/vr/ - Retro Games

Last thread someone complained about expert level spells and expert wisdom. Nobody fucking understood what his initial complaint was.

>somehow get expert air magic
>hero still hasn't gotten 2nd tier wisdom

He was complaining about shit like that where he couldn't make the most of his expert air magic because that still wasn't offered yet and it was RNG.

>>3360478
And 2nd tier wisdom was just an example, don't know what he said specifically.

>>3360478
It seemed more like he was just asking because he didn't get it but I'm not sure what the complaint is. That's just the way the game is. Wisdom is an important skill necessary to cast advanced spells, that's why all the magic heroes other than Necromancers start with it. Expert Air Magic just represents your proficiency in that sphere. Even if you get shafted and never pick up Wisdom being able to mass cast low level spells is extremely useful so it's not like it was wasted.

>>3360502
Oh my mistake. There was a guy proposing a change to stop wisdom gating certain spells being cast and a guy who was completely clueless.

How do you leave some of your units out of battle in heroes 3? For example I can win a battle with my angels only, and don't want to deploy my archers. I could do this easily in 5/6 but I can't find the option in 3.

>>3360478
I was that guy.
I was complaining that a skill so important that even might heroes will probably get 99% of the time shouldn't be left to randomness since it can massively fuck up your hero if you don't get it on a reasonable level.

I always feel bad when a neutral packs offer to join you for free, but it's more useful to kill them for 200 xp.

>>3360598
You can't do that in HoMM3. Strategy of hiding units without magic resistance before each combat that you want to spam armageddon, and bringing them back after it would be way too broken. If you want to protect units until stack is sizeable enough to hold on on its own, keep them in castle for time being.

>>3360607
Magic heroes are already underpowered in most cases when compared to might ones, having that guaranteed starting wisdom skill is one of their few advantages, and you want to strip them down out of it by granting it for might heroes too? Then what's the point of even having magic guys? Also as other anon pointed out, having mass haste, mass slow or mass bless thanks to elemental skills on might hero that never learned wisdom is sometimes completely enough, especially when he has not enough mana to cast teleports and prayers for days

>>3360607
What do you mean? That you get offered Wisdom randomly?

It's not that hugely important, especially on smaller maps. You can easily beat almost anyone without Wisdom skill at all. Yep, a might hero might not get Wisdom. Guess why they're called "might".

Yep, Wisdom is good and all, but what do you need it so much for, that you think you already LOST without it? Broken spells like Fly/Dimension Door/Town Portal? Or elemental summoning spells and Implosion, which do shit if you don't have Power of at least 10? By the time you have enough Power, you will most probably have Expert Wisdom, unless you deliberately choose to advance something instead of it.

You probably say "Armageddon". Well, if you don't have Necro, Dungeon or Inferno towns, you won't get Armageddon in Mage Guilds at all. Even then the chance of acquiring it is slim (20% for Dungeon, 10% for the rest). Let alone that 3 out of 9 towns can't even build Mage Guild past lvl 3. What do you think, they're worst towns now?

>>3360598
Yep, you can't do that in HoMMIII. My advice: give your main hero a "satellite/squire" hero. Helps to not waste movement points flagging mines, picking up resources etc.

>>3360780
Necromancers start with necromancy instead of wisdom, though. So their casters have the potential to get fucked up pretty hard by RNG.

>>3360815
Small rush maps are boring. And yes, not having access to town portal on a larger map is a massive disadvantage.

>>3360829
> And yes, not having access to town portal on a larger map is a massive disadvantage.
I play without it for challenge, to me it's just unfair. In competitive multiplayer it's banned anyway so it's good to train. I also don't pick Diplomacy and other broken stuff.

>>3360857
How often/where do you even play multiplayer personally?

>>3360857
I don't intend to play multiplayer, especially not when it's no fun allowed everythin's banned.
No wonder everyone considers might heroes to be superior when you ban the best magic spells.

By the way, recently I beat Might and Magic VII, and it kind of made me think why the spells in HoMMIII are the way they are.

Before Heroes III came out in 1999, Might and Magic "returned" to players after a long hiatus (1993–1998), setting the scene for both series. For the first time in M&M, it started dividing magic into elemental schools, i.e. Fire, Air, etc. However, M&M also has 5 additional schools: Body, Mind, Spirit, and Light/Dark.

And it so turned out that Earth school in M&MVI was complete shit. Its most useful spells were pretty much untranslatable to Heroes. So I assume that to balance it out, NWC cherry-picked some of the best spells from other schools (Resurrection from Spirit school, Town Portal from Water school) and gave them to Earth.

Also, you know that Protection from Fire/Air etc. spells in HoMMIII are pretty much useless. This, however, is very different in Might and Magic VI. In the game, you often fight against enemies who cast spells of a certain element. Knowing this obviously gives you great advantage, helping reduce losses considerably. But not so much in Heroes, where combat doesn't rely on spells so much.

Is Fire ever worth taking, besides when cheesing with armageddon+immunity? The other 3 schools have powerful attack spells too, plus far superior utility.
And blind works just fine on basic level.

>>3361002
>The most powerfull spell in the School of Fire Magic is Berserk, which combined with expert Fire Magic can be cast on an area of three hex radius. It causes all affected creatures to use their attack to the nearest possible target. The only downside is, that with Pendant of Dispassion, a treasure class artifact, the enemy can protect all his troops from Berserk. Additionally, Armageddon is sometimes quite useful spell, that can be used in a tactic called Dragogeddon. Other useful spells are Curse and Blind. Curse becomes a mass spell at expert level of Fire Magic, and can significantly reduce enemy damage. Blind on the other hand is all-around spell good for almost any situation.
>In conclusion, School of Fire Magic have only few useful spells. Especially Berserk can change the course of battle. However, the lack spells that could increase the effectiveness of allied creatures makes it least necessary of the four schools. And therefore, also Fire Magic becomes dispensable.

>>3361002
And Armageddon bonus is not that big.

Basic: 30+50*Power
Advanced: 60+50*Power
Expert: 120+50*Power

>>3360815
>Yep, a might hero might not get Wisdom.
All heroes are 100% guaranteed to be offered Wisdom at level 6 if they do not already possess it.

>>3360960
Hey fuck you Rock Blast is amazing. I mean, that's about all Earth is good for, but STILL.

MM6 came out in '98

>>3361238
> All heroes are 100% guaranteed to be offered Wisdom at level 6 if they do not already possess it.
Ah, yes, I almost forgot.

> Hey fuck you Rock Blast is amazing.
It is, but in a game where spells and skills cost money, you'd need to think twice before choosing a magical school to advance. Water Walk is essential, as is Town Portal. Air has Fly—enough said. But Earth, on the other hand, only has some great damage spells, and for everything else it's secondary.

>>3360478
why are (you) complaining about autism on 4chan?

Tell me what you hate about HOMM 3. I will start:
Enemy hero goes straight from the fog of war to ninja the city where your hero just left a turn ago.

>>3361439
That's why you clear out the fog with scouts. But yeah, it's annoying.

What I find the most annoying is game–breaking spells. Or more so, the overall unevenness of spells in the game. Mage Guild is a lottery. This is surprisingly broken for a game that is well-balanced otherwise, save for some units/skills.

Second most annoying thing is Conflux. Third is skellies. Honorary prize: going through swamp when you have lvl 1s in you army.

is Horn of The Abyss the best expansion?
campaign is decent, add ton of mechanics, huge random map, nerf conflux and necro a bit, etc...

>>3361503
>Third is skellies
If everyone would play with skellies they weren't annoying.

>>3361506
>mechanics
Like what?

>>3360919
>No wonder everyone considers might heroes to be superior when you ban the best magic spells.

this
TP is OP, banned
Fly is OP, banned
DD is OP, banned
Conflux is OP, banned
...
when everything is op, it really makes you think, just, by any chance, maybe it is balanced?
OP is playing necro? Get the diplomacy hero and try to abuse as much as you can etc.
The h3 police would force everyone to pick fortress and fight only with lizardmen and mighty gorgons

>>3360815
>Even then the chance of acquiring it is slim (20% for Dungeon, 10% for the rest)

surely not, with Tower having Library

>>3361641
See attachment. It's from Tribute to Strategists. Numbers mean percentage. 0 for Tower with Library, 0 for Tower without it.

Armageddon is an "evil" spell. Only evil faction can gain it in Mage Guild.

>>3361615
http://forum.df2.ru/index.php?s=e3dea0d9fce34e9457c3250cdcab1e3a&showtopic=32286&st=0&p=629898&#entry629898
the mechanics they got from HD mod because the HD dev work in HOTA expansion too

>>3361641
Just, by any chance, it's broken. 2 wrongs don't make a right. If many things are broken, it doesn't mean they cancel each other. It's apparent even from your example, because Necromancers take can Diplomacy too.

> The h3 police would force everyone to pick fortress and fight only with lizardmen and mighty gorgons

H3 "police" has agreed to remove 1 faction which was very obviously rushed to the game, and Necropolis which has proven to be broken over time with Necromancy (also see Isra, Vidomina and Galthran). If you want fun, play your own way. It's just a set of rules used for some tournaments.

>>3361506
It adds those dumb windmill-like objects where you can get sulfur/gems/crystals/mercury once a week meanwhile finding actual resource generating objects takes billion months on biggest maps. I like other new mechanics it offers, but I'm not sure it's worth it especially when you take into account that Cove is uninspired joke of a town and sucks monkey balls.

As a Red Alert/AoE RTS-fag how do I get into HoMM3? (and turn-based strategy in general)

>>3361710
The basics are relatively easy. Tutorial and campaign will help you start out, play through every faction and learn their strengths and weaknesses. Also, watch some tutorials or let's plays on YouTube. If you have questions, check this wiki: http://heroes.thelazy.net/

It's relatively easy to pick up, but really hard to master.

>>3361710
Also, just in case: DO NOT get the HD remake. Get Heroes Complete, and install HD mod on it.

God damn, reading that HOMM wiki makes me wish for a HOMM MMO. This series had enough lore to guarantee a successful WOW-level MMO, so sad Ubisolf fucked it up.

>>3360829
Necromancers are only magic heroes that do not have starting wisdom, and frankly, they are still doing mighty fine. And still, chance to level up wisdom, tied with earth magic, is second most offered skill to them, you have to be extremely unlucky to not receive it in your first 15 levels.

>>3360960
All that you say is absolutely true, but what else were they supposed to do, other than simplifying magic learning system for HoMM III? Having 9 different schools in game, each offering only a handful of spells, would be atrocious idea, with more than a half of them ending up useless, players cursing while being offered them on level up, and magic heroes being nerfed even more in result. M&M VII is all about planning developement of each member of your party in tiny details, and there is no cap (other than class-specific) on how many different skills you can learn, so having many schools of magic and detailed spell learning is okay because this is the core of the game. In HoMM III, you also have army and economy to run.

>>3361506
As anon already said, due to promoting new adventure objects, random generated maps are proper, but dull. "Your" territory rarely offer more than sawmill and quarry, and "neutral" territories are rare and still, expensive resource mines happen once in a blue moon. You have to hire gorillion of secondary heroes to drive around those stashes if you want to finish building your towns. Also, there are griffin conservatories, fly nests, wolf rider pickets and experimental factories everywhere, and this combined with rarity of neutral towns mean that everyone amasses angels, cyclopes and titans instead of thir own units.
Best expansion is still WoG and only people who complain are those unable to pick balanced preset of extra features, just played one game with everything turned on and think that this is how it's supposed to look like.

>>3361791
I'm rather happy that it neve happened. All HoMM games from IV onwards ditched the original aesthetics and art style to appeal to WoWfags first and to LoLbabbies later. MMO, especially developed under ubishit, would end up as cancer that is killing the franchise.

>>3361863
4 was still really nice although the town graphics were astrocious. 5 is when Ubi went balls to the walls with that half chibi half whatever the fuck bullshit they call art stylem, and 6 and 7 look like generic fantasy designed by weaboos. I want people who did art for 2 and 3 back

>Played the game for 10+ years
>Only know about splitting lv1 creatures to multiple stacks to migrate damage now
Why am I so noob???

>>3361895
You're not alone. I always figured splitting was pointless since it made the individual weaker. Never even considered using 1 stacks as bait.

>>3361878
V had some comfy towns, though the map/world looked like shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6mKZCz-h78

>>3361895
you've probably played all the time against AI or the same people, that's poor enviroment for learning new stuff alright.

How about splitting shooter stacks instead, so excessive overkill damage won't get wasted on single enemy stack?

>>3361895
>played the game for 10+ years
>never considered banning half of the spells in the game
>had fun

>>3361964
After heroes 3, world map of the new games just look so empty which makes the scale of the game seem way way smaller than before.

>>3361975
Pretty much this. I don't have any big complaints about V, besides the fact that if you take any world map and try to transfer it to III, it becomes awfully visible how dull and empty it is after removing all irrelevant eyecandy.

>>3360607
>shouldn't be left to randomness

It isn't. You're always guaranteed to be offered Wisdom at certain intervals. In the case of might heroes, every six levels.

Same with magic schools

>>3361238
>>3362083
Thanks for educating me, didn't know about this hidden mechanic. Guess wisdom is fine then.

why is there no HoMM3 mobile port? seems like a good fit.

>>3362124
There's some VCMI shit you can search on the playstore which should have HoMM3

>>3362124
Options:
a) Exagear Strategies for Android. Music crashes program, so you will be playing without music. You can place any release of HoMM III, even HotA.
b) Ubisoft HD release for iOS and Android. It works, but worse graphics and only Restoration of Erathia.

Why is everyone here so nice and helpful compared to /vg/?
I legitimately enjoy these threads and i even learned a thing or two. Thank you guys.

>>3362129
there's only clash of might & magic on ios from ubisoft. Appleshit strikes again.

>>3362141
HoMM III an old ass retro game with a small but very dedicated fandom.

>>3362141
Because people who played HOMM and hold dear to it are well into their late 20s by now.

>>3362142
I don't know anything about Apples, but I thought they did release HoMM III HD

I know the basics, what are some youtube videos that teach you how to get from decent to good?

>>3361975
>>3361984
Buds
Are you me
I say the same that world map is empty when Heroes transitioned to 3D

>>3362151
I don't know any English tutorials personally, but watching some streams can help

http://heroes3.tv/

>>3361964

The artstyle took a real fucking dive. It seems like Homm lost that something that made it unique along the way.

>>3362142

It's for tablets and iPads. Not phones. Really stupid imo. Oh well, maybe ubisoft will remove cock from mouth and make it available on phones that support it and bake in random map generator while they're at it.

>>3361697
I don't know about any Necro heroes starting with Diplomacy though. It is a perfectly viable strategy to main Diplomacy imo. In the end it comes down who can abuse the game better and who got favoured by the rng.
Home rules are for autists, who can't accept how the game works.

>>3361791
Haha, well there is a HoMM MMO already in case you didn't know. http://clb.heroes-online.com/en-US

MFW

>>3362124
>>3362129
As a last resort, there's a pretty good port of Heroes II for Android.

>>3362171
> like Homm lost that something that made it unique along the way.
> "like"
Well, NWC went belly up. Jon Van Caneghem, the original mastermind behind the series went on to work on other projects. The rights for Might and Magic were purchased by Ubisoft from tanking 3DO.

Ubisoft proceeded to assign Heroes development to Russian studio Nival, which resulted in the latter experiencing financial difficulties. Then, again they chose some small studio for Heroes VI and again nearly bankrupted it.

t-thanks

>>3362229
Free Heroes?
IIRC it had shitty AI.

>>3362242
Playing through HoMM2 right now, Eagle Eye seems to be a more useful spell there. Resources are scarcer, chapels are few and far between, and magic is a fair bit stronger than in III. Something I'd give to a secondary hero.

Problem is that they ported it over to III for the sake of tradition without accounting for the new balancing, where Haste/Slow (available almost to everyone) are the strongest spells, damage spells are pointless and everything else is just flavoring on the top.

>>3362251
>damage spells are pointless
That's not true, though. It's bad in larger battles against enemy heroes, but it can be useful situationally against small to medium neutral packs.
When all else fails and that pack is going to reach your marksman next round, just killing it with a spell can work.

If a neutral pack is greatly outnumbering you and they are split into 6-7 packs, a chain lightning can kill 4 stacks instantly. This can let your magic hero do some cleaning with almost no army while you give everything to your might heroes.

And damage spells are way overpowered in campaigns where your heroes start on a higher level, but with a starter level 1 army.

>>3362281
Yeah, I was exaggerating. But in II damage spells are way more powerful, even a low-level hero with a crappy army can deal very heavy damage with lightning bolt. So the difference between having and not having lightning bolt or fireball is a more critical one than in III.

>>3361841
Well I didn't say they had to bring in all 9 schools. I agree 4 is more than enough.

I think, first of all, they had to water down some spells. Town Portal should only allow to teleport to closest town, not to any town. Fly belongs to M&M, not to Heroes. It's really close to Dimesnion Door which is also Air school—just leave the latter and add more limits to it.

Second, they should've removed shitty spells which no one ever uses. Protection from Air/Fire, Magic Mirror, Quicksand, Landmine, etc. Other option—just combine them with others, level them down or buff them. I might contemplate using mass Magic Mirror which reflects 50% of spells, but still it's gimmicky and unpredictable.

Third, give Meteor Shower to Fire school. Let it be the "damage" school. Implosion should go to Air school. Thus Earth would be "utility" school, with stuff like Resurrection/Slow/Earthquake and so on.

If even this wouldn't be enough, just make Mage Guild less random, maybe less tall (this leaves a question what Expert Wisdom would do though). Take that thing when certain spells appear more in certain towns and increase it. Or maybe let player choose which spells he wants out of 3-4.

>>3362204
Because only 3 heroes in the whole game start with it, all from 3 "good" factions (Castle-Rampart-Tower). But every hero can get it, although it's a pretty rare skill for everyone, except Clerics.

It is a perfectly viable strategy, but personally I never use diplomacy. It shifts the gameplay from relatively fair competition to rng shitshow. Is it fun? Maybe to some people. But thanks, I've had my share of fun with NWCPADME back in 2000.

>>3362356
>they should've removed shitty spells which no one ever uses. Protection from Air/Fire, Magic Mirror, Quicksand, Landmine, etc.
rather that dropping them, I'd love to see those spells buffed in certain ways.

- Cure is a much weaker version of resurrect, able to return 3 - 4 creatures from low tiers, which would make it useful in early game scouting combats;

- Protection from element spells help not only against magic, but reduce damage from certain units too; that would require expanding mechanics by adding elemental attack variable to many creatures, but would also expand possibilites of various resistances. I would gladly cast protection from fire if it would, say, cut damage done by efreets by half in battle with neutral stack of them.

- Bloodlust, Shield, Stoneskin, Disrupting Ray and Weakness effectiveness is affected by spellpower stat, so they don't cap at 6 on expert. Of course, affected just by little, no one wants broken stuff like dropping unit's defense by 30.

- Quicksand and Land Mine allow you to hand pick at least 2 locations, like in case of Firewall or Force Field. That would work wonders on sieges.

any thoughts?

>>3362151
you can watch this guy play 1vs7 200% with every factions
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheKnownWorld/
i watch him stream every weekend playing H3 with other player and it's been great

>>3362356
>Third, give Meteor Shower to Fire school. Let it be the "damage" school. Implosion should go to Air school
They did pretty much this in Heroes V with there being a destruction school for damage, a light school for buffs/resurrect/heal, one for summoning and so on.
Guess what, damage school is used even less than fire in Heroes 3.
Even in the campaign where you start on a high level, going for damage is questionable when you can go summoning instead and have an overpowered phoenix soloing all the neutral packs.

>>3362407
Are there any streamers that set the chess timer to something low and actually play at a decent speed rather than 30 minutes of fucking about and 30 minutes of hearthstone while the other guy fucks about?

>>3362454
>expect a turn based strategy game to be fast pace
no
how about you do something else while waiting for next turn

>>3362398

I liked the way they did it in homm 2 where mass spells were available to everyone but they cost like tripple mana. Imo all magic skills are a waste of skill slots because leveling up a semi decent magic hero is just ridiculously costly and time consuming.

Building the 5 mage guilds alone is overkill.

>>3362141

Because this thread is 50% Russians.

>>3362245
Sorry, don't remember it now.

>>3362436
It's a question of balance of course. I think we should start from asking, why the fuck a player is allowed to summon Phoenixes. Anyway, everything past Heroes IV has not been made or supervised in any way by NWC, and has little connection to the M&M system/lore. I am not really surprised it's not balanced.

>>3362493
Actually this. The difference between the usual Slow and Mass Slow is night and day.

I guess they took the M&MVI system where expert acquiring skill in a given magic school made most status spells into mass spells.

The big difference is, in M&M, knights and other "Might" classes CAN'T use magic, or at least can never learn Expert magic schools. But in HoMM, where Might heroes get offered magic schools and can advance them to expert (and then equip some Power/Knowledge artifacts), it completely breaks the Might/Magic hero balance.

Moreover, to use the best mass spells, you don't even need Wisdom, Intelligence, or high Power/Knowledge. This very similar to M&MVI; however, as I said, in the latter game, a Paladin can never hope to achieve Expert Body Magic, as only Cleric can do this; and an Archer won't reach the Expert level of proficiency in elemental spells, as it's limited to Wizards.

>>3362504
He пaлиcь

>>3362237

They should have stuck with 2D and let it be compatible with every toaster.

Ubisoft knows that their main audience are slavs who don't have a powerful machine. Like half the names of characters in new Homm canon are common as fuck in slavlands.


I actually really liked some of the changes they made to homm gameplay in V and latet games. Imo the overworld in homm3 gets clusterfucky very quick. The streamlined resource management was great. Because flagging mines and gathering weekly or random resources and creatures got old very, very quickly and is the least fun part of the gameplay. Same with going over all the random overworld objects like witch huts and rally flags and fountains. Homm3 has just too much pointless shit and speeding up the process of getting started and actually facing challenging battles was really welcome, instead of constantly steamrolling or being steamrolled or spending most of the time just building up and gathering useless artifacts and spell scrolls.

Random maps in homm3 really show this weakness.

>>3362454
>>3362473
But he has a point, you know. For many years many fans have been asking for simultaneous turns. That's a bane of existence for HoMM multiplayer. I get it that you can't rush chess, but everything has its limits.

>>3362398
At a first glance, this sounds like a nice idea. But at a second…

Making Cure able to resurrect dead would inevitably alter the basic mechanics of the game, and it's very likely to break a lot of stuff. It's very centered on the fact that when a unit dies, it dies and only Resurrection can bring it back. That's why when you use lvl 1 stacks, it's hard to avoid losses; and your proposal might mess it up big time, with a lot of potential changes.

What keeps you from Curing a given stack several times over the battle? This would make battles with wandering shooter stacks really easy to complete without losses. The whole point of Cure is curing lvl 5–7 units.

And what if it fairies or some other shits? And 1 unit stacks? 1 Troglodyte attacks, say, 100 Dread Knights. They retaliate and kill it. You attack Dread Knights without retaliation and resurrect Troglodytes. Rinse, wash, repeat.

>>3362407
>water wheel!
>already taken. just like my mother.
I like this guy.

>>3362562
isn't there some ghost mode in V for doing stuff while you wait?

>>3362473
CCGs are usually fast paced

>>3362557
I'm not saying HoMMIII was anywhere near perfect. But, you know, here's an analogy—when a music band changes all of its members, is it still the same? It's just completely different people trying to sound the same. It's different people marketed under the same label.

This makes you think—whether you cared just for Heroes concept in general, or if it was its creators who made it that great in the first place. Of course its hard to fuck up the already nearly-perfected Heroes concept completely; but everyone will say that compared to III, Heroes VI–VII are just not the same.

But all of purism aside, NWC had a clear idea of how things should work, they made Heroes from ground up based on this vision. M&M and HoMM existed together, they took things from each other, were closely connected.

When you start messing with this concept, it starts resembling Jenga. It might seem logical to remove bottom blocks, but it can potentially fuck the whole system in its complexity and interconnectedness.

Yep, Heroes system might be clunky, but changing its system requires a carefully planned and understood surgery, not just some random feature removement/attachement. And this is one thing that I'm not sure any company beside NWC could do as only they truly understood the underlying core of Heroes. Now of course Heroes V might have worked better in some ways, I don't argue with that. But it also meant that it replaced some "organs" of the original system with prostheses altogether. Whether the remainder can be called "Heroes" is arguable.

So in the end, I didn't and won't give much of a fuck about new Heroes games, unless Caneghem and his team return to work on it. Alas, I believe Heroes III happened in the right place and right time; it was the time when games with complex mechanics could sell well, and PC wasn't rampant with piracy. In today's environment, alas, I don't see another Heroes-like game made any soon, by any studio.

>>3362613
Caneghem sadly will not. I believe his reputation got tainted by EA after so many failed C & C games. He only make mobile apps now.

>>3362613
I doubt it would be so hard to make another good Heroes game. The main problem is that Heroes III is pretty hard to get into, the game mechanics are fairly complex.
Ubishit does not allow this. Their vision for all of their franchises is making a casual game that they can sell to newcomers to the series. It's not like they couldn't make a good Heroes game, it's that they didn't want to. Instead they simplify and casualize, like cutting down resources to 4 types in Heroes VI, or making it so that you can recruit everything in a single town from other towns and external dwellings, so that the player doesn't have to do any logistics. Or throwing out the whole magic learning system and adding an MMORPG-like point buy character building shit.
All of those changes were not a blunder or a lack of vision, they were deliberate simplification. We won't have another good Heroes game while the king of casualization sits on it.

>>3362398
>>3362562
(cont.)
As for elemental protection spells, there's technically no elemental damage in HoMM—just magic. Yeah, I know: you could program Protection from Fire to reduce damage from Efreeti, maybe Dragons, and so on, just based on their attack animations. Maybe Protection from Air could protect against flyers.

But then, what would Protection from Water/Earth protect from?… And anyway, you realize how complex the balance would become in an already complex game like Heroes? It would also require remembering/keeping in mind attack elements for different creatures, potentially forcing you to think much more at every battle.

Add to this: in M&M, you can visit, say, Temple of Fire. It's obvious you need Protection from Fire there. When you go there, it's telegraphed and signaled from all over the place.

But in Heroes III, it's all pretty much random. Medusa Stores can be next to a pack of Gnolls or something like that. I'm not even mentioning random maps.

The only case of this "elemental" weakness working is Undead-specific spells, Destroy Undead. But otherwise, a whole faction likely can't have one element assigned to it.

>>3361506
I'd say yes if it didn't overwrite the whole original game.

>>3362398
>>3362562
>>3362648
(cont.)
As for your suggestions on Bloodlust and so on, I actually would support you here. Maybe +1 for every 4 points of Power would work OK. However, this would make these spells less predictable, and it would be very different from M&MVI. In the latter, Stone Skin adds +4 defense (well, armor class), period. Power only defines the duration of a spell—and this was left intact in HoMMIII.

Finally, about Quicksand and so on; it would just become pretty unfair as enemy won't see these obstacles.

ALL IN ALL, TL;DR: Heroes III is already complex as fuck, and pretty cluttered too. There are dozens upon dozens of variables in it and tons of RNG. So IMO, it should only be cleaned up from clutter. This means that if there are 2 spells which do similar things, leave 1. If there are spells that do shit, remove them. There's already a shit ton of spells in the game which doesn't affect it much. That's my position.

Has anyone messed around with ERA/WoG and HD mod installed together?

>>3362647
It's all true, but as much as I dislike Ubisoft, to a large degree these complaints can be addressed to any big publisher today. That's just what video game industry has become.

The golden era of strategy games is pretty much over. PC piracy has done its damage. Remaining few popular series are either entirely devoid of graphics (see Paradox games) or ride on the success of their ancestors (well that's Heroes VII for you).

The rest heavily focus on spectacle/grand proportions and graphics (Total War and others). This means huge budgets, which in turn means more dependency on producers. The producers won't allow any change, will simply want the game to look and play like what's popular, and change it as they see fit to fit all trends there are. Meaning, more women in armor, everything looks like WoW, etc. Oh wait, that's Heroes VII again. Never mind.

Anyway, Heroes III was neither of these. I doubt it had a budget over $1 mln. The NWC team had much more freedom and was full of ideas. It came at arguably the best time there's ever been for PC strategies, when 2D was still a viable and respectable choice in the genre.

This era is over. Strategy as a genre is slowly going away, just like adventure games.

>>3362717
>more women in armor
>something that has been commonplace in might and magic since its inception
You sound like a faggot desu. Strategy games will continue to exist as a niche with games like Battle Brothers and Dominions where they rightfully belong.

>>3362739
Every time I bring up Heroes VII excessive fanservice for underage children, someone calls me a faggot. So if I don't like unnecessary women in armor shoved at every place in vidya, I'm a faggot. Nice black-or-white fallacy, retard.

I am simply tired of Heroes lore being twisted and distorted as the new producers seems fit. I didn't deny Might and Magic had plenty of fanservice, if you didn't notice. Heroes had Harpies with tiddies, but it didn't have female knights, female Archangels, and so on. I'm also sure as hell that it didn't have anime in it. Where Heroes had some uniqueness and personality, it's been changed to look and feel like Warcraft/LotR/whatever is trending with lowest common denominator.

>>3362772
Half of the knights in HOMM3 were broads

>>3362772
You are a faggot for various reasons, not just because of complaining about warrior women in a fantasy sci-fi series.

>>3362778
Yes, but it's heroes. This is true for M&M too, they often had 50/50 ratio of female/male heroes.

What I'm sick of is just poor taste. See picrelated, this neon rave Warcraft fedora shit should die in hell. Unfitting fanservice is just one of the aspects, plain ugliness of it all is another.

>>3362801
Do me a favor and go kys

>>3362680
This is some detailed and thoughtful analysis, thank you for that. Those where ideas I've kinda pulled out my ass in a minute though, so maybe they didn't deserve such insight.

About possible overuse of Cure, I agree with you, it reminds me how you can heal your whole army for free in Disciples II by leaving just weakest enemy alive and spamming defend and heal, if you have right unit. That could be avoided by two alterations: slightly higher cost of spell (it's not that beginner hero with 1-4 points of knowledge can spam even cheapest spells anyway), and by making sure that you can't cast it on corpse to avoid counterattack exhaustion.

About elemental protection, it's exactly as you say, that would require some expanding on already complex battle and damage calculator, but that was the point of it; It shouldn't be made as mod, but had a fair chance of working if it would be introduced by devs from the very beginning. As for earth-type attacks, you could probably figure something out by stretching the definition: cyclopes, behemoths, troglodytes, dwarves... there is a lot of stretching like that already.

And as for unfairness of invisible quicksand or land mines, think about mindgames. If it's player vs player, one can try and predict where did his opponent place those one or two obstacles he had control over.

>>3362808
It's less about the fanservice and more about the general turn to generic neon WoW fantasy. It's not just the designs either, though they're painful to look at, it's the entire philosophy

>Dwarves can't be part of Rampart/Preserve anymore, everyone knows dwarves hate elves! We'll give them a faction of their own, a generic viking mountain castle with bears and shit
>Our marketing department reports that people love dark elves, so we'll replace the entire Dungeon faction with dark elf assets from a cheap Korean MMO that grow purple
>Who cares about M&M lore? Besides, our writing department consists of barely literate Russians who have only played HoMM3 on random maps. Let's retcon everything and place the action into a generic neon fantasy setting that is pretty much Warhammer with the serial numbers filed off. Don't forget to tactically namedrop the earlier games though

>>3362808
I will completely agree with you. First three HoMM games (apart from obvious inspiration on M&M cycle) had creatures, buildings and general art style based mostly on myths, folklore and fairy tales from various parts of Europe and Middle East, and only on lesser extent on generic established fantasy setting. HoMM IV is frankenstein monster were nothing fits (but it was extremely rushed, so it's expectable). HoMM V was just a huge pandering to people who played WoW, and HoMM VI and VII is terrible attempt at capturing MOBAfags.

What's the deal with this dark elf shit replacing good old Dungeon/chaos towns? They always had a nice variety in units, while your typical roster from V onwards is: dark elf, female dark elf, magic dark elf and dark elf with different kind of weapon. Water weeb faction promised in VI sounded promising, but of course instead of making some subtle links to Japanese mythology, it's 50% filled with katana-wielding fedorastic elves too.

>>3362407
I watched his castle 1v7.
I expected 1v7 allied AI, it's just 1v7 FFA. He wasn't even attacked by the AI, he just runs around the map with week 3 angels facerolling everything while AI armies pretty much ignore him. It had some interesting tricks, but overall it's pretty boring.

>>3362808
>muh generic uninspired Warcraft fantasy
Please stop. Every HoMM game takes ideas from "generic fantasy" and every HoMM game has its share of interesting monsters (pic related - an example from HoMM 7).

I can agree that HoMM 6 has a little too many weird female creatures, however (as you said) it's nothing new in the series (examples - Harpies and Pegasus) and it certainly did not destroy my enjoyment from playing HoMM 6.

>>3362842 >>3362848
Warlock/Dungeon was always a weird faction to me and I find its evolution rather interesting.
It began with pretty weird line-up of monsters which didn't feel connected. Then NWC decided to move half of Warlock's creatures to other factions (Centaurs to Rampart, Griffins to Castle, Gargoyles to Tower and Hydras to Fortress) and added even more Greek monsters (as well as random Beholder I guess) to newly created Dungeon.

HoMM 4 had even weirder line-up with fucking Inferno creatures in its town. After that half of monsters were replaced by drows making it (imo) more believable (but less interesting to some people) town.

And then the whole faction started having that "darkness" theme which I don't really know a lot about since I stopped playing before Shades of Darkness came out.

I try to have an open mind for new ideas.

>>3362982
I was first attracted to HoMM1 and 2 as a kid mainly due to the myth/fairy tale angle as opposed to the typical boring ass D&D fantasy cliches, Warlock in particular because it seemed like the faction was dedicated to classic mythical creatures. I actually was hesitant to like HoMM3 at first because it seemed like it was starting to depart from that. I don't know shit about M&M so I don't know how much was original to HoMM but in retrospect HoMM3-4 was probably the most interesting because it seemed like the mixture of everything was becoming it's own unique creation.

Throwing in Dark Elves and shit just turned me off. Especially remembering my gut reaction to HoMM3 I try not to be presumptive either but it seems like the shift to more "generic" fantasy has been a gradual process.

>>3363016
Well noted, I actually love the shit out of 1/2's fairytale feel, especially 1. It might be really dated now, but it really feels like a whimsical adventure, with sorceresses, faeries, the cartoonish look and all

>>3362717
>The producers won't allow any change, will simply want the game to look and play like what's popular, and change it as they see fit to fit all trends there are. Meaning, more women in armor,
That's what you're concerned about?!

>>3362808
So you're complaining about art style and not pandering. I think most people will agree with that.

>>3362848
Dark Elves have been a thing since at least M&M4. Not that it matters since everything was retconned and the entire setting was rebooted once jewbisoft got the license.

Playing the very first campaign where you have to capture 7 griffin towers. Got them all, but the game is not giving me the victory. Cleared the AI off the map too.
If I use the instant victory cheat code, it won't fuck up my campaign progression/unlock, right?

>>3363173
no but you'll fuck up your score though

>>3363173
using any other code that one for brighter colors fucks up your campaign score to 1. Are you sure you've done the requirement? I remember that ending this mission was somewhat tricky, but dunno where the problem lies.

>>3362436
HOMM5 did some cool things with destruction school though. When specialized, fire spells reduce victim's defense by 50% and ice spells add an short-lived slow effect. Even in the endgame where destruction spells might fall off, the debuffs are still useful.

>>3363179
That's fine, don't really care about score.

>>3363182
Pretty sure. Got all the buildings.
Using WoG, so it's quite possible that it fucked up some script.

>>3363185
>Using WoG, so it's quite possible that it fucked up some script.
I continue to see no justification for using this meme mod

>>3363196
Honestly, I only played 3 maps with it (the 3 castle maps from restoration of erathia) and I feel like turning it off already.
It's very campaign-unfriendly because it makes higher level heroes way more overpowered than they already are, so every campaign map besides the first becomes even easier. And it seems it also downright breaks some campaign map scripts.

>>3363197
Also while it's configurable, it feels like I'd need to turn off 80% of the mod to make it remotely balanced.
Captain of a level 15 hero (it's a unit you get in your army for free and takes up no creature slot) does like 300 ranged damage. You don't even need to cheese the neutral packs since they can just shoot them down almost on their own. Treasure chests throw primary skill points at you like candy. The whole campaign was literally just steamrolling the AI with my heroes and like first week starting creatures.

>>3363185
In order to play campaigns, use clear version of SoD. It's generally smart to keep one clean version of it, and make copies each time you stumble upon mod you want to test to install on it, as most of them are irreversible

>>3363196
I continue to see no justification to be too retarded to set up balanced parameters on your own

>>3363197
First missions of RoE campaign are intentionally easy and you can steamroll through them with progressively better heroes. I think that devs assumed that new players will try first campaign available right after completing the tutorial, before going for single missions, so they made it easy. If you want some challenge maps where each level and skill of main inherited hero will be absolutely crucial to survive, try AB campaigns, especially Dragon Slayer

>garrisoned off while i build my army and they build their army campaign map
wonderful

>>3362251
love heroes2 myself. what are some of your favorite maps?

>>3363341
I've played random maps ages ago, but I can't remember many at this point. Currently I'm just playing through Archibald's campaign. Guess Dominion is fun.

I have the option of getting HoMMV and the expansion. Is the expansion used a basis for modding or is the base game still the go to game to play and mod?

>>3363369
anything by Timothy Duncan is really good.
recently played a map entitled 'Fear2' which was quite unique, also very good.

if you have any questions about the mechanics of the game, i think i know more than almost anyone

>>3363016

Definitely agree - HoMM1/2's cartoony art style, sound, and overall theme is greatly missed. Remember the genie, nomad, ghost, etc? They were so cool and rare.

>>3363341
Pirate's Utopia

all of those small island and other objects makes teh map actualy feel like a living world for me

>>3362146
49 here
Still play

>>3362680
>Heroes III is already complex as fuck, and pretty cluttered too.
That's why I like Heroes II.

>>3362613

Other teams have succesfully implemented the Heroes core.

Clash of Heroes is an awesome game, Heroes Kingdoms really captures the feel and innovated a huge deal even for a browser based game. So did Heroes Tactics for mobile, which candy crushed the whole Heroes formula.

Imo the mainline devs don't get that Homm is never going to be a mass appeal big budget tripple AAA game. But rather a mass appeal game of chess.

>>3362982
Pretty much what >>3362848 and >>3363016 said. The games had more fairy tale feel and there were more "refined" mythological creatures like Minotaurs, Cyclopes, Titans, Genies, etc., which were put in new contexts and created pretty unique factions. Plus, of course, satanic Inferno with pentagrams all over the place—how cool is that?

Also, the design was relatively simple, but it felt classic immediately. There wasn't that retarded obsession with million piece fedora armors, shining runes, etc—it was simple but to the point. Creatures had distinctive details which made them memorable—take, for example, Master Genie's hat or Harpy's mohawk.

Of course it's cool when creators try something new, but with all due respect, if that means having that shitty charmander knockoff in Heroes VII, then no thank you.

And as for Warcraft, I have always found it rather disgusting, from art style to lore to their knee-slapper jokes. To me, it belongs to Deviantart. So it's not the copying in Heroes which bugs me, but rather that they copied the most cringeworthy lore.

>>3363912
Same here. Well, as with any great series, each game holds its own value. I love simple, uncluttered games, but I also like deep ones. Heroes II and Heroes III have different art styles, but both are excellent and timeless.

What kind of kills II for me though is the town/unit balance. That's what III did better—IMO. Well, except for Conflux and Necro of course.

>>3362696
Even WoG/ERA shillers advice against it due to crashes and incompatibilities. I remember specifically having seen mentioned that quick combat does not work with ERM scripts.

Seems baratorch (HD Mod dev) doesn't give much of a fuck about WoG.

>>3362129
It's ridiculous that it's just RoE but at least you can convert expansion maps to work for it.

>>3363563
if some indie studio come out with it today, it would sell like hot shit

It has the best dragon depiction to this day. I remember being so disappointed with dragons in h3, they just look fugly.

What are plugins for the HD mod?
Any info or documentation?

>>3363985
>Egyptian royalty/pharaoh style decorated clothing
>toolbelt with hammer and pliers
why

>>3364165
WE WUZ KANGS before we became golem repairing slaves.
But seriously, since HoMM V Academy is some weird mix of Egyptian, Middle East and Indian themes, everything used without rhyme and reason, just to make it "cool" in the eyes of high fantasy fags who thing that there is no such a thing as "overdesigned"

>>3362696
>>3364040
HD mod works fine with WoG, but don't enable the HD+ options (gameplay changes). In the latest version it's even grayed out for the WoG exe. The resolution, stretching/filtering and UI changes (like picking a specific hero in tavern) work with WoG.

Noob here, playing through the campaigns for the first time in Heroes 3. Am I missing its vision, or Inferno is really bland after Castle?
Castle troops had a pretty obvious use for them, like Cavaliers for their charge attack, Swordsman who hit hard but was slow so you wanted to haste/teleport him and so on.
Most Inferno unupgraded troops don't even have a special ability. You have Imp, Hell hound, Demon, Pit fiend which do nothing besides being generic melee units with increasing health/damage. Cerberi seems to be the only interesting upgrade.

Of course, Efreet and Devils are great, but for most of the early game I really can't see other tactics besides just sending my units in and hoping to have more health/damage than the enemy. How do you "outplay" the AI with just melee units doing nothing special?

>>3364165
If you are genuinely curious - read up on academy faction on HoMM7 site. It becomes more clear why Cabir is designed like that.

>>3363985
>million piece fedora armors
>cringeworthy lore
>Deviantart
>Harpy from HoMM3 being an example of good design
>Cabir from HoMM7 being an example of bad deisgn
You are unreasonable and sound like nostalgiafag. I see no point in continuing this discussion.

>>3363016
Frankly speaking, I like/tolerate every version of Warlock/Dungeon faction (except HoMM4 one). HoMM1 and HoMM2 have that cute fairy tale approach which I like, however I do prefer more "generic fantasy" approach of HoMM3 and HoMM5. The former has amazing line-up of creatures while the latter reminds me of drow society from books I've used to read.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I like some changes. If every new HoMM game had minor tweaks to factions (like ones made from 1 to 2), series would be kinda boring. What bothers me more are gameplay changes and that fucking Uplay bullshit.

Anyway, I will stop talking about opinions on newer HoMM games since I feel like I'm digressing too much. Feel free to reply if you want though.

>>3364205

The real viable tactic in inferno is sending in efreet and bashing the enemy with fire spells like inferno/fireballs and magog aoe fireballs. Also using sacrifice on demons and imps to replenish efreet. Skip on buying hell hound dwelling, they're optional and also suck. Save the money on upgrading imps and demons. Focus your resources on getting level mages and fire magic because your mage guild is going to be filled with them.

Inferno really sucks ass without strong magic heroes.

>>3363985
More importantly: what the FUCK is a cabir? Wikipedia tells me it's a mobile phone virus.

With pretty much every creature in the earlier games it's immediately obvious what they represent. I can tell that lots of goblins are not a threat, without even having played the game and fought them before, while lots of behemoths can spell trouble. I don't know what a cabir is. If an enemy hero has a horde of cabirs, am I supposed to be afraid or not? I can only learn it by looking cabirs up in the manual.

The earlier games' designs were beautiful in their simplicity. Most creatures were taken from myth and were easily recognizable (though many received a creative spin, like the whole Kreegans and alien angels thing). Now with barely literate Russian faggots as developers we've got cabirs, AYYssids, a faction that consists of 7 different types of dark elves and you just don't know what the fuck is going on.

Just one example of how the new Heroes are a clusterfuck V had good gameplay though, even if it had terrible visual design and writing

>>3364269
Pretty much this. Most low-level units in HoMM I - III had a simple or even silly design and look (goblins, imps, troglodytes and so on) so you could say they are low level and poorly suited for combat unless in big numbers just by looking at them. For V, VI and VII there is no such difference - there is no place for such silly units in a world in which everything has to be riddled with spikes, blades, armor details and cool poses. Pic realted cerberi are level 1 weaklings, but could pass as level 6 creatures with that look in the past.

>>3364342
Please don't group Heroes V together with edgy shit like VI and VII.

I'm really getting where the warcraft art styles complaints are coming from after playing a bit of HoMMV. That's still not as bad as the step back in UI they've done which looks all over the place and low res as shit.

>>3364154
https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/

>>3363859
wish me luck, anon

>trying out aow3
>can't bind tab to select next hero
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FOR WHAT PURPOSE

Post your favorite heroes and spicy secret techniques

>>3364218
>>Harpy from HoMM3 being an example of bad design??
>>Cabir from HoMM7 being an example of good design??
Actually I don't argue here because design is to a large extent a matter of taste. I never said Starcraft/Warcraft lore was objectively bad, it's just my subjective opinion and nothing more.

>>3364501
He is asking specifically about plugins for HD Mod, not about HD Mod itself. Your link is just to the main page of HD Mod and you didn't specify what to look for there.

>>3364154
As far as I know there is a plugin for Russian tournaments which I guess changes some balancing and/or adds other features matching their rules. I don't think there are any others.

The API, if there is one, is not public. The Russians just share their tools and knowledge internally amongst each other.

>>3364205
I guess NWC specifically wanted to buff somewhat weak Castle from HoMMII, given their key role. So they were lavish on gifts to them—perhaps a bit too much… Just some highlights: Stables. Two units with double attack and thus insane damage/price ratio. Archangels. Literally no bad units whatsoever. Of course any faction will look like shit to you after them. But don't let this fool you.

You're right that Inferno is mostly straightforward walkers. It's true, but they have a few cards up their sleeves. Efreeti can be acquired very early—while being some of the best lvl 6 units in the game; Cerberi, Demons and Pit Fiends are very strong on offense. And don't forget Pit Lords' special ability.

Inferno also can get Armageddon, Frenzy, and Sacrifice. Read up on the latter—it might sound shitty, but it's not.

> Cerberi seems to be the only interesting upgrade.
Except for Pit Lords and Efreeti Sultans. 3-hex no retaliation attack is the shit.

>>3365063
I was thinking whether the HD mod allowed changing gameplay for balancing to introduce balance changes ourself that we could share and easily use.
But I guess reverse engineering the original game is the only way to go. And I have no idea where to begin.

Is it good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ta4u9l9jjI

>>3365065
Maybe I just don't like the Inferno units. Too many one-dimensional melee grunts.
Finished the map and playing the Dungeon one now. I like this far more. Harpies have an interesting mechanic, plus they have tons of shooters and fliers, only troglodytes and minotaurs are generic grunts, which makes them a lot more unique for the role.

>>3365105
>Nazgul Dragons
>mostly just renamed vanilla units
Looks like a mess.

>>3364740
Tower: Magi actually have No Obstacle penalty just like their upgrade, despite it's not noted anywhere.

Inferno: best cannon fodder to raise Demons with Pit Lords' ability: Dwarves and Pikemen. 1 Pit Lord can raise 50HP of Demons. Meaning, with 7 Pit Lords you can raise exactly 10 Demons from 35 Pikemen.

>>3365108
You're not alone. Inferno is pretty much universally regarded as the shittiest town. Which is unfortunate, because it's also one of the coolest, imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kdVZ06ssgM

Music is intimidating and badass, and their (functionally useless) grail structure is fucking Satan looming over the city.

HD Edition is a fucking joke

Fucki Ubisoft

>>3365145
Lancuch piorunow them all

>>3365108
Yeah, I get what you're saying. But right now, you're not yet aware of just how deep Heroes III really is. When you will realize this, you might appreciate the somewhat Inferno for its Rattata-like simplicity—simply because you don't need to keep tons of stuff in your head.

>>3365145
Dude HQ4x lmao

Unit faces give me nightmares

>>3365140
In Lore Kreegans are supposed to reproduce as fast as insects
In game they have the lowest reproduction rate from all towns

What the fuck!?

>>3365145
It looks sort of like they were trying to make the spell graphics look like something from a medieval stained glass mural

If that was what they were going for and they didn't fuck it up as badly it would've been cool

>>3365145
>HD edition
>still only 6 spells on a page

>>3365145
Absolutely disgusting

>>3365145
Andrzej, nie denerwuj się. To się wyklepie.

>>3365286
>Jesus with a sword kills a fluffy.jpg

>>3364183
>HD mod works fine with WoG
Thanks m80

Why is there so many heroes with eagle eye lads?

It makes them automatically useless by default

>>3362982
>>3363985
The biggest problem I have in HOMM5-7 is that they do this bling bling design where the mass-recruited soldier units all have a jillion artifacts, spell books, chains, belts, and intricately designed ornaments on their armour.

If the heroes themselves have them, sure, that's fine. They are singular commanders, and you find artifacts on your journey anyway (... on that note, did any HOMM games actually show you how your hero looks with all the artifacts equipped?).

Basically a tier 1 creature has more intricate equipment than a tier 7 or a hero unit. Which is completely stupid.

I liked it better in the early games, where the more common the unit was, the less equipment it had. The higher you go on the tier list, the more detailed the equipment of each army unit is. Tier 1 units basically had a single weapon and basic clothing depending on faction. Some didn't even have clothing, or a weapon. Tier 7 ones wore armour with golden petals on the side and a sword made out of a lightning bolt.

>>3365436
Same reason there's like 10 heroes with stone skin specialty, developers got really lazy somewhere along the way. But I don't know who thought Eagle Eye without any tweaks was a good idea in the first place.

>>3365504
>But I don't know who thought Eagle Eye without any tweaks was a good idea in the first place.

On maps with limited towns, such as 1v1 fights, it is a good skill. It allows you to make up for any advantage your opponent may have if they rolled better spells in their mage guild.

I think the only tweak it needs is for the effect to be instantaneous instead of happening after the fight ends.

>>3365543
On the other hand, on a small map the first big hero battle is usually the last.

>>3365468
> on that note, did any HOMM games actually show you how your hero looks with all the artifacts equipped?
I'd look at a hero with three pairs of boots equipped from HoMM I-II.

>>3365543
If they rolled better spells.

If Eagle Eye actually procs.

If Eagle Eye is high enough to learn a spell of that level.

If the enemy somehow has other forces after you've beaten his high-level caster hero on a small 1v1 map.

I'd go the WoG route and also give Eagle Eye a chance to neutralize a low-level spell cast by an enemy.

>>3365593
That's too OP and adds even more annoying RNG. I prefer the other WoG option, where eagle eye gives you free spells.

>>3365593
>If they rolled better spells.
>If Eagle Eye actually procs.
>If Eagle Eye is high enough to learn a spell of that level.

All of those have a higher chance for lower level spells, since you get more of them, they are easier to get (cheaper mage guild), and there is a much larger pool of them meaning you have a bigger chance for getting something that the other guy has not.

If this ends up something like Slow or Haste, those can easily break entire fights.

>If the enemy somehow has other forces after you've beaten his high-level caster hero on a small 1v1 map.

They could retreat or surrender.

It all comes down to utility. Navigation is crap too, unless you are on a map that has quite a lot of water to traverse. Diplomacy doesn't give you much unless there are wandering stacks to recruit, and if there aren't enough on the map, you have to wait a month for some to appear, and by that time they'll be too small in number to actually make a difference. Mysticism is useless because of magic wells, but if there aren't any then mysticism can save your ass by regenerating just enough spell points for you to cast expert slow/haste one more time as you are caught while retreating. Likewise Expert Earth Magic can give you game breaking spells, but if you don't roll Slow, Stoneskin, Shield, and/or can't afford the high-level mage tower for Town Portal, Meteor Shower and Resurrection, then what good is it?

Play the game on smaller maps, or with a time limit, and you'll notice that the list of best skills become dramatically different. They'll depend more on the layout of the map, the creatures you have, the war machines you have, and the spells you actually have.

>>3365702
Even in the absolutely ideal scenario for eagle eye, it's still questionable.

>>3365286
it still does not beat how silly the actual spell icons in HoMM V actually are.

>>3365741
There is literally nothing wrong with skeleton rave party.

>>3365741

>spend several hours autistically maxing out my heroes for the campaign on first and second
>third map
>choose a bonus: start with heroes from map 1 or map 2

>>3365770
>everyday i am glowing stronger.png
fixed that for you

>>3365745

How about basilisks

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

>>3365874
I don't get it

>>3365880
The dwelling's animation makes it look like a rave pit

>>3365795
You should've expected that when the second map switched over to a completely different faction

>>3365907
Thought the last map would be mixed faction with both groups of heroes.

Is savescumming degenerate?

>map with time limit
>LOL PLAGUE

>amass units from dwellings
>campaign says to dig up grail
>2 packs of angels
>lmao fuck this
>kill one pack
>start digging with a hero
>realize this is way too slow
>deadline coming fast
>have 4 heroes now trying to dig for the grail
>fail and run out of time
So many things wrong with that map like the ambush only triggering if you exit out to the right of the grail area or the 90 gorillion ambushes.

>>3365543
i thought maybe combining eagle eye with mysticism would be a good balance change. thoughts?

>>3365584
did you know that in heroes2
nomads boots (+6 land movement) > compass (+5 land movement) > traveller's boots of mobility (+3 land movement)

>>3365914
i actually only enjoy the maps on which i have to save periodically (sometimes after every turn/parts of a turn) in order to win. i like playing the most difficult maps on impossible and having to pick a 'golden path' that allows me to win, which usually involves repeated saving/reloading

Why hasn't the HotA team balanced Eagle Eye?

>>3365096
I've done a lot of reversing of it so you're interested you can ask here if you have any questions.

The game is written in object-oriented C++ and is pretty straight-forward to reverse engineer.

If you're new to this sort of thing but would like to give it a try I would suggest something like the following:
1. Fire up a hotseat 1v1 on a map you created with two opposing heroes standing one tile from each other with armies containing creatures you are interested to modify and other creatures of various strengths
2. Enter a battle between the two heroes and do a memory scan (with e.g Cheat Engine) for either the hp or creature count of a stack you are interested in
3. Make the other hero attack the stack whose value you scanned so that it goes down and do a new memory scan within the previous results for the new value.
4. Repeat 3 until you only have one or a few addresses in Cheat Engine
5. Set a hardware breakpoint (in e.g OllyDbg) on your address and you will land somewhere inside the code that handles resolving damage. This area is a decent place
to start reversing
6. Go backwards in the code and try to find specifically what you are looking for, e.g HP of defending stack, damage of attacking stack etc and play around with modifying it. You can set additional breakpoints and check for references to values you find to see where they are loaded/set etc.

The above of course is just an example, there's a million other ways to do it. Another simple way to get to interesting places is to breakpoint rand() (note that it may be inlined in which case you have to find it first). Such a breakpoint can for example be set before doing an attack in order to end up in the code handling damage / proc RNG.

>>3366456
if you have the knowledge and skills you claim, i'd really like your help on the ironfist project.
some devs are trying to add some gay shit like additional factions and analytics to the game, but i would like to add some functionality to the game to bring it up to heroes3, with 'wait', additional h3 features, and some high-res stuff.

i want to replace the entire h2 rendering engine, and add h3 features as optional enabled features on a per-map basis, based on config files.

>>3364628
check it out in the editor after you complete it if you havent revealed it 100%

>>3365543
no its still bad
even if by some miracle the enemy actualy uses a spell you might need, on expert its a 60% chance you will learn it

like talk about a fucking ripoff, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?

>>3366096
this is where the 7 other heroes you just hired come in

>>3366131
now you need +1 skill

>>3364269
lots of hell hounds or demons sounds scary af though
in IV I had no idea what to expect from Mantis and Waspwort and got rekt pretty easily.

>>3365874
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6YL8dMSLJA

>>3366470
What is the difference between Project Ironfist and Succession Wars?

>>3366771
Project Ironfost = HOMM II WoG
Succession Wars = HoMM III with HoMM II units

>>3366456
>>3366470
Sorry, but I'm now in the HotA team after they reached out to me for help a few months ago and busy with that stuff. Perhaps at some (much) later point.

Good luck though.

>>3366131

Eagle eye should be combined with wisdom

I made a guide

What do you think about it?

I made a guide

What do you think about it?

>>3366963
If your really want to help new players, shouldn't you use the icons for the basics skills? I know the difference isn't huge but those are the ones you will see while picking your skills. Also, Isn't wisdom an always take skill?

>>3366963
Uh, no, leadership and luck are both great. Leadership especially so, when you mix many unit types.

Scholar is useful for secondary heroes, such as scouts.

Mysticism is useful if there aren't enough wells, few towns, and no town portal (or you don't have mana left for town portal).

Ballista and First Aid skills can be GREAT. That way you can do enough damage to take out a tier 7 unit, or heal a tier 7 unit to max health. It doesn't sound much but they are both awesome early game when high tier units are few and far behind. It's like casting a double barrel magic arrow for free every round. First Aid is the only way to heal magic-immune units; and even more useful if you don't have healing spells. When you still only have a handful of tier 6-7 units, first aid can make them incredibly good meat shields, and minimize their losses, so you can build up a bigger force of them.

Sorcery is shit - it's 15% higher damage and only on damaging spells. That's literally nothing. You get more by casting bless on your strongest troop.

>>3366992
also, controlling the ballista means it won't shoot stacks you blinded. also very useful.

>>3366963
4/10
There's better resources out there we can just link in the OP if this general becomes big enough again.

>>3366963
>don't hire heroes with specialization in war machines
You fucking what mate? Gurnisson is a top-tier hero. Pyre's not a bad pick for Inferno either.

>don't take demons for Inferno
>don't take Sprites
>don't take Gremlins
Is this a troll guide?

Scorpicores and Zealots are definitely not must upgrades. They're the worst units of their respective castles.

Leadership is mandatory for taking diplomacy, great if you're farming hives/conservatories and isn't a terrible skill on its own. The only problem is that it can be replaced by artifacts, but I wouldn't say it should never be taken at all.

Always take sorcery? Is this a troll guide, again?

>>3366963
Tactics is useful for slow armies. That way you can be in range of the enemies even if they move first, if you don't have Haste, or if your army has creatures immune to Haste (such as Conflux).

Very useful skill for Fortress, Stronghold, and even Conflux (magic elemental!).

>>3366963
very nice example why the infographic style is shit, made by dumb people for dumb people. Keep up the good work.

>>3367003
don't take Gremlins is a good protip because they are fucking useless

>>3362842
>our writing department consists of barely literate Russians who have only played HoMM3 on random maps
Are you aware the new setting and plot was done by Ubisoft, shithead?

>>3366963
>that whole units section
>>>/r/games

>>3367076
Not if they're upgraded, which you should probably do on day 1

>>3367087
I'm sorry my hyperbole triggered you, Boris

Is there a mod that balances shitty secondaries like eagle eye and sorcery, but without all the autism of WoG?

>>3367118
>Not if they're upgraded, which you should probably do on day 1
They are good on first week but then you should leave them for secondary hero or town defense

>>3367127
I've never used WoG, but can't you pick and choose what features you want to use?

>>3367134
This. Get ERA and pick just a few options that you want.

>>3366963
Not bad. It contains many useful tips however I disagree with some of them.

Leadership and Luck are good skills or at least better than Eagle Eye and First Aid. Tactic is amazing for Stronghold imo.
Second formation is wrong too because you have 2 archer units too close to each other. It's basically AOE spells bait for AI. Also, shouldn't Unicorn be in the middle?
Why would you not take (Master) Gremlins, Goblins and Gnolls? Tower, Stronghold and Fortress are not known for their speed (nor amazing shooters in case of Fortress).

Also, this guide lacks one tactic I like to use in early game. Fill your free army spaces with one piece of 1st tier unit so they can absorb retaliation or bait AI into attacking. Especially good with Centaurs.

>>3366963
OK, first of all I appreciate the effort you put into it. But I have to make some important notes.

Ballistics should be listed conditional. Useful for walker armies and long sieges to get rid of towers. Also, gives you first chance to cast spells in sieges.

Scouting is OK for, well, scouts

> Water Magic is the weakest one
How long have you been paying Heroes to make such a statement? Did you forget what school Cure, Clone and Teleport belonged to?

Fire Magic skill leaves little impact on Armageddon, except dropping its cost by 4 mana points and adding 90 damage (when the spell deals 500+ damage anyway).
I agree with >>3366992 that sorcery is shit, no matter how you look at it. Basically, if you have 20 Power, it acts like +3 Power. Even if you have Armageddon, this skill is dispensable at best.

>>3366963
>>3367525
Now for upgrades. This is much worse and frankly open to discussion, all of it. I'll only stop on glaring the most questionable tips

> Mage->Archmage
They are bugged, so unupgraded Magi actually shoot through walls with no penalty. Good for 1 thing: speed. +5 health doesn't justify high price and high dwelling cost.

> Don't upgrade Psychic El. to Magic Elemental!!!

Now this is where I gave up and stopped pretending that you aren't retarded. How the fuck you went to this conclusion is beyond me. Ignore the upgrade that's immune to all magic, +2 speed, higher damage and everything for 50 gold? You've got to be kidding.

Also, not upgrading Faeries, Firebirds, Nagas, Genies, Black Knights? I hope you forgot it.

>>3367553
Magic elemental only deals half of damage to magic immune creatures you moron

>>3366963
>>3367525
>>3367553

And to address the final part, probably the shittiest one, and certainly the least useful for beginners

> Never take these units
Really shit advice all the way. What's your logic? Not to take slow units to not suffer land movement penalties? OK, but what about most shooters? Pixies? Gremlins? Or simply don't take lvl 1 units? Shit opinion.

> choose Knowledge
One of the most retarded things I've ever heard. You first advice to learn Sorcery and Intelligence… And then you say to get Knowledge.

> always take attack
What the actual fuck

> Units near Unicorn are immune to spells
First of all, it's not true. They only give 20% of magic resistance. Second, this is bt really important at all.

> Always attack 7th level with them
If you have a choice—yes. Otherwise, Mighty Gorgons are very good on their own.

> that advice about island towns
Gr8 advice m8

>>3367572
http://heroes.thelazy.net/wiki/Magic_Elemental

> Psychic Elementals deal half damage to units immune to Mind Spells, while Magic Elementals deal half damage only to units completely immune to magic (Black Dragons and other Magic Elementals).

2 units in the whole fucking game. Meanwhile, Psychic Elementals deal half damage to units immune to Mind Spells, meaning:

> Giants/Titans
> Undeads
> Golems
> Elementals

Why does the AI think that he can just walk past my biggest army, stopping 3 tiles away from it as it's on its way trying to steal an unguarded town?

Someone needs to put together a guide to macro. I know every trick in the book when it comes to creatures, spells, skills, battles etc., but as long as actually covering the map is concerned, I'm absolute shit. My secondaries end up standing around like autists after clearing the starting area in the first week, and the AI will quickly overwhelm me most of the time unless I get DD or TP because I can't defend my castles.

I'd like a good player to give us a turn-by-turn rundown of the first two weeks or something.

>>3367003
All good points

>>3367132
Why? Just WHY? Master Gremlins have second best damage/gold ratio from all shooting units in the game (only after Grand Elves). You can get tons of them if you take them from Tavern heroes and upgrade them. When under effect of Advanced/Expert Bless and with the aid of Archery (pretty useful for Tower), they deal insane damage.

>>3366992
> Uh, no, leadership and luck are both great.
For combat? Nope.

Luck:

> Maximum positive luck is +3. This may already be obtained through artifacts and adventure map locations (e.g. Fountain of Fortune), so often there is little need to also spend a secondary skill slot on it.
>Lucky strikes are not sufficiently numerous or powerful to rival the bonus damage of Archery or Offense. Even when expert Luck increases luck from 0 to +3, the resulting average bonus damage is 2.4 times lower than what expert Offense provides to melee attacks, and 4 times lower than what expert Archery provides to ranged attacks.
>Luck is unpredictable and therefore cannot be relied on when planning fights.

Don't forget that "double damage" means "+100% BASE damage". E.g., let's say an Archangel strikes an enemy and deals 150 damage. His lucky strike will only deal 200 damage, not 300.

Same applies to morale (except for base damage part). The BEST bonus you can get from it is 12,5% damage on average, which is offset greatly by the fact that it's unpredictable and wasted easily. Offense/Archery provide far better benefits.

Also, I actually think that for newbies, Ballista/Tent and their skills are near useless.

>>3367623
Have you tried looking up youtube plays by good players?
Anyway, I'm not great by any standard, but the most common tactic is leaving a chain of heroes between your starting point and your main hero. If your town gets attacked, you get your armies back on the chain to the town, then you suicide your hero on a random neutral pack, retreat, and rehire him in the town. You can have your main her and your army back in the town in a single turn.

>>3367623
Always try to have a supply chain of heroes to run back new units every week and position heroes near creature dwellings or stuff like windmills and water wheels.

Start with easy stuff like that first and eventually you'll start planning out ahead of time what you need and the amount of heroes you'll need to do it efficiently.

>>3367718
Eh, I'd pick learning if it's a larger map.

>>3367718
A sista's gotta get educated.

>>3367737
Oh, this reminds me. I'm the one who posted >>3360960

Learning made its way to HoMM straight from Might and Magic VI. Meaning, you waste no skill slots buying it in the latter game; more importantly, it adds much more experience in it, easily over 50%. Also, obviously, in M&M you go past lvl 20.

In Heroes, it's a complete, utter and unjustifiable waste.

http://heroes.thelazy.net/wiki/Learning

> Learning is an excellent idea, but the execution fails completely. If a hero were to have expert level of Learning from the beginning of the game, when the hero reaches 230,000 experience points, a hero without the skill would have achieved 200,000 points. This would mean that the first hero is on level 26 and the second on level 25, which is only a one-level difference. There is just no justification for choosing Learning.

>>3367781
Even in MM6 you only put 1 point into it for the base bonus +1%.

>>3367804
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/41610-might-and-magic-vi-the-mandate-of-heaven/faqs/24566
> Learning - There are few major schools of thought on the Learning skill. One, get the skill as soon as possible and never throw a point into it again. This gives you a 10% bonus on all experience gained. The second is to Master the skill ASAP, giving you a 30% bonus on all experience gained. The Final one is to throw as many points into this as humanly possible in order to gain more points later when you start getting these +100,000 XP awards.

>>3367823
>9+1 = 10% bonus xp for 1 skill point
>9+7*3 = 30% bonus xp for 1+2+3+4+5+6+7=28 skill points
That's a lot of skill points. Rather put some points into magic. It's questionable if that 20% extra xp is even going to give you back that extra 27 skill points.

>>3367830
Oh, my bad. I actually only played VII, not VI. I thought they were near identical, but VII has Grandmaster level of expertise. Grandmaster Learning gives quintuple bonus. So for 29%, you need only 1+2+3+4=10 skills points. But only Monks can attain it

>>3367856
You need 10 points in a skill to even be able to train GM. 7 for master.
With 4 skill points you can only become expert, which doubles it for 8% plus base.

>>3367870
OK, looks like I fucked up the whole maths. I admit it.

Well, still you could get it for 10% for very low cost which doesn't hurt.

>>3367893
Anyway, you're right that sometimes it feels like Heroes 3 suffers from a badly translated MM6 skill system.
It's weird that they didn't balance it over 2 expansions.

Why are all witches in this game female? Ain't that a little sexist?

>>3367629
>The BEST bonus you can get from it is 12,5% damage on average

No, the best bonus you can get from high morale is your stack of phoenixes not missing a turn, and therefore giving up the chance at the first hit of the battle (which can decide the entire outcome), all because you have a mixed faction army.

>Also, I actually think that for newbies, Ballista/Tent and their skills are near useless.

Only on huge maps.

Again, it is all situational, some skills are more useful on some maps.

>>3367553
>Ignore the upgrade that's immune to all magic, +2 speed, higher damage and everything for 50 gold? You've got to be kidding.

You can't put Haste on Magic Elementals, which alone can be a game breaker. Getting a guaranteed hit on the 1st turn with weaker units is worth more than potentially not even getting a single turn in. Unless you have tactics.

>Good for 1 thing: speed. +5 health doesn't justify high price and high dwelling cost.

Archmagi reduce spell costs by 2. Or do normal magi do that too? I don't know from the top of my head.

>>3364740
Broghild is rarely talked about at all but I found that on a large map with enough hives, his wyvern stacks can murder everything. He tends to be my pick for Fortress, though Tazar might be better though in absolute terms and Scouting as a starting skill is whatever

>>3367629
Ballista is FREE dead creatures early on and FREE distracted enemy stacks when they decide to go after your warmachines instead of your creatures (AI loves to do that). It also deals ok damage on Might heroes later on, not much but it's FREE. Not sure how a newbie can fuck this up. People undersell ballistas really. Gurnisson is a top-tier hero for a reason.

>>3367976
Normal magi do that also.

>>3367995
Yeah, in late game an expert ballista can kill more than one tier 7 upgraded creature, with 1 shot.

And, again, being able to control the ballista means that it does not hit blinded units.

>>3368006
desu if you don't have artillery skill and use blind you can just get rid of the ballista to avoid the problem.

>>3367967
I was talking more about damage. I get what you're saying, but 1) there are many artifacts and map objects that increase morale, 2) how many creatures from different towns do you have in you army anyway?… With creatures from 3 different towns, and thus -1 morale, you have 8,3% chance of your troops freezing (1 in 12). That's bearable.

Also, you're taking one very specific example. Are you referring to using Armageddon? Have you tried splitting stacks or do you have literally 1 Phoenix? Even refugee camps allow hiring 2 AFAIK.

>>3367976
> You can't put Haste on Magic Elementals
True, but magic immunity also has lots of advantages.

> Or do normal magi do that too?
Yep, they do. So, Arch Magi have +1 attack and + 1 defense (very small difference), +5HP (35 vs 30) and +2 speed (7 vs 5). The last two things are of course good, but first of all, the upgraded Magi dwelling requires Library, which, may I remind you, costs 5 of all resources + 1500 g—pretty steep requirement, especially early in the game; second, the units cost 450 g vs 350 g, which is also around 25% difference—not too little for a pretty small upgrade.

>>3367995
> FREE
> FREE
> actually costs 2500 g and is easily broken
OK

> Not sure how a newbie can fuck this up

I am saying this because when I was new, I always bought a ballista, but knew jack shit about how to use it. So it dealt rather shit damage.

You have to know that 1) ballista damage calculation is different from normal and 2) to realize it's true potential you MUST have high attack and Artillery. That's a lot of asking and planning for a player who's still learning the basics.

>>3368130
>how many creatures from different towns do you have in you army anyway

No reason not to use Phoenix + Archangel + Titan + Dragon army if you have the means to.
And remember that your morale can be affected by other things too, like map events, having undead in your army, or facing bone dragons.

>That's bearable.

You cannot bring statistics into this because if it procs at the wrong time, you can lose your entire main army.

>True, but magic immunity also has lots of advantages.

Yeah, you can't put Bless on them either, nor Prayer, or Clone, or Teleport, nor can you resurrect them (well you couldn't do it anyway since they are elementals). Also Conflux cannot get Armageddon unless you find the grail.

Yeah they cannot be slowed or cursed or imploded either, but the other army can just mass slow and then take out the magic elementals first.

>Kyrre/Gunnar/Dessa need to be like level 40 to double their base movement range

I honestly don't feel like Logistics specialty is as broken as people say, especially considering how it does absolutely nothing in combat

>>3368227
more movement = more neutral packs killed per day = more resources+more xp = being able to buy more/higher tier units
So if you use it well, your hero will be potentially higher level, have more artifacts found and have a bigger army.

Is there a mod that changes H3 necromancy to H5 style? (It's a point buy system, so for example you could raise 20 skeletons or 1 lich)

>>3367718
if this is WoG, then I'd pick Eagle Eye.
they changed the skill a little bit so it's on par with other skills now. it basically works like scholar in WoG.

>>3368328
I'd just play H5 if I was you.

also, everyone: this is an amazing mod for H5.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/might-magic-heroes-55

adds new and old heroes and changes the HUD a bit among a lot of other stuff like new textures and new buildings.

>>3367623
use view air to see the ai's position on the map
use view earth to get a general idea of the map layout

combining them basicly gives you a maphack

>>3367718
>using fortress heroes other than Tazar

>>3367995
it is also a FREE wasted skill slot
the damage is shit earlygame and even worse lategame, it could only be situationaly good in campaigns

>>3368006
and getting expert earth would get rid of +10 level 7 creatures in the lategame, with one cast

Bump because it would be embarrassing to fall off of /vr/

>A throng of power liches with a desire for greater glory wish to join you
diplomacy is a guilty pleasure

>>3365543
it's such an incredibly situational thing though

why on earth would you choose "almost half of the time you can learn a useful spell IF the AI chooses to cast it in battle and IF you survive the the battle" over even a mid tier straightforward bonus like some mana every turn

>For players' armies, Army Strength is the sum of the AI Values of the creatures in their army multiplied by the commanding Hero's [(Attack × 0.05 + 1) × (Defense × 0.05 + 1)] .5

Does this mean that might heroes are better for diplomacy?

>>3369901
I thought necros can't be hired with diplomacy.

>>3368924
>not playing all random

>>3370140
Precisely. They are also better for chasing AI around, because estimated strength is the only thing that it checks. This is why it will sometimes try to siege castles that it has no chance to conquer. Lack of hero in garrison = no attack/defense multiplier = "I can totally do it without shooters, fliers and ballistic skill, those 200 dwarves and 300 zombies that I drag around will manage!"

Hey guys, I've been wondering: is there any way to force your shooting unit to walk up to target and make a melee attack instead of ranged one?

I mean, e.g., I have Titans. I want them to walk up to someone and slash them. Instead all I can do is shoot lightning bolts at them. Is there a way to fix this?

>>3370249
WoG/ERA

>>3370249
only in IV. no such possibility in III. Could you explain what's the use of it anyway, aisde from extremely situational stuff when your shooters have no melee penalty and opponent casts air shield?

>>3370175

Undead creatures don't have morale, but they aren't completely brainless.

My favorite gameplay story from Heroes III has to be this

> Protect Tower town
> Sieged by another Tower army
> Enemy catapult makes a hole in my wall at the top of the screen
> Big stack of Iron Golems comes to it, gets blown up on a land mine (but remember, they have 75% damage resistance)
> I move over a Naga stack to block the hole
> Catapult makes another hole (bottom of the screen)

> Now comes the best part

> Iron Golems decide to not face Nagas and walk to the new hole instead
> They take the shortest route to the new hole, walking over EVERY land mine on their way

> They die after blowing up on 4 or 5 of them

I still hate the fact that Tower has land mines instead of a true moat but oh well

I've seen the Steam version get shit on pretty hard, is it not worth bothering with?

>>3370282
Ah! That's it. I remember I could do that in some Heroes game. I only remember IV subconsciously.

> Could you explain what's the use of it anyway
It's not that much use for most units, admittedly.

But with Titans, there are situations like this for example: I could Haste them and walk through the whole screen and deal full damage, but I'm forced to shoot and do half the damage (distance penalty). Another example: during a siege, the gate is open, but the enemy unit is behind the walls. I could shoot him with half or quarter damage, depending on distance; or I could just walk up and bash his head in, dealing 100% damage.

This is why I actually don't like Titans that much. Call me crazy, but I think they are pretty disappointing, especially given their price.

>>3370214
To be fair, an army without a hero is pretty damn weak. Damage done/taken gets a massive buff from primary skills even if the hero does nothing besides being present at the battle.

>>3370309
Nah, get the GOG version, download the Horn of the Abyss fan expansion, and the Heroes HD mod.

End result; definitive edition of Heroes 3

>>3370310
I agree with your opinion on titans. On the other hand, when you mass haste tower units, upgraded gargoyles, genies and nagas can all traverse whole battlefield, locking all possible shooters anyway, so sending titans in too seems kinda redundant.

>>3370309
The Steam version you're talking about is Heroes III HD—not to be confused with the HD mod.

It's shit on for many reasons. It only has the first game in it, Restoration of Erathia, without the 2 expansions; it has bugs; it looks ugly as all fuck despite the graphics is supposed to be its main selling point. Not to mention it costs much more than Heroes III Complete (but this obviously does not account for sales etc).

If I were you I'd save myself trouble and get Heroes III Complete.

>>3370309
No, it's bad.
It's only base game, NO expansions.
The HD remake is fucking ugly, the freely available HD mod to the original game is actually prettier. It also has UI improvements that the steam version doesn't have, like more spells per page in the spellbook, quick combat, and so on.

The steam version is worse in every way especially content and graphics.

>>3370309
Main reason is that does not offer a single thing not offered by free mods anyway (and actually it offers much less on many fields) and it's a typical cashgrab attempt of jewbisoft, aimed at nostalgiafags that haven't played for years and are clueless about existing modding communities. I've seen posts of people who know what's going around, listing countless reasons to not buy the HD edition, refuted by single "yeah, but it's Heroes! Shut up, you are not real fan if you don't want to buy this!"

>>3370328
I don't mean just to lock other shooters—I mean for damage. In theory, Titans should deal a shitton of damage; in reality, they face all the penalties of the ordinary shooters.

It's sad because many lvl 7 creatures really help in sieges—take Archangels, Dragons and so on. But Titans with their quarter damage feel really underwhelming in this case, unless you amass dozens of them. Not cost effective at all.

Of course there is the huge potential of Clone, but your clones get destroyed by arrow towers every round. Alas, there's no spell to avoid range/obstacle penalties, and artifacts which do so are very rare and hard to get.

>>3370292
Tower's land mines are better than normal moats, at least vs. AI, anyway. Comp will usually avoid getting his units in the moat as much as possible, while with land mines he ignores them and will usually drag units through bunches of them, losing a sizeable chunk of forces that way.

>>3370393
It's not even about that one-time use of them. I would still trade mine damage for stunlock effect that normal moats have, not only there is no point in holding enemy in wall breaches, but also that we will march-on inside without wasting turn.

>install WoG
>replaces the main menu music, which is one of the best songs ever made
>uinstall WoG

>>3370359

You can spam chain lightning with tower though. They have a high chance of getting it. Plus wizards get enough magic power to not completely suck balls as damage dealing casters. Not as good as warlocks or heretics though. The worst part about tower is the terrain imo. You can barely use heroes from other factions. Same as with fortress and barbarians.

Tower's best tactic is separating master genies into as many stacks as possible, then have them all buff your MGs/archmagi/titans. With bless/precision/frenzy/prayer/slayer on simultaneously shooters can lay down some first degree murder, and as soon as you can get an upg. altar of wishes too. Anything that can't reach your shooters in one or two turns will die

>>3370359
That's what Archmagi are for.

>>3370523
>have them all buff your MGs/archmagi/titans
>they cast Counterstrike, Stone skin, Bloodlust and Anti-Magic
t-thanks

>>3370576

Yeah master genies were more geared as hand to hand buffers.

Anti magic is good though.

>>3370576
Well when you have 4-6 of them and have a couple turns to do the buffing, it's more likely for them to cast the needed spells. But yeah buffing up Nagas with them is cool too. What sucks is them casting Protection from X

>>3370621
(sorry, they can't cast Protection from X, but Fire/Air Shield and Magic Mirror aren't exactly impressive either)

>>3370621
>4-6 of them
Opponent casts blind on your buffed to hell shooter(s) and you are fucked due to no melee proficiency. No thanks, I'd rather have normal army and not count on RNG that much

>>3368924
>and getting expert earth would get rid of +10 level 7 creatures in the lategame, with one cast

Assuming you have the resources to get a high level mage guild, assuming that you roll good spells, and assuming that the map creator did not specifically remove a set of spells from the game to make it more fair.

>>3370283
>Undead creatures don't have morale, but they aren't completely brainless.

Meanwhile, living creatures have morale but are completely brainless. Nature is balanced that way.

>>3370621
Master Genies are sweet if you use them on magic plains though. All their spells are buffed to expert level, which can have some HILARIOUS effects.

>>3370638
It's not a tactic for big hero-on-hero fights of course, but it's good for clearing big dumb neutral stacks you'd be having problems with otherwise early on, or dwarven treasuries and stuff.

Is town portal, fly and dimension door disabled in half of the campaigns, or am I just being really unlucky?

>>3370694
>cleaning early stacks with multiple master genies and archmages
yeah, on 80% maybe

>>3370721

It is definitely disabled in dragon slayer campaign. You can only get that shit when doing side quests.

Will the game always flow from having an early-game might hero to fuck up neutrals and then pampering a magic hero to implosion everything for a gorillion damage late game?

>>3370787
If we are talking about real late game on noticeably big maps, might hero is better all the way. Even expert earth Implosion (if you have resources or luck to get it) won't cut down fast enough stacks that were breeding for few months, any opposing main heroes can have some nasty artifacts or skills to oppose it. Better to mass haste/prayer or mass slow (supported by blind and force field) to clear huge non-shooter stacks, and you don't need much mana and no spellpower whatsoever to make use of those

Is there any mod that adds a few more special abilities to units to differentiate them like in Heroes V?
I tried WoG, but it just fills the game with completely needless features like commanders and henchmen, without actually touching the base creatures to make them more unique.
For example Inferno has like 4 melee walker grunts, dungeon has beholders and medusa which are almost identical, and so on.

>>3370936
As it was said several times already, all WoG modules can be turned on and off. Dislike commanders and henchmen? Turn them off. Want creature skills? There are several modules included that can change those, turn them on. Want even more creature skills? There is a tutorial there that instructs you on writing own ERM scripts, so you can assign virtually any skill to any troop.

>>3370973
I can turn off what I don't want, but there isn't anything really in WoG that I want. It's only rebalances of creatures, not making them more interesting.

>>3370987
Damn, I'm WoG enthusiast, but even I can't say that it's about balance. Anyway (please pardon not retro for a second), if you want to try some strategizing around unique skills, play some of those new King's Bounty games. They have exact same HoMM battle mechanics (common roots after all), exept that every single troop has different set of active skills that it can use at command, and troops can move and take special actions in same turn (like, you can move 3 hexes and do nothing else, or move 2 hexes and attack, or launch special boost skill, move 2 hexes and launch attack skill etc.). Combining different sets of units that work in synergy is pretty fun.

>>3370210
>not buying a better hero when you can
>>3370249
only if there is another enemy infront of your titans

>>3370393
>>3370424
i'd disagree with you guys mines damage is nice but it fails at what its supposed to do - defend the town

golems/ogres/zombies/battle dwarves etc are made to patch up holes in the wall while the moat disables the enemy dealing constant damage and providing an armor reduction

landmines could be easily removed by random shit units suiciding in them OR by MASS DISPEL

>>3370453
im pritty sure its the type of army that determines the terrain bonus, a barbarian with a pack of dragon flies will be fast in swampland

>>3370667
assuming you would get enough attack to to actualy kill a level 7

>>3370936
>>3370987

in WoG yeah, turning on creature XP gives them new levels that unlock better stats and unique abilities, however its kinda hard to level up your guys while the ai's army will always be high leveled

>>3371010
That sounds pretty good. Which is a good entry point into the series?

>>3371020
Obviously, you can try out first one that came for DOS in 1990. Out of new ones, I suggest to do them in order they came out (Legends -> Crossworlds -> Warriors of the North -> Dark Side). There is also Armored Princess, but Crossworlds is basically a huge add on that expands Princess campaing with even more units, artifacts and whatnot, so it's like a difference between playing HoMM III RoE or going straight for SoD. If you want to start with longest game with biggest content, it's Crossworlds too, later two installments removed some stuff for the sake of adding other.

Hey /homm3g/, can you recommend me some great HoMM3 singleplayer maps? I've played through Sander's Folly not that long ago and shit was amazing.
Unleashing the Bloodthirsty was pretty neat too, but a little too hardcore for me. Hard to pull off the shooter stack behind force field trick when the enemy both has black dragons and casts dispel every other turn because fuck you.

Anyway, I love this sort of well-crafted, aesthetically pleasing and lengthy maps with their own stories.

>>3370973
Writing ERM scripts is much more difficult than just editing SoD directly. The former requires learning/dealing with a 16 year old unique scripting language made by a Russian autist to be as unintelligible and different from everything else as possible. The latter is just the same generic reversing process as any game.

Call me edgelord2000 but WoG really is trash. HotA and HD Mod are both much better made modifications .

>>3371231
Pandora's Box (comes with the base game)
http://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=974&game=3

>>3370393
Pretty much this.

Tower has some of the best meat shield units in the entire game—Iron Golems. They have the best HP/gold ratio of all units in the whole game; and their immunities/75% damage resistance also helps.

They are perfect for shutting down holes in the walls. But alas, with Tower, there's no moat to completely exhaust troops who try to penetrate your Castle through the wall.

>>3371016
>>>3370453 (You) #
>im pritty sure its the type of army that determines the terrain bonus, a barbarian with a pack of dragon flies will be fast in swampland

I think it only applies to the battlefield.

>>3371632
Your hero experiences increased consumption of movement points on different terrain. The only way to decrease it is have your army consist entirely of a faction that belongs to this terrain.

I.e., you enter swamp on adventure map, and your movement goes to shit. But if you had only Fortress army with you—e.g., Dragon Flies, Gorgons, etc.—, you'd walk on it as if it was grass, going much longer distances each turn.

The same goes for snow.

And no, hero type DOESN'T change shit. Only unit faction does.

>>3370523
Trust me: I've played only Tower for the last several months, and as cool as Master Genies' ability sounds, most of the time you'll have what >>3370576 said. It's a cool ability if you have only 3–4 of them anyway, or if you just can't attack yet and cast spells because they'd just do nothing otherwise.

Master Genies are kinda underrated though. The best flying Tower unit. They have great attack, but completely shit health. With Frenzy, they become simply amazing. But never rush them as they die like flies.

Of course Nagas and Giants are even stronger, but they don't fly and are slow, which is a great disadvantage during sieging, and leads to unwanted high-level creature deaths.

>>3370694
Here's the best tactic for clearing neutral walker and flyer stacks I've found. Take Tactics skill and use formation as on picrelated. The only disadvantage is some lost damage because my Master Gremlin stack is too strong.

>>3370576
and frenzy

>>3370807
berserk scales well though

>>3371662
The other advantage being that you have tactics

>>3371708
>The other advantage being that you have tactics

>low key haste is bad

How often do you trade?

I usually only do it from precious resources I don't need for my main towns.

If I have Dwarven Treasuries I'll go nutty on day 7.

Otherwise it seems like a bad idea that will weaken you. I have no idea what the multiplayer meta here is.

>>3370787
Pretty much what >>3370807 said.

Implosion is very cool if the enemy only has Archangels. But if there are Black Dragons, or meaty units like Iron Golems, Centaurs, Dwarves, Dendroids, Walking Dead, Pikemen, Ogre Magi or Walking Dead, then Implosion is far less effective.

>>3371727
You mean in Markets or where?

>>3371731
Yeah markets. The more towns with markets you control the better the deal is, capping at 1-1 for precious (non-ore or -wood). Trading posts you can find around with is the same as having like 5 towns and can be useful at the start of resource-poor maps.

>>3371727
I try to avoid it, but I'll do it if, for example, it's day 7 and I can somehow scrape together enough resources via trading that I'll get those Behemoths ready.

I don't think it's such a great idea to sell all your resources to get a few units more though, unless you have hundreds of units of them and no use for them.

>>3371734
When I need to build a dwelling/Castle ASAP before the week ends, of course I do trade. Later, pretty much what you said—for Treasury and stuff.

The problem here is, of course, the amount of towns needed for the ratio to get decent. When you have enough towns to have 1-1 ratio, I guess you're already well enough to not care much about trade.

Plus, it's not like you get disproportionate amounts of certain resources in the game very often. I'd get it if Medusa Stores gave you 100 Sulfur or something like that. But otherwise, it's not super important.

>>3360960
I've been thinking about the subject again, and now I understand better why HoMM IV was so much more RPG than TBS: Van Caneghem talked about how he always wanted to merge M&M system and a strategy. But I realize now it had was easier said than done.

In M&M, you have 4 (or even 6) heroes. You can balance everything out. You can have a heavily armored warrior for damage, a Cleric for healing/buffing, a Wizard for flying/walking on water and offensive spells, and one more slot for utility stuff—say, Rogue for opening chests.

In Heroes III, you have only one hero to do everything. That's why, I guess, Might heroes can learn almost all the best skills Magic heroes have if they're lucky enough. In the end, Magic heroes suffer the most from this: most of the time, magic is amazing as support, but just not enough to fight a whole army (except for Armageddon).

And I guess that's why Heroes IV allowed more than 1 hero during combat, artifacts on units and all that (forgive my vague recollection—I haven't played the game since it came out).

I try to think of ways to balance out this M&M system in Heroes III framework, but it just doesn't work out very well.

But I assume one thing would have worked: Might heroes should have been banned from having Intelligence altogether and the Expert (or even Advanced) levels of Wisdom. This way, they'd have no Implosion, Elemental summoning and all that, and even if they did, they'd have no mana to cast it.

>>3371261
I have to agree with this. I'm a software engineer and was thinking of writing a couple of custom scripts in ERM. I looked at the language and went "what the fuck."
I cannot imagine why did anyone think that a syntax like that would be a good idea.

>>3371727
One common tactic is to skip building capital and just rush for a tier 6 or 7 unit. Then you won't have enough gold to buy it, so you sell your resources.
If you get some week 2 angels it's a big enough advantage that you will make back the resources you sold by clearing half of the map without losses.

>>3371769
The issue is less with intelligence and wisdom and more with expert elemental magics. Mass anything utterly transforms the way you view a spell.

>>3371769
>In M&M, you have 4 (or even 6) heroes. You can balance everything out.
You don't even need to do that, I always play with 4 casters like cleric/druid/sorc/sorc. And take traps to the face and heal up after that.

>>3371769
>In the end, Magic heroes suffer the most from this: most of the time, magic is amazing as support, but just not enough to fight a whole army (except for Armageddon).
Magic heroes only suffer if you ban view air, town portal, dimension door, fly, and so on. Otherwise they will get the good spells far before might heroes do, and can cast them more often. Might heroes will only have like 40-50 mana even on medium level. That's not enough to spam dimension door, and you even have to ration your combat mana usage if you want to be able to have enough left for town portal.
Might heroes might not even get to expert level in a spell school by level 15.

>This way, they'd have no Implosion, Elemental summoning and all that, and even if they did, they'd have no mana to cast it.
Might heroes also don't really have the spell power needed for damage spells like implosion. They almost always go for a buffing/utility spell where power matters less, rather than pure damage.

>>3371787
Yep, I've been thinking about this too.

The problem is, any change to Mass Slow/Mass Haste will DRASTICALLY change the balance of the whole game, especially factions like Stronghold which rely on their might Heroes for Attack and mass Haste for walking.

I think that without Mass Haste/Slow, might heroes' usefulness would drop dramatically.

And also, in order for a true Might/Magic class divide to really occur, I think 2 different heroes a week from 2 different factions is simply not enough. Especially with Necros, who fuck up the morale with skeleton summoning.

>>3371791
> see a chest
> what could go wrong, right
> probably just a weak trap
> I'll patch the wounds right up, I have potions
> OK, open it up now
> gameover.jpg

>>3371791
>town portal, dimension door, fly
Nothing actually bans Might heroes from using these spells, and from getting Expert Wisdom eventually, even if it means on level 18 (latest possible if you take it every time). Yes, Magic heroes will get Wisdom faster, usually by level 6; but 1) you have to build Mage Guild to lvl 5 first 2) it's a lottery and you're not guaranteed Dimension Door/Fly/Town Portal at all 3) even then it purely depends on town.

Moreover, since these are all adventure spells, Might heroes can actually recharge in wells/towns. It depends on a map, but on some of them wells are abundant. Regarding Town Portal, which is a lvl 4 spell by the way, this is especially apparent, since you wind up in towns anyway.

Where Magic heroes really win is damage spells… Which pretty much leaves only Armageddon and Implosion. And Elemental summoning too which can be a bitch. This is where Spell Power truly matters.

>>3371819

Oh man, the ai spamming elementals is annoying as fuck

>>3371826
At least they have weaknesses. Air Elementals just ask for a Lightning Bolt.

>>3371843
>Air Elementals
>weak to Lightning spells, immune to Meteor Shower
>Earth Elementals
>weak to Meteor Shower, immune to Lightning spells
I wonder if something got mixed up in development

>>3371797
>play four kinghts
>see a chest
>take an explosion to face and survive on nick of health
>make camp
>one day later, open another chest
>survive on nick of health and camp again
>when out of apples, return to tavern for more to open more chests
slow and steady wins the race

I've been toying with this hypothesis recently: I think Heroes III has a rock-paper-scissors triad of sorts, meat shield-shooters-flyers. This mostly applies to units of lvl 2–5.

Shooters easily get rid of slow units; but they naturally have low speed, terrible health and are awful in melee combat, and thus fall prey to fast units, who can lock them easily (with or without Wait command).

Flyers prey on shooters, but their main advantage—speed—means nothing when they face slow killing machines like Dendroids or Ogres.

Meat shield units are perfect for taking on flyers, but before they get to shooters, they will be decimated and slowed down by spells.

Does this make sense to you? I think it's a good way to explain HoMMIII units to new players, and generalize units into groups based on their similarities.

At the very least, note this interesting tendency:

Pikemen—max health and health/gold ratio of level 1 units
Dwarves/Walking Dead—same but for lvl 2 units
Iron Golems—lvl 3
Ogre Magi/Demons—lvl 4
Dendroids/Gorgons—lvl 5

These cover most factions except for Dungeon. I think they are all similar and can be categorized as "meat shield" units (except Demons, Ogres and Gorgons also have great attack power).

Same goes for fast units/flyers: Obsidian Gargoyles, Dragon Flies, Royal Griffins, Silver Pegasi, Thunder Birds/Master Genies, Efreeti Sultans/Scorpicores/Wyvern Monarchs, and some others.

And also, to add to this: I think units of levels 6 and 7 eschew this scheme, usually becoming multipurpose and all-round developed. A lot of them are also siege-centered, which makes sense given they are usually not acquired when towns still have Forts.

>>3371861
> Congratulations! Your play time: 725 days
It always seems fun to me how in M&M no one stops you from napping anywhere even if it's some evil dungeon.

>>3371856
Yeah, how the hell are Storm Elementals vulnerable to Lightning? Beats me.

I guess on intuitive level, it should've been something like this:

Water—vuln. to Lightning
Fire—vuln. to Water
Earth—vuln. to Fire
Air—vuln. to Earth

On the other hand, the game has only 2 AoE Fire spells, so I guess they had to improvise.

Oh, and this all doesn't explain how the fuck Fire Elementals become Energy Elementals. This is the most counter-intuitive elemental fuckup of the whole game. Middle Ages alchemy has no shit on HoMMIII.

>>3371902

This is the way it works in heroes kingdoms as well. Shooters > walkers > flyers > shooters again, so on.

>>3371919

They used a different criteria. Where lighting gets grounded by earth, but splits apart air as it travels.

>>3371919
> Congratulations! Your play time: 725 days
Considering that heroes in M&M actually do age and it affects their stats (when they grow old, strength drops, intellect rises and so on), intentionally taking it extremely slow and playing whole campaign over the course of ~30 years by taking long rests between quests has it's own charm

>>3372056
That only starts at around 60 years old, since a usual playthrough is 2-3 years long that would need a lot of rest spam.
Or magical aging. Divine Intervention ages the user by 10 years, if I remember correctly. But it can be cured with another potion.

>>3360465
am I weird for just playing homm3 map editor and building comfy maps with fantasy bit sprites?

>>3372434
I loved to do that too... back when HOMM3 was new. But yeah, it's surprisingly fun to build your own maps, even if they'll never be "playable".

>>3372434
A little unusual, but i've seen stranger.

Any cool Archdevil tactics you know of? I was thinking if they had any redeeming qualities about them.

The only one I know of is: wait out an opponent, then strike without retaliation and teleport back, harpy style. This is kinda shit for a lvl 7 if you ask me…

Also, who's the creepiest/ugliest hero in the game? Halon is definitely in my top 3

>>3361350
earth has telekinesis in MM7 and 8, which is essential if your party has no thief
also stone to flesh is really useful
otherwise, meh

>>3372983
And Galthran is probably in my top 1

>>3372434
It's perfectly normal. HOMM3 is great for just roleplaying too.

>>3372983
>Moandor's charismatic style somehow stayed with him after he was transformed into a lich.

>>3372983
Overall the heroes added in Armageddon's Blade look sort of weird.

Especially Gelu.

>>3372996
I guess his desire for knowledge beyond the grave explains why he starts with Basic Learning

Anyway, I know, it's foolish, but I don't like Stronghold precisely because of the look of their heroes. I mean, I'm fine with M&MVII-style goblins, but HoMMIII heroes are a bit too much

How do you guys like HOMM 6 ?
I think it's a shame it turned out so meh, because they had legit great stuff:
>cool graphics and animations
>decent creatures
>cool idea / mechanics / "skills" for each creature, each of them has a special effect or something like that
>faction abilities are a good idea
>leveling system is pretty decent
>dynasties that level up accross several games were a very cool idea I think, even though I guess it's controversial

what fucking sucks is how the overworld map and overworld strategy sucks ball
>removed tons of resources
>gameplay is slow as fuck
>maps are actually tiny as fuck.... if you were to port the HOMM6 maps to HOMM3 they would end up looking retardely small and simple, even the first campaign map in HOMM3 is much much bigger and just feels normal
imo that's where they dropped the ball, there is no strategy of conquest at all in this game, it's basically going from point A to B, following a path on the road

>>3373008
It's very obvious why this happened too.

M&M6 used edited photos or photorealistic portraits of characters. Same goes for HoMMIII—most hero portraits are drawn and resemble photos for a big part.

Armageddon's Blade used 3D models for new heroes. This is immediately apparent when you see them. This was also when M&MVII and VIII made this switch.

However, AFAIK in restoration of Erathia Catherine and Roland are in 3D. But this is explainable by the fact that they appear as 3D models in cutscenes.

>>3373008
He's half elf, so it is no wonder he looks weird.

the devil hero guy who used the Armageddon's Blade looked great though.

>>3373009
I think some of them look sort of cool, like Zubin and Gurnisson. And they have some human heroes, so it's not too bad.

>Not only is Gretchin an excellent leader, but all who follow her will tell you the same thing - she's like having another mom who can take care of you.
She looks like my mom too.

>>3373013
> dynasties that level up accross several games were a very cool idea I think, even though I guess it's controversial
IIRC they were tied with Ubi account, weren't they?

> what fucking sucks is how the overworld map and overworld strategy sucks ball
After HoMM transitioned to 3D (read: V, VI, VII), maps became very empty.

>removed tons of resources
Fixed in VII.
If that matters, I was hyped for HoMM VII, but later I've found I don't care about new Heroes anymore. I'll look if they finally will find out how to make rich maps.

>>3365165
I like the way Inferno can expand and build a bunch of castle gates to have their castles interconnected. However, even though it's probably the best feature of Inferno that cuts out a whole bunch of middle men when it comes to getting troops to your main and upgrading them, it does jack shit if there's no other Inferno cities on the map.

If I was to buff Inferno, I'd give them an ability to convert captured cities of other factions into Inferno towns. It'd be reversible and limited somehow (costs a lot, maybe disables the building of Castle or something, or can only be used with towns without Fort) but combined with castle gate it'd really give Inferno a feel of a spreading alien plague turning everything it touches into a breeding pit and a base of operations.

>>3373027
I get that, and it would be okay if they changed the style between the games, but having the expansion look completely different is really weird.

I remember you could right-click a hero in the Tavern and hero's window wouldn't disappear when you release the right mouse key.
Am I alone reminding this? I couldn't find any version of game with this feature later.

>>3373013
I haven't played it and not going to after watching gameplay videos. Boring as fuck campaigns with endless cutscenes—yeah sure, I totally do give a fuck about the plot you wrote… It's totally gonna be very original and feel like Heroes game, right?

The visuals really kill it for me though. Everything looks like a cheap copy of WoW or a Korean RPG, as some anon in this thread noted. Inferno look like zerg, the rest have neon runes, completely disproportionate models (a la Warcraft), and overall the art direction is very questionable to say the least.

>>3373042
Yeah it was a pretty rough transition. Clashed with the old art style for sure.

I guess they could have just drawn Gelu. Why they didn't? Maybe to achieve consistency with the game cover art/promotional material.

Reminds me how Sharpshooters' icon looks kinda weird in the game. Can't point my finger on it, but it's just wrong. Can't find the image though

>>3373032
Yeah, those are actually cool. But some, like Saurug or Gundula look pretty awful

>>3373008
>>3373027
Actually, my bad; Catherine and Roland were added in Armageddon's Blade. So, this makes it even more obvious; this was a deliberate change from drawings/photos to 3D.

>>3373057
jesus that thing looks fucking stupid.

Digimon has better design than Heroes 6...

>>3373076
>he wouldn't fuck Gundula

>>3373008
I still don't understand how the fuck it's supposed to be a DUDE

>>3373035
yeah it's tied to ubi account but you need one anyway to play. what kind of sucks is that you max out your dynasty in like 30 hours of gameplay, which is basically half the main campaign...
>>3373056
mandela effect in full force

>>3373057
honestly the plot is shit but it's bearable when playing the campaigns... it helps that the first campaign is necro and has actually a original idea where you play an innocent girl that was killed and is revived as a necromancer but still as innocent and on the good side

Also I agree that the graphics design is shit, but I really like it on a technical aspect and for the effects / animations

>that shit-tier 3D

>>3373113
Hero portraits I can deal with, but what the FUCK were they thinking with changing the angel/devil main and loading screens to godawful deviantart tier rendered shit

>>3373120
I've only ever seen this in the loading screen though

>>3373124
Here's the complete main menu, honestly a joke compared to the RoE one, AB and SoD standalone ones are pretty bad too

why the fuck couldn't they do a fast game once they started to do 3D version of HOMM ?
what I like best about HOMM3 is how the game takes seconds to launch, a single turn is really fast because there's 0 lag in the UI / map / combat and it's just accurate as fuck.
On the other hand the 3D versions feels slugish as fuck, it's like it takes ages to do simple shit like a simple turn with a combat...
even HOMM5 suffers from this and now it's 10 years old so I doubt my computer isn't powerful enough to run it

>>3373113
It's a bummer that NWC made all those 3D models for HoMM III and IV, as well as for some M&M games, just to make sprites based on them, but didn't include them in game files or ever released in any way.

>>3372983
There is something inherently wrong with Ayden's portrait. It looks like it was a photo that got warped while being put on scanner. Or is his head actually bent like that?

>>3373146
Conflux heroes are the most retarded / fun
>fire girl hero cuming on her portrait
>black guy with dreads except he is a blue elemental
>john travolta

>Casts X with increased effect, based on hero level compared to the level of the target unit.
What is the actual math behind this?

>>3373085
I know, right?

I mean, how could you possibly fuck up Archangels? Answer: this is how.

> 2 huge glowing different-colored swords
> dress bigger than the body
> wings bigger than the dress
> huge should pads (but of course!)
> all that armor and a CAPE over head. Very wise

And finally, it looks off, close but different from what there really is in popular legends/whatever. Which is my biggest gripe with Heroes VI. Woah dude, a guy on a horse made of sun! A dwarf with a fire beard! A chick in glowing runes! NeOn RaVe!1! https://youtu.be/p6203oIRC0I

>>3373132
Fuck, they actually drew Gelu instead of rendering him there. What stopped them from doing so in AB? Beats me.

>>3373151
Dat mullet

Who's Travolta though?

>>3373161

>>3373158
The fuck is that supposed to be anyway? It looks like something out of Spawn. All it needs is a huge gun.

>>3373146
> It's a bummer that NWC made all those 3D models for HoMM III and IV, as well as for some M&M games, just to make sprites based on them, but didn't include them in game files or ever released in any way.

This. Imagine if Ubisoft actually got the models and re-rendered them in HD. Full 3D remake would be even greater but I guess much more expensive.

> There is something inherently wrong with Ayden's portrait.
Well it has a bit distorted perspective I guess, but so do some other hero portraits. His look is so disgusted though

>>3373162
He always reminded me of Ali G

>>3373040
Inferno castle portal should be able to lead you into any captured town, not just other inferno ones with the gate built.

Town conversion is nice but I'd rather have it a possibility for any town - make it cost something like 50k gold and 50 wood & ore, can only be done on a maxed out town, and it makes your town restart out of scratch.

>>3373142
HOMM3 is fast like that because it was released in 1999, and was a fairly low-end game even then. Pretty much only the FMVs needed a lot of power. The game has static screens almost everywhere with only minimal animation, and runs in 800x600 in 16-bit colour.

You can actually make it lag if you build a map with something like 100 shrubberies in the same map position.

>>3373156
Can't find anything in Tribute to Strategists, but Heroes wiki has the following on Bless/Ice Bolt:

>Bless is the specialty of Adela. It causes bless to be cast with increased effect, based on hero level compared to the level of the target unit (the bonus is greater when used on weaker units). Adela's bless specialty increases the damage of a unit using the following equation:
>base damage * 0.03 * hero level / unit level
>This extra damage is in addition to the bless spell. For example, at level 18 Adela will provide a 54% damage bonus to halberdiers, 27% to marksmen, 18% to royal griffins, 13.5% to crusaders, 10.8% to zealots, 9% to champions, and 7.1% to archangels.
>Ice Bolt follows the same algorithm.

>try out Age of Wonders 3
>combat feels sluggish
>combat based on positioning and not macro and unit management
>try out HoMMV
>UI is fucking awful
>sluggish combat like >>3373013 said
How hard would it be to make a clone of HoMM in something like unity? I'm fucking fed up enough that I'm willing to learn to make something.

>>3373171
It'd be another gimmicky feature a la WoG, breaking restrictions without caring much about the consequences.

>>3373180
You'd think Heroes would be copied by all Android devs a million times. What do you know—the only thing that comes close to being its "clone" got so unanimously shit on that I stayed away from it (given it wasn't free).

>>3373178
So let's see... Suppose level 20 Alagar has 20 Power and is casting Expert Ice Bolt against a level 1 stack. That's 260 bonus damage for 690 total. Doesn't seem too bad, but that's practically nothing compared to what creatures would be dealing at this point, and becomes even less against higher-level creatures (only 38 bonus damage). With the water orb and Expert Sorcery, that's 1138 damage against level 1 units, which is kinda nice, almost an Implosion at only the fraction of the cost. But considerably less against higher-level creatures - only 792 against level 5 creatures. Now killing 17 pit lords at once is nice, but what are the chances of finding a water orb. Overall seems underwhelming to me. It's even worse with low-damage spell specialties like Death Ripple or Inferno

>>3373185
Yeah, but you can't disagree that Inferno needs such a thing anyway.

>>3373214
Why? I can.

Gameplay-wise, why would I spend so much money/resources just to have another unbuilt Inferno town? What do I gain from it? I'd rather build a town of a different faction and either equip a hero only with their units, or use them as cannon fodder if I invest in Pit Lords.

Lore-wise, I'm not even sure; Kreegans mostly advanced from Eofol and didn't really "infect" other towns per se.

Where can I find more "high res" portraits?