Hey all,
I've been playing this game for YEARS. Many, many years. I was wanting to survey you guys about your playing tactics.

I personally stick with one hero that has a baller army, high skills, and my best spells. I find myself neglecting ALL my heroes if I play with more than 1 hero. My one and only hero runs around the map (sometimes very frantically.. no one to guard castles with this technique) and plows down every computer player and castle. I always choose speed increases and experience bonuses for this one "ultimate" hero. I very quickly spend the first two weeks of the game building up to Capitol, and achieving my Gold Dragons ASAP (I always play Rampart) .. During this time I do not recruit troups, but instead send my lone hero out to collect whatever resources that are "freebies" at the beginning of the game e.g those that I don't have to fight anything for. After I achieve my dragons, I leave home with my beginning troop and let my creatures begin to stack at home. Periodically I go home and hire all of my creatures. I've played long games before where my 1 hero had over 50 Gold Dragons. However, I have discovered this technique does NOT work on any other level than easy. I am stuck in my ways and was wondering how you guys tackle the game strategically?

Generally I start out with one hero for combat purposes and a second hero to run around and grab any unguarded resources or mines as well as scout out where I need to send my combat hero (depending on the map size and layout I may add a second or third scout within the first 2-3 weeks). For town development I typically focus on creature dwellings the first week, trying to get dwellings level 1-5 built along with a Castle to max out growth; this lets me quickly start building an army that can take out most of the neutral mobs guarding resources and mines. Second week I go for a capital, and also selectively upgrade a few creature dwellings (based on which upgrades give the biggest advantages). I'll typically stay away from level 7 creature dwellings until at least the third or fourth week, as they often suck up more resources than they're worth in the early game.

On larger maps, once I've established a strong economy and have captured a few towns of a different type from my primary town I'll start developing a second (and sometimes third) combat hero to take out weaker neutral mobs (that aren't worth the time of my primary hero) as well as control the territory I've already taken and prevent incursions by enemy heroes that aren't particularly strong. If my second hero ends up becoming strong enough to tackle most enemy heroes then he'll often be switched over from defense to offense so that I can take the fight to the enemy on two fronts. If for some reason I don't have Town Portal with Expert Earth Magic (due to map restrictions or lousy luck on hero development) then I'll also use several heroes to ferry troops to my combat heroes as the front lines get farther from my main towns.

Interesting! Thanks for the reply. I find myself enjoying random XL maps with dungeons the most.. what size maps do you prefer? and on what difficulty?

For single maps I tend to prefer L or XL maps more in an adventure style (more linear than typical maps, with a greater focus on tactical combat than strategic play), although these kinds of maps lend themselves to a different playstyle from what I just described. I also like playing the various campaigns, and although there's not exactly control over the map sizes I tend to enjoy the M sized ones the most (L and XL campaign maps just seem to drag on too long). For difficulty I tend to play at the second-lowest difficulty, mostly because I play HoMM3 to relax, and while I can still win at the higher difficulties wracking my brain on the strategies and having to occasionally restart is more stress than I'm looking for.

My tactic:

Start the first turn out, buy buying another hero, possibly 1 that fits your town. Give those troops to the hero you want as 'main'. The main hero then starts to take out weak neutral mobs, and capture treasure that way, while my scout goes around taking unguarded treasure (Possibly leaving treasure chests for my main for XP)

I go for Capitol within the first week aswell, then for what creatures I like the most from the town. I go around with my Main killing creatures, untill he needs reinforcements, then I run back to the town, and buy the creatures there, and go out and conqueror. Let's say I'm a little lucky, and captures another town from a computer, then I use my scout to bring troops from my town to my main hero, in case he needs reinforcements. Whenever I capture a new town, and I have the resources for it, I buy a new hero, that can go around and steal the mines that the previous owners of the new castle had.

I'll try to upgrade the castles I capture as much as possible, without delaying my main castle from growing. If I capture more castles before the second is upgraded, I finish upgrading the castle I took first, unless I have a lot of resources.

You might be able to stick with only 1 good hero deppening on the map and difficulty, but you must have a lot of scouts, depening on your wealth and map size. A nice move, is to kill the opponent heroes, and then recruit them, it's an easy way of getting a lvl6-7.

Hope I was to any use =)

I always develop 1 strong hero... that will have the town portal spell. The AI stands no chance once you reach expert level town portal and it's pretty much game over then. The rest of my heroes just defend towns and collect the 1/week stuff from dwellings until then.

The official strategy guide to HoMM3 from Prima states there are four types of heroes: garrison commander, general, scout, and troop transport. With this in mind, and knowing that you have up to eight heroes on the map at any one time (any others must stay in town garrisons), I aim to be able to work you into playing multiple heroes without neglecting any.

The general is the kind of hero you've always been playing, and the one most refer to as "their main hero, or their combat hero". You want, among other things, to identify which computer heroes are their "primary generals", because these will be getting the highest level, and the strongest armies. If you can take them out, without them retreating, you will deal them a big blow, especially from the mid-point in the game to the later-stages after they've had time to advance (and taking potential experience such as from treasure chests off the map).

Say that in every scenario, the first hero you get is to be your primary general. You can explore the territory right around your town first, acquiring any loose resources within easy walking distance. Inside the town, build a town hall on the first day and recruit a second hero, preferrably one from your town side also, but mainly looking for one with the scouting skill already learned. Buy whatever troops you can now, and go to the first hero outside. Trade to the new hero, who will be your primary scout, all but one of the weakest troops from your first hero, and then this force will be your scout's army. If you have the money, buy a second new hero, and give all his troops to the scout too. This third hero will be your primary troop transport.

Most would advise giving the troops to the general, and the official strategy guide (OSG) says that, but in my opinion this overlooks something obvious: as any hero goes out into the black areas of the map, revealing it, he or she is scouting, so why not send your scout out first instead of leaving the general to do this? Having scouting (the skill) will pay off, and it can only do so once because the map will stay revealed. Now let me give missions to the three heroes, and building advice for the first ten days of the game.

The first mission of the scout is to locate mines, and the first of these being wood and ore if they are not already in view of your town. Any mines you can claim with him, go ahead and do it, even if you will lose some men fighting. If you can find a gold mine, it would be particularly useful to take it, and you should make a note of what guards it, and as soon as you have the armies to beat them you should. Usually, there will be one mine of each type somewhere around your town, and once you find them all (with gold mines being the rarest), if you could draw lines between them, encircling your town, you can mark this as your starting territory. The first priority of your war effort will be securing this, including taking all the mines.

Depending on what side you're playing, you may need some resources more than others, so keep an eye out for them. The rampart, for example, needs a lot of wood for the elves, and crystals and gems for pegasi, unicorns, and dragons, respectively. You should give priority to claiming sawmills, crystal mines, and gem ponds therefore. In particular, try to notice any loose wood, crystal, or gems and take these. When you play at the Easy or Normal difficulties, they give you plenty of resources to start with, though, so if you want you can bypass this mission with your scout. First let me say what the other heroes should do.

If the beginning will be all about getting the local mines, you need the right troops to take out their guards, and any other monsters in the way, along roads or what-not. Anything your scout with his army can't take out, make not of as a battle for your general to. Move your general adjacent to those enemies, and build creature buildings at home. Any loose resources your general can get, have him get, and get any chests for experience and any buildings for skill points or experience. The troop transport will then recruit the troops, and when you have enough, march them to where your general is waiting. After you win the battle, move on to the next battle and so on until all the mines are claimed. At the beginning of the second week, you'll have reinforcements, which the troop transport will again be able to bring to you, and this should be enough except maybe not for a gold mine which tends to be well-guarded.

The second mission of the game, as I play, encompasses the next ten days again. In this stage, your scout's mission is to find a new neutral town if there is one nearby. You may be able to take it without reinforcement, especially if you've been able to add to your army by visiting any outside creature dwellings, but the best practice is to just scout the area of the new town and leave the new town to your general to take. The time you take a second town for the first time is when you first need a garrison commander at the main town, by the way. Let's say you recruit one now, and everything is going well.

Have the garrison commander stay near the main town, visiting local creature dwellings to build up your forces and any buildings that offer your hero anything good. Work on building your capitol, and your mage guild, to which all your heroes should visit to learn all the spells he can. The scholar skill can be very helpful at bringing the spells to your more distant heroes, and this can be a great skill for a troop transport to learn.

The next stage of the game is searching for your nearest enemies. With the scout, you want to find your "borders" with them. Remember that borders are sometimes defined by mines, so if you come upon a mine he has flagged, there you go. You can flag it yourself if it's unguarded, and move along. If you keep your general near, the computer is less likely to attack your scout, and ideally your troop transport will keep reinforced your general and your scout to a lesser extent.

So in summary, every time you get a new town, you recruit a garrison commander for the last one you had. You recruit a new scout every time you need to explore in multiple directions over significant distances, and recruit a new troop transport for every new front. You recruit a new general for every new region you want to invade as opposed to just defend, if there are multiple fronts, and you use your main general to seek out the hardest battles on the map and to take out the computer's main generals.

Rather than having one or two ultra-strong heroes I prefer to have all my heroes at a similar level and have each visit all the various stat increase buildings available. I play XL maps and if there is enough cash available I sometimes hire 8 heroes in the first week. All available troops are combined into one or two armies but these are then freely transferred between my heroes. This means those troops can sometimes fight several battles in the same turn by passing from one hero to the next. It also means that if a threat develops at one end of my kingdom I can pass a strong army from hero to hero and the one on the end of the chain is good enough to hold his own in the battle.

Later in the game, after capturing other castle types, I like to have a Rampart hero with an army of Rampart troops, a Wizard with Wizard troops etc. The ideal is to have four separate strong armies, each shared between two heros. This way you cam mix and match your troops depending on the enemy you are facing.

I always play om Impossible unless the map is very small or really is "impossible".
So I rarely recruit many heroes in the beginning.

My main guy is of course the army leader.
But I also try to get one or more secondary commaders, depending on how many directions there is to expand. Since score is dependent on amount of turns I think this is a good strategy. I develope these either by "grooming" them by visiting all sites that give XP or stat increases, or I recruit an experienced hero who I've defeated earlier.

If possible I also recruit a Warlock for scouting, and - depending on map - a sorceress for nautical exploration and expansion.

Having one or more characters to do weekly chores and for leading troops to the commanders is also important.

Giving all but the army commanders Estate skill is a good long term investment.