I'm a relative newcomer to the HoMM series, but as a strategy RPG fan I'm liking it so far. However, I'm not very good at it. If any HoMM veterans can share their personal strategies and tips here to get me started that would be helpful.

If you want to give more specific advice, I could use help on what kind of armies to make, which units are the best, how to develop a strong economy/resource base, and how to raise an army quickly.

The best way to start is just play a few free-for-all maps and try things out (avoid the campaigns until you feel more comfortable with the game). The Castle town is probably the most friendly towards beginners as it's a pretty straight-forward, balanced town, while many of the other towns require you to be mindful of certain things in order to be most effective.

For managing heroes it's often good to focus most of your military might on one hero, then use others mostly for scouting/grabbing resources (buy a second hero early for this purpose as it will really help). Mobility of heroes is quite important, so artifacts and skills that increase a hero's movement (e.g. Boots of Speed, Logistics, Pathfinding) are quite useful; the Town Portal spell (with Expert Earth Magic) is also incredibly useful, especially on larger maps.

Also don't neglect boosting your heroes' stats whenever you have the opportunity. Attack and Defense in particular can make a huge difference- a hero with a somewhat weaker army but far higher attack and defense skill can absolutely decimate a hero with a larger army buy much lower attack and defense.

For magic, I personally think Earth Magic is quite possibly the most useful magic school (and one that every hero should try to pick up), with Water and Air Magic being about equally useful. I personally consider Fire Magic to be the least useful, although it does have some good points as well (expert Berserk can be pretty scary, and mass debuffs can decrease the capabilities of an enemy army pretty significantly).

But going back to what I first said, just try a few maps and test out different strategies. The wide variety of different strategies and possibly play styles is part of what makes this game so great.

Getting started can be confusing. Make random maps (small at first) vs one computer opponent and play just a week or two. Then quit, ,make another random map and play a week or two again. Do that many times.

You'll get used to exploring, how to use level 1,2 and 3 troops, gathering resources with one hero while another one runs around fighting monsters - the basics.

You should be able to play one of these micro-games in less than an hour and you'll be able to make lots and lots of mistakes without worrying about how they'll effect you chances of winning - because you aren't trying to win!

The only drawback to this is that you won't appreciate the impact of high level magic - but you'll learn that when playing campaigns and stuff. Just remember that expert level Earth magic allows you to cast expert Mass Slow - which is key for winning seeminly hopeless fights against giant armies of monsters.

And i think the most important ability is logistics! Being able to cover more ground makes everything better. The faster hero gets the artifacts first, fights more monsters per turn thereby getting more experience and leveling up faster. Gets back to town to get the latest army upgrades - the longer the game (or the bigger the campaign) the more important logistics is. Like high level magic, you won't notice it when you only play a week or two of a game. Also go back to march 14th in this forum and look at the advanced tutorial map post. I thought I knew something about Homm3 but I learned a WHOLE LOT from this tutorial.

I just finished Heroes 1, 2 & 3 and I am working on the Chronicles right now. Whenever possible I played on the impossible difficulty. Here is my advice:
For skills:
*** Wisdom, Earth
** Air, Pathfinding, Logistics & Tactics
* Leadership, Luck, Intelligence
Wisdom to Cast 5th level spells
Earth - When you have expert Earth, you can cast mast slow. (All enemy troops are slowed!) You can also cast Town Portal to any town you own. (Without Expert Earth, you only go to the nearest town.) With Expert Earth, when you cast resurrect, your troops stay alive after the battle is over. Without Expert, they are only resurrected for the course of the battle. (You might win the battle, but if you only have resurrected troops you might still lose your hero.)
Air - Increases damage on lightning bolt and chain lightening.
Pathfinding & Logistics - Increases travel ability.
Tactics - Lets you re-arrange troops before the battle starts. With Expert Tactics you can move many of your troops across the field to attack first round. Very useful in Campaigns. (My friend who plays too recommends water over Tactics - he never chooses Tactics & I never choose water. Water will give you Mass Bless, Clone high level troops & Forget.)
(My friend who plays as much as me would recommend Water on the same rank as Air.)
Leadership will allow you to not suffer moral penalties for having troops from different castles in your army. It will also allow chance of High Moral - which allows a second attack.)
Luck with occasionally allow you to hit for maximum damage.
Intelligence will give you up to double your spell points.

Always have at least one or two extra heroes going around picking up resources. They can also be used to ferry troops from your castle to your main hero.

I also like the castle towns - It doesn't take much to build them up to Angels and Arch Angels. Once you have those you can really do some damages. (Wizard towns with Titans are nice too and Dungeon towns with Black Dragons are great too.)

If you have trouble with a specific campaign, let me know - we just finished them all. We recorded the times and scores too, so you can compare yourself against them.
Send me a private message as I only read the group once a week or so.
Sean

I'd actually advise you to start with the first Erathian campaign (Save the Queen IIRC), the first two maps are very easy and will serve as a good introduction to the game.

As for what skills to pick, that depends on the map. For a big map for instance, movement skills like logistics will be very useful, but they'll be less so on a small map.

The skill I'd actually recommend most but that most players don't seem to use is diplomacy. The main goal of the game is to expand as fast as you can so you can get resources and creatures faster than your opponent.
Diplomacy won't help you recruit pack of monsters that are more powerful, but if you can convince that group of crossbowmen that's about half as strong as your main army to join up (for free or for money), it can make the difference between having to wait one more week to get that first extra town or not. With expert diplomacy you have a fairly good chance of being able to recruit extra creatures for free, especially if you have the same type in your army already.

Every hero should have at least one magic skill at expert, more for mages, but which you take will largely depend on what spells your mages guild provides and what town type you're playing with.

Expert earth is not all that useful if you don't have spells like slow, town portal or resurrection, but it's great if you get them.
Expert water won't be very useful for a necropolis player since most of the buff spells that are the highlights of water will not work on undead, but it's very useful for a castle player who'll get a lot out of expert bless and divine favor.
You see the problem, all magic skills are useful and some are overall better than others, but which you pick will be situational more than anything.

As others said, you should probably start with the castle, it's a classic town with no real weakness. The others either are more expensive or favor a certain playstyle (some are also just plain weaker).

A quick tip:
Introduction: During campaigns you normally start with more than 1 hero. During some of them and during Custom games, you normally start with 1.

It's always good to buy another hero right off the start, possibly 1 that matches your town, so your hero get extra troops, but it's also good to have a hero that can collect all the gold/resources laying on the ground, exploring and taking/stealing mines.

Hope it was helpful =)

While Logistics is not a BAD skill to have(unlike Eagle Eye which is utterly worthless and a waste of a skill slot), there are several that are far more important to have.

1)Earth Magic - One should get this one ASAP. The only way to cast Town Portal in any way to be at all useful is to have expert Earth Magic. Also spells like "Slow", "Resurrection", "Animate Dead", and "Implosion" are greatly improved with Earth magic skill. These are more or less the key spells in the game(the others being "Dimension Door"(AIR), "Fly"(AIR), "Haste"(Air), and a handful of the Water magic spells but none of those are as important as their Earth magic counterparts(re: Town Portal is much more valuable than any other spell in game).

2)Balistics - Without this skill your ground troops will be stuck outside of the castle walls when you are attacking a town/castle, waiting for turn after turn for all the walls to be destroyed and then finally the drawbridge to come down. Unless you are enormously powerful you will lose troops by the score due to enemy towers and ranged units.

3)Air Magic - Need this one to cast Dimension door multiple times in a single turn, as well as cast "Haste" on ALL your troops with a single casting, rather than one at a time. Also spells like Chain Lightning are much more effective.

4)Water Magic - Spells like "Bless", "Teleport"(I think this one is a Water spell?! Been a while since I played...), "Frost Ring"(which I rarely use but it can come in handy sometimes), "Prayer" and such are much better with Water skill.

There are a few more that are arguably better than Logistics but I will leave that there for now.

Now for SECONDARY heroes(re: not your main hero but the ones you buy/recruit afterward), you will want to have at least one or two "Scouts" whose job is to explore/reveal the map and collect whatever resources or capture any mines they can manage to get. Scouts should have "Scouting", "Logistics", "Diplomacy"(to recruit stacks of neutral armies who would otherwise want to fight or run away) and the "Visions" spell(to see which stacks are willing to join and which are not).
Other skills that go well with scouts are "Estates"(not much for a single hero but having four scouts with Estates will net you a few thousand extra each day) and(on 'Water' maps w/ Islands) "Navigation".

I am probably forgetting one or two skills here so bear with me.

Also it is a good idea to have one hero whose job is to be garrisoned at a(or at EACH) town you own. This garrisoned hero should have "Artillery" skill(gives control over the towers so you can aim at which of the attacking units you want to whittle down), "First Aid"(heals up damage to creatures and gives control of first aid tent, provided you have a first aid tent), Whatever magic skills you can get, as well as skills like "Armorer", "Sorcery" and "Archery".
Of course the garrison hero becomes unnecessary after your main gets the town portal spell with expert earth magic(he can just portal to every town he needs to to destroy would-be attackers).

I wrote a novel on Heroes III strategies and build orders and such a while ago but accidentally deleted the post before I was finished with it. Maybe if I find time later I will re-write it and post it here.

A few quick notes:

"Conflux" is a sort of 'Cheaters' town". One almost cannot be beat when starting with this one because you can be cranking out 4 7th level units per week starting at the beginning of week two if you really want(all other towns limit you to 2 or 3 7th level units per week and you won't be building them until a few weeks in at least).

"Necropolis", and the Necromantic heroes and units are fantastic! The one faction that can have legions of troops within a week or two if things go decently. Give a necromancer/Death Knight the CLoak of the Undead King as well as the armor of the damned and the game is over.

Do not bother with Ammo carts. They only provide targets for Magogs and Power Liches to wipe out your troops.

EDIT: And yeah, what Mystal said above about map sizes and specifics is true. "Logistics" is never a good choice on a small map or one that is mostly water for example.

I've gotta disagree on this one. Ballistics can be useful to have in the early game or if your army is focused heavily on ground melee troops, but is significantly less useful in the late game (when tower damage becomes insignificant) and for armies focused more on ranged and flying units. There are also plenty of tactics to deal with enemies entrenched behind walls (even for mostly melee armies) that don't rely on ballistics. So while ballistics may be useful for particular army builds and strategies I certainly wouldn't consider it a globally useful skill, and definitely not on the level of usefulness as Logistics.

It should also be pointed out that even if a hero has expert Earth and Air magic, along with Town Portal and Dimension Door, Logistics is still an incredibly useful skill. Town Portal may be indispensable for getting around territory you already control and have towns in, but it doesn't help at all when pushing into new territory. Dimension Door, even at Expert level, still has a limit of 4 castings per day, after which you'll still need to rely on your normal movement; Dimension Door is also absolutely useless if you happen to have to cross over some cursed ground. At the end of the day increased movement greatly enhances the effectiveness of a hero, and Logistics provides a very nice 30% boost at expert level. Also gotta disagree with this one. Ammo carts aren't that important in the early game when battles get resolved fairly quickly, but can be incredibly useful in the late game. If/when you get into a slugging match with an army of roughly equal power (we all prefer to avoid this, but sometimes it's necessary) the last thing you want is your archers running out of shots halfway through the battle. The issue with Magogs and Power Liches is certainly something to be mindful of, but this can be resolved easily enough by ordering your troops so that troops that will be moving quickly are the ones next to the Ammo Cart, or alternatively if you chose Tactics as a skill you can simply rearrange your army prior to battle so that there are no juicy targets for enemies with area effect attacks.

Be careful with ballistics and the ballista.

One of the best spells in the game is Blind. If you blind ranged attackers, their threat goes away and all you have to worry about is the tower shooters, if any.

However, if you have a ballista and do not have the ballistics skill, the ballista will shoot at whatever it feels like shooting at, breaking the Blind spell time after time and bringing the enemy's shooters back into the battle.

Because of that, I rarely buy a ballista and consider it a huge impediment to my game. My ideal choice is to get the Blind spell ASAP and use it like crazy, then get Earth Mastery so I can resurrect any troops the towers shoot down while I wait for the castle to break. Quite often you lose zero troops.

Meanwhile, with the castle shooters blinded, the enemy will rush out to tangle with your troops. That's when you can use your own shooters not to fight back other shooters but to whittle down the enemy's charging troops.

Even better when you get slow. Sometimes your ranged units will cut the enemy down without your even needing melee troops. Those that die, you resurrect. When all melee troops are dead, march your melee troops up to enemy's blinded shooters. Either slow their shooters or haste your troops so you can get as many as possible to strike first before they can retaliate effectively. Often it comes down to one or two stacks of shooters or extra strong units wiping out a stack all in one round with no losses. If losses: resurrect. Move to next stack.

If you've got a ballista in there without ballista mastery or whatever it's called, you can't do any of this. And the ballista is a minor benefit compared to never losing troops. Very minor. It does minimal damage compared to your troops and takes up one more slot you could use to maneuver your troops in.

Blind/slow/resurrect with earth mastery.

P.S. Earth mastery also lets you use town portal, perhaps the best spell in the game, multiple times per turn, to any town you like.

Slow is also in the Earth school.

I didn't read the thread so I don't know if this has been said already (or how many times it's been said), but:

Ranged attacks! Ranged attacks rule the game, especially early on since most low level creatures are slowish, thus making them take more turns to reach your arrow-slingers. Add to this a spell like slow and it gets ugly, especially on expert earth level.

So when you have ranged creatures try to take on creatures/armies with slow walking troops to maximize your advantage.

---

Keep track of the number of retaliations the enemy troop stacks have. A cheap tactic is dividing your troops into 1 or 2 big stacks and have the rest as just groups of 1. Spend the enemy's retaliations by attacking them with the solo groups, then move on for the kill with the bigger stacks with no fear of losing them in the retaliation.

Take advantage of the special abilities your creatures have, such as resurrection with arch angels, life leeching with vampires etc. With these kind of troops try to end the combat with as little losses as possible. If you can kill the enemy completely this turn but miss out on a chance to ressurrect some of your vampires wait for the next turn and kill the enemy with the vampires!

And that's enough text for now.

Blind is...not a bad spell by any means, but not one of the strongest spells IMO. You can only target a single unit while "Cure" and such will not only remove blindness on the ranged unit but will also remove ALL bad effects on your entire army with expert Water magic. Plus I would laugh my ass off if I ran into someone using blind on my catapults! And the comp/AI never does this anyway. In the late game it matters not anyway. *shrug*. Yep, as I have been saying(and most Heroes 3 vets know) Earth magic is tops! I would only take Fire Magic(what "Blind" falls under) in rare or very particular circumstances though. Only garrisoned heroes should ever have Artillery skill and I would very rarely have to worry about any of your above concerns anyway. Agreed. TBH I rarely even bother with garrisoned heroes w/ artillery anyway(because I tend to just kill everyone quickly anyway, even on large and huge maps I have little need for them any more). Yeah it only matters when I am unable to town portal my main back but it is nice for a garrison hero to be able to target the threatening units(ranged and preferably weaker units) rather than wasting the tower fire on ogres or some such. What happened to my reply to this post?

Using the wait command is useful, especially for ranged creatures against (not-super-fast) non-ranged ones. If you can make the enemy come to the full damage range (broken arrow cursor vs. arrow cursor) by waiting, you can deal double damage or so in that turn. After they're in range there's little use for the wait, though, or if you have some artifact that makes ranged deal full damage anyway.

It's also useful for other troops against slower ones, as it's nicer to be the one getting the first hit.

/edit: and if you have expert tactics, you can move your archers forward to get in range. especially useful when against slower ranged units and having full damage makes the difference between killing everyone before they get to fire at all and losing troops.

The bit about the ballista breaking the blind spell is not about casting or breaking the blind spell on the ballista itself ... but about your own ballista breaking the blind spell you've just cast on your enemy by shooting, say, his stack of blinded archers. Blind becomes useless when you have uncontrollable ballistas.

That's why I never buy ballistas and rarely buy heroes who have them. Blind is a game-changing spell that is much too powerful to do without, much less have blown "on purpose" by one's own uncontrollable ballista.