/v/ - Video Games

Why has slavland started loving this game so much recently? Not that I'm complaining.

>>16350453

>Recent years.

Huh? HoMM has been huge in Slavland for as long as I have been on the internet? And I'm speaking as an almost 40 wizard.

I tried this game several time but It never seems to click with me for some reason

Download links

https://pastebin.com/raw/5hxUd7vC

>>16350466

Recently? Slavland has been playing this accursed piece of shit since the vanilla version released in 199-fucking-9.

t. Slavnigger who is but 3 months away from his 2 decade anniversary of playing this game.

>>16350642

youve got some weird taste anon

>>16350642

>>16350495

>twitch

>>>/reddit/

>>16350642

Nice job killing your own thread OP.

>>16350642

streamers are cancer

>>16350652

the one thing beatifull in this world is that everyone can find something for his tastes.

I tried HOMM 2. It was fun until the level where you get zerged by AI.

>>16350761

There's a mod remake of the campaign of HoMM2 in the engine of 3, so you could try that.

I'm not sure if it's out yet, but there were some trailers for it.

>>16350782

I might check that out unless they use 3's art. I went with 2 just because I preferred the artstyle to 3s. It had this light hearted fantasy theme you don't see anymore.

>>16350786

I think they reused/remade all of the sprites from 2.

>>16350840

That's actually kind of cool, I remember liking 3 when I played it as a kid but when I ran into 5 it just didn't click with me. Never played any of the others.

>>16350874

1 and 2 are obsolete.

4 is mediocre and very different from the others.

5 is hit and miss. Personally, I liked what it had to offer.

6 is a disaster.

7 I know nothing about. Supposedly it bombed as well.

>>16350704

>waifu

>3D

I expected nothing from WRPGniggers but damn

Ultimately the main reason 3 surpassed the others was it was the only one where the lazy dev niggers made random maps. I actually liked the mechanics for 4 (fuzzy memory, but heroes became part of the combat right) The great mystery is why the devs didn't know what made 3 so great to those who had played it a long time.

>>16351038

I don't think the Slavs could tell you why they like it so much either, it's not even limited to just Slavs it seems all of eastern Europe loves the game. They even have some indie clones like Eador (I have the first one) which is essentially just more of HoMM3.

>>16351077

Here in Poland we used to have a shitton of magaiznes that gave out vidya games on discs as an addition, and not just demos but full versions on those games. Some of the games that we live were usualy sold pretty cheap in this way, or just at bargain bins which got us into stuff like Gothic and shit. Many people feel those games are connected to their childhoods.

>>16351100

You mean 4?

>>16351077

it is simple to understand how to play, the mechanics are not autistic level. slav IQ = ok

imho, random maps + artifact sets is what makes 3 the best, if 4 had these two things it would have been a proper contender for 3.

also slavs love toaster games because they are poor as fuck.

>>16350944

how do i get this map

>>16351076

Maybe this isn't true for HoMM, but buffing retarded AI by giving it a gigantic advantage always feels like a slog. I kinda saw what was going on and my experience with shit like this kinda turned me off from it. Although, maybe it's not so bad in HoMM, since a lot of those games gave the AI infinite resources and I haven't really seen that in HoMM.

Dungeon is best.

Me and my bro still play this. Some of the best moments in my teenage years was beating hard ai with him and raging at ruskies for cheating in mp

>>16350761

Easy.

>choose evil

>go barbarian

Rush the ai and scout the map as soon as possible. Go for orcs and trolls, amass shooter stacks and win. You'll never beat the computer fairly so cheese it.

>>16351030

what's the addon?

>>16350883

>6 is a disaster.

They fixed it after 2 years, now the only problem is that Ubishit steam-clone vomit which crash the game randomly. It's way more fun now, but since Ubisoft killed it before arrive it lacks many planned and promised content like the wizard faction (was teased several time as a free dlc). I'm not kidding when i say it's good, it has the good cocnepts of H5 while tries it best to be like H3. The new features are good too, making the annoying shit like travelling through the whole fucking map for reinforcement or getting forced to go full earth expert for townportal is fixed with the "change city to your factions city" and the caravan feature. The different weapons with unlockable skills are nice too, so as how the heroes skill tree is different by classes not by just stats. The story is meh at best but atleast we have Sandro (who somehow makes every pussy wet).

Meanwhile 7 is not just a clusterfuck, but straigth out starts with the MUH REFUGEES save the orks from nazi humans. Literally your first mission is to save the refugee caravan arriving from the sea, then you must (as a human) purge other human territories to make place for your din du nuffin orks.

Just fucking check that shit out!

>>16351942

>Meanwhile 7 is not just a clusterfuck, but straigth out starts with the MUH REFUGEES save the orks from nazi humans. Literally your first mission is to save the refugee caravan arriving from the sea, then you must (as a human) purge other human territories to make place for your din du nuffin orks.

Spellforce 1 was ahead of the curve on cucking out. They had the same exact plotline in the first expansion except back in 2003.

>>16351993

Those pics are hilarious to me.

Also OP has been living under a rock and should download Horn of the Abyss mod because it's the tits.

>>16351077

It's because 3 gives an unprecedented degree of freedom to approach things however you like and doesn't interrupt you with cutscenes.

It's as pure as a game can get.

>>16351942

>They fixed it after 2 years

Might be worth a pirate.

>7 is not just a clusterfuck, but straigth out starts with the MUH REFUGEES

I remember hearing bad things about it, but I didn't think it would be that bad.

>>16351975

The hell.

Really?

I played 1 but never finished it, I had no idea they went full retard like that.

>>16351993

homm in smash when

>>16351975

Spellforce 1 was about being a rune warrior. They tend to leave their race loyalties behind, along with many other things, when they get converted. Don't get your panties in a bunch. Orcs are useless shit in that game as a faction anyway.

>>16350940

this one?

>>16352112

>>16350940

Stop requesting and posting porn in threads and getting them deleted, you cunts.

>>16352228

Not them, but Its thread related also there's only like 2 videos on Pornhub featuring HOMM3 unfortunately

>>16352253

That doesn't matter. This stupid shit got my mass effect thread pruned. Fucking morons with your garbage-tier porn, go watch it somewhere else.

>>16352281

But Mass Effect is mostly porn nowadays? so it will inevitably fill up an ME thread

HOMM3 is pure and clean

>>16352316

you started it m8 >>16350642

>>16351643

>>16351646

Both wrong. Necropolis is best.

Can we all at least agree that Inferno is complete garbage?

Hearing the name of any HOMM game pisses me off because one of the reasons (((Gabe Jew))) pushed Steam and digital distribution is because he is a fat sloven that can't take care of his belongings so he broke HOMM 3 or 4 four times and had to keep rebuying it and used that as an argument against physical copies.

>>16352281

just fucking use /vg/

>>16352825

stronghold is really good on smaller maps

mainly because

>turn 5 behemots

>>16352888

Heroes is not a game where snowballing is limited where the better you perform the greater are penalties. Progress is linear and early game success directly transfers into the big power of late game.

>>16352281

>Rule 3: Not-safe-for-work pictures are allowed (including loli), but only if spoilered

That said >3dpd. Also, you're agitating the thread, so you'd be more likely to get the banhammer than anyone else ITT

>>16352825

>>16352864

I think the best players all consider conflux and necro to be the best towns. You're really underestimating how strong it is to reliably have access to earth magic with their university. Also, tower is by far the weakest. Terrible heroes, weak, overly expensive units.

Sandro is my fave character. Implosion is key.

Killing huge stacks of angels and demo s with implosion then swinging with 1700 skeletons was such a joy in my teens. Fuck it maybe ill boot it up right now…

>>16353102

> Implosion is key.

I prefer Crag Hack with his offence specialty and tactics, mass haste/prayer and/or some speed artifact. Getting to attack with all your troops, including behemoths and wolf raiders, on turn 1 is often backbreaking.

>>16353114

If you have something really fast, like an archangel, in Crag's army and this kind of setup, you often get to wipe massive forces without losses.

>>16353089

Tower can have amazing starts though, especially with Solmyr or the Haste bitch.

>>16353102

Sorcery is a lot less powerful than you think it is, even on a specialist like Sandro. A lvl20 Sandro will have his Implosion do 1300dmg, compared to 1150 with a hero with Sorcery, or 1000 with a hero without Sorcery.

>>16353114

>>16353117

Same goes with that Archery specialist from Castle, especially with the Golden Bow, or the Bless/Prayer specialists from Castle.

>>16353202

>Sorcery is a lot less powerful than you think

There used to be an excellent picture with the skill tiers but it has been edited so many times to fit personal tastes that it is unrecognisable and unreliable now.

Anyway, intelligence is much better than sorcery for anyone who wants to do damage with spells.

>>16353089

>Also, tower is by far the weakest

Inferno exists.

>>16353403

conflux and necro>>fortress and stronghold>castle, cove and dungeon>inferno>>tower

>>16353451

Tower at least has strong units including 3 shooters. Inferno has mostly shit units and they are just as expensive.

>>16352864

I've seen people that claim Fortress is even worse than Inferno or at least definitely one of the weaker ones.

>>16353575

Don't trust them they probably have 0% Slavic blood, Inferno will always be the shittiest town.

>>16353646

>skeletons

Vampire lords are the most broken unit in the game, I think. They're absurdly OP. If you put 20-30 of them in the corner of a battlefield against large level 6-7 neutrals, you can often beat lots of them without losses.

>>16351076

The AI of HoMM 2 is known to be a massive cheater though.

>>16353575

Most towns have an ace up their sleeve of some kind.

Inferno's main problem is its very low health pool while its only advantage is demon farming which is very time-consuming and ineffective.

>>16353659

They are stupidly good yes. The combination of them and skeleton snowballing is why Necro is so fucking good.

>>16353646

>Ghost dragons

They're not as nearly as bad as zombies and wraiths, but otherwise Necro has some top tier units.

>>16353575

Fortress is either good on small maps where wyverns/serpent flies can easily take poorly defended castles, or they can get disgustingly strong with a few specific artifacts, mainly +speed ones and anti-magic ones to keep their slow as fuck units from being CCd. And then there's Tazar in long games.

>>16353664

>most towns have an ace up their sleeve

Necro is skeletons, Vampire Lords, and Raise Dead. Tower is Cyra and Neela Haste specialist makes your Golems/Nagas travel across the field on turn 1 without Tactics or speed items. Dungeon has Portal of Summoning shenanigans and strong overall units. Castle has strong units across the board, more map movement and quite a few strong heroes, especially Edric, Orrin, and Adela. Ramparts has knife-ear archers and the treasury. Inferno has fire spells, and Armageddon/Efreeti cheese. Stronghold has god damn Behemoths and Thunderbirds, and of course Crag Hack. And Conflux is Conflux.

>>16353674

The best use of Zombies is to repel random enemy attacks through sheer resilience. Have some secondary or tertiary hero defend with 400-500 zombies for hilarity.

>>16352080

>I played 1 but never finished it, I had no idea they went full retard like that.

It kinda was prophetic. There's even a part where the elves where going to use Winter-Chan to wipe out everyone.

>>16352098

Bullshit. Go replay the Breath of Winter campaign. The first few levels where about saving muh oppressed Orc refugees (they're literally called refugees) from the evil nazi elves by smuggling them into Sweden with the snow elves. This expansion predicted the future.

>>16353850

Maybe I should get into the expansions because I'm curious, I stopped at the main story which was basically you being a 4d pawn, literally.

>>16353927

I loved the main campaign until you get the Orcs but hated the expansions. The thing about the main campaign is you always where unlocking more tools to play with, buildings, units, etc. None of that exists in the expansions. They're not really worth it unless you're really into story, which the winter campaign has a ton of twists and turns. I don't know if they're good I just remember there where tons of twists and turns. The gameplay was too much of a chore. They did this thing where you don't get towers for most of the campaign, while the enemy units infinitely pour in. The early stages are really fucking tedious and I only beat them by cheesing fucking hard.

>>16353575

There is nothing more disgusting than a high stack gorgo bulls. Those fuckers eat everything if aren't handled quickly. The faction other units with their debuffs and poison attack are very nasty too!

Meanwhile if you get mass fire resistance against Inferno then you technically cheese all of their feature. The only thing what makes them appeal is their mini townportal building, but it's utter shit comperad to master earth spell townportal.

I'm pretty sure that aside from necro and conflux (both of which are typically banned in vanilla play), Castle is by far the strongest town. It does a good job at feeling fair though, nothing about it screams broken. It's got good mage tower spells, good heroes, all of the units are well costed and nothing is near-useless to buy (like dwarves, zombies or golems, which aren't even worth the gold unless you're trying to defend a push on your castle), and stables are a great town special building.

In HotA it's a bit more balanced since a lot of the weaker towns got buffed while castle stayed the same, but with the gutting of conflux and necro castle truly is top dog.

There's a website showing the data of thousands of games played online, but I can't find it right now.

>>16352864

There's no shit towns really, but to me Necro is the worst. You just don't get that many skeletons at the beginning unless playing a random map with hundreds of level 1s to fight. And 3 liches are not enough to clear the map reliably early on. Of course depends on a bunch of factors like map size, starting resources, etc…

>>16354105

Necro shines most on L or XL maps, but even if it's a smaller map with lower size neutral stacks, just rush to vampire lords. A stack of 15-20 vampire lords can beat most vaults without taking any losses, you just zoom around the map collecting wyverns and money to crush your opponent before he can build up anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2_XibBJHO8

Seriously, this shit is broken.

>>16351942

>>16351975

and wasn't that also from like warcraft 1 or 2?

>>16355753

If memory serves right then WC2 told the story how the orks ruined their own realm. WC3 made them full refugees, technically retconning them inti native americans.

WC1 orks were plain zergs, but im not sure. I stopped carrying about Warcraft after Forzen Throne and wiped my memory when WoW came arround.

>>16355768

Brief summary:

WC1 - Orcs win, Azeroth humans flee

WC2 - Humans reconquer Azeroth

WC2 BTDP - Orc homeland of Draenor is destroyed. Surviving Orcs are put in internment camps.

It can be argued that WC3 Orcs aren't really a retcon, as they were under demonic influence for 1 and 2.

>>16355751

What? Estates are tier 4 buildings and you can rush to VLs by day 5, then pick up your castle afterwards. Week 2 day 1 you can have 12 vampire lords by doing nothing except building stuff every day.

Sure there are some monsters they can't drain life from, but against 90% of neutral stacks they're just obscene.

>>16355688

Crag Hack usually ends up overkilling shit with his Behemoth and Thunderbird stacks, but the AI will tend to CC the fuck out of those two stacks. Meaning Crag has to spend his spells removing CC, otherwise he's stuck with shitty, squishy units that will incur incredible casualties. Tazar will start slower but once he has a few levels, his creatures will just stop dying. Fortress creatures are also a hell of a lot more powerful, and he generally gets access to LOLTELEPORT, which is god tier for Hydras and Gorgons, and still useful for Basilisks and Gnolls. Generally speaking, his creatures getting CCd won't matter as much since he has strong back ups, and Mass Cure. And like ever Armorer specialist, he scales to ridiculous levels.

I still remember the first time I fought a high level Armorer specialist. I was playing a magic Tower hero on some XL map, I had a fuck ton of mana, Intelligence, Dungeon mana buff, every spell in the game and expert in all 4 schools of magic, and an army three times the size of the armorer specialist I fought. Armorer specialist was around lvl 40. I was around lvl 50. I almost lost the fight. I remember chain cloning my fuckhuge Titan stack and having each attack basically bounce off of the enemy's stacks. Neela's god damn Gnolls were winning against my Naga Queens. In the end I only won because she ran out of mana, which let me Blind the rest of her Hydras and resurrect enough of my troops and stack enough Disruptor Rays and other debuffs to bring down Godzilla. The opening shots from 400+ Titans only killing 10 or so Chaos Hydras is just wrong. And it made me convert to Armorer Specialists.

>>16355784

The upgrade requires 10 gems and 10 crystal, and on Expert difficulty (what I play online on) you start with only 4, so you have to find those first, and with utter SHIT level 1-4 (no shooters, vampires without upgrade suck), it's hard to beat guards without a lot of losses. Often I've had lots of trouble even being able to move on the map without going for liches first, because every shitter would just beat me up. But as I mentioned before, it depends heavily on the map and difficulty.

>>16355881

Fair enough, if you have to wait for week 2 vampires it's a lot worse, but still good enough to swing the game immediately as soon as you get critical mass (20ish).

>>16353575

Fortress is underrated imo, problem is that they are hard to play because most of their units are slow as shit. However, dragon flies are fast as fuck and especially if you play on JC you can farm wyverns like crazy. Additionally Beastmasters are the 2nd best might class only because their stat growth is a bit shittier than Barbarians' imo. When comparing secondaries Beastmasters have higher chance of getting logistics and have no chance of getting shitty fire magic, but they can't get tactics as easily as Barbarians and they can barely learn Air magic. Though that is also kind of a boon as they've got the easiest time of learning Earth magic as a result.

>>16356063

How are you excecuting the strategy, by the way? What I was doing was having one hero with JUST VLs, and the other with all the other stuff and they both cleared the map.

Anyone interested in arranging a game, by the way?

>>16356114

IMO, the problem with Fortress is it's hard to clear the map without losses (but easier than with Necro before getting VLs). Lizardmen are pretty weak (compare to elves, marksmen, or gremlins…) and Wyverns are the weakest L6. Forget about giving a hero just two Wyverns for sweeping the map (and that's a strategy I liked with Efreet or Black Knights). However if handled well, it is powerful in endgame.

>>16356138

Pretty much, the early game is real hell to them because you can't kite worth a shit due to the molasses speed your units operate at, you better hope you get that Slow and Earth magic ASAP. Tazar is also a great boon to the Fortress line-up, easily in the Top 3 best Heroes in the game, but the problem with him compared to Hack is that you advance much more slowly than you do with Hack.

>>16356212

HotA made Stronghold quite a bit better too. You don't need Crystals to get Cyclopes anymore (though you need more to build the upgraded dwelling to balance it) and the new Wolf Raider Picket banks also give you free Cyclopes when you beat them.

>>16356238

Ha, yeah I totally forgot about the Wolf Raider Pickets, thanks for reminding me. They do make the strat that much stronger if you happen to find them.

>>16356238

20 crystal for a cyclops cavern was stupid, so I'm glad about the change. The wood-cost for ogre fort is also pretty steep, especially since ogres are useless. In the campaigns, I usually got access to cyclops a month or two after getting ancient behemoths.

i once watched a youtube video where some russian inferno player beat another player against overwhelming odds by teleporting his archdevils to the corner of the map next to his ammo cart after his opponent used all of his mana killing everything else he had, and i think the opponent's ranged units were dead too

where is that video?

>>16350786

Yeah, the sprites in HoMM2 were so much better than the pre-rendered trash in HoMM3.

>>16350597

>puny ass window opens up for combat

>>16356157

>>16356138

>>16358715

Flies aren't bad either. They're a bit pricey for a fragile early game troop, but you can be extremely cost-effictive with them. Dragon flies are faster than almost everything in the game. Extremely powerful. Seriously, if you're new to the game, you should learn how combat works. You can get much more value out of your stuff if you understand the importance of speed,waiting and stacks with 1 troops that are used to soak up retaliations. Also, it's important to know that slower creatures hamper the movement rate of your heroes. It's rare that you want to bother with with building and adding slow stuff to your main army.

>>16352864

>>16352471

>ITT: brainlets

Inferno is great because it requires only ore and wood, which you have near your base on any map by default. Exceptions being maybe dungeon.

Fortress is the best faction because you can field a last tier unit in under a week, everything else doesn't really matter.

>>16358747

Behemoths are easier to get and stronger than hydras, mate. This is pretty irrelevant, though. You shouldn't rush for either. Thunderbirds are better units than behemoths, and Wyverns are much better than hydras. This changes somewhat when you can afford to upgrade the level 7 troops, but for the first few weeks, the fast fliers are much more useful.

>>16358737

Probably a false positive. If you want, I can give you a copy of my homm3.

>>16358737

I didn't get my copy from that place and it didn't ping any anti-virus. The HD thing did cause one false positive, which was weird since it was straight from the official mod site and not a copycat. I don't suppose you have any mysterious connections after installation?

>>16358838

>clones of heroes

Heroes is a Warlord clone…

>>16358838

On small maps behemoths exactly don't work. They just get shot down. I don't think it's worth going for level 7s in small maps at all.

>>16358934

I think you pretty much didn1t read what he just posted… by the way nice reddit spacing

It's true that on smaller maps you shouldn't plan for level 7 creatures. But behemoths are so fucking cheap and strong you literally able to rush ahead and gain enough advantage to fuck up everyone with them on smaller maps. It's a quality vs quantity scenario where the behemot has is the quality (opposed when there are other level 7s where he is inferior)

>>16358868

It's from Horn of the Abyss mod

Alright, so, I really like HOMM 3, but I also suck giant dick at it. Can't even beat the normal AI. Does anyone have any tips or a guide so I can not be complete garbage at this game? Specifically, I would like tips on making money, since I always run out.

>>16359098

Having leftover money is generally not a good thing if you have good things to spend it on, so that's not your problem. Stop being passive, start being aggressive. The AI has some gamey reactions to your hero positioning. Always have 1-2 dedicated hero armies depending on map size, every other hero is essentially a relay for troops or going around collecting resources each turn when they're not basically on garrison duty. Slow but strong units are typically defensive and best served protecting the city you put them in. You have way less time then you think you have, every turn counts.

That's about it at the top of my head.

>>16359098

If you're running out of money that usually means you're buying too many dwellings and don't have enough income to recruit all the troops every week.

Identify good units and whether their upgraded versions are worth getting (ignore the rest early), buy them up every week and build up your economy.

Also choose gold over experience in chests and don't lose units to neutral fights if you can help it.

Alternatively, have a bait stack that you sacrifice so your best troops don't get hurt.

Earth magic is the best skill in the game and slow is the best spell in the game.

Air magic and haste are second best.

Be mindful of a hero's specialisation.

The rest you can figure out on your own.

>>16359393

>what is Mass Prayer

>what is Mass Curse

>>16358727

If you're trying to take out hard neutral stacks with flies in your armies, one of the best things you can do is split 1 fly off on its own and have it put up weakness and eat up a counterattack, then the rest your troops can rush in without worrying too much about casualties.

>>16359169

Nothing is worse than playing Necro, using Tactics to make a nice pile of bodies stacked up in a corner to defend your Liches, and have the other guy open up with Expert Berserk.

>>16359758

Prayer is only really worth casting with Loynis though, too expensive expensive for too small of an effect otherwise. And Mass Curse efficacy varies wildly depending on what you're fighting.

>>16359098

Get good at combat.

Rush a strong unit that lets you capture mines/vaults with 0 losses, then build your gold generation after.

Expand quickly.

Use 1-2 main heroes for combat, and use the other 6 slots to ferry units to/from your main heroes and to hit flags and pick up resources so your main heroes don't lose movement.

Pick gold over xp, except maybe in campaign missions.

Learn which spells and skills are good. Expert Slow, Haste, Town Portal, etc are typically a better use of mana than magic missile and fireball. Diplomacy and Logistics are way better than scholar and learning, etc.

>>16362445

Demon farming is very strong online.

>>16362445

HotA attempted to make them not so shit but it tiptoed around the issue. Gogs being able to target any hex helps a TON, and negative luck actually works as intended (plus arch devils give -2 luck). Aside from that though I'd say just reduce the cost of some of their units by a bit and they'd probably be fine. It's very risky to buff them more than that because demon farming can very quickly become abusable to the extent of vanilla necromancy.

Actually, I guess their heroes need a bit of help as well. All the starting specialties are pretty much trash except for demons, and the might heroes have a higher chance of pulling power/knowledge on each level compared to some other town heroes.

>>16362554

Demoniacs are probably my favorite class. High chance of logistics, tactics, offense, armorer…(AFAIK). And the power/knowledge thing IS A POSITIVE - I mean you can barely clear a map with 1 SP - your expert slow means shit in that case. Generally, having a lot of SP / K is a good thing for might heroes up until a certain point.

>>16362764

Demoniacs are the class that has the highest chance of getting both Offense AND Armorer. I prefer Overlords though, they've got the same stat growth, but Overlords have as high of a chance of getting Logistics and Offense, while also having a higher chance of getting Tactics and Earth. Gunnar and Shakti are also MVPs

So anyhow, looking for a good game similar to Heroes 3 that I haven't played. Any suggestions?

Are there any creatures that are just not worth bothering with?

I've always been used to the idea of your hero having all the creatures from the town he recruits from. But sometimes it can seem pretty damn costly to recruit absolutely everything, especially when there are other ways that the empty slot could be filled.

>>16362966

Depends heavily on map size (medium maps I've sometimes played with just THREE creatures out of 7). But in general:

Castle - Monks kinda suck but they're still shooters. Probably gotta ignore either Griffins or Swordsmen (mostly Griffins since they're frail) since the main strategy is still defending Marksmen.

Rampart - usually ignore Pegasi - frail and don't add much to the strategy of defending elves.

Inferno - Hell Hounds get sacked for Demons.

Tower - ugh, they're just so expensive. You will do well with just focusing on Master Gremlins and defending them, honestly. Fuck genies except a few masters for casting spells perhaps. Nagas too fucking expensive and without upgrade are not that great (low speed).

Dungeon - manticores suck

Necro - Zombies suck. Wights even more. And don't get me started on bone dragons…

Stronghold - Discussed before ITT. I just go for Cyclops and screw Rocs and Behemoths.

Fortress - they are all good but money is scarce and you will usually be focusing on Gnolls, Lizards and Wyverns.

Conflux - heh, on medium maps I go only for the first 3 levels unless I have spare money. Storm Elementals can clear like every walker ever.

But the above is mostly for medium maps where I never even go for level 7s (game ends earlier and two or three behemoths / hydras / giants don't do shit in FB). On XL you take everything regardless.

>>16363038

And let me clarify that on medium maps it is way better to upgrade your early troops than get a few Manticores and such. Choose what you will focus on and upgrade those.

>>16362873

King's Bounty Armored Princess? It's super hard, but lots of fun.

>>16363206

King's Bounty the Legend is also good, though I prefer Armored Princess.

>>16363038

>>16363052

I've had moderate success on Medium maps getting to higher unit tiers because their statballs are just better than the lower units or upgraded units.

It's funny that you say Nagas kinda suck, since I've actually done well with them. Popping Mass Haste at the start of combat (which you should be doing anyways) makes them fantastically fast, and with 5 solo stacks of Genies, you can buff them for days. It's great.

>>16363240

Just like how you give a good explain, no unit is shit if you can handle it's handicap. The problem is that inferno has many units which need handheld or easy to put into a disadvantage. Like if you cancel the fire damage then most of the units suffer greatly. Meanwhile other dont suffer from this. Just check the Tower for example. You can shut down all their melee units with mass slow, but ding-dong the archers will still fuck you up. Or the genie will cancel out your shenanigans with a haste buff. Oh and golems can be upgraded further into magic immunity with special buildings, so double fuck you.

>>16363271

Golems are one of the most cost efficient and the strongest tier 3 unit, by far. Golems can go toe-to-toe with pretty much every tier 4 creatures and win, handily. With Mass Haste, Tactics, and speed artifacts, your golems will reach the other side of the battlefield on turn 1 and wreck everything. Generally speaking, Golems do suck, but as you said, it doesn't mean they can't be used to great effect. Same goes with a lot of other units: Frenzy on Hellhounds, Griffons with Fire Shield, Wraith mana bombing, etc, etc.

>>16363240

Well, map setups and amount of resources vary. But I think you'd have to give something up in that case anyway. Maybe not buy gargoyles which suck anyway.

>>16365409

They don't really help to clear the map though. Cyclops do it easily.

>>16365431

If you wait with a fast troop, you get to move last in the turn and first in the following turn. That means you get to double move, and that's very powerful. Rocs are absurdly good at clearing the map due to this.

>>16365431

>Cyclops do it easily.

Cyclops aren't bad, but it's hard to get a meaningful number of them, and the range penalty is punishing. You can do much more with four thunderbirds than with the same number of cyclops.

>>16365452

How would they do against, say, a pack of Ogres? 2 Cyclops would probably clean them up before they even reach you.

>>16365464

Cyclops don't do that much damage. 2 of them wouldn't kill 19 ogres before they reach your troops. I'm not sure about the birds. They'd only get hit when the ogres retaliate. If the ogres are split up into several groups, the birds should be able to wipe them without losses.

>>16365476

Week 1 you have 3 Rocs while I have 2 Cyclops. I doubt you'd even win the fight against 19 Ogres, honestly.

>>16365480

It's cheap to upgrade rocs, man. I'd have 3 thunderbirds. And if you don't believe me, try it yourself in the game.

>>16365485

The point is, I get a bunch of free hits until the ogres reach me, and you don't.

>>16365485

I mean, thunderbirds are great, but 3 may be cutting it too close. 4 should be the number. You want to hit hard with your double attacking troop so that subsequent the retaliation is weak. Also, even with the cheaper cyclops cavern, it's very hard to get cyclops in the first week on higher difficulties, I'd imagine. You'd have those one-eyed beats on the second week.

>>16365497

But when they reach you, you're dead. I'll just fly away to a corner of the map and wait.

>>16365510

Fuck it, I'm intrigued now. We should do a test on what kind of setup would actually do better.

>>16365574

You can sacrifice stacks of 1 Goblin to eat up counters for the Rocs. IE Rocs wait > Goblin attack > Rocs attack > Roc flies away > rinse and repeat. Also, if your army is much weaker than the neutrals, the neutrals will have multiple stacks, which will make it far easier for the Rocs to 1 shot a small stack and run away the next turn. Having a very weak army is also an exceptionally good way to clear neutrals with Necromancers: bring 1 Skeleton and Death Ripple the 6-7 stacks of neutrals. Dump the extra skelies on your pack mule, rinse and repeat for no casualty neutral clearing.

>>16366061

Listen to this anon, he knows his shit. Even in HotA where getting a cyclops power stack is much easier due to no crystal cost for standard dwelling+freebie cyclopes from wolf raider picket it's quite frankly a terrible mistake to pass up on thunderbirds, especially since they're fast as fuck which gives you an edge as you can cast a spell if you need to right away in the majority of cases AND they're flying units as well.

>>16366131

But I've won many online games completely ignoring Rocs and Behemoths, so it can't be that terrible. Even against people who had a bunch of level 7s while I had none. But the biggest benefit is against the map.

>>16351693

Not sure if you're still here, but I asked him about this. He told me he runs ERA, WOG, and an HD mod. Also apparently this game doesn't run well on modern setups and throws errors sometimes.

>>16366130

What are some good maps? Haven't checked any custom maps in a long, long time. Only type of map I dislike are the ones where there's 20 entrances to your area and you're constantly bombarbed with 5-6 enemy heroes running around at any given time.

>>16365409

they are also fast as fuck, which helps with your overall logistics since as we all know, heroes speed is calculated based on the slowest unit in the army

and as we all know, war is won by logistics

>>16368129

>>16366130

>tfw too autistic to play most maps

It just rustles me when there's random things in a terrain it doesnt fit in at all like say inferno dwellings in a fucking swamp of all things! Also those +1 luck altars and such at "every other step"…

>>16370019

Just pretend Inferno changes the landscape to be more comfortable.

>>16373118

>birds and nyxes

>underwhelming

Come on, man. Nyxes are great, and the birds are fast and cheap, so not bad at all.

>>16374964

First aid could heal the entire army after every turn and it would probably still be shit. Resurrection could be fun, or make it so that it increases the health of all units like the vial of lifeblood.

Estates is great on secondary heroes and finding a witch hut with it is amazing. Doesn't really need changed.

Scouting is also okay to have on one throwaway hero that you just put a single fast unit on before throwing into enemy territory. Visions would be a good addition I suppose.

Eagle eye should just be removed. There's no way to make it useful while also making it make sense in a flavor standpoint.

I'd rather have learning removed entirely instead of reworking it. It could give +50% exp and it would still be garbage because you're wasting a secondary slot on it, and because of the sharp xp curve, you're only ever going to get maybe two levels over what you would without it. The suggestion you put out is kind of bad because it disincentivizes going for upgrade buildings early because they might be worth more later, which isn't good game design. Not bashing the suggestion mind you, just reiterating that it really is a bad secondary skill.

>>16374964

Estates and Scouting are OK for secondary heroes who you just use for scouting and bitchwork like transferring new units to your main hero.

how do i git gut at it?

>>16375147

How would you rate your skill level? If you can't really say anything but "I'm bad" did you beat any campaigns or single scenarios? What do you have problems with?

>>16375147

Playing Restoration of Erathia is a good way to get started.

>>16375155

i always play custom scenarios, 2 enemy cpus, normal. biggest problem is telling the strength of the enemies, like what the fuck horde of gnomes mean? can i attack the enemy hero? etc. i buy second hero at the start and explore map with them, dont attack anything until i buy some units later. capitol is the priority when comes to buildings, upgrades comes last. dunno what else

>>16375279

Dude, you can look up what unit numbers mean I can't believe you've got problems with that, horde is 50-99. You'll be able to judge what fights to take and what fights not to take once you get a bit more experienced. I also recommend you learn (if you haven't yet) the power of waiting in combat. Also, capital rush is really good for a beginner, but once you get better you should be able to identify which creature types you'd rather have available on week 1 instead.

Also, >>16375190 gives good advice, you should play RoE campaigns, they're pretty easy and are a good introduction to how to play the game.

>>16375279

Get the HD mod (not the official HD version, it's shit). Amongst a million other QOL changes, it tells you how many monsters are in a horde, increases screen resolution so you can see more info at once, simplies buying and splitting armies, it's great in so many ways.

Early game your hero will be weak, try to use archers and beat up on slow neutral stacks like dwarves and golems. Let's say you're rampart and you have centaurs and grand elves. Put your grand elves at the top hex, split your centaurs into a bunch of stacks of 1 and have the single centaur stacks shield for the archers and main stack of centaurs. If the enemy units break through, then attack with your large centaur stack. If the enemy has lots of stacks, slow and blind will prevent them from ever reaching you. Once you clear out some small stacks and claim mines around the map, you'll likely start having your town built up further. Prioritize speedy stacks, and only buy them once you can buy enough when the stack will hit critical mass - one unicorn doesn't do much except die to an enemy stack, but if you have 10 unicorns they can kill a lot of enemy units without fear of retaliation.

Basically be as cost efficient as you possibly can.

>>16375279

That's just a lack of general game knowledge.

You're going to have to put in a good number of hours playing this to get a basic idea of how strong each monster is and what you can and can't take on with your current forces.

It'll come naturally after a while, just go play the RoE campaign, it's seriously the best place to start.

>>16374964

what if eagle eye let you see what spells the opponent knows?

>>16375140

this. logistics win wars

t.napoopeon

>>16375935

it would be still shit. consider this: how many spells that are actually good enough to be used are there in the game? not enough. you can just guess that enemy has slow/haste/bless and will use it. and you will be always right.

also, even with knowledge about enemy spells there does not exist a way to counter them.

its like having a large rock thrown at your face- you can see it coming but you cannot do anything to prevent that

>>16376172

There's orb of inhibition and some other artifacts.

>>16370554

Spamming Magic Arrow to kill 6 out of 250 Pikemen per turn while moving my single Gold Dragon back and forth is not my idea of fun.

>>16352949

What's this?

>>16363038

>usually ignore Pegasi

great for scout heroes due to their speed

also good for flying up against a shooter stack and waiting

I never use dwarves or dendroids except for home defense

>>16374796

what all changes did HotA make?

>Because flux and necro got nerfed in HotA

>>16383706

New upcoming town for HotA, the factory. Steampunk-esque style town/units.

>>16383767

http://heroes.thelazy.net/wiki/Horn_of_the_Abyss_(Documentation)

Major changes:

All necromancy effectively halved, galthran (the hero that specialized in skeletons) is banned. Slight buffs to other necro things to compensate, but overall a massive nerf.

Conflux nerfed heavily across the board. Firebirds much weaker, cost of units and buildings increased.

Minor changes to several other towns, check the documentation.

>>16383767

Well there are lots of strats. That's the good thing about this game. I like keeping Battle Dwarves on my main to defend elves.

are there any good mods for homm 3? I haven't played this shit in ages

>>16385405

>HD Mod (not the official from Ubishit)

>Heroes of the Abyss (HotA)

>Wake of Gods (WoG)

>>16385432

*Horn of the Abyss, fuck i dont know what did i jsut drank. Sorry!

>>16384304

>Galthran (the hero that specialized in skeletons) is banned

Is he still chooseable in custom games / vs AI?

>>16384304

>New upcoming town for HotA, the factory. Steampunk-esque style town/units.

Wow can't wait for another imbalanced Tier 1 town, at least Cove will have competition now.

>>16389630

>cove

>overpowered

It's solidly mid-high tier, but it's nowhere near as strong as vanilla necro or conflux, or even as strong as castle.

>>16389690

The meme that vanilla necro is OP really needs to die.

LV 1 - Average. Only relies on there being a lot of them, but the amount you can get from the map is underwhelming. Certain random maps have hundreds of level 1 monsters on the map to farm skeletons on, and that's seemingly where the meme came from.

LV 2 - Absolute shit.

LV 3 - See above.

LV 4 - Unupgraded is weak. Upgraded is the only thing "OP" about necro.

LV 5 - Good. But first and only shooter being level five SUCKS.

LV 6 - Great.

LV 7 - Bad.

>>16389972

yeah, all these competitive optimizers don't know what they're talking about

>>16390641

optimize me bones

>>16390641

nah man faggots who only play campaign and single preset scenarios totally know what they're talking about, I mean it's only possible to farm on level 1 stacks am I right? Fighting level 2 or higher creatures is just impossible with your rapidly rising skeleton powerstack. Next you're gonna tell me that diplo is OP and should stay banned or some shit like that, I mean what am I gonna do with creatures who aren't even part of my town??? LMAO

>>16390641

They know how to play on their shitty maps which they've never ventured out of. You know I've been playing online for years, right?

The amount of times you can get a "skeleton powerstack" going is fucking low. Necro sucks.

>>16391014

The stack won't be "rapidly rising", Actually, you will be hard-pressed to beat anything on the map at all until you get either liches or VLs.

>>16389972

>>16385751

What I don't understand is galthran is banned, but the guy who specializes in vampires isn't? Wouldn't he be the most broken far and away?

>>16391587

>necro sucks

If you don't know how to take advantage of their strengths all the towns suck.

>>16391791

lots of people over on the 4chan /vr/ homm threads like it

>>16391735

>If you don't know how to take advantage of their strengths all the towns suck.

Yeah I agree. What I mean is it's balanced in vanilla.

>>16391831

fuck yeah catapult tennis

>>16381965

>Maybe heroes with it gain XP on meeting heroes of higher level.

That would yield marginal XP boosts in the early game and only be top tier late game. I think it's just fucked. There's no real way of fixing it. It's always going to be the worst skill in the game.

I was thinking of putting scholar in there, but is it really that bad? I mean sure, you need Advanced Wisdom to make it useful, you also need enough 3rd and 4th level spells (because those are the only ones that Scholar can teach to heroes without dip) to justify seeking out non spell-caster heroes that have a spellbook for some reason and enough mana to use them. Then you need to actually find those heroes and only then can utilize Scholar to its fullest extend. Oh wait…

Everyone shits on homm4 and justifiably so but one of the things it gets right are secondary skills.

>>16391950

Kek'd

>>16391791

The OC campaigns had pretty good stories, and the OST was damn good.

>>16391735

>but the guy who specializes in vampires isn't? Wouldn't he be the most broken far and away?

It basically boils down to Volkial's artillery skill vs Galthran's armor skill. While it's true that the Skeleton bonus outpaces the Vampire bonus the permanent reduction of all physical damage is what makes Galthran so good.

TIL Most of the Heroes 4 OST is taken from a Celtic samples collection and not original. I feel sad

>>16353664

Before Phoenixes, Archdevils used to be the fastest out of the gate - meaning if the other guy didn't have a fast unit with a speed artifact, Inferno players got the first spell cast and that could easily put the opponent's spell-casting purely on cleanup (dumping dispell or cure just to put units back into play). I always found playing Inferno meant never wasting a turn, just going in hard and trying to put the opponent on the backfoot asap.

>>16353757

> Castle heroes

Love me some Loynis. Mass Prayer on turn 1 meant he could punch far above his weight - the expertise in the spell didn't give much of an edge, just the fact he always started with the spell.

>>16354019

Yeah, but you have to get TP though - sometimes you go 4 castles deep and it never drops.

>>16406863

Archangels have 18 speed while Archdevils have 17.

<<16406875

>Dirty brown asshole

I never thought I'd miss the old pedobait posts that lead to that shit Turkish site

>>16410079

https://soundcloud.com/nyarcel/sets/amg-complete-celt

I think all these songs made it into the game as terrain music. Looks like only the town and battle musics are original.

>>16406514

The obscure Pirates of the Caribbean ARPG game uses the same Celtic music sample for the inn music. You might recognize this tune as HOMMIV's water music.

>>16410079

They also often reuse classical music pieces for some tracks in the HOMM and M&M OSTs, from M&MVI in particular you've got track related. The intro sounds similar to the the beginning of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, you know that part which everyone thinks is originally from the Dracula movies? The rest of the track sounds very similar to Albinoni's Adagio in G minor.

>>16409054

I like how all of the swords she has are different. Had to check that this was the case with original sprite as well.

>>16406877

Holy shit you're right. I had it wrong in my head all those years. Thank random guy.

>>16409054

post more fan art, that is one nice looking Naga

>>16413192

>9gag

>>16414380

I like the decision to go with a wild west approach to the town layout, but the units do look a little off. Also they didn't show if the L1 unit was ranged or melee, if they get L1+L2 ranged units it's going to be absolutely insane.

>>16414438

>>16414380

Yeah, I really like the design of the town.

>>16409054

sexy smug snek

>>16414438

>he doesn't know slav runes

It's upgraded halflings that can shoot.

>>16414438

>>16418411

No, it looks like it's the halflings, wonder why did they change the sprite.

>HoMM3 CIS championship

Heard someone talk about this. https://www.twitch.tv/msstudio

>>16428371

Ah, there's no english coverage. It's supposed to be a fairly big tourney that's held offline in Georgia. That's a shame.

>>16350453

>gotten popular in slavland in recent years

nigger 99% of all overhaul mods have the Slav Stamp of Approval™, we've been playing this shit since it came out

the only reason why it might be getting a surge in popularity is because people are getting nostalgic every half a decade or some shit