I did tutorial step by step but still get wrecked in actual campaigns. Are there useful tips or maybe I should try one of the newer ones?
Also, where should I look for user made content? I heard the modding scene for this game is still quite active.
>>334804309
Pros always have a shitload of heroes to deliver their troops to the frontline faster
>>334804309
Get a second army asap, put all your units into your main character, use your other hero to scout and collect stuff. Use your main army to clear any mobs protecting resources.
Dominating the early game is really important, you need to clear things out and take control of them before your enemies reach you.
Obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6YL8dMSLJA
Many campaign missions require a mission-specific playstyle.
In order to get a better general grasp of the game, standard scenarios would be preferable. A lot of people (including myself) prefer scenarios to campaigns anyhow. Hell, a lot of them have some kind of story content on their own right.
>>334804309
At least compared to 6 the campaigns in Heroes 3 are a lot easier and give you a lot more leeway.
I remember playing them through as kid with Capitol rush and single Hero. Recently replayed utilizing more heroes and getting some creature dwellings first when the resources allowed it and the only tough battle I had was in the Liberation campaign where there's 5x Dungeon underground and they have big army in the last castle.
How many troops should I leave in the towns I own? I usually split half and half between the garrison and current hero.
>>334804675
Zero
Half an army gets rekt by a full one, might as well take the whole lot and clear the map and defend your castle that way unless its super exposed
If you're playing any of the campaigns on the higher difficulties your moves need to literally be perfect. Savescum.
>>334804309
The best tip I can give you is >>334804641
>>334804675
You don't leave anything in the town unless enemy threatens them. Your main hero should have most troops to quickly clear the surrounding enemy stacks and open paths to scouting heroes with 1 unit (or small army to clear easier stacks) that go around and grab all the resources they can access.
If there's sea in the map, try to get at least one hero into a boat fast to go around capping all the excess resources lying around.
>>334804641
>not posting it with picture
>>334804675
Well, on most maps it tends to be at least a week until the enemy could even possibly threaten your cities, sometimes more. At that point you need absolutely no defences and indeed it's counterproductive since the strength sitting in garrison could be used for grabbing the resources from the map (which you can, in turn, use for constructing dwellings and hiring heroes).
And anyway, the defender's advantage in early game is a huge one. If you split 7 tier 1 units to stacks of 1, it's unlikely any early attack could kill all of them before getting destroyed by towers.
>>334804882
I have the picture now, thanks
>>334804309
One tip for the campaigns is when you've basically secured the map, but before you actually win, make sure you take your heroes to every source of permanent stat gain that is on the map, as well as experience shrines and similar things for your non-main heroes. That includes hiring additional heroes. Pay attention to the "Heroes are capped at X and Y number of heroes will carry to the next mission".
Getting a bunch of +defense, +attack, +power, +knowledge boosts really helps your heroes on the next map, and every hero you bring along is free extra troops you can consolidate to the main hero when starting the next map. Don't forget potential buildings in the towns that add stat boosts or xp.
Install this:
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=39830
And this:
https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/eng/description
Use the HD launcher to run heroes3.exe for the regular campaign, and h3hota for the fan one.
I hope you got this off gog and not steam.
>>334804929
You are very welcome my jammin' Anon.
>>334804503
This
>>334804309
I mean, haven't you played any RTS before? I know it's not traditional but this is the setup. Always multiply and double so that you can extend your grasp and reach.
>>334804309
Honestly there is a lot of things to explain. Some of them will need you to have some experience with the game before you understand what we are talking about.
Best way to learn is watch some experienced players play and explain what they do more or less.
The very basics would be
>have a lot of heroes with 1 fast unit for scouting
>don't pick up resources with main hero unless you absolutely need too
>protect your archers with throwaway stacks of 1
>avoid eagle eye like the plague
>pick up expert earth magic and pray to get town portal
>focus on town development instead of buying out units early on
>>334804968
HotA prevents you from playing vanilla campaigns so there is no reason to install it yet.
>>334805385
see it's that kind of metagamging that ruins these oldschool games for me. i'm not saying there isn't any truth behind what you say, but it just kinda sucks the fun out of it when you follow it all to an Nth degree.
>>334805557
Well I wouldn't call anything except not picking up resources immediately out of the ordinary.
I didn't even go into the more broken spell/units combinations or what magic schools to pick or not to pick. Earth magic is just too good.
>play a random scenario
>pick castle and Loynis as my starter hero
>secure my cozy little secluded starting location
>all the resources I need
>slowly start to spread out and conquer
>rank up Loynis to Super Loynis
>he can now teleport, fly over impassable terrain and cast improved mass Prayer
>already know I've won but it's just a matter of hunting down the enemy heroes who just try to run away whenever they see Super Loynis
>get bored and quit the game
Every time
>>334804309
This game is literally divide and conquer, desu.
Many a great advice ITT already.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is some of the campaigns are straight up horseshit. The dragon hunter one is what immediately comes to mind.
Focus on scenarios and the earlier/shorter campaigns first to get your legs in the game.
>>334804309
it was a long long time since i played the campaigns but you could always try getting the max amount of heroes (as in how many you can get into the next map) and gather all the free stuff you can get on them, exp from the exp tomes,spells,stats. preferably get them to the max lvl as well
The campaign AI cheats AF. I don't like te HoMM campaigns much because they become a game of trying to guess the best way to cheese the game in order to win. In HoMM3's case, the most important thing is to collect all artifacts and for the love of god GRIND THE EVER LIVING SHIT OUT OF YOUR HEROES. It will be literally impossible for you to beat the final campaign missions if you aren't leveled up and armed to the teeth because the enemy AI will otherwise come rolling with their 200 Black Dragons army with impossibly good stats on their heroes.
>>334807343
sometimes you have to just rush the maps too, which is annoying
What's the play order? RoE => SoD => AB?
>>334808030
RoE->AB->SoD is the release order.
From what I remember SoD is a prequel to RoE.
AB is the hardest.
Literally impossible on heroic.
Just watch some russians stream HoMM3 on Twitch and become a god of heroes
or just watch maretti on youtube
>>334804309
Buy lots of heroes.
Have one hero have most or all of the troops to do the fighting and use the others to grab resources, reqruit from external dwelling, visit watermills etc.
Your main hero is the one that can gets things done so it's important that you optimize the use of his movement points by only using him to do the things he is needed for and let your other heroes do the rest. Always get logistics, wisdom and offense.
Always hire resource heroes, they are basically walking mines.
Always push forward, don't wait around in your base building an army.
Use cannon fodder: make small stacks of 1 of your weakest units and use them as expendables in combat. For example: 1) Use them to attack a strong enemy so that it uses up it's retaliation that turn allowing one of your stronger units to safely attack. 2) Use them to kite enemies around the battle field while a ranged unit takes shoots at them.
>>334807343
Vanilla campaigns have nothing like that. Even if you build slowly you still have larger army in almost every case. It makes it even easier that AI tends to split like 1/4 or 1/3 of his main force to secondary hero that you can just stomp.
How do we fix this town /v/?
>>334809003
This guy also has some decent playthroughs if you want tot learn.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Chris67132/videos
Which HoMM games are worth playing? I was thinking of getting 3 and 5.
>>334811171
Only 3
>>334811171
You can't go wrong with them, both are solid. Only if you're getting 5 get it with expansions.
>>334811137
well, you could start with buffing fire magic, pretty sure everyone thinks it's the weakest magic school.
also the familiars speciality (draining 1mp/round) is useless imo.
>>334811171
mainly 3, 2 was pretty good as well. 5 was imo complete shit, didn't play much of it though, deleted it pretty fast
>>334811171
theyre all good, even the new ones
Am I the only one who likes4?
>>334811454
You should try it again with expansions. It's the best of the 3D heroes and by that I mean the only one that isn't complete shit.
>>334811171
3 is probably most enjoyable out of them despite some balance issues.
All of them range from pretty decent to great, though 1 is really dated and 4 is an odd one.
>>334811661
odd one because of the "hero is in the fight as well" thing?
i always felt like 5 was the odd one, can't really remember why though. i guess it was because of all the changes to the creatures,towns and maybe town building?
>>334811137
Make Magogs not hurt Inferno units or at the very fucking least fire creatures for starters, I usually dont even upgrade them from Gogs because not being able to hit an enemy without hurting your own melee troops is annoying as fuck
>>334811783
Pretty much and I think you could also just send creatures as army even without hero so you didn't need one to move them around.
I didn't like vanilla 5, but I didn't play it all that much because for some reason it had really bad performance on my pc.
>>334808786
>HOMO 5
>>334812194
that's actually a good idea.
is it just me or does the inferno specialities feel weak as fuck?
>>334811783
5 is the odd one because of ATB. It's an interesting mechanics, but can bring imbalance, when your units can attack 5 times as often as the enemy.
>>334811783
5 had really awful general battle system with replacing hexes and introducing initiative.
Made even simple encounters drag on too much and shooters extremely important for every army.
>>334811539
Pretty good for pre-alpha build
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV8299-mLHM
4 was bretty good
>>334813281
Say what you want but NWC had some good writers
Hey guys. I want to start playing this series, but i don't know which game playing first and which ones i should skip.
Can you help me?
>>334814515
III is the only one that still holds up. And there's so much content you really don't have to bother with the rest.
what does everyone think of wake of gods ?
>>334813281
4 had those fucking 10/10 music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDXNSWJLuo
also the hero system was by far the best, sneaking up behind mobs with thief hero, summoning every kind of shit with a druid or just wrecking everything with a ranger/barbarian was fun as fuck
though getting new creatures every day and them being able to wander freely was a fucking stupid idea
it forces you to split your forces infinitely to get the best scouting and reinforcements to the point that controling them becomes incredibly tedious
also the artstyle was a huge downgrade from homm3 or even 2
>>334814515
3 is considered best and even my parents play it from time to time
2 and 5 pretty good
4 is different and was released like year before it was planned, but you can still appreciate some of it's mechanics.
Avoid later ubishit like fire
>>334814768
Terrible clusterfuck with inconsistent artstyle
HoTA is better just because it feels like actual expansion than crazy ideas badly put together by bunch of russians
>>334814841
>>334814734
thx
>>334814515
3 is all around the best, start with Restoration of Erathia campaigns, most of them are very straightforward and easy
2 has different creatures and less mechanics but the gameplay is mostly the same, if you like those old school graphics give it a try
5 is pretty and 3d, havent played much
>>334814515
HoMM 3 is the best one, and you should never skip this. However, you can start from any from 1 to 5. HoMM 1 is inferior to HoMM 2 in every way, though, so you can play just a couple of hours if you feel curious.
Don't get HD Remastered version of HoMM 3.
Where to get good scenarios? Is there a site like nexus for homm?
>>334814515
-skip 1 completely, 2 is similar just way better in every aspect
-2 is a good start if you love "retro graphics and music"
-3 is just the best, you should probably start here
-4 is pretty different in a lot of mechanics (like: heroes are fighting units now, units can wander without a hero, you get units dayly instead of weekly), has the best music but not as good arstyle as homm2,3 or 5
-5 is the best after 3, try this if you require modern graphics to get into a franchise. It just does everything pretty well, mechanics, artstyle music etc.
-6 is weaker than 5 in most aspects but added some new good ideas to the game and has kinda better graphics (even though the artstyle is kind of overdesigned)
-don't bother with 7 it is like 5 just much weaker at everything
>>334814515
if you play 3:
install HD mod (not that re-released hd shit). hd mod has some nice features as wide screen support, autobattle replay, easier stack control
play vanilla a little bit and then install Horn of the Abyss mod. Avoid a wake of gods mod, it is a clusterfuck
>>334816096
this
objectively I would say: 3>5>2>4>6>7>1
but for as personal favorites go: 4>2>3>5>6>1>7
>>334816096
>>334816691
HoMM II also has brutal, punishing, fast-paced gameplay with more exploits and imbalance.
Is the HD mod working fine for you guys? I got an installation error when updating and when I try to reinstall I get a corrupt file warning
4 had the best little stories attached to the artifacts.
>>334811137
magogs can switch fire mode
town portal is made useful
make imps cheaper and make the drain stronger, so you can pick them to fuck a might hero over
make demons less boring
make devils either have the -morale or replace their -luck with some skill that gives enemies a chance to botch their attack. That way 0 luck heroes dont ignore that ability completely
>>334817220
>start a map with a friend
>2 weeks in game when we found out that it's an island map
>>334817819
That's why I like HoTA, it introduced many cool sea encounters and made boats much faster
>start game
>buy gorillion shit t1 dwelling units
>split them into stacks of gorillion / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1
>have stack of 1 suicide an enemy to make them waste their retaliate
>have main stack hit enemy
>>334804968
In regards to the HD Launcher, does it make any actual gameplay/balance changes? I know it adds some features for convenience like when transferring troops and such.
Also what does HD+ do differently than HD?
5>2>3>6>4>7>1
>>334804309
OP is probably long gone but I bet you accidentally started with Shadow of Death rather than Restoration of Erathia because SoD is listed at the top of the campaign menu.
The only early RoE campaign map that's even remotely tricky is the one in Dungeons & Devils where you need to capture Steadwick, the rest are super beginner-friendly.