why create yet another homm6 thread? we all know it only has homm in the title.
no dragons,
no 7recources,
no city building like in homm 1-2-3-4( i prefer 2d city rather than rotating 3d one building with branches)
no normal battlefield with 8sides, only primitive 4side for children.
etc. etc. i dont even want to write full list of great things they removed to make homm6 be "great" game.

Nice :)
I'm tempted to fix the sentence even more but I can't really come up with anything else to add. Besides, I'm not sure if I dare to challenge the quote system further ahead than this.

Yes it is a sad and hopeless struggle. But remember, if we can't fight them in this world anymore there are other planes, other fields.

Do you know Fantasy General?
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/fantasy-general
It is not really comparable to the HOMM series, since it seem to be much more focused on tactics than strategy (probably closer to The Battle for Wesnoth) but it looks like a game that could appeal to many of the same people. The graphics are gorgeous and the music is supposed to be very good, reusing many classical compositions. (Paul Romero and Rob King did something similar for the soundtrack for HOMM II)
Hopefully it will be a part of GOG soon since Fantasy General II, made by the same people on the same engine is here already.

You probably know about Age of Wonders and it's sequels. A little more time-consuming and deeper than the HOMM series but the chances are high that you would like it.
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/age_of_wonders

The franchise died with 3DO\NWC. A shame Ubisoft of all companies had to be the ones to buy the IP...

Go for it, I dare you :)

- HoMM3 had seven resources. All of them but gold and whatever you needed for buildings were pretty useless for the most part, because you really didn't NEED any of the other ones for much, and when you did you could just buy them from a marketplace, using gold.

- There really wasn't a lot of interesting decisions behind upgrading your towns in the earlier HoMM games anyway. Maybe it was different in multiplayer, but in single I'd basically just build everything without a lot of thought to WHAT my build order was and never had any issues from this.

- Given how the HoMM battle system works, the difference between squares and hexes would be pretty negligible.

Have you played HoMM3 more than a few random maps on easy difficulty? Otherwise I can't figure out how did you reached this conclusion... I disagree with every one of your statements.

I played the campaigns. Battles seemed more determined by numbers and whatever spells/skills the heroes had than anything else, and to a slightly lesser extent whatever unique properties/abilities the units had (which was still sort of a factor numbers). The actually positioning of the units never seemed to matter in enough of a way that a change from hexes to squares would really matter much anyway. HoMM1 through 3 had fairly tiny strategic maps anyway. The SPEED at which a stack could move across the map mattered, yeah, but again, changing from hexes to squares doesn't seem relevant to that.

A quick glance at gamefaqs seems to indicate that most of the resources really aren't going to be used for a lot. You need them for *building* stuff, but getting enough of the given resources for THAT is trivial enough to do and doesn't really require any sort of resource control. Each race only needs one of the resources besides gold for building their top-tier unit. And again, securing enough for that isn't really difficult unless you're playing as a very multi-race empire, because you can just buy them from the marketplace.

I'm less sure about the town building stuff. Maybe you could list some of your particular strategies for that?

1) squares vs hexes: If on a squares battle field diagonal attacking is permitted then there is no problem. This will actually create more attacking opportunities than with hexes. If not, then this will be a major limitation that will make positioning have an even less impact on the battle tactics. This remain to be seen how it will end up, but hexes worked very well before.

2) resource management in homm3 was pretty well done. If you upgrade mage guild in every town you conquer then you will need every little stone/resource you could gather. Buying them from the marketplace is not an option for large quantities because of the penalty (exception when you have lots of marketplaces and the rates become more humane). The fact that every race need more of one specific resource it is a nice touch that gives some variation.

3) town building strategy in homm3 is not offering a lot of variation to play with but it is important in certain situations where you have to decide if you need to focus on gold production or creature production in the first weeks. A wrong building strategy at the beginning of the game may have repercussions in the following weeks making the difference between winning or loosing. Building the town sometimes forces you to take tactical decisions what buildings to have ready before the end of the week or before your hero leaves the castle. You may find yourself in situations to decide between building another level to the mage guild before the hero leaves or build another building, or to decide to build or not in order to preserve a scarce resource. This adds depth to the game an it is an important part of the strategy early in the game. It really makes a difference in the hands of a skilled player.

Had a quick play of the demo. There are 4 town types and 4 resource types. Hero skills have more depth (might\magic heroes are more distinct for starters). There are also more options when choosing a scenario (for example, you can add both battle\turn time limits, autoresolve some or all battles, and change resource placement). The demo scenario map is Broken Alliance from HOMM2 with some minor changes, so it does seem like Blackhole\Ubisoft are wanting it to appeal to the existing Heroes fanbase.

What modern square-based games DON'T allow for diagonal attacks, though? That's such a given that if you couldn't attack diagonally it'd be weird (unless they were going for something like certain units can attack diagonally, or in a certain pattern of squares around them, or something. Which actually works out pretty well in the few games I've seen it in, since positioning can get really important).

The Necro 003 screenshot from
http://might-and-magic.ubi.com/heroes-6/en-GB/media/screenshots/index.aspx
shows that diagonal attacking is possible.
:)