Heroes of Might and Magic?

[KittenMagician]

I've been looking for somewhere to discuss HoMM but almost every forum I look at for it specifically has only sporadic or really old posts. Does any one here like this series and want to talk about it?

I'm mainly asking because I'm working on a passion project to make a similar style game that takes all the best aspects from the series and adds a few more thing and I want someone to bounce ideas off of.

Thanks for your time.

[veti]

Well, it's a pretty old franchise. It's not too surprising there's not much current discussion about it.

I liked HoMM 1-3, loved 4 (which most people didn't), then hated 5 so much that I abandoned the franchise and haven't really taken much notice since. I still dust off 3 or 4, very occasionally, for a few sessions, but I don't know if I could be of any help to you.

[factotum]

Pretty much agree with veti there--while HoMM4 is the one that seems to get a lot of hate, I liked that game a lot (apart from the occasional issues whereby an enemy stack with an instant kill chance attacked a hero who was vital to the current mission and thus resulting in an instant game over). HoMM5 just made the fact the AI was totally cheating so blatant (e.g. I have stacks guarding all the enemy's towns and somehow they still find troops from somewhere to attack my unguarded town) that I stopped playing it. Have no experience of the more recent games.

[zlefin]

I haven't played it in years; but it was great fun back in the day. Is there anything specific you'd like to ask about it? I've played 1-5; 2 and 3 were great, 4 and 5 were nice, each in their own way.

6 and on were ruined by the company iirc, so I didn't play them beyond checking a demo.

[Resileaf]

The first HoMM I played was 5 when I found out about it on Steam. Found it quite fun. Recently got into the mood to play the series after watching Spiffing Brit play them, and I played the first game. I found it to be incredibly charming, if a bit overwhelming in difficulty at times, and have since then played a little of 2 before the urge left. They're on my list to play through soon though.

[Iruka]

I've been looking for somewhere to discuss HoMM but almost every forum I look at for it specifically has only sporadic or really old posts. Does any one here like this series and want to talk about it?

I'm mainly asking because I'm working on a passion project to make a similar style game that takes all the best aspects from the series and adds a few more thing and I want someone to bounce ideas off of.

Thanks for your time.

I recently played through the HoMM 3 campaigns and enjoyed them a lot. Haven't tried the others from the series yet, except HoMM 1 I think, but I barely remember that.
Besides that I watch some competetiv games and puzzle maps for HoMM3 on Youtube.

If you haven't already done so, you might want to check out the HoMM3 modding community at http://heroes3wog.net/ and see what they changed and why. They have released several popular expansions so far.

[KittenMagician]

Honestly, I'm one of the people that found 4 to be really bad and am surprised that its the favorite of even a couple people.

For those that have played 1 or more of the games can you tell me what you liked about the ones you played, what you disliked, what made the one that is your favorite your favorite, and what you wish could have been added to the games to make them more fun/interesting?


A quick rundown of my project thus far, its primarily just in the idea stage:
-looking to do 10 factions for the base game, adding more for expansions
-have more layers to the map besides underground and above ground
-each creature from a faction town has 3 different upgrades with 2 of them being exclusive from each other
-7 levels of spells in 8 schools of magic with some spells being in more than 1 school
-2 different hero types per faction (like in 3)
-each hero type has its own mandatory skill (like in 5)
-subskills for skills (like in 5)

if you have questions about what I'm doing just let me know.

[factotum]

Hey, I never said HoMM4 was my *favourite*--3 takes that crown. It's just 4 was nowhere near as terrible as most fans of the series made it out to be, and I liked the way they were trying to fiddle with the formula after three very similar games (2 and 3 were really essentially the same gameplay as 1, but with improved graphics and some extra troops).

Regarding your description--TBH, it just sounds like the same as HoMM3 but with more of everything. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I can see it being an absolute pain to balance all those factions and creatures. Also, one of the issues that already existed in HoMM3 was that picking up troops from huts etc. on the map was often a royal pain because they'd be the non-upgraded version, whereas if you had the upgraded creatures in your army they wouldn't stack together--having 2 levels of upgrades for each critter just makes that problem worse, unless you have a potential solution for that which you haven't mentioned.

[Lord Torath]

I like the idea of multiple map levels. That could be pretty cool!

[KittenMagician]

Hey, I never said HoMM4 was my *favourite*--3 takes that crown.

I 100% agree. and sorry for making an assumption.



Also, one of the issues that already existed in HoMM3 was that picking up troops from huts etc. on the map was often a royal pain because they'd be the non-upgraded version, whereas if you had the upgraded creatures in your army they wouldn't stack together--having 2 levels of upgrades for each critter just makes that problem worse, unless you have a potential solution for that which you haven't mentioned.

HoMM5 added caravans that would transport troops from those dwellings on the map to your city and it allowed the creatures to build up in those dwellings and didn't reset each week. I intend to do this as well.

As for my upgrade system:
Building A can be upgraded to Building A2 or Building A3 (Hovels can be upgraded to either Guardhouse or Thieves' Den)
Creature A can be upgraded to creature A1 with either Building A2 or A3 (Peasants -->Citizens with both Guardhouse or Thieves' Den)
Creature A can be upgraded to creature A2 only with Building A2 (Peasants -->Guardsman only with Guardhouse)
Creature A can be upgraded to creature A3 only with Building A3 (Peasants -->Thug only with Thieves' Den)

each creature will have its own stats and abilities. I was also thinking that there would be skills/subskills or maybe an artifact that expands the number of creature slots available (7 base but expand up to maybe 10). this would allow for more diverse army builds and play styles.

also i want to avoid the major balance issues that HoMM3 and HoMM5 had (these are the ones I've played the most). HoMM3 had some major flaws with dead skills (eagle eye, scholar, etc) and broken as hell skills (diplomacy, necromancy, etc) while HoMM5 had issues more along the lines of subskills with some awful/bad subskills being forced on you (diplomacy being practically useless) and other skills/subskills being severely over powered (luck and soldiers luck)

[Winthur]

also i want to avoid the major balance issues that HoMM3 and HoMM5 had (these are the ones I've played the most). HoMM3 had some major flaws with dead skills (eagle eye, scholar, etc) and broken as hell skills (diplomacy, necromancy, etc)

Scholar, Scouting and a bunch of others are all solid skills specifically for secondary heroes to save time in the early game - sucks to retreat your main to the Mage Guild if you didn't build it Day 1, and it's nice to have a better view of your Day 1 surroundings to save some time. While they are rather dead in the final battle and not as overpoweringly useful as Necromancy or Logistics on the world map, only Learning and Eagle Eye were truly useless.

I like H2 and H3 the most I guess, but don't really dislike any game in the series.

[Sloanzilla]

My problem with 5 at the time was that there were only like 3 map options. So after you finished the campaign- which was OK- there wasn't a whole lot else to do. Maybe that has changed.

I loved the insane ability wheel thing for characters.

[KittenMagician]

My problem with 5 at the time was that there were only like 3 map options. So after you finished the campaign- which was OK- there wasn't a whole lot else to do. Maybe that has changed.

I loved the insane ability wheel thing for characters.

they added more with the expansions and the map generator wasn't too bad

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I liked HoMM 1-3, loved 4 (which most people didn't), then hated 5 so much that I abandoned the franchise and haven't really taken much notice since.

Mostly this; I was ambivalent about the gameplay in 4 but the vanilla campaigns had excellent stories. I think my favorite was 3, I never really got into 2 but the campaign letting you switch sides halfway through was cool and the music was excellent even if I still have a soft spot for the music in 1.

5 drove me away too; they dumped all the old lore, the system requirements were much higher than the previous games, monster design was terrible (for example, the dark elf units wore belts for armor and high heels into battle) and monster selection was repetitive (almost every town had a dragon as the top unit - where previous games got much more interesting things like Hydras, Behemoth, Phoenixes, Titans…). The AI was idiotic and cheated blatantly as factotum noted, and the main character for the vanilla campaign was an idiot. I also personally found the 3D interface of the towns in 5 to be a pain, but that might not have been so bad with a beefier computer.

[veti]

Ten factions sounds like a lot for the base game. I mean, good on you for generosity, but I wonder if coming up with all those critters and development trees is really the most cost effective use of your time.

More layers to the map is easy. Age of Wonders did it, with the Shadow Realm - and in principle I don't see why you shouldn't have as many different levels as you can come up with tilesets for. But I imagine too many would get very frustrating, quite fast.

What I liked about the series - good clean strategy game, gentler than most 4X games, but challenging. There are strengths and weaknesses, but it mostly avoids the overworn scissors-paper-rock type matching you so often find.

What made me like 4 best was the greater emphasis on the heroes, making it almost like a role-playing game at times. 5 was overly scripted - feels like one very long, and frankly very dull, railroad. And, as mentioned, it fails to disguise its cheating, which is fatal to any strategy game.

[Resileaf]

and the main character for the vanilla campaign was an idiot.

GRIFFIN ETERNAL! Casts random spell

[KittenMagician]

Mostly this; I was ambivalent about the gameplay in 4 but the vanilla campaigns had excellent stories. I think my favorite was 3, I never really got into 2 but the campaign letting you switch sides halfway through was cool and the music was excellent even if I still have a soft spot for the music in 1.

5 drove me away too; they dumped all the old lore, the system requirements were much higher than the previous games, monster design was terrible (for example, the dark elf units wore belts for armor and high heels into battle) and monster selection was repetitive (almost every town had a dragon as the top unit - where previous games got much more interesting things like Hydras, Behemoth, Phoenixes, Titans…). The AI was idiotic and cheated blatantly as factotum noted, and the main character for the vanilla campaign was an idiot. I also personally found the 3D interface of the towns in 5 to be a pain, but that might not have been so bad with a beefier computer.

i have decided that none of my factions will have a dragon at tier 7. there will be a dragon that is associated with each faction that will provide benefits that their respective faction might like/want/need but dragons will be powerful, expensive, and hard to get. I'm turning dragon utopias from just fight some dragons for wealth into fight some dragons for minor wealth and capturing the utopia which will be like a mini town that if you build the right buildings you can recruit different dragons from it.



Ten factions sounds like a lot for the base game. I mean, good on you for generosity, but I wonder if coming up with all those critters and development trees is really the most cost effective use of your time.

so far i have put 0 money into this project. i just work on it in my free time, at least until i find some more people who would be interested in collaborating. I already have strong ideas and themes for almost all the factions including expansion factions. for some of the factions i have their creature list fully flushed out already.



More layers to the map is easy. Age of Wonders did it, with the Shadow Realm - and in principle I don't see why you shouldn't have as many different levels as you can come up with tilesets for. But I imagine too many would get very frustrating, quite fast.

i was thinking 4 layers. above ground, underground, the deep (second layer of underground), and a sky layer (floating island/heaven-esque). was also thinking underwater zones that woulld be on hte same layers as underground and the deep.



What I liked about the series - good clean strategy game, gentler than most 4X games, but challenging. There are strengths and weaknesses, but it mostly avoids the overworn scissors-paper-rock type matching you so often find.

What made me like 4 best was the greater emphasis on the heroes, making it almost like a role-playing game at times. 5 was overly scripted - feels like one very long, and frankly very dull, railroad. And, as mentioned, it fails to disguise its cheating, which is fatal to any strategy game.

another guy i have been bouncing ideas off of also liked how heroes worked in HoMM4. There might be a way to implement some of it without it being dumb, ridiculous, or overpowered. i liked the prison you could build in your cities. im also a fan of how the heroes worked in HoMM5, where they got their own turn in initiative order and could attack or cast a spell but couldn't be attacked and didn't have health like a creature. maybe there is a happy medium between 4 and 5

[Kareeah_Indaga]

GRIFFIN ETERNAL! Casts random spell

Oh yes, I forgot about the immersion-shattering spellcasting animations interspersed throughout the dialog. Even if the plot had been good, that probably would have killed it.

[Sermil]

HoMM4 had serious problems with the AI, which was much less competent on the strategic map than HoMM3. The designers tried to work around that by turning it into a RPG-ish, but the mechanics didn't really support it.

HoMM4 also had the problem that Gus Smedstad, the lead designer/balancer, left right after the game was released, which meant there were no real balance patches.

HoMM4 tried some fresh new things, particularly heroes on the battlefield, which was great, but it needed more balance work, and maybe a second game to get all the kinks out. But the approach was abandoned when NWC shut down.




HoMM5 added caravans that would transport troops from those dwellings on the map to your city and it allowed the creatures to build up in those dwellings and didn't reset each week. I intend to do this as well.

HoMM4 had those as well. FYI




A quick rundown of my project thus far, its primarily just in the idea stage:
-looking to do 10 factions for the base game, adding more for expansions
-have more layers to the map besides underground and above ground
-each creature from a faction town has 3 different upgrades with 2 of them being exclusive from each other
-7 levels of spells in 8 schools of magic with some spells being in more than 1 school
-2 different hero types per faction (like in 3)
-each hero type has its own mandatory skill (like in 5)
-subskills for skills (like in 5)

if you have questions about what I'm doing just let me know.


As other people said, you may be biting off a lot more than you realize. Each new creature & each new skill needs its own battlefield AI, for example. Balance issues get worse the more creatures & skills you have -- each one is another chance to have an overpowered skill/creature/faction. You need artwork (portraits, animations, etc) and sounds for every creature as well. Everything needs to be tested.

I'm assuming you are mostly doing this yourself. That sounds like the size of game that a team of 20-40 people could do in 3 years of full-time work (maybe a bit less if they had an existing engine). HoMM4 had over 40 people working on it (https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/heroes-of-might-and-magic-iv/credits), most of them full-time since HoMM3 launched 3 years earlier. And, as many people have noted, it wasn't really in great shape at launch; the AI and balance were not up to snuff. Are you, personally, going to be able to make a game larger than those 40 people in any realistic time frame?

[veti]

Looking again at your plans, I'm wondering - have you played Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic? It's not the same, obviously, but there are a lot of common features.

It has three levels of map, up to 15 factions, and a bunch of domains, spells and hero types. I suggest you spend a few hours with it, see if it gives you more insight into how your ideas might play out in practice.

[zlefin]

Honestly, I'm one of the people that found 4 to be really bad and am surprised that its the favorite of even a couple people.

For those that have played 1 or more of the games can you tell me what you liked about the ones you played, what you disliked, what made the one that is your favorite your favorite, and what you wish could have been added to the games to make them more fun/interesting?


A quick rundown of my project thus far, its primarily just in the idea stage:
-looking to do 10 factions for the base game, adding more for expansions
-have more layers to the map besides underground and above ground
-each creature from a faction town has 3 different upgrades with 2 of them being exclusive from each other
-7 levels of spells in 8 schools of magic with some spells being in more than 1 school
-2 different hero types per faction (like in 3)
-each hero type has its own mandatory skill (like in 5)
-subskills for skills (like in 5)

if you have questions about what I'm doing just let me know.

I think 3 was my favorite; though 2 was quite nice as well, and 4/5 were solid.

The art was nice and interesting to look at. Solid music, and battle music, which I'm fond of listening too. Good strategy with lots of options. Trying to get into more useful specifics: I found 2's art style very charming, and its art is I think my favorite (been a long time since I played it, my tastes may've changed since my memories). 2 also had good music and was very strong on ambience. The effects/feel of the little popups when you visit a location, like the gazebos and such, just worked so well.

3 had great battle music; lots of good combat spells and buffs, as well as neat units to use. It had a lot of variety in playstyles, and quite a few maps which fit my tastes. It was also satisfyingly awesome to get a high level hero and just how crazy good your troops could get compared to neutrals. One of the balance flaws is that they underestimated just how powerful speed was; slow bruiser units were just too weak in play quite often.

4 had some great campaigns. Gauldoth half-dead is one of the best pragmatic villains I've seen.
It was nice to see castles that provided a good benefit for even late game armies, unlike some of the earlier games where castles might mean very little in the late game, depending on which army you were vs. It was also nice to see a solid variety of worthwhile builds that could each succeed in their own way; and that even the stealth hero option was reasonably viable. It did get a little silly when fighting a huge enemy neutral stack often came down to drinking 30 potions of immortality as my hero slowly whittles them down.

5 was nice, though I never played it near as extensively as the others. The hero skill choices at level up were nice, and well balanced, each with merits of its own. It did live up to its goal of being basically a homm3-like with better balance between the choices.


In general, one thing I sometimes wonder about is the effects of balance - while in multiplayer having good balance is important; in single player sometimes one feels better by finding the exploits/strategies to succeed and win more at high difficulties, even if they're not as balanced. Like in homm3 some heroes were much better than others due to having better specials, or better starting skills; like the ones that added a level-scaling bonus to useful skills.

[warty goblin]

I'd caution about too many map layers, as they can tend to make city management, and particularly army movement, kind of a pain in the butt. If you need to get an army stack from one layer to another, it can involve a lot of schlepping around the map between the access points, and every layer you add just magnifies the problem. This goes double for underground maps, since they tend to have very confined paths, so getting from A to B within a layer is slow. The original Age of Wonders remedied this a bit by giving some units the ability to dig new tunnels in dirt/soft rock, so you could in some cases build more efficient routes or bypass a chokepoint, but that too was slow.



In general, one thing I sometimes wonder about is the effects of balance - while in multiplayer having good balance is important; in single player sometimes one feels better by finding the exploits/strategies to succeed and win more at high difficulties, even if they're not as balanced. Like in homm3 some heroes were much better than others due to having better specials, or better starting skills; like the ones that added a level-scaling bonus to useful skills.

I think the orientation towards MP balance in general isn't great for singleplayer games. It just tends to remove the sorts of abilities that cam be used in weird or clever ways because it's impossible to balance. But the only balance a SP game really needs is that most non-insane troll logic strategies should be viable. Not necessarily equally viable, or viable in every scenario, but generally functional.

[Maryring]

I absolutely loved HoMM3. Even to this day I keep playing it from time to time. And like most people here, I hated 5. It had a few interesting ideas, but for me the killing blow was how incredibly slooooow it was.

In a game like HoMM3, you make a lot of actions in every particular combat. Attaching five seconds of animation to every action just makes the game feel cumbersome to play. (This, of course, coming in addition to the many other flaws in the game but I feel people have talked plenty about it already.)

That said. I did play 5, and from what I remember, the split unit trees did not work well. It didn't feel interesting, because very rarely was there a noticeable difference between them. And when there were, it was usually "this thing is better in 99% of use cases". It's your pet project of course, but personally I think your energy is better spent on better AI for fewer units.

Also, the game doesn't need to be perfectly balanced. I enjoy HoMM3 even though Necropolis stomps Inferno hard. Part of that is that if we need things to be perfectly balanced, we can always just play the same faction. And if things are modable, then balance mods show up all the time.

[Resileaf]

You know, I bet HoMM 5's story was the way it was because of Warcraft 3's success. There are clear parallels between both games that I feel HoMM 5 was, if not copying, then inspiring itself heavily on.

[Thomas Cardew]

You may also want to check out Hero's Hour as your competition / alternative take on a sucessor. It's very much inspired by HOMM3 with some big deviations biggest of which is the realtime combat. You can get a free demo at https://thingonitsown.itch.io/heros-hour or it just released on steam, https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/.

[veti]

I absolutely loved HoMM3. Even to this day I keep playing it from time to time. And like most people here, I hated 5. It had a few interesting ideas, but for me the killing blow was how incredibly slooooow it was.

Oh Urgash yes, I'd forgotten about the sheer tedious pace of 5.

With animations, less is more. I definitely want to see the pieces moving, both on the battlefield and the strategic map - it's the only way I have any idea what's going on - so a "no animation" option is not helpful. But if a single piece takes more than about a second to make its move - maybe up to 2s if it has to cross a very large area of map - I am going to get sooooo bored.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I absolutely loved HoMM3. Even to this day I keep playing it from time to time. And like most people here, I hated 5. It had a few interesting ideas, but for me the killing blow was how incredibly slooooow it was.

I think this (in addition to, as noted, having a lousy computer at the time) was a contributing factor to my ambivalence over the 3D town screens. With the 2D towns, it was click the building, click the number of units you wanted, click buy and you’re done. Everything fit into one screen, it was fast and efficient and you could get back to conquering the map in short order. In 5 you had to scroll around and rotate the city just to find the building you wanted. I don’t say it couldn’t be done well in 3D, but HoMM 5 did not do it well.

[factotum]

With the 2D towns, it was click the building, click the number of units you wanted, click buy and you’re done.

Certainly in HoMM3 (can't honestly remember if you could do this in 5 as well) you didn't need to click on the individual creature dwellings to recruit them, you could do it from the town hall/castle (I forget which one). So if you *could* do the same in 5 that would make the 3D town layout less of a problem.

[Grim Portent]

Certainly in HoMM3 (can't honestly remember if you could do this in 5 as well) you didn't need to click on the individual creature dwellings to recruit them, you could do it from the town hall/castle (I forget which one). So if you *could* do the same in 5 that would make the 3D town layout less of a problem.

In 5 there was a unit tab that showed, and let you purchase, every unit the city could produce, with a button to train everything available starting from most to least expensive.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

In 5 there was a unit tab that showed, and let you purchase, every unit the city could produce, with a button to train everything available starting from most to least expensive.

Must have forgotten that. I did not enjoy 5.

[Grim Portent]

The way the city UI worked in 5 basically meant you never had to use the 3d part, everything could be opened by clicking a button on the bottom left or right of the screen. Really the 3d view was just there to look kind of neat rather than to do anything.

[Resileaf]

I didn't even know you could hire units by clicking on the buildings in 5.

[KittenMagician]

Must have forgotten that. I did not enjoy 5.

5 actually had tabs for everything so you never really needed to click on the building itself. they had tabs for marketplace, mages guild, blacksmith, shipyard (if available), creature recruitment, tavern, build, and more depending on faction. i actually appreciated the 3D towns as they made it feel less clutered. HoMM6 reverted back to 2D towns and they feel super crowded when fully built. HoMM7 also has this problem but slightly less so.

[Bavarian itP]

5 actually had tabs for everything so you never really needed to click on the building itself. they had tabs for marketplace, mages guild, blacksmith, shipyard (if available), creature recruitment, tavern, build, and more depending on faction. i actually appreciated the 3D towns as they made it feel less clutered. HoMM6 reverted back to 2D towns and they feel super crowded when fully built. HoMM7 also has this problem but slightly less so.

These games do not exist. You're probably talking about M&M:H6 and M&M:H7 :smalltongue:

[veti]

These games do not exist. You're probably talking about M&M:H6 and M&M:H7 :smalltongue:

Ah, pedantry... how I've missed you.

Which reminds me - my favourite game in all the franchise, based on how often I've replayed it, is probably "Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes". But that's perhaps not very relevant to this discussion. Sorry.

[KittenMagician]

did anyone who played 6 or 7 like their leveling systems or is the older random choice style more preferred?

[Satinavian]

I liked the levelling system of 5 best. But more than lacking randomness, it is the lack of actually interesting options and builds in 6 and 7 that sours them a bit for me.

[zlefin]

While I haven't played 6/7, a fixed leveling system is found in a number of games that I have played. Each has its merits; one basic concern with a fixed leveling system that I encountered in Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes is that it becomes apparent a small number of builds/choices are simply better than the others so you simply end up taking those same choices over and over every game. So if you have a fixed system, it's important to spend a lot of work both balancing it, AND making sure that there's games/situations that will change what is the best choice.

[Resileaf]

Sometimes, the importance might be less on balancing everything to be equally powerful, but balancing for everything to be equally fun. That way, as long as you're not playing competitively, you at least always have fun picking any build you want.

[factotum]

Or else do what Stellaris does and try to make suboptimal options cool from a roleplaying point of view. So, if you *want* to play a particular style of game you can do so, regardless of whether it's the "best" or not.

[warty goblin]

I think that once a game is balanced enough that a normal player can have fun on default difficulty using a vaguely sane strategy, further balancing is at best superfluous - and at worst counterproductive - for a singleplayer game.

Let me unpack that a bit.

A normal player; i.e. somebody who is playing the game for the first time, and isn't going to make a career on YouTube out of it.

Vaguely sane strategy; if you have an archery based faction, using archery and upgrading archery is a sane strategy. If they actually suck at archery for obscure reasons, or they archery upgrades make them worse at it, your game is badly balanced for singleplayer. Rushing your archers into melee because you like their dagger attack animation is not a sane strategy and there's no need to cater to it.

Have fun; the strategy shouldn't either make the game impossible hard, or trivially easy for most of the game. Both are bad outcomes, though ending up really easy for a portion of the late game can be satisfying.

This doesn't mean that your game is unbreakable with a couple hundred hours of theorycrafting, merely that the normal player isn't likely to break it on accident. If the third archery upgrade out of ten completely trivializes the game, it needs more balancing. If you do the Traitorous Redemption side quest to get Arkov the Vile as a party member, then beat three side bosses so you can craft the Bow if the Destroyer, and equipping that on Arkov trivializes a few fights, that's OK.

Arguably its a good thing, since it means there's a lot of depth to explore, and if a player is that engaged they'll not really care that they're breaking the difficulty in half. Or they're replacing the game on a higher difficulty, and the power boost no longer has as huge of an impact. Nobody wants to break the game by accident, doing it on purpose is fun.

[Resileaf]

I like when the game allows itself to be broken with hard work. It feels like a reward for focusing on something your faction/hero is good at.

[Sloanzilla]

Sometimes, the importance might be less on balancing everything to be equally powerful, but balancing for everything to be equally fun. That way, as long as you're not playing competitively, you at least always have fun picking any build you want.

So much this. I actually think an obsession over unit balance hurts the quality of a game more than anything.

[factotum]

I like when the game allows itself to be broken with hard work. It feels like a reward for focusing on something your faction/hero is good at.

Whereas I view things the opposite way--I work to earn money, I don't play games to have more work during my downtime! Now, I *do* like systems where I have to figure out what to do when levelling up, but I sure as heck don't put huge amounts of thought into optimising my builds because to me that's not fun. If there's an obvious synergy between different skills then I'll probably take it, but won't really go beyond that.

[Resileaf]

Whereas I view things the opposite way--I work to earn money, I don't play games to have more work during my downtime! Now, I *do* like systems where I have to figure out what to do when levelling up, but I sure as heck don't put huge amounts of thought into optimising my builds because to me that's not fun. If there's an obvious synergy between different skills then I'll probably take it, but won't really go beyond that.

I don't mean hard work as in doing something repetitive and boring to get a reward, I mean hard work as in play the game to achieve a goal that makes you increasingly powerful.
So, like, doing the restoration/alchemy/enchanting loop in Skyrim is the bad kind of hard work where it just turns playing the game into an obnoxious chore to achieve breaking it. But in Total War Three Kingdoms, capturing all the stables on the game map as Ma Teng (a cavalry expert) makes all of the best cavalry units completely free of upkeep, and that's the fun kind of hard work, because you achieved it playing the game normally.

[Ignimortis]

Honestly, I'm one of the people that found 4 to be really bad and am surprised that its the favorite of even a couple people.

For those that have played 1 or more of the games can you tell me what you liked about the ones you played, what you disliked, what made the one that is your favorite your favorite, and what you wish could have been added to the games to make them more fun/interesting?


A quick rundown of my project thus far, its primarily just in the idea stage:
-looking to do 10 factions for the base game, adding more for expansions
-have more layers to the map besides underground and above ground
-each creature from a faction town has 3 different upgrades with 2 of them being exclusive from each other
-7 levels of spells in 8 schools of magic with some spells being in more than 1 school
-2 different hero types per faction (like in 3)
-each hero type has its own mandatory skill (like in 5)
-subskills for skills (like in 5)

if you have questions about what I'm doing just let me know.

4 is great because it feels like a lightweight tactical RPG with an overworld. You can get 2-3 heroes to become a force equal to most non-endgame armies, like a small TTRPG party. Four heroes is doable, but only if the map has a lot of non-EXP based powerups like Libraries and Guilds, otherwise you'll be way behind from splitting EXP four ways.

I also liked the idea of buildpath exclusivity, so that each town has two sides for different tactics, and the way levelling in general worked. Artifacts influencing hero stats and abilities instead of being army-focused was also interesting.

Basically, 4 didn't play like 3, and that was fine with me, because I had 3 anyway.

I also have played 2 and 5. I don't like 5 all that much, but 2 had a very charming art style and was less homogenized than 3. Factions felt really different - a single black dragon deletes like 8 paladins from play, which is balanced mostly by costs and ease of procurement — you can have paladins by week 3, while a black dragon is gonna take you a month if you're lucky with resources.

However, I am not a competitive Heroes player and mostly enjoy single-player maps with a story or at least a semblance of one. So I don't look for precise balance and such.

[veti]

4 is great because it feels like a lightweight tactical RPG with an overworld. You can get 2-3 heroes to become a force equal to most non-endgame armies, like a small TTRPG party.

In the barbarian campaign, by mid-way through the second map, your leader could solo even strong armies without any help at all. The trick was to build up complete magic immunity, then the lucky-shot-one-hit-kills couldn't touch him.

I loved it. Just forgetting about armies, strategy etc. felt enormously liberating at that point. And very Barbarian.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

In the barbarian campaign, by mid-way through the second map, your leader could solo even strong armies without any help at all. The trick was to build up complete magic immunity, then the lucky-shot-one-hit-kills couldn't touch him.

I loved it. Just forgetting about armies, strategy etc. felt enormously liberating at that point. And very Barbarian.

Give him Stealth too and you could get XP for encounters twice - once for sneaking past and once for turning around and killing everything.

[Ignimortis]

In the barbarian campaign, by mid-way through the second map, your leader could solo even strong armies without any help at all. The trick was to build up complete magic immunity, then the lucky-shot-one-hit-kills couldn't touch him.

I loved it. Just forgetting about armies, strategy etc. felt enormously liberating at that point. And very Barbarian.

My usual H4 experience for the last five years has been as follows:
1) Get the urge to play H4 again.
2) Run Zanfas' Challenge (the only XL map in the game).
3) Use armies only to control cities, all overworld exploration and fighting is done by heroes in parties or alone.

It's a lot of fun. In H3, I tend to just run through the usual "Best of" maps like Hail to the King, Sander, the Pride series (I wish it got finished...), maybe, if I'm in the mood, The Troglodyte Rebellion campaign.

[veti]

Give him Stealth too and you could get XP for encounters twice - once for sneaking past and once for turning around and killing everything.

(a) limited total number of skills that can be developed, plus (b) limit to the level the hero can reach before the last map, make that a suboptimal strategy.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

(a) limited total number of skills that can be developed, plus (b) limit to the level the hero can reach before the last map, make that a suboptimal strategy.

Who said anything about optimal?

[Ignimortis]

(a) limited total number of skills that can be developed, plus (b) limit to the level the hero can reach before the last map, make that a suboptimal strategy.

The first point is somewhat moot, since the most optimal hero would probably be Combat+Scouting+Life+Nature+either Tactics if they use an army or one more magic skill if they don't. I.e. getting Combat and Scouting is generally a good choice on any hero in PvE maps.

[Sermil]

In general, one thing I sometimes wonder about is the effects of balance - while in multiplayer having good balance is important; in single player sometimes one feels better by finding the exploits/strategies to succeed and win more at high difficulties, even if they're not as balanced. Like in homm3 some heroes were much better than others due to having better specials, or better starting skills; like the ones that added a level-scaling bonus to useful skills.


The main problem with having a singleplayer game which is too unbalanced is that you can't balance the map for it.

Let's say archery is way more powerful than melee. If you balance the map for people who have a mixed archery/melee army, then someone who happens to choose a lot of archers is going to steamroll everything and be bored, while someone who innocently chooses melee units is going to get crushed and feel very frustrated and probably rage-quit.

If you have a dominant (unbalanced-in-the-players-favor) strategy that will win one particular map, that's fine, but if there's a strategy that will just win every map, people will just keep doing that strategy over and over and get very bored. Mashing the "more archers" button isn't exciting. (Also, why did you bother putting in the 'bad' units and animating them if no one ever uses them?)

Having an overall balanced game makes it more likely that choice A will be good sometimes and choice B will be good at other times, and then it's an interesting choice, because the player can try to be clever and figure out which one is the correct choice now.

[factotum]

Speaking of balance, I always remember the complaints about the Fortress in HoMM3 having a top-end unit that really sucked compared to other units of its class, but those complaints were largely missing the point. The Hydra was fantastic against lots of smaller units due to its ability to attack in all directions at once. You didn't send it up against the opponent's top tier unit because you had a much more powerful unit in that regard--the Mighty Gorgon. Its "chance to outright kill" thing worked against pretty much everything, and against a stack of top tier units (which would obviously tend to be smaller than a lower tier stack) it could be absolutely devastating!

[Ignimortis]

Speaking of balance, I always remember the complaints about the Fortress in HoMM3 having a top-end unit that really sucked compared to other units of its class, but those complaints were largely missing the point. The Hydra was fantastic against lots of smaller units due to its ability to attack in all directions at once. You didn't send it up against the opponent's top tier unit because you had a much more powerful unit in that regard--the Mighty Gorgon. Its "chance to outright kill" thing worked against pretty much everything, and against a stack of top tier units (which would obviously tend to be smaller than a lower tier stack) it could be absolutely devastating!

It's the same way with Necropolis. Bone/Ghost Dragons are clearly underwhelming and only exist to give you an initiative advantage, but every Necropolis mid-to-high tier unit (Vampires, Liches, Dread Knights) is a powerhouse with properties that pretty much set them apart from comparable units (not to mention a lucky Necromancer could start raising Liches instead of Skeletons, and by this point the game is over).

The worst matchup a Necromancer could have is another Necromancer with a better army, or maybe Conflux, since elementals are not counted as living.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Speaking of balance, I always remember the complaints about the Fortress in HoMM3 having a top-end unit that really sucked compared to other units of its class, but those complaints were largely missing the point. The Hydra was fantastic against lots of smaller units due to its ability to attack in all directions at once. You didn't send it up against the opponent's top tier unit because you had a much more powerful unit in that regard--the Mighty Gorgon. Its "chance to outright kill" thing worked against pretty much everything, and against a stack of top tier units (which would obviously tend to be smaller than a lower tier stack) it could be absolutely devastating!

Yeah, but if your opponent has any sense at all they aren’t going to neatly group up their forces for your Chaos Hydra to attack. Also, depending on how fast you built up your Fortress vs. your opponent’s town, you aren’t going to have Hydras vs. lots of lower tier units, you’re going to have Hydras vs. their 7th level units, which the Hydras really aren’t built for. They’re a fun unit, don’t get me wrong.

Re: Mighty Gorgons, IIRC they’re a bit slow and they don’t fly, so they need a bit of help (magical or logistical) to get to the dragons, phoenixes, angels and whatnot that do.

[Winthur]

Yeah, but if your opponent has any sense at all they aren’t going to neatly group up their forces for your Chaos Hydra to attack. Also, depending on how fast you built up your Fortress vs. your opponent’s town, you aren’t going to have Hydras vs. lots of lower tier units, you’re going to have Hydras vs. their 7th level units, which the Hydras really aren’t built for. They’re a fun unit, don’t get me wrong.
Hydras are purchasable week 1 even on poorer templates since Fortress mostly requires wood and gold to build itself up

also 99% of what you are going to do in any given H3 game isn't solely about the final battle, but also about the buildup; Hydras allow you to break banks pretty well, so even if the threat of them getting multiple hits on enemies isn't a big deal, they are cheap and return the investment rather handily by helping with griffin conservatories and treasuries and whatnot

Fortress is one of those towns that has a much better reputation in high level gameplay than it does in slow single player games

[Kareeah_Indaga]

also 99% of what you are going to do in any given H3 game isn't solely about the final battle, but also about the buildup; Hydras allow you to break banks pretty well, so even if the threat of them getting multiple hits on enemies isn't a big deal, they are cheap and return the investment rather handily by helping with griffin conservatories and treasuries and whatnot

I’m not sure what you mean by break banks in this context. :smallconfused:

[Divayth Fyr]

I’m not sure what you mean by break banks in this context. :smallconfused:

Things like the Griffin Conservatories mentioned later on - basically any map object where you fight a bunch of creatures to get some new troops for your army, resources or artifacts.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Things like the Griffin Conservatories mentioned later on - basically any map object where you fight a bunch of creatures to get some new troops for your army, resources or artifacts.

Against Griffins yeah I could see that. Still wouldn’t want to see them go up against Ancient Behemoth.

[factotum]

Against Griffins yeah I could see that. Still wouldn’t want to see them go up against Ancient Behemoth.

Um, which is exactly the point I made? They're not *designed* to go toe to toe with Ancient Behemoths!

[Ignimortis]

I’m not sure what you mean by break banks in this context. :smallconfused:

At this point, H3 has two subsets of fans. People who don't play multiplayer and people who do. In multiplayer, you rarely get the time and the resources you'd need to build up your towns army properly (considering they're played a lot of games end in the first game month), so a lot of your troops and money actually come from creature banks, like Griffin Conservatory, Serpentfly Hive, Naga Bank, etc, etc.

Over here there's even a meme about the "right" Crag Hack player (rushes, spends little on future investments, focuses on winning quickly and picks the best faction for a quick offensive) and the "wrong" Solmyr player (builds up the economy, including the prohibitively expensive Capitol, relies too much on Chain Lightning for combat despite having maybe two casts before losing all his MP, picking a faction that doesn't truly shine until lategame, etc).

In singleplayer, all of this doesn't matter, especially on L and XL maps, where the lowest estimate for clearing normally is around three to four game months, and some maps easily go on for six or more, and even level 7 creatures can get a 3-digit stack going.

I think that H3 designers didn't really take the latter into account, simply because of how much more balanced and thought-out the game seems at lower creature counts. To understand what I mean, I would advise any H3 player to go through Hail to the King map, which has you play with no weekly creature growth, always relying only on whatever stragglers you can pick up and use most effectively.

[Winthur]

Against Griffins yeah I could see that. Still wouldn’t want to see them go up against Ancient Behemoth.

The point of the post is that the most major contribution to your success in any given HOMM3 map is how well you tackle the map and not just the final fight against an opponent's hero, especially since a lot of games end simply because the opponent screwed up and took a lot of losses in the levelling phase

You aren't fighting Ancient Behemoths with Hydras, you are fighting Griffin Conservatories with Hydras so that you can pick up 3 Angels for a major boost to your army, or Dwarven Treasuries so that you can pick up gold and resources, or Dragonfly Hives so that you can pick up extra Wyverns (which Fortress can upgrade to Monarchs natively, making them a respectable power stack if there are enough Hives on the map). A properly supported Hydra stack can solo these places. They are also useful for taking Dragon Utopias. And since they are cheap, it doesn't hurt that much to lose them

now granted, Hydras are decidedly not a top tier unit and even in their perfect role they are a bit cumbersome to use (low movement speed and AI doesn't prioritize it meaning it's best at doing solo jobs) but in general comparing units of certain tier in a vacuum isn't that useful because usually the scary part about a Fortress player is a high level Beastmaster with Expert Earth / Air Magic keeping a 50+% damage reduction bonus on his entire cheap army (including lots of extra Wyvern Monarchs) that probably didn't take a lot of losses while expanding

and in single player or just long games, you can stack a ton of impervious mighty gorgons over the course of multiple weeks

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Um, which is exactly the point I made? They're not *designed* to go toe to toe with Ancient Behemoths!

Except both are 7th level units, so comparing the two to each other is fair. Saying ‘they’re really good against lower level units’ - of course they are, they’re a 7th level unit, and generally speaking higher level units are more durable, more powerful, more whatever than lower level units. If they were not useful against lower level units, then it would be notable.

You will note I never said they were useless. I just like them better supporting dragons in the Warlock town. (H1 Hydras were way prettier than H2 though. H2 Hydras look like a brick wall with heads.)

[Winthur]

Except both are 7th level units, so comparing the two to each other is fair.
phoenixes are one of the best level 7 units in the game and they lose 1v1 to almost every one of them
archdevils lose most 1v1 matchups but can solo dragon utopias with some magic
HotA's haspids beat every level 7 unit 1v1 and they aren't all that good for much else

hydra's weakness in the final battle is apparent to everyone, but as everyone says, flagging an early hydra pond (whether your own or from a dwelling) may give you a huge asset when clearing the map, making your overall army bigger during the final battle

final battle is pretty much never a case of two guys taking X weeks worth of native units to fight each other after all

[asaadrehman]

I don't know much about this game but the thing I google is that it is a 2011 game and one of the most popular ones among all ages of people. I also come to know come more information about it but first I am going to play it. And after that, I will definitely share my review in the comment.

[SarahCornel]

I'd be interested in that, too. Thank you for starting this discussion.