Let's see if this works, posts have been failing me for a while. I am trying to figure out combat in HOMM3. So far it seems completely unbalanced and random, where 5 dwarves can kill just about my whole army. I end up having to sit in town for a week for troops to respawn. Is there some trick I don't know? I read the manual, but as far as i can tell, my troops basically suck no matter which race I am or what hero I play. I would like to enjoy this game, please help me out!

Thanks,
Matt

ps: do you really have to go back to town every time you want to refresh your spell points? Seem like it would make playing a magic hero super-frustrating.

Dwarves are quite hard for their level, with good AC and some magic resistance. But they are slow. A good
tactic is to exploit that and use more mobile missile troops against them.
Some spells will also improve the effectiveness of your own troops.
It also sounds like you need to level your Hero more. Taking XP instead of gold from chest means increased chance of increasing Attack and Defense, for example.

Thanks for the advice! I always take xp rather than money, so it is good to know that is sound. I usually try to get as many archers as possible, and I have my spear troops running interference, but even my expensive troops like griffins and such get chewed up by small numbers of enemy creatures. Should I just avoid fighting until I have 70 or 80 each of my cheap troops?

Thanks,
Matt

I didn't play HOMM3 as much as others but take over as much towns as possible, not too fast or else you can't defend them. Why? besides more troops each week you also get a huge income to buy said troops plus it's usually less defended than gold mines.

It can take a while to get a feel for the capabilities of all of the creatures in HoMM, and until you do there will be a lot of trial and error (e.g. thinking that your army of 50 pikemen and 20 marksmen should be enough to handle just a few titans). The capabilities of your army also vary quite a bit depending on how developed your hero is; pit a fresh hero against a veteran one (say, with 50 atk and defense, and expert offense and defense) and watch the veteran hero mop the floor with the fresh one with only a fraction of their troops. You'll also need to develop good tactics and learn how to best use the various units at your disposal; Griffins may be able to get very close to the enemy on their first move, but this doesn't do much good if all it does is let every unit in the enemy army beat on them while they're isolated away from your other troops. Try to avoid battles of attrition by making good use of archers and units that don't allow for retaliation, and in cases where you do need to trade blows let a unit with good defense and health attack first to take the counterattack, with the rest of your units attacking after that.

As for recovering mana, you automatically recover 1 point per day, although this can be increased with the Mysticism skill (useless, IMO), as well as some artifacts. Visiting wells refreshes your mana instantly, and visiting a magic spring recovers your mana to twice its normal amount. There's also the Intelligence skill which boost your maximum amount of mana (combined with high Knowledge and the occasional visit to a magic spring and this can give you massive amounts of mana).

It's usually worth it to get large enough armies and skilled enough heroes, to win battles with few or even no troop losses.

In a battle where you have superior archers (range attack creatures) don't move towards the enemy. Let him come to you. Use "slow" spell if you can.

Like DarrkPhoenix said: use your archers and guard them well. Before the battle split your troops (ex: 14 pikemen in: 1, 10, 1, 1, 1). Move all single creatures near your archers (surround them) so they won't be attacked by enemy and forced to fight in melee. Protect your archers as much as you can.
Use "wait". Archers do half damage when they shoot far away troops (the arrow is broken). If the enemy can't get you in the next turn, then let your archers wait, enemy move closer, then shoot with full damage.

Same with melee troops. Wait with all your army, 5 dwarves come closer, attack the 5 dwarves with 1 pikeman, dwarves retaliate and the 1 pikeman dies, then attack with 10 pikemen, 1 dwarf dies, and the remaining dwarves don't retaliate because they do that only once per turn and they did that already on 1 pikeman.
Next turn begins: Attack with 1 pikeman, dwaves rataliate, then with 10 pikemen, another dwarf dies and no retaliation.
You killed 2 dwarves and you only lost 2 pikemen, which are weaker creatures.
I hope you got the point.

Good hero skills are very important in battle: try to get offence, armorer and archery (if you have 2 types of range attack creatures in your army).

That's a great post. I've never really understood the value of wait and I've been playing this game since HOMM 1 originally came out.

Strongly agree, also, with using slow and keeping archers safe by surrounding. I often use the skill "tactics" to do this when I'm lucky enough to get it. Great skill even for a caster hero.

Another tactic I recommend is getting a fast character of some type and/or hasting a character, then running him between and around and behind the advancing enemy. Count up his movement by hex and keep him just out of reach while your archers lay waste to the pursuing enemy. Take care to keep your "follow the leader" decoy from getting too close to your other troops, so the enemy doesn't decide to go for them instead. Use the time created to move your other troops to surround your archers.

I tend to put my archers 1st and 3rd from the top slots so I can move them together quickly when necessary. The reason I don't put them 1st and 2nd position? Meteor shower. Hit and run fights in which the enemy can zap you with a single powerful spell and then run away can be damaging over time.

Make getting earth magic and air magic skills a priority. Don't miss great skills to do it, but once you have a good complement of them, make getting expert status in those schools of magic a priority. Earth will let you cast cheap army-wide slow to delay your enemy so your archers can decimate them before they come near, while air will let you, once the enemy is close enough to strike in the next turn, cast cheap army-wide haste so your slow archers can get in a last volley before the enemy's melee troops start pounding them. Haste is also great for taking out enemy archers so your enemy cannot damage you (or damage you much) before his slowed footsoldiers reach you. Properly managed slow and haste are often enough to win a battle against far superior troops.

Not to mention, the highest levels of the earth (resurrection, town portal, implosion, earth elemental) and air (fly, dimension door) top-level spells are enormously powerful, all but earth elemental almost assuring all by themselves that you've won the game. And earth elemental is the only good summoned elemental and a great help in preserving your troops or even turning hopeless battles around with minimal troop loss.

Hmm, I tend to have more sucess with the opposite strategy of taking at least in the beginning the gold. More gold means more creatures, which win battles faster and that way with less losses. Also you can take out stronger enemies sooner. Which will give you extra EXP anyway. Going for EXP is surely fun, but my point of view is just that even the best skills don't make up for what you lose in troop strength without being able to invest this extra gold in your army. Also the higher you get with your heroes levels, the less you gain out of the gold relatively to what you need to climb up a level.

Actually, I usually go for the gold myself, since I nearly always start on the highest difficulty. But if you're a noob, playing on Easy and thus should have lots of gold, I think boosting that lvl 1 Hero will be more useful.

But it all depends on the situation, of course.

And there are many considerations to make. Like spending gold to complete castle ASAP, so that you get max creature production ASAP? Or spend the gold on creatures and expand as fast as you can, hoping to get control of other castles?

Solution to that issue is simple. The experience or money gain in the chests are experience/gold 500/1000 1000/1500 and 1500/2000. Which overall means that taking experience when you encounter a 500/1000-chest is kinda waste.
My tactic is to take experience when it gives 1000/1500 or 1500/2000, and gold when it gives 500/1000.

Once a character gets to about level 20 (which usually only happens in the campaigns) I start taking the gold every time. The later campaign missions (especially in SoD and AB) have so many huge stacks of monsters that the XP you get dwarfs the XP from chests, and the XP curve gets humongous past level 20 to boot. The gold, on the other hand, is always helpful for acquiring more troops to beat those humongous stacks.

In the early stages I generally take the XP unless it's a 500/1000 chest, though.

I agree with Petrus and Sakkraner. At the very beginning gold is extremely important. It allows you to buy creatures that are necessary in early exploration and in the same time build structures in your town. And you can gain experience fighting the stacks of monsters guarding mines etc. I find the first few weeks the most important phase of the game. If you lose liquidity and won't be able to upgrade you towns and explore because of lack of gold you are screwed especially on higher levels.

My strategy is to take gold from 500/1000 chests, gold or experience (50/50) from 1000/1500 chests and gold or experience (25/75) from 1000/15000 chests. This way I have balance between heroes/army and town development.

It helps if you don't lose too many troops in petty encounters. With the right tactics you can win many battles with zero losses.

---------------------------


> Here's a clever map that has a training regimen to teach you how to kill max monsters with minimum casualties and other stuff.

http://heroes-iii.com/dl/h3basic.h3m

Heroes3 Basic Training Map
>> This is a training map made by Ironwill in the hopes of helping players learn a few basic things not taught in the tutorial of the game. Be sure to try out all 3 colors; Red, Blue and Tan as all 3 offer different training screnarios. You will learn the basics of chaining items to heroes, hero movement allowances, terrain and its effects on movement and combat in relation to different creatures and finally you will learn pretty much all stages of basic combat and proven strategies to lessen losses and extend your hero's fighting.

I'm like Artki. I try to lose zero troops in the beginning by using mostly archers, and concentrating on picking up the nearby resources and mines ASAP so I can build all the creature dwellings I need ASAP. Archers, especially with SLOW, are my best friend.

If the weak stacks of enemies aren't guarding anything vital, like a mine, I generally leave them alone. I'll attack them later when they are huge and give much more significant experience, and will generally do it with a secondary or tertiary character I want to build up as a second hero or a strong castle defender. Or, even better, with a necro character who can turn a huge stack into a hundred skeletons.

And I also try to get or start with a character who has diplomacy. That way those puny character stacks often join for free and can be turned into skeletons for my necro secondary and immediately boost his power. But they're worth a lot more when they join me much later in the game, so I leave them be for a long time if at all possible.

Diplomacy is a huge power booster and money-saver. Nothing like getting hundreds of free troops! Or being able to buy or get for free a stack that would have really hurt your fighting power. Happens outside great things like gold mines, sometimes, that you may really need badly.