Beat campaign as the knights. I never played this back in the day, with Heroes 2 being my introduction to the series. I knew this game was not as good as Heroes 2 but still wanted to check it out. The version I downloaded did not work. Best I could tell it was the install files for GOG version but without the CD. I settled on playing in browser on playclassicgames, which was fine if slow at times. I was worried that my saves would be lost but they were still there after shutting off PC. I was not expecting it to be so good. The core game elements of the series were already well established here. The game was pretty much Heroes 2 only with a few small differences. There was no wizard or necro faction, and no elementals. There were no secondary skills, instead each class had a unique bonus that Heroes 2 expanded on as secondary skills. The knight had +1 morale and focused on defense. The barbarian had no rough terrain movement penalty and focused on attack. The sorceress had bonus naval movement and focused on knowledge. The warlock had better sight range and focused on spell power. There was a simplistic charm to having 1 class for each attribute. Each class was good in their own way. The knight's morale was a great general purpose combat boost. The barb's and sorc's movement was very useful for maps with appropriate terrain, while both spell caster types benefitted more from mid to late game mage guilds. I liked how spells could be used X number of times instead of having a mana pool. This encouraged use of a wider variety of spells and put more tactical emphasis on which spell to use in a given situation. Like don't waste paralysis when slow will do. Mana would accomplish that too though. In order to restore spells the hero had to visit a town and click on the mage guild, but it only added the spells specific to that castle. This put additional strategic pressure on returning to specific castles to replenish key spells. I did not like how there was only 1 campaign with your starting position changing based on chosen faction. This seriously hurt replayability as I really don't want to play the same maps 4 times. Another big flaw was the lack of any way to sell resources. I can appreciate not being able to trade or buy resources since it put a lot of pressure on finding those resources on the map, making the view mines and view resources spells worth using. However it made mines and loose resources pointless once you had enough. There was no sense of loot everything for more wealth. Another big flaw was with the AI, in that they were both incredibly annoying and too easy. The way I play Heroes games is to consolidate my troops, artifacts and xp on a single hero to make an unstoppable doom stack. Defense is then left to whatever can be scraped together, and I don't usually spend gold on troops unless they will survive. The most important thing is consolidating power on 1 or more heroes since castles are just sources of new power and can be easily re taken. The AI plays opposite, dividing its forces among many heroes and towns, pointedly not camping in castles to abuse the walls and tower, and relying more on hoping to ninja undefended castles and weak heroes without the player noticing. It was extremely rare to fight an enemy hero that actually had all 5 unit slots filled with significant numbers to make for an epic battle that could very well decide the whole map. Instead it was heroes with maybe 1 or 2 decent troop stacks who would steal my castles, then split their already weak army even more. The bigger challenge was catching all the bastards, not the actual battles. The AI was also very dumb at retreating, more often fighting to the death and needlessly giving me artifacts and losing high level heroes. I did like how neutral stacks never fled in terror so there was a cost benefit analysis to fighting. Like those ranged or flying troops will definitely kill some of mine so is what they are guarding worth the losses. I often left those stacks alone and fought them only after moving my weaker troops out of the hero. This was especially true with ghosts! I found it difficult to keep troops as most battles inflicted at least some losses. This was good because I want my forces worn down so I will be encouraged to adjust for losses by using units from other factions. Another thing I liked was the lack of carry over from 1 mission to the next. Later games seen me prolonging each map to farm as much stat boosts and spells as possible for the hero to bring to the next map. Here it was a fresh start with a random level 1 hero each time.

My strategy was to build as many creature dwellings as possible, and get a basic mage guild and 2nd hero sooner rather than later. My main hero then took all troops and went around killing, exploring and flagging. To save movement the 2nd hero picked up loose resources. Keeping backup saves was very important. I made 1 when my main hero was at home and loaded if the enemy later attacked while I was away. I often did not build castles in other towns and even afterwards did not rush to build dwellings. On one hand castles increased gold income, but on the other they guaranteed casualties when I had to take them back from the enemy. Sometimes it was good to let them take towns so they would spend to construct buildings. It all depended on how well I could consolidate my power and defend holdings. There was no point to build castles and dwellings in frontier towns if I could not afford to recruit all troops in my core castles, or they were too far away to protect. Eventually my main hero would need to venture too far away to defend anything and I would need a defender hero. Then I would have to split my forces somehow. Usually I would plan to be gone for weeks or months so the defender would start with nothing and accumulate new recruits. And since the AI was so bad it was not necessary to go beyond a certain level of army power for each hero. Then I made a 3rd hero to support the defender with troop ferrying and map activation stuff, and possibly a 4th hero to loot behind the main. Then repeat this process as new territory was conquered, reruiting local forces for a new defend hero. As the knight I felt that peasants were so god awful as to be not worth recruiting at all. Maybe just 1 to defend a castle if the enemy had no shooters or flyers. I used what peasants I had for free to block archers until I had all dwellings built, or got a better unit elsewhere. They at least could do some damage against flyers that went for the archers. Slot 1 was archers. They provided much needed ranged damage but always took losses. Slot 2 was pikes to help block the archers. They and swords were tough but too slow to contribute in many battles; 3 turns to cross the battlefield unless there was a large creature to attack. Haste helped with that. Slot 3 was paladins, which went 1st and were both fast and powerful. I put them there so they could fully block my archers before enemy fliers could move, and because obstacles sometimes got in the way for cavalry. Slot 4 was swords and 5 was the cavalry, which could cross the battlefield in 1 turn if there was a large creature to attack, but they were also vulnerable to that. Sometimes I adjusted cavalry position based on enemy large unit positions. 1st mission was easy, just get a big enough army to kill 1 dragon at the center. 2nd was islands with portals and whirlpools linking everything. It was nearly impossible to know when the home would be attacked and I always hated maps like this in the later games. I stayed on my own island until I had all 3 castles built up then took each island in turn. Map 3 sucked because it failed if an AI found the buried treasure, effectively forcing a difficult time limit. Backup saves helped and I was able to go back far enough before the AI won to dig the thing myself. Map 4 was a bigger free for all that took a long time. It seemed like there were more knight towns than any other faction and I ended up with 4 knight castles pumping out troops in my corner. I had no trouble building up 2 invincible armies but before then it was tough to keep all those castles. I even had a group of cavalry and paladins join me, which were near my base but left alone for weeks until I could spare the time. The AI wiped each other out until yellow controlled 75% of the map. I was very disappointed to see how many of the enemy castles didn't even have all dwellings built. What were they spending their resources on? Map 5 was fun with a large desert separating me and the AI. I had centaurs join me very early and there was a warlock town in my area so I took those instead of pikes. Had to save scum twice to fend off the 1st attack. 1st time I used view mines to see a gold mine in the desert, 2nd I was clearing the entire bottom. Instead I had to hang around to defend, then clear the bottom. I decided to leave my main hero home for defense and hire a barbarian to go offense and claim desert stuff. It was very lucky when a powerful enemy attacked. He was 1 space short of attacking the main hero in main castle, who only had the pikes and some nomads. The barb with the rest of my army could not quite make it but was close enough for the knight to take his troops and devastate the enemy. I had built up the mage guild and found 3 different + knowledge artifacts so both heroes had plenty to cast. Maps 6 and 7 were were rpg focused, requiring a lot of exploring before even being able to access the enemy. As such there were some epic hero vs hero battles but nothing too challenging. The final mission was another timed with the goal being to capture dragon city on an island in the middle. It was not difficult though. I stayed mostly in my quadrant fending off attacks, and later conquering the barbarian to my west. The south front was quiet for a long time so not sure what the AI was doing. At this point with 3 castles I built a shipyard and bee lined for victory.

647 days unicorn rank.

Custom maps:

Claw: I started this on max possible difficulty, which meant 1 vs 3 and starting with 0 resources. I was sorceress and pretty much hid in my castle fending off attacks by abusing magic and high knowledge. Lasted 2 months before losing. I was not able to afford Phoenix and could not withstand constant attacks from 3 factions. I tried to use cheat codes to get the mercury for Phoenix but it did not work. Reveal map worked. There was a knight town just above mine so I switched to them and made it free for all. I beat it and resolved to cheat to reveal each map so I could choose the best faction.

Around the bay. A heavy water map so I played as sorceress. It took several attempts to get the start right because color was not linked to any specific faction or start location. Town faction seemed to be random but not sure about mines. I made it free for all and lowered the difficulty to hard so I at least started off with some gold, wood and ore. I was in the SE and there were a lot of annoying creatures that would inflict casualties, so I did not kill many. There was no mercury anywhere so I was stuck with only sprites, dwarves and elves. I added rogues from their lair and lots of orcs joined me. Then I defeated a hero from the N and bee lined to take his castle. I took a town along the way and barely defeated the hero that tried to take their castle back from me. They had about a dozen hydra and similar amount of druids that joined them. Only a few rogues survived while kiting those hydra around as the castle killed them. I thought I was clear but he had 1 more hero. I built a dragon tower but was 1500 gold short of affording a dragon, which would have single handedly wiped out that hero. I totally could have made that by not recruiting in my main castle, so I loaded the backup save from before I left. This time lots of elves joined me so it seems like getting free followers could be save scummed by trying the fight each new day. This time I moved out of their castle, which caused their weak hero to come close enough for me to kill, and the hydra hero to go for the castle instead of getting free druids. I kept far more of my forces, got dragons and even got those druids to join me. I then had my main hero methodically clear out and loot my entire side of the map, and it was now down to 1vs1. I did a lot of those annoying fights with just the dragons, then took the portal to invade the west with 5 dragons, elves, druids, gargoyles and centaurs (later replaced with unicorns as I finally got some gems). Meanwhile in warlock land I found the buried treasure and hired a barbarian hero to venture into the desert, only giving him dragons. By the time he was finished and attacked the AI he had about 25 dragons (2 or 3 neutral stacks joined), several paladins and about 10 genies. Got hydra rank.

Badlands: this map was 5 different biomes separated by a waterway. I wanted to play as barbarian at the spot closest to the desert but settled on barbarian in the middle dirt spot. I left the map fuly revealed and played 1vs3 on Expert, and this was a lot of fun. Yellow attacked me by boat, so after killing that hero I hired a sorceress and gave her my entire army to take their castle; only 1 turn for her to sail between the castles. Then I was able to sail back just in time for my main hero to take back the army to defeat a green hero, then give it back to the sorc to defend from yellow, then take green's castle. At this point using the power of reveal map cheat and sorc navigation, I controlled 75% of the starting castles. It then took a long time to consolidate my forces and get everything where I needed. Yellow still had a town where they eventually built a castle and got back into the game, green was eliminated, and red controlled half of the map including the desert. My sorc stayed around green's fully upgraded sorc town, fending off red and even defeating their best heroes and getting all their artifacts. She was using an army of Phoenix, druids, elves, cyclopses and trolls. Meanwhile my main hero used his path finding to secure the entire swamp, eliminating yellow and capturing 3 sorc towns. His army was hydra, griffins, gargoyles, centaurs and sprites. I had another barb hero shuffling troops around in that area and another sorc ferrying them around the water. The homeland was defended by the left over troops: unicorns, ogres, orcs, wolves and archers from my 2nd town. They did not see much action. My main hero took the teleporter from swamp to desert, took everything of value, then captured the 2 core knight castles of red. Meanwhile my sorc killed most of their heroes fighting over the grasslands. Got genie rank.

Close quarters: did expert free for all with random start as sorceress. I liked the map layout with plenty of ocean, a 2nd sorc town near me, and 2 mercury mines nearby in a swamp. The rest of the map was an arc of dirt with the starting castles, and a center grassland with the extra towns and rare mines. I hired a barbarian just to get those swamp mines but soon had to fall back and spend weeks holed up in my castle because the barb AI took the castles of the other 2, and their heroes were in my land. Waited for them to be banished, but then I had to endure attacks from the 3 different castles. I never would have survived without the castle, and that lots of dwarves that joined me really pulled their weight. The clutch moment came when I could afford the Phoenix tower. Building it left me too weak to survive the next attack, so the winning move was to spend that gold on the new week's troops. After this things quieted down a bit and I was able to build the tower. Phoenix made a huge difference in every battle such that I could finally accumulate troops. I finally captured the 2nd sorc town and built that up while controlling the center and fending off attacks. Eventually I split my forces and sent my main hero to conquer each castle. I was shocked at how many troops the AI had in stock, not recruited. They had been focusing on cavalry, trolls and hydra, neglecting to hire significant amounts of the others. Their home castle had 35 cyclopses in stock! Since I controlled all the rare mines they had no crystal, and clearly did not cheat with infinite gold. If they attacked me with all the troops they had in stock I might have lost. Got hydra rank

Crossroads: beat on expert 3vs1 as knights. The map was a triangle with me in the middle with minimal mines, and the AI having 1 extra town each. The ways out were blocked by genies and the AI suicided several heroes into them. The barbarian had the fewest genies so I broke though hoping to conquer them and their knight town before the other colors broke through, but red broke through immediately after. So I loaded and let both AI defeat those genies, then abandoned my castle to get the barbarian. By this point my army was archers, trolls, pikes, swords and wolves. I could not capture their knight castle without high losses. I had to defeat their heroes to make them hire 1 in that castle and split up the forces. The barb mage guild had teleport so I had no trouble fighting off both yellow and red (sorceress), yellow took my original castle. My knight units eventually died and my army was trolls, orcs, archers, cavalry and ogres. It was very effective, especially troll regeneration combined with knight high defense. My army had no trouble defeating enemy heroes but all 3 AI were swarming me with 2 to 3 heroes each. I didn't have enough movement points to defeat them all and keep my castles so I had to manage. Eventually things died down and I hired a sorc to go by boat to steal an island gold mine. I built a cathedral and gave her a few paladins to take a 2nd gold mine, but an enemy sorc attacked her and barely won. She in turn tried to take my castle but it was stupid to attack with such a pitiful force. My main hero took the center castle, then north to wipe out red, and finally defeated green. I was surprised how many dragons they had in stock. They never built any all game, preferring knight troops despite having sulfur mine. Got cyclops rank.

Desert isle: this was a very interesting map with water along the edges, then a ring of grass with some swamp, then a large central area of desert with lava at the core. Kinda like vardenfell in Morrowind. 1st start put me as warlock on the top far away from everyone else and with 2 warlock towns along the top. I liked this start, and it was 3vs1 expert as usual. My plan was to control the north with 3 warlock castles piling troops into an unstoppable army. I hired a barbarian for main hero while my starting warlock stayed home to defend. 1st priority was getting the nearby gem and 2 sulfur mines for better troops, and I got a boat from yellow who came up from the south, which allowed me to snatch a few resources without fighting. The barb went along the N coast with tier 1 to 4 + lots of orcs while the hydra stayed behind since I did not have haste or teleport. Red was attacking that way, so I defeated them, took the warlock town, went into the desert to recruit genies, capture a knight town and a few gold mines before finally getting the desert warlock town that was close to my start. It was a fruitful circle. My warlock successfully held the base and even captured the wood and ore mines, got lots of pikemen, and at one point barely survived an attack that went down to 1 minotaur vs 1 minotaur. Of course the enemy took those warlock towns. Instead of following my plan I did the opposite. I went south to recruit more genies and took out yellow since I seen them using dimension door. That spell was amazing in this map because of the long mountain ranges around the desert. The ultimate artifact was also in the south so I secured that area to dig it up. Meanwhile back home I had dragons and had no trouble holding off attacks. The genies and centaurs eventually died so I replaced them with paladins and cavalry from the 2 full knight castles in the south. I then went along the coast taking red and green's home castles, then finally my 2nd warlock castle. The enemy was now entirely confined to the desert and it was a simple matter of mopping them up and defending each area with local troops. I was surprised how long my main hero's gargoyles and griffins lasted without reinforcements, and only 7 minotaurs. I did use plenty of resurrection. Final score troll.

Dragon pass: All 4 starting castles were at the center with several dragons blocking the way. Further away genies blocked access. The only other way into the other player's territory was to go through the rough biomes in the corners. I was knights in the south. The AI was incredibly stupid, suiciding many heroes into those dragons. Warlock never did anything other than suicide, barb got stuck at an oasis just before my territory, and sorc was the only 1 that conquered stuff. I had my knight hero clear out the starting area while a barb went into the swamp to get loose resources. After that I gave most of my army to the barb to conquer the swamp and take warlock. His forces were incredibly weak and there were lots of hydra in stock. He then went north through the snow to attack sorc. Meanwhile the knight dug for the ultimate artifact. At one point green broke through the genies and attacked, so I mustered a defense and took their castle. This made their hero that was stuck at the oasis try to take a castle. Then my knight killed the dragons to sneak attack the last castle. I was very surprised that I got dragon rank.

Hermit isle: Small map with a lot of rough terrain, so I restarted until I was barbarian, expert king of the hill. I was in the center dirt area with desert behind. I went further south looting around a neutral town until the knight from the south broke in. I wanted his ore mine so I could build cyclopses. I ended up killing the hero, then waiting for a new hero to leave the castle before taking it with only 2 weeks growth of goblins, orcs and wolves. I built a shipyard in my town and sent a 2nd barbarian hero to get resources and mines from sea, including the ore mine at my castle and a crystal mine in the desert. The knight castle had built up the mage guild and I abused berserk, teleport and blind to kill the other 2 color heroes with minimal losses. It helped that there was a knowledge artifact just 1 day from the castle. Red sorceress took my barbarian castle but I was better off with that mage guild. Unfortunately it took a long time to get the wood required for paladins and cavalry, and they kept killing my paladins with lightning. No one else got 6th tier units though. Eventually things calmed down enough for me to take the warlock castle while my own warlock hero defended the knight castle with minimal troops. Then I took the central neutral warlock town, then my old castle, and finally the snowy sorc town. My army was paladins, hydra, swords, pikes, centaurs. Got dragon rank.

Jolly roger: skull and cross bones shaped map with mines in the center, each castle on the tips of the bones, and small desert islands. Barbarian was the obvious choice with the bones being lava. I lost on expert 3vs1 because of the resources being in the middle. It took more than 1 week to get enough stone for trolls, and no point to go for the genies on the desert islands without gems. I could not hold the center and lost to a hero who had a neutral army of genies and gargoyles join. I didn't have the troops or spells to deal with constant attacks from the 3 factions. It possibly could have been doable by abandoning the starting castle to take 1 built up by the AI. Tried again on Hard and it was a good challenge. The extra resources allowed me to get trolls right away and get some resources from the center. 2nd week I built a shipyard and sorceress to hit the desert islands. I managed to get half of them for a total stack of 15 genies. My barb hero eventually got pushed out of the center and I was not able to get back there for a long time. The enemy heroes were tough enough to not be worth the losses I would incur but they also refused to attack me in my castle. It was a stalemate that they would eventually win due to resources. I did build the cyclops lair but only had enough crystal to build 1 for the rest of the game. My sorc also had lots of nomads she hired and lots of elves that joined. She easily stole the knight castle and got into a lot of fights as the AI was more inclined to attack her. Good thing too since that castle had a full mage guild with resurrect, teleport and paralyze. The AI even had that neutral stack of genies join again and sieged her with slightly more of them. Sometimes it took some save scumming and changing troop positions to manipulate the RNG for genie half kills. I only lost a couple, and kept the paladins alive too. Soon I had wiped out the troublesome armies and both heroes moved into the center. Rather than secure all the mines I bee lined for both enemy castles to secure the win for cyclops rank.

Knight quest: this was a large map with many towns already under control and all 3 enemy knight heroes starting outside my castle. My hero was also a knight but my castle was sorceress. Expert difficulty 3vs1. 1st turn all 3 enemies attacked and I barely survived with 5 archers remaining. Then I hired a barbarian hero to go for the mercury mine to the NE. There were a lot of undefended mines and resources. He looped around to the desert, grabbing mines, resources and the only genie lamp before going back to home castle. The good thing about this map was enemy heroes were too busy looting and far away to be much threat. I lost all my towns but gained 2 neutral warlock towns close by. My main army was elves, druids, sprites, gargoyles and griffins. Green was closest to the east and sent some attacks. I took their sorceress castle but had to turn back from attacking their main warlock castle in the middle of the desert to defend my territory. Red was sending a decent army and I had to take the troops from my main castle to let them take it. Eventually I had Phoenix from both castles to replace gargoyles, a large collection of good artifacts, and controlled half of the map. My main hero had such high attack that the elves and druids alone could wipe out the best the enemy could send. I had a sorceress defending my main castle with mostly dwarves and unicorns while the barb defended the other castle. Both seen some very close victories, abusing berserk, blind, paralyze and teleport. One battle I was teleporting a single unicorn around while the tower killed enough that the unicorn could survive. Soon though I had wiped out most of the enemy heroes and there was nothing they could do. Barbarian hero took the desert castle, finding 25 dragons in stock. Green never hired a single dragon all game. He also killed the hero who found the ultimate artifact, who had a pathetic army. He took the barb castle nearby while my main hero took everything else. It was just mopping up at this point as every enemy castle had more than enough troops in stock to defend against what passed for opposing armies. Got highest score yet, 200 dragon rank.

Land bridge: beat on expert 3vs1 as warlock. I was in the SW quadrant which was mostly desert, with my castle in dirt. I wanted a barbarian hero but none were available 1st week. Instead I got a sorceress in case I used the water separating me from east. With those sprites I had the neutral stack guarding lumber mine join me, but the lots of gargoyles guarding the rest of the dirt was too difficult. Instead both heroes had no choice but to go into the desert. Main hero went into a grassy area with a warlock town but could not capture it. He later got killed by green who had a barb hero that outpaced in the desert. My sorc got some nomads from tents and I finally got my own barb hero who took troops from the sorc to kill green. At one point my castle was attacked and I barely defended it without any hero. Sorc returned to castle to defend while barb scoured the desert. I had hydras and was saving up gems to get minotaurs, but first spent them to get all the genies. Also had 2 neutral stacks of nomads join while he took artifacts, 2 desert towns and that warlock town. I had 9 genies, 70 nomads, gargoyles, griffins and centaurs. 2 of those artifacts were boots of travel and compass, so his movement range was insane. I had little trouble zipping around doing both defense and offense. Got dragons, wiped out green, built up mage guilds to get good spells, and got a lot of artifacts by defeating enemy heroes. There were some high magic power heroes with big nukes so I opted to station all my troops except dragons. Barb was going around with 16 dragons and stacked with artifacts wiping the floor with everything. Never lost a single dragon, winning with my highest score yet. 202.

Pathways: beat expert 3vs1 as warlock with cyclops rank. Map was mostly grass and dirt with large optional snow, swamp and lava areas. I started in the NW near the snow and it did not take long before red and yellow cleared the way to attack me. Yellow was far away to the S while red was only about 3 days away. Red was sorceress so I knew I had to conquer them as soon as possible. I hired a barb and the 1st attempt failed because they had everything up to unicorns left as garrison. I had to wait until one of their heroes removed those troops. I defeated 1 hero then went for the castle on day 1 of a new week. This battle would decide the fate of the game and it took several attempts to win. I had something like 20 gargoyles, 4 griffins, 10 centaurs, and some goblins and orcs. They had about 8 elves and 2 unicorns. The key was to send the gargs after the elves then have them eat unicorn retaliations while everyone focused the unicorns while not getting any blind. Only 1 griffin and several gargs survived but I no longer needed them as I had a full week's growth of sorc troops. Except for dwarves because the AI never built their dwelling for some reason. Big mistake which I corrected. I then spent the entire week hiding in castles until red was eliminated because their mage guild had storm and I did not want unnecessary casualties. Slow, teleport and lightning were the most useful but I was never able to build any more mage guilds because complete lack of crystal. I had a gem mine near the center of the map which got me minotaur, 2 mercury mines in the swamp, 1 sulfur towards yellow and another just past a teleporter near red that went to the lava area. I focused on the swamp since it had 4 gold mines and a town, plus the ultimate artifact, even hiring another barb hero just to help dig. Took forever to find it, and it was the defense boost. Meanwhile my warlock took a 2nd warlock town to the west while both main castles had a sorc for defense. By the time I finished in the swamp I had dragons and phoenix, and the enemy dared not attack either main castle. I gave my barb all 9 dragons and every artifact to go solo green because they were annoying with armageddon. Never lost a single dragon with that hero having like 20 defense. The warlock helped a little against yellow.

River: Beat as barb starting in the SW by snow. The map was in 4 quadrants with NW being grass, NE desert and SE swamp. The swamp was the only starting castle in bad terrain. I went into the snow bee lining for an unguarded ore mine, which was my only source of ore beyond 1 loose pile, so it took a very long time to build all dwellings and even the level 1 mage guild. I hired a sorc to exploit the water but did not build a shipyard, instead waiting for the enemy to bring me a ship. I got a barb and knight town in the snow but was unable to beat most neutrals there, despite the 50 rogues I hired. Orcs were my strongest stack with 2 towns worth of growth. I knew the ultimate artifact was NW so I sent the sorc there by ship to steal their castle while all their heroes were too far to respond. They were sorc, and I timed it just right to get the next week's growth. Wiped out their heroes with help from the castle and took their sorc town. Then I planned a risky gamble that required 2 resets to a backup save. The AI already got 2 genie lamps and I wanted to get the last 2 just to deprive them. 1st try I sent my main barb, had to avoid a warlock hero that was too strong, and lost my castle by 1 turn from a sneaky barb hero from the S edge. They hired my troops including 2 cyclopses from the pyramid I just built. I didn't consider that trade worth it so I loaded. 2nd try I delayed until the next week to get new troops and give the sorc enough time to get back to defend, but the enemy barb had a much stronger army and high stats that the sorc was unable to win. Funny on 1st try the enemy hero with genies died to ghosts but I was not able to make that happen again since I moved up the backup save. Try 3 had my barb sit home until the powerful barb came, and he would not attack until I moved 1 steck of troops into the castle. Then winning was easy. Will have to use this trick more often. Then I went to the desert for those genies and gold mine, then went W for the main warlock castle while they sent 2 heroes into my NW territory. Sorc beat them and I hired a knight to defend my home castle, then that powerful barb hero that gave me trouble since he had decent level. The NW area had 2 barb towns, which I built up and gave him a good army. My main hero fought both strong enemy heroes (genie guy, and other with big army), losing all my genies, and other troops, leaving only trolls and orcs. Had to retreat to warlock castle for reinforcements, and even built dragon tower. I added dragons, hydras and gargoyles, since that guild had haste, and proceeded to conquer east. But the flood of enemy heroes was such that progress was very slow. Other barb hero cleared the center lava island then went far south to conquer the swamp. Sorc went into the snow to clear the loot and she by far had the most artifacts. Then she sailed to help with conquering. I had already won long before, it was just mopping up all the weak heroes and towns. Phoenix rank.

Shang: Beat with genie rank as barb. Started in NE very close to a swamp. This map was tough and I had to revert to backup saves a few times. The main problem was a yellow hero with 20+ druids had 2 neutral stacks of elves and 1 pack of wolves join. They had nearly 50 elves, plus decent number of dwarves and sprites too. There was no way my main hero could win even defending in a castle, and I had captured red's warlock castle. Reloading a save I killed 1 of the elf groups and tried defending in red's castle, but still lost. Next time the elves joined me! Instead of going for red I fell back to my castle and finally defeated that troublesome sorceress. I then lost most of the elves taking red's castle. Then was another tough green hero that I could not defeat with strong stacks of knight units. The key to victory was going back before I bought my pyramid to instead spend that gold on hydras. I survived that battle with only several goblins left alive. Meanwhile red had taken a barb town close to my base and upgraded it into a castle. My 2nd hero was a warlock but he mostly stayed at base and brought troops. I eliminated red but now began an annoying battle of attrition.

Squirrel: beat as sorc cyclops rank hardest difficulty 3vs1. This map had a lake in the center with all 4 starting castles touching it, so I knew they would attack me via boat. But I could also do that to them. I spent a couple days building up then bee lined for an unguarded mercury mine. The short route was guarded by centaurs so I took a longer way around gathering loot along the way. Hired a barb and used only dwarves to kill that centaur stack, which I think was better than losing elves or sprites. I had the barb fight for some loot while the sorc defended a couple boat attacks. Warlock attacked me by land with multiple heroes and their storm nuke ruined my army. Low hp sorc units are definitely weak to weapons of mass destruction. I loaded a backup save and instead sent my barb to take their castle by boat. Later I wiped them out by fighting them with only 2 or 3 stacks of units, which tricked them into not using storm. I took a nearby knight castle from green then both heroes defended against repeated onslaughts, defeating the best enemy heroes in easy siege defense battles and winning their artifacts. I gave the barb attack, defense, luck and land movement artifacts, with army of druids, elves, centaurs, gargoyles and griffins. Sorc got knowledge, spell power and boat movement artifacts with dwarves, hydra, unicorns and sprites. Sorc had 10 knowledge with blind and lightning from home and berserk from the warlock castle, and she was absolutely wrecking enemy cyclopses and paladins. I later added Phoenix to both armies, cutting centaurs out. I never built the dragon tower and never used minotaur. It was weird that the warlock AI never built the gargoyle dwelling, which is one of the best units in the game. I had a stack of 24 join me later, after I had killed them using only dwarves before loading the backup to go take warlock castle. I got 2 genies from a lamp but they did not survive long. I hired 2 sorcs to dig up the ultimate artifact N of warlock, and the other to guard the home castle while my battle sorc got the sorc and warlock towns in my quadrant. The enemy attacks never gave me the chance until now. Barb got some knowledge artifacts from an enemy and I sent both heroes to mop up the weak enemy. I did manage to get the ultimate knowledge artifact to my barb but that never came in use as by that point his Phoenix alone were enough to wipe out every army.

Two if by sea: this map had the player on a grassy landmass shared with an AI in classic 1vs1 arena setup, but the other 2 AI started on tiny islands with a ton of resources and 3 gold mines. They were fixed to be warlock and sorc so I restarted many times on Hard until I was sorc and the grass AI + neutral middle town was warlock. I hired a barb, got enough mercury to get druids and got a money bag and armor artifact while getting some great battle wins. Then near the end of week 2 an island warlock hero with 2 dragons and armageddon wiped me out. Either the spell or dragons alone were enough to wipe out my measly 1 to 2 weeks growth of troops, even with castle advantage. The only possible way to win against that would be to have my own 2 dragons, who would destroy the enemy dragons with the barb's better attack and defense. Would likely have to play on easy to afford that. I did not bother to try again. There were 2 other maps that I did not beat. Jester had 1 AI with 2 extra towns safe past a desert while the player was flanked by the other 2 in a fairly small area. Definitely set up to make it all vs player and likely would have to play on Easy or Normal to be able to survive close quarters 2vs1. Small maps heavily favor the AI and make the harder difficulties impossible. There was another small map that I failed on Hard or Expert because I was forced to hide in my castle to weather the constant attacks without getting any opportunity to conquer to loot, and eventually was worn down to the loss.

After all this extreme difficulty play I have come to consider the sorc town the best, followed by warlock, but only if they can get the mercury, sulfur and gems to build their better units. Knight and barb functioned better in more resource scarce maps. Barb was the best main hero because it took a long time to be able to afford significant magic. Usually I got most spells from conquered enemies. The sorc and warlock heroes really needed higher level spells to be viable. Knight hero was a good choice too but the rough terrain movement of the barb made it overall best if the map had such terrain. Otherwise the morale of the knight gave the best edge to troops. Sorc was my favorite 2nd hero because her knowledge focus allowed more casts of each spell, which synergized very well with castle defense. The AI was actually very competent in battle and with spell casting, which forced me to carefully think several moves ahead and plan out how battles will go. Berserk was often my 1st cast as it could both skip a unit's turn while inflicting damage and retaliation back, but the enemy would surely remove it if they get the chance. So it was either berserk the unit that would go 1st, or wait for the enemy to cast. It did not work properly on ranged units that had nothing to attack in melee though. If the enemy could cast berser it was better to remove it. They almost always targeted the most powerful stack with all debuff spells, so a single cast of anti magic on that stack could go a long way. Paralyze was great for crowd control and skipping turns, while also preventing counter attacks; great way to soften up a dangerous stack. Blind did the same except for preventing retaliation. I cheesed with it a lot by making the enemy miss their turns over and over while my castle and ranged wore them down. Teleport was another favourite which I used to send a heavy melee stack next to enemy ranged, and to kite my units during defensive sieges to give my castle more turns to shoot. I abused all of these spells to win sieges that I should have lost, which was why I liked having sorc defenders. The other spells were good too but these were the most valuable. My overall favorite main hero used a mixed force of druids, elves, Phoenix, gargoyles and griffins. 2 great shooters combined with 3 tanky fliers and no slow units. My sorc unit line up looked like: elves, unicorns, Phoenix, sprites, druids, with the dwarves left for garrison. So the Phoenix would go 1st to either block the elves to engage the enemy. Since I could not block both shooters this faction was weak against flying, but they absolutely dominated when the shooters were unhindered. The combo of dwarves and unicorns did amazing at castle defense too. The warlock unit lineup looked like: centaurs, hydra or minotaur, dragon, griffins, gargoyle. With 3 great fliers and only 1 crappy shooter this faction countered the sorc, and neutral shooter armies. It was more difficult to defeat melee units without casualties though. Choosing which unit to leave out of the army was difficult. Centaurs were weak and tended to die but were the only ranged. Hydra were incredibly powerful but slow, and being large could fully block the centaurs with help from 1 of the others. This alone made me usually leave the minotaurs behind, especially if I had teleport. Dragons were very expensive to get going but I found a hero with just dragons could easily solo anything while being entirely immune to magic. The barb faction was easy to get going resource wise but their unit line up was not great despite having the best shooter. My lineup was: troll, ogre, wolf, cyclops, orc. I put the trolls on top to bait more attacks to take advantage of their defense and regen. With enough hero defense they completely negated the castle arrow making sieges easy. The wolves were center to be able to block either shooter. They were critical as the only fast speed but tough to use without taking significant losses. The ogres gave goblins the boot since the orcs made the army slow anyway. Ogres did very well against fliers and with teleport, and made good castle defenders. But with 3 melee units and 1 weak slow shooter, this faction suffered a bit though not nearly as bad as the knights.

I was impressed with this game and did not expect it to already have the core Heroes experience already established. This was essentially Heroes 2 with less content and a single campaign. What I liked about this game over the later games was: the by wisdom number of casts for each spell instead of mana, the simple more wargame less rpg progression, and the never flee never grow in size neutral stacks. What it did worse: stupid strategic AI (in battle was good though), only 1 campaign, almost every map being more like a multiplayer arena than asymmetrical real world adventure/rpg design, random faction selection for custom maps, and that certain mines and resources could become not worth getting. I would not play it again over the later games nor look online for additional maps but I had more fun than j expected.

7.8/10