HOMM 1 - Camp map 8, King of the Hill - need help

[ChancytheChinchilla]

so im playing old HOMM 1 for fun, doing the first set of campaign maps, got to map 8, king of the hill, and I think ive found the first HOMM map ever that i cant beat. it just seems impossible.
you get attacked from all sides by three oponents at once, you get no time at all to build and prepare, you are unable to hold any other city other than your first one, which keeps getting captured.
the enemy builds larger army than yours in the first couple of weeks, there is no way i could have as many units. lol it feels like im playing against a cheating HOMM V AI again.
and the worst is the crazy magic system of HOMM 1 where heros of any level can cast any spell of any level, and somehow the enemies get high lvl magic guilds in the first couple weeks. so ive got lvl 1 suicidal enemy heroes armageddoning me killing themselves just when im about to kill them, or casting bezerk on my high lvl units destroying my own army, or continuosly blinding or paralzying my troops. in my last attempt the enemy got ressurection very early in the map. i gave up at that point.
i cant even scrounge enough resources for a lvl 4 guild to match the enemies spells.
ive tried all three tactics, the build and defend, doenst work, the enemy builds armies much faster than you and gets high lvl spells fast.
i tried the rush tactic, again, doesnt work. if you focus on one enemy, the rest rush in from the other directions and take your cities out.
and since the objective is to capture the dragon city, i even tried to rush over to catch it. nope. didnt work.
any suggestions on tactics?
im also trying to find cheat codes, because im doubtful i can pass this map. but so far, the only cheat codes ive found reveal the map, haste your army, or give you resources. and some code that gives you plutos or diamonds?? nothing to create troops.
anyone know any cheat codes?
thxs for any help

[Pitsu]

Some links that may help:
http://hommworld.grantpalin.com/Homm/campaign_map9.html
http://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=435
http://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=436

And finally, are not afraid of losing your cities. Your goal is to kill enemies one by one. If another player takes your towns at the same time so be it, get reinforcements from towns that you conquer and sooner or later you get all towns back.

[grobblewobble]

Nice to see someone playing the H1 campaign! I did it as well, not too long ago, a few times with different factions.

Ok, so you have troubles finishing the final map. A few questions.

1. What faction are you?
2. What heroes do you use?
3. On what objectives do you most focus in the first two weeks?

since the objective is to capture the dragon city, i even tried to rush over to catch it. nope. didnt work.

I'm sorry your first attempt failed, but this strategy worked for me. To do this, you MUST use a might hero, however. Dragons are immune to spells, so there is not much a spellcaster can do.

Also, be sure to take into account there is a rock/scissor/stone relationship between ranged/flying/walking units in this game! So think carefully what type of units will work best.

If you don't want to rush for the dragons, try rushing for either the warlock or the sorceress castle. Don't bother with the defense of your home castle. If you manage to conquer one of the magic castles, focus all your efforts on getting phoenices or dragons. If you're lucky, the enemy has built the tower for you and had not enough money to buy the units yet.

Good luck.

By the way, if you think this map is hard, have you tried "two if by sea"? I failed that map about 12 times before I finally managed to win. That was on easy.

[ChancytheChinchilla]

thxs for those links, that first one pretty sums up my problems, enemies whittling away my troops attacking from all sides, capturing all my cities, and mages developing powerful spells.
Im playing as red, lord ironfist.
probably the mistake i was making was attacking the barbarians. they seemed to be the most aggressive problem so went after them first, but even when i rushed their city very early, they had stacks of trolls, wolves, ogres, and lots of orcs which wiped me out.
so this time for my next attempt at the map ill head south after the blue wizards instead, and hopefully capture one of their high lvl mage guilds.
ill also try not worrying about loosing my first city and instead try to take out the players. though i always hate to do that....i get possessive of my cities

[Kristo]

Red player starts in probably the best position in this map even though I think you pretty much have to give up your home castle to win. The way I did it was to rush the Warlock castle early on - I'd say about two weeks' worth of creatures should do it. Then decide that it's your new home and stay there. If you explored enough around the Knight castle you might be able to see the Barbarian coming and ferry extra troops down to your main hero. After that, it's Dragons, Dragons, Dragons. Build the largest army you can, hold off the Sorceress, and when you think you have enough, beeline for the shore and build a boat.

It's actually a pretty exciting finish because you're necessarily "all in" when you go for the Dragon City. It's been a while, but I don't think I had any towns left to my name once I reached the center island.

If you're having trouble with the AI heroes, you can always try the baiting trick. The AI cannot resist an undefended castle; the neutral ones around the center lake make perfect bait. Capture one and leave it empty. Sooner or later an AI hero will waltz in and take over, splitting his army roughly in half. Half will stay with the hero and the other half will defend the castle. Now you have two easy targets instead of one dangerous enemy.

[ChancytheChinchilla]

so i tried the map a fifth time. this time i moved directly after the blue player and managed to capture one of their castles. then i fought wave after wave of blue heroes with armies larger then mine, and captured their second city.
green had already moved in from the north, and i lost my original city.
i thought i was doing well, after seven days the blue player without towns was defeated.
but then....yellow moved in with this huge army of elves, druids, unicorns, and seven phoenix's, with the bezerk spell and anti magic.
i had suffered too many losses defeating blue, and there wasnt enough time to rebuild, so i died very fast. Plus green barbarian hordes were starting to move down from the north, so even i managed to win against the phoenix's it wouldnt be long before green moved in for the kill.
i dunno...i dont think i can defeat this map.
so no cheat codes eh? would be so much fun to give myself a stack of dragons and destroy everything on this frustrating map

[grobblewobble]

Please don't give up. Knight is the hardest faction to play, and the final map is a challenge, but not impossible.

Once you conquered blue, what creatures did you buy, if I may ask? Did you manage to get dragons? Were there any dragons left in the tower unpurchased?

[ChancytheChinchilla]

ok i will try the map a sixth time
the problem with the last try is that i attacked blue too early.
when i captured blues town a dragon tower had not been built, just a hydra dwelling, and only a lvl 3 mage guild.
so i suppose the trick is waiting just till the right moment that blue builds a dragon tower. of course, there is no way to know when that moment is, so its not easy.
the other problem which is why I rushed blue so early was that green was moving in to my territory with trolls, ogres and wolves. if i was to wait any longer i would have to take casualties fighting off green.
and i barely defeated blue with what army i had.
and the other problem is that the only supply of wood is right on greens warpath to my town, so i was unable to build a jousting/knight dwelling, since it needs 20 wood.
i guess this time i will try to hold green off while i wait a bit longer to attack blue. maybe that will work....

[ChancytheChinchilla]

well i finally beat the map.

it took seven tries, its definetly a very hard map.
I would recommend anyone who thinks they are good at HOMM to play out the HOMM1 campaign maps just to get to this final map and play it.
if you are red player, moving south to get the blue warlocks seems to be the only way to go, and you have to time it just right that they have a dragon dwelling with dragons ready to be hired.
even then its a tough fight when yellow moves in with its phoenixes and hordes of dwarves, elves and unicorns.
i dont think there is anyway you could go after the green player.

i also think capturing all the mines in your starting area, and getting all the resources is very important, because you have to build a lvl 5 mage guild, and hope you get a good spell like ressurection, which I got that spell, which made a huge difference. without a lvl 5 mage guild, and other high lvl spells, i dont think beating the map would have been possible.
i used a mage hero as the main hero instead of a knight so i could use more magic.

[Metathron]

Congratulations on finally beating the map, Chancy!

I remember this final map was a rather difficult one way back when I played it, but I don't think I had any major difficulties beating it. However, I was playing with the sorceress, and knight is probably the most difficult faction to play with.

Actually, if memory serves me right, I think I had more trouble winning the third map (the one where you have to find some sort of artifact) with the other three factions, because the computer would frequently dig it up before me.

[ChancytheChinchilla]

the artifact one!! that was a pain, i had the same problem, luckily the spot where the AI dug up the artifact was visable, so i could tell where the hero was digging.
i then had go back a couple save games and stake out that spot. i killed any AI hero that even got near that spot on the map. this was before i figured out you could dig up the artifact before you had the puzzle map completed lol.
for some reason i thought you needed the puzzle map complete before you could get the treasure, maybe thats how it is in another HOMM version?....i couldnt figure out how the AI knew where it was so soon.

i wouldnt mind trying out king of the hill map as the other factions, but you would have to play through the entire campaign maps as that faction to do that right?

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Here is my Heroes 1 balance mod, for anyone interested.

Windows 95 version 1.1.

http://pages.infinit.net/plague/Heroes.zip

[Metathron]

I have just finished the game playing Lord Slayer (barbarian) and got a cavalry rating (715 days). The last map was quite challenging, but I did not have any real problems. The biggest threat came in the form of a warlock who, when left only with hydras, decimated my army with armageddon and other spells, the sly devil.

Here is my Heroes 1 balance mod, for anyone interested.

Windows 95 version 1.1.

http://pages.infinit.net/plague/Heroes.zip

What does that include?

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Only the modified executable file.

[Trevor]

Playing thru all the HOMMs as a New Year's Resolution, and I was surprised to find how blasted tough this map was.

First time, after breezing thru the first 7 maps of the campaign, I thought I was doing well for a few weeks, and then got completely slaughtered.

Came here for advice, saw that I was on the right track.

Second and third tries, got slaughtered even earlier. Beginning of week two and blue comes at me with 5 stacks and about 200 total units, he must of had all of the wandering stacks join him.

Fourth time, beaten to a pulp in week three.

Fifth time, on the run from the start, sure that I'm losing big time as I take a shore town and quickly lose my starting castle. Move south with my ragtag army and take another town as I lose the second. Blue comes at me with a couple of sizable armies, looks like double what it would take to finish me. Well, I hire a few suicide bombers (third town had storm), and somehow manage to win those battles, but with virtually nothing to spare.

I almost quit at that point. I was still at one town, and had maybe two Paladins and 20 or so total other units. Blue had to be at least as bad off as I, but green and yellow had not taken a loss, and they all had more towns/income than I. But I decided to press on, and actually moved briefly back towards green, briefly re-taking my first castle just long enough for one weeks troops. I then abandoned that area and marched south, finding blue's last castle.

I had no towns at this point, and barely captured his castle. I had almost no troops left, again, but luckily it was day one and I was able to buy three dragons. His castle had Armageddon, so I changed tactics. I relegated my knight hero, the saviour of my first month, to ferry duty, and bought a spellcaster with slightly better spell scores.

I then used those three dragons and Armageddon and finished off blue, expanding to three towns. I was still worried that it was a bit too little and too late, as green and yellow made runs at me with sizable armies. I used the abandon castle trick a few times. (One battle had me losing my entire army when I tried to stand my ground, but after reloading the autosave, and letting him take my castle and split his army, I was able to defeat him with no losses.)

It was back and forth for a bit, green and blue thankfully having full mage towers for me at each new conquest. Around the time that I finished off yellow, green was still showing as having a better army than me according to the thieves guilds. But my this point, I knew the tide had turned and after a couple more hours, I finally defeated green.

Still have to finish the dragon island, but after that 8+ hour battle, I need to sleep.

Sorry for the long post, I imagine this was quite boring to everyone besides me, but I just wanted to get it out there before I forgot. It was truly one of the finest HOMM scenarios of my 15 years with the games.

Thanks to this thread's participants for the insights and commentary.

After I mop up the dragons tomorrow, it is on to HOMM2!

[Kristo]

It was truly one of the finest HOMM scenarios of my 15 years with the games.

I wouldn't go that far. It's really hard because the odds are really stacked against you from the beginning. Great HOMM scenarios leave me wanting to replay it. I wouldn't cry if I never saw that one again. Congratulations on (assumedly) having it all wrapped up.

[Trevor]

It was truly one of the finest HOMM scenarios of my 15 years with the games.

I wouldn't go that far. It's really hard because the odds are really stacked against you from the beginning. Great HOMM scenarios leave me wanting to replay it. I wouldn't cry if I never saw that one again. Congratulations on (assumedly) having it all wrapped up.

Yep, went back and finished this morning, and was surprised at how easy the dragon fight was.

I could have sailed over and finished things weeks earlier, but figured that the dragons were growing in numbers week by week. I thought I'd have to conquer the map, pool all the armies together, and make a multiple hero attack. But the dragons and griffins apparently don't grow at all. Had 50 griffins and 20 dragons to beat.

And actually, the toughness makes me want to replay it again. I'll try it again someday as a non-knight. Also, a quick (month two or so) rush to the dragons should work. Most of the campaigns are little challenge, this one gave me fits.

[Jude Takerath]

Never managed to complete this level but on reading the advice to head south, grab warlocks city then build dragons like crazy, will give it another go.

[grobblewobble]

Finished it again today as lord Ironfist.

The last map took me two tries this time. On the second try I noticed that there was a warlock town nearby, to the west. So I put all resources toward building that up asap, investing very little in knight buildings or units at all. That worked very well. Soon had dragons and won.

What is a good time for the Homm1 campaign? I finished the campaign exactly on the last day of the first year (329 days).

[Pitsu]

What is a good time for the Homm1 campaign? I finished the campaign exactly on the last day of the first year (329 days).

Not the world top, but see discussion here: http://www.celestialheavens.com/forums/ ... sc&start=0