Heroes of Magic and Might III

theres good high level spells too user
resurrection, animate dead, prayer, sorrow, clone, teleport, frenzy, DIMENSION DOOR, fly, water walk, and TOWN PORTAL
you also forgot bloodlust and curse as lvl 1 spells

also, of note; you can use town portal to travel to allied towns
you can also recruit heroes at allied towns

The spells I listed are far better, fire magic is shit,
You cannot use if he has the cape that negates 3+ level spells (which all AI heroes seem to have) and finally you dont have enough time in a battle to cast more than 1-2 spells before the battle is decided.

If you start first and cast mass haste, you can pretty much win the battle in the first round. Cast mass shield in the second round and you end it in 3-4 rounds.

Also might heroes are far stronger than mass prayer or mass ressurection can bring you. If you get a main magic hero at least give him implosion, so you can annihilate 10 archangels or 150 grand elves each turn, otherwise you're fucked since your troops do almost 0 damage.

By the way, each point of defence above your attack skill reduces damage taken by 5%, each point of attack above your enemiy's defence skill increases damage by 2.5%.
So if your hero has 10 defence and 10 attack and your enemy hero has 5 attack and 5 defence, all of your troops take 50% reduced damage from his troops and all of yours deal 25% more damage to his.

I'm talking singleplayer, they are only "king" until you find a might enemy hero with orb of inhibition and shackles of war.

ROR!

if you got good spellpower you can make that mass prayer instead and still win on round 1
if its a siege you can teleport your chaos hydras or whatever into the fort
and don't you diss town portal

well gee when you put it that way i guess might heroes are OP and crag hack and armorer specialists should be banned from online play

and archery specialists, don't wanna forget those

Mass prayer: increases defence and attack and movement by +4.
heroes.thelazy.net/wiki/Prayer

Might hero, level 25, versus magic hero level 25: 10+ points difference in attack and defence.

I agree that fly, dimension door and town portal are OP, but they dont do shit if you get obliterated in combat by a far more powerful enemy hero.

Yes, they are.
They do?
In singleplayer tazar is easy mode anyway. Start 200% with tazar and fortress, get wyverns in week 1, leave your entire army in the castle except for wyverns, pick 8xm8 to get more wyverns, get 200 wyverns by month 2, gg easy game.
Crag Hack is also easy mode.

Range is a multiplier stat. If you had a very expensive unit that had meh offensive power and shit defensive power, but it had a range of ten billion kilometers, everybody would rush to get them and then whittle down opponents from a distance while holding a defensive position.

IN EVERY GAME, RANGE/ ACCURACY ARE THE BEST MODIFIERS

What's with with sudden surge of wannabe tourneyfags?
You're no slavs, just play the game as is.

Ahahahaha get back to le AI pwnage on 1v1 maps with size: small and 20k gold advantage, cretin.
Pic related - 488 score, good luck beating that.

You're probably some effeminate Czech at best.

Cool name, player.

are you talking about a different game?

THAT'S NOT EVEN A COUNTRY

A scrub mlg-pro-wannabe who fails at trolling and jumps into threads, straight from reddit, to "hurr durr im hipster faggot and everything u say is dumb/degenerate/wrong", pic related.

The problem with redditors like you is that you dont know what you talk about, but you talk about it anyway.

...

Sure thing reddit.

why this

Learn how to play faggot.

This now reads like a fighterfags thread.

Wow you sure showed us with your ad infinitum 1 liner replies, faggot.

You guys are acting worse than moba soul shitters. Combined.

Luck and Diplomacy are criminally underrated. Albeit expensive (sometimes) you can buy off fifth level creatures.

Stop playing defensively, play aggressively and never let a stalemate last. Once a stalemate happens the AI will practice a tried and true tactic of constantly hammering you at a bottleneck while building up it's own forces until it sweeps through your defenses and kicks your ass.

Or at least that is what always happens to me when I don't play aggressively.

i tried playing a random allied subterranean XL map alone on hard earlier with one fighting hero because its not really fun with more than 1 hero who does something other than collect resources and creature dwellings

eventually what happens is the AI just constantly takes your towns and you can't really go anywhere that has enemies for very long without risking losing a town unless you have logistics specialty or DD+town portal
its even worse if theres a subterranean level; keeping track of those monolith portals near your 4 towns+allied towns is hard enough, combine that with subterranean passages and its even worse, though not by as much
and there can also be portals near subterranean passages

shackles of war helps out at least, but its still probably gonna end in the AI destroying me and my AI ally because I just have 1 combat hero, even though I'm so much stronger than them at month 5 or something

Real question is how to get good at this since the AI will always cheat you.

Protip, play the campaigns first, starting with Restoration and save in a different file after each completed mission.
They're a good introduction and very fun.

I'm not so sure about that, unless that's not your main guy.

Also, while diplomacy can be fantastic and almost game-breaking, you really need leadership to go along with it, otherwise your units may get low morale.
Of course, that's assuming you don't have an artefact for morale, but those are not very common to begin with.
Same with luck. The bonuses are good, but you're better off trying to get items as substitutes while supplementing your hero with better skills like magic, logistics, tactics or any of the top skills in this picture.

This 100 times.
If you're not as aggressive as you can be and have as many heroes running around the map picking up resources and delivering reinforcements to your primary hero, you're not going to win.
It's very counter-intuitive because the game looks (and is) comfy as fuck but at the same time it demands your full attention and careful planning.

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Armourer is fairly mediocre unless you have a hero with a specialization like Tazar.
Besides, killing things more efficiently is better than having a lot of armour. One wins battles, the other prolongs them. Of course, it also depends on your play style and how you approach things, but that is the general rule.

Resistance should be at the very bottom though.
It's a near-useless skill, along with ballista and siege.

the game makes less sense the more you learn about it. for now, just aggressively go after resources you could take with minimal losses and split your ranged stacks.

I'm more concerned with why sorcery is considered worse than resist, especially when you have a character specialized in it
Resist is over all useless, sorcery is actually decent for any mage hero
Also isn't diplomacy more of a mid-tier skill?
I've always found it more useful in the campaign than anything else.

Diplo is even more relevant in multiplayer, getting free stacks is nothing to sneeze at, especially since games finish relatively quickly (when comparing them to campaign especially) so you won't be seeing extremely large armies most of the time.
Sorcery is bad because direct damage spells are generally pretty bad in HoMM3 with the exception of implosion and chain lightning. Even then you'll get much more mileage out of buff/debuff spells, especially haste and slow which are without a doubt the best spells in the game. Resist can at least cockblock your opponent by sometimes protecting your stack from your opponent's slow cast, but it's still not that great.

I'll second this. Make sure to keep on those resources too, don't let mines and shit get taken over and ignored.

Expanding a little bit I like to start with 3 heroes. You have your adventurer who goes out and fights, eats xp, gets powerful. Then you have your scout, who only needs 1 of the fastest monsters you can get. He flags shit your adventurer isn't wasting movement on flagging. Finally, you have a warden who stays 1 or 2 turns away from home. The warden is keeping your mines flagged, hitting monster spawners, and slapping people's shit if they get too close. Your warden is going to end up with a bigger army as your adventurer is going to rely on spells and xp.

Don't count on getting town portal or dimension door but if you do they're the best spells in the game. Movement, its all movement.

Diplomacy can really break the game, especially if you get a 'week of –,' run around the map for a bit and end up with a 200-strong stack by the end of the third week.
That's really main appeal of the skill, but otherwise it's not that useful and would be a lot better on a second hero following your main one.

I feel that sorcery, even with the specialisation, is a mixed bag.
It gives you a little bit of damage at first, but only shines at higher levels like 20 and over. It's also easily overshadowed by intelligence because being able to cast twice as often during battles with stronger stacks is better than doing only about 20% more damage per spell.

I normally play the extremely large maps so generally my games end up longer and personally i hate mixing my army unless i have too or its any opportunity i can't pass up
Still its not as useful late game in comparison to practically any of the other high tier skills and Tazar with armourer

i agree with this which makes me wonder why intelligence isnt godly?
If there was a skill considered godly it would have to be intelligence
Hell I've seen someone take 4 enemy castles with intelligence by using a few unused wells, a dungeon castle and the spell Dimension Door

Should mention, they also had logistics

Diplomacy gets even better in the late game since if you have a larger army then neutral stacks will have a higher chance of joining, at least I think it's like that, I've been playing multiplayer-only for years where Diplo is always banned so I've even forgotten how it works. But yeah, in the late game you'd rather have Diplo on a secondary hero so he can pick up free stacks while your main hero has a good combat-relevant skill in its place.

I'd say that's because it becomes a bit redundant late game when you have 10 artefacts and over 20 knowledge.
There isn't a world of difference between 250 and 500 spell points when they replenish very quickly and the best spells cost under 15.

Resist is about right where it is. Not the skill you want but at least a bit better than the real crap. Armorer still belongs in (the lower part of) High because of its great value in close battles. Tactics is High, not Top since it's half obsoleted by Mass Haste. Also Scouting is missing from the image, should be at the end of Low.
Lots of the evaluations of course shift depending on the map, main or support hero and faction (Archery is only in High for factions with prominent/multiple archers, Artillery is trash if you don't have a way to get a ballista, Ballistics can be bad if there aren't many castles to siege, Pathfinding is High in rougher maps, Estates/Scholar are very useful for support heroes, etc).

For reference's sake, the skills players tend to shoot for in MP is Logistics/Air/Earth/Wisdom/Offense/Armorer. Tactics is usually 7th iirc, 8th is more or less free pick/trash you were forced to pick.

As a rule only monsters spawned during the match will be neutral, all monsters generated at the start are always set to be at maximum aggression by the player setting up the match.

I heard HoMaM IV was better but it just had uglier graphics. Is that true?

its the biggest departure in the series, most glaringly your hero is a unit on the battlefield, they can attack or be attacked. i think age of wonders does that better, but its worth checking out for yourself either way.

Have you even played the game?

I can see its value in quick short multiplayer games
But the larger maps make it sort of a secondary hero skill like previous user said
You're main hero would likely be better off with any of the other high tier or god tier skills
Or Armoyrer

Diplomacy is one of the most powerful skills in the game. There are two skills you are banned from having for your starting hero in most online games. The first is logistics, the second is diplomacy.

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is unironically the greatest game ever made.

It really is timeless.

this is why i don't play online much
I'm fine with my singleplayer and LAN parties
Still I'm going to avoid diplomacy whenever i can
I've personally never found it that useful, But then i mostly play fortress
Its probably that part of me that loathes mixing my army for a small unit boost, However I'll take your word on it being good
Still i can understand Undead or Inferno using it implying anyone here even plays inferno

Why would the undead use it?

Skeleton transformer i figured
Although Only really useful if you can get you're hands on dragons/hydras by diplomacy
Otherwise not so much a benefit if you've already got necromancy
God its been around a year since I've played

IV is very different from the rest of the series, and most of the changes were very controversial and poorly balanced. And it looks like absolute shit too.

You never won in online matches did you?

lol no
Morale is objectively better.

But ghost dragon can be good if you're lucky?
Take for instance:
a non-Upgraded hydra vs a ghost dragon,
if you're willing and can afford to upgrade the skeleton dragons you can definitely come out with a better unit
Still i don't play Necropolis so much because of generally how good they are and instead decided to play best town fortress
And that ageing ability can be extremely useful, I mean halving all enemy stack health is essentially doubling damage against that unit from all attacks, not to mention -1 to enemy morale can be pretty useful against heroes who haven't gone over te limit of moral yet.
Still personally i think the deathknight is probably the better unit.

Also my internet is incredibly shit where i am so of course i don't play online very much and that also goes for winning as i usually time out of any game i play
tfw Australian

Units that need you to be lucky to be good are subpar.

You could say the same of resist
The problem with the ghost dragon is its low hitpoints and defence
Which means its got less time to inflict an enemy with ageing before it dies
Still by itself its somewhat solid, its not like its significantly weaker to the point of not even worth buying

But it is to the point of putting something else into your army.

Early game:

magic > might

Late game:

might > magic

It's as simple as that.

If you can get your hands on a better tier 6 - 7 unit then do it
But zombies are easily more likely to be swapped out in my opinion than the dragons

You don't even need tier 6-7, I'd gladly take a fat stack of lower tier units than an average stack of boner dragons.

Quantity does generally beat quality most of the time

If you like Heroes of Might and Magic III
you will love
Mount & Blade Warband
unless you're a magic fag, you need mods

close user, not to insult mount and blade, but HOMM3 is in a completely different genre to try and relate them

Also if you liked HOMM3 i recommend HOMM5 with all expansions (particularly TOE)
It does have a few flaws, such as the slow pace, mainly a result of movement over the mapo taking ages, and the cinematic scenes in battle also taking ages
Gargoyles are fucking slow and look retarded though, probably hte biggest weakness in the game for me\
However i do not recommend HOMM6 or 7 or 8
They said that they were making HOMM5 except more like HOMM3, but it was all a lie, they went and emphasized the worst points of HOMM5 and then compounded it each sequel. Bosses however were new but kind of annoying
Also HOMM5 is more balanced than HOMM3, and they added a few improvements in my mind
For starters Casters get their own "Spell Book" and spell points, The TOE expansion adds an alternative upgrade for every unit and the necropolis gets a resource to bring back the dead, which somewhat limits their ability, but now they have more choices in what they reanimate from the dead
fortress is Still good, even if they got rid of the Lizard people and suffered under mass dorf immigration

any of you guys like wog?

The only thing HoMM has over the other ones is the music in my opinion, otherwise it just screams rushed mess with a lot of gameplay changes, a lot of them being quite questionable. While I personally kinda like the fact that heroes become units on the battlefield like any other and I like that high level heroes can reach a point where they can devastate entire armies by themselves, a lot of other gameplay changes are shit, like armies attacking each other at the same time unless one of them has no retaliation/first strike and the fact that creature dwellings go up to level 4 only. To elaborate on that, each town has 2 level 1, 2, 3 and 4 creature dwellings you can build, however with the exception of level 1 dwellings you can only choose 1 dwelling of a higher level per town. To illustrate, the Life town (basically castle from HOMMIII) has squires as crossbowmen as level 1 units, for level 2 it has pikemen and ballistae. You have to choose whether you want the town to produce pikemen or ballistae, YOU CAN'T CHOOSE BOTH. Additionally, this also means that there are no upgraded unit types. For example you know how archers upgrade to marksmen? Well crossbowmen in Heroes IV can't upgrade to a superior version, same goes for every other creature in the game.
Now if you're willing to overlook that, it's still a mess of a game, the graphics are ugly as sin, the game is even less balanced than III, the AI is even more retarded making going up against the AI even easier and beating campaigns at Champion difficulty a piece of cake when you get all the mechanics down. The only exception I can think of are expansion campaigns which are even more rushed than the base game because they're just flat out unfair. Also, to prove how rushed they are, the second expansion's story can be summarized as "a bunch of power hungry dudes want to conquer some big city". There's zero character development or story or what have you. Also in the nature campaign (nature is basically the rampart town) the main character is your typical environmentalist elf dude whose name is Erutan Revol. Read it backwards to see how little they cared.

Wasn't the "HD" re-release of this a blatant lie? (Fan mod HD of original game having better sprites, and the official HD changing how Spectral Dragons looked)

Shit, I just realized my toaster PC can run classic HOM&M3. Never finish the campaign (usually just did random maps), might give it a go finally.

yes, your right. hmm3 is a lot slower paced and ultimately your mouse click will decide your face exactly.. but, overland movement is essentially simultaneously turn-based. (each army gets a certain distance per day based on stats (like path-finding) and yes, combat is real-time but it's army based. it's not the same setup but having played both games a lot I still feel M&B is a modern version of Hmm3.

Yes. Also with the HD cash-in you only get RoE and none of the expansions and the HD mod adds so many more quality-of-life changes and tweaks that the HD cash-in doesn't. Also the HD cash-in has bloated system requirements, while they're nothing special it's a hell of a difference between classic Heroes III Complete with HD mod that you can easily still run on a calculator.

There's a special place in my heart for HoMM 2. That might be because it's the first one I played at an impressionable age and because I find the graphics more charming.

Eh, WoG has some nice tweaks and ideas but overall it's a giant fucking mess.

No they don't justify their price, resources to build the structures, lack the spell immunities other dragons have, and many of the other undead units are simply better. In almost all cases you would want tier 5 though 7, and sometimes tier 4 of almost any other races units. Bone dragons are complete trash, spend your gold on something else.
Yah it is. You also forget bone dragons have a very low initiative compared to other tier 7 units.

Diplomacy is the hardest snowballing skill on small/medium/large maps. Units joining you is based on your army strength vs neutral stack strength. As soon as you get a stack to join, the subsequent packs become significantly more likely to join, too. This creates a chain reaction where you can chain recruit higher and higher tier of neutrals AND you get free can cannon fodder for the neutrals that don't join you. If you use the Tower hero that starts with Diplomacy, it's not unusual to be able to just walk over to your neighbor's town and take it over because your army's 3-4 times the size of his. On week 1.

true
it's what makes it fun

That is fucked up, they are not remotely the same genre. A third person action game with real time commands to armies in real time being the same as a game where everything is turn based, to the point that your turn is sub divided into more turns requires a very serious stretch in logic and painting everything in such broad strokes as to render any meaningful distinctions between them completely meaningless. I am not going to ever associate M&B with HoMM3, and if it wasn't for the fact I already play it off and on I'd dismiss your recommendation outright purely because it's not a turn based strategy game.

Never played these games, but seeing the gameplay now I can see what the slavs were attempting to copy for Disciples III.

Don't you dare compare that shit show to HoMM 3.

I'm not attempting to make D3 look good in any way, considering they just slammed HoMM's overworld and combat into the rest of Disciples' mechanics with no concern for how it would turn out.

At least while I didn't know about HoMM I could at least have the illusion that they were 'trying something new' while suffering through that hot mess. Now that I know they ripped the way the combat and overworld worked almost entirely from another series I feel stupid for even trying to play it.

Is there any advice that you would recommend to a newcomer to the series?

Ya: read the fucking thread.

It's not so much that they ripped it off because HoMM's combat, and overworld are pretty common in games like that. D3's problems really can't be explained by attempting to copy another game. D3 was just plain bad. For example they made it so that you could no longer move across trees, and boats could only be accessed from certain places. They completely fucked up everything in the game, and it was there own fault.

Fair enough. I probably should have specified that they badly copied it. I still feel that trying to make Disciples into something else entirely was the root of the problem, and this is what bewilders me about the whole process. I know that D2 wasn't perfect, but the changes they made in D3 are so sweeping that I can't help but feel that the squatters at Akella would have rather made a different game instead, but Disciples was the IP they could pick up and score some hype points with and some broad had already written some fanfiction for them to use as a story.

I can tell you from experience that the changes in D3 were so dramatic that having played D2 actually made it harder to play D3.

You can't move through tree terrain?

If you recommend HoMM5, don't forget to recommend the skill wheel for it.
mightandmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Skill_wheel

The trees were made impassable objects in D3, where as in D2 trees were just another tile you could walk on that added a -5 to your movement points. You should go pirate it, it's hilariously bad.

Cool trick but seems like a boring as fuck way to play the game. It's also pretty much AI exploitation when your trick depends on the AI suiciding his units into your firewall.

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Just spam vampire lords user.