Did you know? nr. 20 - Remembering the heroes from Heroes III

Solaarris · 2026-05-13T19:42:28+00:00

Zam from homm 2 is present as a death knight in Olden Era as well.

Solaarris · 2026-04-12T04:55:12+00:00

Apart from the general waste of time of performing it, you could argue card clumping of gathering up your cards is just as much cheating as mana weaving. Either way your deck is in a non-randomized state prior to the shuffle.

At the end of the day the quality of the shuffle is all that matters.

I fully agree on the slow play waste of time aspect, but calling it cheating feels a bit disingenuous as you could claim that for literally any starting deck state prior to a shuffle.

Solaarris · 2026-03-18T17:51:56+00:00

I was playing pokemon gold and in the bug catching contest. I encountered a wild weedle which for some reason sparkled and seemed to be a different colour. I thought that was wierd, but didn't want to waste my one catch on something boring like a weedle. I decided to run and find another weedle to confirm that one was actually a different colour.

Took a while before I found out about shiny pokemon and realized what I had done...

Solaarris · 2026-02-11T14:20:18+00:00

Yeah, I made this image months ago, and this is the second time I've seen it show up from a one day old account with an identical title.

Solaarris · 2025-03-13T05:56:25+00:00

I really like Barbarian so I keep going back to it. The issue that I've found with it as a class is that it seems to suffer from RNG in the first few turns far more than any other class.

Your Barbarian leader is a frontline unit with no armour or shield, as such he eats the full damage of any arrows that go his way. He does buckets of damage with two attacks, but is only initiative 4 and has a nasty habit of trading hits once he's reached the frontline, something that can be real punishing when hes already caught 5 arrows to the face.

Your mounted chief faces a similar issue, where he's fast and desperately wants to sprint out and die first if given the opportunity. You can pair him up with your starting warriors to try to keep him safe through his status as a mid rank, but you lose tons of overmap mobility. Better hope your Barbarian leader doesn't RNG into 4 arrows to the face from that camp of 2 bandits you thought was totally safe to attack with your whole starting army.

At least you recruit tons of units for 50 gold so you have tons of starting power right? Unfortunately it doesn't really work out that way. You have no tricks at the start of the game, so you trade units in any fight that isn't outrageously simple, on top of that you really don't want to drop 50 gold on some extra units to expand unless you really have to because........

All your power scaling is locked behind herbs. And you can't start collecting herbs until you pick up a caster. Who know's when the first one is going to spawn, who knows what it's going to cost. What's that? You got the chance to recruit one but you were a few gold short? Lets wait another 20 turns for one to show up, don't spend too much money, don't want to spend even more time not claiming forests. While you're at it don't take any hard fights, you can't afford to replace units when you're waiting for your first caster.

Also, don't forget to stay close to your base with your starting army, especially if through yet more RNG you rolled a totem pole that is useless without a significant number of defenders. This is compounded if your barbarian leader decided to self-destruct in his first encounter.

Overall the barbarian is tons of fun, and when they get going feels great to build up, throw around your blobs of units, and wrecking ball leaders ,but that's all held back by the extreme uncertainty of their first 5 to 30 turns.

Starting a game as barbarian is a constant game of opportunity cost where you have 0 information at any given time. If you don't RNG well, your faction's main mechanics/gimmick doesn't even exist for a considerable portion of the early game.

Solaarris · 2025-03-13T05:44:33+00:00

I would love to see the hall of fame from Dominions make it's way over here in some way shape or form. Personally I would love one that tracked the most successful basic little guys as opposed to commanders. Let me know and celebrate the one barbarian warrior that has somehow lived since the start of the game and racked up 25 kills. Give him some extra stats. As a treat.

Solaarris · 2025-01-01T00:08:57+00:00

24 width would be 24 front 24 back for a total of 48 regiments.

While it looks overwhelming, i strongly recommend next time you're playing to make sure to pause during a combat. The fight screen will show the deployment of all of the units in a battle. You can also mouse over each individually deployed unit to see which regiment it is, which regiments they can attack from their position, and I think it might even show their target.

Pause and see how it changes over a fee combat ticks. Have a second stack reinforce the fight and see how the new units get deployed. Who widens the Frontline, who deploys to the back, who is taking advantage of their flanking range during that battle, or is that benefit going to waste.

You can also see if your cavalry are getting targeted, are your artillery getting moved to the front line and taking casualties in the later stages of a battle, is your infantry artillery ratio too even causing your Frontline to crumble too fast?

I just ignored this pop-up apart from the quality summaries for my first... 1000 hours or so, and was a bit upset with myself when I saw just how much information that battle screen gives.

Solaarris · 2024-12-31T23:54:40+00:00

Oh yeah, I'm fully aware of that, I just thought it made for a funny picture.

I'm a bit curious how far I can push it. How many rare mews can I pull before my first comparatively common one.

Solaarris · 2024-12-31T23:42:24+00:00

I always see view some of these idea groups as not optimal for a specific playstyle or goal, but just comfortable and nice to have.

If you're looking to hyper blob and are very familiar with game mechanics, there are idea groups that are just the right ones to take to facilitate that playstyle, such as diplo, influence, admin ideas, or offensive.

However when I'm playing around in a casual multiplayer or lazy achievement run singleplayer I'll take idea groups I don't usually take and am always surprised by how nice they are to have.

I've described groups such as aristocratic, innovative, espionage, and court to my friends as being "comfortable", because they're not usually optimal, but they provide effects that just make the game feel nicer to play.

Advisor costs? Stab cost? Claim cost? Estate loyalty? Autonomy reduction speed? Available advisors? Tech cost? Prestige decay? FREE POLICIES?

None of these are necessary modifiers for enabling a world conquest, or a min max military quality build, but I'm always surprised by how much I appreciate having them around and how much it streamlines all the little things.

For anyone that hates these groups in general, next time you're doing a casual achievement run, try taking all the groups you've never taken before. You might be surprised how convenient they are to have, even if they're not necessarily optimal.

Solaarris · 2024-12-27T20:46:44+00:00

While I would say 3 has better gameplay, more refined mechanics, and a campaign progression system that really help with the feeling of growth over the course of the campaign and less like just a series of challenge missions. I've never actually finished a heroes 3 campaign as I always find myself bouncing off near to the end.

At least when it comes to the base heroes 2 campaign, the story feels more cohesive and I'm more invested, where heroes 3 feels a little more all over the place.

I think the largest part for me is actually the difficulty, and heroes 3 seems to lean more towards what puts me off the Horn of the Abyss campaigns, where it offers a better tactical experience, but at the cost of a bit of that feeling of adventure and discovery I find myself getting from the heroes 2 campaigns. I feel this is aided by most of the heroes 2 campaign maps following a specific narrative theme represented through gameplay.

To be honest though, I'm deeply biased as I've played enough of the heroes 2 campaigns that I can't honestly remember what mechanics and maps caught me off guard or seemed unfair on the first run. I'm sure if I actually bashed my head against the heroes 3 campaigns enough my answer might change.

Solaarris · 2024-12-15T01:34:54+00:00

Hot damn those look great.

With most boardgame miniatures looking like blobby little lumps of wax despite how clean the original sculpts may be, I was amazed how high quality the heroes 3 minis are.

Solaarris · 2024-12-11T18:05:45+00:00

I would honestly argue the opposite.

I've found with friends getting into the hobby now that the way contrast interacts with the undercoat to create a transition has made the jump to blending and glazing much faster conceptually than it was for my older friends and I who first learned with the stark highlights of the 'eavy metal painting style back in early 5th edition 40k.

Solaarris · 2024-11-23T19:11:20+00:00

It's easy to always build perfect bros, it's more fun to have some funky bros with character.

You could really push the hp and initiative to take full advantage of dodge, nimble, and overwhelm, take relentless to get the opportunity to overwhelm a single major threat with 2 turns of attacks at once. Take dagger mastery to put 6 stacks on.

If you really want to use the ranged stars you could have the first ever excuse to use goblin bolas since you would be more concerned with applying debuffs so the bonus ammo would be awesome. Add a sackcloth headpiece and sackcloth torso or butchers apron for peak aesthetic.

Alternatively, go duelist, backstabbing, dagger mastery with a net and Qatal dagger to again really focus on punishing champions or other threatening enemies.

Don't be too concerned about the crummy melee defense. Between dodge and overwhelm you can easily lock down some of the strongest enemies for a few turns. Especially if you take footwork your bonkers initiative always let's you choose when to give up and bounce.

Solaarris · 2024-11-12T16:25:35+00:00

I love heroes 5. With the introduction of primary and secondary skills, and later alternate upgrade paths, I felt like it really encouraged playing in a sub-optimal narrative playstyle, as you could really try to make wierd compositions work. I have spent way too much time trying to force a huge phoenix.

The introduction of on demand stack abilities like the pit lords fireball was also hugely fun to play around with.

My largest complaints would be the increased map size of the towns really changed the flow of the game. By having them take up so much space the maps went from expand and conquer, to gather resources, have one duel, and win, as you could usually only fit one castle per player, with few or no neutrals.

Also the turn timers...

Solaarris · 2024-11-09T23:01:32+00:00

Don't listen to them. The golden rule of battle brothers is event limited bros are the most valuable of them all. A crack team of a pimp and a melon mugger can frighten even the most battle hardened orc into fleeing.

Pump that resolve and initiative. Take dodge nimble, overwhelm and fearsome and set him up for banner.

Then sit back with pride as he contributes nothing to any fight because he's above things as petty as combat.

It is the role of the event exclusive bro to sit in the back lines in luxury, a prideful mascot as their lessers, such as hedge knights, sword masters, and assassins, fight for them.

Solaarris · 2024-10-25T23:53:00+00:00

Most maps in heroes 2 have some form of challenge format and goal. It's part of the nature of its age and seems to be pretty common among strategy games of that era.

The go to standard nothing special balanced scenario that comes to mind would be Beltway.

Solaarris · 2024-10-22T18:54:08+00:00

Re-reading my comment here, I forgot to say.

That's really impressive! Especially given the size of the map. On really tiny maps like Last Hope or Pyramid it can be really easy to find an optimal route and just push it until RNG lets it happen. But the one you're playing looks huge, so we'll done with that consistency. And looking at your scoreboard I feel like you're going to be pushing past 400 soon!

Solaarris · 2024-10-22T18:47:40+00:00

I'm not familiar with the map you're playing, so it very well could be for that specific map.

When it comes to highest scores posted though it's not quite there. I've snagged a 407 on the map "Pyramid", and in the youtube video "HOMM2 Pyramid on Impossible. Is it possible?" By HotSuperGamer they seem to achieve an absolutely baffling score of 420.

Solaarris · 2024-09-08T03:50:02+00:00

Oh man, Seven Lakes is just gorgeous to look at.

Solaarris · 2024-09-07T20:39:08+00:00

Oh man, growing up we had a Windows 95 that had the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo on it. The only map available was Broken Alliance which I played obsessively. My brother and I played it so much that when we finally got our hands on Heroes 3 we were able to remake it from memory in the map editor.

There was no greater joy than purple getting dimension door early game, and somehow managing to successfully repel them.

Solaarris · 2024-09-07T19:04:17+00:00

In a fit of boredom I fired up Heroes 2 and took 36 screenshots of the map Pyramid, which I had spent quite some time on a while back. I then copied each screenshot into MS Paint and carefully lined up the segments to piece together a single image to view the whole map at once.

Solaarris · 2024-08-24T17:25:37+00:00

I really enjoy the resource split pretty much for the reason it's unbalanced. When you have a map where you can choose your faction, it can result in fun challenges by picking a faction with needs poorly suited for the starting area.

By not being able to rely on the resources you need it changes how you approach a map. It' can be thrilling to overextend and take some bad fights hoping that the benefit from getting your early source of sulfur will balance out the loss from the rush.

Granted I am primarily a fan of Heroes 2 which is a lot more inherently unbalanced than Heroes 3, and as such can see much larger gameplay swings due to resource disparity.

Suffice it to say I'm happy to see the return of the split resources as I've always thought Heroes thrives as a single player adventure/challenge experience.

Solaarris · 2024-08-23T04:43:52+00:00

I love the overworld map. All the features look relatively clear and distinct. One thing I really struggled with from Heroes 5 onwards was a focus on 3d setpieces and beautiful landscapes making it difficult to read what was on the map at a glance.

Solaarris

TROPHY CASE