H3:What should be built first under expert difficulty?

[Kildars]

I normally go for, at least, city hall and then begin troop raising building. But whenever I just finished city hall(which normally takes 5 days) and began building other things a computer player is located and it already has tier 4 or even 5 creatures while I only have the first 2...
So, does this mean that I should even neglect the town hall and city hall to raise troops first?
Remember that I am referring to some small and medium map!
I was quite impressed how quick AI was about finding the grail.

[Pol]

You need to draw a fine line between your army and money generator buildings. And that depends on maps (how much resources are located around, how many dwellings which you can instantly used, how far is enemy and finally with which town your are beginning).

So, if it's a tight map, you may prefer to start with units.

My setup for M maps is close to follows.
* get 1 day resources, decide to build Town Hall or another hero
* buy another unit generators (two or three)
* more resources.., build generator of units lvl 4

So at the end of the first week I'm commanding usually two heroes, bonding about 50 Skeletons, 20 Zombies and 4 Vampires or 10 Wights or 3 Liches. (For example for a start of Necro is very helpful to get in hold of 'Death Ripple', nearby 'Fort Hill' counts always )

And that will be different for Rampart like that
> two heroes, 20-100 Centaurus, 3-12 Elves, 2-12 Dwarves and optionally + 4 Pegasi(if resources)

Fortress
> two heroes, 50-80 Gnolls, around 10 Lizards, 1-12 Serpent Flies and/or 4-6Basilisk and 2 Wyverns

Stronghold
> two heroes, 50-100 Goblins, 10-15 of Wolves, 3-10 Orcs, 3 Rocs

And so on...
PS That's for Impossible, medium resources rich maps.

[Kildars]

Hey, I wonder if the AI gets additional starting troops by the difficulty setting?
I will try to build troops faster, but would anyone recommend me which town is good for someone relatively new to this game? I read somewhere Castle is good but that's the town with which I lost the previous games against "Expert AI"...is Conflux easy to play with? I found this town very strong during the Armageddon's Blade campaign.

[Pol]

On higher difficulties the AI gets money and intelligence bonus. The ability to cheat in non-watchable battles remains as well, so it sometimes break or defeat the stack/hero which is not normally possible.

Confluxes can be a good tip, second one probably will be Inferno.

[Bandobras Took]

So long as you're not playing on Impossible (no starting resources at all), the Rampart can be a good choice; you can get pretty far with just centaurs and elves.

[Kildars]

!!!!!!!!
Computer cheats????????????????
That's something new.....

[ThunderTitan]

How else do you think they could make it challenging enough to be considered Impossible?

[Kildars]

Good question.
No wonder I don't see difference in their army strength after a battle with a big neutral stack, which I would dearly avoid.
But this makes it sound quite boring...so this is the truth of H3?

[Pol]

Hmm, it's not so bad and it will wear off 'completely' in about a two weeks. Depending on the map you usually can avoid the consequences and seize some other castle. Traveling can make you strong.

Of course, if that will not become combined with special Water Walking magic .

[Kildars]

Hmmmmm......
Looks like I still cam only handle Hard difficulty. Or is the map "Ascension" so difficult??? I could get a big army too but AIs always have better spells, like water walk and dimension door etc(I got a Planeswalker hero from the start...not a magic user). It was troublesome enough for me to beat a dungeon and a fortress using Conflux. Of course I got a lot of Phoenix and even some Sacred Phoenix, but it took so much time hunting down the enemies casting town protal, water walk, dimension door while I had to go on foot. That was really some hard work, haha!

[Pol]

No it's not so difficult, once you will get know what is where it's sort of stereotype and I'm talking about Impossible.

Perhaps try a Rampart, it's generating most money.

[Kildars]

Now Heroes III seems to be more difficult than IV and Vm or am I just not used to it?
Rampart...? OK...

[Kildars]

Pol, maybe you can again help me by answering my question.
I suppose you know the map "Bad witch, good witch"(or some similar name)? Where you must play Rampart. I have, maybe, tried three times, each time with normal difficulty, but I still found that quite undoable, considering the three months time limit and the size of the enemy force. And having read your post I suppose you would recommend rampart for new players. Still I am sort of "always try and fail"......
Does this mean I am really not used(missing some good strategies?) or is that normal?

[Pol]

I vaguely remember that here's some map with Good and Bad Witch in storyline, but that's all to that. It's not invoking any exact image in my head, perhaps a correct name?

[Kildars]

Alright.
The correct name is..."Good Witch, Bad Witch"!
I would say this is a strange name indeed...in this map you must kill an enemy hero within three months.

[Pol]

"Gulcheria, the bad witch of the east, has decided to expand her borders by calling for reinforcements, warlocks from the far south. If these reinforcements arrive, all is lost. Being Glinda, the good witch of the west, you must stop her before time runs out."
Hehe, I like theirs intros.

Maybe, it's a relative big map and not exactly the best to sharpen your strategical edges due to, hmm mentioned, time limit. As I'm seeing your main enemy is set on patrol and is using two cousins as living blockade. All enemies are high leveled but are supposed to keep only small armies relatively to you.

Try smaller ones first, I would recommend Key to Victory and Knee Deep in the Dead, these are relative safe and you can learn a bit of strategy from them. (Also good one is Tale about two Continents but that is from another keg, that one's quite big but you can get an ally.)

When I'm learning something new I usually tend to turn on autocombat and watch it, autocombat knows the mechanics and with exception of obvious flaws it's doing a good job in H3.

Frankly, back to the Witches, I didn't played them. I remember some map where you were fighting an elemental lords and it was bit of frustrating. Very, very long road(RoE). I tend to playing shorter maps usually - that copes nice with my time flow.

PS I discovered that tablet driver 5.05-7g can throws a nice blue screen, it's sort of RC, but still... Wacom, wacom.

[Banedon]

I normally do the same things for Heroes III on all difficulties. There isn't a specific and set build order, but they revolve around the same philosophy: go for your key creatures. These are -

INFERNO - Efreet Sultans
CASTLE - Marksmen
RAMPART - Grand Elves
FORTRESS - Greater Basiliks
NECROPOLIS - Skeleton Warriors -> Vampire Lords
DUNGEON - Evil Eyes
TOWER - Nagas
STRONGHOLD - Thunderbirds
CONFLUX - Storm Elementals (but seriously, Conflux is imbalanced)

On most maps, with your key creatures you can expand at a decent pace. The key creatures were not made equal - Inferno and its Efreet Sultans will grossly outpace Tower no problem early-game - but they all amount to the same thing. They let you beat most guardians with little casualties, and thus you can make do with them while you move on to the resource buildings or higher-tier creatures. Note you can get all these key creatures early, by the first week.

In the early stages of the game your hero should return to the castle as rarely as possible, preferably never, unless to pick up a spellbook. Hence you don't really need higher-tier creatures - you won't get them to your army after all. This means that after reaching your key creatures you want the resource buildings - Capitol, Castle, etc. You will of course want your other dwellings as well, but upgrading them or buying the creatures is simply not necessary. You just build the dwellings for the creatures to start stockpiling.

To appreciate this method I'd suggest you play one game with Inferno - it's most illustrative. What you do here is to rush the Sultans. Ignore everything else except possibly the Town Hall (which you might build on turn one). After getting to the Sultans go for Castle. You probably won't reach it and you must save some gold to hire the Sultans of course, but at the start of the second week you should have a minimum of 5 Efreet Sultans to roam the map with. Put all your other creatures on a secondary hero then send your main hero out on a trip he won't return from. 5 Efreet Sultans destroy all neutrals on a normal map, and all other races' armies at this point even. Of course, you must be fast. Leave loose resources for your other heroes to collect, and power level your main hero.

This is most illustrative with Inferno because, in my opinion, Inferno is unbeatable early-mid game. Really early-game, during the first week, Rampart rules with Centaurs and Elves. In the second week Inferno takes over, then eventually Necropolis, then finally fully-formed armies take the field and the game resolves itself. Of course, if the game drags to 2 years game time Necropolis would destroy everyone...

But the point is that during the crucial second week of expansion Inferno overpowers everyone else. I don't mean Inferno is the best race in Heroes III or anything, but they certainly have a smooth early-mid game and that is what you must shoot for. I suggest trying this method out at least once (remember, emphasis on speed) and appreciating the power it gives. You should be able to beat the AI in a multiplayer based map; for single-player based maps you need to configure to the map itself (eg. Mandate of Heaven makes it obviously impossible to play Inferno).

[Kildars]

Banedon, thanks for such a long post!
I released a hero in prison in the "Key to Victory" map, and she had 5 angels as starting army! Is this bug or what...and then I just used her to beat the enemies...
I am feeling it as well but what exactly is Conflux's problem? It does feel very strong. Stronger than other towns.

[Kildars]

Could anyone say, why is Conflux unbalanced or something? Is that because of the weekly production of Firebirds/Phoenix?
I am currently doing well with the Castle ...

[Banedon]

Check out this topic - I like my answer most, but many other fine points were made.

viewtopic.php?t=5279&start=0

Conflux is overpowered, not least because of the 4x growth of Phoenixes. Other advantages include:

1. Magic University allows them to gain access to any specialization they need.
2. Storm Elementals and Ice Elementals form some of the best Ranged, low-level creatures. With Sprites being fine creatures as well, Conflux has a great early-game.
3. The Pyre is relatively cheap to get and can be built quickly. It can easily be done by week 1.
4. The Aurora Borealis is far and away the strongest grail building in the game.
5. Because Phoenixes have 22 speed, Conflux will always be the side with the first move in battle. This grants them initiative.

Taken together, this makes Conflux unstoppable by all except possibly Necropolis (and then Necropolis needs huge numbers of food). Don't play Conflux; winning with it is no fun (and your friends might stop talking to you as well).