Beiträge von Moriarty

I've found that creatures in general will behave in a few ways..

First on 130% or higher I am reffering to..

Most of the time creatures will attack the weakest unit. NOw in some cases, this might not be that honking stack of lv1's.. AI units are afraid of dying, and therefore tend to attack the stack that poses the least amount of threat to their numbers.

As an example I was quite baffled the other day.

I attacked "lots of centaur captains" with a day 3 stronghold army and Dessa. Lots of captains is normally a walk in the park, with little loses. However this time the captains moraled in rd1. Rather than hitting my stack of 98 goblins, which in retaliation would kill a good number of the centaurs, so instead they attacked my rocs. THis is very odd behavior, as normally any enemy would attack your goblins. However since the rocs were the smallest possible dmg dealing unit I had within reach of the centaurs they chose to attack them, killing 1. My goblins moved up and finished the stack off. BUt a battle that could have been easily no loss, was all of sudden a major loss. Simply because I had more units..

After saying this, I have also tried the summoning in utopias, with success and without.
Often times if your hero is capable of summononing large numbers of elementals say 80+ earths.. those dragons would much rather attack your stronger units, as the dmg ratio is much less. So sometimes less is more if you know what I mean

I'll give another nice example for a week 1 utopia take This is very situational and I derived it from a map archie had sent me to attempt it. well not exactly what he had in mind, but I figured out a new way

Its yet another force feild trick..

With a haste specialist hero, using a conflux town and your sprites.. having exp air magic, and being about lv8 or 9 your sprites, hasted will actually go faster than the gold dragons on grass terrain.

SO basically your going to need.. exp air magic, prolly exp intel, and Force feild spell. (I'd also recommend over 90 sprites.) I'd provide pictures but I am way to lazy to do it. Anyway, a Elementalist hero at lv8 with exp intel has a knowledge score of about 7, so you need to find some boosts, or artifacts to help your mana, you need 200.

Then basically.. its just a wait, attack, return.. You don't need earth magic for this tactic, because the sprites go faster than the drags, and they can stand in a proper position to be blocked by a non skilled feild.
This trick is recommended only for 1 or 2 black utopias, you need also to kill the blacks and golds first here.. reason being, your sprites can actually outrun them, and if worse comes to worse.. Mana wise, wait for morales.. CAUTION: Advise opponent to grab a book as they may see that active sign a few times

This can also be done with a haste specialist and conflux early if your lucky enough to find a summon spell, which still works on the same principle, with you sprites hidden in the force feild, just continue to summon, when feild disolves recast..

No pictures cause I am too lazy right now.

I am always afraid of drags hitting my stronger units. They do sometimes and when do they do it?

I remember once I had 5 arch. I then summonned lots of earth ele. and then the drags attacked my arch instead.

Lemme contribute... a tactic one can usse ,as I did in bob2 , was to have first the water book. in battle I brought in only 1-1-1-1-1-1-1. Then in battle summonned water constantly. After reducing the arch dev.(or any other lvl 7s you may concounter) to 1 or 2 I retreated before coming back a second time wif full army to take out everything thats left.

UTOPE TACTIC

this is a situation not very common in games but when u have the option to use it, IT ROCKS.Ivor is not wearing all of his 2nd week army (alltho he had an external elf dwelling) He only use what he thinks he needs to master the dragons may their be 5 blacks or only 1. that dont matter to ivor

The blacks and gold had their go now its the pegasis turn

Cast haste and move pegasis to the left flank out of reach for the greens and reds, note that hasted grands go b4 reds and greens since they now have a speed of 12 (grass / ivor speed 14)Move grands to top left corner.

Next round start. Hasted pegasi go first. Cast force field and let the Grands do their stuff. Dragons kill the loose pegasis but cannot hurt the main stacks behind field. Beaware that force field only lasts 2 rounds so when spell expires be sure your pegasis are still hasted, if they are not hasted, the blacks or golds will go first. Thats why i suggest u kill blacks and golds first (since it would be sad to retreat, when u allrdy got the deadlock) Just keep casting force field and maybe throw in a bless on grands if u got it (helpfull in 5 black topes).

Not alot of casulties and even the 3 pegasi can prolly be saved if used another set up, this was only a 1 black utope but army was capable of 5 with exatly same casulties. The trick is to have the proper set up so drags dont hit ranged units round 1. this can be done in a few different ways depending on quantity of ranged units and other potential targets for the dragons. U will need to do some research to understand the AI completly, thus knowing what set up to use with different armies.

This tactic (set up) used here i made for 130 setting or higher so if u play on less it wont work. The dragons will actually play smarter on that setting in this regard. Tactic works great with castle and tower aswell.

Hope u enjoy the tactic and get to use it in a real game.

Heres some stuff about topias: dont attack the greens and the reds with a weaker unit before they move...somehow they tend to attack the stack that is placed right in front of them - that happened to my quiet often with sultans, attacking 5 reds with a stack of 14 sultans sounds good if your force isnt so big, kill some off before they move and only loose 1 maybe, but: the reds and the greens will attack them and you loose too many.
the greens are your main target to hit after they moved usually - lowest defense skill but biggest damage they deal, so take the retal and concentrate on them...your last target should be the blacks.
Never use the spirit of oppression in topias - drags alrdy cant get morale and wont freeze (only if you got a ghosti).

Quote: Hey Frank,
Do you have some topias strategies to share besides the hydra's trick on easy level or the use of force field with arch-devils?
Mandrake
[/quote]
im not frank but i have a quite easy tactic how to take a topia with inferno with minor losses.

all u need is a good might hero with good defense and attack . usually u use ur imps and gogs as fooder but they die faster than u can say "hi". i dun use imps and gog stacks in topias - i just use my demons as fooder before entering topia take a stack of demons with you and don't make this stack any bigger than u can resurrect cause our target will be to let that stack die completely and rise it just before topiafight is over (i think 1 pitfiend can rise 1,2 - maybe a bit more -demons) so for example if u have 20 pitfiends take 32 demons with u into the utopia. the other 6 stacks are Archdevils, sultans, pitlords and 3 single imps . on 100% difficulty the dragosn will first go for the single imps and then after ur demons and attack em over and over again - but compared to the imps and gogs (which surely most of u take as fooder into a topia) they wont die in a second . while the dragons concentrate on the demons and slaughter em the archdevils and sultans kick their butts. the good thing about a big stack of demons is that u can even use them to take the dragons retalation - specially if u got spells on em like shield. try taking drags retalation with a stack of 60 imps for example that wont do you any good - u run out of fooder and lose a lot .

not that ur devils and sltans have minimized the number of drags keep an eye on the number of ur demons and let 1 maybe 2 drags surive (best red or greens) then hit wait with all ur units till the demon stack is totally whiped out and then rise em with the pitlords. in the next turn ur archdevils and sultans should go first and whipe out the last standing drags so they cant hurt ur loyal demons anymore

after a bit of practice ull c taking topias with inferno is a piece of cake. even without high lvl spells

Demonschaaf

the kind o tactics i wanna describe now are different. they are not battlefield ,chaing tactics or similar. its more about how to use little psychology tricks to get an advantage or turn a game around.

i know a lot players might disagree with me but i have made good experience with this strange tactics.

- show what u got.
i know alot players who try to hide their stats by taking off arts before the end of every turn. i think this is an huge mistake. not only that it costs time (and we all know that sometims every second counts ). no ! also there is the chance that u will be caught with all ur arts in backpack and they dun help any further in there. but the main thing is - seem to react more nervous and play much more unconcentrated if u show them an relic for example u found. i noticed that by myself when i saw an opponnt for example on day 9 with power 16 on hack that i tended to risk too much and then made some game deciding mistakes i wouldnt have done without having seen that cuirass on hack.
i think u automatically think that u are way behind - i also mean this is a reason for a lot suicides. even if u badly suck that game. by making ur opponent think u are ahead of him u can often turn the game around and force him to make mistakes.
same goes for scholars in my opinion. when i got a guy like alamar i usually never hide him. why u ask ? very simple - to scare the snow out of my opponnet. opponents often automatcally thinks ull have a great game without any trouble and that causes this unfoced errors like i said bfore- i bet everybody noticed that by himself when he saw day 1 his opponnet got alamar and with this a free resurect.
to be true - i often give alamar all troops by end of day 1 to inetentinally make him shown in tavern.
but this i only recommend on closed maps cause this res spell helps a lot with breaking garrisons and so. on open maps its more important to show ur opponents guys like deemer and solymr - the threat of getting rushed if often more effective than the rush itself

- tossing about ur game.
never ever whine in a game and tell how much u suck and what a bad game you have to expect the opponnet underestimates you. that usually has the opposite effect as u want it to have.

alamarschaaf

P.S: one tip i wanna ad as a tactic which alot playes seem to forget before entering a battle. allways keep an eye on which ground a battle takes place. that speed+1 for native ground can be a matchwinner !!

The best tactic: avoid the fight ! If you dont have any options. You have some ways of lowering the cost of such a fight.

I suggest you use either a hero with leadership or a high sp hero with magic arrow.

Have as many single high speed unit that can reach archers with 1 morale. Advance all of them right away. Wait with your main fast walking group and advance on the return of round 1. There is a chance that opposing achers shoot all the single groups in front of them round 1.

Use haste on something you can afford to sacrifice like pikes, goblins, trogs.

Bring 2 different archer group. Most likely the archer group not of your starting race will sustain at least for the 1st combat round.

In any case, never fight such a group if you dont have anything that can reach the archers in 2 turns. If the archers are faster than every units you have and you cant count on haste find something else to do.

Erläuterung von Moriarty

Frank

This is usefull to know as you sometimes have to fight them archers week 1/2 with no ways of preventing loses.

As I previously mentionned, 2 skills helps more than anything preventing loses on a might hero. Tactic and Leadership. But you have to know how to place your troops, how to slip them and which to bring to the fight.

In a fight vs 94 master gremlins I had basic tactic and advanced leadership on tyris. This is day 8 en route towards a dwarven treasury. That brings me to tactic #25 following this one.

I managed to bring to the fight 8 swordsman - 6 monks - 15 archers and some pikes. I split to 2-4 swordsman. You can move both these groups right off. Archers will shoot at either your weekest archer group or at your walking lvl 1 unit. What you have to achieve is either block them grems or at least do some damage on them before they get their turns. That way you get them to either shoot at different targets and most likely not at your achers.

If you get into a fight in which your marksman/grandelves shoots first. Remember this is with morale potential only. Then I split my achers in as many groups I can with maybe 1 spot left for my strongest or fastest walking/flying group. You get one chance of morale after both shot being fired. So that way you improve greatly the odds of getting a morale rather than if you had left all your archers in 1 single group. Its basic maths and it works.

Strong level 4, 5 and 6 groups should always move toward the opposing archers if you have archers in your army and/or unit of lesser levels. If you dont have archers then you have to wait on your first turn if you dont reach the other side in 1 move.

- I often do money buildings the first day of a any given week because it allows me to buy all I can before going in and still manage to build something in my town with the money I get from the dwarven/crypt/bank/cache/stores.

- Sit on a stable day 7,14,21, etc...

- Get your link ready for replenishing troops to your main hero.

You have to keep in mind that each new week you get many times stronger and so you have to forsee what will grant you with the greatest advantages the upcomming week. It helps to scout the money buildings that way you can progress starting from the easiest/closest to the toughest/most distant. You may get nice skills doing so and more gold for more troops thus making the last buildings to visit that much easier.

Jebus is played as a castle war. Whichever the starting difficulty the strategy is the same. Get angels first week. At 200% its doable but you may have to not build citadel and castle.

The way to manage buying heroes:

If starting heroes were picked you already have one problem solved... you have a main hero. If not then you keep the best possible main hero garrisonned until a better one shows off. The first hero to be bought should always be the none native. Chances are you will get one of the following: gargoyles, harpies, wolves, cerberi/imps, centaurs, pixies, serpent flies. Thats what you want to give as a single unit to every scouts you buy. If your scouts can move freely, ie no blocks in all directions, move your main hero last or not until you clearly see the best path to follow. Slow scouts should move first picking free gold mostly but also piles or scrolls on the road. Once the path is cleared, move your fastest scout (ex: log heroes, tyraxor, piquedram...) along the paths your cleared. That can translate to buying one or two extra heroes. When do you stop buying heroes? As long as you have 2500, keep doing it! Jebus is very rich and 8 heroes day 1 will ensure you will get if you span in every directions the most it offers as soon as possible.
Usually you will have 2 directions to follow via the road. I'd send a magic arrow hero (if I can) one way and my army the other way. The leading heroes towards the end of both paths should move every turns as strait foward down the paths as possible to get your 2nd and 3rd castle. Main hero should always move after all your scouts have moved.

What to do first week with your main hero:

You dont have to do all the fights rather than the important ones. Visit the things that will improve your stats: Marletto, Arenas, pandora boxes, visit a stable and fight hordes of zombies As you uncover your territory focuss on discovering a cavalier dwelling or a portal of glory dwelling. You can open them day 6 or 7 when your main hero and army are ready. Day 7 should end with your main hero either in your main castle (buy stable day 1) or on an outside stable with a link from your main castle and towards all the money building you couldnt do first week. Your goal is to acquire earth magics and logistics. If those arent offered keep picking your starting secondary skills. As soon as you get earth magic you don't take anything else until you reach expert earth with only exception being logistics. Expert earth (slow) will allow you do to full banks and conservatories early week 2. Your 2nd week army will likely be strong enough to allow taking Stores and Treasuries even horde griffins consevatories with scouts. If you see horde medusas or throng dwarves + lots battle dwarfs you may need/want to use your main hero for xps purposes.

How to build your extra towns:

Tavern, town hall, market... Then it depends on how wealthy you are. If you are about done exploring and you dont see many ressources left its best stop building for the first week. Ultimate goal is Angels with Castle. If you dont have archers dwelling prebuilt then so be it, no archers week 1. Best is to buy your magic guild day 1. Try not to depend on trading too much at least not until you have 3 markets and an outside post. Sometimes you dont have the choice though and trading all to get angels is ok. You will get plenty ressources from stockpile week 2 to get your Archangels and possible high level magic tower.

With any luck with earth and logistics & if you plan well enough your main hero route you may be attacking your opponent in his castle day 13-14 with several AAs !

This works great if you are positioning your units like I do. That is your best archer group in first. Your best/strongest walking unit in 2nd. 2nd best walking unit in 3rd. 4th 5th and 6th prolly a single unit and 7th your flying units.

If you fight things that have the same speed has your walking units you will want to NOT kill completely the opposing 1st and 2nd group. Why ?

If you bring down the 1st group and then the 2nd group to 1 or 2 units, those groups will probably attack your single units or your archers not killing any... Meanwhile it allows you to use your walking groups before the left out unnarmed opposing groups can move. It makes a huge difference.

Lets say in the first couple of turns in your game you can fight a crypt and lots zombies. Fight the zombies first if you know a full crypt will be hard. Against lots zombies you are not going to lose much leaving you plenty to do the crypt but a full crypt can whipe half your army this early in the game and that would make the lots zombies a risk if your archers are gone...

Doing the fights in the proper order will ensure you to gather the most you can with the army you have.

This is the hardest for me to explain in details but since it may be the most precious tool I may provide you to improve your game I will try my best to be clear on what you need to achieve in any fights with map monsters.

First you have to define your needs. If the group you want to attack contains walking units that can reach your troops in 2 turns, you may want to wait until you have either tactic or mass slow. Its easy to mess up starting a game attacking lets say horde centaurs captains, they morale of first turn and if not destroys your archers, they keep you from using them. If your archers were what you needed to kill the centaurs then you are doomed. Starting a game you have to plan your fights accordingly to your hero's skills.
Zombies and Golems are perfect for they have high Hit points which translates in a lot of experience points for your main hero and they cant get morale.

a) Against walking/flying units.

This is basic layout for a typical main hero army against walking troops of speed 6 or less starting day 1. Lets say you dont have tactic. Try placing your troops in that order: Your best archer group - your best walking group - your 2nd best walking group or an expandable single unit - ex single unit - ex single unit - ex single unit - 1 unit of your fastest flying unit.

For fortess that would be 20 or so lizards - 40 gnolls - 30 gremlins/goblins/trogs/etc... - 1 of the 2nd best group - 1 of the 2nd best group - 1 of the 2nd best group - 1 serpent fly. Depending on what you fight, morale can be of a more important factor than bringing that 2nd best walking group of a different town type. Try both ways and see for yourself. Ok so now we are in place. Typically the walking units you are attacking will be divided in a number of groups so that your best walking unit can't kill all of them. I'm sure there is a rule defining how thats done but its a little ahead of what is really the point I want to makeout here. So lets say you have 5 groups of 9 dwarfs to fight:

Your achers wait on their turn so that a group of dwarf can travel close enough of them to deal full damage. What your archers have to accomplish is to reduce the groups of dwarfs from 9 to about 4 starting from the first group of dwarfs to move, ie the upper group on your screen. Your 40 gnolls will finish off the groups of 4 dwarfs. All the single units move toward creating a ''shield'' in front of your archers so that the dwarfs can't reach them directly. The job of your flying unit will be to attract as many group of dwarfs to the bottom part of your screen hence bying some time for your achers to get more shots in on the dwarfs before they ever reach the ''shield''. The reason why you have to start shooting the dwarfs in order of their turn to move is simple. If fought on grass the dwarfs have the same speed as your lizards and gnolls. So if you ever get in a position in which all groups are close to your shield you can expect the first group of dwarfs to be down to 1-2 units. So they cant do much damage. Then lizards shoot the following huge group of dwarfs. Then a 2nd group of 1-2 dwarfs move. Still no harms done. Then your gnolls can move... So if you follow the reasoning, shooting at which groups move first avoids you to endure the attacks of full groups before ever getting a chance to move your important units. Thats reasoning also help you understand why archers are to be placed in first slot rather than in the 7th even if you have tactic skill.

Thats a lot of information to diggest and I which I could bring the whole example to be more visual... Pratice it is much better than reading about it.

A little toh culture: if your opponent tells you that he had to make some zombie dance, it means that he had to attract zombies off his archer group. Sometime that can even mean that his archers had to move around hoping for some morale to get as many shot off before going hand to hand attack.

On a final note, skills like archery, slow, offence, bless can greatly improve your potential for such fights.

b) Against archers.

You have to know what you are fighting against. Don't make mistakes about the speed of the units you are attacking. Whereas against walking unit such a mistake can be overcomed, against archers it can mean having to retreat.
In any case, fight against archers should be avoided as much as possible first week. But if you have to fight them, heres how you can minimise your loses:

You have to have either haste or units that can reach in no more than 2 turns. What is very helpfull is being able to count on a 2nd group of expandable archers. Like if you have grand elves and your 2nd tavern hero provided you with gnolls the opposing archers will 90% of the time aim at your weakest archer group. You have to place your groups slightly differently than for a fight against walking units. I would place my army like such: 1 centaur - grand elves - 1 centaur - main centaur group - expandable walking units - expandable archer units - 1 centaur. In such fights the morale you might be getting is much more important and I would recommand only bringing troops of the same town type unless you can count on some leadership/2nd archer group.

Skills like tactic, haste, magic arrow can help you a great deal in such fights.

Archers becomes very easy to fight when you can count on lvl 6 units as I explained in a previous tactic post. Also as soon as you can block all archer groups via either expert tactic or mass haste than you are in buisness.

You can never be too cautious attacking archers especially if you see lots week 1. Whereas 25 might be doable with minor loses, 40+ would mean sure death. You have to know your maps/templates and only practice will tell you what to expect. If you see an archer group guarding 2 different things like learning stone and artefact or obelisk and ressources or any combination of assets, you can bet the group will be closer to 40 than to 20...

Whichever the starting difficulty of the game from 100% to 160% the challenge is the same. At 200% you may want to build towards economy and try getting giants + castleweek 2. Master gremlins can sustain 2 weeks of fights.

How to build a tower main hero. Many skills are interesting for tower heroes but you need to stay focussed. You need to get logistic and air magic first. Armorer, Offense and archery then. Wisdom can wait.

1) Get a might hero working with master gremlins. What you need to do though is select your fights carefully. You need to avoid fighting archers as much as you can. KEEP YOUR MGs ALIVE !

2) Try getting as many nagas you can for the first week.
HINT : 5 buyable nagas week 2 are better than 6 nagas from which you can only buy 1 starting week 2... Your main hero should then only carry nagas. With 4-5 of them you can kill anything almost. Lots archers of level 1-3 close to hordes can be killed easily if you have expert armorer. A 2nd hero has to be active with the remaining of your troops.

3) Get castle and giants week 2. This is essential.

4) Starting week 3 if you still have at least one week ahead of you before a main fight can happen you can easily use 3 fighting heroes. Giants are formidable.

Topias are hard to do with tower. But if you can get angels out of conservatories and/or mass haste with a good might hero (ie expert armorer/offense)... You can do all topias but maybe one maxed out with 3 giants 10 naga queens all your golems and gargs and 3 groups of master genies. This will have you sacrifice your gargs and some genies. Never bring master gremlins and magi in a topia unless you have ressurect.

5) If you were patient enough to get at least 3-4 markets before trading your ressources you can upgrade those giants late week 3 or starting week 4.

Tower with all troops bought can match any army. Then its only a question of how well you know how to fight.

For the games that last less than 3 weeks tower is still very good. Spells, sp and mana would play a bigger role then.

Tower is maybe the most underrated castle type of all. On balanced template I had no trouble getting rid of the rampart/castle power users...

Last thing about tower, neela is a great hero. Some of you dont like scholar but remember it can provide you with chain, meteor or ressurect very easily.

a) Only castle with which you can easily kill a legion of golems day 1.

b) Only castle with which you can kill a legion of golems week 1 with 2 different unit.

This list could go up to z) with even more crazy advantages conflux has over all other castle type.

to be continued...

An army consisting of one large group of anything + single lvl 1 unit will perform better than an army consisting of an average number of several levels of units.

As soon as you have a clear you of your land, figure out which unit will give you the greatest advantage. If you have an outside dwelling like pit fiend for inferno it will be a better strategy to build castle and pit fiends dwelling in your castle even if you have to neglect building efreets dwelling doing so. With all your pit fiends week 2 you can accomplish greater task like huge blocks, conservatories, full dwarven treasuries, naga banks, etc...

Frank

Antwort von LordRiton

Antwort von bjorn190

HOMM3 without conflux is one of the best game (real time or turn based games) I know as far as balanced between army type. What is even more interesting is that each castles offers more than just 1 way to build a successfull army.

Each castle type plays differently depending on starting difficulty and the richness (ressources) of the map behing played.

a) Playing Castle.

- Rich map/easy settings: Your best move is to try getting portal of glory with castle before week 2 begins. 3 angels will vanquish just about any AI controlled groups. It`s always better to build portal of glory even without citadel and castle.

- Poor map/hard settings: If you start with the archer dwelling already built, upgrading your archers to marksmen day 1 may be your best option. Another option, risky but proven successfull on larger maps in which main fights can happen no sooner than week 3+, you can build strait to capitol starting from day 1 keeping in mind that before week 3 begins you absolutely need your portal of glory and your castle.

Tante Edit sagt: Kapitol ist (fast) immer quatsch!

b) other castles comming soon, my turn...

With your first hero: You should remove all troops but 1, the fastest one you can keep of course.

Then you move from visible gold to visible gold. There is some planning here. The goal is to get 2500.

1st situation: If you are at 2100 and you can only pick either a campfire or a chest at the end of your movement... pick the campfire !

2nd situation: If you are at 2000 and you can either pick a campfire or a mystical garden. You have to go for the campfire !

3rd situation: If you need 700 gold a pile of gold provides better odds than a chest of gold !
Chest = 59%,
Pile of gold = 60%.

With your first hero you will uncover sufficient ground to have a good idea of the richness of the map. The only reason why you should buy a town hall before a 2nd hero is if your land looks poor as hell or if you are playing on a template known to be either poor or extremely strong.

Campfire: 400-600 gold.
Chest: 1000-2000 gold, 5% of getting nothing.
Pile of gold: 500-1000 gold.
Water Wheel: 500 gold 1st week.
Mystical Garden: 50% of getting 500 gold.

Ergänzung von Lancelot

In a multiplayer game, given a fair map, you can count on one thing: both players will have access to roughly the same quantity of gold. If you take some of your gold as xps (experience points) for your main hero it shouldn`t jeopardize the best line of buildings for your main castle at least for the first week.

The ratio by which you get xps is different for all possible chests. 2000 gold chest gives 1500 xps or 75% of it`s value. 1500 gold chest gives 1000 xps or 67% of it`s value and 1000 gold chest gives 500 xps or 50% of it`s value. Personnaly I take almost only 2000 chests for xps and rarely 1500 in some key situations.

Why would you need xps from a chest? There are some situations in which taking xps from a chest can help you gather even more gold for the given week than you would have if you took gold instead of xps. If you recognize those situations than you are clearly managaging gold vs main hero build vs caslte build in a great way.

Examples of those situations:
- 2 chests are behind lots marksmen. Your hero has expert offence, advanced tactic and needs only 1000 xps for the next level. If expert tactic means that your unit can reach the marksmen in the first combat turn thus avoiding massive losses than you really should take a chest for xps instead of gold.
- For any logistic heroes like Pyre, Gunnar, Dessa and Kyrre. Getting expert logistic sooner means more distance covered the next turn and so in the end, your main hero will open access to more gold than he would have if you didn`t take xps from earlier chests.
- If a fight between main heroes with full army is about to happen, you have an advanced secondary skill such as air or earth magic with the related good spells, than you have to take xps from chests to get expert level. 2000 gold worth of gnolls isn`t nearly as beneficial for you than gaining the ability to cast mass haste, mass slow, mass shield, etc...

In any case, chests taken as experience points make a greater difference early in the game. In the later stages, when your main hero requires 5000 xps to get a new level, gold should solely be used to buy all the troops you can.

On most maps you will find that it`s possible to build the dragon dwelling on day 7. But instead of getting that dwelling level 7 wouldn`t it be better to build up to level 6 dwelling with citadel and castle but without 2 levels of magic guild? Compare the following troop quantities stats on day 8 for the 2nd option over building dwelling 7:

Bonus troops on day 8:
Rampart
+14 centaurs/+16 dwarfs/+7 elves/+5 pegasis/+5 dendroids/ +2 unicorns *
That`s 872 hit points worth of troops that you gain. Is one green dragon worth it?
Dungeon
+14 trogs/+8 harpies/+7 beholders/+4 medusas/+3 minotaurs/ +2 manticores *
That`s 746 hit points worth of troops that you gain. Is one red dragon worth it?

* no legion parts nor special buildings involved.

Of course fighting with 2 dragons on day 8 with your main hero is very effective. Your main hero is fast having speed 10 for green dragon and speed 11 for red dragon, he can do just about any fights rather effortless. But simplistic fights come at a high price. Too high if you ask me. 6 war unicorns can be just has effective as 2 greens. As for serpicores it involves 5 extra sulfurs which you may not have in abundance considering you still need 24 sulfurs to build your dragon dwelling in week 2... Try fighting with manticores and minotaurs instead.

Dragons are amongst the mightiest creatures in HOMM. They have great spead, nice def and att stats, they are immune to the first 2 levels of magics and most of all, they attack on 2 hexes distance...

Here are some tips on using dragons to the best of their abilities.
- Against AI (Arteficial Intelligence) controlled creatures.
The computer controlled troops will always use your own dragons retaliation against you if you let them have a proper hex and orientation from which to attack your dragons. Usually you don`t need a lot of planning to avoid that. However in fly hives and topias, if you are using green or red dragons, chances are you will get hit by your own dragons if you are careless placing your army before entering those areas.

- Against lower level monster groups you can take advantage of the 2 hexes attack by being patient. Wait until 2 groups are lined up and then attact both groups via the smallest one to avoid any undue retaliation damage. Avoid getting hit by all groups in the same combat turn. Just one dragon can be amazing against slow groups. Against faster and tougher groups like pack efreet you may want to use more than just one gold dragon because the outcome will be desastrous. In single playing mode you`d just look silly. In multiplaying mode, you may lose the game because of it. But don`t despair, if you do such a stupid move, you can always pretend you didn`t do it by forcing a reload (!).

- Against your opponent
In main fights if you know that you don`t have the initiative (first move in the fight) you should place your dragons accordingly. There are several ways to place your dragons so that your opponent can`t use them on your own troops. Practice makes perfect.

You`d be suprise how often in a game my opponent sends me a message like this: why are you playing first!???

The fighting order is relatively simple... if no spells and no morale are invovled ! If you aren`t using versions 1.4 - 2.2 - 3.2 - 4.0, this topic isn`t for you. Tactic was working right in the previous versions and so upgrade your versions or read another topic.

a) There is 2 part in any combat turns. The downward part and the wait part. In the downward part units play accordingly to their own speed.

b) Units that gets morale in the downward part and wait instead of moving will all play firts beginning the wait part starting from the first unit that got moral and not on a speed basis. This is important. If slow, haste or prayer is cast on a unit that wait on the downward part it`ll change the order in which they will play in the wait part but not on units that wait after having morale in the donward part ! I hope you are still with me.

c) Most suprises comes when the 2nd turn begins especially when one player casted either blind or slow with 1 sp. If your attacking opponent started the first turn with a unit of equal speed of your fastest unit, casting slow or blind having 1 sp on the opponent`s fastest unit will make your opponent play first again in the 2nd combat round ! That is unless your opponent had 2 units moving at that same fastest speed and both opponents had 7 different groups starting the combat and that none of the groups that waited on the downward part died before the wait part begun !

d) In a none castle fight, siege engines will ALWAYS have their turn to play at the end of the downward part and before troops with morale that waited get their turn. That is important if you fight against an opponent equipped with a first aid tent. If you can`t kill a unit completely, wait on the wait part in order to avoid the tent`s healing power.

{I know tossers will rejoice at seing that last commment, lot of tossing material in there for you... Know that in games in which 1st week fights happens, the first aid tent can be decisive in a fight. So there. }

e) The above is true for a fight against a castle with a few exceptions. The first one to play in such a fight are the turrets if the defending hero as artillery as a secondary skill. The skill is important here, not the ballista. Don`t buy a ballista on a none artillery hero thinking that will grant you first move ! If no such hero is defending then it`s the attacker's catapult. There is something interesting here. If the attacking hero has ballistics and the defending hero doesn`t have artillery it will grant you the right of casting first even if your opponent has the fastest unit in the combat. If solmyr is defending, deemer will be very pleased to cast first in each combat rounds hey Troelen ?

Knowing when each units will have their turn in a combat is essential if you want to have any success in a multiplayer game. When you know all that you think about such technic as casting slow on a blinded unit so that all your units can hit and hopefully kill the last standing unit to keep your opponent from having a say in the fight. You can also be more effective attacking wraiths and wights inflicting all damage after those units used the regenerating abilities on the downward part in vain. Same thing goes for trolls in SOD or complete...

I just got complete and I didn`t play AB much before that so if there are some of you experts out there I would like to see more tactics posted here about the creatures we don`t see in 1.4 like rust dragons, enchanters and such...

- When you have a ballista but you don't have the skill, if blind plays any part in your fight... remove that ballista ! Give it to another hero. I used 4 war unicorns and 16 grand elves to kill 45 archmagi. I wasn't expecting that many but I would have still made it without losses if only that ballista didn't unblind that last group of archmagi ! The archmagi killed my unicorn, of course got high morale and then killed 4 of my grandelves... Ballista can win you fights against horde goblins when you have only 1 harpy but it can also be desastrous in a fight. Know when to use it and when to remove it.

- Visting a castle with your main hero and depart from it without having bought a magic book. Cost: at least 2 turns !

- Entering a combat in which you will have to cast ressurect but you forget to unequip the recanter. Cost: from some of your troops to your whole army + 2500 gold to rehire !

- Entering a combat with your main hero only for being able to rebuy it in another castle but you have the shackles equipped. Cost: all your artefacts + your main hero or (n) times 2500 gold if you are lucky to get it back in your tavern

- For any chain of heroes that has to pass through a town: Switching your troops IN the town to the next hero and depart from it without having transferred the needed artefacts. Cost: you get your troops implosionned whereas with the recanter...

- While moving towards opponent`s castle day 7 a Marletto attracts you just by the road and you end up short 1 tile from your target. Cost: instead of getting a free castle you end up fighting the opponent`s main hero with + 1 week worth of troops.

- You see your opponent`s main hero with few thunderbirds and you are in reach with dragon flies. What are the only 2 factors that can prevent you from ending the game right there given the fact that you have enough dragon flies to kill 4 t-birds at once? answer: more advanced tactic skill and speed artefacts !!! You think that 13 speed would be enough to kill 11 speed when the opponent hero isn`t Shiva and not standing on rough (barbarian`s terrain). Well cape of velocity +2 and Wayfaerer ring +1 is all it takes ! I had the swiftness necklace and being careless I didn`t equip it before the fight. To my big surprise I wasn`t playing first with same tactic level. What a great opportunity missed to end the game.

Archery is a great skill. For it to give you the edge in a game you must know how to use it properly. Let`s say for this example that your army is composed of 7 grand elves and 54 centaurs in the hands of Jenova lvl 2 with expert archery skill and 1-4-1-1 stats. This is typical day 3 situation for rampart. Just how many zombies can you kill do you think? Hint: personnaly I know horde zombies can go down even if 99... Place your troops this way: 7 GE - dwarfs - 50 centaurs - 1 centaur - 1 centaur - 1 centaur - 1 centaur. What is the key in this particular fight is first - making sure the zombies won`t advanced strait to your grand elves and second - knowing how many zombies you can kill +/- 1 with your 50 centaurs. Try using your arrows only when you deal full damage on a target. In the case of bigger hordes you`d even be better off not firing at all on a turn if you don`t have such a target (dealing full damage). With your individual centaurs you can attract the zombies back and forth in the battle screen almost forever if you forsee where to go well enough. Remember that you don`t have to kill each stacks of zombies solely with your grand elves ! Just reduce the stack enough so that the 50 centaurs can kill the remaining zombies at once.

With such a technic you can amass enormous quantities of experience points against golems/dwarfs/zombies/ rather easily. If you can count on a serpent flie you can even make some ogres dance long enough, even in great numbers, for your grand elves and centaurs to do the job.

I`m often using rampart for my examples. Maybe it`s because rampart is good? You have to know that every archery heroes can do just about the same with almost all castle type. If you don`t get a logistic specialist, a ballista specialist, a off/armorer specialist or level 3-4 heroes but you see Jarbakas with stronghold, Wystan with fortress, Valeska with castle, Calh with inferno, Jenova/Kyrre/Orrin with any, Go for them heroes, you`d be surprised at how great they can be on a battlefield. Heck personnally I chose archery heroes on random maps only after logistic specialist... Your goal is to get expert slow. If you can get it in week 1 or 2 you will amass xps twice as fast as your opponent, just about any opponents, it is just that good.

Ergänzende Antwort von notmythohandle:

On open maps the scouting war is very important. You have to find a way to see your opponent`s land and prevent your opponent from scouting your land. If you can achieve that early in the game it`ll be much easier for you in the later stages of the game.

First thing first. Knowing the scouting tactics will benefit you the most if you know the map perfectly. Focuss on knowing which path is the shortest to get to a specific area. Know approximately where the red zone is. By red zone I mean the area of the open map in which fights can occur if both players starting on day 1 send a scout strait towards the enemy. You have to know the basics about HOMM troops such has unit`s speed on all type of lands, dwarfs' potential to resist magics, fire elementals` immunity against magic arrows, etc...

How to create a good scout. There are 3 ways to setup a good scout.
1) a very fast scout with either pathfinding /logistic / 1-4 native land troop. Examples: piquedram with gargoyles on the map battle for honor. Knowing which area of the map you can reach with no chance of getting attacked by your opponent is the key.

2) A loaded in hit points hero. Use all your dwarfs or zombies. This type of scout will be slow getting to the red zone (zone in which fights can occur) but once there chances are you will have the edge against your opponent`s scouts.

3) A strong magic user. 7 fast troops on an hero with at least 2 knowledge and 2 spell power can also be good. If you take into account your type of castle vs the castle your opponent, you can improve the potential of such a scout. Example: you are rampart and your opponent is tower on grass terrain map. Your centaur will have 7 speed whereas your opponent`s gargoyles will have 6. So such a scout will work even better having the first and last decision in any fights with your opponent`s scouts.

Combination of the 2nd and 3rd type of scout is the best to kill your opponent`s scouts.

Whichever type of scouts you use you must use a global scouting strategy. Remember that the prime objective isn`t to kill your opponent`s scouts. Your objective is to scout most of your opponent`s land while preventing your opponent to do exactly that. So if you win a fight between scouts, chances are that if you continue deeper into your enemy land, you won`t win the next fight... So I suggest that you withdraw by returning towards your main castle in such a position that you can link more troops to your scout in case your opponent choses to run after you.

This is the hardest part of any games on open maps. You have to develop a main hero but meanwhile each heroes you use must have access to the core of your army in case you need it to stop the progression in your land of enemy scouts. I don`t want to be too specific but try forming a grid of heroes, each of them active (doing stuff), so that if ever your opponent tries something radical, you can counter his every moves.

There is a building I`ve seen few Rampart addict ever build. I do it every games that last 3 weeks+. The Treasury building. 5000 gold 5W 10Ore might seem a lot but if you do all that you should do you will get 5K + gold the very first week change it comes into play. Day 7 you should build a market in every cities you own. Trade every ressources you don`t need. Let`s say you are playing a random XL map and you have 100 gems-sulfur-mercury to trade. Depending on the number of markets you own that`s easily +15k gold before the new week. Also do not upgrade your green dragon dwelling just now, wait until day 1. In fact, all major expenses should wait until the next day with the exception of going to a new month. You can still gamble it but plagues may occur every other new months and so you might consider buying all that you can to save as much as possible. Week 3 should be your goal to build the treasury else I suggest you wait until week 5 unless you want to gamble it.

Having to fight against Harpy Hags early in the game can be desastrous. Here is 2 things you should know about hags. First, your formation should have your best archer group in 1st position, in 2nd position your largest hand to hand combat unit group. 3rd positon should be your 2nd hand to hand combat group or a single unit. I suggest single units for each of the remaining position. Your archer group should always aim for the groups for which they deal full damage (full arrow). Unless, and this is the key,if your best hand to hand combat group can kill one stack of hags outright. Then it becomes more advantageous to aim the the stacks of hags starting from the 3rd group or so. Leave one tile from which your archers can be attacked by the hags. The first group of hags will then come right beside your archers without attacking them. Wait with your archers and when it`s your best hand to hand combat group`s turn kill the stack of hags completely with using magics if you have to. Then on the return your achers will be able to fire at the remaining stacks. This way you kill twice as many stacks of hags in every combat turns. This tactic does wonders. Instead of running towards the hags with your pikemen`s group and see it destroyed completely by 7 stacks of hags the next turn, you keep as much of your pikes and let the hags come to you.

In this example I will demonstrate how to do it with Rampart, the best at it. Note that it can be done with other castle type. Experience it for yourselves. Crypts are great for extra income week 1. Don`t let the big crypts (10 vamps) scare you. Place your troops this way before entering. 1 fodder / all your remaining centaurs / 1 fodder / 1 fodder / all your grand elves / 1 fodder / 1 fodder. For fodders you can use a single centaur, that way you gain +1 morale or you can use goblins, pikemen, imps, trogs, etc... This works best on grass, rampart`s homeland and is dangerous on dirt, necro`s homeland. First turn, (7+)Grand Elves wait. Then your group of centaurs, you should have about 50 of them, kill the whole stack of 20 squeletons by attacking them from directly in front of them. Use your fodder to attract the vampires and the wights the further away from your centaurs. Still on the first combat turn, if you are on grass, you can fire arrows on 20 zombies or move to the tile where the squeletons were. The 2nd combat turn you still have 2 fodders to keep the vamps and wights as far away from your centaurs/grand elves as possible. Then simply kill the foes as they come within reach carefully managing the wait feature to let them come at full damage arrow range. You shouldn`t lose much using this tactic ( a few centaurs ). Note that if you have an archery skilled hero and/or magic arrow you can improve your results. That way you can do all crypts as soon as you have grand elves the very first week of the game. Whichever castle type you are, remember to follow the same principles going in a crypt. It works well with tower and castle too. For other castle type you need more fire power and/or magical assets.

How to developp your main hero is the key to success in any games. You have to know one thing about secondary skills. If your main hero starts with logistic and archery for example, when you reach a new level of expertise, you will be offered 100% of the time either archery or logistic + a new secondary skill. There are a lot of skills at this point that might interest you. Likely: Tactic, offense, armorer, air and earth magic and wisdom. It`s a common mistake for the beginners to jump on them new skills the very first time they show up. Be patient. At first you should try to gain expert logistic as fast as possible unless earth magic is offered. From the moment your hero reaches expert logistic, the more you will gain experience points each upcomming turns. Why should you only focuss on earth magic as for your third secondary skill? A skilled archery hero with mass slow will be able to get rid of huge AI groups such as lots daemons, or do naga banks, conservatories, etc... much faster then any other configuration hero/troops/spells there is in HOMM3. The only moment you should take something else than earth magic on such an hero (Kyrre) is if you have expert log and advanced archery or expert archery and advanced log. Instead of taking archery or log you may want to get air / tactic / offense / armorer / wisdom at that time. The reason is simple. If you have both your starting skills at expert then the next time you get a level, 2 new skills will be offered to you and you may have to chose between 2 unwanted skills such as eagle eye and navigation.

Whichever hero you select as your main, you should foccuss on getting 1st) logistic 2nd)earth/air 3) offense/armorer/tactic/wisdom. If you know you can count on a better moving speed troop than your opponent has, a lethal combination of skills would be tactic and air expert with the spell haste.

Keep in mind that the more secondary skills you have the tougher it gets to aquire new ones. The other thing to consider about managing your secondary skills is the map your are playing on. Is there enough XPs availabe to reach 3 expert secondary levels? 5 secondary expert levels? When would a main fight be likely to happen? 1st week? 3rd week? The time table is important. You should never enter a main fight with your opponent without either mass slow or mass haste.

In week 2 if you can count on level 6 units you can easily send any hero kill the packs and even the lots of ranged units ( lizards, orcs, archers, elves, master gremlins, beholders ). This can work with only 2 level 6 but against the lots I suggest you bring all level 6 units you have. Split your level 6 units in stacks of 1 unit. 1st turn you wait with all units. Most likely the archers will fire at the same unit but not always. On the return you advanced towards the archers with all units but the one who got hit. Then be sure to attack or at least place one unit beside every groups there are. Monitor your Hit Points closely as the fight can last for several turns. Withdraw the units too close from dying.

Fighting with only your level 6 units will allow you to not lose a single of your own archer & level 1 - 2 -3 troops.