I've really liked Heroes 4 ever since is was released. Most people seem to like Heroes 3 more but I prefer games with an RPG feel.

I created a video to show the Half-Dead campaign on Champion difficulty, with only level 1 completed so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsWmYGsYEqs

The strategy and execution are not perfect but the video has some annotations which explain why certain decisions were made and the tactics that were used.

Let me know of any ideas to improve it.

Death Campaign "Half-Dead"

Level 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsWmYGsYEqs
Level 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07S0qFmVriU
Level 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN5aCwkAQLA

This made me want to play HoMM IV again! Problem is, I played all the maps already. I wish there were some decent community-made maps out there.

Regarding your video, at the beginning you have the ghosts pick up the Crest of Valor, but then you don't transfer it to your hero. Was that an oversight? I didn't watch after you added the ghosts to your army. By the way, how do you make/capture these videos?

Thanks a lot!

Order campaign "The Price of Peace"

Level 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qcfihjB4jo
Level 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07S0qFmVriU
Level 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lakohsgR1xM
Level 4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUFfJIy9KBI
Level 5 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qgyoVY-PSg

Might campaign "Glory of Days Past"

Level 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6i-Ez0TUjQ

Very nice. You are only the third person I know of who won this campaign on Champion difficulty. Rather surprising you did it with Ring of Protection - I needed Potion of Cold and I believe an Axe (Elven Chain would be the best).

I am not too happy about the way you captured the second Centaur dwelling on day 7 - I think you lost too many of the Berserkers, when you chould have used a box formation, with Waerjak in slot 2 and berserkers in slot 6 - then they would stay put until you let them out. But apparently it was good enough.

My own preference was to attack the Pirates at the docks much sooner, in Week 1 as soon as I could get there, but it does make sense to build up the army a little, as your growth early on is much higher than the neutral stack's growth. Certainly your strategy lead to quite low losses.

Well fought against the Pirates on the island. I liked that you tactics was not dependent on artifacts, as mine was.

Thanks! A Ring of Protection or Ring of the Warlord is very useful since the creatures will be taking and dealing most of the damage, but you're right there are several artifacts and potions which can help a lot. Glad to hear there are other people who like these campaigns. That's a good idea, I might use that strategy in later videos. With credit of course :)

Chaos campaign "A Pirate's Daughter"

Level 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G97ZESfeQAw

Incidentally, I played out this campaign not too long ago, also on Champion difficulty. It will be interesting to see how your gameplay style differed from mine. Particularly, I wonder whether you won the last map fair and square or whether you "cheated" like I did: I found that I want to use the real Tawni against the Sea Monsters, but the game insists that Tawni attacks the Mermaids. So I hired another Tawni in the tavern :-)

That's an interesting glitch / cheat! Didn't know about that one - I might try it out myself :)

I've only completed "A Pirate's Daughter" once before, because I prefer playing the Order, Life and Death campaigns much more :)

There are more like that. It even works if the hero is not available in the tavern (a hero might get disabled by the mapmaker), you can simply rename another hero :-)

Note that in this particular campaign it is very useful to give Pete Girly Nobility + Scouting + three magics, but no spells, and keep him at level one. I prefered not to visit any towns with him, so that he would never accidentally learn useful level 1 spells. Me too.

After watching you play with Tawni and Gauldoth, I have several suggestions:

1) You seem to be completely ignoring Potions of Immortality for some reason. They can make your gameplay much more efficient.

2) You seem to be completely ignoring Mage Chests, too. That is a mistake, particularly if that chest is easily available (e.g. in the Tawni's first map, there is a chest which can be grabbed by a bandit essentially for free): Some of the minor artifacts stored in these chests are extremely powerful, e.g. Hideous Helmet or Halberd of the Swiftwatch.

3) Sometimes you are wasting your moves. E.g. you don't need to walk right inside the city, it's enough to stop at the gates and open the city screen (saves one movement point). If you want to split your army pays to notice that the game always places the splitted units in a particular order (NE first, if that slot is occupied, then clockwise). If you want to combine two armies with approximately the same amount of movement points (e.g. a lone hero and a fast unit), it is better to initiate the join with the unit in the direction in which you will want to move, then have the other unit join it (rather than do both the initiation and the actual combining by the same unit). You should not use your main hero to flag mines or creature dwellings, that's what secondary heroes are for.

4) I noticed you are mostly ignoring Universities and similar buildings. Why is that? They give you secondary skills for only 2000 gold, much cheaper than the cost in terms of experience.

Thanks for the feedback :)

Potions of immortality don't really suit my playing style. One of the critical drawbacks is if the hero dies, they are resurrected as if they had the "Dispel" spell cast on them. For my heavily spell-buffed heroes, this usually means they die again a couple of hits later, sometimes without even having a turn to drink another potion thanks to bad morale or multiple enemies.

That's true, and usually if I've skipped one of the chests it's because I know there is nothing useful inside it, or just don't need any more artifacts to finish the level.

I don't think I often do this - I'm usually pretty efficient with my movement. Though Gauldoth's campaign was the first one that I started recording and so that one was a little less polished. Can you link to a place where I've wasted moves? I rarely do it entering towns, but sometimes I do forget some things like casting Pathfinding each turn and it's because I'm usually trying to be fast. It's boring watching a video of someone thinking :)

Sometimes I waste movement because there is not really anything left for me to do except wait (the extreme example is in the Might video). Occasionally I make a few mistakes in the video but the rest of the video is "good enough" and I leave it in. The videos are trimmed and appended but usually otherwise unedited.

I'm not trying for maximum score, just to make a fun video, but the score should be pretty good regardless.

I think the only times are when there is a skill available that I consider pretty useless - like Summoning or Charm - or if the skill on offer does not match my intended skill progression with that hero. Can you link to a place where this happens in the video?

Also, there is only one University/Seminary in Gauldoth's campaign so far and none in Tawni's, but I assume you mean the War Universities and Magic Universities available on the map.

OK. I take it what we see in the video is only a small part of what you actually did? As in, you did actually check which skills were available in a University, or which artifacts were stored in the chest, only we didn't get to watch that - we only know that you decided not to go there. Not specifically, no - I didn't make notes, just noticed that particularly your splitting-and-recombing of armies leaves a lot to be desired. But perhaps that would be too much micromanaging for a game which is being recorded (though I did notice that the recording didn't prevent you from poisoning Behemots and running around until they all died :-)).

One place which I do remember is the Tawni map: The original island can be explored much more efficiently, it is in fact possible to give the Seaman's Hat to Tawni on turn two (without losing Tawni's movement points). - When you reached the first barbarian city, I for the life of me couldn't understand why you didn't attack it immediately, instead opting to wait for the next day. - In Emilia's first campaign, the Town Portal can be used much more efficiently if you just block all four squares in front of the closest town; even better, if you block the squares of the second-nearest town, then attack a stack which is located very close to the nearest town. That makes sense. I know my playing style would be too boring to watch on video. Is that why you always save a game, then immediately load it? The frequent loads will play havoc with the score :-( Yes.