Heroes Of Might and Magic

[Chowlett]

Is it now available on abandonware? I haven't seen it in the shops, and I have found two or three links to it, but all appeared to be broken.

[pchang]

If you are too cheap to buy it, switch to Master of Magic (MOM). It is available for free.

[Chowlett]

It's not that I'm too cheap, I just haven't seen it around. And I have MoM, but I haven't reconfigged this machine for the extra 7k of RAM I need.

[Father Beast]

I picked up the Millenium edition used about 6 months ago. I am sure that they are still selling the Heroes 3 complete (heroes 3 with 2 add on packs), as I saw it in media play recently.
You can aways go to ebworld.com and look for it.

BTW, MOM is NOT like HOMM, except vaguely. AoW is something like a combination of MoM and HoMM.
did I have enough acronyms in that last bit?

[Father Beast]

AARRGGHH....
I was playing the around the beltway map for HOMM2, and My top hero with about 6 artifacts happens upon this sphinx. He fails to answer the riddle of the sphinx, and he's gone! no fight, just my best hero gone forever, apparently. he's not available for rehire anywhere.
it's things like this that make me want to quit and start over...

[Father Beast]

How long does one of these games usually last for you guys? I was playing a medium map, and it took me 8 months to finish, and I still didn't explore the whole map!
seems like those XL games could drag on for years in game time

[Rex Little]

Well, the longest time recorded in my archives is 167 days (just under 6 months) for an L game. I'm playing my first XL game now; we'll see how long it takes.

[Father Beast]

Rex, you must be able to hit them hard and fast. my 8 month game was on "around the beltway" in HOMM2, and I still hadn't gotten the best monster out of most of my cities.
actually, only 1 of my cities had the best monster available (Crusaders). the closest I got on any of the others was giants and red dragons. just short of Titans and Black Dragons.

sure is fun, though...

[Rex Little]

I was referring to HOMM3, which I've played a lot more than 2. I'll have to check if my archives for HOMM2 are still on the machine, and see what my game times were.

[Father Beast]

I haven't actually played HOMM3 yet, except for the demo. I started this by playing 1, and then when I went to 2, I was pleased by the improvements. most notably the spell points business, which was a fantastic improvement over 1.
When I played the Demo for 3, It didn't seem like that much of an improvement. Oh, sure, it was prettier, and a few changes in castle amnagement were vaguely better, but a lot of things annoyed me. like all the undead units healing themselves. seemed like it gave them an unfair advantage. maybe I just don't understand it that well, but it wasn't as much fun as 2.

I guess I'm going to fire it up again and give it another try. that's happened to me more than once with deep games. they fail to suck me in on first blush.

[Rex Little]

The only undead which heal themselves are the Wraiths and the Vampire Lords. (The VLs do it by life-stealing, and they can resurrect fallen ones that way, so a large group of them is really nasty.) Many other unit types have special advantages of one kind or another: hitting twice, cursing, blinding, turning to stone, etc.

[pchang]

Originally posted by Chowlett
It's not that I'm too cheap, I just haven't seen it around. And I have MoM, but I haven't reconfigged this machine for the extra 7k of RAM I need.

I didn't mean to be insulting. Sorry. However, with respect to MoM and HoMM, I can only say that a game in hand is worth two in the bush.

[Father Beast]

Hey! I've been playing the lost continent scenario in HOMM2, and I may have backed myself into a corner. I have romped all over the continent, and have the enemies down to one or two castles. the turning point came when one of my big heroes took a castle which was built up ALL THE WAY. had about 30 black dragons available to recruit, as well. don't know why they didn't defend that one. just about bankrupted myself to buy most of them and went on a killing spree.

Anyway. its been over 7 months on the calendar, and some of these random monster stacks have gotten pretty big. I saw a "legion of peasants' in one spot. I'm saving that for my necromancer. I found a bunch of necromancer castles, but was unable to hire one until about month 5. I'm sending him against huge stacks of low level critters to build up his skeleton force.

the drawback to my spending so much time dicking around, is that I haven't tackled the dragon country in the middle, and I'm scared to do it now. all those dragon stacks in there are ather intimidating. there's throngs of red dragons and green dragons, and several hordes of black dragons. not a single stack of "lots" to be found.

I'm not sure what to do. maybe build an army of highest units from all the cities (like paladins, cyclops, pheonixes, black and bone dragons) and attack one stack at a time.
any suggestions?

[pchang]

Its the economy

The question is:
Can you build units faster than the random monsters in dragon country?
If the answer is yes, just go ahead an attack. Eventually you'll wear them down and win. If the answer is no, you must try to build a stack that is qualitatively better win battles with it. Hopefully, you will lose less units than the random monsters.

[Father Beast]

It's been going up to almost a year now....

I tried taking my top hero with a stack of paladins, and several stacks of hundreds of archers to take out this legion of giants, but only got him plastered with only 300 of the one stack of 400 titans dead, and 150 of the regular giants dead. I'm trying to build him back up with all top units, like I originally said, and go at it again.

I even traded artifacts among all my heroes so my main man has all the best. I'm thinking of loading down my lesser heroes with lower units for the purpose of wearing down those mighty stacks a bit.

another odd thing has been happening. in areas I'v already cleared out, monsters are apearring.I wasn't concerned about the odd legion of goblins or peasants, but now are appearing legions of medusas and ogres!

Maybe I'll send my top hero to them for more experience before he takes on the big guys...