I have a few questions about general strategy.

1) How many heroes should I have? I've usually only used one or two in a match but I've noticed the AI seems to use at least 5 or more.

2) Also, is it more beneficial to upgrade captured towns or should I just focus on one?

Watch couple of vids in this series. TheMeinTeam makes very effective use of heroes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EplLyekzMFA

Upgrading towns harder to answer. Towns of your faction, yes. Get more troops! More money. But second priority to getting main town up and running.

Other towns, all depends on the size of the map, number of enemies, victory condition you are going for, etc.

I asked a very similar question re how many heroes to have a few days ago and have experimented a fair bit since. This may be the blind leading the blind as I'm a complete novice but found that 4 heroes on a small/medium map works for me.

One stays in my main town along with some troops to protect it, two act as looters and ferry troops to the main hero and then there's the main hero. I also found that whilst ferrying, a capable underling hero can attack weaker opponents 'en-route'.

Having said all that - I'm still trying to work out how the player difficulty options in Single Campaign (represented by chess pieces) works. Does the scale of 80% through to 200% represent the strength or handicap to the player - i.e. is 80% easier for me than 200%?

HTH and apologies for hijacking your thread to ask a question of my own.

This question would be under the 'state the obvious' thread if there was one but just want to be 100% sure; would this mean that 80% is easiest for me against enemy AI or harder?

Thanks - PD

Lower the percentage, easier it is.

Thanks - just finished and won my first single scenario map. I did have it on the easiest of settings though. I'm now hooked and love this game!

Don't forget to hire heroes for three other reasons:

1. To strip them of their troops. Sometimes when you add up the cost of the troops they are carrying, it comes to more than the cost of the hero. That's a bargain in the long run. When that happens, you can consider the hero a free bonus and use him for errands. Or dump him later at no real loss, because you've already made your money, so to speak.

2. To run between windmills and troop generators and such. I always have extra heroes, because the gems and gold they gather can pay for the cost of a hero many times over. And if they are near a good troop generator, those troops can be hugely useful, even giving you troops of a tier you haven't built yet. This is especially useful with ranged characters, which are weak for a good while but strong later. Your castle will take a long time to generate a powerful bunch of them, but a creature generator can cut in half the time it takes to build an intimidating stack of, say, archers. Raiding the creature generator can also keep an approaching enemy from buying up more troops to attack you with.

3. To free up slots in the tavern to see if you can find another hero who generates gold or gems. If you have money to burn, or if a hero has more value in troops than he costs (or about the same), buy and dump, keeping the troops -- burn through junk heroes to see if you luck out and find someone great lurking underneath. A hero with the gems you need to advance or buy troops is a bargain, and gems trade well for the raw materials you need to quickly build up and staff a new castle.

Heroes function not just as force multipliers, but as major parts of your economy that easily pay for themselves. It's a rare HOMM3 game in which I don't have 8 heroes.

Using the HOMM3 pack from GOG.com + Heroes3HD from here http://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/ , it allows you to 'invite specific hero' from the tavern.

Thus, after spending initial outlay of $2000, you can then hire the hero with the specialty you want for another $2000. If you want more you can keep the chain going.

If you open and print the HOMM3 manual, you'll know which hero carries a strong spell from the start or gives out resources, thus paying for themselves in a week's time or less.

This can be considered cheating but if you've had no luck finding the hero you want, that feature is there to use. Its also handy when you are playing the map where the entire world is covered in hostile terrain e.g. swamps and you'd really want some heroes with Pathfinding, therefore you want Beastmasters or Barbarians as they are more likely to gain this skill.

I think the game is more fun if I don't cheat.
But whatever does float your boat that don't get you stuck in a wizards moat.