When's the best week to build a dragons cave (HOMM3 dungeon)

[pikeman93]

When's the best week to build dragon's cave on a normal difficulty map? I've been thinking second week, but if you were to do that, you have to either build no upgrade buildings for two weeks, skip castle, or skip city hall. Is it worth getting dragon's cave on day 14 and sacrifice castle, city hall, or an upgrade building?

Thanks.

[Qurqirish Dragon]

Most 7th level creatures should be built ASAP, to start stockpiling them, even if you don't use them immediately.
Also, you can afford not to upgrade something, since the level 2 magic guild will almost certainly have some direct damage to use, and a mana vortex is also useful for Dungeon. The upgrade to black dragons can wait until you are ready to recruit them.

[BoardGuest808888]

I'd say, no later than 2nd week at most cases. Unless you got a very valid decision for otherwise (map design or role-play).

[Salamandre]

@Pikeman,

You did not answer my question from other (how many still?) thread:

Imagine you start on a template with dungeon and shakti -common start for dungeon-. You get another warlock in tavern + a trog dwelling near your town (common situation on most random templates). Now Shakti has tactics, trogs specialty and 120-150 trogs on him. At one day march you see a dragon dwelling and you plan to take him on second day -because Shakti can do that-.

What you build on first day, seeing this particular situation-to optimize Shakti chances-? And what will be your best build on second day, after taking the dragon cave?

Having the good answer will clarify about going for level 7 in any situation or not.

[Qurqirish Dragon]

@Pikeman,

You did not answer my question from other (how many still?) thread:

Imagine you start on a template with dungeon and shakti -common start for dungeon-. You get another warlock in tavern + a trog dwelling near your town (common situation on most random templates). Now Shakti has tactics, trogs specialty and 120-150 trogs on him. At one day march you see a dragon dwelling and you plan to take him on second day -because Shakti can do that-.

What you build on first day, seeing this particular situation-to optimize Shakti chances-? And what will be your best build on second day, after taking the dragon cave?

Having the good answer will clarify about going for level 7 in any situation or not.

If you can get an on-map dragon cave, then you should aim for the summoning portal, since that + cave = 2 dragons/week at a much lower cost- just remember not to flag any other dwellings! When you build your own dragon cave (which you should do ASAP anyway), you'll have 5 per week

[pikeman93]

But the chances of seeing a dragon's cave on a map is ridiculously low, no? And even if it is present, it's probably very far from your base and is guarded by millions of strong neutral stacks.

Salamander - what map do you mostly play?

[Salamandre]

Qurqirish Dragon, you just ruined any chance for Pikeman to think creative for once and not stuck to theory. Of course right answer, but I wasn't testing you

@Pikeman, is not about what map I play, but how will you adapt your "best build order" to various situations. Dragon cave is a common dwelling on 90% random maps.

[ShadowLiberal]

Personally I'd go for upgrading to a capital & castle first.

I find that usually whenever I rush to build up all my troop generating buildings that I tend to become so broke that I can't afford to recruit most of them. That's why I tend to rush up to a capital my very first week in Heroes 3.

Sure it's great to stockpile an army of troops, even if you can't hire them all right away, but 1 less dragon in your army isn't going to kill you when you make it to month 2 or 3.

Also a castle gives you more troops each week, and those level 1 to level 6 troops matter to, larger groups of them can be just as powerful as a level 7 dragon.

Plus I find that a large group of say level 4 or 5 troops can deal more damage then one or two level 7 dragons early on.