/v/ - Video Games

I just want to make the necromancer artifact 1 more time.

Doesn't online HoMM3 get tedious? You could potentially be stuck a while waiting for the other players to make their move.

>>14181973

Actually, the mod has "simultaneous turns" option. But even without it, it's still great fun! You can shitpost on 8chan during opponent's turns, you know.

>>14182073

>"simultaneous turns" option

How does that work?

>>14182082

it means everyone does their turn at the same time.

>>14182082

If you don't meet each other, then both of your moves count. Otherwise, you have to replay the turn in which you met each other.

Anyway, does anyone want to play right now? If so, I'm hosting on the lobby. Game: anon game. Password: 8ch.

>>14182073

>the mod has "simultaneous turns" option

holy shit that sounds great. what mod?

>>14182133

read the OP

also, I found a game with some russian, but if you want to play later with me, post here

>>14182148

you didn't specify which mod does this in the op.

I assume you mean Horn of the Abyss? I don't remember the HD mod having it

>>14182148

Fuck, it's hard to find a game. People leave or come up with some stupid rules.

>>14181358

God Ashan's lore is so fucking boring compared to the previous lore, but I guess they just feared raping M&M corpse and decided to make it pure fantasy when making V. I still love H5 and Dark Messiah

>>14189766

Theres nothing wrong with that anon

HOMM3, Dark Messiah and HOMM5 are the best games in the franchise

Thanks for the links, OP!

Anyone interested in setting up a game right now?

>>14192549

Missed the post. Can play right now if you're still here.

Anyway, here's what I've learned in my few days of playing on the online lobby:

Lots of people play with dumb rules like no Dimension Door, no Fly, or no "double build" which means you can't recruit creatures of a castle from the same type.

Many people are leavers, just quitting when they are losing (because they don't lose rating points then).

Most random maps suck. It's just two months of gathering resources, army and experience and then you can finally meet your opponent. But by then I'm bored.

>>14193955

Actually nevermind, the server doesn't work. Maybe tomorrow then.

>>14193964

yeah, tomorrow will do.

Up for a game now.

>>14196956

Are you available in 1-2 hours? I got some work that I need to attend to first.

>>14196983

Yes I am.

>>14196984

Just do it faggot.

ok I'm ready for when you two >>14196956

>>14196983 can play

>>14196985

>>14197080

Set it up, and let's do this.

>>14197080

three*

I'm up for a game too.

>>14197094

OK, I've made a game. Name: anon game. Password: 8ch.

Did it work or it closed the game for everyone?

>>14197449

It closed the game.

Is this accurate?

>>14197457

you can refuse the result of autocombat and fight yourself, you know

>>14197463

Now I feel even more stupid. I'll try to not fuck everything up next time

We're setting up another game. Post here if you are in or message me on the lobby (bighax).

>>14197461

I just watched it, it's more of a memefest than a review, but it is correct.

Surprisingly, there is no mention of the HD mod.

If you never played it, give it a shot. I'd suggest starting with the queen campaign of Restoration.

Does anyone want to play now?

Server is up again. Anyone wants to play?

>>14181150

Thanks for the links, OP. Never played the game though so think I'll be trying single player for now.

Is this game better than Age of Wonders 1? Fucking loved AOW1.

Anyone up for a game?

>>14208134

Hope you'll join us sometime!

>>14181364

>literally never purged Xana even though I played the games multiple times

Can't help it.

>>14189766

>>14190582

Me too.

Btw can someone please recommend me an experienced Homm 3 player playing Homm 6 or 7 or reviewing it?

I think that would be kinda entertaining to see how someone like that would criticize the game.

Sorry for the triple post, but it's your fault for being so slow.

>>14217113

I know the feeling

here's a bump

>>14217113

"Oh, jeez. Anon posted… ehh, I'm gonna head off."

To be fair, a game will often last very long, and some of us only really have time during weekends.

>>14219501

who are you talking to?

>>14215084

>>14217113

>being so slow.

>thread you reply to dies instantly

>>14219501

That depends heavily on the map. Medium sized randoms can last 2 to 5 weeks, small randoms even one week or less.

>>14219696

it's compounded online, as you have to wait for the other players.

>>14220360

No mate, the mod has a simultaneous turns option.

BTW I'm up for a game now.

Bump so that this doesn't die. Anyone wants to play?

I'd be game in 7 or 8 hours I guess, heading off to sleep here, didn't notice the thread before but I'd love to try some HoMM3 MP.

Just had a XL game against some guy + 6 computers. Got diplomacy and just destroyed him, lol. Had 170 pirates from diplo (and upgraded them, since I had Cove), as well as 250 basilisks + 40 unicorns, which I also upgraded. He had no chance despite much better stats.

We haven't arranged a game in a long time. I thought that when we got 4 people in a game once, this could actually be a regular occurence. Doesn't seem so.

Anyway I'm up for a game now.

>>14245304

I realised I am shit at homm and decided to wait to getmore practice offline

we should make a game, even just for practicing. cause playing with those other tards is unbearable

>>14217113

Oh shit it's that faggot again. I'm bailing, we can play heroes some other time guys.

I see a few people posted. Is anyone coming? If so, I will make a game.

Just had a game with a guy who left the castle empty and I took it like right before month 1 ends. He then claimed I "don't know how to play heroes", that everyone hates me and why am I eliminating him so fast, lol. In the end he said "fuck u" but at least took the loss.

This is why I want to play with you guys.

>>14246109

What are you looking for? The base game is great as it is. The mods are really only for online IMO.

>>14246109

Horn of the Abyss is the only must have mod.

>>14246159

Well, the maps that come with the game are great and are enough for months of gameplay, as well as the campaigns.

But if I can shill my map ^_^ - http://maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=1143&game=3. I've made it years ago. It has stories and shit in it. It has rating 10 out of 10, so people liked it…

Guys, where should I look for H3 mods? I want to spice up the gameplay a bit and new maps don't do it anymore for me.

>>14250887

>offended by liches in tunics

Nani the fuck ? They were among the strongest skellingtons. Ranged too.

>>14249122

Play online.

Like with me now.

>>14251103

>not restricting yourself to give you an even harder challenge

And as I said female Undead are kinda creepy to me. That's why I don't like the Lich Queen mission of the Dark Mod.

Can anyone please recommend me a Let's play of a Might and Magic 3, 4 or 5 veteran playing through 6 or 7?

I would really like to see something like that. I want to hear him talk about indepth knowledge, while playing these games.

You know, if this poster was for a modern game, you guys would be complaining about muh diversity and muh feminism:

>3 of 7 characters are female

>1 nigger

>1 mulatto

But back then, we didn't care, because it was only natural, and not shoved down our gullets.

>>14252070

>But back then, we didn't care, because it was only natural, and not shoved down our gullets.

Exactly. The reason we complain now is because diversity is shoehorned in. If HoMM3 was released today we wouldn't complain about the diversity because of the fact it's not shoved in our faces.

>>14181150

Man, I have not played HoMM 3 in ages. These days I just fuck around with AoW 3 and Eador: Genesis. Might have to check it out again. How good is HoMM 3 online?

>>14252070

There's a difference between good diversity and SJW pandering diversity. The latter produces some fucking awful character design and writing with a warning saying "And if you don't like it, you're a racist/sexist pig!" which deserves to get shat on while the former is perfectly acceptable.

>>14260211

>How good is HoMM 3 online?

It's great now with the lobby since you don't have to fuck around with gameranger and such to find matches. But finding decent people to play with can be hard, thus this thread…

So anyone wants to play?

>>14266290

I can play, if you're still here.

>>14266407

Made a game "anon game". Password: 8ch.

>>14266417

The autoupdate doesn't work, give me a moment.

bump?

>>14271990

Make a game and I will join.

>>14272003

ok, it's fungame pass vee. 1v1 or you want to wait for more people?

>>14272033

>>14272003

Have you guys started already? I can't see the game.

We're looking for another guy to join us.

>>14272044

probably because it's full, I'll remake it for 3 players same name and all

>>14272207

How'd it go? Spill the details.

Anyone wants to play?

How to git gud at HOMM?

>>14279256

Be efficient with your turns. Know where you're going, only fight stacks that you'll take minimal losses from and are guarding useful shit. Anything else is a waste of time and resources. If you have to double back more than twice you definitely fucked it up somewhere. The rest is knowing how to fight and use spells properly, which can get complicated.

>>14279256

Some of the things I've learned from online play:

- If using a might hero (no spell book), build Mage Guild day 1. You don't wanna come back to your castle just to buy a spellbook. In fact, don't come back to your castle at all. Other heroes should carry army to your main hero.

- After building MG, go for shooters always. Orcs, Elves and Liches can be built day 2. With Tower, upgrade gremlins. With Castle, upgrade archers.

- Day 3 on every town has a different build order. Fortress and Inferno should go for Wyverns and Efreets as early as possible. Often, you can beat some weaker shooters with just two split Wyverns / Efreets and a cure spell. Wyverns can even be built Day 2. Efreets day 3 if you built Demon Gate day 2. With other towns, you can go for Town Hall now. At the end of first week, try to have at least four levels of monsters + Citadel. Week 2 go for City Hall as early as possible. You can build level 5 and 6 at the end of the week.

- Be adaptable. Don't rush building Unicorns and such if you don't have the money. There's no point in having all that army sit in your castle. Better recruit what you have and give it to your main hero so he can fight stronger monsters. I've won games where I did not even go for the Unicorn building when playing Rampart. Because I could recruit all my army and it was strong enough. If you feel that a Level 2 MG will be a better investment than more army, don't be afraid to build it instead. Don't rush Level 7 - unupgraded are not that great and will prevent you from buying your other army.

- Know what to upgrade. Resources are scarce and many upgrades are not worth building. Most important ones are PIT LORDS, vampires, dwarves (3 speed becomes 5 speed) archers, elves, serpent flies, griffins, air/water elementals (since they become shooters).

- Hero speed on land is determined by the slowest soldier he has. So a hero with an unupgraded dwarf will have very little movement. Use other heroes to take army from the main one at the end of the turn and leave him with just dragonflies and such. Other heroes, if they aren't fighting, should also be equipped with just dragonflies or whatever fastest army you have.

- If there's a +350 gold hero in tavern, always recruit him. He will pay you back in a week. Same with +1 resource heroes.

- For hero skills, having a magic on expert as early as possible is the most important. In a fight against another player, the guy without expert magic is heavily disadvantaged. In fact, he might as well just wave the white flag. Other skills to aim for are Logistics and Tactics.

- Magic heroes are underrated. Enemy hiding his shooters? Pop a Lightning Bolt of 300 damage. Boom, shooter is gone, enemy now has to approach…

- If using a Might hero, find a +knowledge building as early as possible and use it. You just can't manage with only 10 mana. Same with spell power of 1. A spell lasting 1 turn is just useless.

- Best spells: Generally, any spell that affects all troops. L1 - Expert Haste, Slow, Bless and Curse. L2 - Expert Weakness. Lightning Bolt is a necessity. L3 - Expert Forgetfulness - one of the best spells in the game. Kills any shooter guarding strategy. Teleport. Expert Earthquake for sieges. L4 - Most of them are good. Clone, Expert Prayer. Meteor Shower for damage. Expert Town Portal to move between towns easily. L5 - Implosion! As you can see, there's quite a lot of Water Magic spells in there. It's the most underrated skill, having a great spell at every level except 5. In reality, I've rarely been able to even get to L5 MG in an online game, or even L4 MG. Use spell research mechanic to get the spells you want, especially from the level 1 if you don't have them.

>>14281759

- Find a resource trade spot on the map. Use it to dump all unneeded resources for gold, since the value is much better than in a marketplace.

- Scout around for artifacts in your area. Try to prioritize getting them since they will make you stronger for other battles. Best ones to get early are +knowledge, +spell power ones for your Barbarians and such.

- Roads always lead to towns. Go along the road to find another town as early as possible, since that's another +500 gold, or +1000 if you build town hall.

- Use chests to boost your experience if it's +1000 or especially +1500. Don't listen to the people that say you should always take gold. As I said, getting Expert magic early is invaluable, or even boosting your Logistics. But be sensible - if there's no gold, then take gold.

- If there's water on the map, get on a ship as early as possible and pick up all the chests and shit.

- Rampart strategy: Instead of going for Unicorns and such, build Treasury first week and dump all resources for gold. That will kill your gold troubles. You can do that every week then.

- You don't need all the army from your main town. In fact, if there's a lot of Dragonfly Hives, Wolf Raider pickets or Griffin Conservatories around, it might be a better idea to make a slot for Wyverns, Cyclops or Angels.

>>14281799

- On day 1, recruit the two heroes with army and give it to the main hero so he can fight more early.

- Some hero classes are better than others. If you got a Druid at the beginning, and you get a Beastmaster in the Tavern, make the Beastmaster your main hero. Skills are more important than stats, and some hero classes have bonus chances to get skills like Tactics and Logistics (Overlords for example).

- Use your other heroes to scout Crypts and Dwarven Treasuries. If the Crypt doesn't contain vampires, for example, you can take it early without losses.

- Use your other heroes to claim Windmills and such every week. In fact, if a hero has nothing to do, you can just leave him sitting in the windmill and press space every week.

- Generally, use your main hero only for fighting. Pick resources and such with your secondary heroes.

>>14278070

I died

>>14281759

>>14281799

>>14281889

We can write our own little War and Peace if we keep this up. I'm so disappointed I missed the game. last week was merciless for me. If you anons want, I can host another servers later at 19:00 CET (that's 13:00 for you burgers in the east coast.).

>>14181358

I enjoyed homm 4 more than 5 due to how lame they made Ashan. Only redeeming moment was when the elves get called tree-shagging pixies.

>>14281952

You there mate? Let's play.

Anybody online?

>>14292065

Me.

>>14292065

You up for a game? Otherwise I'll find some russian to play with, heh.

BTW, I just had a game where we both randomly got Rampart. The guy rushed unicorns while I patiently went for gold first and used only troops up to Dendroids (got Dendroids week 3). In the end, I was able to buy my whole army with gold left to spend while he attacked me with one Unicorn and much less of the other army than he should have at that point (23 dwarfs vs 38). Moral of the story - better be able to buy all your army up to level 4 than have a level 6 sit in your castle…

>>14292634

Homm4 makes some pretty radical changes and you should at least give it a look, if nothing else the campaigns are nice. Homm5 ugly as sin and has nothing to do with the previous homm worlds which really robs it of character and you really wouldn't be missing much if you passed it. Homm6 is an abomination, do not tread here.

Had another cool game, guy attacked me and again had level 6s while I didn't. At the beginning I thought I'd be surely losing, but I had 60 something battle dwarves and they ended up being MVPs. He surrounded them but they just killed all his elementals one by one, lol.

>>14292917

Battle dwarves are a lot meaner than their tier would make you think, compensation for being immobile.

>>14295937

They do have magic resistance and it is hilarious when someone tries to curse them or what not and do nothing but wiff their turns.

anyone online ?

>>14181273

What maps contain the artifacts needed to assemble it?

Is it only available in campaign?

>>14193955

"Dimension Door" and "Fly" are sort of game breaking almost on the level of "Town Portal". However, there is a point where the custom rules autism takes over to resemble shit like "Friendly Heavies" in TF2, where they will kick you for disturbing the autism.

For strategy games or other games that span a lot of time and investment, it's the better choice to play with people you already know. For drop in - drop out kind of games with no consequences or loss of investment, it's not nearly as bad to have the game ruined.

>>14309841

In the majority of games you won't even get to use DD or Fly.

>>14193955

Sounds like scrub shit, kinda like the age of empires games these days where they set absurd rules for a peaceful build-up phase because they couldn't stand getting rushed or even harassed early in the game.

>>14311667

Yes that's the way almost any "competitive" community is. But I'm still able to find games with no rules.

>>14309907

It's luck of the draw in the mages guild levels 4 and 5. The probability is quite high and only increases the more players there are. The higher level mages guilds have less spells in the randomized pool, and an even higher chance for Tower and Conflux.

>>14311667

I'll be honest and admit I've gotten butthurt the few times I played AoE2 online with random people. Most of the people who play it are veterans who stuck around since release, so if you're casual like me you're better off gathering friends of the same skill level for a relaxed vs game or a comp stomp.

That's the thing about competitive communities. You have to keep up to date on the strategies, exploits and trends, otherwise you are minced meat. Starcraft is the ultimate example of how crazy it gets where everybody turns into mindless computers executing muscle memory.

It's a necessary investment most people are not willing to make. So if you just want to kick back and relax, it's best to assemble a group of like minded people.

Why didn't anyone tell me Horn of the Abyss updated?

Now if only I could actually git gud at this game.

>>14316146

No, I meant games end before you get LV 5 MG.

Wow, Necropolis is truly the shittiest town now. You rely on 3 liches to fight neutrals and if you lose even one, you are fucked. Just forget about fighting any shooters early.

Somewhat off-topic:

What's the point of neutral creatures? One-time rewards or dwellings, I don't remember a single time I got to use them. They always ended up on some resource gathering hero or dismissed, because by the time you get any of them, they are most likely too few to be of value

>>14326448

If you have Rogues in your army you can see the amount of enemy creatures. That's extremely useful.

>>14326448

Dwelling can add up early on, though they made them better in homm4 with the caravan system letting you order the troops from home without needinga hero. Neutrals are pretty much in the same boat if you can get some early on it gives you some extra meat you don't need to care about. One time rewards are situational and I've gotten use out of them when im critically low on resources.

>>14326601

You can also see if they are willing to fight, or join you to if your close enough.

I wish they would implement the auto-combat prompt from Heroes 4 when a neutral stack is heavily outnumbered. Once your hero reaches a certain level, you'd want the experience points from thrash mobs, but don't want to manually battle each and every one. The alternative is to manually enable auto-combat prior to every encounter, or to let them run and lose out on the potential experience.

This is one of the most important features they should add. It's elementary once games reach a certain point, especially for larger maps like XL, and beyond, which has now been implemented.

>>14330937

That feature is actually in the HD Mod (not the official release, the mod). You can automatically skip any fight, and if you don't like the results, you can manually go in and do it yourself. Helps a lot since the AI is still a bit retarded when it comes to utilizing your spells and archer units, but most of the time you can clear small wandering stacks without any losses. You can even restart a fight after it's over, as many times as you like - but obviously people will hate you if you do it in multiplayer.

>>14331024

You can also enter the fight, cast a spell, and press "Q" so that autocombat finishes the fight with your intelligently cast spell. Handy as fuck.

I've never played HoMM 3 against humans before and got roasted on my first try. Are there any newbies here to play against?

I've created a game with description "8ch", password "nigger"

Been a very very long time since I played homm3. All I ever had were the Tarnum's story stand alone campaigns and the base one with gem. Started picking away at complete edition, and I don't remember the swamp faction at all. It is like they took the rejected monsters who couldn't hack it in dungeon and kicked their sorry asses into the bog but they banded together to try and make it on their own.

>>14197461

Since when does Sseth make videos again? And since when is he such a fucking memelord

who wants to play?

>>14335341

You'd find Fortress guys to be pretty good, overall. They aren't top tier, but the Gorgons are deadly and wyverns are super cheap, with hydra situationally useful. Too slow for my liking, especially when dealing with other tier 7s.

>>14331024

How do I activate this? It doesn't prompt by default.

If you mean the auto-combat feature that can be enabled in the settings, that one has been there since the beginning. That's not the one I'm talking about, because if you activate that, auto-combat will be initiated on every encounter without first asking. Some times you want to battle manually when there is potential for loss, but with vanilla auto-combat, you have to go deactivate it in the settings prior to attacking that stack of units.

In Heroes IV you could attack it, and if they were outnumbered you could click "let them run", an option to battle them manually, and also "auto-combat". If THIS is what you are talking about, please explain how to activate that!

>>14335341

I lol'd.

Mostly for the fact that it is objectively one of the worst factions. Inferno is by far the worst, with Fortress barely better due to weak units. Apparently, they have tampered with the necromancy skill in HotA. I don't know if they have the option for vanilla necromancy anymore. In that case, necro is no longer the fun game-breaking faction it used to be but the bottom of the barrell together with the two aforementioned factions.

As >>14337790

mentioned, Gorgons(upgraded) are freaking unstoppable and should all be dumped on your main hero. Hydras are only good if you have the teleport spell since they are slow and weak, so you want to teleport them between the enemy shooters and the adjacent unit so you can disable the shooter and take advantage of the ability to attack multiple adjacent cells without fear of retaliation.

But if you don't luck out and get Teleport, Hydras are pretty useless. Fortress is a cool town though, if you can live with the fact that almost all the heroes are furries and lizard people. Of course, if you know what you're doing you pick Tazar to avoid that and get the Armor speciality.

Shilling Rampart x Culture Shock mashup, I love it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgUS5EcuDB0

>>14338187

IMO Necro is the worst. The start determines everything and Necro has a bad start (well, maybe on a XL map, this can be mitigated). It has only one shooter at level 5 and you can have only 3 of them in week 1. It's easy to fuck up and lose one or two, and then you can't beat neutrals. ALL other castles can have 20+ shooters in week 1, and even if you lose a few of them you can still beat neutrals.

>>14182256

Can't play HoMM3 multiplayer without inhouse rules.

>>14193955

>>14309841

>>14309907

DD, Fly, TP, Logistic specialists and that one Diplomacy chick from Tower are usually the most sensible and common rules. The travel spells usually are game breaking if one side gets them and the other doesn't and Logistic/Diplomacy create unstoppable snowballs. It's even worse when the game isn't played on the higher difficulties, where you can do retarded shit like take out T7 stacks because a horde of gremlins joined on day 1 which caused a horde of T3 units to join which caused a horde of T4 to join, etc, etc.

>>14326448

Flagged dwellings increase the owner's pop generation if they have a town with a matching creature building built. AKA if you're Tower and tag a Gremlin dwelling, EVERY TOWER TOWN YOU OWN will spawn +1 Gremlin per week. Can also be abused by that one portal building I forget the name of. Just tag a single creature dwelling and every week will give you the same creature at the portal, so if you tag a Red Dragon dwelling, you get +1 Red/Black Dragon from having the dwelling and +1 from the portal.

>>14338187

Hydras are absolutely terrifying with Frenzy.

A tip for newbies: Bless and Curse effectiveness varies greatly depending on the unit. Best example of this is Harpy/Harpy Hags. They do 1-4 damage, for an average of 2.5 damage. Curse reduces their damage to down 1, or cuts down their damage by a whooping 60%. On the flip side, creatures with low damage variance like Demons (7-9) will have their damage output modified by a greater amount through Bloodlust or Weakness.

>>14340470

>It's even worse when the game isn't played on the higher difficulties, where you can do retarded shit like take out T7 stacks because a horde of gremlins joined on day 1 which caused a horde of T3 units to join which caused a horde of T4 to join, etc, etc.

Really? I've never had that happen. Most of the time, a one or two stacks will join for the whole game, and that's not very significant. Also, I was almost never able to get expert Diplomacy, because it didn't appear in the level up…

>A tip for newbies: Bless and Curse effectiveness varies greatly depending on the unit. Best example of this is Harpy/Harpy Hags. They do 1-4 damage, for an average of 2.5 damage. Curse reduces their damage to down 1, or cuts down their damage by a whooping 60%. On the flip side, creatures with low damage variance like Demons (7-9) will have their damage output modified by a greater amount through Bloodlust or Weakness.

That's useful, thanks.

>>14340687

Stacks joining is greatly affected by the Diplomacy skill and having more troops than what you're attacking. Diplomacy also makes stacks offer to join you for a small portion of the creature's cost. Go try a playing a few weeks with Cyra (Tower Wizard) on whatever map and see what Diplomacy does.

>>14340717

I didn't know about the growth bonus, but it doesn't matter anyway, since I already get plenty of use out of dwellings of my own faction. Knowledge of that +1 bonus changes nothing.

I was talking about golden golems, one-time wyvern rewards, that sort of crap.

What should I pick given the choice between attack and defense? 40 defense against 20 attack is 50% decrease, so half damage taken. 40 attack over 20 defense is 100% increase, double damage. Looks like the same damn thing to me.

>>14340873

Generally speaking, Offense is a better choice than Defense simply because of how Neutrals and retaliation works. The "soft cap" for getting Offense over Defense should be when your tier 1 creatures can reach the damage bonus cap against tier 7 creatures. In other words, always go Offense.

The only exceptions would be if your main hero is an Armorer specialist or if you're playing Ramparts against someone you know has a Magic hero as his main.

>>14341106

I can see how Attack is more useful against neutrals, but the retaliation part doesn't make sense. More defense -> more creatures survive -> similar retaliation damage. Well, I guess attack is at least as good as defense, so might as well stop thinking about it and go full attack

>>14341380

That's pretty good.

Does anybody have any other good mashups to share?

>>14341336

More Offense > more creatures die > less retal damage. But less creatures means less chance of the surviving neutrals killing your weaker armies. Offense is also generally far more beneficial for ranged stack, against AI heroes and when attacking towns.

>>14342195

Really? Because some zombies joined? lol. Week 1 Rampart army probably wipes this Cyra out.

>>14343286

Well, I guess the Liches are kind of dangerous, if I want to protect my elves. But now your Gremlins will have bad morale. Also, Cyra is not doing much damage with those stats. My Ranger will have stats of like 3 attack and 6 defense + good skills like Archery and Armorer, which the Wizard has low chances of getting.

>>14343286

>Zombies

>Not the multiple ranged stacks

>>14343286

>>14343321

I got 21 Obsidian Gargoyles, 12 air elementals, 46 zombies, 14 beholders and 8 liches. For free. I still had everything left to recruit in my castle except for Gremlins. This means I can throw useless cannon fodder like zombies at neutrals and not waste my precious troops. And Cyra's specialty is Haste, enjoy your turbo golems. Or zombies in this case.

>>14344966

Okay, I've just tested diplomacy and it's really not that good. Got expert diplomacy as fast as possible. All that joined me in week 1 was 30 Oceanids. I couldn't get anything else to join and was stuck with shitty Adela as main.

>>14345770

You have to know where and when to use it. Diplomacy has it's drawbacks, but is super powerful when abused. Look up a guide for diplomacy, and also using visions will help to see if the monsters are likely to join or not. Some stacks will never join though.

>>14345770

>>14345800

Also depends heavily on the maps. Some maps have a lot of neutrals set to never join. Go try it on Realm of Chaos and you'll be able to take out your neighbors by week 2.

>>14345770

Keep in mind as well, I think diplomacy was heavily nerfed in HotA, as well as adjustments to the map creator resulting in even fewer neutral stacks willing to join you. In vanilla it's absurdly broken as long as you don't mind seeing negative morale - but if you use it in conjunction with tactics and archer units, you can use every free stack to screen for your archers to blast your way through any otherwise impossible encounters.

>>14339967

Thanks! I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, but launching HotA through the HD Launcher and not just running the HotA executable solved this for me.

How does HotA compare to VCMI? AFAIK the difference is HotA is programmed through hex-editing, which makes it slower and more cumbersome to implement new stuff whereas VCMI is basically Heroes 3 coded from scratch. The drawback to that of course, is that nobody has the source code, so they have to analyze the game and interpret the AI, which according to some, has not yet yielded satisfactory results. Apparently the AI in VCMI is quite dumb.

VCMI has a new faction made for it, Oasis, which besides the Cove from HotA is the only custom faction that blends properly with the art style in heroes. A standardized environment would be the best, since that would focus the efforts from programmers to balance the new factions perfectly. Already in HotA there are some irritating liberties taken with "re-balancing" the gameplay according to multiplayer conventions. However, some old time players who just like to play with the AI or a couple friends don't mind the alleged imbalances as they are what adds the risk, charm and peculiarities to the game.

This IMO is the greatest challenge for the future development of HOMM3. VCMI has full customization since it is recreated from scratch, but HotA has some amazing new features like the Cove as well as the Random Map Template Editor, which adds incredible replayability.

>>14349474

VCMI has nothing so far, other than AI that is worse than original. HotA has awesome multiplayer lobby and needed balance changes, what's there to compare exactly?

>>14349474

The source code is somewhere out there surely. Whoever has it should just release it. I mean it's a dead game. Modders keep it alive. It's not gonna generate anymore income.

>>14349630

If you mostly play multiplayer, then that's great. The problem is that there are no options to disable or revert the changes they did to the gameplay. On the forums they discussed changing hero specialities, which is impossible for the user unless using hex-editing. And in that case, to distribute a map would require distributing the modified exe, which becomes obsolete and require a new edit once an update is out. Imagine the headache!

For the purposes stated by this thread, multiplayer lobbies, HotA is probably excellent. I wouldn't know, because I don't have the guts to go get my ass kicked by Russians or Poles who play the game religiously. For me, the prospect of VCMI is more appealing, if one could only weed out the dross. That is, a dozen user created factions that don't mesh well with the graphics style. That's the problem with WoG. They added a bunch of new stuff that sticks out like a sore thumb.

For the casuals like myself, who never will become more than average skilled despite having played the game since release, a fully fleshed out VCMI(or equivalently customizable HotA) will suit our needs.

By the way, HotA also got a Random Map Template Editor that looks promising. The new built-in templates are already excellent, making much more beautiful maps as the vanilla generator would put subterranean objects in the desert and other ugly combinations.

I expect to see some nice templates once the community gets their head around the somewhat cryptic interface of that editor. IMO a lot of replayability is added with random maps.

>>14353930

One of the few situations when Mysticism isn't a garbage skill.

>>14331024

>You can even restart a fight after it's over, as many times as you like - but obviously people will hate you if you do it in multiplayer.

That's a pretty dubious feature imo. Shit feels like cheating to me. And why the hell is it available in multiplayer?

>>14362581

I didn't even know this exists. But yeah, it's pretty much cheating.

>>14362581

Most multiplayer games have time limits - one time limit for movement on the overworld, and another for battles, so you still might not be able to actually replay a single fight repeatedly, or you'll time out. And I don't know if it's possible to do it in PVP, but you certainly can for neutral stacks. I'd imagine you'll get put on shit lists for abusing it though.

We haven't arranged a game in a long time.

>>14368656

where did you read this?

Homm3 complete does not come with Tarnum's story expansions sadly, how many here enjoyed those? I had better access to them than the 'main' campaigns of homm.

>thread made a month ago

>must have accident hidden it when i was aggressively hiding shit threads

>basically binged it last 3 days

I liked Castle for marksman spam but I usually get wrekt late and also the cost is really high. I like Conflux but it's sometimes banned on smaller templates. Liked Tower for a while, naga/genie is fantastic and I like spellcasting, but Rampart (? Avlee town) was pretty solid early/mid, just make careful upgrades and spam archers and upgrade mage tower while letting gold interest builld up.

>tfw figuring out expert earth+slow

Diplomacy fucked me again. All that joined through the whole game was 43 fucking Seamen.

Anyway we should arrange a game. One on one is pretty fucking boring.

>>14387317

What's the point? You're done after one fight anyway.

>>14387616

Not really if we had 8 players. Or even 4.

BTW, I've just had a LEGENDARY game. We've met already in week 2 and I was really close to beating him, but two heroes with strong Magic Arrows saved him. Then he got the advantage since I knew I couldn't attack him. I picked the resources around his castle but eventually he attacked me, and even though my army was much bigger I had to surrender since his spells would doom me. I had a lot of army in castle but couldn't recruit since I had no gold. Eventually he came to attack. I knew he'd win so I left my secondary hero in town with some shit troops and the main guy fucked off to underground.

Then the dreaded message appears "You have 7 days to get a town or you get kicked out of these lands". I'm thinking what do I do now? Can't take my town back. Can't take his either since it's too far and protected. So I'm seeking some other town (and I didn't even know if there is one on the map). 5 days…4…3…ok, found a STRONGHOLD (same as my starting town) in some secluded place. I thought "this guy will attack at any moment, gotta build up fast". OK let's go.

There just happened to be two Behemoth dwellings around. I thought "ok, THIS is my opportunity". Tavern. Town Hall. Cliff Nest. Behemoth Crag. Citadel. Castle. Now I have five Behemoths per week. He didn't come yet - he's really close to the portal leading to me, but he's taking Dwarf Treasuries and such instead. He will come soon though. Gotta act fast.

There were some Dragonfly Hives around. I ended up collecting 42 (!) wyverns from them. Then got back to underground to collect some artifacts. OK, he's coming out of the portal, but I was away, and couldn't prevent him from taking town. Again the dreaded message "Get a town or get out". OK, I had no more choice. His town was too far for 7 days. Had to attack his main hero in my town.

His army wasn't that great, but we know the defender has huge advantage. Fortunately I had two stacks of Cyclops. And 11 Behemoths. Attack the gate I thought. Wyverns fly and kill the Ice Elementals. Expert Resistance saves my Cyclops from his Lightning Bolt. Gate is smashed, Behemoths enter. Then Black Knights I got from the underground earlier. Boom, his army is destroyed…but wait, he fucking flees. I forgot there is the possibility of Escape Tunnel, and he took it.

Whatever, I now have the advantage. Dumped all army except Wyverns and 15 Ancient Behemoths into castle. Charged him Took Dragon Utopia on the way. Smashed main hero. Took his castles. It's over. GG.

H3 can be exciting as you can see, if you get a good map and a good player.

Do you guys just generate random maps, or do you use the tourneyfag ones that came with the game? Personally I like the 2sm2c template, but I modified it to re-enable Necropolis and Conflux (they removed it from that map because it's 2strong for the smaller map size). Otherwise, the slightly larger maps take too long to play in my opinion.

Anyways, I always seem to stall out mid game, around the end of week 2. My opening is usually to grab upgraded ranged units or a magic guild on 111, depending, and have a total of 2 or 3 heroes to explore, with one having a dedicated army to push aggressively for a second town. On 112, I upgrade my town hall, and on 113, I usually grab a marketplace or something to build towards the next tier, but depending on the castle, if it's has a good, easy progression to strong units, then I just grab those

>>14392438

Always random maps (because no one wants to play on the ones included with the game, but they are much, much better).

yeah, I have the same problem. Great start, then I fuck up.

>>14392829

So what do you do and where do you think you fuck up?

I think my gold tends to run out if I try to increase both cities too fast. Instead, I think it's better to focus on your main and only get a few supplemental buildings (eg horde buildings if you're Necro w/ transformer, or marketplaces/silos in general, maybe a lv1 Mage Guild for recharge).

Usually after clearing the second zone, I don't have enough power to break meaningfully into the third zone. I can kill a few mobs, but then my army's steam starts to run out. Usually I have my main pushing with magic and tier 1-3 ranged units as best as I can, and then a secondary comes with T121 reinforcements and ends up having more oomph than my main does - regardless of who I choose. I also don't know what stats to stack properly.

Like, I can pick goblins and start with a 4 power hero, even got him up to 10 power, and but then the rest of the critters are so shitty my guys just melt to any archers. I will say that expert earth with archers is fucking disgusting and makes you win fights no problem, so maybe I just don't have the right magic to support my stuff

>>14393482

In any game you need to strike a balance between spending on buildings or army, and I go way too far into the buildings side. Not noticeable early when I just use Centaurs and Elves, but eventually I have 5 levels of unit recruiting buildings and the units are all sitting in the castle, because I can't buy them.

I do fights early and well so that's not a problem. But even if I earn a bunch of gold from crypts and such, I just spend it all on new buildings. As in, "gotta get these tier 6 units week 1, so I can buy more of them next week " (and it never happens). And if I do manage to get the level 6 buildings, it's immediately "gotta get Citadel so I have more Efreets next week".

I just have to calm down and, I guess, force myself to buy all my army before building anything new. Swing to the other side, you know. Maybe then I'll be able to strike a balance.

I've had games where I only built up to level 4 in week 1, and that can really be enough if you buy all of them. A lot of those games I've won, even if the opponent had tier 6 in final fight and I didn't. But old habits always come back.

What's your build order, mate? Mine is usually Mage Guild day 1, then Town Hall, then unit recruiters up to level 4, then Citadel. But it varies by town and map.

>>14380635

>fire magic god tier

>intelligence top tier

>scholar and navigation high tier

what

Jesus, this is one of the worst skill guides I've seen. Skill selection will depend a lot on your specific situation and strategy, but even disregarding that this selection has massive flaws.

Your opinion is still changing from game to game and you also think there's a fucking cannon in the game. You really have no job making guides for it (particularly with the two decades of expert players making and collecting the guides on forums).

>>14396639

>Mine is usually Mage Guild day 1

nigga what no what are you doing

>>14397057

What's wrong with MG Day 1? My main might be away for a long time and needs a spell book (if its a might hero).

>>14397261

Halls and particularly dwellings are a much greater priority in the first week. MG on the other hand is a relatively expensive gamble for some mildly useful spells (~two weak ones per battle if the hero is might class).

>>14396639

>As in, "gotta get these tier 6 units week 1, so I can buy more of them next week " (and it never happens). And if I do manage to get the level 6 buildings, it's immediately "gotta get Citadel so I have more Efreets next week".

Fantastic, I'm glad I'm not the only one falling into this trap. (though lategame, I did this to rush dragons and went from +1 to +3 for doing so, so it was a net gain in that case).

Having played a good 4 or more games since my post, and actually looking at it in depth, I think the early tempo you get for having a strong army now completely outweighs the economic gain over ~3-5 turns you'd get for rushing buildings sooner. Shit like imp caches and graveyards and stockpiles are worth a good chunk of change and XP, plus sometimes have a treasure. It's basically a super treasure chest, and being able to clear them consistently feels good.

As far as faction goes, I am in love with dungeon. The HoMM3 wiki (http://heroes.thelazy.net) made it sound like the units were shitty so I avoided them as much as Inferno. Turns out, I can find a use for every fucking tier of unit. I'm an asshole and picked the Gunnar the minotaur who has speciality logistics and tactics, and just snowballed so hard.

My games with him usually open with upgraded harpies, and try to soft rush to minotaur kings. Because of hit and return, they're basically archers, which also get supported by beholders, which function in melee or range (and if enemies do get too close, a stack of trogs can usually kill ~10 enemies in one go). Dungeon also is weighted towards earth magic and can't natively learn water magic unless via events, so that means you get a soft guarantee on expert slow, too. Insane.

>>14398062

You should get used to playing Shakti as well, he's one of the best starting heroes in the game. Dungeon is all-around great at safe map clearing for obvious reasons, but they fall off hard if they can't get going. There's no such thing as a low-resource game with them.

>>14398197

What about him is good in particular? I tend to use trogs as support units, rather than main damage. It seems like he'd get wrecked by archers pretty easily.

Do you still get the experience if monsters scatter, or do you have to fight them?

>>14398197

>>14398062

I'll join in. Dungeon and Tower are objectively the best factions because they both have several shooters. Dungeon has Beholders and Medusas, Tower has Master Gremlins, mages and is the only town with a level 7 unit(Titan) that is a shooter, which makes for THREE shooters for that town!

The downside of both is that they are expensive. You want to upgrade your Giants, you will suffer for it. Same with Dungeons Black Dragons. The Labyrinth is also costly on gems as well, and I usually seem to stall there. The upside is that both are magic-oriented, have heroes with great specialties and, as one of you mentioned, have no objectively "useless" creatures unless you count the gremlins before the upgrade.

Yes, the Master Gremlins get slaughtered and drop like flies, but you should always barricade your shooters anyway.

Deemer, with Meteor Shower speciality(like Aislinn in Necropolis) is also a great choice. That spell can wreak massive havoc.

I love how they made Titans and Black Dragons hate each other. That really makes for fun games when those factions are pitted against each other.

I really, REALLY hope the HotA team didn't screw with those factions. It's bad enough that they nerfed Necro, Diplomacy and a lot of other things.

>>14398228

Shakti has tactics, so you put your trogs as close as possible to them to get to the shooters right off the bat. Unless you're against shooters that have no melee penalty, they'll be minced meat in early game and will make for a good start, as most shooters have terrible melee penalty.

>>14398242

Tower is buffed in HotA, their build-up is much easier. Some argue it's the best town in that mod since it was the only one to get truly significant buffs.

>>14398062

>As far as faction goes, I am in love with dungeon. The HoMM3 wiki (http://heroes.thelazy.net) made it sound like the units were shitty so I avoided them as much as Inferno.

Inferno is actually my favorite (both thematically and to play with). The first game I ever won online, I won decisively by drowning the opponent in demons. If you are able to get it going, Demon Farming is like necromancy on steroids. Now every secondary castle is a potential demon farm. You'd be surprised about the numbers you can get from something like Pikemen that you've been ignoring for 2 weeks. Also, you can attack monsters that you'd be scared of attacking with any other town. Lost some Gogs? Cool, just sacrifice the whole stack then. Losses turned into gains.

>>14401768

Wow disregard. Even though I tried to make things conservative, I had way too much shit coming in, I hit level 7 and had 10k by the end of the 10th turn and I didn't even hit the underground yet

>>14402741

>I attacked him with one Phoenix, armageddoned and surrendered.

That's actually one of the online server rules, "no hit and run"

>>14404249

Yeah but I made sure to specify "NO RULES" in the game description.

>>14404326

Well then I guess he can only blame himself

>play h3dm1 1v1, mirrored map

>both roll dungeon

>end up with like 7 towns, hop over into his territory, capture one

>somehow lose map control and we're even

>realize that I'm losing fights because I have no A/D, and he has like 10/9 on his main hero, so even my mino kings aren't holding up very well

Feels bad man

>>14411432

Hey shit I actually won (also I see you can't open mirror maps in editor - is this a safety feature for tourneyfags?)

Anyways, using logic, I was able to deduce where his main was, and where his towns were, based on my revealed map, and his path of clearing the neutral mobs. I had about 8 marketplaces by the end of it, and just kept attritioning his smaller heroes and capping his towns he left with 4 units. Eventually, because I had a resource advantage, I won.

>>14411537

>kept attritioning his smaller heroes

Those were my mains, being continually re-summoned and re-equipped at the expense of nearly all my income per turn

How do you build your towns, guys? I'm especially interested in Necropolis. Is rushing Vampire Lords the right strat?

>>14404249

Really? In Age of Wonders 3 games it's a perfectly valid strategy to hit with one unit, Hellfire, and run. In fact the Partisan specialization exists for hit and run shenanigans.

>>14412325

>Those were my mains, plural

That's why I kept doing it. I knew that your income was limited because of how aggressively I captured my own towns. Every time I did it, it was 2500g that wasnt going towards creatures I had to fight.

>>14413044

I can't remember where I saw it, either the server rules (that comes bundled w/ the HOTA expansion), or the wiki, or something. Obviously, in a no rules game or between friends it doesn't matter, but ranked or playing with randoms, it might be an issue; basically don't use it as a crutch, but it's possible to win.

WHICH REMINDS ME, against >>14412325, there was a rule also where if there is no ranged units left, you can't keep moving out of range to make a fight into a stalemate to waste turn time. Which is fine. However, we had a siege situation and we had two midsize armies, me on defense. It was down to like, 4 air elementals and 30 zombies. His hero had 30 mp left. Every turn they'd run away, Magic Arrow. Run away, magic arrow. I lost the town such a disgustingly small margin.

Note that he didn't break any rules (nor were we playing with said rules). It was just so depressing to lose a distant town by that much.

Bump

Any recommended templates for 1v1?

>>14398827

It's amazing just looking at how the probability for spells to appear in the mage guild reflects the alignment of the town and the strengths and weaknesses of the units, i.e necro gets highest probability for haste to compensate for the slowest early units, the zombie, but also has no probability to get the cure spell, since the undead are diseased by nature and logically, "cure" would kill them.

As opposed to Castle, which has cure and also the highest chance for bless, and Rampart, which is a nature town.

So not only are the alignments and lore taken into account, but also the usage of units and how spells can compensate for weaknesses.

This kind of attention to important details is not found in modern games, partly due to laziness, but also because the bigger games are streamlined since most of them are not constructed from scratch, but built from commercial engines which makes them very samey and makes it cumbersome to create intricate mechanics, which are most intuitively implemented from scratch instead of something you try to fit into a pre-existing framework.

This is just one aspect of the depth of this game. It doesn't even take into account how primary and secondary skills affect it, specialties, what faction you play against etcetra.

>>14432446

>It's possible for a hero to have no troops if you deposit them at Seer's Hut or Quest Guard. Upon entering a battle, you will instantly lose as soon as pre-battle music ends.

>>14432450

That isn't actually how I did it, though I didn't know that was also an option.

>>14432467

Maybe you won with only summons left?

>>14397057

There's a cannon in Horn of the Abyss.

>>14434458

I was trying to split a unit of one in the city and when I cancelled out of it it had moved the single unit from the hero into the city. The enemy hero there had 5 iron golems and a ballista on him but was out of mana and I was just spamming heroes to slow him down and desperately wanted to fire a hero but keep the unit.

I never realized conflux existed because they do not appear in the main campaign or Tarnum's quests. What a weird faction, anyone care to share their thoughts on them? I've started an ai skirmish with them and started with the psychic elemental guy who gets offense and logistics which feels absolutely fantastic.

>>14438656

My least favorite town, but really good in MP if you know how to use it. Units are expensive as fuck, so you shouldn't rush them first week like you do with all the other towns. Instead, get as many Storm Elementals as early as possible, with which you will be able to beat most walkers easily. Try to get a bless spell since the range of Storms is 2-8. When you get enough money build Water Elementals, and then immediately upgrade them. Ignore levels 4 and 5, they're pretty useless, unless you're swimming in gold. Spend the money on the shooters which will help you clear the map. Only buy the next units if you can afford to buy out all the shooters with gold to spare.

>>14438986

Actually, I just won a game with it by using the outlined strategy. Only Storm and Ice Elements for the whole game. Opponent had 8 Nixes, I still won the game.

>>14439188

BTW, here are my favorite strats for each town (Conflux was already mentioned).

Tower: Upgrade Gremlins day 1. Make another hero, take his gremlins. Leave Golems in town, they will slow your hero down. Split Gargoyles into 3 stacks and block the gremlins. 100+ Gremlins can beat a lot. Tower has a hard time with shooters. You will always lose gremlins against them. Upgrade Gargoyles to block shooters in two turns. But mostly avoid fighting shooters if possible. Don't rush Genies or Nagas - too expensive.

Castle - Upgrade Archers day 1. Next unit requires Blacksmith, so skip it for now. Build Mage Guild day 2, buy book, and get out with your main and a bunch of marksmen. Try to get Cavaliers before end of week 1 (Blacksmith > Barracks > Stables > Training Grounds), give them to another hero and use to beat shooters. Forget Monastery week 1.

Fortress - Wyverns day 1, give them to one hero and the other army to another hero. 2 Wyverns alone can beat a lot if you're smart, especially shooters. Archers, Gogs, Orcs sometimes…Get a tent. Forget Basilisks and Gorgons for now. You're fighting with Wyverns, Gnolls and Lizardmen. Upgrade Wyverns for safer map cleanup.

Inferno - This one has many ways. You can try to get Efreets day 3. Two Efreets beats most shooters. Or get Pit Lords in week 1 to get started with demon farming faster, since that's what makes Inferno. Sack Imps for demons. Forget Hell Hounds too. Demon food. Later you can sack gogs as well, but that's up to you if you think you need shooters. Magogs are great for fighting neutrals BTW, so upgrading them early is another possibility. I've won games with just a fat stack of Demons smashing everything.

Stronghold - Tough town. Orcs are weak. Try to get Cyclops as fast as possible, so you can actually beat walkers. Forget fighting with two heroes, Stronghold's army is just too weak. Rushing behemoths doesn't really work either. I consider this the weakest town.

Dungeon - has two shooters so get those early. Forget higher levels, you will go bankrupt (and Manticores suck). Build Portal of summoning in week 1 to get more army, especially if you've found a Beholder dwelling. Upgrade Harpies and give them to your secondary heroes. Don't go beyond Level 4 in week 1.

Necropolis - Another tough town. Mage Guild day 1 and rely on hasting skeletons, but you will still have losses. Absolutely terrible against shooters, or all neutrals really. Your best bet is actually Mage Guild level 2 and Death Ripple + a few Wights. Since the AI will split their units into 7 stacks if it considers your army weak, you can deal more damage with Death Ripple. You can fight with two heroes that way, which will help you be a little faster. This all changes when you get VLs, which can beat any live neutral easily without losses. You should then have a hero with just VLs. Liches day 2 is another possibility, but I don't like it. Again, tough town early on.

Rampart - strongest town early, I guess. Leave Dwarves in town. Day 1 is Elves, day 2 Upgraded Elves and you clean up. Then upgrade Dwarves so you can take them with your main. Centaurs, Dwarves and Elves will beat even very strong walkers. Pegasi suck, ignore them if you don't have money. Buy all the other army instead. This has similar situation as Conflux, where focusing on first 3 levels is better than rushing higher tier units.

Cove - Pirates require Blacksmith so buy Mage Guild day 1 and use the pirates you already have from heroes. Generally, pirates are the bread and butter of Cove and you can clean up the map with just them. Be careful not to lose any pirates.

>>14439877

>Fortress - Wyverns day 1, give them to one hero and the other army to another hero. 2 Wyverns alone can beat a lot if you're smart, especially shooters. Archers, Gogs, Orcs sometimes…Get a tent. Forget Basilisks and Gorgons for now. You're fighting with Wyverns, Gnolls and Lizardmen. Upgrade Wyverns for safer map cleanup.

Why have i never done this before?

Normally i just race to upgrade townhall at the start

>>14438656

Conflux is a bit of an eyesore, but it has some good units. The shooters are nice, the Psy/magic elementals have a Hydra/Cerberus kind of attack(attacking all surrounding units) and the Phoenixes will resurrect a certain number when a stack dies. They're fairly weak though so it's more like a lore gimmick than an actual compensation for a pretty bland 7th level unit.

Magic University is expensive, but it allows you to purchase any of the magic schools for secondary skills, which are objectively the best secondary skills. Brissa has Haste as specialty. Now your Magic Elementals can decimate an army completely.

It's a fun faction to play once in a while. I'm not good with it, but I have the aforementioned aspects in mind when I do play it.

>>14440147

Sure. Keep in mind I'm not so experienced at 200% though.

Pick gold bonus before the game if you're picking. Now look carefully around the area you can see and try to map out the path that will allow you to pick the most gold in turn 1. If that requires beating some Pikemen, Gnolls or whatever, this is fine even with heavy losses. It is important to get 2500 gold day 1. Now make another hero and go the other way. Again concentrate on picking gold. If you have enough for Town Hall, buy it day 1. This is rare. Otherwise, buy it day 2.

Now start going along the road. Join your armies if needed. Find the second town, capture it immediately, don't worry about losses. You have another 500 gold per day. Build Tavern there, and in your main town Marketplace.

Next day, build Town Hall in the second town, and Blacksmith in main town. You have 2K gold per day now, that's significant. Keep picking gold with your heroes. You need City Hall ASAP. Next day is Mage Guild, and next City Hall if gold allows it. Don't buy any dwellings before you have City Hall. No gold? Dump everything for gold in the Marketplace.

The only other thing you should spend money on besides rushing City Hall is buying the third hero that has army with him, since he will be able to do some fights to pick up more gold. Of course ignore things like Schools of Magic and such for now.

If you have City Hall before week 2? You're set, and play starts as usual. At the start of week 2, buy all the level 1 and 2 troops from your towns. Start fighting the stronger monsters like you usually do. Buy the fourth hero, give army to main. Go for your tier 3 and 4 dwellings. Do in week 2 what you usually do in week 1 on other difficulties.

>>14440267

Worst towns for 200%? Necropolis and Conflux! Necro has no available shooters by default, and the walkers are quite weak. You will have a lot of problems fighting neutrals. Conflux the same - Upgraded Air dwelling requires gems, mercury and wood + 1500 gold. Insurmountable on 200%.

>>14440457

Necro needs a little more finesse in its first week than other towns, yes mostly because it lacks shooters. Wights are decent to get initiative and to bait enemies across obstacles to waste movement, but it doesn't work very long. The best thing I've found was to just get a good stack of skeletons to OHKO a neutral stack. Do people ever get zombies? They seem useless.

Vampires are great because they can life drain later.

>>14446239

>>14440457

Also, Conflux isn't too bad. I don't ever see anyone talk about Cove towns though.

Conflux seems to be balanced around a strong midgame. Pixies don't trigger retaliation, so it's nice to pick T1-2 stacks off. Heroes start with elemental magic, so you're guaranteed to get expert spells very quickly. Upgraded air/water elementals act as shooters, and fire/earth elementals are trash. Psychics are okay I guess? Firebirds/phoenixes don't seem that good, other than having amazing speed (which works very well with expert magic)

Is it better to haste or slow on turn one?

>>14446239

>I don't need zombies

Turn the difficulty level up son and if not necroing ur dead stack (also lich aoe ff) ur doing it wrong. A neat tricks also not upgrading skeles so you can perma neck 1 stack deathball… I don't even play undead but my bro does

>>14446257

Haste if it's on for eg dungeon minotaurs to get max map movement, basically whatever gives you the most turn adv, saving one of yours, or adding more to their critical stack.

Why is inferno so bad? I know their grail structure week of the imp shit is awful.

>>14446273

I dislike zombies because fights tend to be over before they get involved. Even if I defend/wait turns, then skeletons are usually bullied first. Not good if you're trying to get a deathball.

Zombies are SLOW. Skeletons have a speed of 4, versus 3 for zombies. This translates to a difference of 60 movement per turn on your hero, or a difference of a half tile per turn. It adds up. One month is 28 turns, so that's extra 17(!) tiles of movement you're losing out on, just to keep a marginally useless stack around.

When I play Dungeon, I give my scouting hero a single Harpy Hag. That's 9 speed, or 1900 movement. That's a difference of 4 tiles per turn, or an extra 112 tiles of movement in a month, compared to keeping around a speed 3 unit.

>>14197461

Sseth went a long way from making reviews of assfaggot champions to reviewing games such as Heroes of Might and Magic III.

>>14446409

Turn the difficulty up you are shit.

>>14446417

I've only started playing on 130% and I tend to play academy most, should I just take the plunge of 200% or work my way up?

>>14446510

200% until your ego can't take getting crushed no more then lower it to the second hardest, if you can't beat that like 50-95% of time then go theory craft some more outside of actual game time. Can help playing against real humans too. Better if hotseat

>>14446417

Why does difficulty matter? I play against friends at 160% and absolutely crush them every time

>>14446708

Higher value on resource allocation and decision-choices if there is less room for error. You can then magnify this practice when times are good.

>>14446573

I did pick gold starting bonus, 600 is basically the same as zero though it did let me get a day one city hall. 200% really is cranking the vice on my balls though. Losing my capitol when an enemy tower attacked with giants really hurt but I got it back and am hanging in there.

>>14446734

What difficulty do competitive players use? 200%? 160%? Having less resources makes it more skill-based though

I managed to dig my old disks out, but I'm having trouble with Shadow of Death.

It won't install because it says I need "Service Pack 4"- and installing it did nothing.

And it has no audio when I run it from the disk.

>>14447541

You might want to consider just pirating GOG's version of Heroes 3 Complete. Especially if you want to give some of the mods a shot.

>Try to make custom RMG template

>Place a red zone for human player

>Place a blue zone for human player

>Try to start game

>Only lets me select an even number of human players

>Only lets me select an even number of computer players

>Can't 1v1 a computer like in other templates

What the fuck is this shit?

Alright, my first 200% game went pretty alright. I struggled really hard early on and lost my main city a few times. Rather than try to reclaim it against the AI main hero I just ran to the AI's main tower city which was already fully upgraded AND had the grail structure which completely turned the tide in my favor.

>>14447884

Mine is going just fine

>Dungeon

>Have to rely on troglodytes a lot more than I thought I would

>Capture a manticore lair at the start of the second week

>End up with 2 trog, 1 harpy, and 1 manticore nest, buy lots of armies, capture 4 black towers without too much hassle

>>14447967

scenario or random map? The map I generated had no goddamn creature dwellings anywhere nearby. Not that it would have mattered with 0 fucking resources.

>>14447992

What? One of the included random templates. 2sm4d I think

Had a good game on h3dm1 with a friend. 2h, Fort v Fort, strong monsters and 200%.

I went with wyverns and then upgraded lizards, but was late to take second town. For some reason I was very on top of effectively clearing treasuries and even got a dwarven one fairly early plus some nice artifacts. We had no gold because of 200%, but Haart spawned in my tavern and estates made the game way easier. Main was lizard spec hero and I got logistics and expert water pretty fast, and cure spam won the day.

We ended up monoliths at about the same time but i had +1 town and a slight gold advantage so I ended up with a solid win. I was lv 12 vs his 7. My wyverns were A/D 21/24 vs his 17/24 so i had a slight edge

>>14447558

Fair enough.

Solved one of the issues at least.

This toaster is a hand-me-down, turns out the last person to have it had all the audio options muted.

:/

>>14450034

At least HoMM 3 should run fine on a toaster.

>h3dm1 mirror vs 200% ai

>Don't break into second zone until like the third week (strong monsters, no water)

>Manage to keep pace, get 4 towns at about the same time

>Build up my army and go in

>Fail at the macro gameplay, end up with 180,000g because of 2-3 Treasuries, takes me a fucking week to get my fresh army to my main hero, meanwhile they've been spreading to side zones and I can't contain them

>My main has something like 12/10/17/8 stats, theirs aren't even half it

>Stall for two weeks, though I can implosion and fireball and just BTFO their forces easily

>Suddenly they're even strength, because they were clearing treasuries the whole time

FUGG

so we gonna have some /v/ matches anymore or not?

>>14458865

If it's that bad you might as well install Gentoo linux. Any playable games for your laptop would have to be so old they'd run fine on WINE and Linux isn't filled with bloatware like Windows is, so you'd have a faster and more responsive rig that way. And yes, Gentoo is a serious recommendation. It's a Linux distribution geared towards running fast. That's why it's called "Gentoo" - because those are the fastest swimming penguins.

It might take some time to set it up but it'll be worth it for a laptop that doesn't run like ass.

So is 200% supposed to be hard? I can usually win no problem

Had a shitty game yesterday. Guards were tough but I was an opportunity in a Portal of Glory near my castle. Unfortunately, it was blocked by Lots of Zealots, which I tried to attack twice, and failed. Second time I had cavaliers and royal griffins - they still shot me down.

>>14478511

That came out funny. Saw* an opportunity of course.

>>14478640

Haha, that's my old chart. I don't really believe in it anymore.

>>14478652

Better than the one above.

>>14478640

I play on mirrored maps, though.

The two expansion campaigns for homm3 seem like they had a lot less put into them than the first.

I don't get this game. I tried playing it a few years back and it didn't grab me. /v/ is usually on the ball about this kind of shit but I don't know. The combat seemed kind of stale and directionless.

>>14488413

You'd think so, and on paper, I hated the stack system, but it's actually pretty deep strategically. I also played HoMM a few years ago and felt the same way (though it was HoMM6 and used the ubishit launcher)

Anyways, you have 5 or 6 different resources, and fight neutral mob camps to capture more resources and mines and towns. You only get new creatures every week, so it becomes a balance of macro management (developing towns, exploring certain areas) and micro management (how combat plays out)

Different races have different strengths in combat. For example, ranged units are very desireable because they can destroy units from afar (making it easier to clear mob camps without losing units). Thus, you want a fast unit or a tanky unit to stop them. You can also augment your battles with spells, to cover your weaknesses. Every race has different spell weighting, so if you have a weakness or a strength, your spell choices are going to improve those issues.

For example, Necropolis is difficult to play early, since you'll likely lose many units because you won't have ranged units until Tier 4. Most other races have them at Tier 1-2. However, they have tricks like harming all non-undead units, or constantly replacing their skeletons every battle. If you know what you're doing, you can micro your units very hard and win some real weird battles.

>>14488466

I will admit I am not the most savvy strategy guy. I got a kick out of the King's bounty games but those were more PVE adventures with crazy boss fights.

>>14197461

>power liches

>soros

Jesus fucking christ I am dying

>>14215068

Also this was my first exposure to the series. I picked it up from my local Walmart's bargain bin for $5 back in 2005, 2006 or something. Fantastic.

How good's the actual story ie lore behind M&M anyway?

As in is it well-crafted etc or fanfic-tier garbage?

>>14496860

I'd say it's generic mid-high medieval fantasy, but it embraces it and does it well. It doesn't have the crazy setting lore that TES has (as far as I know), but it does have some sci-fi elements which were present in the earlier games, and the RPGs.

I believe that Xeen(?) was this giant artificial world that existed on a rectangular metal plate (sort of like Halo), and the devils that invaded Enroth were from this world. This was sort of the plot of MM7, and while it looked medieval on the surface, you had to eventually recover items from a downed spacecraft. I can't remember all the details, it's been a while since I played it.

Anyone think there could be any appeal to an RTS that plays like a heroes game?

>instead of having workers who go back and forth from resources, you go around capturing mines about the map

>capturing works like in dawn of war, with your unit having to stand next to a building for a period of time to capture it, however only your hero units can capture buildings

>like in heroes each player starts with a castle of their starting faction, each castle can purchase upgrades that add new buildings to it allowing you to purchase that faction's monsters in a manner similar to buying units in an RTS

>there are also creature dwellings about the map which can be captured to recruit third-party units from

>enemy castles can be captured in the same way mine capturing works (while being captured the castle can't produce units) meaning if you capture an enemy castle, you can start recruiting units from other factions (I don't know any RTS that lets you do this)

>obviously hero levelling and spells are also a thing with heroes engaging in combat directly, if your hero unit dies you can re-recruit them from a castle at a cost reflecting their current level

>>14497150

I've seen a few different RTS's with gimmicks. Terrain deformation and physics are sometimes used. I saw one anon suggest a game where orders are relayed through a chain of command, so there is up to say, a 10 second delay between when you issue an order and when the individual footsoldiers hear it, because it has to go through commanders and generals and officers first.

I saw one that dealt with time:

>Plays like a normal RTS, except you can teleport units back in time. Every so often, events become "canonized" and you can't go back any further than that point

>Eg, you get rushed and stomped because you went for economy; you quickly build a few units now, and send them back in time. In the past, you can now stall the rush just long enough to build actual units to defend so your base ends up okay

>Aggressor responds by going back in time and not sending the attack to begin with, and does other stuff

How viable is rushing combo artifacts?

>>14504315

Not very since you don't know what you will find. But if you lack one part, you can try to hunt for it in the black markets and such.

one of you niggers needs to stream your online matches

>>14504616

https://pastebin.com/raw/R4icHVgd

>>14504616

But only Armor of the Damned would provide enough benefit in final battle I think.

>>14504902

Depends what you're playing. Elixir of Life would work great with Demon memes, for example, or Wizard's Well would let you aggressively clear mobs by lightning bolting them every turn. The resource ones and legion aren't very good in my opinion, being a sort of a "win more" deal.

Personally I play on low resource 1v1 maps that can be finished in a month.

Any way to disable victory conditions?

By the way, I pre-emptively made a new thread over on /vg/.

>>>/vg/28902

>>>/vg/28902

>>>/vg/28902

>>14504462

Or record them and upload the best bits as webms.

Any of you faggots wanna start a 1v1 unranked game in the next hour or two?

Either Nine Day Wonder or h3dm1, 200%, no water, strong monsters

>>14380635

>pathfinding bad tier

>fire magic and water in the top

>tactics only at high

>having schoolar on main hero at all

Jesus what a garbage list

>>14515609

Make a better one then. But will it be backed by online experience?

>>14368656

I thought the Forge town was something they scrapped. Anyway, I've had the opinion that the Forge is something that should really affect the game on a much deeper level than just being a new town, but neat.

>>14517618

Your icons don't entirely match the text on your list.

One last bump