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Heroes of Might and Magic I & II were two of the best time-suck games ever written. It was really easy to think to yourself, "Just one more turn…" over and over again until you realize the sun has set and risen again and you are about to face yet another day without the benefit of sleep. Heroes of Might and Magic III (Heroes III) happily continues in the tradition of it's predecessors by sucking away many, many hours as you play "just one more turn".

Like all good sequels, Heroes III keeps enough of what made the preceding game so much fun as well as adding in enough new stuff to keep things fresh. Devils, angels, and gremlins have joined the black dragons, titans, and skeletons from before. There is even a new twist on the old debate about which creature is the most powerful. In HoMM II, it was between the black dragon and the titan. In Heroes III, it's the titan versus the archangel. With that in mind, here's part one of our three-part strategy guide!

Part I: The Cities
Each of the eight cities of Heroes III has unique creatures and heroes that are associated with them. You have the fairly balanced castle creatures, the strong defenders of the fortress, and the magical resisting rampart. Although it might seem some town types are weak compared to others, if you understand how to play to their specific advantages, you can be successful with any of them.

Pay attention to the goal in the scenario. If all you need to do is flag all the mines or capture a specific town, it doesn't make sense to waste your time trying to conquer a well-defended enemy
The Dungeon: The Dungeon creatures are, overall, about average. They are fairly inexpensive, but are also only mediocre fighters. They do have the advantage of having two ranged attackers that do not suffer a melee penalty. They also have a very powerful seventh level creature in the black dragon. The black dragons are especially useful to heroes that are facing magic heroes because they are totally immune to the offensive spells preferred by those heroes. This is a double-edged sword, though, since your heroes cannot cast beneficial spells on them either.

The Dungeon also has some very useful buildings in it. You have the artifact merchants as a source of items and the portal of summoning to give you an additional source of creatures in the town. The resource silo produces 1 sulfur per day to help pay the resource cost of black dragons. The academy of battle scholars gives visiting heroes 1000 experience, guaranteeing that every hero who starts out here is at least level 2. Finally, the mana vortex is a very useful place for any of your magic heroes to visit any time they are nearby. It restores your spell points to double their normal maximum.

Before attacking an enemy hero or town, it is important to make sure that you are not running into too many enemy forces for your own hero to handle
The Castle: This is arguably the easiest town to win with. It is well balanced with two ranged attackers, good melee fighters, and of course, archangels. One of the first upgrades you are going to want to make is to the archery tower. The marksmen do not have any better attack or defense stats than the archers do, nor do they do any more damage per shot. However, they do get two shots per attack, which effectively doubles their damage per round. Then there is the archangel. The archangel is the most powerful melee creature in the game. It is fast enough to reach any square and has the highest defense and attack stats of any creature. They also have the ability to resurrect once per combat, which makes them even more valuable. Of course, whether they are more powerful overall than the titan is still up for debate.

The unique Castle buildings are all about movement. The shipyard allows you to build boats to move on the water. The lighthouse increases that movement at sea. The stables increase your movement on land. If you take castle heroes with logistics and pathfinding, you can cover a lot of territory very quickly.

The Fortress: The Fortress creatures would be slightly below average if not for the fact they were loaded with special abilities. The serpent and dragonflies dispel magic on their targets. Basilisks have a twenty- percent chance of turning their target to stone for three turns. Each gorgon in a stack has a ten percent chance of killing the top creature in the stack they attacked. Wyverns have a chance to poison their target, which does extra damage every round. Hydras attack all enemy creatures adjacent to them with no chance of counterattack. They also counterattack all adjacent creatures, which makes them a good unit to teleport into the middle of a group of enemies, especially if you cast counterstrike on them the round before.

The unique Fortress buildings make it a difficult target to capture if defended. The blood obelisk and glyphs of fear boost the attack and defense skills of a defending hero by two. The cage of warlords permanently boosts the defense of any hero that visits by one. The Fortress can also build shipyards.

The Inferno: The Inferno creatures are good melee fighters. This means you are going to want to pair them up with a good might hero, preferably a demoniac. The only ranged units are the gogs who upgrade into magogs. This upgrade does boost the attack rating and makes their attack hit the target and all adjacent hexes. They are good castle defenders who can attack the bunches of enemy units waiting outside the walls, but it severely limits them when trying to support their own melee units. This makes gogs the one unit that it is often best not to upgrade. The seventh level arch devils are very powerful, but use caution when fighting archangels who are faster and can do extra damage.

So now you stand ready to win the final victory in the restoration of Eratia
The Inferno buildings lend themselves to a single hero defending all Inferno towns. The brimstone storm clouds boost the defending heroes power skill and the castle gate allows a hero to travel instantly to any unoccupied Inferno town. The order of fire also permanently boosts the power skill of any visiting hero, so it is usually a good idea to send all your heroes for a visit.

The Necropolis: The Necropolis is populated entirely with undead creatures. This makes the Death Ripple spell particularly useful when fighting since your army will take no damage. The skeletal warriors are second only to the Rampart's centaur captains in strength of first level creatures. Both the black and dread knights outclass any other sixth level creatures, especially with the dread knights; twenty percent chance of delivering a double damaging deathblow. The ghost dragon is the weakest of the seventh level creatures, but with its chance to age the entire stack of enemies it attacks offsets some of that weakness. Of special note are the liches and vampire lords. The liches have an area effect ranged attack similar to the Inferno magogs but with one change: undead in the adjacent squares are not affected. This allows them to hit groups of enemies without damaging your undead troops who are at melee range. The vampire lords have the ability to drain life and resurrect members of their stack, both when they attack and counterattack. That makes them it very difficult to kill off with melee troops.

Then again, maybe that wasn't the final battle
The Necropolis has a variety of unique buildings that help you and hinder your enemies. The necromancy amplifier boosts the necromancy skill of all of your heroes with the ability. If you control several of these and have your heroes reach expert necromancy skill, it becomes very easy to put together a horde of skeletal warriors quickly. You can also use the skeleton transformer to turn any other creatures into skeletons. This is a good use for small groups of wandering creatures that join your hero. You also have the cover of darkness that hides the map all around the town, allowing you to move your heroes unseen and especially slowing down computer opponents who cannot remember the hidden map at all.

The Rampart: The Rampart creatures lean very heavily towards defense, including magical resistance. The centaur captains are the most powerful, and most expensive, first level creatures in the game. Most of the other creatures tend to be slower than their enemies but can usually survive the initial onslaught. The dwarves and unicorns have twenty- percent magical resistance, and the pegasi increase the casting cost of spells for the opposing hero. The gold dragons are very similar to the Dungeon's black dragons. They have nearly the same immunity to magic (only effected by fifth level spells), but they are slightly faster with better attack and defense skills yet less health.

Some quick math shows the dragons will kill 7-9 of the champions, and that the champions will not be able to kill any dragons with their counterattack
The unique buildings of the Rampart help boost wealth, which is good given the more expensive nature of the creatures here. The treasury pays you ten percent interest on the gold you have on day one. Saving towards the end of the week is usually a good idea. The mystic pond also provides you with one to four random resources every week.

The Stronghold: The Stronghold creatures are a mix of some of the weaker and stronger units in the game. Upgrading your wolf riders to raiders early on is a good idea since the ability to hit twice per attack effectively doubles their damage. The sixth level cyclops kings are the second most powerful ranged unit in the game and can also be used to attack town defenses. The ancient behemoth is only around average strength, but their ability to reduce the enemy's defense rating when they attack usually gives them the upper hand when on the offensive.

The buildings of the stronghold are not the most useful around. The hall of Valhalla does boost visiting heroes'attack ratings permanently so visiting is a good idea. The escape tunnel allows defending heroes to flee from combat. However, it is usually a good idea to flee before starting to defend so that you can take your army with you. The freelancer guild allows you to trade creatures for resources, but the costs generally make such trades a bad idea.

The Tower: The Tower has more ranged creatures than any other, including the most powerful of them, the titans. Upgrading your workshop immediately is usually a good idea since the gremlins are very weak and fighting at range dramatically improves their survivability. Gargoyles and golems are not living, which makes them the perfect troops for fighting against the necropolis's vampire lords, who cannot drain life from them. The nagas are second only to the Necropolis dread nights in strength, but with their counterstrike free attack, they tend to have slightly better survivability. The giants are slightly below average seventh level creatures, but once upgraded to titans, they are arguably the most powerful overall, and easily the most powerful ranged. If you match them with a hero who has the archery skill and archery boosting artifacts, they can do the most damage possible of any creature.

The Tower buildings lean towards building the magical skill of visiting heroes. The wall of knowledge increases the knowledge skill of a visiting hero permanently by one. The library increases the number of spells in each level of the mage guild. The lookout tower is a good way to instantly explore the area all around the town and is cheap enough that the limited usefulness doesn't make it a waste. The town also has access to an artifact merchant.

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Page Updated Mon Feb 28, 2000 8:25pm EST