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+ Frenzy (Target has A increased for 2xD)
+ Slayer (+8 A against all 7thlevel troops)
Important spells: Armageddon, Fireball, FireWall, Inferno,
Sacrifice!
Favorite secondary skills are a tough part.
For a might hero, I would suggest Tactics, Offense, Leadership,
Ballistics. Other slots might be used for Logistics, Wisdom, one magic school and maybe Intelligence, but skills like Diplomacy, Artillery,
Archery, First Aid, or Pathfinding are applicable as well.
Magic heroes should have Wisdom, at least one but prefferrably more magic schools, possibly Sorcery and Intelligence. They might use Tactics as well, Logistics needn't be mentioned. Of course, you might have a
Super-duper spellcaster with Sorcery, Wisdom, Intelligence and four spell schools - and still one slot left. Or you could have a mega-might freak with Offense, Armorer, Archery, Leadership, Artillery, Ballistics and
Tactics - and still one slot left.
In general, when deciding about a particular skill, you should always bear in mind particular conditions in that particular game. You won't need Estates, if you have a few goldmines/endless bags. You won't need Diplomacy, if you're very short of gold or if there are only a few armies that you would want to join you. You won't need Pathfinding on grassland landmasses. You won't need Logistics in a Small map. You won't need luck with strong armies. You won't need Intelligence if there are enough castles and wells in the map...
If there are any skills that are useful 'always', then I would vote for
Tactics - it will bring results in the first week - no building required, no special map conditions (size/terrain/armies) needed etc.
9. Spell Casting - adventure spells
When an adventure spell is cast, ALL your heroes profit from it. So, if you have some spare guy at home, cast all view spells with him, sitting in his castle.
I don't have to mention profits of dimension door, do I? Remember one thing, though. Plan your DD journeys well, considerings wells ;-). It's good to be able to travel half the map in one day, but is even better to end your trip with almost full spellpoints, in case you might need them - i.e. to travel back or use powerful offensive magic to repel an enemy that you've gotten near to. It's always nice to see a computer hero DDing onto a little island and then waiting a week to regain ten points to get back - especially if he has his pack of titans with him and not in his home castle... Also bear in mind that DD is limited to 2/3/4 jumps/day - so make sure that if you can cast it twice, you won't end near somebody you don't want to face in battle!
The town portal is even bigger bastard than DD. Suppose you capture an enemy castle with some heavy losses - you warp home, get new armies, run to a well, that often is near your starting castle, and then, warp back to the newly captured castle, all in one turn! [I personally began to dislike DD and Town Portal, finding them very unbalancing to the game.]
Dirty Trick: Hit'n'Run: Although the following is nasty and almost cheating, you can do this: Having some very fast units in your castle, an enemy nearby with a huge army and some offensive spells in your guild:
Split your very fast units into 7 stacks, if possible. Just have the seven stacks occupied by 1 unit each. Attack the enemy, demolish his stacks with spells, retreat, hire again and repeat. If you'll have a well nearby, you can do this as long as you have the cash. Having 7 stacks of 1 unit often allows you to cast 2 or even 3 spells per battle. (Remember, you must FLEE, don't get killed!). This may be applied even with many starting heroes, but the process is generally more costly. And anyway, it's considered as 'dirty' by many players. Softening up an enemy before attack/defense may have another aspect - if you use strong enough army, you might force the AI to cast spells and thus waste spellpoints. If you sacrifice one or two armies this way, in the following castle siege the
AI may not have enough spellpoints to caste annoying Blind on your shooters.
This way, you can reduce the enemy's army to quite poor numbers and then, either fortify at your castle, or even slay him with your main army, that was resting in your castle all the time (and maybe providing the very fast units for those repeated attacks). Note that sometimes it would be better to use non-offensive spells, eh, I mean berzerker ;-))
In early exploration, casting View Earth or View Air may have crucial impact on your success. Seeing mines is often helpful, because there are often scattered respective resources near a mine, so it's important to be there sooner than your opponents.
10. Did you know that... - if an army is composed of creatures native to one terrain type, the hero does not suffer from movement penalty on that terrain type (applies to Tower, Stronghold and especially Fortress. When you hire a scout hero of other class, leave his starting troops in the castle for defense and take native troops out). - movement or resource artifacts are needed only at the beginning of turn. You won't lose the movement bonus for changing the boots of speed with Sandals of the Saint... Also, Knowledge increasing artifacts are needed only at the time you're replenishing spellpoints. You can therefore use i.e. the Crown of supreme magi to give all your heroes
+40 spellpoints, when they meet near a well. - magic plains enhance all spellcasters, not only the hero. All elementals,
Ogre magi and genies will cast Mass versions, where applicable. - skeleton transformer creates Bone Dragons from all dragons and hydras. - all guarded treasury buildings can be scouted by refusing to enter.
After a right-click, you are then told what guardians are there, just as if they were a wandering army. You can then safely decide, how big an army will you need. Note that war machines cannot be used in those fights. - try to attack on day 7 or even better at day 1. Computer has Day 1 after you, but his dwellings have it before you :-). This way, you can capture ligthly defended towns and have some considerable forces left for defense without delaying your main force. - if you fear that the town will be recaptured soon, spend money only on those defending armies that are pain to fight against (usually shooters or fast units) or on those armies that will cause the biggest losses to the recapturing army. - if the AI comes near your castle, but does not attack, don't think that it fears you. It knows the above tip as well and often spends a few days flagging nearby mines and dwellings before striking. - avoid whirlpool losses by using a free slot to hold one 1stlevel troop.
The whirlpool will consider that the weakest stack and remove it.
It is a pain to repeat the splitting, so if you will be a little more generous, two creatures will last for two turns :-)
- If you want a fair battle, play on Hard difficulty. At normal, the AI plays very lousy - does not use Wait, does not retreat etc. - in team matches where your ally is a computer, it is often a good idea to block his castle and take some of his resources. Once his starting hero gets outside the castle, buy a hero in there and leave him as visiting - your ally won't be able to recruit other heroes or return with his starting hero for more troops. You can then hire another hero there to collect resources, recruit from dwellings and take some lightly defended towns.
II. Map structures and other information
This section is a shortened version of Christoper Nahr's HOMM3 Manual
Addendum, rewritten and published with author's permission. The originalis recommended for most players as required reading...
o Garrison heroes cannot be traded with - you have to click on the castle, move the hero to 'visiting' slot and then manually initiate a trade with another hero. Garrison heroes cannot be anyhow selected from the map.
Putting a hero to the garrison has therefore effect similar to 'sleeping' him (the tent icon), but not only you don't get him selected by 'next hero' icon (or 'n' key), the hero isn't even visible in heroes column.
o If there are both visiting and garrison hero present and enemy attacks, the visiting hero is fought on free terrain. After the battle another 'click' on the castle is needed to fight the hero inside. o [Therefore is may sometimes be handy to purchase a visiting hero - just to hold the enemy one more step - if his planning was tight, it might happen that he doesn't have the one extra movement point left and you get extra turn - and even on other days than day 7 this might be good - you might upgrade a dwelling, get some beneficial building or increase fortification level...]
o If there is a visiting hero (that is visible in the castle entrance) and no hero inside, the garrison armies are merged into the hero's army, what cannot be merged is unused (just as in
HOMM2) - and if the defender wins the battle, the armies are still there, if he loses, they're lost without fight. Therefore, be sure to check whether some castle army shouldn't be better transferred to the hero right before the siege - I don't know exact algorithm for choosing armies from the garrison slots to be merged into the hero's army, so if you want to be sure, better do this manually.
o Creature Dwellings dwellings offer a fixed number of creatures, replenished once per week, to any visiting hero whose flag will then be planted at the dwelling. The actual number of creatures offered is equivalent to the base production of that creature type in their native town type. Any creature dwelling that flies your flag will also add one creature to the weekly production of all of your towns with a corresponding creature generator. This means that if you have flagged three Cursed Temples on the Adventure Map and two Necropolis towns with a
Cursed Temple already built, each of these towns will offer three additional Skeletons per week. To fully exploit a creature dwelling you will have to keep sending heroes there once per week. The bonus creatures added to a town's production will accumulate along with regularly produced creatures until you choose to buy them, but any creatures that were not fetched from a dwelling in any given week will be lost. The
Dungeon Town's Portal of Summoning duplicates a random, flagged dwelling's weekly production by offering the same number of creatures again that is also, and additionally, available at the dwelling itself.
However, in this case too unhired creatures will be lost. First-level creatures will join a hero for free when invited at their dwelling but come at the usual price when added to a town's production. Creatures purchased directly at a dwelling are always of basic quality whereas creatures added to a town's production are hired at the same quality (basic or upgraded) as the corresponding town structure. Their price changes accordingly.
o Cursed Ground. No spellcasting is possible and all positive luck and morale modifiers are removed.
o Magic Plains. All adventure and combat spells are cast at expert proficiency.
o Idol of Fortune. While giving either a morale or a luck bonus on most days, the
o Idol will give both bonuses on the 7th day of the week.
o Temple. The morale bonus bestowed on your troops by the Temple is doubled on the 7th day of the week. Note that it is always a good idea to conquer cities on the day just before the weekly creature growth because you will be able to replenish your forces on the very next day. The enhanced powers of Idols and Temples on the 7th day of the week are meant to encourage this strategy.
o Spirit of Oppression. This artifact does not negate the morale bonus for wandering creatures on their native terrain, although it does negate this same bonus for creatures in a hero's army.
o Hero Specialty. Some hero specialties come as bonuses to creatures, spells, or secondary skills. The descriptions of these specialties state that the bonus would increase "for every level after the nth" which is somewhat misleading. The bonus is not actually increased by a fixed amount of points per level. Its calculation merely involves the current hero level as a factor, as follows:
+ Creature Speciality. The indicated creatures gain a percentage bonus to their Attack and Defense ratings equivalent to (Hero Level /
Creature Level) x 5. Note that since Creature Level appears as denominator, it can take a very long time before you see any effect at all on high level creatures! Therefore it's usually better to pick heroes that are specialized in lower level units. A hero on 20th level would give 50% bonus to skills of archers and 15% bonus to skills of Champions, if he had these two as special units.
Practical effects will be pretty close, since the archers will get
+3 to their attack of six, while the champions will get +2-3 to their attack of 16. (In other words, the lower percentage due to higher denominator in the formula is balanced by higher base numbers to which the counted percentage is applied.)
+ Spell Speciality. The effect of the indicated spell is enhanced by a percentage value of (Hero Level / Creature Level) x 3, where
"Creature Level" is the level of the creature(s) targetted by the spell.
+ Slayer (+8 A against all 7thlevel troops)
Important spells: Armageddon, Fireball, FireWall, Inferno,
Sacrifice!
Favorite secondary skills are a tough part.
For a might hero, I would suggest Tactics, Offense, Leadership,
Ballistics. Other slots might be used for Logistics, Wisdom, one magic school and maybe Intelligence, but skills like Diplomacy, Artillery,
Archery, First Aid, or Pathfinding are applicable as well.
Magic heroes should have Wisdom, at least one but prefferrably more magic schools, possibly Sorcery and Intelligence. They might use Tactics as well, Logistics needn't be mentioned. Of course, you might have a
Super-duper spellcaster with Sorcery, Wisdom, Intelligence and four spell schools - and still one slot left. Or you could have a mega-might freak with Offense, Armorer, Archery, Leadership, Artillery, Ballistics and
Tactics - and still one slot left.
In general, when deciding about a particular skill, you should always bear in mind particular conditions in that particular game. You won't need Estates, if you have a few goldmines/endless bags. You won't need Diplomacy, if you're very short of gold or if there are only a few armies that you would want to join you. You won't need Pathfinding on grassland landmasses. You won't need Logistics in a Small map. You won't need luck with strong armies. You won't need Intelligence if there are enough castles and wells in the map...
If there are any skills that are useful 'always', then I would vote for
Tactics - it will bring results in the first week - no building required, no special map conditions (size/terrain/armies) needed etc.
9. Spell Casting - adventure spells
When an adventure spell is cast, ALL your heroes profit from it. So, if you have some spare guy at home, cast all view spells with him, sitting in his castle.
I don't have to mention profits of dimension door, do I? Remember one thing, though. Plan your DD journeys well, considerings wells ;-). It's good to be able to travel half the map in one day, but is even better to end your trip with almost full spellpoints, in case you might need them - i.e. to travel back or use powerful offensive magic to repel an enemy that you've gotten near to. It's always nice to see a computer hero DDing onto a little island and then waiting a week to regain ten points to get back - especially if he has his pack of titans with him and not in his home castle... Also bear in mind that DD is limited to 2/3/4 jumps/day - so make sure that if you can cast it twice, you won't end near somebody you don't want to face in battle!
The town portal is even bigger bastard than DD. Suppose you capture an enemy castle with some heavy losses - you warp home, get new armies, run to a well, that often is near your starting castle, and then, warp back to the newly captured castle, all in one turn! [I personally began to dislike DD and Town Portal, finding them very unbalancing to the game.]
Dirty Trick: Hit'n'Run: Although the following is nasty and almost cheating, you can do this: Having some very fast units in your castle, an enemy nearby with a huge army and some offensive spells in your guild:
Split your very fast units into 7 stacks, if possible. Just have the seven stacks occupied by 1 unit each. Attack the enemy, demolish his stacks with spells, retreat, hire again and repeat. If you'll have a well nearby, you can do this as long as you have the cash. Having 7 stacks of 1 unit often allows you to cast 2 or even 3 spells per battle. (Remember, you must FLEE, don't get killed!). This may be applied even with many starting heroes, but the process is generally more costly. And anyway, it's considered as 'dirty' by many players. Softening up an enemy before attack/defense may have another aspect - if you use strong enough army, you might force the AI to cast spells and thus waste spellpoints. If you sacrifice one or two armies this way, in the following castle siege the
AI may not have enough spellpoints to caste annoying Blind on your shooters.
This way, you can reduce the enemy's army to quite poor numbers and then, either fortify at your castle, or even slay him with your main army, that was resting in your castle all the time (and maybe providing the very fast units for those repeated attacks). Note that sometimes it would be better to use non-offensive spells, eh, I mean berzerker ;-))
In early exploration, casting View Earth or View Air may have crucial impact on your success. Seeing mines is often helpful, because there are often scattered respective resources near a mine, so it's important to be there sooner than your opponents.
10. Did you know that... - if an army is composed of creatures native to one terrain type, the hero does not suffer from movement penalty on that terrain type (applies to Tower, Stronghold and especially Fortress. When you hire a scout hero of other class, leave his starting troops in the castle for defense and take native troops out). - movement or resource artifacts are needed only at the beginning of turn. You won't lose the movement bonus for changing the boots of speed with Sandals of the Saint... Also, Knowledge increasing artifacts are needed only at the time you're replenishing spellpoints. You can therefore use i.e. the Crown of supreme magi to give all your heroes
+40 spellpoints, when they meet near a well. - magic plains enhance all spellcasters, not only the hero. All elementals,
Ogre magi and genies will cast Mass versions, where applicable. - skeleton transformer creates Bone Dragons from all dragons and hydras. - all guarded treasury buildings can be scouted by refusing to enter.
After a right-click, you are then told what guardians are there, just as if they were a wandering army. You can then safely decide, how big an army will you need. Note that war machines cannot be used in those fights. - try to attack on day 7 or even better at day 1. Computer has Day 1 after you, but his dwellings have it before you :-). This way, you can capture ligthly defended towns and have some considerable forces left for defense without delaying your main force. - if you fear that the town will be recaptured soon, spend money only on those defending armies that are pain to fight against (usually shooters or fast units) or on those armies that will cause the biggest losses to the recapturing army. - if the AI comes near your castle, but does not attack, don't think that it fears you. It knows the above tip as well and often spends a few days flagging nearby mines and dwellings before striking. - avoid whirlpool losses by using a free slot to hold one 1stlevel troop.
The whirlpool will consider that the weakest stack and remove it.
It is a pain to repeat the splitting, so if you will be a little more generous, two creatures will last for two turns :-)
- If you want a fair battle, play on Hard difficulty. At normal, the AI plays very lousy - does not use Wait, does not retreat etc. - in team matches where your ally is a computer, it is often a good idea to block his castle and take some of his resources. Once his starting hero gets outside the castle, buy a hero in there and leave him as visiting - your ally won't be able to recruit other heroes or return with his starting hero for more troops. You can then hire another hero there to collect resources, recruit from dwellings and take some lightly defended towns.
II. Map structures and other information
This section is a shortened version of Christoper Nahr's HOMM3 Manual
Addendum, rewritten and published with author's permission. The originalis recommended for most players as required reading...
o Garrison heroes cannot be traded with - you have to click on the castle, move the hero to 'visiting' slot and then manually initiate a trade with another hero. Garrison heroes cannot be anyhow selected from the map.
Putting a hero to the garrison has therefore effect similar to 'sleeping' him (the tent icon), but not only you don't get him selected by 'next hero' icon (or 'n' key), the hero isn't even visible in heroes column.
o If there are both visiting and garrison hero present and enemy attacks, the visiting hero is fought on free terrain. After the battle another 'click' on the castle is needed to fight the hero inside. o [Therefore is may sometimes be handy to purchase a visiting hero - just to hold the enemy one more step - if his planning was tight, it might happen that he doesn't have the one extra movement point left and you get extra turn - and even on other days than day 7 this might be good - you might upgrade a dwelling, get some beneficial building or increase fortification level...]
o If there is a visiting hero (that is visible in the castle entrance) and no hero inside, the garrison armies are merged into the hero's army, what cannot be merged is unused (just as in
HOMM2) - and if the defender wins the battle, the armies are still there, if he loses, they're lost without fight. Therefore, be sure to check whether some castle army shouldn't be better transferred to the hero right before the siege - I don't know exact algorithm for choosing armies from the garrison slots to be merged into the hero's army, so if you want to be sure, better do this manually.
o Creature Dwellings dwellings offer a fixed number of creatures, replenished once per week, to any visiting hero whose flag will then be planted at the dwelling. The actual number of creatures offered is equivalent to the base production of that creature type in their native town type. Any creature dwelling that flies your flag will also add one creature to the weekly production of all of your towns with a corresponding creature generator. This means that if you have flagged three Cursed Temples on the Adventure Map and two Necropolis towns with a
Cursed Temple already built, each of these towns will offer three additional Skeletons per week. To fully exploit a creature dwelling you will have to keep sending heroes there once per week. The bonus creatures added to a town's production will accumulate along with regularly produced creatures until you choose to buy them, but any creatures that were not fetched from a dwelling in any given week will be lost. The
Dungeon Town's Portal of Summoning duplicates a random, flagged dwelling's weekly production by offering the same number of creatures again that is also, and additionally, available at the dwelling itself.
However, in this case too unhired creatures will be lost. First-level creatures will join a hero for free when invited at their dwelling but come at the usual price when added to a town's production. Creatures purchased directly at a dwelling are always of basic quality whereas creatures added to a town's production are hired at the same quality (basic or upgraded) as the corresponding town structure. Their price changes accordingly.
o Cursed Ground. No spellcasting is possible and all positive luck and morale modifiers are removed.
o Magic Plains. All adventure and combat spells are cast at expert proficiency.
o Idol of Fortune. While giving either a morale or a luck bonus on most days, the
o Idol will give both bonuses on the 7th day of the week.
o Temple. The morale bonus bestowed on your troops by the Temple is doubled on the 7th day of the week. Note that it is always a good idea to conquer cities on the day just before the weekly creature growth because you will be able to replenish your forces on the very next day. The enhanced powers of Idols and Temples on the 7th day of the week are meant to encourage this strategy.
o Spirit of Oppression. This artifact does not negate the morale bonus for wandering creatures on their native terrain, although it does negate this same bonus for creatures in a hero's army.
o Hero Specialty. Some hero specialties come as bonuses to creatures, spells, or secondary skills. The descriptions of these specialties state that the bonus would increase "for every level after the nth" which is somewhat misleading. The bonus is not actually increased by a fixed amount of points per level. Its calculation merely involves the current hero level as a factor, as follows:
+ Creature Speciality. The indicated creatures gain a percentage bonus to their Attack and Defense ratings equivalent to (Hero Level /
Creature Level) x 5. Note that since Creature Level appears as denominator, it can take a very long time before you see any effect at all on high level creatures! Therefore it's usually better to pick heroes that are specialized in lower level units. A hero on 20th level would give 50% bonus to skills of archers and 15% bonus to skills of Champions, if he had these two as special units.
Practical effects will be pretty close, since the archers will get
+3 to their attack of six, while the champions will get +2-3 to their attack of 16. (In other words, the lower percentage due to higher denominator in the formula is balanced by higher base numbers to which the counted percentage is applied.)
+ Spell Speciality. The effect of the indicated spell is enhanced by a percentage value of (Hero Level / Creature Level) x 3, where
"Creature Level" is the level of the creature(s) targetted by the spell.
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