HoMM3 is the best - for the perfect balance between fairy-tale charm and beeing good strategy.

It's seems to me that KB series is rather RPG genre, and, of course, HM series is more a turn-based strategy. So HoMM replayability is almost infinitive ;)

My best success has been in King's Bounty Crossworlds and Dark Side, and then HoMM 5 and my success in the game is inverse to the game's number in HoMM.

The only issues I have with King's Bounty is that a lot of the time the quests have very nebulous progression to them. You think, okay I will go there and do that because this dude literally said to. You get there and then... you talk to whomsoever you are supposed to but they obviously have nothing to say to you yet... Also, that's if the characters are being direct with what you need to do, other occasions, and they are not too common, you'd have to come across the next step either by accident or with a guide and when I was playing Dark Side there really were not very many (being a Russian game that is not hugely popular on English speaking sites).

I really like HoMM V but after giving it a break I cannot get back into it. These games remind me of Age of Wonders, actually, but King's Bounty does not.

Interestingly, I had a hard time getting my head around the King's Bounty games until I took the approach of, "The battle system is basically like in a JRPG where you use squads of like finite attacks." Somehow that helped me a lot.

That said, the HoMM game I like the most is III. The art, music, and gameplay is the most fun for me, I'm just not very good at it.

Bugged GOG version of KB: The Legend caused me to hate KB so HoMM is my winner (3rd part is the best one).

I guess it's the downside to having actually played the game to death, I have never faced the situation where I was overwhelmed by the AI. I remember seeing my father play the game and he always ended up in situations where it was like month 12, or something ridiculous like that, and he still hadn't revealed half the map, so every battle was actually challenging.

I guess minimizing the loss of troops while maximizing controlled area, from the fist day to the last of the game, is what allows me to do so well in these games.

I just played KB: The Legend, while on the other hand I played HoMM 1-4 (all vanilla) and TotE from 5. In spite of that, definitely KB.
Clearly also enjoyed HoMM4, being different from the rest, but the way HoMM is meant to be played, with the need to rush and expand early, which runs completely counter to how I "work", and maybe most of all in case of all but 4 the need for (likely sacrificial) heroes to carry troops, which I always refused to use on principle, means that the rest were quite an exercise in frustration. Finished HoMM1 and TotE, and all of vanilla HoMM4, but in 2 and 3 I wasn't getting anywhere.
KB:TL on the other hand was just thoroughly enjoyable, and it all suited me, with single army, and the creatures being the resources to manage so what matters being to keep them alive, and being able to do so, basically never losing units with a mage after gaining the right skills and finding some units to supplement them, and just exploring and advancing at my own pace. And I'd also add that the graphics showed care and were art from my point of view, with all the little details.

Yeah I guess I am not so much into reading game manuals, at least nowadays. I prefer if the game itself teaches me to play itself (e.g. RTS games like Starcraft did that brilliantly, by introducing new kinds of buildings, units and tactics to the game as the game progressed; no separate tutorial needed either).

I actually knew that "monsters from different towns lower the morale" from the HOMM FAQ I read... but then it felt as an unnecessary complication to the game. If I was wandering around with one of my heroes and it was running out of troops, I went to one of my castles to get reinforcements... but how the heck do I remember if those units in that particular castle are the right type of units to add to that hero's troops? Why should it even matter? Am I supposed to wander back to the "right" kind of castle to replenish the troops?

It sounds just as odd as if in e.g. Starcraft there would have been some severe penalty if I group together tanks and ghost units. Why should it matter that they are "different" kind of units? Does it somehow make the gameplay more interesting?

Also there sure was a wealth of different kinds of units... but that also felt a bit unnecessary. Ok so there are those fairies and gnomes and trolls I can produce... it is not apparent why they exist why should I e.g. produce fairies instead of gnomes or trolls? Again I take Starcraft as an example: most units have a pretty clear reason to exist in the game, they are used for different gameplay styles. Easier to tell why there is a tank or medic or a Valkyrie air unit in Starcraft, than why there is a troll or fairy or gnome or a big snake-kind of creature in the game. I guess they all serve some kind of purpose, but it is not quite apparent what it is. Fairies move faster but are more fragile and cause less damage, right?

Maybe all that becomes clear if I just keep playing the game (longer than merely just finishing the first campaign mission), but until then...

I didn't mean I was doing nothing but defending, or even concentrating in it. Actually it was quite the opposite: I had three or four heroes wandering around with their troops, and I had just transferred many units from one castle to one of the heroes.

Just as the hero had left to a distance, the enemy attacked that castle of mine when I had only few troops inside. So I easily lost the castle because none of my wandering heroes could reach it in time to help defend it.

Then again I guess the point of the game is not care that much if you lose some castle etc., just build or conquer another one...

Yeah maybe that is one thing, as I wondered am I supposed to run back and forth to the "right" kind of castle, just so that I don't cause any lower morale by mixing fairies, trolls, gnomes and snakes into the same team...

Maybe that is a good approach then, using other heroes mostly as mere delivery guys.

Also, that is one important(?) thing that the FAQ mentioned: you shouldn't necessarily try to improve all or even most your heroes, but try to improve one of your heroes mostly, even though you have several heroes/parties. I guess things like that become clear only through playing the game a long time, at first I had no idea whatsoever whether I should have only one or as many as possible heroes/parties (different kind of heroes I guess, like some are spellcasters, others are fighter heros etc.), and whether I should try to improve all of them evenly or not.

How can you not know which kind a castle is? Each has different looks and backgrounds and an entirely different unit roster. And I guess the idea is that you have all those different races that are at war with each other, so when you mix them together in one army they won't do well. You can mix two types that aren't completely at odds, but three types or types that are deathly enemies, like heaven and demons or undead with any living, will have negative consequences, and it makes sense.
Tanks and ghosts aren't different in SC though, they're both Terran.
Units are split by level, so of course some will be weaker and other stronger. And the idea would be, at least from HoMM3, for races to be balanced, so overall each race should have similar units, so if you mix and match instead of sticking to one you may often wonder what the point is. But there are still quite a few differences between units of the same level, so depends on the play style.
Yeah, that's a basic requirement of playing HoMM, except 4, and I'd say the main reason I just got endlessly frustrated with it.

I never read the manual for Heroes. I just played it, and it all seemed quite self evident. I'm not saying I was great at it fro mthe start, but I found it very easye to get the mechanics just from playing it and trying stuff out.


It makes putting together your army a bit more complex then just "I'll throw together all the strongest units from all the towns". You can sure make a stronger army with more high level units, but the morale is a trade off. One you can mitigate with artefacts or hero skills. Comparing it to Starcraft where you only play one faction with set assortment of units at a time doesn't make much sense.

That's a strange take. That's half of what makes the game fun, having all the numerous combinations fighting against each other.

Because again, unlike in Starcraft there is no permanent, easy answer to what combinations you're going to fight, or what units you will be able to recruit in every scenario. So there's no one "role" for units. It's more of a puzzle - "how do I use what I've got in this scenario, to defeat such and such foe".

Yeah, typically you'll only have 1 or 2 main heroes in a level. But yes definitely, delivery heroes is pretty much a requirement once your main heroes start to move out into the world. I've always wished that there was instead some sort of explorer/scout class unit that could deliver troops, instead of having to use heroes. Seems a bit 'undignified' for a hero :)

I wouldn't worry too much about morale. Just read up on it once, and keep it in mind. After a couple of levels you'll learn the different units well enough that you won't mix units from 3+ towns without knowing it.
Also, it's not really a problem to avoid this. Pretty early on already you'll find you don't have enough money to recruit everything, so you can easily afford to only pick the units from the towns you want, for your main hero(es).

If you haven't already, Disciples 2 is an excellent (even better than homm3 imho) TBS in the genre, which doesn't have the 'problem' of having to ferry troops all over Unfortunately the combat is a lot simpler, but not that that makes the game easier. In fact overall I think Disciples 2 is a much harder game than the majority of HoMM3. (Not all though - Shadow of Death is brutal)

there is a new disciples game right? is it good? hope not as booring as the old meh one

disciples 2 is not hard it is just a platformer, there is a path you have to take to win , if you fail you load and try a different path until you find the right one

That is why absolutely everyone should take Earth Magic, because of Town Portal. Not taking it is basically trolling in Heroes 3. It has the best defensive spells, best utility spells, best offensive spells. As far as balance goes, Heroes 3 is not a balanced game.

In the campaigns, every single one of your main heroes, no matter what campaign should have the same 4 out of 8 skills every time, no matter the faction or scenario. Wisdom, Earth Magic, Armorer, Logistics. Then mages can take 4 magic skills (usually Sorcery, Intelligence and 2 other spell schools) and might focused heroes take 4 fight oriented skills (Luck, Leadership, Archery or Tactics) or one secondary magic school. That is your build for the majority of your main heroes, no matter what. A large portion of the skills are pretty much useless.

When it comes to hero build variety, 5 excels in that regard.

I've only played HOMM games, I once tried to start doing the story of the series but I didn't get far.

Heroes of Might & Magic 2 (the very best, love of my life) > HoMM 3 > Disciples 2 > HoMM 1 > King's Bounty (original) > Disciples 1 > HoMM 5 > King's Bounty (reboot series) > HoMM 4 > other games

HOMM2 and 3 where teenage fantasies, 4 will always hold a special place since i could enjoy that game with my first love, gaming 2gether, drinking 2gether, making love.. 2gether. nothing can beat that! Up until this day the whole setup in 4, from music to the story told in the campaign holds a certain style that is not beaten in both Kings Bounty or any other HoMM game.

HOMM is of course much richer in both versatility, challenge and entourage but Kings Bountry remains a worthy opponent. I've been dying to check out Kings Bounty 2 though i fear that the series will befall the same fate as disciples have.

Mostly I guess, but I recall there were quite many missions in SC where you controlled two different factions at the same time. Like the very last mission of the main game (you control both Terrans and Protoss), or I recall some missions where you had both Zerg and Terran units, and Zerg and Protoss.

Anyway, I might give HOMM a new chance at some point, with some of the tips I got from this thread.