I want to make it absolutely clear form the get-go that i am not interested in Hota.
I want to play homm3 ultimate with a friend over the internet and we've tried hamachi in the past.

It used to work with gameranger but didn't last time we tried.

Anyone know a good way to play it?


To answer my own question: You need to watch out for firewalls, anti-vira, malware protection services etc.
Then there is a problem with "Receiving map headers from host"]"Receiving map headers from host" which i solved by following instructions from this site: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroes3/comments/3zdmc9/receiving_map_headers_from_host_bug/

After fixing that you can use hamachi to play. Enjoy!

A direct TCP/IP connection, or hot seat if you're physically close.

You DO need to add an exception for Heroes3.exe in your firewalls/antiviruses.

Try the site below for common problems and fixes, I used to be on that site all the time but haven't played H3 online for a long time now. One suggestion other than Game Ranger was Gamespy Arcade. I havn't used that either in years though so can't say.

http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=12141

GameSpy died in 2014 and is entirely irrelevant.

Can't you simply use hamachi and play tcp/ip ?

I think we will try that again. Didn't work last time, but maybe we missed a firewall.

Yeah, probably. Usually when you try network game for the first time, message form fire wall pops up and asks to add exception. If you pressed "no" at one point, you have to add exceptions to firewall for inbound and outbound rules manually.
For that you have to know witch port/ports heroes 3 uses.
If you don't know what port you need, you can easy find that out by launching cmd and running few strings. Or try google ;)

Or turn off firewall.
Mind that you both (all players) have to make same adjustments.