'Anyone in here happen to have any cool little memes from the general threads back in the day? I'm not talking about facebook or VK garbage. In the meantime someone please post the ">implying I wanted x" meme.
>>1657235
I want a spooki town. Some paranormal shit. Just kinda hard to think of how to make it actually unique and not necropolis 2.0. We don't have ghosts. that would be one unit. A lil spooky ghost nigga. A witch unit. City is a haunted forest.';

'Some months ago someone suggested using Termux to get data for VCMI. I did it today. It is also my first experience with Linux.
I'm a hacker.
I'm a hacker now.

HACK THE PLANET
HACK THE PLANEEET';

'>>1657235
I finished the campaign and it was awesome. For intermediate level players, I recommend going through everything on a pawn (except for the map with the airship, it is not very difficult, although VERY long, a rook will be fine here). I think this campaign is better than anything in HoMM3. There is simply nothing more interesting and thoughtful. It's amazing how much work went into it.

I'm very glad that Factory came out. I want to congratulate us all on this event, this is a truly significant event.';

'>>1657237
So you want a Lovecraft town?';

'>>1657370
I don't know. Do I?';

'Dragon's are so cool bros. I want a new type of dragon, just not sure what it could be to make it unique.';

'>>1657377
No, you don't. Boot up VCMI and play the Death Valley town.';

'>>1657382
No that's super gay.';

'>>1657370
So like Cove?
lmao help me niggerman';

'>>1657387
Actually, more like the Abyss town. How long has that been in development? It's been around since WoG.';

'When are we getting that freezing town?';

'>>1657370
No, he wants the Halloween Neighborhood town.';

'Am I the only one who gets aneurysm when there's still so much shit to collect on the map, but you can finish it in the next turn and it has a time limit anyway?';

'>>1657475
I bet your brain looks like bubble wrap.';

'Okay, who do I pick on Impossible difficulty?
I really wanna play as Tod cause of his connection with Frederick and DP in the lore, but Bertram starts with Basic Earth magic, Slow and Force Field, AND starts generating money right away.
If I play Tod, am I at risk of Bertram snowballing to victory? I really don't wanna spend an entire day playing to find out I had made a wrong choice.';

'>>1657595
>I really don't wanna spend an entire day playing
isn't playing the game fun?';

'>>1657595
Bruh, this is one of the shortest missions, the map is small and you two are (technically) allies. If anything Tod's got an unfair advantage with his starting army while Bertram got jack (at least when you choose the latter). There are some things you can do to cheese this mission even further like blocking the town with your hero.';

'>>1657237
It was posted in the previous thread.';

'DRAGON FUCKING SHITS
*i'm not allowed to post images, just pretend there's a Gorgon in here*';

'>>1657742
>mfw I hear the imp movement sound effect';

'>>1657674
>isn't playing the game fun?
Yes, but replaying the map when you painstakingly did every combat manually with minimal losses and still ending up getting sucker-punched by something you had no possibility of knowing beforehand can be a bit frustrating.

>>1657726
>blocking the town with your hero
I did something similar by trapping him at the Seer's Hut at the South-West. I only stopped blocking when the Tan heroes started pouring out. And guess what? He still built the city faster than me. He had the Castle, the Capitol and basically all of the Creature buildings built. Fortunately, the Tan and Pink heroes stole all of the resources on the map, so he wasn't able to complete the Gantry before I did.';

'>>1657770
It's just brain tumor pressing on your sensory centers.';

'>>1657370
Yeah, that's what I was going for with the OP.
Cosmic horror town.
It's already in the canon lore.
Crazed lunatics, cultists, mist spiders. Grail can give random spooky creatures from another dimension.
Let's call it. uh...
...
Rift?';

'Does HotA have any OPish strats like undead cloak, Luna and so on?';

'>>1657789
Boy look at that lazy design.';

'>>1657825
Luna was nerfed in HotA.
They are nerfing broken strats in general.';

'undefined';

'UH OH WE BUILT DOUBLE BEHES WEEK 2';

'>>1657862
Your army is a bunch of simps. I bet they've also donated all their money. Would not happen under my command, all simps get the rope.';

'>>1657862
https://youtu.be/apBb7Y32QW8
20% they said';

'>>1657875
>>1657893
LOOK AT ME';

'>>1657920
BIG FAT OGRE STACK';

'>>1657920
Shit specialty Rocs. Scouting - meh on main. Tactics - why if no archers and you have Air Magic.';

'Anybody here play Heroes 7.5? Where'd you get your copy of Heroes 7 Complete? Asking for a friend.';

'>>1658095
Hello!
I think there was a scat thread on /hc/. There is no such thing here.';

'>>1658007
He's playing meme rmg template where only one hero is allowed, you are pretty much forced to have a hero that starts with scouting. Air magic is for DD and mobility and not for actual combat.';

'>>1658007
noob';

'>>1658213
Lol, no need to make excuses, better learn to play.';

'>>1658210
>where only one hero is allowed, you are pretty much forced to have a hero that starts with scouting
That's pretty interesting.
Recently played some solo hero games on homm2, and felt like Scouting was much more appreciated.';

'>>1658286
See me in duel any day then, pussy. You wont.';

'>>1658290
Also what should be noted is that scouting was buffed in hota to give 5 extra vision at expert so it's impact is much bigger than ever before.';

'>>1658295
In a duel with a huge black cock? Thanks, but I'm not gay.

But the selection of skills is really weak.';

'This retard started talking about black cocks out of nowhere what the fuck...';

'american moment';

'big black dragons';

'>>1658325
>This retard started talking about black cocks out of nowhere what the fuck...

This idiot started challenging an anonymous from the Internet to a duel over heroes for no reason at all. Pathetic.';

'>>1658448
Lurk more newfag.';

'INFERNO TOP OF THE WORLD';

'>>1658334';

'What kind of ancient out of touch boomer is that to not know about duelka? Go back to your cave, gramps.';

'>>1657235
Don't mind me.
Just posting best Stacy in the game.';

'>>1658593
>snake girls
>cold-blooded
>live in Bracada
Wizards summon them just to flex on everyone how they can keep their home warm enough for the Nagas to survive.
and also for sex';

'Undisputed queen of the entire roster.';

'm'lady';

'>>1658786';

'>>1657235
DoR is taking their sweet time, so I'll be making something of my own. Thinking... this June (a playable map at least, probably not an independent faction though).';

'>>1658874
DoR?';

'>>1658874
Make me a unit, senpai. And give me a big dick.';

'>>1657742
I love how Zydar was chosen for that "looking in futile rage at the Heavens from the bottom of a bullshit pit" portrait.';

'>>1659026
>Chad vs virgin
Look at the cold and stoic expression of barely concealed disdain for the enemy and that fuming with hysterics on the opposite';

'>>1659061
Man, if I were as cool and mighty as Archangels I'd stay stoic all the time too so I didn't ruin the look of hard-boiled resolve sobering my chiseled features.';

'>>1659061';

'>>1659219
Zoomer meme but hilarious at the same time. I imagined the same thing as a little kid 20 years ago. The Archangel as a turbochad and the Archdevil as a bitch.';

'>>1657235
buy an ad.
also this game is too hard.';

'undefined';

'>>1659256
>Too hard
Try learning the game';

'>>1658464
R u cool internet anonymous? Better learn to play a little and stop making excuses. I'm not interested in reading your whining.';

'>>1658791
Lol what a build. Are you ten?';

'>>1658874
Look like shit to be honest.';

'>>1659061
he's a literal robot. when the singularity happens, you will too be fuming with hysterics while the robots stoicly and methodically pursue and kill every last one of us.';

'How do you counter Archangel's resurrect?';

'>>1659307
>>1659308
kys newfaggot samefag';

'>>1659344
blind, berserk, red orb';

'>>1659344
Superior firepower.';

'>>1659344
You can stand your own troop on top of a corpse and that will block resurrection.';

'>>1659309
Thank you anon. It's always good to be knocked down a peg. I'll be sure to polish it further.';

'>>1659344
kill it more';

'>One HoMM3 folder for HotA
>One HoMM3 folder for VCMI
>One HoMM3 folder for WoG(mostly for Advanced Classes)
Ah, I'm full.';

'>>1659411
>One HoMM3 folder for VCMI
AI is quite aggressive with this one; As example I had it embarking on my shores next to the castle on the very first RoE campaign and venting underground to efficiently take over my captured towns on the first Dungeon scenario. It likes to explore deep and honing in on you fast with strong armies but sometimes it bugs out with single unit explorers so they get stuck in place.';

'>>1659421
And yeah, abusing wait function in battles like a crafty bitch. I think there was a designated addon for AI testing purposes, might take a clear look with it on how it plays and if it's actually good as it made me to initially believe.';

'>>1659344
Eat the corpse';

'Necro Nerf.
Yay or nay?';

'>>1660205
Don't touch the game, asshole. Leave it as is or only add new shit.';

'Speaking of my babe Luna, is there any map/campaign that has story for her that displays just how bonkers insane her specialty is (even when nerfed)? Seriously, I picked her for the first time in years and holy shit the Lunagaming strat is real, it almost felt like cheating.';

'Castle doesn't have good heroes
Tower doesn't have good heroes
Inferno doesn't have good heroes
Elemental niggas don't have good heroes';

'>>1660546
The hero is who plays the game. You are the hero.';

'>>1660552
Are you telling me...I'm some kinda hero of might and magic???';

'>>1660567
Yeah bro. You could be a wizard too. Me I'm a wizard myself.';

'>>1660546
I think people overestimate the difference between good and perfect hero, as long you have wisdom logistics and earth magic you could have eagle eye as your specialty and your hero is good enough. Tazar and such are a meme, early game tempo is the king and few games get your hero past level 25 where these specialists really kick off.';

'Eagle Eye, hehe.';

'>>1660546
And you don't have a father.';

'>>1659332
The singularity took place long before h3 did. The Ancients already had infinitely smart androids, like Corak. Angels and Archangels aren't that smart, they are just meant to defend';

'>>1659301
I tried but every fucking guide I read or video I watch tells me super specific things about optimization or scenarios that don't apply to me playing the first vanilla campaign on easy. I don't give a shit about sweaty fan made expansions or Impossible runs, etc. I'd just like some dude playing casually a normal map telling me what he's doing.
So I just open the game from time to time and do some shit and reload when I die then do some other shit.
I'm still trying though.';

'>>1660845
Name another strategy game that you play.';

'>>1660845
Just play on easy? Are you one of those people that jumps to highest difficulty and then complains things are hard? No shit dude, this isn't your latest AAA slop where you need to play on hardest to feel challenge.
Play on easy and if you can't beat the AI on easy then something is going seriously wrong.';

'>>1658653
Nah. It's the Naga who slither into Wizard Towers and coil around them to keep THEM warm.
But honestly Naga are the best and Naga Queens even better.';

'>>1660583
So you're telling me Grindan is one of the best picks for most maps because he'll be curbstomping everyone on lv5 with his guaranteed expert earth?';

'>>1660845
play on an easy difficulty
use saves

like as soon as you start, make a basic save that you overwrite constantly
save, then attack into a stack, find out how badly you get fucked from that stack, load, learn from that experience how powerful that stack is.';

'That's why I asked what other strategy games does he play. When you know basic strategy things like scouting, not allowing money to pile up, responding to enemy actions, learning unit abilities and weaknesses, Heroes shouldn't be that hard.

What I'm trying to say, is... lmao noob.';

'All strategy games aside from homm 3 and 2 are garbage.';

'>>1661041
4 is good doe';

'i love 5';

'hehehehe';

'>>1661109
Cap.';

'>>1661123
No cap here senpai frfr';

'>>1661109
No...
I tried...
Multiple times...
I just can't get past how horribly ugly it is. It must be one of the ugliest games in mainstream history of gaming.
It looks like something designed by a teenage geocities blogger girl.';

'>>1661388
nice pony
https://youtu.be/8MC0G-Lbuuk';

'>>1661409
Ponies?';

'>>1661388
>AHH ITS SO HEKIN UGLY!!!!!
>posts close up model that you don't see Ingame
Yup classic homm4 disrespecter slander I bet you won't complain about other games that also turn 3d models into sprites like warlords battlecry (it's units also look like shit from up close)';

'>>1660957
Well if you don't count Luna then yeah Grindan is one of the top picks for conflux, conflux in general has the reputation for being overpowered just because they have magic university and guaranteeing schools of magic on your heroes is extremely strong.';

'>>1660205
I'm gonna be honest: The zombie(or whatever the creature from the left is supposed to be) looks pretty bad. It looks like a golem';

'>>1661435
Fun fact: Heroes 3 also did that';

'>>1661388
some units looked cool, like thunderbirds (second from right)';

'>>1657235
>come up with (your) theme for a town.
Revolutionary themed based on France/USA
Might heroes are called Revolutionaries and the Magic heroes are Theorists.
I have candidates for the unit lineup, but the only unit I have fully figured out is the first level one and it has two upgrades
Militia is basically a tough peasant.
Will be upgraded to Minuteman who can shoot. Requires Mage Guild 2 for magic gunpowder and Blacksmith which is renamed to Gunsmith.
And the final upgrade is the Partisan who basically works like a Harpy, but instead flying in to attack, there is a hole popping up from the neighbouring hexfield, where the unit starts to shoot at the enemy and then retreat, gif related. No retaliation, no melee penalty. Essentially a level 2.5 unit but requires Mage Guild 4 for the high magic gunpowder.';

'>>1661721
how about
Cuirassier.
Tier 5 or 6.
First time they move to attack an enemy unit, they fire off a shot like a ranged unit first.
When they're upgraded they start combat with Advanced Shield, which can be dispelled.
Imperial Cuirassier could be the upgraded them.
Would be a mounted armored humanoid with a saber and pistol.';

'I hate it when the AI keeps focusing my nagas, unicorns or scorpicores. It's so hard to get a nice fat stack of those.';

'Factory is the easiest to cheese the AI with right?
>Leeroy Jenkins your spider to the other side of the map so you can buy a few rounds of unhindered shooting. Just run it back when its really damaged because reviving it on enemy territory is difficult
or
>Bunker in the corner using the spider as a wall and you heal it while shooters are dishing out full damage';

'Which faction has the best aesthetics?';

'>>1661435
Anon... 3d models turned into sprites are soulful kino.
Early 3d always looked worse. Arguably, it was fine for low res horror.
Anyway, it's not only about tech. It's also about art direction.
Heroes 3 - generic fantasy but with it's own style.
Heroes IV - looks like models taken from a generic library , mashed together with no consistency.
Why this vampire is dressed in a cheap modern vampire custume? He even has a bowtie!';

'>>1662077
All are great.
Bracada is probably the best. With that "oriental in the snow" vibe.';

'>>1662175
OK but he goes "bleh" and that's based';

'>>1661774
A mix of Marksman and Crusader.
That's actually nice. Upgrade should have jousting as well, since they were all about charging.
>Imperial Cuirassiers
It's revolutionary themed. So something less that implies nobility and aristocracy. Maybe Glorious Cuirassiers for the glorious charges they loved to do.';

'>>1662246
>It's revolutionary themed. So something less that implies nobility and aristocracy.
I was going for the revolutionary french empire implication rather than any aristocratic empire, but fair.
Glorious Cuirassier works, maybe Cuirassier Guard, as if to clearly denote they're part of the Revolutionary Guard.';

'>>1661721
That is so fucking gay.';

'>>1662414
You are so fucking gay!';

'>>1662477
GOTTEM';

'>>1662414
How about you come up with your own ideas then?';

'>play singleplayer
>get reminded plague week exists
AHH TOURNAMENT RULES SAVE ME';

'>>1662791
If you play on impossible difficulty I will argue that month of the plague is a good thing, AI may have infinite resources but they do can't exceed growth limits and you had no chance to buy all the troops you wanted anyway. Either way I'm happy to see it whenever it happens to me.';

'>>1662791
>week
month*';

'>play the fuken game
>map has shitload of tier 1 and 2 dwellings
>have like 2 couriers constantly picking them up
>every day i have to manually fucking move them
>day 9999
>run out of units
>might aswell grab those 1000+ hobgoblins i stacked
>mfw they die to 3 hits from enemy tier 7 unit while dealing no dmg
>all this macromanaging for this
tell those slavs to add caravan neutral building on overworld or something before i piss myself';

'>>1663203
>run out of units
severe case of skill issue';

'>>1661435
Warlords does look like shit though.';

'IM FUCKING INVINCIBLE';

'>>1663398
All "Heroes" are invincible, at the sight of a defeat they always successfully run away back to tavern to wait for another bid.';

'>>1663415
"no"';

'>>1659256
>HotA
>"Buy an ad"
Newfag, pls.';

'>>1663425
There is a chance though that they would reappear at the tavern? Or I'm misremembering.

Anyway, that full-plated guy in the defeat cutscene who leaves a comrade for demise is definitely a "Hero".';

'>>1663398
Crag Hack is better!';

'how do you play inferno early game? rush efreet before town hall? rush pit lords to farm demons on neutral camps? kms because I got inferno?

I'm an """Expert""" (160% rating) vs AI guy';

'>>1663439
>There is a chance though that they would reappear at the tavern?
Yes.
With HotA, it's only a possibility after all other heroes have been used.';

'>>1663479
I'm no inferno expert but I think that there are two approaches to starting as inferno.
The typical one is start with calh he gets 3 stacks of gogs and archery, gogs are your early game carry until you build up to efreets and hope for armageddon in your level 4 mage guild. Efreet is just your powerstack and other units just serve as meat, the AI is unlikely to target efreets since they retaliate hard and they have fire shield so maintaining this stack shouldn't be too hard.
Second approach is the demon farming strategy, start with marius as she has demon specialty. Build up to pit lords asap and then sacrifice your imps gogs and dogs to be reborn as demons. If you find dwellings of other factions of tier 1-3 hire them and then convert to demons too, as example I was playing map as inferno and there were two dwarf dwellings normally useless but dwarfs have very good gold to hp ratio so they converted to a lot of extra demons I otherwise wouldn't get. You have to think a bit like necromancer in a way.
The demon farming itself is difficult to explain so just look it up online but let me tell you a powerstack of demons does some scary things if you can pull it off well.';

'>trade all my resources for lvl 5 mage guild
>magic mirror';

'>>1663479
Imps are good as fodder and I like to use cerberi, both have cheap horde buildings. Pretty weak faction I agree though.';

'>>1663532
>12.5 g/hp
>3 defense
I would not invest too much into them, use the ones your heroes start with and you might have a big enough stack to kill things before they kill you at least early on. Gremlins are super cheap, goblins are strictly better than imps and cheaper.';

'>>1663521
>Calh
>Marius
Funny how the exes are the MVPs of their faction.';

'Real cloak hours';

'>need gold for dragons
>trade away all of my resources for gold
>traded away the sulphur too';

'>>1663244
What do you mean? Warlords look amazing.';

'>>1664517
Has happened way too many times...

Also
>playing online with friend, teaching him the game
>he needs gold bad, getting hammered
>I gift red 100k gold
>oh wait, my friend is blue';

'So how is the new town and patch overall?';

'>>1664642
>doggo hero
I'd march into death for him.';

'>>1664642
Yoo what rpgmaker asset pack is this';

'>>1664752
a good one';

'>>1664750
>New town
Imagine if you have master gremlins from the beginning of the game. Armadillos are slow and useless but you have mechanics to heal your automatons so you do not have to lose units. Sandworms are a great unit and definitely worth upgrading, gunslingers are good but very squishy for a tier 6 so protect them well. The town has two tier 7's but the couatl is the stronger one.';

'>>1664750
I like the new town a lot. And all the weird gimmicks it has.
The campaign is pure autism though. The bad kind.
You HAVE TO get expert air magic to beat the second map playing fair. I did it without air expert, but I accidentally discovered AI exploit.
I don't like this "zero suboptimal choices allowed" approach.';

'>good heroes cant sacrifice creatures in altar
huh';

'>>1665357
I got close, I tried to do it by sending my automatons to suicide bomb(You do not have enough turns to bring them back anyway) the chieftains as they are the only thing that can target my ranged stacks that are basically the only things doing damage. I didn't have any armadillos though, if you have armadillos you can buy more time for your pirate and halfling stacks to do damage, 100 armadillos is a lot of meat. The annoying part is he starts thunderbolting the halflings later on, ranged units are important because fireshield and counterstrike kills anything melee.';

'>>1665357
>>1665589
I managed to beat him without Expert Air Magic and with the army composition in picrel. The lack of Air Magic does hurt a lot, not gonna lie.
I only managed to get Earth Magic in the first two missions, but it turns out that HotA devs consider Slow to be far more OP than Haste. AFAIK, you'll get only one hero in the entire campaign that can cast Slow natively, and they'll replace Henrietta as your main real quick.
The 'good' news for anyone who is in the same basket as me is that Henrietta can at least get the Resurrection spell in the penultimate mission.';

'>>1665770
Yeah I lost the goblins and armadillos, if you can keep them the fight should not be too difficult, hobgoblins benefit a lot from the +1 HP, thats like 8800 hp worth of goblins and probably around 2k damage';

'Let's goooo';

'What's your favorite creature in terms of aesthetics?

I dunno why, but I'm really favoring all the riders, Champions in particular. Not only do they look glorious with their almost ceremonial decorations and plumes, but also the way they run through their enemies with a giant VLC stick. Jousting is so cool! And of course, when they get hit, they just shrug it off with a loud "KEH!", armor clanking and horse neighing (bonus points because it's the same sound from HoMM2), and the death sound is visceral as they fall to the ground, their horse likely crushing them to death, you can almost feel the weight of it, it's awesome.

And I also love the DKs of course, our lovable bucketheads with the coolest on-hit effect in the game.';

'>>1666554
DK';

'>>1666554
Master Genies probably.
Efreet Sultans are up there too.
Maybe Naga Queens, I think it's really neat how the swords are not the same, kinda makes the attack seem even more chaotic and of course harder to retaliate to.

Sadly the aesthetic of the Champion loses a lot of the flair to me because how it trots so slow.
Grand Elves and Crusaders have quite nice armor.
Silver Pegasus too.';

'Disgusting good luck

So for those not familiar with the homm2 campaign, you can get Dragon Alliance from one of the optional missions, which means all dragons join you for free.
One of the random high level monsters ended up being black dragons on the last mission.

There are only 3 radnom Mon4 icons on the map, which are required for dragons, 2 in the middle in a contested area, and then 1 in the swamp where I got black dragons.';

'>>1658593
sexo';

'>>1666554
The whole game, every pixel of it.';

'>>1666648
>silver pegasus
nah shes a dyke
regular pegasus is my beautiful long haired tradfife';

'>>1667464
how about';

'>>1666554
- Naga Queen.
- Behemoth.
- Troll.
- Gnoll.';

'This is the Druid, the only unit from the older games not in Heroes 3. Say something nice about them!';

'>>1667750
Man, I liked trolls a lot more in HoMM2. How they looked and their power. They were actually scary there. In 3, they're just getting mocked at every step.';

'>>1668264
I like their visual design, not their stats.';

'>>1668264
Sequel of the RPG line of the series, which had came out later, shared assets with HoMM3 and also had trolls. Experience of these hulking beefy creatures ganging up on you from Tatalian woods, unanticipated and always munching on some grisly limb, was one of the unique intimidating aspects of the game for me. From this angle, it made sense that this would be less of the case, when the one confronting these wandering savages is an organized under a commander's flag army and not lone adventurers.';

'>>1668187
forest zealot';

'>>1668279
Holy shit the OG troll is a shifty wojack looking fuck';

'>>1668264
trolls are in a weird place in homm2
I play barbarian fairly often, but the high infrastructure cost for the bridge makes it so I almost never get them.
I just get the tier 1-4, conquer something else.
They have pretty bad cost/hp too, so they easily drain your gold when they get bullied by spells.';

'>>1668279
Kings bounty trolls';

'>>1668279
Trolls really should have higher HP.
They need a buff and it would be lore-friendly.';

'>>1666554
Naga queen
Honorable mentions: Minotaur King, Champion';

'That's good that you're nostalgic for 2 an all but when will The Succession Wars be done?';

'>>1668279
>flies added in homm4 to stress the putrid stench
funny how the original first iterations were so different on different platforms.
Might&Magic 5 is so fucking weird and ugly';

'>>1667739
thats nice';

'I swear these niggas will always want to join me even if I don't have diplomacy. Do creatures have some values that one might want to join you more than another?';

'>>1669465
They see a fellow ugly orc who also smells bad.';

'Long time no see anons. Need some advice on how to beat Mallerio without losing 85% of my army.
I thought getting the Armageddon scroll would trivialize the fight, but it deals way too little damage.
I obviously can't cast Blind due to Cape of Silence and Forgetfulness doesn't work on Elementals.';

'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRqNDgX-Wek
Might and Magic if JRPG';

'I'm pretty much a newfag when it comes to this game and I spam necropolis because I like skeletons, any channels about teaching you how to play the game, discussing strategies etc.?';

'>>1671455
why are zoomers like this? just play the fucking game and think';

'>>1671455
Play the campaign, also google coyot, you can see information about various units. Just make skeletons they are free units, and get the skeleton transformer so you can turn secondary heroes troops into more skeletons. Vampires and liches are good against living creatures. Don't take new skills unless its logistics or earth/air, wisdom comes up around every six levels so you have a buffer against useless skills';

'>>1671455
I recall telling someone on /v/ to watch theknownworld's 1v7 FFAs to learn the game and they only thing they told me back is that they are even more confused than before so I don't even know what to recommend.';

'>>1670606
>I killed her. You can only do it with Wynona. She wasn't that hard. People need to learn how to use small spells on big battles. Shield, stone skin and air shield. She barely did any damage. The reward is: you get a pandora box with +3 power and a water elemental spell permanently on her.';

'Cove at home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5F_wjMFKlc';

'>>1672320
Cove if not stolen. No, I am not going to elaborate. HotA is an offshoot of WoG, always remember that.';

'>>1672491
that was actually debunked
hota developed cove before the wog pirate haven';

'>>1671946
Pretty sure you didn't cast shield or stone skin since she's wearing the Cape of Silence. Maybe you mixed it up with some other combat encounter.
The Air Shield did the trick however, as well as doubling my mana pool with Magic Spring.
I ended up killing everything but ~50 Storm Elementals and just spammed Resurrection for the next dozen or so turns. I only lost 15 Ayssids and 10 Dragon Flies because the Storm Elemental used all 24 of his shots and went for the melee attack before I could revive them as well.

All-in-all, 8.5/10 advice, would listen to again.';

'Why lgbt dragon in factory is the upgraded one? Its sprite is a lot more flashier';

'>>1658325
Negroid incels are all over 4chan.';

'>>1672805
bbcposting stops whenever israel calls a general shelter (cf oct 8)';

'>>1672491
Well, the Mermaid, the Ratman and the Sea Serpent graphics from this mod are definitely stolen.';

'>>1671455
>>1671921
I learned how to play through his YT videos. Maybe its not for people fresh to the game but he usually explains most of his moves in his older vids in a logical way.

https://youtube.com/@TheKnownWorld?si=wLnn2UtNeetRXgXa';

'Is this general only for HoMM, or turn-based games in general? Because I tried HoMM III, and I get filtered. I tried HoMM IV, and I somehow can win against a very easy AI.
Then I tried HoMM V or VI, I'm not sure, and sweet lord, I get filtered even more than in III, the second I'm out of reach of my capital, or get weakened by a battle, the AI sprints to me in a straight line.';

'>>1673210
Hah, nevermind, didn't see that.';

'>>1673239
Even a child should be capable of winning vs easy AI in homm3, something has to be going horribly wrong.';

'>>1673247
I am very bad. Abysmally bad.
I mean, I love strategy games, but the best I ever managed to do was to beat Medium AI in SupCom FA. And I consider myself better in real time than in turn based.
Age of Wonders 3, for example, I routinely lose to indies.';

'>>1658311
mutts' law';

'>>1673239
>Is this general only for HoMM,
This is not a general.
If it is a general it should be reported and deleted, since they are against the rules of this board.';

'>>1673287
Right, my apologies. I'm so used to /vt/ that I forget that there are boards with recurring threads that aren't generals. Sorry.
Still, every HoMM that isn't IV kicks my ass so hard I'm developping a phobia of turn-based games for the whole "entire dragon stack out of fucking nowhere" thing.';

'>>1657235
Tower > Dungeon';

'undefined';

'>>1673289
Try taking towns before they have the chance to build up';

'>>1673289
Like other anon suggests, acting early can squash a lot of threats.

also if you're never having one constant "Test" save, you use for even minor things can be good to learn.
Like if you don't know how dangerous grand elves are, save Test, attack see what happens, maybe load and try again if you have gargoyles you can split.';

'>>1673491
this is great';

'>>1673592
save scumming is absolute subhuman behavior and you guys should be ashamed for recommending it';

'>>1673592
The reward is usually not worth fighting the shooter stacks and losing half the army, unless your army outclasses them in speed and hitpoints or ranged attacks';

'>>1673644
I never save.
I know what the units do because I first played these games decades ago.
A new player don't know what I know, they don't know how much of a threat everything is.
They need experience and the quickest they can get that is by testing, and the quickest they can test is saving and loading.';

'>>1673644
look at mister poser over here, if you haven't savescummed you have never cleared a single challenge map';

'>>1673894
Lol, save scumming in challenge maps. You might as well use cheat codes and consider the challenge beaten';

'>>1673908
Go clear wayfarer or way home without a single reload and provide video evidence of you doing so. I'll wait. By wait I mean I'll turn into a real life skeleton before you can do that.
Keep being an internet tough guy though, that makes you really cool and shit. /s';

'https://yewtu.be/embed/3IjAy_7vXzs';

'>>1673913
It is already done anon, go check youtube. Just because you can't do it, it doesn't mean it requires cheating';

'They seem middling, but I like them.';

'>>1673485
You don't actually care, you'd coom to anything.';

'>>1674063
I care and I coom to anything';

'I'm getting my ass kicked in Gem's campaing';

'>>1673913
>/s
reddit';

'>>1673999
Campaign does them disservice.
You will be monstly soaking damage with automatons to repair them later.
Armadilo will end up being emergency defence.';

'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPU5Z7kCXKY';

'>>1674557
Its because Rampart isn't great as a town, at least dungeon has portal of summoning. Make as many grand elves as you can the upgrade is cheap';

'>>1675897
>Its because Rampart isn't great as a town
Do people really think that? I enjoy rampart a lot on impossible because they're so easy to get started, centaurs and elves are really all you need and as the game goes on you will reinforce your army later with ponies and dragons while trees and dwarves are meat you rarely buy when you need them you're glad they're there. Sure unicorn and gold dragons aren't top tier units but they're plenty good to win against AI.';

'Conflux should be erased from existence. It's a hastily cobbled together town made out of recycled assets.';

'>>1676012
I'm a noob but I think they're average or slightly below average.';

'>>1674557
>>1675897
It's because the odds are stacked against you. Gem has a shit specialty and starting skill, a problem that gets compounded by the level cap. Also in the second mission, not only does the enemy start out stronger by you so you can't wait, but there are a lot of strong garrisons so you can't rush him, but you can't rush the objective either, so you have to find the right balance and also be somewhat lucky';

'I mean, Rampy is god tier early game, no doubt (as long as you don't have your elves castrated by HotA), and some of their heroes are S tier. But at some point you're meant to graduate from Rampy units. You're not gonna be running with a power stack of goldies or ponies around, nobody plays like that. So you try to rush and snowball before your enemies get strong enough to decimate your archers. And then get better, faster units from other towns.';

'I had to restart my HotA campaign to get the right skills...';

'This mod is the expansion people were hoping for.';

'Mission 3 - Dead or alive.
I just survived the first pirate invasion trio from the portals.
That was close.
Is the hard part behind me?';

'>>1677386
>Is the hard part behind me?
lol, no.';

'>>1671455
Welcome fellow necromancer, remember to spam blind on the living and raise the dead so you won't lose a single units.';

'What is there to do on this game? I understand that gameplay is fire, but as far as I know there is only one campaign which is pretty shitty and designed to abuse game mechanics. And apart of that there is skirmish and is that it? I mean why would I waste time playing skirmish maps with a computer?
Is this game is for friend parties only?';

'>>1677694
One campaign? Did you buy the HD shitmaster on steam? There are three campaigns in the original, seven chronicles campaigns and four HOTA campaigns for expert players. On top of that you have like 100 single scenarios and literally THOUSANDS custom player maps you can download online from regular conquest type maps to extreme challenge maps where you're expected to fight an army 100x your size and take no losses because the next guy has army 1000x your size.
There is plenty of fun to be had in single player vs AI, maybe the game just isn't for you.';

'H-how do I defeat Bess?';

'I have decided my autism levels are not high enough to play the new campaign.
So I have a question.
What happens to Frederick?';

'>>1678024
He gets creampied by all the hobbits.';

'>>1677792
>H-how do I defeat Bess?
Picrel army composition and artifacts. Cape of Velocity seems like the most important thing aside from a good army. You can get it from the Seer's Hut in the very top-left of the map. To minimize losses, you can also acquire Clone Scroll from a little island that can be accessed through a Teal One Way Portal.
As for the combat tactics, just Haste and first strike all of her shooters since she's immune to Forgetfulness (and that's pretty much all she has, aside from being able to cast Clone spell)

>>1678024
>What happens to Frederick?
I'm currently playing the penultimate mission of the campaign, and it doesn't appear Frederick gets a happy ending. Basically, around elves, watch yourself.';

'>>1678103
>Basically, around elves, watch yourself.
Kastore?';

'In case you ever doubted tazar was good there you go.';

'>>1678469
>Kastore?
C'mon anon, how can you not trust this face?';

'Mage guild in Bracada.';

'Mage guild in AvLee.';

'Mage guild in Tatalia.';

'>>1678906
wow armorer is really good versus... armorer';

'>final fight on a G sized map be like';

'the map name is "crapcore" by the way
there are no losses these are just clones, I wish hota would fix that';

'>>1678469
>factory
>not forge

WHAT THE FUCK';

'>>1679803
>>1679807
Huh, I thought that was EotW on SoD, looks very similar. Also, Sod_SP plugin fixes the issue of clones counting towards the final tally, maybe HotA team just needs to contact the guy and steal his stuff lol.';

'Eye see (You)';

'>>1679260
Have you got mage guild in krewlod?';

'>>1680196
Wake of god mod fixed that.';

'>>1680213';

'>>1679943
>EotW on SoD
I'm not familiar with that, what is the full name of that map?';

'Succession Wars making some progress. Witch looking good, only one left now is Heretic.';

'>>1680445
Empire of the world. Best played with Wake of God.';

'>>1680650
Wasn't that supposed to be Heroes 3 with Heroes 2 aesthetics?';

'>>1680660
No, more like Heroes 2 with 3's engine.';

'>>1680726
L';

'Any other games with art in similar style and quality to HoMM3? The most similar I can think of is HoMM4 but it's a downgrade and my favorite aesthetics were Fortress.';

'>>1680789
Not a single one.';

'>>1680789
There's this indie game songs of conquest which is heavily inspired by homm3 but is it good? I have no idea.';

'>>1680213
>>1680363
Fuck it, just dump them all';

'>HoMM IV factions';

'>>1682102
I don't get it. Random shit that doesn't go together?';

'>>1682139
It looks like pepperoni on chicken from KFC';

'Jeddite is the coolest. He's my favourite.';

'>>1682470
Pretty backwards in HoMM IV where Heroes play a much more active role they lose their specialties and all heroes of a given type therefore become completely interchangeable.
>>1682139
Not the guy who posted that, but the only faction where that criticism is 100% valid is Death, though Chaos's tier 3 and Order's tier 1 also have their problems.';

'Why are eastern europeans so good at making unofficial add-ons for the games but still suck at making full games';

'>>1680650
Campaigns when?!?';

'>>1672730
>lgbt dragon
Never played M&M8, huh?';

'>>1676129
Blame those competitive hacks who never played M&M and thought that robots are not immersive enough for their comfy realistic historically accurate medieval fantasy strategy game.';

'>>1683027
NTA, but I think that making couatls T7s was a bad idea. In MM lore, they are about as strong as dragon flies at best';

'Does HoMM4 have its own "Wayfarer" equivalent? I desire some exquisite CBT.';

'Mission 4 of the Factory Campaign be like';

'Shitter here.
What's so bad about eagle eyes?';

'>>1683860
So many things
It only works when fighting enemy heroes
It's only a chance to learn the spell
You must win to learn a spell and get lucky
You can only learn one spell per battle
Enemy might cast something you already have
AI does not cast many spells, for example in SOD AI will never cast berserk
Cannot learn level 5 spells with eagle eye
Skill is completely worthless once you've learned all spells';

'>>1683865
Factory campaign is so stingy with spells that it showed that Eagle Eye could be viable...
If somebody one day creates a campaign around it.';

'>>1683850
Final mission be like:';

'>>1682573
>but the only faction where that criticism is 100% valid is Death, though Chaos's tier 3 and Order's tier 1 also have their problems.
Also, aren't demons and undead in a rivalry? So how did they put them together in Heroes IV? It looks like they copied Warcraft III or something. Luckily in Legends of Ancients (Heroes V mod) they put Kreegans and undead as enemies again.';

'>>1683951
To be fair, EVERYONE on Enroth hated Kreegans.';

'>>1683951
>>1683988
Ancients are just retarded and didn't know that all it took to pacify the Kreegans and turn them from space locusts into a manageable planet/VARN-inhabiting race like any other was the elimination of the spaceship and the royal couple of their expeditionary force :).';

'I just started playing HoMM3 for the first time and really enjoying it. Playing six hours straight at a time reminds me of playing Caesar 3 as a kid.

How do I get better at judging whether I can beat an enemy or not BEFORE engaging them in combat?';

'>>1684555
>How do I get better at judging whether I can beat an enemy or not BEFORE engaging them in combat?
That's one of the harder skills to come by in this game, short answer is experience. But in slightly longer answer consider your hero stats, skills, spells, army stats vs enemy you're fighting.
Let's take the example of typical hated fight by everyone, random archer stack blocking something important. Ask yourself these questions:
>how quickly can I reach the archer stacks to block them
Ideally 1 turn, most likely 2 turns, if 3 or more probably not worth it
>what kind of skills are available to me
Having tactics can make up the speed difference, air magic with haste, water magic with forgetfulness disables shooters etc.
>do I have enough mana for this battle? how much mana will it cost me to win?
maybe you can win the fight by blowing your whole mana pool but then you can't win the next fight
>If I don't have speed advantage who is going to get shot at
usually your own shooters which is bad or whoever is the most fragile
>can I simulate the battle in my head where I win without too many losses
likely final step in any estimation, the more you play the better you get at this one

The more questions you can ask and answer the better you'll get at judging which fights are takeable and which are not, unfortunately the line between clean sweep and losing half your army tends to be pretty thin especially early on when it matters the most.';

'>>1684564
Thanks, that's helpful.';

'Is defence skill really worse than attack?
At 20 points of defence difference your troop takes half the damage while at 20 points of offence difference your troop deals twice the damage. A hero with good defence values might be able to take a few of the AI stacks with no casualties that an offense hero would lose stacks to. If you could choose 1 point of offence and 1 point of defence early on the defence might make more difference as you retain more troops. Later in the game offence certainly is useful because defence doesn't help kill the enemy main.
>>1684555
Play the campaigns starting with restoration of erathia.
>How do I get better at judging whether I can beat an enemy or not BEFORE engaging them in combat?
Check the size of a stack/creature bank before fighting it, decide whether the objective is minimal casualties, no casualties or you don't care about casualties (The reward could be considerably more valuable than what you lose like angels) and try to get reinforcements to your main before fighting large stacks.
Most level 1 spells are not great, haste and slow are preferred for their expert effects, you want level 2 mage guild only for lightning bolt which scales well with the power stat. Resurrection is also extremely powerful on a magic hero with advanced earth magic and can help clear utopias. Necropolis gets animate dead instead at level 3 and it works fine even at basic level.
There are other spells with niche cases like berserk and clone.
You want to be clearing creature banks if you can do it without too much sacrifice, the gold is good but also some offer artifacts.
Shooters are useful to have in your army for clearing.
Also make note of wells, you can use all your spell points if you are going to reach a well soon';

'>>1685003
>Is defence skill really worse than attack?
Unless you're one of the armorer specialists yes. To put it simply your average game of heroes 3 revolves around a single power stack and that power stack heavily relies on one shotting the enemy stack and attack skill helps with that. The armies are just small enough that this usually works and if it's not a straight up one shot, the damage dealt is so high that whatever counter is coming at you is negligible.
That said if you're playing a challenge map where enemy troops are counted in thousands and the map gives them free stats some way then armorer specialty + defense skill is the way to go. There are way more spells that can increase your offense potential compared to defense ones. Like what you're going to do cast shield or air shield and stoneskin/prayer and that's about as far as defense goes. Offense there's bless and most importantly disrupting ray or frenzy. Best case scenario these spells can increase your damage output by more than 10x, there is no 10xing your defense.
There is argument for both attack skill and defense skill but unless you're playing some sort of crazy challenge map with armorer specialty the attack skill is the way to go like 90%+ of the time. And the devs knew that attack skill is OP this is why it takes more than twice as many points to reach the cap, you need 60 ADD(attack defense difference) to cap attack but only 28 ADD to cap defense.';

'Hi please fuck my face thanks';

'>>1685485
Pathfinding can be a useful skill learning can never be a useful skill.
>As can be seen from the experience table, assuming Expert Learning very early on, after level 10 the hero will be ~0.75 levels higher than other heroes without this secondary skill. Before level 10, the advantage is less.
OHNONONONO';

'>>1685485
That's what you get for using a meme strat of baiting retaliation strikes.';

'>>1686205
this looks more like a valid strat of guarding the elfs with the big centaurs. the 61 stack is just for refills.';

'>>1685485
How did this happen in the first place, you didn't pick wisdom at level 6?';

'>>1685954
>can be a useful
Not so much on a map with underground focus.
>>1686205
>>1686353
Yeah, I managed to keep those lads alive until just now. Pretty much done on this map, but guess what
THE RIDE NEVER ENDS

>>1686374
That's exactly what happened, maybe this was a meme strat after all but I took Expert Earth at lvl 6 along with having Expert archery, the real tradeoff wasn't delaying getting Wisdom though, it was this bs.';

'>>1686785
Well I can hardly blame anyone for picking earth magic, shit happens and rolling the perfect hero is harder than one might think unless you have help of conflux magic university or some external witch hut/university that just happens to have one of the top skills. No worries as long you have the essential trifecta that is logistics wisdom and earth magic everything else is luxury for the average map.';

'I play this game with cheats because I suck ass.';

'>>1686785
Nowadays I almost always go wisdom at level 6 if a better skill isn't provided, wisdom will help later on';

'Question to anyone who's half decent at the game, that is you can beat a 200% AI at minimum.
Do you ever use magic heroes? If yes which ones and what's your general gameplan? I feel like might heroes are heavily favored if you know how to play the game.';

'>>1687609
>Question to anyone who's half decent at the game, that is you can beat a 200% AI at minimum.
I am playing through the campaigns on impossible so I guess that counts
>Do you ever use magic heroes? If yes which ones and what's your general gameplan? I feel like might heroes are heavily favored if you know how to play the game.
How good they are depends on their starting spell and mage guild levels, having slow, haste magic arrow is very good(Death knights get best of both worlds, might hero stats and magic books with mostly useful spells). Meteor shower specialty is also good, its an expensive spell but it does a lot of damage. If you are playing with multiple heroes you will want your first hero to be a creature specialist';

'How is this game so evergreen, what is the secret?';

'>>1687926
Magic.';

'Latar faggots, tomorrow I'm going to Paul Anthony Romero concert!';

'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBs5P7FrgPU
Didn't occur that HoMM4 used royalty-free music (Floating Across Water)';

'>>1688412
HoMM4 OST was recorded in Romero's bathroom for $20
https://youtu.be/vhtHMIllw6Q?feature=shared
it's still better than HoMM3's understated and imo mostly forgettable music';

'>>1688516
>mostly forgettable music
I'm here to remind you that hardcore contrarians belong to /v/ and not here. I mean the music is so forgettable that in Poland there's a real life orchestra that plays HOMM3 themes for fun I don't think they're even being paid.
But it's forgettable and overrated, yeah.';

'>>1688519
If I ranked music of HoMM 1-5:
>2
>4
>5
>3 and 1 tied
they lost a lot dropping the opera whether you and Poland want to admit it or not';

'>>1688412
It's definitely not royalty-free. It's from a licensed music library.';

'Wow, the opera fags are really that petty to claim that the highly acclaimed soundtrack is bad just because it doesn't have the wild wailing of the previous one. Insane.';

'>>1688564
>wild wailing
shit take
>sie reden nicht
>durch ihren
>HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA';

'I cannot play this game and its campaigns without save scumming. Always fuck up something in combat even with the Hota hand-holding, let alone in SoD. Seems like I'll never be ready for multiplayer.';

'>>1691963
>Seems like I'll never be ready for multiplayer.
Why would you want to? It's all about cheesy exploits.';

'>>1691963
Even top tier players make dumb mistakes in multiplayer, I was watching world championship finals and one guy suicided into a horde of air elementals because it was literally 99 of them the maximum possible amount for horde. If you're going to practice single player until you never do dumb things in multi player that'll just never happen.
But really better question is why would you want to play multiplayer? It's a completely different game where you farm the map like jebus for an hour without interacting with another player at all until you meet in the middle for one final fight that's resolved within 5 minutes or less on average. I've played this game for thousands of hours and I think multiplayer is silly but I'm not going to hate on people who enjoy it, it's just that it's a completely separate experience from single player that's all.';

'I was on Paul Anthony Romero Quintet concert.
I'm actually glad I confused dates a bit and went to see quintet and not orchestra.
It was more chill with a smaller audience. More anecdotes and non-standard version of the music.
Great stuff.';

'Gotta love scholar';

'>>1693182
Wow, based.';

'>>1693348
lol. most useless skill in the game for a main hero.
have a (you)
it does help if you have it on an auxiliary hero though.';

'>>1659346
>>1658791
>>1657920
>2x expert magic
>no wisdom
why even bother? what's the point of logistics if you can't fly or teleport to a town?
or end a massive fight with zero casualties thanks to resurrect?

are these just meme screencaps?';

'>>1693469
Well thanks for (you) captain obvious.';

'>>1693450
Some mad lad Pepik played Necropolis theme on a guitar SOLO.
And it worked.';

'Okay, hear me out...
...
I think it's possible... to make Eagle Eye not-useless.
You just have to design an entire campaign around it.
1. Be super stingy with spells, like in Factory campaign.
2. Make gimmick boss fights with invading heroes, like in Factory campaign map 3.
There's is going to be a clone gimmick boss. Summon gimmick boss. Minefield boss. Hypnosis boss. Etc.
Eagle eye is the only way to learn these spells, except maybe for the final scenario.
There you go, Eagle eye is not useful.';

'>>1693561
* Eagle eye is now useful.

Fugg, Eagle eye is so useless, my muscle memory just refused to suggest otherwise.';

'>>1693478
Duel anon. It's duel. In hota. I'm amazed at how many times you guys will make these posts. Are you fucking time travelers? Do you not see my tomes in there as well?';

'Holy hell what a frantic fight it came down to a wire, I ran out of mana and had to anti magic and start brawling a stack of about 8k faerie dragons but I brawled it down just barely.
Don't ask questions about my army these magogs sure are a source of regret and I don't want to hear about it.
Protip for future me, make sure to give intelligence to the armorer specialist.';

'Now I'm pretty sure you were meant to use berserk for this fight but eh whatever, capturing this town wins the map so losses are irrelevant. Cleaving through this much meat meant that about 1500 mana was not enough.';

'>>1693893
>9999
Ugh... unelegant design...';

'>end of month one with Tower on 200% 7v1 and I'm actually doing surprisingly well for a change
>finally check the enemy AI factions since I forgot to at the start
>there's 3 Necro towns with two necromancy specialists';

'It's done.

After three months and ten days of on-off playing, I completed the Forged in Fire campaign.

After so many bullshit encounters with ridiculously overpowered heroes, I avoided the very last encounter with Xex and snuck into the castle unopposed. Considering how tightly the HotA devs tuned the campaign, I am confident they intentionally positioned the Shroud of Darkness on the north to allow you to bait Xex out of the castle in case you ust wanted to wrap up the campaign. Might be their way of saying, "see, we're not completely heartless".';

'>>1698033
Can you compare difficulty of factory campaign to the cove one? I've played terror of the seas on 200% and it was difficult enough that I wasn't having fun playing it, I finished it but out of spite more than anything.
Everything I've heard about factory campaign so far is that it's puzzle like and offers very little freedom, you have to play the map like devs intended or else you got no chance which is why I haven't played it yet.';

'>>1698033
It's a very bittersweet feeling, finishing this campaign.

I'll be 33 this December, and if I'm lucky, I'll get to live at least for another 33 years. My sister, with whom I played coop H3 maps well into our university days, now lives in another town and has a family of her own - her oldest child is almost as old as I was when my dad brought us a pirated copy of Heroes 3. We no longer have the time to play together, just reminisce about those times.

Most of the HotA devs must be around the same age as I am, and are likely thinking about starting families of their own, if they haven't done so already. Just like I, they'll have less and less time to play H3, or in their case mod it. If we're both lucky, we'll get the last two factions (Kronwerk and Cathedral, or some variation of these two) before they hang up their gloves. Saddest of all is that Docent is gone and hasn't seen the fruits of his labor - the completion of the FoF campaign or/and how many people appreciated it, as well as how many more got assblasted by some of the encounters in it. I'd like to think he'd feel flattered by both.

And yet, when the ending cutscene played, I felt like I was 10 again, hovering over the RoE campaign screen to see the gryphons fly in an endless procession. In that minute, everything was as it was supposed to be.


>>1698048
>Can you compare difficulty of factory campaign to the cove one?
Last time I played the Cove campaign was in 2016, so it might be age catching up to me, but I feel like the Factory campaign is substantially more difficult. Perceive it as a final test of everything you have learned about H3. The margin for error is very small, the enemy heroes are overturned to the point of obnoxiousness, and restarting the mission (or the campaign) is not out of the option if you get bad secondary skills (which fortunately wasn't an issue for me). And yet, I overcame every single challenge I thought to be impossible just a few hours ago, until it was all done.';

'Have you made any maps anon?
May I see them?';

'>>1680800
This
I'm 70 hours in and I've been enjoying it so far, the magic system is more intresting and personally I love the pixelart even though it's not for everybody. They really need to implement a new faction soon, 4 towns feels bad even with all the alternative unit trees';

'>>1698590
I'm making maps exlusively for my mom';

'>>1699604
Big and wholesome, if true';

'Guys I got the HOMM3 board game!';

'>>92169395
Dumping on /tg/ if anyone wants to check it out.';

'>>1700836
>that manface
>those fucking centipede bits
2/10';

'>>1701306
She's also not wearing the sexy harness.';

'>>1700836
Would've been nice if you could scan these.';

'>>1701973
I don't have the technology necessary. The art book is kinda mid though. You don't need it.';

'Whats your favorite siege item
>ballista
>med tent
>ammocart';

'>>1702014
How is that even a question.
Of course it's ballista. It's the only one that can be a central part your strategy.
And who the hell needs ammo cart except for dungeon scrubs?';

'>>1702956
>And who the hell needs ammo cart
forcefield cheese special';

'>>1702014
Wish you had an option to kill your own ballista from the get go.';

'>>1702961
This is pornographic.';

'>>1702961
>Almost 3000 grand elves';

'>>1683024
You can always play remakes of H1+2 campaigns in HotA';

'>>1705217
>hota
No, thanks. I am good.';

'I played "Talent Shortage" single scenario and it gave me autism.
In a good way though.
Maybe these silly puzzle challange maps will make me ready for new HotA campaign, because I gave up at pirates.';

'>>1705530
What's the problem? Apart from graphical style Succession Wars will be as far from canon and original from HoMM2 as HotA is from HoMM3. Pick your poison I guess.';

'Manjawlodia.';

'Oh no he's hot';

'>>1708183
Lmao, tumor legs, bigger than his torso.';

'Noob here going through the campaing and I need a quick rundown about each faction.
I have no idea how to play Inferno on the early game';

'>>1709620
You're playing Dungeon and Devils?
Just remember to have one dude with armageddon spell for the third mission.
>I have no idea how to play Inferno on the early game
Preferably, you don't.
But if you must...
Frenzy on magogs is a good combo.
Efreets are insanely good. Rush them.
Demon farming is recommended but it's a chore.';

'>>1709620
http://home.pinknet.cz/~coyot/homm3/ (In-depth docs on every faction, general tips)
It's preferable to become accustomed to the system on your own before proceeding with any tips on how to game or cheat around it. With that said, at its basics, it's pleasing (and otherwise imperative for highest difficulties) to play efficient.
- Learn how unit formations work or rely on Tactics secondary skill. Grasp the efficacy of each unit you come across with their specific use cases. Know that different factions interact with each other at varying costs of morale penalty.
- Players tend to split their expendable stacks into single units to either: clear retaliation attacks, manipulate enemy AI to waste turns, bait enemy for the melee attack reach, or to barricade your shooter units.
- Speed of the slowest unit at the end of turn determines how many movement points you get for the next one. Drop your units at the mines, garrisons and castles to optimise your movement points usage, spacebar key lets you interact with buildings you're currently occupying at no cost.
- Don't always rely on your main heroes to do all the grunt work, hiring secondaries for scouting and mine/dwelling capturing pays well off in the end and saves you time. With some movement expertise you could "chain" your heroes for army transportation purposes.
Original campaign is somewhat of a full-fledged tutorial, with some weird curveballs here and there. For example, there is one specific building and external dwelling for the Dungeon which may help you save nerves on the Steadwick's Fall scenario. Kids manage this quite simple to learn game and become addictive just fine, and also you can too. Good luck.';

'>>1709620
>quick rundown about each faction
it would take way too long to explain each one so instead let me give you a summary how all castles work
every castle has at least one of each type
a shooter
a flyer
a walking foot soldier or a slow but tough unit these usually overlap
and a castle defining unit
now if you take inferno you can see that magogs are your shooters, efreets are your flyers, demons are your foot soldiers and devils are the definitive unit not because they're tier 7 but because this unit is highly desirable for other castles too, arch devil specifically allows for a lot of cheesy plays when combined with intelligence specialty
Now that you understand that every castle is pretty much the same here's what not to do, noobs generally buy units only from their starting castle and they buy ALL of them, big mistake and most important a big waste of money some units are simply undesirable for variety of factors
what are undesirable units? any unit that is slow, doesn't trade effectively, cannot be resurrected or is simply too expensive for what it provides, now these units aren't completely useless for example let's take iron golem it's slow and can't be resurrected but it has good hp per gold so it's decent to just have them building up so when your castle gets unexpectedly attacked you can just buy all of these out at once and maybe castle defense will work out, a desperation unit if you will
So what should you buy or use? Your main should carry only fast units preferably of speed 9 or higher, 11 is ideal but it's simply not possible for all factions, it's practically impossible to play necro without carrying speed 4 skeletons around, do not buy slow units unless it's an emergency or desperation, learn which units cover each general use case and there isn't a single castle in which all units are worth buying there's always something with bad value like griffons or evil eyes
and most important just keep playing, 20 years later I still learn new things';

'>>1709889
>there's always something with bad value like griffons or evil eyes
>lists useful units
???';

'Forgot that 'Neutral Affairs' of 'Liberation' campaign had broken and still unfixed border guard logic requesting Speculum for Speculum he himself is guarding. There are MMArchive and game-distributed campaign/map editors to remedy the issue:

1) Extract Good2.h3c from h3bitmap.lod with MMArchive, view it with h3ccmped.exe
2) Export 'Neutral Affairs' map file called Good-2c.h3m, view it with h3maped.exe
3) Switch request of the border guard at the bottom from Speculum to Charm of Mana
(Badge of Honor near the green monolith up north also enables you to get both rewards on the final scenario, up to your choice is to either replace it or remove it)
4) After needed changes you refresh Good-2c.h3m inside Good2.h3c and pack it all back together into h3bitmap.lod with MMArchive.

The way it apparently supposed to work before getting broken with Armaggedon's Blade expansion update, is that you'd get different rewards (either Sentinel's Shield or Thunder Helmet) in the campaign finale depending on the order you completed the past scenarios. So it's something like this:

Steadwick's Liberation (Badge) > Deal With the Devil (Badge for Charm) > Neutral Affairs (Charm for Speculum) > Tunnels and Troglodytes (Speculum for Thunder Helmet)
OR
Steadwick's Liberation (Badge) > Neutral Affairs (Badge for Pendant) > Deal With the Devil (Pendant for Spyglass) > Tunnels and Troglodytes (Spyglass for Sentinel's Shield)

I used this thread as a reference http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=47948';

'>>1709620
That's the thing with how these rundowns and tips go >>1710599, they end up mostly subjective. You better learn the ropes yourself instead of supplanting the first personal experience (unless you are into competitive multiplayer, which I assume the tip anon above in some manner is). It's an easy game to learn.';

'>>1710633
I think there's a case for Royal Griffins being the overall top T3 unit? "Bad value" is something to be reserved for units like Earth Elementals, Lizardmen and Gargoyles, and you can at least scout with the Gargoyles';

'>>1710643
Cerberi, Grand Elves and Dragon Flies can be no less good T3 units too with their offensive oriented specials. Griffins can be considered bad exactly because they're only *T3* and not for example Gorgons or Black Dragons, so we should wait for the anon to further elaborate on his point and satisfy our inquiry. Personally, I think their exclusive horde building is also good bonus to have for a casual play and they come cheaper on resources; I'm much less enthusiastic about the monks, barring T1 halberdiers.';

'Wonder if any faction in specific is at apparent disadvantage before others in competitive play, as I just discovered that you can in fact play with guys from all around the world with HD Mod. My favorites are Fortress and Stronghold because of how less they're resource reliant. Tower with Dungeon gives me the most trouble, and Castle just became boring to play somehow. As for Conflux, I wish this rehashed asset faction didn't exist at all.';

'>>1710599
>>1710633
>>1710643
when I say units are bad or bad value I talk mostly from perspective of either single scenarios, challenge maps or campaigns on impossible difficulty, I don't play multiplayer but there is an overlap
the reason why griffons are bad, well there's lots of them so let's go in detail
by far the most important reason is the build order, griffons are the only tier 3 unit in the game that requires t4 building to be present first and if I have crusaders then I have no need for griffons
griffon building is also in the way of building portal of glory week 1 which is sometimes possible on a rich map, what would you rather have 121(month 1 week 2 day 1) 3 angels or 20 griffons?
the unit itself does not have stats that are favorable to the player, griffons are tanky and deal low damage they don't make a good power stack and their special while great in hands of AI it's not in yours

it's much easier to explain why evil eyes are bad, it's their price compared to damage beholders deal 3-5 damage for 280 gold a piece, from the same faction medusa queen costing 330 deals 6-8 which is almost double damage for merely 15% more gold, if you compare beholders to other factions it's even worse
or if you're in a late game scenario where units are counted in thousands and you got expert bless, 280 gold beholder deals 6 damage blessed and costs 280 gold, lizard warrior also deals same 6 damage blessed while costing 140 gold and having better growth so per week you are dealing more damage with a lower tiered unit that costs half the money
beholder premium gives them more hp and no melee penalty compared to other shooters but again these specials are not in players favor
>>1710663
funny you mention black dragons as I would consider these bad units in most challenge maps or just any map where unit numbers get into thousands, they're just pain in the ass to work with and require black orb to be resurrected';

'I've never played homm3 before but I want to get in touch with my eastern euro roots, what's the recommended setup? Just install homm3 then hota and play the campaigns? Jump into the random maps? Play vanilla with hd mod?';

'>>1710812
You can't play the original campaigns with hota, so hd mod it is. Use OpenGL renderer by Verok, rest is up to your preference. Personally, lowest height resolution with no stretch filter is looking fine to me.

Also try out various options within the game, both from the overworld view and combat, plenty of QoL functions are there.';

'>>1710809
ok great case made';

'>>1710812
>what's the recommended setup?
1. Download and install the GOG version of Heroes 3 Complete, the HotA mod and the unofficial HD mod.
2. Run heroes3.exe using the HD launcher.
3. (Optional) Play the tutorial (it relies on you having a H3 manual, but you can complete the tutorial even without it).
4. Play the Restoration of Erathia campaigns, then the Armageddon Blade and close it off with Shadow of Death. Starting RoE campaigns are tutorial-tier easy, AB steps it up a notch and SoD has some genuinely tricky missions (Crag Hack mission 4 comes to mind).

VERY IMPORTANT: After every completed mission, you will be prompted to save the game. Always do so. When you complete a campaign, you will see a golden check mark on the select screen of the campaign you finished. If you do not start another campaign from that point, the game will disregard you completed that prior campaign, and you will not be able to access the hidden campaigns that require you to complete all the previous ones. See picrel for how your campaign screen should look eventually.

4. Run HotaHD.exe using the using the HD launcher.
5. Play Under the Jolly Roder, Terror of the Seas, Horn of Abyss and finally close it off with the Forged in Fire campaigns.

ALSO IMPORTANT: Forged in Fire is a campaign tuned for people who've been playing the game for the past two decades. Do not feel bad if you need to lower the difficulty to medium or easy. Watch Lexiav's playthrough of FiF if necessary to get a hang of some more advanced strategies and exploits (blocking shooters with Force Field, Cloning, Hypnotizing an almost dead enemy stack and then Ressurecting your dead stacks etc).';

'>>1710817
>>1710837
alright thanks for the help! I was going to ask what the most used renderer/filters are';

'>>1688412
That applies to heroes 3 too. Romero used a lot of samples in general. It's just more noticeable in 4. Video related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW5jKwM-S1E&t=2487s

>>1688549
Funny thing about that. If you actually bother to extract the music files from Heroes IV directly, some of them link to mp3 dot com in the metadata (this used to be a now long dead site for sample licensing). Presumably Romero didn't have the time or simply didn't care enough to wipe the metadata from all the game's music files.';

'undefined';

'Best scenarios/maps
Go';

'>>1709403
These are just leather pants. Look how different the color is from the face/hands. But yeah, it was my first thought too, when I saw him.';

'Is it just me or berserk spell works guaranteed, while hypnotize can only be applied to the lowest of t1 stacks? Playing with Astral no less.';

'>>1710817
>You can't play the original campaigns with hota, so hd mod it is
Actually you can since the last update, only thing is there's not really voice acting with them for some reason.';

'>>1713308
>since the last update
How? If it's 'Custom' button through file extracting, then you could've done it since far long before. I remember reading somewhere, that with extensive changes that hota introduces, some scenarios are liable to be broken. Plus you can't sort the campaigns out in sequential order, it's mainly designed for fan-made content after all.';

'>>1713303
hypnotize has a condition that it only works on units under certain amount of hp per spell power so yes it usually only works on super weak stacks
berserk has no such condition, regardless of spell power berserk will last 255 turns or until the unit attacks something which means it can be used as a better blind sometimes if you can block enemy unit with a wall or it can be kited';

'After playing this game for 20+ years I am still not comfortable managing multiple heroes and towns.
That is a confusing kind of feeling. At least I played through M&M 3-8 tho';

'>>1713351
I got comfortable with using 8 heroes but going beyond 8 and stashing extra heroes in towns and swapping them around as needed now that's too much for me';

'Factory played by Heroes Orchestra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpNzFUmIii4
And I was on that smaller concert. It was great. Cool weird versions of the songs. Comfy atmosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlJqBM5CWfw';

'>>1710837
Didn't they fix this "manual campaign save" bullshit in VCMI?';

'>>1713082
Rise of the Sun King';

'>>1713359
>going beyond 8 and stashing extra heroes in towns and swapping them around as needed now
What kind of fresh hell is HotA? Or is it competitive autism?';

'>>1713692
You can do that in the original game, so I'm not sure what's the problem.';

'>>1713692
>competitive autism
this, it's not a hota feature at all it works and originates from sod
to put it as simply as possible, if you have an access to spellbinders hat or tome of air you can grant DD to anyone just by swapping artifacts, this means that anytime you capture a new town you can have (8+number of towns) separate heroes farm the area within 1-4 dimensional doors around the town depending on your hero air magic competency, that's the most common strategy but you can also use stashed heroes to like grab water mills close to a town, visit dwellings or do whatever else is needed';

'>>1713082
I liked Talent Shortage a lot.';

'>>1713578
Last time I checked, VCMI just has all campaigns unlocked from the start';

'>>1710843
NTA, but I run the game at 1066x600. That way it fills the whole screen without getting stretched. Also, I run the game with no filters';

'>>1713948
Not only that but also it's very own dorky AI which rushes you the moment it potentially could overpower you. General codebase was written from blank state, and if I'm not wholly mistaken in my rough assertion, VCMI is its own game which tries to imitate HoMM3 the best it could while being open to extensive modding capabilities. I think the goal is to trump or at least be very valid alternative to HD Mod, but it's no way to first-experience the game in its current state.

>>1713951
I agree.';

'>>1714404
VCMI is one of those "revolutionary projects" that I've heard first about at least a decade ago and every time I hear about how the next big update will fix all of its problems it never does.';

'>>1713445
what a massive Chad, made video game music, was massively appreciated by it, replies by making new music for free';

'>>1713445
such a cool guy';

'>>1714949
>>1715228
He truly is. HoMM music has a spark of genius in it. And the dude is a savant, gave first concerts at the age of 7 iirc.';

'You guys might not know this, but Solmyr's looks and abs were modeled after Romero.';

'>>1715228
>>1715236
maybe next get on your knees and start sucking his dick';

'>>1715449
im not gay, but maybe i would for him.';

'I'm a Might scrub. How can I become a Magic intelectual?';

'>>1716388
Might is generally superior but it's easier to start with magic when you play tower, that's sort of because tower doesn't have any good heroes and you can start with solmyr who isn't that good either but there aren't exactly better choices. Tower has a rough start however wizards have very high chance to learn intelligence and level up knowledge and mages give you -2 to your spell cost so you can actually cast spells quite a lot without running out of mana.
Otherwise intelligence specialists can be good doesn't matter which one, sometimes all you need are couple thousand spell points.';

'>>1699587
Not him but could you answer 2 minor questions about Songs of Conquest?
First, you only have preset heroes, right? Can't, like, pick a sprite, a portrait, and make up a name and a build, only preset predefined characters?
Is it pozzed? I keep saying negresses with nappy hair in screenshots and whatnot, so I'm just a little concerned if that might have been a mere coincidence or if this is some California reject game.';

'>>1716654
NTA but yes only presets, so it's got that in common with Heroes (but less characters overall)
Pozzed is a bit of a question, there's definitely a lot of Congo lookin strong wimmen and some Anons made a stink about the first faction having female knights and whatnot but that's about it, and at least there's no voice acting on the heroes. Conversely, despite the first ally you run into the starter campaign being a charcoal black woman with a big are, the lady you actually play as is giga Hitler out to slaughter any browns who trespass on her property and also anyone who doesn't pay taxes. Mileage may vary.';

'>>1716684
I figure I'll give it a chance since it's "borderline free" dirt cheap right now and apparently about to be 1.0'd. Shame about preset heroes, but that's a staple of the genre and I don't think there are enough weirdos like me who enjoy cobbling together a bunch of OCs that we could make a dent in the market of HOMM-likes.
Thanks for the answers, lad, I appreciate it.';

'>>1716684
>some Anons made a stink about the first faction having female knights
Ah, I see. They are just gay and dumb. Got it.';

'tASSt';

'>>1657235
i love 4';

'bleh';

'>normal is too easy
>hard is too hard
Man ..';

'Pegasi.';

'Forge time, kitchykoos.
https://app.suno.ai/song/4eff207c-a192-409e-bffc-a6d758209761/';

'https://youtu.be/TLEi0IQ_EfI?si=EQv8956o-x-GkFtZ
This sounds absolutely amazing. Love Cove, simple as.';

'>>1720317
>choir
Nah, sounds too formal and stuffy.';

'HotA 1.7.1 is here.
Major change - easy difficulty in campaign is actually easy.
Welp.
I'm going to give map 3 another try. Maybe on normal.';

'Well it took me almost 6 weeks to complete all RoE + AB + SoD campaigns (the latter of which, all maps were on on impossible). I'm exhausted. I'll definitely give HotA a go sometime in the future, I've heard it's pretty good and I'm keen for even harder difficulty. But right now I'm pretty much burnt out.

I mainly just wanted to say: FUCK neutral stacks having positive morale. Fuck this god awful dogshit in the ass. Fucking christ. I just read that it should only trigger 4.2% of the time? Yeah that's fucking bullshit.
How do you guys cope with this shit? I can't and I sincerely hope HotA has removed it.';

'>>1723504
So...
How do you feel about Crag Hack campaign...?';

'>>1723504
>How do you guys cope with this shit?
To put it simply you don't, just scream bullshit each time it fucks you over.
>I can't and I sincerely hope HotA has removed it.
It did not but there are several artifacts that reduce morale of the enemy, sure there is spirit of oppression in SOD but these morale reducing artifacts are common in HOTA you are almost guaranteed to trip over one and it makes neutral stacks much more pleasant to kill. In fact I've played a giant sized hota map always having that morale reducing artifact equipped I almost forgot neutral stacks were supposed to have positive morale in the first place when I went back to play a SOD map instead.';

'>>1723505
>Crag Hack campaign...?
Pretty mixed feelings, cause these and a few other maps in SoD felt like they were just determined by how aggressive the enemy decides to be. Black Sheep was particularly egregious if they show up in the first week before you get your thunderbirds and behemoths online. 'Target' and 'Harvest' are another couple of maps where the AI can obliterate you in the first week if they want to.
Speaking of, sometimes an enemy hero with 100+ mana and meteor shower would look at my army and run away for some reason. I'm thankful the AI doesn't seem to factor in spells in terms of how hard they can shit on me, cause I had to rely on this luck a couple times. It did clue me into the fact that the adventure map AI is pretty terrible - or at least it seemed to me. For eg. they never seemed very good at planning more than one turn in advance, so often I could just waltz into their towns. I don't blame the game however, it would be incredibly difficult to program a competent AI.
Overall, HoMM3 is an extremely snowbally game, so past the first week or so of a map I never really had any problems. One thing I noticed was that if an early neutral stack decides to join you - the game becomes VERY easy. For example on the map 'Barbarian Brothers', on the first day 200 hobgoblins randomly decided to join. From there I could just rush the enemy easy peasy. This can happen without diplomacy which I think is silly.

>>1723508
>you don't
Damn. I'm completely fine with the opponent having positive morale, because they would either have to have a secondary skill or artifact or only have a single faction's army, y'know some sort of opportunity cost. But yeah on neutral stacks it just feels dumb and RNG heavy.
>several artifacts that reduce morale of the enemy
Ohhh nice yeah that's cool. Eliminates the annoying lowrolls vs neutrals while still being effective vs opponents. Call me weird but that makes me even more excited to play HotA now, thanks.';

'>>1723504
>Well it took me almost 6 weeks to complete all RoE + AB + SoD campaigns
Very nice anon, it took me 2 months to do the same, and I was unemployed at the time.
>I'll definitely give HotA a go sometime in the future, I've heard it's pretty good and I'm keen for even harder difficulty.
The difficulty of HotA's second and third campaign is somewhere in the territory of Crag Hack's campaign, if not noticeably easier IIRC, but the maps themselves are bigger. The first one is basically a tutorial for Cove faction plus some Fortress vs Inferno shenanigans.
However, the newest campaign with the Factory faction is absolutely going to recalibrate what you think is (Im)possible in the game. It took me 3 months (admittedly with some breaks) to complete the campaign and it's not for the lack of trying. They also allegedly made the campaign slightly more challenging on Impossible difficulty with the new 1.7.1 Patch, but I don't plan on finding out how.';

'>>1723562
Well, I absolutely hated them and lowered thr difficulty. Very frustrating design.
Also, odd design choice for a barbarian character. This type of "achieve goal rush, avoid enemies" would fit Gelu more.
>'Target' and 'Harvest'
I don't really see how these are comparable. In target you just level necro asap and win.
In harvest you roll for right skills and rush.
In both you can fight back.
Poison Fit for a King is maybe a bit similar, but much less annoying.
...
Speaking of which, Kreegan Alliance is really a weird one.
Probably unbeatable with underleveled Sandro.
I restarted campaign and even with well-developed Sandro Melodia destroyed me... the first time.
I loaded the game, rolled back maybe 2 days and tried again.
And...
She had half of her mana spent for some reason. And AI was using much worse selection fo spells.
Really not sure what happened there.';

'>>1723618
>I don't really see how these are comparable.
I actually think that perfectly demonstrates my point in how the difficulty (for me at least ) came down to chance in those maps i.e. AI pathing.
In 'Target', the Dungeon hero within spitting distance can wander over early with pic army, 45 mana and destroy undead spell which does 69 aoe damage. I just don't think it's possible to beat that in the first week. Are you meant to build a Cover of Darkness? I don't know if it works vs AI, but they rushed me anyways and I had to restart.
In 'Harvest' the AI starts with a 140 mana Aislinn who can randomly decide to enter the nearby portal and arrive near your base in the first week ruining your day with meteor shower. For this one I think you definitely have to rely on the AI quirk in which they don't factor in spell for army strength.
Unless there's some other logic I don't know about, I think it just comes down to luck whether they rush you or not.';

'>>1723618
>Poison Fit for a King
That map was insane for me, I was surprised at how large an army they could build up was. I thought this fight might be unwinnable but then using berserk on the gryphons to kill the catapult ASAP meant that I could ignore all her melee troops and just focus on killing the archers and fliers which was doable. I'm surprised the AI knew to flee when it became unwinnable for them despite still having a bigger army.
In the end though I did it the hard way as I could have just rushed the bottom left castle quite easily.

>Kreegan Alliance
That was an interesting one. My Sandro had summon elemental spells so I just rushed over there and whooped her ass with the base army. However, because I ended the fight with only elementals left, Sandro died, but not before completing the map! So the very next scenario, I started with a level 1 Sandro... wondering what the hell was going on. I initially thought the devs were just making the final mission extra difficult or something.';

'>>1723854
I felt like in this map you needed a bit of luck to survive first week since the AI tends to rush you hard but past that it's cakewalk.
>>1723878
I think this is the map where AI starts with 4 castles and one of them is fully built with grail in it so their growth is very high, still nothing vamp lords couldn't handle.';

'I severely underestimated the Berserk spell until I got to this point in the campaign.

>>1723881
>past that it's cakewalk.
For sure. Wandering around with an ever increasing stack of liches, what a power trip.
>and one of them is fully built with grail in it so their growth is very high
...well that makes a lot of sense. I think I just assumed that they started with a fat army.
>still nothing vamp lords couldn't handle.
Pretty much. Still as broken as they were in HoMM2, feels good man.

>>1723572
I definitely no-lifed the game, plus I typically rushed all maps as with every turn based strategy game I go for LTC strats. In HoMM3 I feel like it's optimal to rush anyways.
>HotA
Sick, Cove looks cool and I'm super curious what the campaigns are like being created by what I imagine to be people with 20+ years of experience of playing HoMM. I expect dimension door to be banned on every map and I hope that there's no incentive to farm maps for spells/stats for carry-over heroes.

Damn, I wish I had found this general earlier. I thought it was perma dead but I didn't realise it had just moved from /vr/ to /vst/.';

'>>1723909
>I expect dimension door to be banned
HOTA campaigns are extremely stingy on spells, DD? Bro you will be begging for spells like slow, haste, blind you will get desperate for hypnotize which will not be given to you either. Oh you found a tome of fire? No armageddon for you get fucked, no fun allowed.';

'>>1723913
>Oh you found a tome of fire? No armageddon for you get fucked, no fun allowed.
In your pic, you don't even have berserk, do they ban that too??';

'>>1723916
Oh yeah almost every useful spell you can think of is banned, all the fire spells in that screenshot are granted by tome of fire, remaining spells are what I actually had to work with until that point.
But hey the enemy hero of fortress starts with blind even though the fortress mage guild will never roll blind and that beastmaster shouldn't even have a spell book to begin with, that map is downright sadistic with how many artificial limitations are put upon you.';

'>>1723918
Oh god. Does that mean Might heroes reign supreme on those maps?';

'>>1723933
Well yes and no, in that map you spawn with Jeremy a might hero and Casmetra a magic hero and I couldn't win with Jeremy no matter how hard I've tried. The actual winning strategy was to keep restarting the map until Jeremy started with advanced estates and upgraded to expert estates on first level up and then feed artifacts to altar of sacrifice so Casmetra hits level cap as soon as possible. This particular map I mained Casmetra because your army just sucks so much I had to be carried by lightning bolt to win fights, things get very desperate in hota campaigns.
But while Casmetra was the way to go on this map in all the maps following it I've had better success with Jeremy but you will really not have one main at any point you gotta use all of the heroes you're given.';

'>>1723941
Wow that seems intense. Well at least now I won't be too overconfident going into that campaign.';

'>>1657235
>2024
>Still giving fuck about HotA
Reminder Picolan's death was an inside job';

'>>1723941
I played that mission (Evenmorn) around 5 years ago and I remember thinking it was difficult, but IIRC, you just need to rush down the Fortress base in the south west and secure one of your flanks. That way, you can stop playing on the defensive and conquer the rest of the maps. I don't recall using Casmetra over Jeremy any more than was needed to level her up to the experience cap for that scenario.

>>1723955
Oh yeah, Factory campaign is the final test of your HoMM3 proficiency (if you exclude insane scenarios like Wayfarer). To put this into perspective, if you play on Impossible difficulty, you will NEVER acquire a Blind spell. DD and Fly spells are mere concepts at that point.';

'>>1724137
yeah he was murdered by judeomasonry';

'>>1723504
>FUCK neutral stacks having positive morale
ICANT https://files.catbox.moe/0zt3ry.mp4
>Spirit Of Oppression exists
that's good.wav
>It's not guaranteed to appear and doesn't carry over
that's bad.wav';

'>>1724371
kek, glad I'm not the only one';

'>>1661041
4 and 5 are good. Inferno is even better in 5 than in 3. Pit lords especially.';

'>>1724345
And jesuits.';

'>>1693182
>Paul Anthony Romero
He is the best! I like his music! God bless him!';

'>>1710812
You need a shadow of death MP mod to speed up combat animations';

'Any pvp players? Which templates you prefers and why?';

'>>1727127
I tried getting into this. Played like 10 different JC games and none of them even reached week 2, someone always gg'd out. Usually me of course.
My main problem is the clock because I play so slowly.
Still hasn't given up on the idea but I gotta get better. I'm too much of a combatlet and chainlet right now.
I'm curious about your favorite map and the why to start the discussion.';

'>>1727127
I will remain single player in this, multiplayer is just get a lot of angels/wyverns etc then fight your opponent once and its gg. For multiplayer I prefer age of empires 2';

'>>1727127
Duel is the only good one although I jsut play sp.';

'Speaking of SP, what kind of maps do you like playing?
I've played what I like from the scenario list and the problem with campaigns is that past a certain point you pretty much have to rush and I don't really like to play that way. I know it's optimal but I don't like it. Just now I tried mini-nosta and it was OK but reaching the mid town to see the AI has taken it but has their army split between all its heroes was a letdown.';

'>>1727385
>Speaking of SP, what kind of maps do you like playing?
I just go to maps4heroes search for XL map that looks like fun and give it a spin, any big map with large scale fights is where I feel right at home.
Not a fan of RMG vs AI, all of them play roughly the same where you struggle early game until you hit some critical power spike and the map just wins itself from there.';

'>>1727396
>large scale fights
Please explain the appeal to me. In the end don't they just come down to a massive bloodbath, and when the enemy finally has one stack left you just blind it and resurrect your whole army?
What happens if you're woefully out matched? Do you have to rely on forcefield and clone cheese?
How do you even manage to get an army big enough to beat that 9999 nonsense anyways? Do you just wait weeks, months for creatures in your towns to accumulate then go around picking them all up? What's the failure condition if you can just wait indefinitely for an insurmountable army?

I have a lot of questions that could just be answered by playing one of these damn maps, but for some reason I'm too afraid to waste so much time on something I just don't see myself enjoying that much.';

'>>1727870
>How do you even manage to get an army big enough to beat that 9999 nonsense anyways?
You don't. You cheese them with spells. Like in that particular fight you can just block the gate so the units can't get out, then start berserking the behemoths.
Other options include a stack of archangels with expert clone.';

'>>1727281
I used to play a lot of JC b4 Luna nerf. I'm brainlet too, so I did write "noob game free pick'' for my hosted game title. And had many funny matches. But yeah it usualy ended too soon and without final battle. Nowadays I mostly host "noob game default L+U with a timer set to 6-4-1. I also ask people for noob games in chat.';

'>>1727870
>Please explain the appeal to me.
Will do, the thing I enjoy is that there's always some sort of trick to win a really big fight with minimal effort or troops. This map in particular has big fight against neutral stacks, not much against an AI player.
On the screenshot there's an example of a fight I won with forcefield cheese, no need to explain how it works but let me ask a question instead how would you deal with 1000 rust dragons otherwise? This is hardly the only viable solution and does not require waiting months or years for army.
Second is the game knowledge check and map awareness check, you see I've started this map as dungeon but I've hardly used dungeon troops in my army that's because there were 3-4 necro towns and 6 inferno towns, I had better growth with inferno and that made it my "main town" despite starting as different faction. Also the fact that medusa's ass is too fat to fit behind a forcefield you learn something new everyday with this game.
>Do you just wait weeks, months for creatures in your towns to accumulate then go around picking them all up?
As you can see on the in game timer, I never waited for growth there was always some better solution and that's where most of the fun is figuring out that solution.
>What's the failure condition if you can just wait indefinitely for an insurmountable army?
I guess there is none, it's a simple race against the clock I've seen others playing this map on the internet in a video the guy waited to month 15 while I was able to finish it by month 7 so it's half the time, that's all the confirmation I need that I played the map better or smarter. Of course not that it matters, think of time as an arcade's high score irrelevant but fun.';

'>>1727870
>How do you even manage to get an army big enough to beat that 9999 nonsense anyways?
>>1727911
>You don't. You cheese them with spells.
The little fact I didn't mention is that's an anti magic garrison, and the one with 9999 crystal dragons was the easier one I believe this is my army that ended up winning the fight I'm not sure I made multiple saves and adjustements before commiting but there's no winning this fight without losses, I just gathered up all of the T1 growth and turned them into skeleton for a meat stack while all the other units deal damage I really just wanted to preserve as many magogs arch devils and vamp lords rest didn't matter.
And I've been building up mephala an armorer specialist this whole game specifically for this, anti magic garrison severely limits your option for cheese with spells so I had to get out of the usual comfort zone of blinding or resurrecting, lots of troops died on this map which is unusual for XL h3 map.';

'>>1728121
Oh yeah and past this anti magic garisson there was this fight >>1693892 which also ended up in an unusual way due to numbers and also me playing the map badly, in retrospect I could've played this map MUCH smarter, 7 months was still a long time if you were to replay the map and optimize it, start with better faction etc.';

'And one more spam post to the thread, I was inspired to play this particular map by this video
https://youtu.be/ptntcv7a5NE
I was thinking that this is an incredibly dumb strategy and surely you could've played it better which well I could by using hit and run tactics and killing dragons each other with breath attacks instead of dumping year's worth of reinforcements into meat grinder. Or as I found out about 2500 vampire lords can win that fight without a single loss.';

'>>1727911
>>1728119
>>1728121
>>1728141
Many thanks anons for the explanations.

>let me ask a question instead how would you deal with 1000 rust dragons otherwise?
Hmm, mass slow and mass berserk maybe? I'm not sure how effective that is cause Rust dragons are still quite fast iirc. I'm a big noob so I have don't even have any idea how you have 682 base mana off only 21 knowledge (custom artifact?)
>Also the fact that medusa's ass is too fat to fit behind a forcefield
I'm confused about this one. It still blocks all 2-hex enemies right?
>month 7
that does seem impressive for a map that huge and fights that big, well done anon.

I do feel substantially more tempted to try out one of these maps now. I guess I like the fact that because there's no time limit, you don't feel the need to play optimally (which imo would just become tedious) as much, like for example how I felt with the Dragon Slayer AB campaign.';

'>>1728385
>how you have 682 base mana off only 21 knowledge
Intelligence specialty and I've likely pre equipped more artifacts that give knowledge before visiting that object that doubles the mana.
>It still blocks all 2-hex enemies right?
The original plan was to use medusas to shoot at rust dragons but as it turns out it's impossible to have a 2 hex shooter ammo cart and a devil make a safe forcefield. Without ammo cart 8 shots wouldn't kill even 1 stack of rusties.';

'I kind of want t create MAXIMUM AESTHETIC custom map.
I guess I will just make a regular battle royale with every town except conflux.
But...
I was thinking about gimmick cove map with no serious town upgrades and focus and rag-tag army .
"ands of Rogues or some shit.';

'>>1728837
>pre equipped more artifacts that give knowledge before visiting that object that doubles the mana.
Ahhh yes that explains it for Mephala too. That's definitely a good trick that I haven't thought of before.';

'>>1683024
It comes with a campaign but it just crashes to desktop for me. Not sure if my experience is typical.';

'Last post.
...
Or is it?';

'Can the conflux grail give you spells that are banned on the map specification level?
Some joker thought it was funny to ban Town Portal on his G map, but I'm not sure if their intention was for you to find the grail instead.';

'>>1730993
As soon as I posted this I realised I could just whip up a custom map that tests this faster than the googling I tried.
Anyways. Looks like the spells are still banned. Not sure I want to play a G map where I have to bumble around for ages even just trying to find Slow of all things.';

'Rolled town portal on first try on pvp match default template. It's supposed to be 3 tries, right?';

'>>1731865
I think the fourth reroll is guaranteed to be TP or DD.';

'Well, here we go. I already lost once due to getting to the first town a day too late. This time, I at least know what's hidden where in the starting area.
Let's find out if these kinds of maps are my thing at all!';

'>>1732381
Make sure to play these maps at 200%, playing at too low difficulty might break them since fights on these types of maps tend to depend on AI manipulation and they assume you're playing on 200%.';

'>>1732574
Isn't the AI identical on 160% and 200%?';

'I guess I'm not supposed to go here yet.
So far good fun. I just wish I knew what skills to take. You start with logistics and offense, get earth magic out of a witch hut at the very beginning, then wisdom and tactics a bit later. I also rolled air magic and took it. Now I'm level 8 with basic earth and that on expert would make a lot of fights a lot easier. Like, will I need ballistics for some of the siege battles later on or something? Intelligence is probably a must, but good luck rolling it on a barbarian.

Also fuck morale. Give me the spirit of oppression already.';

'>>1732619
It should be identical but there is an unwritten rule that all custom maps should be played on 200% unless specified otherwise.';

'>>1732685
I did switch to 200% when I restarted. No difference as far as I can tell. Even the 1st battle 1st round morale kept fucking me up and I had to work around that by trying to move units into different hexes to not trigger it since it makes the battle unwinnable.';

'>>1732681
>>1732695
>"puzzle" map
>has rng bullshit like neutral morale and random levelup skills
Yeah I hate this. With Sword and Fire is an example of a good puzzle map but they are few and far between. Even that map in particular has fights that are affected by damage rolls though.';

'I guess fire magic isn't so bad. Had to choose between it and learning or ballistic for my last skill or restart.
So far, no difficult battles. Expert slow and the clops + orcs have handled everything so far. I guess the offense specialty also helps.';

'>>1733558
I would prefer ballistics as you already have earth air and water';

'>>1733561
I was trying to get intelligence but wasn't offered that all game and I don't feel like restarting.';

'>>1733558
That's a tough choice. On a map like Wayfarer, I'd rather ballistics, but on Unleashing the Bloodthirsty, I'd rather expert fire. How are you meant to know what's better on these fuckhuge maps where you can screw yourself over early but only find out 40 hours later? Maddening.
Expert fire is still the best choice in a vacuum though.
Anyways, just hope you don't get softlocked.';

'What do I play to be like Slavs? Do they play campaigns, scenarios, multiplayer?';

'>>1734992
Duelka.';

'For those anons playing the board game, they're working on completing the roster of towns. They also hinted at Cove getting in (no word on Factory though).
I said in the last thread that I'd get it if all towns were in, so maybe I will.';

'>>1735343
>playing the board game

Mine's been staying on the shelf ever since I got it in March.';

'Castle - Lyonis
Rampart - Mephala
Tower - Solmyr
Inferno - Zydar
Necropolis - Vidomina
Dungeon - Malekith
Stronghold - Crag Hack
Fortress - Tazar
Conflux - Brissa
Cove - Eovacius
Factory - Duny

Simple as';

'So we're finally getting an official Forge town. Official as in Greg Fulton and others worked on it.
Pic is Day of Reckoning's three new towns: a mystery town that's probably what Mod Team was teasing before moving on to work on DoR, Palace, and Forge.';

'>>1736869
>Official as in Greg Fulton and others worked on it

What, more info on this? I also thought DoR had only one new town in the works. Snow one with the yeti and little gremlin.';

'>>1736882
>Yes, that's the Forge, and yes, Gregory Fulton (Lead Designer of HoMM3) did provide guidance on the design of the town as well as on the campaign that will tell the story of the Heavenly Forge, heavily inspired by the visions of New World Computing (oh, and he was not the only one).';

'>>1736885
Give it faster then...';

'>>1736886
Soon™';

'>>1736891
What's that fantasy disney but not gay looking one in the bottom left corner?';

'>>1736893
Palace, the snow town with the Vori elves.';

'>>1736869
Give me OG Naga Tanks and we'll talk about "official Forge town" (the town also looks like ass now).';

'>>1736869
Fucking sick. Looking forward to more campaign content. I don't give a shit about muh aesthetics so hopefully the team is good at scenario design and balancing.';

'https://archon-studio.com/blog/cove-expansion-announcement-ubisoft-archon-studio-hota-cooperation
Official Cove expansion for the board game. Fucking webp.';