Heroes III: how would you rank the towns?

[Toge]

Is there such thing as best town for map size, like in Heroes II? Or can weaknesses of every town be overcome with proper secondary skill choices and skillful playing?

[Kalah]

Conflux is the best town, isn't it? Overpowered, even? I guess if it's a matter of a small map with little time to get the biggest units, then the others might catch up... but once you get them flaming pigeons, you're on the track to winning.

[Deadguy118]

The best town in terms of raw firepower is Conflux (because they neglected to balance it) followed by Castle. Both have high costs, so it would be slightly harder to build them up, but Tower is the only town that would be severely crippled by having a small map or a high difficulty.

Stronghold and Fortress both have fast and somewhat inexpensive tech trees (high cost in wood and ore though) that might be better on small maps, but Hydras are junk and Behemoths are only good because you can get them in the first week with little difficulty. They also can only reach Lvl3 Mage Guilds, but Fortress at least has the best native terrain type (swamp)

The worst town is probably inferno, because it only has two really standout units (Hell Hounds and Efreet), and all the others are sub-par in comparison, not to mention the relative expensiveness for what you get.

Everything else is somewhere in the middle, but Necropolis has an obvious advantage on large maps because that means there are more skeletons to raise.

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Agree with what Deadguy said (especially regarding Conflux). But it should be mentioned that Rampart has huge HP output and excellent, varied magic-resisting abilities (dwarf, pegasi, unicorns, dragons) and Dungeon has lots of strategy disrupting abilities (2 shooters with no melee penalty, 1 semi-shooter, 3 flyers, 2 paralyzing units)

My H3 patch addresses most of the weakness mentioned by him. Inferno rocks now!

[Toge]

I was wondering, since if I ever start playing Myth and Legend, I'd want to have the best town. Actually Inferno is a bit underrated. If there's many Inferno towns on map, the faction becomes ridiculous with Castle Gate. It costs no movement points to warp between other Inferno towns and you can have that defending hero on any of them, depending where he/she is needed. Ramparts can get very high gold output with Treasury and Necropolises multiply skeleton growth. Rest of the factions, notably Stronghold, Fortress and Dungeon fall to worst class in the long run. Not even their Grails are that impressive.

[hobowu]

Stronghold and Fortress both have fast and somewhat inexpensive tech trees (high cost in wood and ore though) that might be better on small maps, but Hydras are junk and Behemoths are only good because you can get them in the first week with little difficulty. They also can only reach Lvl3 Mage Guilds, but Fortress at least has the best native terrain type (swamp)

The worst town is probably inferno, because it only has two really standout units (Hell Hounds and Efreet), and all the others are sub-par in comparison, not to mention the relative expensiveness for what you get.

Hydras aren't junk at all... that no retaliation ability is absolutely to kill for. Excellent for weakening a strong creature stack before your other creatures hit it, hydras are also great for teleporting across castle walls and whatnot.
Devils/Archdevils are the same... except that you can be much more sneaker and hide them behind a forcefield in the corner of your map.

Inferno is actually great. Imps and gogs are pretty much useless, but use them for demon-farming purposes. Demons in large numbers are very hard to kill.

[BigThingWithHolesInIt]

Conflux is ridiculous, they have so many huge advantages: nearly infallable early-game team, quick access to all magic schools, doubled lv7 output, all the spells in the game with the grail structure...

So then Castle is very powerful offensively, but lack defense against a good spellcaster. This will usually not be the AI so in single player games they are undeniably a notch above other towns.

Then Rampart, Stronghold, Fortress, Necropolis and Dungeon are pretty much evenly matched. Dungeon's no good on small maps however, and managing Fortress tends to be a bit harder to get the hang of.

Tower and Inferno are worst off. Tower is exorbitantly expensive in both building and unit prices, giving you a slow army with a mediocre damage output. Inferno, not cheap either, gives low HP units with mediocre damage values and slightly above average offense. Both towns will often need high level magic to overcome serious competition, and it is usually not available in the first month.
They do have their strengths and are still fun towns to play, and the AI is still relatively easy to beat with them.

[hobowu]

you all forget...
that conflux has 2 units that are total garbage. (level 4 and level 5)

Storm elementals are dealt with by curse (they do 1 damage each ), plus their low growth and susceptibility to getting lightning-bolted means their numbers don't get built up too high.

I'd rank the towns in this order:
Necro (banned for a good reason! 600 skeles on 3rd week...)

Conflux / Inferno (flux has an excellent early game... sprites and phoenixes... maybe the growth should be capped at 3, Inferno if you can demon farm, or there are many inferno towns on the map)

Rampart / Castle (rampart units have so much health and speed!)

Dungeon / Stronghold / Fortress / Tower (tower would be even lower if it weren't for the incredible early game. Tower lacks good heroes, and their units lack speed, which means you're extra prone to having your unit stacks punished hard before even making a move).

[Storm-giant]

Conflux has the best creeping early army, the deadly duo Sprites-Storm Elementals(enemies don't cast lighting bolts).
vs slow walkers sprites alone take them really easyly, just wait, attack&run away!Some creature banks can be taken too(like dwarven treasury or cripts)

[AngelEyes]

I was wondering, since if I ever start playing Myth and Legend, I'd want to have the best town. Actually Inferno is a bit underrated. If there's many Inferno towns on map, the faction becomes ridiculous with Castle Gate. It costs no movement points to warp between other Inferno towns and you can have that defending hero on any of them, depending where he/she is needed.

The Castle Gate is a neat idea to be sure. But it has several glaring problems:

1. 1) Most maps won't have more then one or two Infernos.
   2) The cost of the Castle Gate is way too high, IMO. 10000 Gold +5 Wood and +5 Ore? Multiply this by every Inferno you have and it starts getting ridiculous.
   3) The relative ease of acquiring the Town Portal spell. Unlike Heroes 2, this spell is pretty easy to get and it nullifies the Inferno's advantage of having multiple gates. Yes, it costs mana and movement, but not enough to cripple the hero.

So I would say that unless the map is specifically designed with multiple Infernos and the Town Portal spell disabled, the Castle Gate will rarely play a significant role in the Inferno strategy.

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

2) The cost of the Castle Gate is way too high, IMO. 10000 Gold +5 Wood and +5 Ore? eyes wide open Multiply this by every Inferno you have and it starts getting ridiculous.

But does that not depend where your priorities lie? If your priority is to use Castle Gate and the more Infernos you have the more resources you get generally.

[Storm-giant]

The requirements of Infernos castle Gate is just too big to consider it as a good strategy.
It depends of too much factors....

[Banedon]

Conflux is essentially unbeatable - their armies start fast and stay fast, they have easy access to every spell school to accomodate whatever they get in their mage guild and their Phoenix output is so strong (not to mention so easily reached) to overwhelm everyone else. It doesn't matter that their level 4's and 5's are weak because their other advantages more than compensate.

I don't know about Necro, I've read a lot about how they can feed off neutrals and get a massive Skeleton army quickly but I've not managed to duplicate that strategy myself - I typically can't begin clearing neutrals without first having to sacrifice lots of Skeletons since Necropolis early-game is pretty weak.

With my style of play Fortress and Tower are noticably the weakest races. Stronghold is OK, you've got to move fast and stay fast though exploiting Rocs / Thunderbirds. Inferno is great, Efreet Sultans ensure you mid-game dominance over every other race in the game (6 Sultans in week 2 will destroy everyone else before Necroplis catches up). Dungeon never fit my style of play very well with their magic-reliant heroes, but it's still a solid race.

If I'm going to rank the towns ...

Top tier: Conflux
Mid tier: Castle, Rampart, Inferno, Stronghold, Dungeon
Low tier: Fortress, Tower
?: Necropolis

[Pol]

Necropolis is splendid, if you will get a way to accumulating skeletons you're unstoppable. And probably can beat Conflux too - depending on "slaves".

Rampart is fast and rich.

Inferno is also fast and rich

Other towns are usually not so magnificent on the first sight, although Fortress is. ..Very individual.

[hobowu]

I amend my previous assessment of tower =.=
the master gremlin rush is awesome (yes it is! )
although getting piquedram in your tavern = ultra bad luck!

Reason for reassessment..... my frenzied naga queen stack just raped the archangels =)

I also discovered that golems are excellent for soaking up retaliation, allows my genies to do good damage and still survive.

Perhaps, the best part of tower is its sieging abilities, both attacking and defending. Many ranged troops, and if attacking, teleport works wonders. If defending, shove that golem in the hole in the wall, while your range troops make short work of enemies. XD

A well played tower in a rich map can rival castle.
(Has anyone seen maretti play tower? He's awesome!)

Although... needless to say, in v. poor maps.. it's stronghold and fortress that rule the game.

[lumpoor]

Noone likes tower?

Yes, it's very expensive. But 3 shooters + very good magic is awesome

[hobowu]

but you'll have to be lucky with heroes... since the native ones are terrible (cyra is excellent but usually banned. Neela is ok).

The thing is... tower units are too slow (tower is I think the slowest town, or 2nd slowest). It is almost certain that your opponents will move before you, cast mass haste, and then you can say goodbye to your stacks.

What use is having ranged troops when they're all standing in front of you anyway?

[m0sh]

I'd never had problems beating Conflux ... I'm surprised people are calling it the best town...there are many not so good players there...so yes you can get spells easy (well u need luck also) and another player can disable spells aswell...

I love Rampart and my friend likes Tower , but we play XL levels that I usually have many different soldiers from other towns as well

Give me gelu anyday

[JackintheMox]

I'd never had problems beating Conflux ... I'm surprised people are calling it the best town...there are many not so good players there...so yes you can get spells easy (well u need luck also) and another player can disable spells aswell...

I love Rampart and my friend likes Tower , but we play XL levels that I usually have many different soldiers from other towns as well

Give me gelu anyday

I don't think Gelu is a normal available starting hero for multiplayer unless you specifically allow him He's quite powerful compared to the majority of the other heroes, which is why he's generally not allowed in most multi-player games.

Conflux is incredibly dangerous in the right hands (not the computer's, unless it is a small map). Try a small map just for kicks against a Conflux opponent, it likely will not be easy. A skilled Conflux player will have a huge advantage by midgame over most towns given the early creeping ability and ridiculous amount of Phoenix growth they get.

[m0sh]

Well I never play gelu unless the map maker allows me but im playing WOG now the game is a bit different

when we're talking about big maps you still support Conflux?