Sometimes losing a lot of troops can be worth it - an early castle or a dragon utopia, so you have to learn to make these kind of judgement calls.

Some russians and slavs take the game very seriously. There's all these little tricks you can use and abuse to win impossible fights.

One way portal exit near your starting town maps are the worst. nofunallowed.jpg

Until you get Teleporting Hydras to come and say hi to your defensive formation.

Fortress is great if you can play defensively with it. You absolutely need expert water magic to make it work though.

Dungeon's only "bad" unit is the manticore because of how fragile it is. Every other unit is average or above average. Can also abuse the ever living fuck out of creature dwellings on some maps.

Shit/10

so is there any way we can play multiplayer with pirated versions?
do i need some patches or something?
can i just turn on voobly and let it auto patch or whatever

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Two main problems are 1) getting everyone to use the same version and 2) setting up the rules and adjusting the maps so that they're edited to match the rules.

that's a shame, it even had automatic patches that made different versions of age of empires 2 work together, so i was hoping voobly had something for homm too

Only if you want to be liberated.

If Voobly supports H3 then yes, just make sure both of you run same version, there are a lot of pirate non-cracked versions that work alright.
Most popular option of H3 mp is Gameranger however, you will find shitton of gaemz going there.

Also if you want nocd then just install russian H3 HD mod, make in options HD executable with all those nocd, select resolution options, backup old executable and rename HD exe to normal exe, then it will be picked by programs like voobly or gayranger.

I'm willing to be wrong when you classy bunch of guys all disagree with me, but I genuinely can't figure out if this is nostalgia goggles on my part or I'm missing something about 3 that makes it better or what.

You're right in that HoMM3 made everything look so boring compared to the colourfulness of HoMM2, however the gameplay changes HoMM3 made turned HoMM2 completely obsolete.

HoMM2 gameplay and balance is inferior to HoMM3 [despite that HoMM3 is far from being balanced properly], the AI in HoMM2 is even worse than that in HoMM3, the only neat thing it does are suicide armagedon/meteor shower attacks. Annoying unadressed bugs that cause crashes/piss you off [like random stacks of monsters at map growing in size super fast and triggering 4k monsters stack bug, this shit even in newest versions of price of loyalty expansion]. Strategies like elves+druids rush letting you with even L/XL maps at impossible difficulty against AI so easily.

Add broken multiplayer [permacrashes at week 2 usually] on top it and you get the full picture of HoMM2.

I've heard that before, some HoMM fans prefer 2 but it's a minority. I don't know, I love how HoMM3 looks, I love how 2 looks too but it's very different style, so I get it.
Gameplay and content-wise 3 is just better.

shit/10

it's-a Horn of Abyss mod (or just era? don't remember), it adds items like mask from homm2 and other to add negative luck to enemy, like skill with -1 luck from homm5

Still a shit item to wear. Recruit a shitty hero you don't want, give that shit to him and send him scouting toward the nearest enemy.

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You do know there is a graphical mod for making H3 look like H2, right? I assume that if you really cared about the games and were really into them, you would know that already.

That touhou one looks pretty neat

i want to fuck cirno

Thanks for the feedback guys, I should go back and give it another shot I guess.

I really cared about 1 and 2, I never got invested in 3. So this is a weird argument to make. Do you regularly check out the mod scene of, say, DmC because you liked the originals?

I regularly check out the mod scene of all of the games I like. You like 2 very much so if you wanted to get invested in 3, it's common sense that you would check for a nostalgia style mod.

Just install it heroes3mod.webs.com/

Now you can have your preferred art style with the superior gameplay additions that H3 brought.

This. The AI cheats in HoMM3, but at least it tries to hide it somewhat. In HoMM2 the cheating is so obvious and exaggerated.

That's not a mod making H3 look like H2, that's a mod remaking H2 in the H3 engine and adding some new shit. And it's not even done yet.

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Gog version had a 75% sale 2 days ago, it might still be on, I bought h3 + all expansions for £2.

reported

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Does anyone play multiplayer anymore? At all?

I remember conflux used to be the absolute weakest one in single player.

Meh, it saves me the trouble and the time to torrent it; installing utorrent, risking an ISP notice, searching for the magnet link, learning to use magnet links etc.

The fuck are you doing? Just download qbittorrent and download game from russian tracker.

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Holy shit this russian guy.

Thanks, I'll do that. But most games don't work on linux anyway so I'll probably have to wait until I can afford a 2nd PC exclusively for vidya.

Heroes 3 works fine with Wine.
appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=24425

oy vey time to download, thank you

Oh no, this nice thread is not going down yet.

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Pfft, all he is doing is exploiting shit AI

Yes, usually Russians or other Slavs, the only non-Slav top player I know of is maretti who is Danish I think.

Yes, but did you think of doing it before?
´Cause I didn't.

It's more about building a decent army and having speed magic than anything else. Magic really depends on class, but haste and town portal are ridiculously overpowered. Depending on your class, or how combat-oriented you want to be, Tactics is fantastic but not always the best choice.

Random campaigns are more about rushing objectives. The story campaigns have secondary objectives that have to be completed first, so it's harder to just rush them. Still, completing games in the fewest number of turns is the key to a high score and an easy victory. You can game the AI and have free run some of the time, if really necessary.

Your main mistake, OP, is focusing on a powerful hero. You want to build a massive army of powerful units more than anything, although having a Mage Tower in your city on start is very helpful out out the gate regardless.

Just focus on mobility and don't worry about crushing every enemy force or "beating" the enemy outright. It's not that kind of game. It's like Chess: you can win without capturing a single piece, with the right maneuvering, or lose by wasting your turns accomplishing nothing.

Thanks for the advice. A powerful hero with a big enough attack/defense advantage can give me quadruple damage and 70% damage reduction though (if I have +60 atk and +28 def vs the opponent), so surely they're a massive force multiplier? Not to mention the items they can have that change other elements of a battle.

I've always considered Slow to be better than Haste, but both are godlike spells, especially Mass Slow/Haste. In combat Mass Bless is also really powerful if you're got a lot of units with a highly variable damage stat, which is always the case if you're got a huge stack of level 1s for example.

When it comes to spells, Mass Haste, Slow and Bless are the top 3 which are extremely useful in both singleplayer and multiplayer, in multiplayer it's more about army strength and hero stats since you most likely won't have high enough level heroes to just sling high level spells like it's nothing and you most likely won't even get to a high level magic guild anyway. Spells are much more useful in singleplayer since the AI is too stupid to properly react to some of them. However, the most important thing in campaigns is for your main hero (and even secondary heroes if multiple carry over) to have great primary stats and secondary skills, so if you can it's always recommended to visit every permanent stat-boosting location (for example mercenary camps).

It was the second reason. HoMM got much bigger than M&M at that point and people complained so much (including death threats) they changed it. Personally, I don't care about the Forge either way it would have been better than Conflux though

I didn't even know there were plans for such a faction.
mightandmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Forge_(town)
It looked pretty interesting but definitely out of place.

Not if you know the Might and Magic series' lore.

I prefer Homm2 because the graphics are some of the best 2D I have ever seen. Homm3 on the other hand has some of the worst 2D I have ever seen.
That and the gameplay doesn't feel that different between them. I'm not that hardcore though.

Most people don't know the MM/HoMM lore enough to know that units from the inferno faction are actually ayyliums.

Yeah but the thing about HoMM was it never ever touched the sci-fi side, it was always fanta sea.
Then suddenly, bam Forge.

Well, yeah. That's the point, especially on impossible maps.

Vast majority of GoG's older games work with wine flawlessly. No worries with linux user.

My main complaint with 5 is that it's harder to navigate the map and the combat seems much slower.
But other than that, it's a fantastic game.

I know there is custom content since the game has an editor, but these things exist? What are they like?

Yeah but I was talking about HEROES of might and magic.

That's great to know, I should install others too then.

I don't even want to think about the amount of resources people missed because they didn't rotate the shitty camera all the time.

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Can't find posters to reply to but in regards to heroes 4:
I kind of liked the combat tbh, also the game overall.
It had a very small number of skirmish maps and short campaign(s?).
But to be quite honest it was way too short and also too easy once you got the crack of it.
I still remember the lvl 20 barbarian at lvl 1 map, I beat it 2nd or 3rd try, was fun.
It was "run run crag is coming" or something.

Yeah, but who of the homm players actually played through and read up on the lore of mm?

Might and Magic VI : Mandate of heaven. First 80% of the game is fucking fantasy. Then the game is all about blasters and control cubes and terminators.

M&Ms were about sci-fi fantasy since the beginning so the fans knew what to expect.
HoMM never had anything sci-fi til they talked about Forge.

WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP FORGETTING THAT THE INFERNO FACTION ARE LITERAL AYYLIUMS WHO CAN'T RETURN TO THEIR HOME PLANET BECAUSE THEIR SHIT GOT WRECKED?

They look like dayymons to me.

NOBODY'S FORGETTING THAT, NOSE BREATHER.
IT JUST NEVER COMES UP IN HOMM 3 OR LATER. IN GAMEPLAY OR HOMM LORE
THAT'S WHY HOMM EXCLUSIVE PLAYERS VIEWED THEM ONLY AS DEMONS AND DEVILS

If I remember correctly it does, since I knew they were ayyliums before I ever even played Might and Magic games.

You're missing my point. M&M 6 plays like a pure fantasy game for most of the game. If you were halfway through the game you would have absolutely no clue that later on it would turn into a fucking sci fi game.

Unless you played M&M 5, then you'd know what to expect.
Having played HoMM since the 1st one there's nothing about hi tech.

Yes, and? Faggots who don't finish games and don't know shit about the lore of games they supposedly love aren't somehow right, they're wrong. And faggots.

get a load of this faggot

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It's not that you're wrong, it's just that you're focusing on the wrong aspects. It's better to, say, get a bunch of angels or vampires early on than it is to have a strong hero, just because of the nature of the utility spells. Having speed magic matters way more than any amount of damage you can do. Every extra inch you travel counts. You can win games just by being more mobile than your enemy.

Additionally, consider specialization. Have a weak hero run around and explore, collecting items and units. Have your strong hero run around fighting stuff that needs to be killed. You can tweak their skill list to match their role.

This game is hardly like chess. In chess you and your opponent are on almost equal turns with the exception that white goes first. This games balance is so bad, I find it hard to believe it wasn't on purpose

They made the demon castle eat shit because they were aliens

Except you know, all the prior games

How are the demons aliens, they're clearly demons.

Because they come from another planet, duh.

No, they're ayys who look like demons

Guys how am I improving?

I call this the "hatefuck item combo"

What the fuck, you're doing ever worse.

Pretty shit tbh.

user I need my gold so I can buy my dragons. And I didn't learn any spells because let's be honest, no ironic shitposting here, there are books that contain those spells.

That's why you get estates and shit on your secondary heroes.

BUT YOU CAN'T CAST THEM AT EXPERT LEVEL YOU YOKEL

Isn't that why you have wisdom?

READ SKILL DESCRIPTIONS

I hate this, if you're going to do that sort of thing it should be a prominent part of the setting that anyone getting into it will see for themselves early on, its jarring as fuck otherwise.

Wisdom is so you're able to cast higher level spells, magic schools allows you to cast spells at higher levels.

For fuck's sake you faggots should stop with this shit already.
heroesofmightandmagic.com/forgetown/index.php?cat=interview

So, anyone here have a high-quality soundtrack of Heroes 3 and 4? Bit at a loss(y) here.

I want to hear this now.

It all comes down to HoMM becoming bigger than M&Ms, people playing HoMM 1-3 without touching any of MM and having no clue about science behind it all.

Which is funny because many ancient rpg playing games had sci-fi fantasy settings.
Mainly early Ultimas and all later Wizardries.

They never actually confirmed what it actually is, but from what I know from Might and Magic lore, just like the Kreegans who don't actually have demonic origins but are ayyliums, it might be that angels and archangels are cyborgs or straight-up purely mechanical creations created by the Ancients, who were the enemies of Kreegans and creators of the worlds where the HOMM and MM games take place.
That's probably what he meant by that it'll give the fans heart attacks, if most of the fans didn't (and judging by this thread still don't) know that the demons are actually ayyliums imagine their shock when they find out that angels aren't divine.

100 emails may not be a lot today, 100 out of 750,000 is huge. Doesn't mean the HoMM players were right but the game was changed because HoMM was more popular than M&M and most HoMM fans didn't give a fuck about M&M.

Kek.

M&M has always had scifi

I have this.

On a second thought.
HoMM2 OST was fucking amazing too.

Embed doesn't work for some reason.

youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_3536019605&feature=iv&feature=youtu.be&src_vid=q43G9FTaomg&v=Pao5v8RMt3s

You know, when you say emotional, that is true. But you have to look at it from the perspective of the majority. The Forge town is a jarring contrast to say the least, even if the leaked prototype isn't polished. It's kind of like taking trust and dashing ti against the rocks.
If it looks like fantasy, then by purchasing the product you are agreeing with the dev that you are paying them for the fantasy.
Shit like WoW or TES have that shit backed into them from day one.
There isn't a single warcraft title that won't say " Orcs came from a different planet ". But in HoMM ? A bit too late to implement imho. I'd be as pissed the same way if ASOIAF turned out to be hidden sci-fi.

HOMM's soundtrack was always great, even that piece of shit that was HOMM4 had a great soundtrack.

I can upload the good old goys FLACs or MP3s if you want, just let me know.

Been feeling real nostalgia lately. Started up the game, updated HotA, but decided to go back to HD Mod SoD for Necromancy for a bit, just wanted to make my 100% necromancy endless power lich army.

Terrible. Let me give you some basic tips, user. Apologizing in advance for shitty formatting.

(Note I don't play small maps often, so this advice only really works for Large+)

*You should, depending on map size, have 2-4 MAIN heroes (I stick with 2 or 3 generally), who's focus is on buffing armies with supplementary skills like Offense, Armorer, and magic schools that benefit mass armies. You should try to max out your slots with secondary/scouting heroes. When you are reaching the hero limit, any hero that has skills based on resources you can garrison in town (any hero that gives 1/day of a resource, or has estates speciality), thus allowing you to bypass hero limit as long as you have towns.

Most of my mains (Might) end up with: 1. Air Magic 2. Earth Magic (I consider this most important, access to mass slow, True resurrection, Anti Magic, Town Portal) 3. Logistics 4. Armorer 5. Wisdom 6. Resistance 7. Offense/Archery (depend on army composition, melee or shooter) 8. Necromancy/Pathfinding/Navigation/Tactics/Leadership/Intelligence/Diplomacy/Water Magic

Why is 8 so split up? Generally map dependent and faction dependent.
~Diplomacy I find better on secondary mains or map clearing scouts. Can be broken on some maps, lackluster on others (anything that sets enemies to savage, aka they will never join you).
~Pathfinding is mandatory on maps with horrible terrain (swamp especially)
~Navigation for water maps
~Leadership if I plan to use extremely split morality armies
~Intelligence if the map is a challenge map and there is no easy access to mana springs/you are not playing dungeon (requires advanced usage of magic to overcome challenges, battles that can eat up 500 MP a battle/etc)
~Necromancy for necromancers obviously
~Tactics for when I can't access Air magic
~Water Magic is for shooter armies, mass bless is very powerful to have.

Now that's ideal RNG, but you can afford to switch some things up (Resistance isn't mandatory, not all heroes will have the good RNG to get both AIR and Earth magic), generally swapping out 8's things for the others. In some cases, having Earth magic alone is fine (Mass Slow is the most important thing), such as shooter armies, in which case, Tactics, and Archery are the best. Water magic is also useful for shooter armies, but not mandatory.

*A magic main would focus on similar skills but generally have All schools of magic if possible, especially Earth, Air and Fire, Sorcery Specialty (Sandro!), and ideally fights like a guerilla fighter (Dracogeddon is the endgoal for them, Armageddon+Black Dragons/Phoenixes), able to Dimension Door, fly and Town Portal to deal with all map situations, while having wide variety of spells on battlefield (biggest weakness of Dracogeddon is enemy Conflux, Inferno and Dungeon as they have Fire Immune Troops, who can resist dracogeddon as well as useful spells like Blind and Berserk). Diplomacy is also very good, for if your goal is to weaken with dracogeddon and get out without losing anything (artifacts, hero, troops), you can use the surrender option and rehire your hero at your town's taverns, especially good with the surrender price reduction artifacts.

Ideally:
1. Air 2. Earth. 3. Fire 4. Water 5. Wisdom 6. Logistics 7. Sorcery 8. Pathfinding/Navigation/Ballistics/Diplomacy

Again the #8 slot skills can be switched with any of the schools of magic (water is generally the least useful school for mage mains: Air gets you dimensional door, fly, chain lightning, mass haste, lightning bolt - Earth gets you town portal, resurrect, mass slow, Meteor Shower, Anti Magic, Implosion, etc - Fire has Armageddon, Berserk, Blind, etc) and or is map situational. Why Ballistics? Because in sieges, the catapult always goes first. If you use Ballistics, you get to control the catapult, so you get to cast magic before anyone else can act, and can surrender/retreat if you want. This is very powerful for Dracogeddon.

(Cont)

(Cont)
*Now after your mains you have secondaries, these guys are focused on economy bolstering, troop and artifact transfering and map clearing, generally referred to as scouts.

Ideally they have:
1. Logistics, 2. Pathfinding, 3. Estates, 4. Wisdom, 5. Earth Magic, 6. Diplomacy, 7. Navigation/Scouting 8. Air Magic

For Scouts, the first three skills are the ideal, they allow you to gather loose resources, recruit from dwellings, hit weekly resource buildings (dancing leprechaun, windmills, watermills, etc), and transfer troops to your mains swiftly, while bolstering your economy.
~Wisdom and Earth Magic allow for Town Portal usage
~Diplomacy for when they hold onto some troops to clear guarded resources/locations that your mains don't have time to deal with (if they are doing their job mid/late game and hunting and conqeuring enemy heroes), and if you don't want to lose a scout to an enemy hero that attacks (surrender like with main mage heroes with diplomacy).
~Air Magic for Dimensional Door/Fly (Endgame, your scouts will probably not be able to get these, but if some do, it's nice to be able to give your mains troops/artifacts quickly).
~ Navigation/Scouting: Very map dependent, Scouting is generally shit (if a map is fully revealed it is almost completely useless, since there are spells/buildings that can perform its secondary functions just as well), but can be useful on maps with no observation towers/fighting necropolis with shroud of darkness, navigation is mandatory on water maps.

I hope the information is useful, user.

This. I first started playing HoMM2 Hotseat at a friends house, but got HoMM3 as my first game. I didn't get to play M&M until much later on, so while I feel it's a shame that it happened the way it did, my perspective was basically based of what I saw in HoMM3 (since I was a bit too young for HoMM2 to care at all for the plot). I kinda wish there was a version for both, since I like the fantasy setup they built, but I loved the crazy sci-fi stuff too when I learned about it.

Actually one of my favourite mods for Oblivion, Midas Magic, had a cool aspect that not everyone played through (besides making spells, you could traverse different planes of magic doing this silly crossword game after finishing the Aether realm quests), actually had a location that was essentially a robot factory in a sci-fi area. While jarring, it made sense given the planes travelling idea, something I think has merit if done right (and given M&M's true setting, yeah, it really is a big shame it isn't explored more.).

Oh and for magic mains, you can also get intelligence in place of water/8th slot, but it's also faction dependent/situational. Dungeons can build a building that does this for you, mana springs on maps do this for you, and unless you're doing those challenge maps, double mana is rarely necessarily.

Also some simple tips and tricks:

- If you can, have only your fastest troop with your main hero at the end of a turn. This way when they start their turn, their map movement speed is based off their unit speed. (having 1-2 of your scouts follow your main is a good idea since he'll be doing general clearing anyway, this also applies to leaving troops in the town garrison)
- If you end your turn in a town with a mage's guild, your hero's spell points are fully recovered.
- if you want to clear tough encounters early with a smaller army or survive minimal losses against archers/fliers, split your weakest troop into single unit stacks, and use them as distractions. You'l sustain losses, but 5 goblins is better than 30 goblins.

By that logic people playing HoMM, a spin out series from M&M, are guilty of the same wilful ignorance.

No.

It's not bad, but I wouldn't get it over Tactics or Archery.

Better against players, worse against AI.
But

Has it right. Was thinking a bit more in Heroes V terms, where it has more potential with all the creep casters and AI actually building up their mages guild.

THERE IS A REASON WHY CRAG HACK IS THE BEST HERO IN THE GAME, user

I never put them in order, user, just skills to have. And I agree.

Oh, in that case excuse me for spergin' the fuck out.

Worry not fellow Mighty, Crackhog best skullcracker since HoMM1.

So much to the point Ubisoft had to put him (and Sandro) in their objectively inferior games to pander.

STOP CALLING ME MR. HACK, SANDRO

Yes, please!

Which one would you prefer? MP3 or FLAC?

Also I only have HoMM3 and HoMM2 soundtracks, never repurchased 4 after the first time.

FLAC if possible. Greatly appriciated.
Will hunt for 4 a little longer then.

Uploading now. HoMM3 Complete edition Soudtrack doesn't come in FLAC sadly, but here's the link.

Internet in this country is really shit so the upload on HoMM2 is a bit slower for the filesize.

mediafire.com/file/r4jh5qdicajdkjs/homm_3_ost.zip

mediafire.com/file/qkeupf59q5wafes/homm_2_ost_flac.zip
And the link for the FLAC version. Enjoy!

Here, Holla Forums. I will give you this game courtesy of /tg/. This is the board game that you did not know you were looking for, and the closest thing to a modern version of Heroes of Might and Magic that will ever exist.
It basically follows a similar premise to HoMM, leveling your character for skills while collecting items, spells, and skills, recruiting a variety of units to serve as your warband, and ultimately using those units to assault and take over heavily fortified cities. Just about the only major difference is that combat isn't a separate tactical game.
It's widely considered one of the best games to be played solitaire as well, and has modules on both tabletop simulator and vassal for those who don't wish to pay.

Downloading now
Thank you anons
Thank you so much

Thanks a million.

Bump so this thread doesn't die

It's like you faggots don't know how to read

Also:

This guy has missed the whole point of creating any kind of entertainment. Entertainment is the art of manipulating the emotions of your audience. If you say "your problem with me is founded in emotion, not logic" then you've just admitted that you've failed as an entertainer.

HOMM4 had the best soundtrack, for the adventure map. Not the towns or battles.

And that was just about the only thing good about it, except the massive opportunities for scripting in the editor, layering foliage and other objects, etc.

HOMM3 had a slightly plasticky feel to the graphics. This was very noticeable in the expansion hero portraits, but except from that, the low resolution graininess and the saturated colors made the wholeness of it appear very pleasant.

HOMM4 however is about the ugliest in the series. A bunch of irredeemable plastic figures. And the heroless armies and armyless heroes also fucked everything up. Hero dies and now you can't do shit until you find a town or place to revive him.

HOMM5 tried to be Warcraft III/WoW in terms of graphics. It failed pretty bad and should instead have tried to do its own thing. Music was half decent.

HoMM 4's editor was the biggest shame because the base game was so mechanically inferior. Agreed on the soundtrack. Horrible graphics for sure.

HoMM3's graphics had that plasticky feel because it was actually early 3D downgraded into sprites. Still it holds up, probably because of the unified theme where nothing really looks out of place on the battlefield or the overworld, probably wouldn't have felt that way with the Forge (even though I think it's a shame that HoMM fans don't get to experience the greater plot of the M&M universe, which is quite interesting, but introduced a little too late and poorly thought out in the context of the Forge).

HoMM V was pretty good mechanically if not graphically. If it had the same ideas but a hex-based grid with the class two hexes for big creatures, it'd be truly wonderful. Also best town screens, such a shame the future games never tried to innovate as much as it did (hero skill tree was really cool with the specialization, alternate unit upgrades were cool, creature abilities were the most active and interesting, improved caravans over 4, and kept the best features like external dwelling growth, etc). Heroes attacking was cool too, without it feeling like such a crazy departure like in HoMM4. The initiative system in HoMM5 is widely debated. I like it because it gave some creatures some unique mechanics (blood furies were powerful if used right, for example, with double turns), but simultaneously dislike it for being less tactical in nature compared to classic turn order, and made a failing of the previous games even more apparent (slow units were just completely shat on even more than before).

OP here, any recommended scenarios I can download made by the community?

How about scenarios/campaigns with multiple missions? Are there any where you can bring items and units from the previous mission or is that too game breaking?

mediafire.com/file/nk3z0bwb06p/HC.rar

Guys: is it good to have full magic schools (expert fire air water earth magic) on my main or should I also get offense+armourer and keep just 1 or 2 magic schools maxed?

A system that can allow for one pixie beating 500 zombies if you have enough patience is not a good system. Both initiative and hero attacks are at fault for this.

This is the Tarnum saga? Play that, it's enough campaign to last you for a while.

2-3 schools.

I know earth and fire are the shit.
So 3rd one is air, water, or none?

Fire isn't the shit. It has good spells like blind and berserk but it may be the weakest school of magic.
Air is dope because of haste, chain lightning, fly, dimension whores.
Water is good because of cure, prayer and forgetfulness which is simply amazing.

All schools of magic are pretty great but Fire's probably the least great outside of Berserk and Armageddon, and bringing all four schools is just a waste when you already have more spells than you can cast with 2 or 3 schools on expert, and enough other good skills to get in Offense, Armorer, Logistics, Wisdom, Tactics, maybe Archery or Intelligence or such.

Month 9. Although he probably has multiple dwellings, Statue of Legion etc.

The first two games have decent campaigns. In the third things tend to vary.

More or less the same. When I try to play a HoMM it's more often II than III.

There are many things you could say, but you had to say one that is not correct.
Gameplay is very similar, they haven't changed much.
Balance is leagues better as III is all about having nice, uniform creature pools, heroes and economy. How NWC managed to refrain from making all factions have the same magic availability and aptitude puzzles me to this day. II had way more variety and one of the best things about it you have to account for everything a faction has to compare it to others balance-wise.

IIRC every M&M game is set in the same universe, you're just on different celestial objects in 1-3, 4-5 and 6-8. VARN, Xeen and Enroth, if I'm not mistaken.

I made a long chain post about what's generally best. If you're going for a pure spellcaster, having the different schools is fine, generally the best are Earth and Air (for might heroes too). But for guerilla fighting style caster (which works extremely well if you have dracogeddon or something like a chain lightning specialist, especially mid-game where their armies will not be big enough to destroy a 1-4 stack of red/black/gold dragons/phoenixes, ifrit work too but risk getting blown up by spells like Lightning bolt/chain lightning), you'll usually want air, earth and fire, the first two because Dim Door and Town Portal make the playstyle OP (you can Dim door around, wiping out all his smaller units, capture his weakly defended town, then build troops in his town and watch him struggle to take back his castle while your might main comes rushing in with the huge army)

If you're building a might hero, then all the other considerations (offense, armorer, logistics, wisdom, earth magic, air magic, tactics for shooter armies [your mileage may vary if you already have air magic to cover tactic's weaknesses], water magic for shooter armies, leadership if you have no positive morale artifacts and plan to make a mixed army, etc) are better, but you'll almost never need offense with a guerilla wizard because your focus isn't attacking with your big sack. Better off with Armorer to offset any damage that could be dealt, Intelligence for more mana, Wisdom is mandatory on all heroes unless you like having less options on the battlefield. Logistics is extremely good, pathfinding too, situationally.

Sorcery is also great on pure magic mains, especially sorcery specialists if the map doesn't lock dracogeddon.

Some people are still butthurt about HoMM and sci-fi shit I see

Not to mention that high level heroes could just run around fucking everyone's shit up because they have become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. I don't remember a campaign in that piece of shit of a game where after the 2nd scenario or so you didn't even need an army anymore because your heroes could wreck anyone's shit just by blinking at them and could fuck up entire armies without even losing HP.

You don't really need all 4 magic schools, Earth and Air are enough, Water is fine and Fire is the worst until you get to the high level shit which allows you to get AoE Blind, AoE Berserk and armageddon.

Blind never goes AoE. All that leveling the spell does is reduce retaliation damage for the attack that removes Blind.

You're right, my mistake.

This is not what other people have said, but I think % increase to magic damage is a good thing surely?

What is dracogeddon?

The issue with sorcery is just that the boost% is mediocre and that direct damage spells are niche. Dracogeddon is casting Armageddon when you only have fire-immune units in your army, usually dragons or phoenixes who are so fast that you'll get the guaranteed first turn too and do absurd damage for no drawbacks, so it's one of the few strategies where Sorcery is helpful.

As
said. Though I explained this in my long ass posts earlier. It's useful for dracogeddon, and in some cases, early-mid with heroes like Solmyr for Wizards (Chain Lightning Specialist).

Sorcery is usually not great, in most instances because you end up building heroes that support troops, where Earth/Air magic excels and the passive boosts (Offense, Armorer, Archery) offer the most bang for buck along side the ever important utility (Logistics, Wisdom, Pathfinding, etc).

But in my mind, Magic mains are the type of guerilla fighters that use fast fliers+powerful spells like chain lightning+Magic Arrow early/mid and dracogeddon in conjunction with Dimensional Door and Town Portal lategame to dominate battlefields. Of course, most tournaments/pvp doesn't allow this because it can be pretty cheap, but the AI has no way of dealing with it. When unit numbers swell into the hundreds, only Dracogeddon remains relevant as far as direct damage sorcery is concerned. Magic mains are basically about getting as much bang for your buck for as little investment as possible.

Generally in Large+ maps/random gens you'll be able to pull off a dracogeddon.

Large army rolling is the realm of Might heroes, who's stat growths in Attack and Defence as well as specializations such as Offence (Crag Hack) and Armorer (Mephala) make mince meat of enemy troops en mass.

Yes, the downgrading to sprites "grained" it up and ironically, it was this reduction in graphical "quality" that made it better, because it avoided the overly smooth, shiny, bleak feel of Heroes IV. Heroes IV was released in 2002 and this was in the middle of the epidemic of MUH SHINY 3D, ROTATING STUFF AND PERSPECTIVE CAMERAS.

Heroes V, while being an upgrade from IV in many aspects fucked up the playability even more with the stupid camera controls and rotating towns. At least you could deactivate it. It was so stupid. LOOK IT'S FUCKING 3D MODELS AND I'M GOING TO ROTATE THIS SHIT SO YOU DON'T FORGET ABOUT IT.

I didn't like the departure from hex grids. That coupled with the show-off camera made it straining to play. In HoMM3, the large units occupied two hex squares, and that worked fine. In Heroes V, it ranges from four squares to Xbox hueg half the map. And "initiative" ruined the predictability, messing up strategy, which was even more messed up by fucking with the hourglass button.

HoMM3 nailed it. You could use the wait feature to save a turn and see what your opponent would do. You could save your archers turn to have the enemy get closer so you would not get the broken arrow.

Agreed on the downgrading of to sprites brining the improvement.

If you look at what I said, I've mostly agreed with you. I mentioned wishing Heroes V had the hex system too, it was much better tactically, and units didn't feel clumsy. Placing them wasn't an issue, unlike in HoMMV where if you made stacks of only large units, the battlefield terrain could screw you over and make you unable to place a stack. It's very flawed in that regard.

And yeah, initiative while it had it's fun moments, took away from the tactical aspect too, because of Heroes 3 Speed+Wait I could use a single stack of fliers and magic to win plenty of battles. Waiting and letting them move out gives you more options generally, since your faster units will go last, then first again, so you could double move if you needed, you could attack the stacks split by terrain, you could attack and reposition back, kinda like harpies/harpy hags, etc.

Battle cameras was meh, hit or miss for me, fun the first few times to see the improved anims, turned off after seeing the anims enough times to get bored (usually twice).
M
y criticism comes to the camera in the overworld, where it's possible to miss resources and artifacts. Truly abhorrent.

The in city camera's I really didn't mind, because you could access everything from the menu buttons, which is a UI improvement, IMO, while allowing you to appreciate the only real marked improvement in the graphics department (cities feeling epic and thematically strong).

Bump with the best looking creature in HOMM IV :^)

Funny thing, I'm trying to finish the campaign in V now, and the whole plot feels a lot like a rejected Warcraft 3 script.
It doesn't really bother me too much though. I also find the visuals very appealing and the music is mostly good.
I'll never understand why people bitch about it so much, when it's a fairly solid game without any glaring issues except for the world map.

Also, did anyone here play this thing?
I know 6 sucked cock, but surely they managed to fix it.
Right?

HoMMV isn't bad, it's just tactically inferior because of some mechanics, like squares instead of hexes make big units clumsy, initiative isn't as good as speed based turn order for mechanics involving turns since it kind of randomizes things.

The general rule of thumb is if monster x has twice the initiative of monster y, monster x will move twice before monster y, except on the first turn where there's RNG involved with faster initiative units generally going first.

I do like it overall, it's also a very strong contender in the series, especially with Heroes 5.5 installed (kind've like WoG for Heroes 3). The story isn't great but it really is inconsequential.

Heroes 7 from everything I've seen, is basically Heroes 6 but worse. The only good thing about it is the town screens generally look better than Heroes 6's. The graphics look worse, with horrible creature animations. I can't comment on mechanics because I don't play Ubisoft shit on principle anymore, but a gander at some youtube videos and steam reviews points to steaming pile of dung.

Image unrelated (except to Warcraft)

Ubisoft shit after HoMM V

Wtf were they thinking with this shit. How do you look at that and say "yeah, that's acceptable".

Bad 3D is a among things that killed the series, IMO. Well 3D in general, there's the camera criticisms with HoMMV+

Then again a lot o 3DO games around the time used these horrible, cheap, plasticky looking models (look at the army men games)

Fite me.

Is it really a big deal that it doesn't use hexes instead of squares?
I don't see that as an issue since you can attack diagonally, although the movement is more restrictive, meaning that blocking a strong enemy stack is viable.

Fucking jews can't get anything right.

Air Attack is good, I also liked their RTS game, but there's no doubt about the crappy 3D graphics in 3DO's games in general.

There's a lot of considerations to be made in regards to it:

Pros for Hexes:
+ Has no problems with diagonal movement mathematically (though Heroes V doesn't really have an issue with this since no unit moves at a speed of 1 square)
+ Has more tiles for movement on a speed tier than a square one (for example speed value 3 has 29 tiles in squares and 37 tiles in hexes).
+ Is balanced and time-proven (four games with no issues with hexes, didn't need to change).
+ Hexes can form more field shapes, which look smoother.
+On square grid it's possible to pass between two creatures who are adjacent diagonally, which has no equivalent in H3. It makes it harder to block the units and makes melee fight very chaotic.
+Certain spells work better with hexes (forcefield, firewall), allowing for tactical gameplay.

Cons of Hexes:
-Less exit ranges, 6 being normal for hex, 8 for square

Neutral (Both)
-Terrain advantage works in either:
~In hexes, terrain can always box a small unit, while allowing large units to attack inside as long as it is adjacent to the corner, this allow firewall and forcefield to be used tactically.
~In squares, terrain favours small units, large units cannot ever get past 1 square tiles, which is tactically advantageous but also much more RNG in nature, favouring whoever has more small troops.

Pros of squares:
+More 8 exit ranges, 2 more than hex's standard 6
+Large creatures can be attacked from more angles

Cons of Squares:
-Terrain also has an issue with blocking units off completely from movement because of the 4x size of large creatures.
-Terrain can block creature placement in initial grid, as seen if you have a full stack of 4x size creatures
-Terrain can block non-fliers from ever moving out of the initial grid, especially prevalent if you have a full 4x size creature stack
- Has a rounding problem with diagonals mathematically, but this is only visible if a unit's movement is 1 square

It's been discussed a lot in the past. I think the best compromise would be to go back to hex's but introduce new hex size creatures if they really want to make "large" units. I prefer the 2 hex size personally because it's much easier visually to calculate dragon's breath attack, and it removes the awkward problem if they were to make 2 square cavalry type units to free grid space (instead of 2x2, a 2x1 unit would attack very awkwardly from a diagonal angle in 3D).

Shit i miss this game so much, is there any download link or should i give a try on the GOG version? I have never tried the fan made expansion(WoD and HotA) do they change the overall gameplay too much? I might as well replay IV and V, i kinda fell bad that VI and VII ended up being total filthy, I became so disapointed after finishing VI that i didnt even bother to check out VII, anyone here played VII, I really wanna know how bad it actually is.

I have the GOG version but don't like giving Ubisoft money (last game, Heroes VI) so if you can find that on download somewhere, go for it. It's got both expacs (Armageddon's Blade and Shadow of Death) except Heroes Chronicles which is a set of 8 campaigns (which is also available on GOG).

WoG changes the game very drastically while fixing a lot of base game bugs, but it's quite a fun experience with interesting ideas and mechanics like commanders (creature-hero unit, you can have one per hero, it levels up along side you and can gain it's own set of skills and stats, one for each town type but you can buy commanders of other towns), and a lot of others that you can read about here:
celestialheavens.com/h3maparchives/wog/wogfeatures.html

Download here (ERA II is a utility platform for modding, part of the modern WoG install):
heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=37208

HotA on the other hand is very true to Heroes 3, in that it's balance is focused around Shadow of Death while fixing bugs, balancing things out in very competitively sound ways. Like making it harder for Conflux to rush phoenixes by adding an additional structure requirement for fast phoenix growth, and reducing the structure cost for Tower's endgame so it's not nearly impossible to Rush Titans. Necromancy is half as strong in all accounts (the skill's values are halfed, items related to it are halfed, and necromantic amplifiers only give 5% instead of 10%), which is great competitively, and makes Necromancy less OP. Also making it impossible outside of certain maps/scenarios/certain options ticked in Random Map Generator to get dimensional door/fly. The town it adds is very much in-line with Heroes 3 aesthetically, lore-wise, and generally pretty balanced but teetering on the side of OP if you know the game mechanics very well.
You can read about and download HotA here: heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=39830

Feature list here:
forum.df2.ru/index.php?showtopic=32286

Full change list here:
forum.df2.ru/index.php?s=51c9cb88d041f208fd9efa0143104d1a&showtopic=32286&st=0&p=629898&#entry629898

Also importantly, WoG ERA come with the HD mod which lets you scale the game to whatever resolution you like and adds some useful UI tweaks. With HotA, you have to download it separately but it's 100% compatible and highly recommended (I personally play on lower resolutions because it gives a better feel but the UI buttons are useful to have).
Link here:
sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/eng/description

The nice thing about the mods with HD mod, is you can choose between them at any time. I'm not sure if it's possible to Install HotA and WoG at the same time, but I know for a fact that you can play the game vanilla style with either of them installed standalone with the HD mod.

Enjoy, user, I recommend trying both, but strongly recommend HotA personally.

Sorry wait, I was thinking of the competitive rules part of HotA. You can still get Fly and Dimensional Door, you just can't abuse them like in the past (grabbing artifacts in ways that ignore the guardians, etc), and you can't get them in competitive multiplayer maps.

Thanks a lot, I was worried that these new expansions deviated too much from the core concept, but they seen alright(thou i have no problem with necro or balance i`ll play single player anyway ), I just wish to find a good torrent for the full version, I keep seeing the complete HD version, but I`m worried it`s that god forsaken ubsoft garbage, i`ll keep looking for it once I get back from college.

Search for Heroes 3: Complete Edition, or Heroes 3: GOG torrent.

Those should be the parameters you're looking for :)

Will do when i get back.

Forgot to ask, is the HD mod compatible with all versions? I think i might have an old CD with the complete edition somewhere in my house, but maybe because its an old version its incompatible with the mod.

From what I can tell, yes it should work. The CD version was ported with no changes AFAIK but don't quote me on that.

If it doesn't work, you can just grab the GOG installer from my Mega.

mega.nz/#F!qh5VVSQQ!jNlo8xN9RnLfQSDBEWItbA

I also checked on the GOG site and it's still the latest version of the installer.

Everything went fine, its really a long time since I played this, what I really still dont like is the randonnes of skills available when you level, its a a pain to keep getting eagle eye or the catapult skill when I wanna air magic and it just wont come, but all in all its still a blast playing this again, maybe this time ill go through and finish the campaings for once.

Earth is probably the strongest School of magic in my opinion

It has some generally useful offensive abilities like implosion which is a good single target spell or meteor shower for clusters, doesnt have any full map damaging abilities, But its got a few good debuffs like slow or sorrow, Stoner skin is a neat buff early game, with it being so cheap in mana cost
Resurrection is absurdly nice depending on the situation, Many times I've besieged a castle and ended up resurrecting my Higher tier units because i hate losses by simply avoiding killing the last stack
Antimagic is pretty fucking great when versing a caster, ended up saving my high tier units a few times

Where earth magic really shines is earthquake and Town portal, Earthquake pretty much explains itself, Really helps speed up sieges, which for me who usually mains fortress is fantastic,
The other spell, Town Portal is probably the most useful spell in the game
Town Portal with Wisdom allows you to defend any of your castles with your strongest army and character, which makes losing them ridiculously hard

The best part is that you can cast it outside a castle which makes the demons built in townportal look like shit

I've been in maps where I fought off 3 different enemy main herpes in the same round with the same hero simply by porting from 1 castle to the other and moving out and attacking them
Normally i would of run out of travel/logistic points, but i ended up with a wisdom character,and visited a dungeon, which game me absurd amount of mana
Combined with the fact i had dimensional door, i sim-p0ly ported to the castle, dimension doored right next to the enemy and hit them

Consider not posting from your smartphone with T9 enabled, or whatever the fuck modern ones have.
Although I'm now tempted to shop Snoop's mug on the Stone Skin image.

The portal in Inferno can be great under certain circumstances, but in 99% of cases it is not worth the cost.

do it user
We know you want to

I kinda want to sleep tho. And my madskillz aren't all that great. If no one else takes on the challenge, I'll most likely do it within a day or two.
This thread made me consider trying to play this damn game again, so that might become a factor too.

Eador Genesis is really good, and a lot like HOMM3.

Is kings bounty any good?

The new ones or the original?

original?
tbh i've never played any of them

This. It's a little slower but there's so much more stuff and complexity than in HoMM that it's worth it. It's also much more difficult. avoid the 3d remake, it's crap

First King's Bounty was released in the early 90s, it was pretty much HoMM 0. Dunno about the new ones, they give me HoMM 5 vibes.

It's old. 320x200 pixels, 256 colours old. If you can't stomach that old - well, your loss.
If you can - very much recommend it. One of my most favourite games.

The Legend is, in my opinion, a decent game. They captured the fairy-tale feel (at least as far as the original is concerned, never played it in English), the game is balanced well enough, it's challenging.

Armoured Princess is okay, but they started to tinker with balance and difficulty and it didn't turn out well enough. Also locations and story are inferior to the first game.
Then you got plate bikini on the main character model and other minor bullshit.
One good thing about it is they added the flying mount change, but it doesn't function like in NWC's King's Bounty. You just get free togglable pegasus wings once you get to a certain part of the story.

Like said, The Legend is a very good game.
It's a lot like HoMM, except you only control one hero and recruit your troops from friendly towns.
Armoured Princess fucked me over with the difficulty, so I never finished it, but I think I'll get to it once I'm done with the HoMM5 campaign.

Overall, I highly recommend it.

All they've essentially done is made margin for error even narrower. You must be very efficient with spells (and you can not forgo them), you must be very efficient with trades and preferably lose nothing important at all, you must pick your battles very carefully, you must spend a fucking hour to plan your skills development for the entire game. I mean, sure, it's challenging, but it gets into Space Rangers levels of autism. Which is not really that surprising.

Huh. I thought that was just them nerfing the mage to hell and back, although I can confirm that I had trouble with everything that you mentioned.

I don't remember whether the game has a difficulty setting, but even if it doesn't, there had to be at least one autist who tried to fix it.

It wasn't so much a nerf to magic in general, although they did fix some things that were in no need of fixing, as it was changes to the magic skill tree. But the other two got similar treatment, for all classes, so yeah.

It does. IIRC it's easy, normal, hard and insane or something like that. As is customary for games built around this particular brand of russian gamedev mentaility, you want normal. Anything above tends to at least dip into spreadsheet simulator territory.

Eador Genesis isn't like HOMM3, it's more similar to the Age of Wonder games.

Is it better than Warlock: Master of the Arcane?

How should I know?

Just pirate both and see what you like better.

favourite original maps?

i dont know how they thought pandora's box would work but my fucking god the amount of effort that went into that map was incredible

i think at some point later on i rerolled and just snuck past the fuckers but my GOD did i shit myself the first time i saw how many troops that place had

I used to play Realm of Chaos all the time when I was younger, usually the allied version. Something about a massive team war between Good, Neutral and Evil made me come back all the time. A few days ago I tried Jared Haret and am enjoying it a lot so far but didn't finish it yet.
I've also tried to reinstall WoG, but I'm getting a very annoying bug where the game pauses for moments when I'm moving my mouse too fast, which doesn't happen with the base game.

Same genre, but yeah Eador is much more like Age of Wonder or Master of Magic than HoMM. Very good game too, sadly overlooked by most.