Jump to page:
Sponsors:
shooters can be killed swiftly, if they pose a threat). If you distribute damage from your shooters and spells among all enemy walkers, the enemy will have four or five small armies that will cause him a lot of trouble - blocking each other's access to collapsed castle walls, and once they get in, causing smaller damage and again blocking each other's way.)
A classical example is computer behaviour when all his walkers have assembled in the moat. When his catapult destroys one wall section in front of a slower troop, all the fast ones will run out of the moat and move closer to the opening. The slow troop will play last. If some faster units have waited, the slow troop could move away and the faster unit would later in the 'waited moving' phase occupy it's place and in the next turn break loose into the castle. But since the fast unit didn't wait, it is now standing somewhere behind the moat and will need extra turn to get into the moat again.
In SOD, the behaviour will be different, since units will not enter moat before the walls are down... yet once they are down, the troops will amass themselves in close area, again.
19. Did you know that...
- Cloned archangels can resurrect even when the original stack has already used it's resurrection. The only bad thing is that you cannot clone a stack that already has a clone present in the battle, but i.e. in castle sieges, the towers will target the clone every turn, so if you i.e.
Blind the last enemy stack, you can then resurrect as long as you have enough spell points for the repeated cloning. Another possibility may be to destroy the clones by area spells (frost ring, fireball or inferno), since they cannot be targeted directly.
- If you stand on top of a dead enemy unit, it cannot be resurrected.
It works even for two-hex creatures blocked on one hex only. So, if you're facing i.e. a nasty Necro with high spellpower and a big army of Vampire
Lords, once you happen to kill them, block the body and let the hero waste his Animate Dead on something far less dangerous.
- Forcefield is very powerful spell. It can be used against strong wandering armies if you have a shooter faster than they are. Just move the shooter to the top left corner and cast forcefield. (Turn Cursor Shadow on to see exactly where the spell will be). You will have to renew the spell every two turns, which gives time for Bless, too. This trick can be pulled against faster armies, if you have Expert Slow or Expert Haste available.
- Second good use for Forcefield is blocking holes in castle walls in sieges.
But it can, as well, be used to block the gate to prevent enemies from coming out.
- More on blocking gates - when you have superior ranged firepower - or flyers fast enough to hit'n'run the enemy shooters in order to achieve that superiority, you may want to put a durable walker stack into the hex that the gate opens to. The gate cannot be open then, but you must expect the enemy shooters and walkers to focus on this stack...
- More on blocking gates, this time blocking them open. The gate won't close if there's a dead body on it, so place an army to a hex adjacent to the front hex of the gate. Choose which of the adjacent hexes will you use, mainly depending on which troop will be the first to try and attack you and how far could it move - I'm not sure about AI, but a human player will surely try to avoid dying on the gate. The AI will probably attack with the first available stack.
- Your blinded troops can be Teleported. If you don't have Cure/Dispel or don't want to use Mass Dispel, you can block an enemy shooter with your blinded stack, which either forces the shooter to move away or to attack at half strength, suffer from retaliation and unblind the troop.
Pay attention to timing. If the blinded troop is attacked when all the creatures have waited, it will have it's turn immediately, so you can run back, should the need be.
- With Ballistics skill, when you pick targets in a siege, you can cast a spell! That's especially nice for Mass Haste/Slow, Earthquake, Berzerker or frying the fastest enemy with a damage spell.
- Summoning Elementals may win otherwise unwinnable battles by keeping an enemy killer stack busy. The AI always attacks if it can, so the elementals can be used to lure the enemy away from your shooters. This is handy especially when the enemy cannot be slowed (or when you fear a counter-Haste) or destroyed by direct damage spells.
- Elementals can be also used to block holes in castle walls.
- When an enemy hero approaches your castle, don't panic. If it's a super hero with a huge army, it will probably be best to abandon the castle, or to use a few units split into seven stacks to waste enemy spellpoints and give the castle turrets time to score at least some damage. But when the enemy is not so strong, take a careful look at his army. The fewer and slower flyers and shooters he has, the bigger your chances for winning are. Don't scare him away by returning a strong hero or using all gold reserves to buy a huge army. Instead, try to build a one-use army, just capable enough of holding the castle. From the composition of enemy army, you should know exactly what will be needed. The shooters can be usually ignored, because they will be shooting and 25%. You'll need to eliminate the flyers first and then hold the walls. As long as you have turrets shooting or some shooters remaining, use your walkers passively. Split your armies to have some retaliation-soakers. The goal is to have one strong walker stack left to deal with what gets inside the walls. Don't put that strong stack close to your shooters, because the enemy will likely try to block the shooters by attacking adjacent armies. If the enemy flyers are eliminated and you still have some weak stacks left, use them first to block broken walls. Your strongest stack should attack only when it will suffer low damage from retaliation.
In this way, you'll be able to promote a fresh/scout hero quickly.
- Another defense tip against enemy secondary heroes - if you still have some gold left, buy a fresh hero, move his troops into the garisson and give him seven stacks of one low-level unit. Leave him as a visiting hero.
The enemy will quite probably waste a few spellpoints dealing with him, plus you get a chance to deal one or two magic arrows or better to his most dangerous units (fast, weaker flyers - see the above tip).
If you happen to have a good 4thlevel spell in the castle, look for heroes that start with advanced wisdom.
- Delaying the approaching enemy may save you a turn. Sometimes hiring more than one hero with the above mentioned weak seven-slot force and a few lousy spells may not only drain enemy's spellpoints, but it may delay his attack on the castle itself for one turn. That turn can be used to upgrade castle defenses (if you think that this will decide the battle) or building or upgrading a dwelling. Think twice before building a dwelling. An upgrade can sometimes have much better effect than some fresh, weak cannonfodder.
- Aging and Poisoning can be cured. Poisoning is less dangerous, but it repeats the effect (knocking off 10% of orinigal health of every unit) on beginning of two more turns. If you don't remove the spell (and First Aid Tent does NOT do that), be sure that the opponent will wait for the second turn.
- When sieging a Tower, Mass Dispel removes the defensive Landmines.
[It also removes QuickSand and Landmines in general]. The Landmines cause 150 damage no matter how the town is developed.
- Arrow towers cause damage dependant on how the town is developed.
- If you cannot outmaneuver enemy to get a first strike on a particular unit (typically when you have a one-stack army), use Defend rather than move/wait. Defending increases the D rating of the stack by the creature level. So i.e. Nagas gain +6 defense. If the attacker had lower attack rating than Nagas, the damage will be lower by 12% only, but if his attack rating was above the Nagas' defense, the damage is lowered by 30%.
(If A-D was lower than 6, the percentage will be proportionally lowered).
- If you're about to battle a fast wandering army (or enemy hero) and have one strong shooter stack that's worth protecting, the following may help:
In adventure game settings, choose 'close formation'. Put the shooter in the middle slot, one slow tough walkers adjacent on each side. All you will need is to have one stack faster than the enemy units. The close formation is centered, with the shooter being in the leftmost column, having only three adjacent hexes. Two of them are occupied by the walkers and the third can be taken by the fast unit of yours.
- In castle defenses, if you happen to have fast flyer (or a very fast walker) left alive after all enemy flyers and shooters have been eliminated, you may use it to outrun the enemy walkers by repeatedly flying back and forth over the castle walls in the top or bottom row of screen. The castle turrets will then do the most for you. It is especially applicable in larger battles, where you can use hit'n'run or damage spells to quickly destroy enemy catapult. It is especially effective against walkers that need two turns to move through the moat.
- How to counter the above? Earthquakes, Teleport (with expert Water only),
Berzerker (the enemy flyer will try to attack) or Hypnotize (to move the enemy closer to you or to have it open the gate for you - in case the enemy fragged your catapult quickly and the walls are not breached yet.
- Not only for Necros: Wraithbombs. If you happen to get your hands on
Wraiths (Necropolis, dwelling+fort, wandering army join), keep them tucked somewhere near the front lines. When an enemy comes to attack you (or when you need to attack him), take a scout hero, give him 7 stacks of wraiths (or six plus one stack of something faster than enemy units, if you happen to have Mass Slow/Haste), let the wraiths suck his spellpoints and if he could kill many of them, surrender, rehire and repeat. If he can kill only one or two in the first round (shooters, spell), let them suck once more. If he has to kill them with spells, let him, it's even better :-).
This may be quite effective especially against might heroes that don't have that big knowledge, but it may be worth trying even against magic heroes, whose big spellpoints would be used for repeated resurrections or strong damage spells.
- Not only for Wizards: If you happen to acquire master genies, split them into as many stacks as you can (usually 2-4, depending on how many useful armies you'll need. Their beneficial spells will usually be worth more than carrying a slow walker army around instead). Try to protect them, esp. if the source of them was a one-times (refugee camp, join).
- Be careful with War Machines. They make a good damage soaker for enemy
High Voltage experiments, but on the other hand, they allow flame-strikers to attack adjacent stacks without retaliation and allow liches, magogs and Faerie dragons to hit with area attack. (Yes, Faerie Dragons sometimes want to cast Frost ring, but they cannot target empty hexes!) - against slow units, hit'n'run with fast armies can be used, so that you only suffer from their retaliations. Wait, attack and then retreat far enough so that you can wait in the next round. Using Slow/Haste makes this available even with not so big speed differences. - every unit with a percentage special can be used for splitting attacks.
The best example may be Ghost Dragons. If the necromancer leaves walking dead and wights at home, the two free slots can be used by single ghost dragons that will accomplish two things - waste a retaliation of a powerful enemy and increase the chance of halving the HPs of the target stack. You will probably use this approach only a few times, because the dragons are quite valuable.
But troops like Basilisks can be used as well, they will only need some magic support (Haste).
Chapter III: Troop charts
Legend:
A: Attack
D: Defense
HP: Hit Points
Damage: Normal damage range of a unit
Avg: Average damage of a unit
Sp: Speed
$$: Cost without resources
AdjD: Damage caused against an enemy with Defense rating 10
L: Level of the creature (1 means 1stlevel creature, 41 means 4thlevel upgraded.) C: Castle number:
1 Necropolis
2 Stronghold
3 Rampart
4 Tower
5 Fortress
6 5Castle
7 Dungeon
8 Inferno
9 Conflux
Dm/g: AjdDam/$$*100 (Damage cost - i.e. how much damage can 100 gold worth of this army cause to enemies with Defense 10)
Gro: Growth rate with castle and growth increase structure present.
D/W: Damage dealt by one week worth' of this creature to an opponent with 10D.
This is the field that tables are sorted by, so you can see the most damaging units at the bottom of each table. This table compares damage potential of all armies. However, specials, speeds and ranged attacks cannot be reflected in these numbers.
The best unit list after each table reflects those characteristics (and my opinions ;-)).
Unit A D HP Dmg Avg Sp $$ L C AdjD Dm/g gro D/W
Gremlins 3 3 4 1__2 1.5 4 30 1.0 4 1.29 4.30 32 41
Master Gremlins 4 4 4 1__2 1.5 5 40 1.1 4 1.32 3.30 32 42
Imps 2 3 4 1__2 1.5 5 50 1.0 8 1.26 2.52 38 48
Pikemen 4 5 10 1__3 2 4 60 1.0 6 1.76 2.93 28 49
Goblins 4 2 5 1__2 1.5 5 40 1.0 2 1.32 3.30 38 50
Familiars 4 4 4 1__2 1.5 7 60 1.1 8 1.32 2.20 38 50
Hobgoblins 5 3 5 1__2 1.5 7 50 1.1 2 1.35 2.70 38 51
Skeletons 5 4 6 1__3 2 4 60 1.0 1 1.80 3.00 30 54
Skeleton warriors 6 6 6 1__3 2 5 70 1.1 1 1.84 2.63 30 55
Troglodytes 4 3 5 1__3 2 4 50 1.0 7 1.76 3.52 35 62
Pixies 2 2 3 1__2 1.5 7 25 1.0 9 1.26 5.04 50 63
Infernal trogs 5 4 6 1__3 2 5 65 1.1 7 1.80 2.77 35 63
Centaurs 5 3 8 2__3 2.5 6 70 1.0 3 2.25 3.21 28 63
A classical example is computer behaviour when all his walkers have assembled in the moat. When his catapult destroys one wall section in front of a slower troop, all the fast ones will run out of the moat and move closer to the opening. The slow troop will play last. If some faster units have waited, the slow troop could move away and the faster unit would later in the 'waited moving' phase occupy it's place and in the next turn break loose into the castle. But since the fast unit didn't wait, it is now standing somewhere behind the moat and will need extra turn to get into the moat again.
In SOD, the behaviour will be different, since units will not enter moat before the walls are down... yet once they are down, the troops will amass themselves in close area, again.
19. Did you know that...
- Cloned archangels can resurrect even when the original stack has already used it's resurrection. The only bad thing is that you cannot clone a stack that already has a clone present in the battle, but i.e. in castle sieges, the towers will target the clone every turn, so if you i.e.
Blind the last enemy stack, you can then resurrect as long as you have enough spell points for the repeated cloning. Another possibility may be to destroy the clones by area spells (frost ring, fireball or inferno), since they cannot be targeted directly.
- If you stand on top of a dead enemy unit, it cannot be resurrected.
It works even for two-hex creatures blocked on one hex only. So, if you're facing i.e. a nasty Necro with high spellpower and a big army of Vampire
Lords, once you happen to kill them, block the body and let the hero waste his Animate Dead on something far less dangerous.
- Forcefield is very powerful spell. It can be used against strong wandering armies if you have a shooter faster than they are. Just move the shooter to the top left corner and cast forcefield. (Turn Cursor Shadow on to see exactly where the spell will be). You will have to renew the spell every two turns, which gives time for Bless, too. This trick can be pulled against faster armies, if you have Expert Slow or Expert Haste available.
- Second good use for Forcefield is blocking holes in castle walls in sieges.
But it can, as well, be used to block the gate to prevent enemies from coming out.
- More on blocking gates - when you have superior ranged firepower - or flyers fast enough to hit'n'run the enemy shooters in order to achieve that superiority, you may want to put a durable walker stack into the hex that the gate opens to. The gate cannot be open then, but you must expect the enemy shooters and walkers to focus on this stack...
- More on blocking gates, this time blocking them open. The gate won't close if there's a dead body on it, so place an army to a hex adjacent to the front hex of the gate. Choose which of the adjacent hexes will you use, mainly depending on which troop will be the first to try and attack you and how far could it move - I'm not sure about AI, but a human player will surely try to avoid dying on the gate. The AI will probably attack with the first available stack.
- Your blinded troops can be Teleported. If you don't have Cure/Dispel or don't want to use Mass Dispel, you can block an enemy shooter with your blinded stack, which either forces the shooter to move away or to attack at half strength, suffer from retaliation and unblind the troop.
Pay attention to timing. If the blinded troop is attacked when all the creatures have waited, it will have it's turn immediately, so you can run back, should the need be.
- With Ballistics skill, when you pick targets in a siege, you can cast a spell! That's especially nice for Mass Haste/Slow, Earthquake, Berzerker or frying the fastest enemy with a damage spell.
- Summoning Elementals may win otherwise unwinnable battles by keeping an enemy killer stack busy. The AI always attacks if it can, so the elementals can be used to lure the enemy away from your shooters. This is handy especially when the enemy cannot be slowed (or when you fear a counter-Haste) or destroyed by direct damage spells.
- Elementals can be also used to block holes in castle walls.
- When an enemy hero approaches your castle, don't panic. If it's a super hero with a huge army, it will probably be best to abandon the castle, or to use a few units split into seven stacks to waste enemy spellpoints and give the castle turrets time to score at least some damage. But when the enemy is not so strong, take a careful look at his army. The fewer and slower flyers and shooters he has, the bigger your chances for winning are. Don't scare him away by returning a strong hero or using all gold reserves to buy a huge army. Instead, try to build a one-use army, just capable enough of holding the castle. From the composition of enemy army, you should know exactly what will be needed. The shooters can be usually ignored, because they will be shooting and 25%. You'll need to eliminate the flyers first and then hold the walls. As long as you have turrets shooting or some shooters remaining, use your walkers passively. Split your armies to have some retaliation-soakers. The goal is to have one strong walker stack left to deal with what gets inside the walls. Don't put that strong stack close to your shooters, because the enemy will likely try to block the shooters by attacking adjacent armies. If the enemy flyers are eliminated and you still have some weak stacks left, use them first to block broken walls. Your strongest stack should attack only when it will suffer low damage from retaliation.
In this way, you'll be able to promote a fresh/scout hero quickly.
- Another defense tip against enemy secondary heroes - if you still have some gold left, buy a fresh hero, move his troops into the garisson and give him seven stacks of one low-level unit. Leave him as a visiting hero.
The enemy will quite probably waste a few spellpoints dealing with him, plus you get a chance to deal one or two magic arrows or better to his most dangerous units (fast, weaker flyers - see the above tip).
If you happen to have a good 4thlevel spell in the castle, look for heroes that start with advanced wisdom.
- Delaying the approaching enemy may save you a turn. Sometimes hiring more than one hero with the above mentioned weak seven-slot force and a few lousy spells may not only drain enemy's spellpoints, but it may delay his attack on the castle itself for one turn. That turn can be used to upgrade castle defenses (if you think that this will decide the battle) or building or upgrading a dwelling. Think twice before building a dwelling. An upgrade can sometimes have much better effect than some fresh, weak cannonfodder.
- Aging and Poisoning can be cured. Poisoning is less dangerous, but it repeats the effect (knocking off 10% of orinigal health of every unit) on beginning of two more turns. If you don't remove the spell (and First Aid Tent does NOT do that), be sure that the opponent will wait for the second turn.
- When sieging a Tower, Mass Dispel removes the defensive Landmines.
[It also removes QuickSand and Landmines in general]. The Landmines cause 150 damage no matter how the town is developed.
- Arrow towers cause damage dependant on how the town is developed.
- If you cannot outmaneuver enemy to get a first strike on a particular unit (typically when you have a one-stack army), use Defend rather than move/wait. Defending increases the D rating of the stack by the creature level. So i.e. Nagas gain +6 defense. If the attacker had lower attack rating than Nagas, the damage will be lower by 12% only, but if his attack rating was above the Nagas' defense, the damage is lowered by 30%.
(If A-D was lower than 6, the percentage will be proportionally lowered).
- If you're about to battle a fast wandering army (or enemy hero) and have one strong shooter stack that's worth protecting, the following may help:
In adventure game settings, choose 'close formation'. Put the shooter in the middle slot, one slow tough walkers adjacent on each side. All you will need is to have one stack faster than the enemy units. The close formation is centered, with the shooter being in the leftmost column, having only three adjacent hexes. Two of them are occupied by the walkers and the third can be taken by the fast unit of yours.
- In castle defenses, if you happen to have fast flyer (or a very fast walker) left alive after all enemy flyers and shooters have been eliminated, you may use it to outrun the enemy walkers by repeatedly flying back and forth over the castle walls in the top or bottom row of screen. The castle turrets will then do the most for you. It is especially applicable in larger battles, where you can use hit'n'run or damage spells to quickly destroy enemy catapult. It is especially effective against walkers that need two turns to move through the moat.
- How to counter the above? Earthquakes, Teleport (with expert Water only),
Berzerker (the enemy flyer will try to attack) or Hypnotize (to move the enemy closer to you or to have it open the gate for you - in case the enemy fragged your catapult quickly and the walls are not breached yet.
- Not only for Necros: Wraithbombs. If you happen to get your hands on
Wraiths (Necropolis, dwelling+fort, wandering army join), keep them tucked somewhere near the front lines. When an enemy comes to attack you (or when you need to attack him), take a scout hero, give him 7 stacks of wraiths (or six plus one stack of something faster than enemy units, if you happen to have Mass Slow/Haste), let the wraiths suck his spellpoints and if he could kill many of them, surrender, rehire and repeat. If he can kill only one or two in the first round (shooters, spell), let them suck once more. If he has to kill them with spells, let him, it's even better :-).
This may be quite effective especially against might heroes that don't have that big knowledge, but it may be worth trying even against magic heroes, whose big spellpoints would be used for repeated resurrections or strong damage spells.
- Not only for Wizards: If you happen to acquire master genies, split them into as many stacks as you can (usually 2-4, depending on how many useful armies you'll need. Their beneficial spells will usually be worth more than carrying a slow walker army around instead). Try to protect them, esp. if the source of them was a one-times (refugee camp, join).
- Be careful with War Machines. They make a good damage soaker for enemy
High Voltage experiments, but on the other hand, they allow flame-strikers to attack adjacent stacks without retaliation and allow liches, magogs and Faerie dragons to hit with area attack. (Yes, Faerie Dragons sometimes want to cast Frost ring, but they cannot target empty hexes!) - against slow units, hit'n'run with fast armies can be used, so that you only suffer from their retaliations. Wait, attack and then retreat far enough so that you can wait in the next round. Using Slow/Haste makes this available even with not so big speed differences. - every unit with a percentage special can be used for splitting attacks.
The best example may be Ghost Dragons. If the necromancer leaves walking dead and wights at home, the two free slots can be used by single ghost dragons that will accomplish two things - waste a retaliation of a powerful enemy and increase the chance of halving the HPs of the target stack. You will probably use this approach only a few times, because the dragons are quite valuable.
But troops like Basilisks can be used as well, they will only need some magic support (Haste).
Chapter III: Troop charts
Legend:
A: Attack
D: Defense
HP: Hit Points
Damage: Normal damage range of a unit
Avg: Average damage of a unit
Sp: Speed
$$: Cost without resources
AdjD: Damage caused against an enemy with Defense rating 10
L: Level of the creature (1 means 1stlevel creature, 41 means 4thlevel upgraded.) C: Castle number:
1 Necropolis
2 Stronghold
3 Rampart
4 Tower
5 Fortress
6 5Castle
7 Dungeon
8 Inferno
9 Conflux
Dm/g: AjdDam/$$*100 (Damage cost - i.e. how much damage can 100 gold worth of this army cause to enemies with Defense 10)
Gro: Growth rate with castle and growth increase structure present.
D/W: Damage dealt by one week worth' of this creature to an opponent with 10D.
This is the field that tables are sorted by, so you can see the most damaging units at the bottom of each table. This table compares damage potential of all armies. However, specials, speeds and ranged attacks cannot be reflected in these numbers.
The best unit list after each table reflects those characteristics (and my opinions ;-)).
Unit A D HP Dmg Avg Sp $$ L C AdjD Dm/g gro D/W
Gremlins 3 3 4 1__2 1.5 4 30 1.0 4 1.29 4.30 32 41
Master Gremlins 4 4 4 1__2 1.5 5 40 1.1 4 1.32 3.30 32 42
Imps 2 3 4 1__2 1.5 5 50 1.0 8 1.26 2.52 38 48
Pikemen 4 5 10 1__3 2 4 60 1.0 6 1.76 2.93 28 49
Goblins 4 2 5 1__2 1.5 5 40 1.0 2 1.32 3.30 38 50
Familiars 4 4 4 1__2 1.5 7 60 1.1 8 1.32 2.20 38 50
Hobgoblins 5 3 5 1__2 1.5 7 50 1.1 2 1.35 2.70 38 51
Skeletons 5 4 6 1__3 2 4 60 1.0 1 1.80 3.00 30 54
Skeleton warriors 6 6 6 1__3 2 5 70 1.1 1 1.84 2.63 30 55
Troglodytes 4 3 5 1__3 2 4 50 1.0 7 1.76 3.52 35 62
Pixies 2 2 3 1__2 1.5 7 25 1.0 9 1.26 5.04 50 63
Infernal trogs 5 4 6 1__3 2 5 65 1.1 7 1.80 2.77 35 63
Centaurs 5 3 8 2__3 2.5 6 70 1.0 3 2.25 3.21 28 63
Jump to page:
Sponsors:
Other files from this game:
- Heroes of Might & Magic 3 trainer by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
Start the program - it's self explaining - Heroes of Might & Magic 3 trainer by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
+16 trainer - Heroes of Might & Magic 3 savegame by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
- Heroes of Might & Magic 3 trainer by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
Trainer for v1.13 - Heroes of Might & Magic 3 document by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
- Heroes of Might & Magic 3 editor by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
Resources editor - Heroes of Might & Magic 3 hints by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Heroes of Might & Magic 3 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Heroes of Might & Magic 3 cheats by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Heroes of Might & Magic 3 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50