The modders tried hard, way too hard to ape the unique style and atmosphere of Heroes III but failed miserably.
I do suppose ruskies with 80 IQ living in Siberia will love it.
Did HotA actually buff familiars? Familiars in Complete are grossly overpriced and add nothing of value, in fact from my recollection of HotA, the faction still sucked dick despite all the buffs they got.
It depends on a unit from as soon as possible or pretty much never. Going from gremlin to master gremlin is an insane upgrade while upgrading skeletons may hurt you more than help.
I'm speaking from 20+ years of casual experience but no tournament play.
For me, gremlins, archers, and elves (if you have them on turn 1 on rampart) you 100% upgrade them on turn 1. Massive upgrades, from nothing to shooting and from shooting to shooting twice.
On conflux you upgrade the faeries, they're super powerful early on with spellcaster heroes if you have access to magic arrow on T1.
The rest it depends on the map and available resources but the turn 1 upgrades are less impactful in my opinion. Maybe harpies for dungeon because you get the extra attack distance and no retailation which is really nice.
depends on the unit, you'll see that sometimes upgrades don't change much, while sometimes they give fantastic abilities or significant stat increases
for example I upgrading the crossbowmen in Castle lets they shoot twice - that's fantastic. Same with elves. Harpies when upgraded get no retaliation and a significant speed boost - also really nice. Air and water elementals become shooters, that's always worth getting. Vampires start stealing health after their upgrade, dragonflies get a huge speed boost, wolf riders start attacking twice and so on and so on.
You'll just need to get used to the units and then you'll know which ones are worth upgrading quickly, and which ones don't matter that much.
Those are the main early-game power boosts. Usually it's either because units gain shooting (gremlins, elementals), double attack (marksmen, wolf riders, elves), no retaliation (harpy hags, cerberi, pixies) or an ability that makes neutral armies trivial (one growth of vamp lords can kill 95% weak neutrals in the game). Centaur captains are just great because of their huge speed and alpha-strike potential if you can finish off opponent stack in one hit or have 1 unit spend their retaliation, sort of the same for serpent flies, fragile but with huge speed.
I'm not really into strategy but the theme is great. There's very little good high fantasy Vidya. I also prefer Gothenburg metal and some symphonic black metal.
One of the greatest games ever made. Hand-drawn graphics do not get old. It's such a simple yet very woek-intensive concept, so in this age of outsourcing design to Indian subhumans who don't have the mental capabilities for creativeness and beauty, it's something you don't really see anymore.
I think this is pretty good guidance for the "must upgrades", but I would add a few.
>Swordsmen into Crusader
For the same reason Wolf Rider into Wolf Raider is great >Pit Fiend into Pit Lord
One of the best gimmicks of Inferno, and usually a primary reason anyone really plays them >Goblin into Hobgoblin
7 speed is a huge deal when trying to clear map objectives >Gorgon into Mighty Gorgon
Giving them Death Stare turns them into arguably the best unit Fortress has
What are some less known stuff you've learned about the game you can share? For example I only learned a few years ago that the 'magical aura' of the unicorns means that every unit placed right next to a unicorn gets magic resistance.
commonly known facts >diplomacy reduces level needed for library of enlightenment, normally you need to be level 10 but it can be reduced to 8/6/4 with each level of diplomacy >badge of courage artifact also makes you immune to mind spells >speed of the slowest unit determines movement points of your hero >if you clone an archer they'll spawn with maximum amount of ammo regardless of original unit count
lesser known facts >admiral's hat combination artifact is bugged and can be used to generate infinite amount of movement points >berserk has 255 turn duration regardless of spell power >level 50 thorgrim can become completely immune to all spells due to resistance specialty >if your shooter has only 1 shot left but it has double attack ability, it will still shoot twice leaving ammo count at -1
obscure facts >navigation specialist can convert water movement points to ground movement points for one turn by running away while boarded and then rehired in tavern just for that one turn >AI will never target their own war machines which means you can use enemy first aid tents or ammo carts as cover >hp increasing artifacts will improve effectiveness of demon farming strategy, the lower tier unit the better >sorcery and orb of tempestuous fire will increase damage dealt by fire shield
You playing campaign or scenarios? Town Portal is a must. If it's banned by MP tourney rules or somesuch then you're shit outta luck, back to chaining heroes with you.
I own the entire thing because I pledged enough to have all the expansions so far.
The game is good, not revolutionary, but it's good. It's fun. It's enjoyable. The catch is that the flavor and feel are adapted so perfectly it's a fricking delight to play if you're a homm3 fan. I can't wait to play with my friends again.
Played with all the expansions. It requires so much setup and space that at this point just get everyone bring their notebooks and just play HOMM3 over LAN. I don't get taking a thing everyone can run on a fricking toaster oven and making it into the bulkiest board game ever made.
I guess it's good if you want to involve normie/non-gamer friends, but there are better games to play with them at that point. Otherwise, just get hota or wog and go to town in a random map with your nerd mates. Timeless fun.
I play a lot more board games than video games, but I remember HoMM 3 fondly. I looked at the components and it seems it takes less space than Ark nova or GWT or trillion other board games. But what I'm interested in is does the game play well? Do you always do the same thing, or are there several different paths to victory? Is the game balanced, or do you just wait to topdeck that one broken card?
nta
Different maps have different win conditions.
Depending on the map it's either get resource mines, or get to the center quickly, or kill all your opponents, there's some co-op win conditions there too like "everyone needs to beat this encounter for you to win"
Haven't played enough to talk about balance but nothing seems especially broken. You have a deck of cards that you use to help you in both fighting and exploration. Said deck consists of spells artifacts and skills. Some are obviously better than other (i.e this one gives you 1 attack, this one gives you two attack, one is objectively better) but none seemed super broken. Each of my friends took different strategies and everyone reached similar powerlevels.
Of course your faction and hero tailor you towards a playstyle but it depends on what you find scouting the map too. I played a spellcastar but ended up having tons of good artifacts that I used in battle. A friend played a warrior and still managed to rack some good spells. Game allows you to cycle your deck insanely fast for consistency so it's not a waiting room, the subtelty is on whether or not you're picking stuff that doesn't line with your plan.
The game plays well but 60% of my reason to enjoy it was the flavor, 40% were the mechanics. It's a better heroes piece of fanservice than it is a boardgame, but not because it's a bad game, far from it. Mostly for fans.
Thanks for long post, I appreciate it. I've bought tons of board games without ever trying them (cheap and/or looks funny) first and have learned the hard way not to ever do that. However, based on your post I'll think I'll do it ONE more time, because HoMM is a special case for me and I would definitely enjoy the flavor.
If you're worried by "man can't get my playgroup together to get to this at all my money was wasted" the game has a frickton of single player maps that are an adaptation of the pc campaigns. Haven't tested those either, I've had the game just for two and a half weeks and adult life is very busy.
1 week ago
Anonymous
Thanks for the concern, but I have tons of board gaming buddies who always want to try out new games. And we always joke about how weird it is how every single new board game has a solo mode. Like lmao just get some bros duuude LOL who would play board games alone, get a gaming computer.
This game is hard. I've found that the only way to not get sweeped late game is to spam magic in the early game while replenishing at the castle to not lose troops.
Also, what AI difficulty should I use? Should I use the lower ones to get the hang of the game, or would that build bad habits?
Just play however you like, no shame on playing even on easy as long you're having fun but experienced player will demolish 200% AI like it's nothing, just keep increasing the challenge as you go or don't it's a single player game.
If you're playing Complete, on the easiest difficulty AI will pretty much never take your castles (though I might be confusing it with unpatched RoE). IMO lower difficulties are not really worth it as the AI is already dumb and exploitable enough. Play on the Rook (middle one) because you and AI get the same starting resources that way and AI plays as well as it can (not that great). Impossible requires finesse and ability to frick proper neutrals up in a proper order because you'll get no money, it's not much of a challenge on regular maps (because AI just gets extra resources but is still as dumb as it was) when you get a hang on troop splitting and retaliation mechanics and you'll get to it eventually.
>had three friends I was planning this with >two of them met a girl online and both dated her >she's a huge piece of shit and turned both of them against the third friend >20-year group of friends ruined by one woman
>arguably becomes more of a HoMM successor than HoMM6 and 7 despite being a completely different take on turn-based strategy
Fricking wild.
I wish there were more games like King's Bounty where you run around an open world with one guy and his army and beat up dudes and their armies. Also, I fricking love the artstyle of this game, it's so pleasant and colorful.
>but I must say that HoMM 6 is not all that bad
fricking based
I get the hate but I fell the game has lots of heart put into it. Like all the changes meant well but they simply didn't understand the game on a deeper level.
>HoMM 6 is not all that bad
Did you completely forget about >outposts (insta-capture mines) >Conflux orbs >less resource types >the entire blood/tear reputation system (good idea, horrible execution) >only 6 factions (5 at launch), no Academy, no elves or dwarves either >insane step back for Town Screens for H5 but even compared to H3
but most importantly >Custom Heroes can bring their artifacts on completely new maps (dynasty weapons, more below)
which leads to >literally pay-to-win dlcs, microtransactions and ubisoft "rewards" ruining online games because you can get an enemy hero with maxed out artifacts on day 1
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Dynasty_Weapon
This was absolutely garbage, even if H6 had some nice ideas such as Boss encounters and units being able to deal damage to walls (albeit the structural damage was really overtuned).
King's Bounty, especially on Hard and above, is moreso a resource management game than anything else. Couple bad fights and you can essentially permanently brick yourself because enemies dont respawn. There's literally a finite amount of cash you can get which is such a wild but cool design decision that I don't even know how to explain it.
Regardless, I always manage to get by making sure to loose as few units as possible. It's better to have tiny squads of super strong units than massive armies of peasants.
Which is, ironically, complete opposite of HoMM 3, which peasants are the single most cost effective unit in the game, picrel
I only have it on Switch, never played a HoMM game before, heard great things of III this is based off of, and I got HH for over $7 with Heroes Realm DLC already built in. I say it's a good alternative.
when this game was new me and my best friend played hotseat together, he was ultra sweaty in the game and really good so i cheated in some black dragons when he went to the toilet and he beat me anyway
the powerdynamic between us has never recovered and he continues owning me at everything
I tried HoMM3 and M&M7 very recently for the first time and I haven't put much time into the latter, but they're both amazing for when I work from home. True sense of high fantasy adventure without any shit
Some Shadow of Death (specifically Sandro's campaign) missions unironically have to be restarted if RNG fricks up your leveling. It's nigh impossible to beat Sandro's first mission without quickly getting Expert Necromancy and getting the liches ball rolling. Armaggedon's Blade is pretty uneven, Dracon's campaign is the easiest for expert player and can be the hardest for newbies because it's basically a series of "puzzle maps" where you're supposed to solve extremely hard fights with proper usage of spells and artifacts. Dragon Blood can be super hard if AIs decide to gang on you because it's a constant knife fight in a phone booth situation.
Some Shadow of Death (specifically Sandro's campaign) missions unironically have to be restarted if RNG fricks up your leveling. It's nigh impossible to beat Sandro's first mission without quickly getting Expert Necromancy and getting the liches ball rolling. Armaggedon's Blade is pretty uneven, Dracon's campaign is the easiest for expert player and can be the hardest for newbies because it's basically a series of "puzzle maps" where you're supposed to solve extremely hard fights with proper usage of spells and artifacts. Dragon Blood can be super hard if AIs decide to gang on you because it's a constant knife fight in a phone booth situation.
, HotA campaigns will bust your fricking balls. I don't know how many hours I spent on them, but Factory's campaign especially is pretty damn sadistic. Though devs do throw newbie players a bone and if you play on easy you get extra troops and spells and such.
Im not super elite at the game, but I eventually stopped playing through the expansions because of how hard you are incentivized to bumrush the AI on most maps. I quit on some map where you are the swamp faction against necros, and they have like 5 times the number of towns you have. So every week that passes they just produce 5 times as many troops as you and it gets out of control.
Some Shadow of Death (specifically Sandro's campaign) missions unironically have to be restarted if RNG fricks up your leveling. It's nigh impossible to beat Sandro's first mission without quickly getting Expert Necromancy and getting the liches ball rolling. Armaggedon's Blade is pretty uneven, Dracon's campaign is the easiest for expert player and can be the hardest for newbies because it's basically a series of "puzzle maps" where you're supposed to solve extremely hard fights with proper usage of spells and artifacts. Dragon Blood can be super hard if AIs decide to gang on you because it's a constant knife fight in a phone booth situation.
I haven't completed HotA on the rook difficulty yet, I can see it's tough, but I completed all the other official stuff. Among Heroes Chronicles campaigns, most of it was easy cheese with Town Portals and shit, but what kicked my nuts for a bit was this: https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Senseless_Destruction. It's a second level in some Chronicles campaigns, and it requires rather exact timing.
Yeah, I remember in RoE you can beat the last map of Catherine's campaign in 1 day by town portaling. I even won a contest in my country once by doing that. The prize was Ubisoft's HoMM3 HD edition... It's still in my Steam library with 0.1 hours played.
Use Heroes3 HD+ patch, it doesn't only change the screen res, but also adds quite a bit of fixes/tweaks. Most notable single-player one: quick combat on by default + the new button to replay the combat manually.
Just make sure your upscale settings are not shitwiener (mostly notable on fonts). OpenGL backend smoothing makes me coom.
Ι installed HOTA because it comes with the HD mod and I can also use it to play the base game and if I ever git gud at it or actually spend the time to beat the main campaign I will try it. It's a very good solution for someone who doesn't want to bother looking anything up, just download hota, install and choose to start base game
Dunno about the rest of the slavland, but in Russia it was one of the first games to get an official localization (there was an ad campaign and stuff) and voice over + the situation with PC/console disparity: most of the kids were playing PC at the time of release and not that many had (relatively) new gen consoles, most kids had NES/Genesis at most. Plus it was a good comfy game and still is.
Excellent music, bright and chipper high fantasy atmosphere that can at the same time be serious if it wants to be - which is far more true to life than games that try to sell you overwhelming doom and gloom. Massacres frequently occurred on bright and sunny days. Runs on almost any computer, under most circumstances, can play online or with a friend on the same PC. And what the other anon said, its availability in slavlands and Eastern Europe at large also ensured its status as a cult classic since it came along at the right place at the right time and was a great game to boot.
HD mod has a full-fledged and very active MP lobby maintained by its creator for who knows how many years now. You'll have no problem finding a game no matter what your time zone is.
can you say you finished all the campaigns from RoE, SoD and AB? Changing difficulty level in SoD doesn't count as finishing thegame. You have to play with recommended or higher
I've beaten RoE and AB.
I haven't beaten SoD but I haven't tried either.
This map was hard as balls. The first time I attempted to beat the campaign it filtered me. I had to replay the entire thing.
You mean Kilgor's?
I didn't think they were particularly difficult. If anything I don't remember anything being particularly difficult besides this specific map on Dracon's campaign. I remember being fricked in one of Adrienne's map but it's because it was late into her campaign and it took forever to get dimension door. After I got it I rolfstomped everyone.
If you're talking anything from SoD I haven't played it yet so I can't tell.
>If you're talking anything from SoD I haven't played it yet so I can't tell.
yes, i mean Hack and Slash from SoD. The hardest campaign in the whole game definitely >I remember being fricked in one of Adrienne's map but it's because it was late into her campaign and it took forever to get dimension door. After I got it I rolfstomped everyone.
yeah, there was this gigantic map that was borderline impossible to control without it
In RoE you can't change difficulty so it doesn't really count, but I finished all AB and all Sandro's campaigns on Impossible, granted they're usually a cakewalk after the first mission. There were a few times when I had to restart from mission 1 because I didn't get a certain magic skill though.
>In RoE you can't change difficulty so it doesn't really count
that's why i said >Changing difficulty level in SoD
because that's the only one where you can change difficulty
Wake of Gods mod (or rather mod pack) gives heroes upgradeable commanders that can get special abilities like gorgon's death stare or archangel's resurrection spell
beware to only play this if you don't care that the game becomes a fricking clown mess of unbalanced bullshit
WoG is just the definition of throwing everything at the wall and most of it is pretty moronic fun.
WoG is its own thing that uses its own (extremely fricking buggy) ERM scripting language on top of the game whereas HotA rewrites the original's code. I remember hotseat multiplayer working in WoG, you could probably try hamachi but it can crash even in SP.
>but it can crash even in SP.
Frick, i guess legacy hacked code is like that
But will keep mod in mind, thank you
I found HotA to be less cup of my tea, other than working multiplayer
1 week ago
Anonymous
>But will keep mod in mind, thank you
Oh shit, it seems like VCMI is supporting WoG at least partially, and they are adding mod compatibility check for multiplayer
https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi/pull/3776
I guess i can reuse folder from HotA in VCMI?
1 week ago
Anonymous
It's generally advised that you keep all different modded versions in different folders.
WoG and HotA are not compatible as far as I'm aware, so you can't benefit from the built in online in HotA. If you want to play you need to set up games using gameRanger or some other lan simulator, that should work perfectly fine.
I believe at least some content from HotA has been ported to WoG so if you want to have everything in one place you can mod your WoG to have that.
3 and 4+5 (you can install 4 and 5 in one folder and can visit both locations of 4 and 5 in the same game plus get a secret postgame ending) are cool square-based dungeon crawlers and are worth a play, you can start with 4+5 if you want, it's the better game anyway. Also, great pixel art all around. 6-8 are excellent as well. There's a merge mod that lets you play any class/race combo from 6-8 in any game and make a custom 5 character party and travel between worlds of respective games using dimension door spell, peak comfy.
1-2 are pretty damn antiquated and are worse than for example earlier Wizardry games, 9 is a buggy mess where 50% of content was cut. 10 (Ubisoft's) is actually a decent homage to the grid crawling of 2-5.
Ive been playing the campaigns, and it is a fun game, but how the frick are you supposed to play against people without wanting to commit murder? The amount of warcrimes even hard CPUs do against me seems like it would drive a man to insanity
The most popular MP dueling map template of the current era gives every player 1 hero. In addition to HotA's balance changes (like making Conflux fricking work for their phoenixes growth) it's actually quite enjoyable.
He got too wienery. The campaign writing felt really fricking disjointed though. So we're led to believe Sandro "violated" this green Black person's daughter? Was he drunk? Was it a lie spread by Sandro's opponents? Sandro himself just chuckles in response like the chad he is. Then there was the fricking anime romance plotline with Vidomina that went nowhere. Then there was a tidbit about him sleeping (despite being a lich at this point). Was it written by a different writer than the rest of the campaign or something? The mysteries.
>Quick rundown?
Hard to give a quick rundown. Deeply passionate and autistic man makes board game of his dreams and every update has been 'btw I added more shit to this part of the game'. Backed it in 2017 and I still haven't gotten everything I am suppose to get.
the greatest turn based strategy game ever made
What other ones even come close? All I ever see is people talk about HOMM3.
Master of Magic
Master of Orion (peaked at 2)
Dominions series
Age of Wonders series
There's a lot if you're willing to dig
myhomie.gif
>you're going to play the real Forge in your lifetime
Feels great.
The modders tried hard, way too hard to ape the unique style and atmosphere of Heroes III but failed miserably.
I do suppose ruskies with 80 IQ living in Siberia will love it.
What's the cool snow castle?
Palace.
>real Forge
Not with the town looking like that.
Hey at what point should I start upgrading my units?
Always upgrade your T1 units, especially Imps.
are these the frickers that get range? no those were called gremlins right?
Skeletons are fine as it is and a waste of money to upgrade. Imps -> familiars are much better in HotA than in Complete.
Did HotA actually buff familiars? Familiars in Complete are grossly overpriced and add nothing of value, in fact from my recollection of HotA, the faction still sucked dick despite all the buffs they got.
It depends on a unit from as soon as possible or pretty much never. Going from gremlin to master gremlin is an insane upgrade while upgrading skeletons may hurt you more than help.
I'm speaking from 20+ years of casual experience but no tournament play.
For me, gremlins, archers, and elves (if you have them on turn 1 on rampart) you 100% upgrade them on turn 1. Massive upgrades, from nothing to shooting and from shooting to shooting twice.
On conflux you upgrade the faeries, they're super powerful early on with spellcaster heroes if you have access to magic arrow on T1.
The rest it depends on the map and available resources but the turn 1 upgrades are less impactful in my opinion. Maybe harpies for dungeon because you get the extra attack distance and no retailation which is really nice.
depends on the unit, you'll see that sometimes upgrades don't change much, while sometimes they give fantastic abilities or significant stat increases
for example I upgrading the crossbowmen in Castle lets they shoot twice - that's fantastic. Same with elves. Harpies when upgraded get no retaliation and a significant speed boost - also really nice. Air and water elementals become shooters, that's always worth getting. Vampires start stealing health after their upgrade, dragonflies get a huge speed boost, wolf riders start attacking twice and so on and so on.
You'll just need to get used to the units and then you'll know which ones are worth upgrading quickly, and which ones don't matter that much.
>I upgrading the crossbowmen in Castle lets they shoot twice
what the frick did I just write? I think I had a stroke
It depends. Heroes 3 seems very simple but it is actually pretty complex
Those are the main early-game power boosts. Usually it's either because units gain shooting (gremlins, elementals), double attack (marksmen, wolf riders, elves), no retaliation (harpy hags, cerberi, pixies) or an ability that makes neutral armies trivial (one growth of vamp lords can kill 95% weak neutrals in the game). Centaur captains are just great because of their huge speed and alpha-strike potential if you can finish off opponent stack in one hit or have 1 unit spend their retaliation, sort of the same for serpent flies, fragile but with huge speed.
It depends, because if I see those upgraded goblins, archers and lizardmen AI is just gonna blind them for god knows how many turns.
Most games of tower, the Workshop upgrade is my day 1 buy.
Greatness
Slavkino.
I don't know why, but pretty much every east euro loves the series.
Eastern Europeans love strategy. Why do you think most chess champions are Russian? They also love heavy metal, which makes them based.
>Eastern Europeans love strategy
I'm not really into strategy but the theme is great. There's very little good high fantasy Vidya. I also prefer Gothenburg metal and some symphonic black metal.
One of the greatest games ever made. Hand-drawn graphics do not get old. It's such a simple yet very woek-intensive concept, so in this age of outsourcing design to Indian subhumans who don't have the mental capabilities for creativeness and beauty, it's something you don't really see anymore.
I actually have fun in songs of conquest
It's different from homm3 though, in good and bad ways different
Ludo
Don't put too much hype into the story driven campaign. It's there, it's nice, but many people stick to skirmish games and get through life.
>Heroes of troony and Magic 3
What's your best/favorite faction?
Hard to argue against Castle in terms of power level but I enjoy playing as Rampart.
I think this is pretty good guidance for the "must upgrades", but I would add a few.
>Swordsmen into Crusader
For the same reason Wolf Rider into Wolf Raider is great
>Pit Fiend into Pit Lord
One of the best gimmicks of Inferno, and usually a primary reason anyone really plays them
>Goblin into Hobgoblin
7 speed is a huge deal when trying to clear map objectives
>Gorgon into Mighty Gorgon
Giving them Death Stare turns them into arguably the best unit Fortress has
Castle is objectively the best but I like playing Dungeon, Necropolis, and Fortress more, I just like the aesthetics of them
What are some less known stuff you've learned about the game you can share? For example I only learned a few years ago that the 'magical aura' of the unicorns means that every unit placed right next to a unicorn gets magic resistance.
commonly known facts
>diplomacy reduces level needed for library of enlightenment, normally you need to be level 10 but it can be reduced to 8/6/4 with each level of diplomacy
>badge of courage artifact also makes you immune to mind spells
>speed of the slowest unit determines movement points of your hero
>if you clone an archer they'll spawn with maximum amount of ammo regardless of original unit count
lesser known facts
>admiral's hat combination artifact is bugged and can be used to generate infinite amount of movement points
>berserk has 255 turn duration regardless of spell power
>level 50 thorgrim can become completely immune to all spells due to resistance specialty
>if your shooter has only 1 shot left but it has double attack ability, it will still shoot twice leaving ammo count at -1
obscure facts
>navigation specialist can convert water movement points to ground movement points for one turn by running away while boarded and then rehired in tavern just for that one turn
>AI will never target their own war machines which means you can use enemy first aid tents or ammo carts as cover
>hp increasing artifacts will improve effectiveness of demon farming strategy, the lower tier unit the better
>sorcery and orb of tempestuous fire will increase damage dealt by fire shield
Wrong edition
a redpill on the israelites
Anyway to avoid the tedium of transporting troops around the larger maps?
You playing campaign or scenarios? Town Portal is a must. If it's banned by MP tourney rules or somesuch then you're shit outta luck, back to chaining heroes with you.
Thoughts?
Interested in this as well. Considered kickstarting just for the minis alone.
I own the entire thing because I pledged enough to have all the expansions so far.
The game is good, not revolutionary, but it's good. It's fun. It's enjoyable. The catch is that the flavor and feel are adapted so perfectly it's a fricking delight to play if you're a homm3 fan. I can't wait to play with my friends again.
I don't care because first I'd need friends to play this.
Played with all the expansions. It requires so much setup and space that at this point just get everyone bring their notebooks and just play HOMM3 over LAN. I don't get taking a thing everyone can run on a fricking toaster oven and making it into the bulkiest board game ever made.
I guess it's good if you want to involve normie/non-gamer friends, but there are better games to play with them at that point. Otherwise, just get hota or wog and go to town in a random map with your nerd mates. Timeless fun.
>It requires so much setup and space
I play a lot more board games than video games, but I remember HoMM 3 fondly. I looked at the components and it seems it takes less space than Ark nova or GWT or trillion other board games. But what I'm interested in is does the game play well? Do you always do the same thing, or are there several different paths to victory? Is the game balanced, or do you just wait to topdeck that one broken card?
nta
Different maps have different win conditions.
Depending on the map it's either get resource mines, or get to the center quickly, or kill all your opponents, there's some co-op win conditions there too like "everyone needs to beat this encounter for you to win"
Haven't played enough to talk about balance but nothing seems especially broken. You have a deck of cards that you use to help you in both fighting and exploration. Said deck consists of spells artifacts and skills. Some are obviously better than other (i.e this one gives you 1 attack, this one gives you two attack, one is objectively better) but none seemed super broken. Each of my friends took different strategies and everyone reached similar powerlevels.
Of course your faction and hero tailor you towards a playstyle but it depends on what you find scouting the map too. I played a spellcastar but ended up having tons of good artifacts that I used in battle. A friend played a warrior and still managed to rack some good spells. Game allows you to cycle your deck insanely fast for consistency so it's not a waiting room, the subtelty is on whether or not you're picking stuff that doesn't line with your plan.
The game plays well but 60% of my reason to enjoy it was the flavor, 40% were the mechanics. It's a better heroes piece of fanservice than it is a boardgame, but not because it's a bad game, far from it. Mostly for fans.
Thanks for long post, I appreciate it. I've bought tons of board games without ever trying them (cheap and/or looks funny) first and have learned the hard way not to ever do that. However, based on your post I'll think I'll do it ONE more time, because HoMM is a special case for me and I would definitely enjoy the flavor.
If you're worried by "man can't get my playgroup together to get to this at all my money was wasted" the game has a frickton of single player maps that are an adaptation of the pc campaigns. Haven't tested those either, I've had the game just for two and a half weeks and adult life is very busy.
Thanks for the concern, but I have tons of board gaming buddies who always want to try out new games. And we always joke about how weird it is how every single new board game has a solo mode. Like lmao just get some bros duuude LOL who would play board games alone, get a gaming computer.
They're going to add the rest of the towns (including Cove), I'll see what the complete picture looks like first.
I hope someone casts an Armageddon inside Unisoft's HQ, my only hope
Why?
Mold man brainrot
Disgusting merchandising to profit off a dead IP with a dogshit board game.
This game is hard. I've found that the only way to not get sweeped late game is to spam magic in the early game while replenishing at the castle to not lose troops.
Also, what AI difficulty should I use? Should I use the lower ones to get the hang of the game, or would that build bad habits?
Just play however you like, no shame on playing even on easy as long you're having fun but experienced player will demolish 200% AI like it's nothing, just keep increasing the challenge as you go or don't it's a single player game.
If you're playing Complete, on the easiest difficulty AI will pretty much never take your castles (though I might be confusing it with unpatched RoE). IMO lower difficulties are not really worth it as the AI is already dumb and exploitable enough. Play on the Rook (middle one) because you and AI get the same starting resources that way and AI plays as well as it can (not that great). Impossible requires finesse and ability to frick proper neutrals up in a proper order because you'll get no money, it's not much of a challenge on regular maps (because AI just gets extra resources but is still as dumb as it was) when you get a hang on troop splitting and retaliation mechanics and you'll get to it eventually.
>What am I in for?
A tracksuit and a bottle of vodka.
Лopeм ипcyм дoлop cит aмeт, eх нaтyм хoнecтaтиc либepaвиcce виc. Aт вeл aццycaмyc пaтpиoяye, мyнepe нocтep peфeppeнтyp нaм yт, ey яyo иycтo хoмepo гpaeцo.
Kino soundtrack
Try to convince your pleb friends to organise a homm3 lanparty
That's the most fun way to experience this game
>had three friends I was planning this with
>two of them met a girl online and both dated her
>she's a huge piece of shit and turned both of them against the third friend
>20-year group of friends ruined by one woman
Oh well
>>two of them met a girl online and both dated her
What a prostitute
>arguably becomes more of a HoMM successor than HoMM6 and 7 despite being a completely different take on turn-based strategy
Fricking wild.
I wish there were more games like King's Bounty where you run around an open world with one guy and his army and beat up dudes and their armies. Also, I fricking love the artstyle of this game, it's so pleasant and colorful.
based
but I must say that HoMM 6 is not all that bad
it's not the dumpster fire that is 7
>but I must say that HoMM 6 is not all that bad
fricking based
I get the hate but I fell the game has lots of heart put into it. Like all the changes meant well but they simply didn't understand the game on a deeper level.
>HoMM 6 is not all that bad
Did you completely forget about
>outposts (insta-capture mines)
>Conflux orbs
>less resource types
>the entire blood/tear reputation system (good idea, horrible execution)
>only 6 factions (5 at launch), no Academy, no elves or dwarves either
>insane step back for Town Screens for H5 but even compared to H3
but most importantly
>Custom Heroes can bring their artifacts on completely new maps (dynasty weapons, more below)
which leads to
>literally pay-to-win dlcs, microtransactions and ubisoft "rewards" ruining online games because you can get an enemy hero with maxed out artifacts on day 1
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Dynasty_Weapon
This was absolutely garbage, even if H6 had some nice ideas such as Boss encounters and units being able to deal damage to walls (albeit the structural damage was really overtuned).
This game is just such a nice vibe even though I always end up too weak to continue at some point
King's Bounty, especially on Hard and above, is moreso a resource management game than anything else. Couple bad fights and you can essentially permanently brick yourself because enemies dont respawn. There's literally a finite amount of cash you can get which is such a wild but cool design decision that I don't even know how to explain it.
Regardless, I always manage to get by making sure to loose as few units as possible. It's better to have tiny squads of super strong units than massive armies of peasants.
Which is, ironically, complete opposite of HoMM 3, which peasants are the single most cost effective unit in the game, picrel
Should've gotten the upgrade.
Art design is terrible, combat looks bad too
I don't mind it because it's made by literally one guy, but the pixelshit really turns me off.
It's fine, nothing stellar and definitely not a replacement for HoMM. It's a good fan game.
I only have it on Switch, never played a HoMM game before, heard great things of III this is based off of, and I got HH for over $7 with Heroes Realm DLC already built in. I say it's a good alternative.
If you have a chipped Switch, there's a Heroes 2 on fheroes engine.
Kino of the highest order.
Skeletons. A lot of them.
when this game was new me and my best friend played hotseat together, he was ultra sweaty in the game and really good so i cheated in some black dragons when he went to the toilet and he beat me anyway
the powerdynamic between us has never recovered and he continues owning me at everything
[Good news] After almost 10 years, the Heroes VII expansion is now on the open seas, which in turn lets you play mods that need it like Heroes 7.5.
I can't play Complete multiplayer after HotA + HD Mod creator made simultaneous MP turns mode.
Are there any good grail strats on the highest difficulty or are you basically screwed if it doesn't spawn within arms reach of your starting town?
Man why you playing these old ass games smdh go play fortnite with your squad, you fool
I tried HoMM3 and M&M7 very recently for the first time and I haven't put much time into the latter, but they're both amazing for when I work from home. True sense of high fantasy adventure without any shit
how ridiculous does the difficulty get in the expansions?
Some Shadow of Death (specifically Sandro's campaign) missions unironically have to be restarted if RNG fricks up your leveling. It's nigh impossible to beat Sandro's first mission without quickly getting Expert Necromancy and getting the liches ball rolling. Armaggedon's Blade is pretty uneven, Dracon's campaign is the easiest for expert player and can be the hardest for newbies because it's basically a series of "puzzle maps" where you're supposed to solve extremely hard fights with proper usage of spells and artifacts. Dragon Blood can be super hard if AIs decide to gang on you because it's a constant knife fight in a phone booth situation.
Forgot to add to
, HotA campaigns will bust your fricking balls. I don't know how many hours I spent on them, but Factory's campaign especially is pretty damn sadistic. Though devs do throw newbie players a bone and if you play on easy you get extra troops and spells and such.
Im not super elite at the game, but I eventually stopped playing through the expansions because of how hard you are incentivized to bumrush the AI on most maps. I quit on some map where you are the swamp faction against necros, and they have like 5 times the number of towns you have. So every week that passes they just produce 5 times as many troops as you and it gets out of control.
I haven't completed HotA on the rook difficulty yet, I can see it's tough, but I completed all the other official stuff. Among Heroes Chronicles campaigns, most of it was easy cheese with Town Portals and shit, but what kicked my nuts for a bit was this: https://heroes.thelazy.net/index.php/Senseless_Destruction. It's a second level in some Chronicles campaigns, and it requires rather exact timing.
(if I'm ever replaying HoMM3 campaigns, I will not use any terrain spells to make things actually difficult)
Yeah, I remember in RoE you can beat the last map of Catherine's campaign in 1 day by town portaling. I even won a contest in my country once by doing that. The prize was Ubisoft's HoMM3 HD edition... It's still in my Steam library with 0.1 hours played.
I think Steadwick's Fall was the only one where I consistently cheesed the anti-magic garrisons
Use Heroes3 HD+ patch, it doesn't only change the screen res, but also adds quite a bit of fixes/tweaks. Most notable single-player one: quick combat on by default + the new button to replay the combat manually.
Just make sure your upscale settings are not shitwiener (mostly notable on fonts). OpenGL backend smoothing makes me coom.
https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/
Ι installed HOTA because it comes with the HD mod and I can also use it to play the base game and if I ever git gud at it or actually spend the time to beat the main campaign I will try it. It's a very good solution for someone who doesn't want to bother looking anything up, just download hota, install and choose to start base game
>portal exit right next to your towns
for fricks sake map designers.
why do slavs love this game so much
Dunno about the rest of the slavland, but in Russia it was one of the first games to get an official localization (there was an ad campaign and stuff) and voice over + the situation with PC/console disparity: most of the kids were playing PC at the time of release and not that many had (relatively) new gen consoles, most kids had NES/Genesis at most. Plus it was a good comfy game and still is.
Excellent music, bright and chipper high fantasy atmosphere that can at the same time be serious if it wants to be - which is far more true to life than games that try to sell you overwhelming doom and gloom. Massacres frequently occurred on bright and sunny days. Runs on almost any computer, under most circumstances, can play online or with a friend on the same PC. And what the other anon said, its availability in slavlands and Eastern Europe at large also ensured its status as a cult classic since it came along at the right place at the right time and was a great game to boot.
It's a good game that's easy to pirate. Naturally, the thirdies love things they can steal. And it is a good game, too.
Copyright infringement is not theft. I have two cd holders full of localized games I've purchased, most likely before you were even born.
What's the best way to play this in multiplayer? HD Mod? VCMI?
HD mod has a full-fledged and very active MP lobby maintained by its creator for who knows how many years now. You'll have no problem finding a game no matter what your time zone is.
>What am I in for?
Kino.
you can't not get magic arrow
still funny though
can you say you finished all the campaigns from RoE, SoD and AB? Changing difficulty level in SoD doesn't count as finishing thegame. You have to play with recommended or higher
I've beaten RoE and AB.
I haven't beaten SoD but I haven't tried either.
This map was hard as balls. The first time I attempted to beat the campaign it filtered me. I had to replay the entire thing.
i don't know why so many people say this campaign is the hardest when Crag Hack's is much harder and it's not even close
You mean Kilgor's?
I didn't think they were particularly difficult. If anything I don't remember anything being particularly difficult besides this specific map on Dracon's campaign. I remember being fricked in one of Adrienne's map but it's because it was late into her campaign and it took forever to get dimension door. After I got it I rolfstomped everyone.
If you're talking anything from SoD I haven't played it yet so I can't tell.
>If you're talking anything from SoD I haven't played it yet so I can't tell.
yes, i mean Hack and Slash from SoD. The hardest campaign in the whole game definitely
>I remember being fricked in one of Adrienne's map but it's because it was late into her campaign and it took forever to get dimension door. After I got it I rolfstomped everyone.
yeah, there was this gigantic map that was borderline impossible to control without it
I'll take note for future threads after beating the campaign, and I'll type my impressions.
remember not to change difficulty. Play with the one that is given to you just like with RoE and AB
When I was a kid I hated that campaign. Especially the fairy dragon part. Thank god for save/load
In RoE you can't change difficulty so it doesn't really count, but I finished all AB and all Sandro's campaigns on Impossible, granted they're usually a cakewalk after the first mission. There were a few times when I had to restart from mission 1 because I didn't get a certain magic skill though.
>In RoE you can't change difficulty so it doesn't really count
that's why i said
>Changing difficulty level in SoD
because that's the only one where you can change difficulty
*flops in your path*
Shame because the campaign writing is hands down the best in the series.
Playing this with a friend online is a ton of fun despite how jank everything is.
Also godlike soundtrack.
I unironically like the concept of hero being actual sprite in combat with own stats
I even wish HoMM3 had such mod so i could walk with Sandro
Wake of Gods mod (or rather mod pack) gives heroes upgradeable commanders that can get special abilities like gorgon's death stare or archangel's resurrection spell
beware to only play this if you don't care that the game becomes a fricking clown mess of unbalanced bullshit
WoG is just the definition of throwing everything at the wall and most of it is pretty moronic fun.
Nice, great i posted that
Is it working in multiplayer? Compatible with Hota perhaps?
WoG is its own thing that uses its own (extremely fricking buggy) ERM scripting language on top of the game whereas HotA rewrites the original's code. I remember hotseat multiplayer working in WoG, you could probably try hamachi but it can crash even in SP.
>but it can crash even in SP.
Frick, i guess legacy hacked code is like that
But will keep mod in mind, thank you
I found HotA to be less cup of my tea, other than working multiplayer
>But will keep mod in mind, thank you
Oh shit, it seems like VCMI is supporting WoG at least partially, and they are adding mod compatibility check for multiplayer
https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi/pull/3776
I guess i can reuse folder from HotA in VCMI?
It's generally advised that you keep all different modded versions in different folders.
WoG and HotA are not compatible as far as I'm aware, so you can't benefit from the built in online in HotA. If you want to play you need to set up games using gameRanger or some other lan simulator, that should work perfectly fine.
I believe at least some content from HotA has been ported to WoG so if you want to have everything in one place you can mod your WoG to have that.
Are any of the mainline Might and Magic games worth playing?
3 and 4+5 (you can install 4 and 5 in one folder and can visit both locations of 4 and 5 in the same game plus get a secret postgame ending) are cool square-based dungeon crawlers and are worth a play, you can start with 4+5 if you want, it's the better game anyway. Also, great pixel art all around. 6-8 are excellent as well. There's a merge mod that lets you play any class/race combo from 6-8 in any game and make a custom 5 character party and travel between worlds of respective games using dimension door spell, peak comfy.
1-2 are pretty damn antiquated and are worse than for example earlier Wizardry games, 9 is a buggy mess where 50% of content was cut. 10 (Ubisoft's) is actually a decent homage to the grid crawling of 2-5.
Ive been playing the campaigns, and it is a fun game, but how the frick are you supposed to play against people without wanting to commit murder? The amount of warcrimes even hard CPUs do against me seems like it would drive a man to insanity
The most popular MP dueling map template of the current era gives every player 1 hero. In addition to HotA's balance changes (like making Conflux fricking work for their phoenixes growth) it's actually quite enjoyable.
Top tier turn based game, shits on the most of JRPG cringe, combat system only topped by Larian and XCOM games.
True masterpiece
Aged like a fine wine
Supreme kino
I wish I could play heroes 2 with heroes 3 mechanics. the towns are more fun and I like the grafix better.
Someday, brother.
I don't like this because it adds new units. I like the heroes 2 castles exactly as they are. it's a shame how shitty knight is though.
>Sandro would have been fine if he just fricking paid Craig Hack his money
what was his end game?
He got too wienery. The campaign writing felt really fricking disjointed though. So we're led to believe Sandro "violated" this green Black person's daughter? Was he drunk? Was it a lie spread by Sandro's opponents? Sandro himself just chuckles in response like the chad he is. Then there was the fricking anime romance plotline with Vidomina that went nowhere. Then there was a tidbit about him sleeping (despite being a lich at this point). Was it written by a different writer than the rest of the campaign or something? The mysteries.
He never scored
How jelly are you?
I'd have to be an even sadder loser than I already am to play a boardgame by myself so, not at all
Are all those the same?
Those are faction expansions. I think vanilla only has castle and necropolis
I backed Kingdom Death and that was a fantastic lesson in backing board games on Shitstarter so not really.
Quick rundown? Also checked.
>Quick rundown?
Hard to give a quick rundown. Deeply passionate and autistic man makes board game of his dreams and every update has been 'btw I added more shit to this part of the game'. Backed it in 2017 and I still haven't gotten everything I am suppose to get.
Not much, I also have mine since several weeks (but didn't unpack it and don't think I will soon.)