>>2322641
>the greatest fantasy turn based strategy series of all time.
yikes

>>2322641
Are homm 3 purist going to sabotage olden era with bad press so the homm 3 player base doesn’t fracture?

good morning slav sirs

>>2322656
>>2322722
good morning sirs, we are all slavs too
did you know Lithuanian sounds very similar to Sanskrit?

>>2322693
>says "yikes", implying disagreement
>too cowardly to name what's supposed to be better
Afraid to come at the king, huh.

>>2322740
Not her, but Sengoku Rance is the greatest TBS in history of video games and it's fantasy too.

>>2322693
yeah probably not even top 5

^
Forgot to post my top 5:
>Songs of Conquest
>Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster
>Fire Emblem : Three Houses
>Age of Wonders 4
>King's Bounty

As y'all can see, none of the Heroes games can compare

the best game in the franchise is Clash of Heroes

>>2323160
Source? Citation?

>>2322753
chinkshit for smelly jeets is superior to homm3? I don't think so, TheGhostmaster

>>2323398
>TheGhostmaster
That your Steam friend? Your nemesis?

>>2323547
just a resident /vst/ jeet with the shittiest takes of all time. Why are you talking about yourself in third person again?

Heroes 3 doesn't even have comeback mechanics

>>2323634
NTA but why are you so obsessed with him? Just because he posts his aoe2 team game armenian screenshots every day?

>>2322641
Heroes of Might & Magic needs
>good AI
>a way to recover from when you lose your best hero+army / when the AI loses its shitstack on some random shit hero with shit skills
>multiplayer balance that allows for played maps that aren't Jesus on the Cross

>>2323925
>>2323850
>Heroes 3 doesn't even have comeback mechanics
>a way to recover from when you lose your best hero+army / when the AI loses its shitstack on some random shit hero with shit skills
I'm not sure if it needs it, but it's probably the biggest flaw in the series.
I don't know a good way to fix it either.

>>2323157
>Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster
>Fire Emblem : Three Houses
These are not HoMM type games.

>>2323999
copivm

>>2323850
>>2323925
>>2323966
My first thought would be making it so that it's easier to build up but also more expensive to maintain a large army.

Which turn based strategy game *does* have comeback mechanics?

>>2324107
We just don't know

>>2324107
Civ
The thing about homm is that if you win a big fight, you delete the enemy army and you gain a lot of experience.
Even if it's a tough fight and you lose most of your army, you still gained all of the experience.
Promotions for units in civ games aren't really that massive, so there's more room for back and forth. You also have other ways of achieving victory, so even losing armies and a city there's another path forward to victory.

>>2323925
>a way to recover from when you lose your best hero+army
why? If you lose, why should you have a way to win?
For me, the entire point of homm3 scenarios is the lead up to and having a massive final fight between the most powerful heroes of each faction. If you lose badly to the point where the enemy keeps most of its force alive, you can't and shouldn't be able to come back.
Granted, the AI should just surrender at that point instead of playing a retarded cat & mouse game with weak enemy remnants

>>2324550
>For me, the entire point of homm3 scenarios is the lead up to and having a massive final fight between the most powerful heroes of each faction
Yeah but this literally never happens. The AI never picks up the best hero on offer, and even if you spoonfeed it (I'm talking not only giving that hero a high level/good skills and good army, but also double check on the hero in a save editor to make sure the AI is still using him/her) it will, at the first opportunity, ditch the hero somewhere and split his stack into three shit heroes with Eagle Eye, 1 ATK at level 10 and Artillery.

Of course I as the player never thought to myself "gee wilikers, I wish I had a comeback mechanic", I want the AI to at least provide a bit of a challenge after I wipe its "one good hero's good army that I had to forcefeed into said hero split into X". It's like the AI loves to divide itself so its easier to conquer.

replaying the campaigns in H3 reminds you how mid it is

>>2324739
Are there any good Heroes campaigns outside of Shadow of Death?

>>2326593
some people say the one where you play as a Black is a good one

File: copium map.jpg (461.5 KB)

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How accurate is this map?

>>2327417
What is the GDP of shitholes like Krewlod that have like two towns in it?

Just pirated HoMM3 Complete and am about to play my first game, any quick tips? My entire HoMM experience thus far is an hour of the demo for the new one coming out soon.

>>2328652
just two, have fun and don't listen to anybody in these threads

>>2323157
Kings bounty is shit and heroes improved the foundations on every level. But you already knew that

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>>2328652
First, I'd recommend that you install the unofficial HD mod, if you haven't done so already. It's just a matter of convenience for you. You can run heroes3.exe using the HD launcher.
Then, play the tutorial if you want (it relies on you having a H3 manual, but you can complete the tutorial even without it). If you understand the mechanics, just go straight to campaigns.
Afterwards, play the Restoration of Erathia campaigns, then Armageddon Blade and close it off with Shadow of Death. Starting RoE campaigns are tutorial-tier easy, AB steps it up a notch and SoD has some genuinely tricky missions on harder difficulties.

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

At this point, you have either had enough of the game or you want more. If it's the latter, then you've got two options:
1. Play the single scenario maps (there's comfortably over a hundred of them) included in the Complete Edition.
2. Download the unofficial expansions. The official unofficial one is the Horn of the Abyss expansion, with its own set of scenarios and campaigns.

ALSO IMPORTANT: These expansions were made by and tuned for people with advanced autism who've been playing the game for the past two decades. Do not feel bad if you need to lower the difficulty to medium or easy.

>>2328679
This is also a good tip.

>>2328652
Ignore
>>2328679
listen to me instead. Play Necropolis and play with instant battle results in HD mod disabled at first, so you don't get lazy and rely on it and its possibly superior results to your beginner combat skills. Necropolis teaches you the value of preserving your big stacks early and using tiny stacks as distraction/bait for AI, while still having to win with pawn-like units (Necro has no shooters early) before Vampire Lords and Liches.

t. learned how to play Heroes with Necropolis+Thant first

>>2328691
>listen to me instead. Play Necropolis
see, this is the first issue that >>2328679 talks about. Play whatever faction you want. Play what you think is coolest. Play the hero that looks the coolest. Don't read wikis, don't listen to minmaxers ITT, don't play the game to be "taught" to be the best. Play however you want.
You will fail a lot and you will have tons of fun failing.

>>2328691
retard

>>2324107
the most fundamental comeback mechanic in strategy games is distance. if you're fighting in the enemy base your production is delayed by travel time

but in H3 you just pony express that shit right across the map

>>2328679
>Hero feels like the enemy is way too strong for them
>"Do you wish to retreat?"
>Click the tick because the tick means yes, thus I want to retreat
>In actuality the tick made me engage and she died
:/

>>2328686
Yeah I found the HD mod when googling for how to put the game in window mode, it's nice.

>>2328744
"retreat" means your hero can be recruited at the tavern with all their units intact

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>>2327417
Antagarich is fine but the other two continents are awkwardly cut out when from the maps presented from the games you might guess there's more to them. See pic related.

File: jadame-map.jpg (1.2 MB)

1.2 MB JPG

>>2328763
And Jadame here. Although thanks to incoming Homm Older Era at least we can see the whole of Jadame (oriented upside-down in comparison to the M&M8 map). Also I don't know if the placement of the continents in relation to themselves was even canonical stated.

>>2328747
LIAR! Retreat means you can be recruited with no units! You have to PAY & surrender to keep your army.

>>2328769
shit it's been a while, you're right with the terminology.

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>>2322641
The Older Era devs are teasing something "ancient". Whatever that might be.

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>>2324550
>If you lose, why should you have a way to win?
This. Scrubs need to STFU and git gud
>>2324575
>I want the AI to at least provide a bit of a challenge
Have you tried having 7 AIs in a team against you?

>>2329277
Not them, but it's super easy to beat 7 AIs, they don't team play.

Don't play Restoration of Erathia campaigns.

>>2327417
Why did no one ever make a "lore accurate" map of Antagarich where you can play as all the original 8 factions in their original lands?

>>2329634
For one, we never really had enough factions to make that possible.

>>2329634
https://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=2387&game=3
https://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=1922&game=3
https://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=2652&game=3
https://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=2793&game=3
https://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=2268&game=3
https://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=1791&game=3

>>2329694
>no tunnel from Stone City to Nignog
>no desert between Krewlod/Barrow Downs and Bracada
>no snow mountains between Tatalia and Krewlod (where the Wormthrax cave is supposed to be)

File: allwrong.jpg (1.4 MB)

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>>2329992

>>2330012
Which map is that? I downloaded only the first link thinking they're all the same.

>>2330022
5th

My 2026 skill buff wishlist:
>Artillery/Ballistics
Merge in one, add a new racial skill into the empty slot formerly occupied by Ballistics. Although... I guess adding new slots is not a problem?
>(Artillery+Ballistics) & First Aid
You can restore X% of your ballista/first aid tent every turn, even after it's destroyed. I don't like the "MOM SAID you can't deal more than 40% of damage in one attack" added in HotA.
>Eagle Eye
Last time I wrote a post like this on /vst/, it needed buffing, but now they made it tolerable in HotA (only looked it up as I was writing this).
>Pathfinding
Heroes with Pathfinding get no negatives when traveling on terrain where the majority of their army is from. Would make this a feature given to everyone to be honest.
>Scouting
At expert you also get the Rogue's spy ability.

File: 1746610730417980.png (222 KB)

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guess that's the ancient news

>>2323850
Why should there be a comeback mechanic in a war?

Just dont lose, then you dont need to "come back"

>>2330191
>where the majority of their army is from
too autistic, make it native terrain to the hero

>>2330260
25 years out of notable game development, and it's not like he was some auteur solo dev that made everything himself before that.
Credit for what he did back then, but there's very little actual value in bringing him in.
He's basically just there for legitimacy.

>>2330260
>>2330317
All the while Ubislop is falling apart

>>2330322
I just hope ubisoft falling won't stop them from releasing olden era

>>2330297
No, that would get immediately powergamed by the hotties.
>Hehe look how strong Fortress Beastmasters (only) and Cove heroes and Academy heroes are now! I can carry my multiracial shitstack all over the hardest terrains! Pathfinder is irrelevant nos on my bestheroes TM!

Since movement is always based on the units you have (heroes only enhance it/reduce penalties), so should the ability to travese natural terrain naturally be linked to your units. If I could I would also double down on penalties for race mixing.

All units, same faction? +2 morale instead of +1.
All units, same alignment? +1 morale base, if good or evil, +0 base if neutral.
If you add a neutral to all good or all evil, goes to +0 base.
If you add an evil to all good or a good to all evil, -1 base morale.
Undead with living creatures, regardless of alignments = always extra -1 base morale on top of everything else.
Each hostile faction unit mixed in, -1 morale (so if you have 3x Castle, 2x Rampart, 1x Tower = +1 -2 = -1 base morale if there's a hostile faction with Tower and hostile faction with Rampart)

>>2322641
Let's discuss how by so many standards the highwater mark of our civilization is speeding away at sixty seconds per minute in the opposite direction.

>>2330333
>split goblins into all slots
>you are now a desert wind
>split gnolls into all slots
>you are now swamp proof
that's retarded anon. Just a bad idea altogether and you yourself explain why
>umm ackshually you should do calculations of total HP of a faction in your roster and include all artifact and hero skill modifiers into the formula
far too autistic of an idea

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>>2330343
>split goblins into all slots
>you are now a desert wind
>split gnolls into all slots
>you are now swamp proof
waow

>>2330343
>Each unit counts as one, regardless of how many stacks you split them to.
There. BOOM.

Same goes for the morale, so you don't get -6 morale from having 6 separate stacks of your enemy Dungeon's Evil Eyes in your Rampart party.

>>2330260
wow how long until release? Two more weeks? What an ingenious PR move. If only they fired all the retarded MP niggers from design positions and had this guy from the beginning, we could be looking at a decent game that also doesn't look like chinese mobile gacha slop

>>2330329
Well they're getting published by Hooded Horse, not Ubisoft for starters.

>>2328652
Ignore everyone, including >>2328679, instead watch Heroes 3 pros like Lexiav so you learn how to play Jesus's Cross as soon as possible, the only true way to play Heroes 3.

Why do some Heroes with unit speciality end up with disproportionately higher stats than others, even though they're specialized in like 2-4 level creatures?

https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Comparison_of_Creature_Specialties
1) 92 total, 1x level 3 specialist
2) 84 total, 3x level 2
3) 78 total, 2x level 2
4) 76 total, 1x level 3
5) 72 total, lots of level 2 and 3s, but also Death Knights who have the same total as Skeletons, the only level 1 in top 5, two level 4s and a level 5

>>2332053
Creatures have different stats.

tier2 Battle Dwarves have 7 attack skill and 7 defense skill, in total 14.
Every 2 levels Ufretin increases their stats by 20%.
At level 60 he increases their stats by 600%.
14*6=84

Tier2 Wolf Raiders have 8 attack skill and 5 defense skill, in total 13.
13*6=78

>>2331151
The only true way to play homm3 is to exclusively play XL maps, turtle, and to remain willfully ignorant of half the game's mechanics (it remains magical).

Spell Balance Patch

== Air Magic ==
>Level 1
Disguise
Disrupting Ray
Haste
View Air
+
>Level 2
Fortune Spell cost reduced to 6 (5). Removes Misfortune.
Lighting Bolt
Mirth
>Level 3
Air Shield
Hypnotize
Precision Spell cost increased to 18 (15). Single target effect. Increases attack by 10/15%. Removes range penalty at Expert Air Magic.
>Level 4
Chain Lightning
Counterstrike
Magic Mirror Spell cost is 24 (20). 30/40/50% chance of deflection, increased by Luck.
>Level 5
Fly
Summon Air Elemental

== Earth Magic ==
>Level 1
Shield
Slow
Stone Skin
View Earth
>Level 2
Earth Quake Spell cost 9 (7). Applies the effects formerly applied by Quicksand.
Misfortune Spell cost reduced to 6 (5). Removes Fortune.
Sorrow
>Level 3
Animate Dead
Death Ripple Base spell cost stays the same, so Earth Magic reduces it to 7 instead of 8.
Force Field
>Level 4
Anti-Magic
Meteor Shower
Resurrection
>Level 5
Implosion
Summon Earth Elemental

== Fire Magic ==
>Level 1
Blind Spell cost "increased" to 10 (9) - the Fire Magic reduction is only 1 at level 1.
Bloodlust
Curse
Slayer Spell cost reduced to 10 (9). Adds an attack bonus when when attacking level 7 units. Attack bonus equal to 1+(half the level difference of the attacking unit, rounded up). Increases to 1+(level difference of the attacking unit, rounded up). Affects all units at Expert Fire Magic.
>Level 2
Fireball Spell cost reduced to 12 (10). Damage reduced by 5 (60->55) at Expert Fire Magic.
Fire Wall
Frenzy
>Level 3
Fire Shield
Inferno Spell cost reduced to 15 (12). Damage increased by 10 (80->90) at Expert Fire Magic
Land Mine
>Level 4
Armageddon
Berserk
Sacrifice
>Level 5
Dimension Door
Summon Fire Elemental

>>2332528
== Water Magic ==
>Level 1
Bless
Cure
Dispel
Remove Obstacle Cost reduced to 5 (4) spell points. At advanced/expert, prevents Fire Wall/magical obstacles from being placed again next turn.
Summon Boat Cost reduced to 1 (0) spell points.
>Level 2
Ice Bolt
Weakness
Destroy Undead *Cost reduced to 10 (8) spell points. Casting the spell prevents Animate Dead and Resurrection on both sides (Advanced Water Magic) on your enemy's side (Expert Water Magic).
>Level 3
Forgetfulness
Frost Ring
Teleport
>Level 4
Clone
Prayer
Water Walk *You can now end your turn on water. You can enter an empty boat (i.e. from Summon Boat) if you're stuck in water.
>Level 5
Town Portal *You can now teleport to any unoccupied allied town from the start, but you lose all your movement points/half your movement points/no movement points. You need to have a minimum of 300 movement points to cast the spell.
Summon Water Elemental

Summon Boat and Water Walk don't appear in Mage Guilds if there is no water on the map. Summon Boat appears in every player's Mage Guild level 1 on maps with water.
Scuttle Boat is no longer a spell, but something you can do when clicking on a boat, instead of boarding it.

>Generic Spells
>Level 1
Magic Arrow
>Level 2
Visions
>Level 4
Protection from Magic *Protects all friendly units, reducing damage from all spells by 15%. You automatically get Protection from X Magic if you get Basic X Magic. Protection from X Magic casts Protection from Magic and gives you an additional 25/35/45% damage reduction from X spells at Basic/Advanced/Expert X Magic.

If I forgot to mention the spell cost on some of the spells I moved up/down a rank, they are automatically adjusted to cost the same they used to with Basic X Magic, so the base cost goes up/down according.

>>2332092
this but unironically

>>2332531
this but unironically, unironically

when I listen to the Russky's and near-Russky's talk about how to play their HotA matches, it makes me sick to the stomach
>nooooo I spawned on my favorite terrain, that's terrible because I need to fill my army with diversity from my heckin templetarino

>>2330317
I was under the impression that he made some of the games (like M&M1 and King's Bounty) completely on his own. Regardless, I'm still incredibly butthurt about Underworld Ascendant, so I automatically dismiss having people that made great games 25 years ago on your team as anything but memberberry bait. Time will tell, maybe he has some advice that will make the game better.
But speaking of JVC, here's an interview with him (and also the fat fuck from unfrozen), some pretty neat insights into older games' development.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wRJDA1zUJY

>>2333055
>I was under the impression that he made some of the games (like M&M1 and King's Bounty) completely on his own.
Just m&m1 as far as I know, and that's not really the work of an auteur.
I think of him as a strategy games hall of famer, but not a singular talent and an untapped goldmine they can draw from.
Honestly not sure if such a person even exists within video games, like maybe at best in the writing department you could get a guy who was good and relevant 25 years ago and he could write for a new game, but I don't know. Game design relies on too many factors.
>Regardless, I'm still incredibly butthurt about Underworld Ascendant, so I automatically dismiss having people that made great games 25 years ago on your team as anything but memberberry bait
I do feel a bit smug seeing Stormgate fail after seeing so many people getting hyped over old blizzard devs.


Yeah saw the interview it was really interesting.

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Don't forget about Hammer of the Gods which was made before Heroes 1.

>>2333119
why do they look like they're pooping?

>>2333266
It's completely normal and natural to evacuate yourself during high adrenaline situations, such as melees.

>>2333119
Is it good? Should I play it?

How can I check my ongoing campaign score? I'm trying not to score too high as Gem, so I can have the SoD campaigns go Gem < Yogurt < Gelu < Crag Hack < Sandro, in High Scores.

>Latest VCMI
>Play HOTA, the AI somehow gets a bajilion units
>Play vanilla, the AI is barely playing
THEY BORKED IT

>>2333119
I'll hammer your mom.

>>2328683
KB is unique and complete.

>>2328652
I personally play only Skirmish on maps that feel like a fantasy adventure: Darwin's Prize, Dawn of War, Battle of the Sexes etc.

>>2339146
That is, maps that are pretty and where chests and artifacts are events.

>>2339026
Just recently, the Olden Era marketing team did a youtuber shill interview with JVC, and he mentioned that apparently at first Heroes 3 had an AI so strong that no one beat it, so everyone complained it wasn't fun so he dumbed it down to monkey tier.

And now, years later, there are some embarrassing Russkies writing stuff like "A TRIBUTE TO STRATEGISTS" praising Heroes 3 players like they're the second coming of Sun Tzu, because they're exploiting a purposefully retard AI algorithm. That's why I cannot take HOTA seriously or any of the HOTA multiplayer tips and tricks. It's all about exploiting a designed-to-be-retarded AI.
>chacha [ch like chaos], my fellow cykas, look how I can destroy this stack by cleverly manipulating the AI to go after my 1 units masterfully baiting good strategy tactic, while my big unit stack kills everything
I've always thought it was weird because even the most basic AI algorithm would know not to follow 1 stacks and eliminate the highest threat.

Is it true that they made the "sexy monster" in the cthulhu faction a gender fluid? How far we done fell from Heroes 5 days...

>>2333055
Oh hey that's the interview

>>2339720
They can take my gender fluid if you know what I mean.

What kind of damn hippy plays the Rampart.

>>2339210
Was the AI strong because of brilliant moves, or strong because of resources? And how much time did it take?

>>2340066
Because of moves obviously, it's super easy to make an AI that can tell that it's better to take out the power stack than follow some 0 damage level 1 unit on the other side of the map.

What are everyone's thoughts on Olden Era's new necromancy rework?

Personally, I wonder if the following alternative might work better, even though I didn't play the demo:
>the level of units that necromancers can raise to are dependent on technologies, not towns or heroes
>heroes with necromancy has a single target undead unit type they raise to, unit-type-raised-after-battle, limited by technologies
>heroes with necromancy can only change the unit-type-raised-after-battle in towns, and maybe some locations. This is to decrease micromanagement and improve what the developers call "player flow", such that players don't have to change the type before each battle
>all enemy defeated stacks yield some necromancy resource, necro-res. Necro-res yield are based on unit type AI strength statistics
>undead are raised according to necro-res. Level 1 skeletons are raised at necro-res cost equal to their unit type AI strength score. As in, if the enemy stacks after battle yield 100 necro-res, and the skeleton unit type AI strength score is 11, then 9 skeletons are raised and there is 1 necro-res leftover, since 9x11 + 1 = 100
>any leftover necro-res is carried by heroes, until they reach a town, at which point it goes into a global pool similar to gold and other regular resources
>at towns, necro-res can buy units at some discounted converted gold cost, like 50%, without costing any existing available creatures from growth in that town
>in towns, undead units can be converted to necro-res, though it will still cost gold to raise using necro-res
>necro-res is never lost when converted to or from undead units, but higher-level undead units cost more and give more necro-res relative to their level by some percentage
>if there is no room for unit-type-raised-after-battle after a battle, it will convert to the first stack of any upgraded or degraded undead of the same level and type, and if there is no such stack, it is all converted to necro-res

>>2340074
In Heroes 4 and later the battle Ai changes with the difficulty setting. Sadly there is no way to play with the better AI without also letting the AI get a shitload of extra ressorces.

>>2340074
I would think that the adventure map challenges would still be difficult for the AI, relative to the battle map challenges.

I do agree with some of your points, the many significant idiosyncrasies of HOMM3, and how exploiting the vulnerabilities in the AI is a huge part of gameplay, are strange. But it is presumably also difficult to fix, because campaigns, scenarios and multiplayer formats have been balanced around it, the game might have been designed around it, and it is what the playerbase is familiar and experienced with.
The dumb AI does have some advantages, since it is presumably cheap and fast to execute, and since the AI will presumably never play perfectly due to inherent limitations in more complex battles and the battle systems (probability like damage ranges, luck and morale, and some special abilities, as well as unknown information like the AI not knowing what skills, items and spells the enemy hero has), a cheap AI may not be that much worse.

>>2340074
>>2340114

But I do think you have some decent points. Making the AI play worse on purpose might be better for new players, and might be better if a player wants the challenge to be different or be elsewhere, or just wants to make players feel great about beating a fake challenge that is designed to seem difficult as you say to make them buy and play, but it ought to get old beating the same old challenges.
At least there are some complexities. For instance, in multiplayer, a player typically has to optimize as much as possible and exploit to the fullest that the AI is dumb. But the inclusion of randomness and hidden information can make this significantly more complex in practice.on the other hand, multiplayer matches can often seem a bit like action games, as the player races against the game clock as his turn ticks down. Though that can also hold for blitz chess.

Strategy games often have problems with AI being slow and playing poorly. Chess is one example to the contrary where the AI is doing well relative to the best human players.

Which Heroes are gay?

>>2340572
Heroes 4.

>>2340572
All except 4.

>>2340572
Gelu

>>2340572
6 and 7

>>2340927
Haha! This is so funny! He said the young people numbers! That's just like E back in my son's day or "game" back in my day

>>2340929
wat

>>2340933
you literally have to be retarded to get it

Reading statistics after a game is pretty neat.

>>2340950
Where? I don't get any stats after game

>>2340954
VCMI.

File: good luck.webm (2.1 MB)

2.1 MB WEBM

>>2340074
In Olden Era they go for the BIG units although that's not always a good idea when you have a unit that can res them

>>2333565
I still fire it up about once a year. Its interesting enough to have played through at least once.
The biggest downside is the videos (at the beginning and end of the game) don't like to run thru DOSBox. Those provide some background / story info but they aren't really that important to the game.
But I do recommend it.

Why is this so poplar but Age of Wonders / 2 / Shadow Magic so dead? I even have one of the newest AoW games on Steam and I never even installed, prolly got it for free or thru some HB shyte.

>>2342292
Eastern Europe, duh.

>>2342292
I don't know much about the state of newer turn-based strategy games, but autobattlers probably remove a huge chunk of tedium, and perhaps also certain kinds of challenges.

Guessing wildly, the endgame of HOMM3 has a low maximum number of armies that can be moved around on the global map. This limits micromanagement. In AOW1 and AOW2, one can end up moving lots and lots of armies around, split units off, build and send settlers, etc., which can be significant extra work.

Also, leaders/heroes are able to fight and die, unlike HOMM3.

And there was the whole, really weird, genocide and migration mechanism in AOW.

And battle map combat could get really stupid and strange, with the cheese having the possibility of being much worse and much more tedious and time-consuming than even HOMM3.

HOMM4 experimented a lot, and arguably regressed in some of these regards.

Though HOMM3 is not a flawless game. And most players just enjoy numbers going up, probably, and HOMM3 does really, really well there as a drug. In singleplayer, some campaigns, especially some of the ones in the fan-made expansion, encourage or require save-scumming, undermining one of the sources of challenge in singleplayer, namely to win a campaign without ever restarting or save-scumming or looking up campaign guides.

>>2342292
>>2342332
>>2342292

One HOTA HOMM3 campaign scenario, with pyramids and boat-game-mechanic-focused adventure-level puzzles (why would anyone ever want to become an expert in the weird and demented game mechanics of an old game??) in particular, abused and required terrible kinds of gameplay, not strategy-focused, but focused on stupid, demented, save-scumming-requiring puzzles. I won one battle in that scenario, that would otherwise have been impossible, with a single gold dragon, and then using an OS macro to repeatedly and automatically kite for like a 1000 turns, to drain the enemy hero of mana, and then killing the enemy stack with just about enough mana (I had made rough calculations about spell damage being enough, researching which spells would be most mana-efficient). Completed that scenario, but never finished that campaign due to hardware failure, and not bothering again with a new save. The story was also manipulative, demented and Mary Sue trash.

>>2342333
>why would anyone ever want to become an expert in the weird and demented game mechanics of an old game??
Regarding boats, a rarely used and not really relevant mechanic, to be specific.

>>2342292
because AoW2 is immensely overrated. evidence: the question it itself.

>>2342292
Age of Wonders is doing just fine, it still receives new games to this day
Your post might've had some merit if you mentioned an actual dead fantasy tbs franchise like Disciples, Warlords, Master of Magic

>>2342463
>Warlords
Killed by a match-three franchise...

>>2342593
And I just found out that Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition on Steam has a big black guy and a tiny white woman on the cover.

>>2342596
hot hot hot

>>2341013
>swastika at the bottom in the middle

>>2342766
Olden Era is based?

>>2324575
>>2329277
>>2329292
The difficulty is determined by the map maker by the restrictions placed on the human team and the resources given to the computer teams.

>>2342796
Based on what?

>>2342824
The hit series Heroes of Might and Magic (tm).

Does Olden Era still rely on shitty AI for its "masterful big brain tactician" tactics, like Heroes 3?

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is there any actual guide for beginners for heroes 3? every vid i look up is heavily accented slavic men talking about advanced strata like you already know how to bay the game already

>>2343689
Just go through the tutorial lil' bro:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiYvdkCDFC8

>>2343694
holy shit, you do have to dig deep for these kinds of games

>>2343689
I don't think there's much for beginners because the AI is just so simple to beat. Basically, the strategy is, on a macro level
>Go money first, then creature dwellings (i.e. Capitol on week one)
>If you have ranged units, use your melee units split into multiple stacks to defend them, unless you have a better stack of fast moving/hard hitting melee units, then you still split other units to distract enemy
The enemy AI always goes "grug attack!" on the nearest unit. With the HD mod, you can see the move range (where the AI can go) if you hover over the enemy unit. If you place a unit there, it will go after it.

>>2343694
> Watching in 2026 here. This was incredibly useful. There are several "tips and tricks" beginner tutorials for this game online, but this is the best "WTF am I looking at?" tutorial for players like me who have never played a Might and Magic game. Thank you for making it! It's old but gold.

This one of youse?

>>2343697
you say that, as someone who is familiar with the game, but i don't even know who to recruit, what to buy and when to take fights, there are just a lot of micro decisions that i can't find anyone talking about

>>2343698
N-no it really isn't me, I just picked the first H3 tutorial vid from YT

>>2343699
I don't think you need to worry about that yet if you're a total beginner. If I and every other Slav out there could've figured it out when we were kids, you'll figure it out quickly enough.

>>2343699
If by "what you to buy" you mean which units are good, then even the Russky's unit tier lists still apply mostly. They underrate a few specific units, but otherwise it still holds up.

Otherwise you can just watch this one video, you can tell he's a casual because he isn't a Slav.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww65Abp0DjQ

>>2343700
thing is, i don't have as much time and patience of a kid to figure all that out nowadays, i know it sounds whiny but with the free time i have i just play either play stuff i already know well or learn games through tutorial vids, i wish i had all the time in the world like a kid again to really explore new games at my own pace
>>2343701
nice to know, but that kinda proves my point that most learning resources for this game, at least in English, is not readily apparent to newcomers, but i guess i know what to look up now

>>2343697
>Go money first, then creature dwellings (i.e. Capitol on week one)
Nah, have a healthy balance of units, magic, economy. Get a momentum by exploring and grabbing everything on the map.

>>2343697
>Go money first, then creature dwellings (i.e. Capitol on week one)
With the HD mod it's better to use the invite hero feature to hire all heroes with the +350 gold/day speciality.

New VCMI release.

>>2322740
3 is fucking trash where it comes to strategy and tactics, my mother could play this game. in fact she did. the games in the same series (4 and 5) shit all over it.

here you go, you absolute zero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd2gOI0FURs

Will Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era still be released even though Ubislop are kill?

>>2345272
At ubishit stage of slop China buying them out will only improve their games desu

>>2345212
>still not saying anything aside from pissing and shitting himself tier insults
HOW is it trash? Do you even have an argument?

>>2345524
nta but
>hero speed determined by slowest unit, so the slow units are a detriment and unusable
>creature speed also determining its initiative
>extreme imbalance between might and magic heroes
>strongest spells to use in combat are level 1
>severe imbalance between spell schools
>a slew of secondary skills that are bad to useless, only being there to either reward metagaming or have RNG screw you over
>overworld spells invalidate several secondary skills and trivialize both movement and exploration
>some spells are absolute game-changers and whether you get them is a complete RNG tossup, with some towns not even being able to get them at all
>poor town balance in general
>little to no meaningful choice in troop composition: there's good units and there's bad units, while upgrades are a no-brainer
>the best way to play is to drag the game down by buying as many heroes as possible and using them for menial tasks
>invalidating defender's advantage and distances by using said hero spam for long chains that transfer troops
>no comeback mechanics
>a player is virtually out of the game once their strongest hero gets defeated, leaving you with a boring cleanup and without an interesting back-and-forth
>lawl necromancy
>lawl combination artifacts like cape of the undead king

>>2345734
>hero speed determined by slowest unit, so the slow units are a detriment and unusable
just like in real life. And you can put slow units in castles to defend and tank, they're not "unusable", you're just bad at the game
>creature speed also determining its initiative
in what world should slow soldiers have high initiative?
>extreme imbalance between might and magic heroes
skill issue, you can't cast spells if your troops got deleted by +50 attack dragons immediately
>strongest spells to use in combat are level 1
"strongest"? Magic arrow is better than lightning bolt? Cure is better than resurrection? "Universally useful" would be a better term and for a good reason, why wouldn't T1 spells be universally useful and high tier spells specialized?
>severe imbalance between spell schools
sure earth magic is the best by the virtue of slow and town portal, but the other magic schools aren't useless either. Haste, chain lightning, berserk, blind, dispel, teleport, all very useful and commonly used spells
>a slew of secondary skills that are bad to useless, only being there to either reward metagaming or have RNG screw you over
sure, eagle eye and mysticism are pretty bad, but you're greatly exaggerating the issue
>overworld spells invalidate several secondary skills and trivialize both movement and exploration
they don't invalidate anything, you need mana to cast spells, and you need movement points to get to your destination anyway
>some spells are absolute game-changers and whether you get them is a complete RNG tossup, with some towns not even being able to get them at all
I agree town portal is busted, but pissing and shitting yourself over its existence is a skill issue. 99% of maps have multiple castles other than your faction so it's not like they don't exist or pandora's boxes don't exist or scholars don't exist or magic shrines don't exist
>poor town balance in general
only inferno suffers, conflux is too strong in vanilla SoD, others are perfectly fine

>>2345734
>little to no meaningful choice in troop composition: there's good units and there's bad units, while upgrades are a no-brainer
maybe in editor, in real gameplay you use what you have and what you can afford, including the walking dead
>the best way to play is to drag the game down by buying as many heroes as possible and using them for menial tasks
babby strategist discovers logistics
>invalidating defender's advantage and distances by using said hero spam for long chains that transfer troops
babby strategist discovers logistics
>no comeback mechanics
why would you be allowed a comeback when you lost? Imagine wanting war to have comeback mechanics, how would that even work? You discover V2 rockets and nuke krewlod?
>a player is virtually out of the game once their strongest hero gets defeated, leaving you with a boring cleanup and without an interesting back-and-forth
again, why would you have a comeback mechanic once you lost and your main army was defeated? That's precisely how you win or lose wars both in real life and in this fantasy war simulator
>lawl necromancy
what's the issue?
>lawl combination artifacts like cape of the undead king
it's called fun game design, something you have no idea about. If you ever made a game, nobody would play it because of how autistically retarded and unfun it would be

>>2346171
even just the fact that you're poorly trying to apply some nonsensical realism to game mechanics to justify unfun design is damning enough

>>2346177
Rome lost many 'main armies' and still won those wars
Because logistics

>>2345212
>angry cyka

>>2346171
>only inferno suffers, conflux is too strong in vanilla SoD, others are perfectly fine
*perfectly fine in HotA

>>2346177
>what's the issue?
It's an overpowered skill that the clever Russians had to fix in V.

>Stack of 100 Minotaur Kings
What countries do they all rule?

>>2348288
Genres of music.

>>2346407
Yeah, but it's not that fun to play that out.

>>2322641
>along with SMAC obviously.
you meant Civ IV and MOM? and AC is scifi not fantasy strat.

>>2348443
>you meant Civ IV and MOM? and AC is scifi not fantasy strat.
I think they/them are saying Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is the best fantasy TBS (#1 fantasy) and that Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Alpha Centauri are both contenders for the best TBS (#1 TBS).

>>2348466
>Alpha Centauri are both contenders for the best TBS (#1 TBS)
it's really not....

Master of Magic has boobies in it.

>>2348969
But are they nice?

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>>2349051
They're nothing special.

>>2349053
Not these! The voodoo priestess!

>>2349065
I can't find them

>>2348855
It is better than every single Civilization type game with incredibly good balance and viability for all victory types depending on the faction you play.

>>2349067
https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Sharee

Damn, my Tower hero even with Fly was slow as hell, took me like 50% more days to finish a map.

>>2349579
he fly? sheit

Got my infernal ass kicked by the undead... tsk...

reading some posts in previous threads is pretty surreal and absurd, people will whine about how scifi doesnt belong in homm, it makes me think that these morons never played homm games, because you are playing on Enroth, planet created by Ancients, hell, in homm3 you can even play as Kreegans, so i assume the people who were sending death threats to nwc, never played homm games, they just saw pics of forge and shat themself, thinking that by combinig scifi and fantasy you commit some sort of primordal sin and by doing so you desecrate the poor world of fantasy and tolkien himself is turning in his grave

>>2349864
I think it's because MnM is so good at being fantasy, that people get irritated by the sci-si elements, they ruin their fantasy immersion.

>>2349886
what?

>>2349864
Most Homm players didnt play the previous games yes. That was correct in the 90s its also correct now.

>>2349895
Might and Magic is such a good fantasy experience that people get irritated by sci-fi elements.

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>>2349902
>Most Homm players didnt play the previous games yes. That was correct in the 90s its also correct now.
>>2349903
>Might and Magic is such a good fantasy experience that people get irritated by sci-fi elements.

>>2350545
Explain how are these statements mutually exclusive. I'll wait.

>>2349864
>it makes me think that these morons never played homm games,
I think you meant
>never played m&m games
which would be true

I played one.
It sucked.

>>2350704
Try playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 instead of one, it's the best in the series.

>>2350704
this old man
he played one

A friend and I keep playing 1v1 games and he keeps kicking my ass.

>>2351584
in homm5

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>>2351000
The first Heroes game is one of the best. Best artstyle and no bloat. Every unit is useful too even Peasants can win games for you.

>>2351931
It's pretty interesting.
Sadly the UI is quite slow to manage compared to homm2 and homm3. Like just selecting which castle to enter and which units to purchase felt like it took twice as long.

>even Peasants can win games for you
yeah
Combat space being smaller helps the really slow units like peasants and hydras a lot.
The power gap between the peasant and the stronger unit is also smaller in homm1 and homm2. Like dragons only having 200 hp.
Also if you have a single stack of peasants in homm1 in the corner, only 2 hexes are open adjacent to it, compared to 3 in homm2. So you can move your other units over to a secondary hero, and attack fliers like Gargoyles with just Peasants in the corner, and 3 of them will attack, one of them will die to a counter attack, and 2 will have to idle.
Meanwhile in homm2 the same peasant stack would get attacked by 4/5 gargoyles in the first turn.
It sounds like a pretty minor thing but it really changes things.

>>2352890
Id say no

Anyone know how to get the HOMM3 Succession Wars mod to stop crashing so much? It's a shame, I'm enjoying it more than HOTA now except for the random crashes now and then. Usually happens during the phase between turns.

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You can't because orzie is a retard. The only option is to make a VCMI port - extract the graphics using MMArchive and write .json files for VCMI.

>>2353045
I'd play this faction

>>2351950
Two hundred peasants should be able to kill a dragon in the real world.

>>2348395
neither are hero daisychains

>2353077
Even if (HoMM) dragons existed, 200 peasants with pitchforks would get ROFL stomped by a single one, since in 3D space melee weapons can't do shit against flying units, especially ones with ranged attacks (which breath attacks actually realistically are)
But hey, you baited me to reply to (you)r shitpost, so kudos for that

>>2353077
two hundred really isn't a lot anon. Two thousand, now that's a possibility

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Are double runes on Yetis working as intended?
Seems like a bit too much.

>>2353346
Ah, a fellow 35 year old. You're as angry as you were in 2007, everything's a trolling to you.

>>2353346
>(which breath attacks actually realistically are)
not homm dragons breath attacks

Why do (You) like the Yogscast campaign so much?

He looks like an ugly ass blue Indian, and acts like a retard.

>>2346407
In H0MM your "Rome" is a player with multiple castles and that player really can lose an entire army assuming they have different factions.

Realistically speaking, name one thing that Heroes 3 does better than Heroes 5.5 (that's Heroes 5 with a mod to speed up the enemy turns and make their AI better). I know that Heroes 5 sounded good on paper but when I played it the enemy turns made it unplayable. But where's the excuse now? Checkmate.

>>2354583
It runs on a Pentium 2.

>>2354583
graphics, faction design, units and their upgrades, hex combat grid

>>2354583
Better lore, no painfully shitty writing, and no ugly, laggy 3D engine.

>>2354613
>graphics
Um, excuse me?
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_maiden
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Shadow_witch
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Succubus_(H5)
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Pixie_(H5)
I rest my penis, victorious.
>faction design
Elaborate.
>units and their upgrades
Heroes 5's units are more balanced and it has two different upgrades. Sounds like an epic win to me.
>hex combat grid
Yes, that's one thing Heroes 3 has that Heroes 5 doesn't. And is that such a big deal?

>>2354617
>Better lore
Heroes 3 lore is super generic, I bet even the writers themselves would agree Heroes 5 is better.
>no painfully shitty writing
Same as above.
>ugly
I bet even the 2D sprite artists who worked on Heroes 3 would say Heroes 5 looks better.
>laggy
Fixed in 5.5.

>>2354583
You're not wrong but the overworld is kind of shit to navigate.

All this Heroes 5 talk made me think about Necromancy while I was in the shower (after masturbating to anime girls).

I think I came out with the best Necromancy balance ever
>Necromancy is no longer free, but instead requires a global resource (you can track the points by looking at the skill) shared with all heroes that have Necromancy
>Instead of getting X points per week, you get points for killing creatures, equal to the HP total killed * Necromancy skill of the hero who killed them (so Expert Necromancy gets 30% of HP as points for the global pool)
>You can choose to raise an amount of skeletons (shown to you, with the cost), if you do, you don't get any points, instead you get skeletons
>You can't raise more skeletons than the number of units that died in combat
I am brilliant?

>>2354624
>I rest my penis, victorious.
goonbrain is not an argument.
>Elaborate.
9 cool factions > 8 gay factions
>Heroes 5's units are more balanced and it has two different upgrades. Sounds like an epic win to me.
go back.
>Yes, that's one thing Heroes 3 has that Heroes 5 doesn't. And is that such a big deal?
far bigger than what you listed as "better" features of homm5

>>2354583
faction design
homm3 has stronger themes prevalent in design, while homm5 has some factions that are just devolved into generic race as faction.

>>2354624
Homm5 is an extremely ugly game, homm3 isn't that pretty but it wins by default
mid 2000s 3d was rough

>>2354624
>Heroes 3 lore is super generic, I bet even the writers themselves would agree Heroes 5 is better.
H3 is generic 60's/70's fantasy, H5 is generic 80's/90's fantasy ... one might have a preference towards one or the other, but neither have much of a spark, if we're being honest

Are goblins the most diverse ethnicity in the might and magic universe? They are small and fat in MM1-3, blue and African in MM4, completely alien in MM5, look like Magmar from Pokemon in MM6, green humans in MM7, green humans in Heroes (1), green homo habilis in Heroes 2, green little shits in Heroes 3, members of high nobility in Heroes 4, orange big-eared little shits in Heroes 5+.

>>2354647
Necromancy should also only let you raise skeletons from units that have skeletons. That would epically own Necropolis. No more skeletons from thin air, water, mud or fire. No skeletons from statues, trees or ghos--

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>try and play the HotA cove campaigns
>cove towns provided are almost completely useless and most things are locked
>only other town I get is a hamstrung Stronghold town with limited gold production and no access no behes
>get steamrolled by Jabarcas on week 4 by an army thrice the size of mine
Pretty disappointing considering these are supposed to be introductory scenarious to the town and not a gauntlet you need to min-max

>>2355220
kek if you think thats hard wait till you get to the later levels and the forged in fire campaign.

>>2353045
the centaur one ...XD

>>2355220
Anon...
Don't even get near Forged in Fire...

>>2355260
>>2355377
>look up playthrough
>hour 2 he's still trying to get through week 1
that's just straight up dumb

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Why can't my Cavalry move?
The tree is clearly in front of the Ogre.

>>2322641
Heroes is mid.

Does the schizo still post here? He was my favorite lolcow

>>2355721
Which one?

>>2355722
The Quartering

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>>2355697
not sure, tree shouldn't block you, I just tested it

maybe you're just bad at hovering with the cursor

>>2355010
Yes, they were inspired by the Brazilians.

>>2354583
>and make their AI better
This is very questionable.

>>2354613
>>2354617
Who cares about writing in fantasy games? Warcraft's level of Orcs vs Humans and CORRUPTION is enough.

3D castles and a A LOT of units were the best parts of 5.

>>2355722
The one that insisted the old games were better, and if you disagreed you were a "zoom zoom."

>>2355972
I thought maybe you meant the one from /pol/ who said it was redpilled on the Jews.

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>>2355697
>>2355768
Looking closely there is a tree stump hidden behind the tree.

>>2356063
omg, lmao

it's obvious when you look at another tree without a tree stump behind it, but hard to tell otherwise

>>2356063
THIS GUY GOT STUMPED