It is something like that, huh? You can have HoMM over everything, you think that if you will play for even a second you're gonna throw up but even after one day of rehab it takes no more than even reading about one of the cities and you want to play :)

I've played 1-4, and I know each edition has its own flaws. I often get a bit exhausted when the stacks are really high and the differences between units become heavily exaggerated, and I tend to like the early exploration periods and hate it when the big wars begin (usually because I still want to explore some more). But still, I like the unit relationships, the skills, finding cool artifact combinations, cool troop combinations, that sort of thing.

Maybe one of the things I like is that each town feels like it has strong character to it, evocative of a certain theme and mood. I get a sort of Hammer Horror feel from the Undead towns, melodramatic opera villain stuff from the Warlocks, that sort of thing.

Really good music, too, which is a must in games like these.

My favorite has always been the Necropolis. It's fun playing the undead evil lord--and vampires, vampires, vampires! Once you get enough of them, they just never die. (I admit that there might be a power imbalance there, but I just like the walking dead).

After Necro, I think it's Tower. I love titans.

Definitely necropolis - some of the most interesting units there

Dungeon is my second favourite

I really dislike Conflux...

My favorite overall would be the Necropolis. I play random maps exclusively now and I do not use that WoG crap so...your milage may vary. There is just no mkore awesome feeling than putting together the Armor of the damned and/or Cloak of the Undead King, walking up to stacks of legions and coming away with legions of skeleton warriors or liches. Fairly cheap and easy to get dominant armies early on(and VERY dominant armies late in game) and if you start with Thant(specializes in Animate dead) it is even better.

I do not understand why Dungeon seems to get so much love here?! Generally regarded by HoMM veterans as the worst faction because of it's slow units(save for the dragonflies) and mediocre shooters(lizardmen are it) and level 3 mage guild limit.

Dungeon and Tower are both nice and I play them from time to time as well.

Stronghold is a good town except for the level 3 mage guild limit and the perplexing replacement of trolls as the resident boulder throwers with cyclops(just does not make sense for the genre, cosmetically speaking). The cyclops really help with seiges.

Rampart is...not terrible. But I always find myself asking why pegusi, centaurs and dwarves are part of this faction?! Equine creatures running around densely wooded forests?! FLYING equines?! Far from the worst but not really my thing I guess.

Conflux was a HUGE mistake but this is hard to pin on the game designers. It was the silly teenagers at the old Astral Wizard site that threatened a silly boycott because the INTENDED new town for the Armageddon's Blade expansion was going to be the "Forge" town that mixed sci-fi and fantasy elements(which would have been massively cool!). Conflux comes off as very rushed, poorly thought out and highly overpowered/imbalanced. Twice as many units(4 Pheonixes per week anyone?) as other towns just destroys any chance at being playable.

Castle is a good and fun town to play. The level 4 mage guild does not hurt much because of Town Portal being level 4 and Archangels with their being the fastest fliers in game and able to resurrect other units make this one a good one.

I think Conflux had some interesting ideas but yeah, it's definitely overpowered