Dungeon Mission 3: Impossible

[DaemianLucifer]

I agree that there naturally are other more efficient ways to level up than the ultimate ability, but considering that the other races became very strong just by following the ultimate ability route. This paired with the fact that the Warlock ultimate ability is quite frankly pants makes their heroes the most underwhelming.

Maybe its like that just in the campaigns.

[Kristo]

Don't tell me to change the difficulty level to Normal. This has to be clearable with the harder levels as well.

It sounds to me like you have a preconceived notion of what the difficulty levels mean. I think it's reasonable to expect every campaign mission to be winnable by itself on Normal difficulty. But if you crank it up to Hard or above, the developers can and should assume you've played through the campaign before and can plan ahead.

[Linky]

Don't tell me to change the difficulty level to Normal. This has to be clearable with the harder levels as well.

It sounds to me like you have a preconceived notion of what the difficulty levels mean. I think it's reasonable to expect every campaign mission to be winnable by itself on Normal difficulty. But if you crank it up to Hard or above, the developers can and should assume you've played through the campaign before and can plan ahead.

I guess you might be right. Maybe it just has been too long since I last played actually difficult games. The mistake I probably made was compare the Hard level of earlier Heroes games to the one here. It would be nicer if the difficulty levels were consistent with the earlier games though. In my opinion, 'Normal' should be titled 'Hard', and there really should be a real 'Normal' difficulty, as well as an 'Easy' one. Perhaps not for us, but for the inexperienced gamers and children who get this for their birthday.

Well, at least I learned a bit about the different kinds of heroes and their balancing issues.

[DaemianLucifer]

I guess you might be right. Maybe it just has been too long since I last played actually difficult games. The mistake I probably made was compare the Hard level of earlier Heroes games to the one here. It would be nicer if the difficulty levels were consistent with the earlier games though. In my opinion, 'Normal' should be titled 'Hard', and there really should be a real 'Normal' difficulty, as well as an 'Easy' one. Perhaps not for us, but for the inexperienced gamers and children who get this for their birthday.

Why?When civ III came out,it was a lot harder then the previous one.While I always played on godlike in civ II,I had to tone it done for the first few games.

And look at thief I and II.There was no easy setting in there.The game had its specific target group,it wasnt for everybody.But I guess they wanted to make thief III more appealing to bigger crowd.A big mistake

[Linky]

I don't understand the point to your post, but I can answer the question why:

Because it would be more consistent with the series. Returning gamers would know which difficulty level to choose instantly. The fact that other games aren't consistent doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. I'm not saying they should tone down the existing difficulty levels. Just add a few to the lower end of the spectrum and rename these ones one level upwards.

[Bandobras Took]

I believe Fabrice said (in the stickied content thread) that one of the results of the Demo was seeing a necessity for an "easy mode" for the campaign. Hopefully it will be out with the first patch.

[magritte2]

Yes, I was on the Ubisoft board and a lot of gamers who were not expereinced Heroes players found the demo *very* difficult.

For that matter, I remember getting totally screwed in the HOMM IV campaign. I sailed through the first map approaching my hero development in much the same way as I did in previous games--I emphasized army support skills (life magic, tactics, scouting, nobility) and didn't develop any combat heroes. Then, I hit campaign map 2 starting out without a town and my situation was pretty dire. I ended up replaying the first map.

[Arkali]

Sorry if I dredged up a dead horse in replying to this thread, but I'd searched on "Cultists" for help with this map. Anyway, I'm thinking I'm going to restart the Warlock campaign. Raelag, while certainly not a weakling by any stretch, and Sharya, too, just don't have optimum skills IMO. Chiefly, I'm thinking I really should have specialized Raelag in Summoning magic. Conjure Phoenix is just evil.

[Rapier]

My only complaint about this level is that on heroic difficulty you MUST have summoning magic as a skill. I don't think the campaign should be that inflexible, on the other hand it's reasonable to accept that you must have magic as a skill (Dungeon are clearly casters after all) however Armageddon, Resurrection, Puppet Master, just won't help you as much as Summon Phoenix. It's a problem, but not with the campaign map, with the spell balance.

Oh and you should have realised that Raelag would be useless with the ultimate ability, he starts with defence, not Destruction, and what's the point in getting the Ultimate extra chaining damage if you don't have decent elemental spells to attack with?

[Nebs]

No, you don't have to have Summoning Magic. My Raelag managed just fine without it. Shayda had it, but again, she would do fine with just destructive magic, as in many battles she didn't casted summon phoenix.

[Rapier]

No, you don't have to have Summoning Magic. My Raelag managed just fine without it. Shayda had it, but again, she would do fine with just destructive magic, as in many battles she didn't casted summon phoenix.

On heroic?

You don't need Summon phoneix very often, but you do need it. It's just, the best spell :p

[Nebs]

Yeah, on Heroic, pre-patched version. Raelag had great spell power and nice empowered spells, and really didn't need Summon Phoenix. I used it though couple of times with Shayda, but as said, again she would've been just fine as well if only with destructive magic...both heroes had meteor, chain, implo and that empowered versions. And as AI likes to group critters, fights weren't so tough.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I just finished this one on normal. Raelag did all of the conquering and wound up level 26. Shayda guarded the first and second towns and wound up level 19.

Fortunately on the previous map I built up all the mages guilds. Both had empowered meteor storm so that helped a lot. Raelag traveled with inferior forces but his magic pumeled his foes.

I was careful to hire those anoying enemy heroes when they showed up at the tavern to throw a few back. "Hey, I just kicked your but. Care to join up or shall I finish you off?"

Here is his development so far:

Empowered spells, Dark Ritual, Elemental Vision.

His Stats:



Skills and Avilities:


GOW

[Rapier]

I've come to the conclusion that the heroes you kill never get reoffered to the computer whether you hire them or not.

Also Nebs, what was your spellpower at? My spellpower didn't wind up that much higher than my attack...

[Nebs]

I could've swear it was 25+. Can't remember exact number now.

[Ari]

I'm curious to hear what other players have to say for this map once they get there.

I'll bite. This map is a massive pain in the ass. I'm not an expert player by any means, but I'm playing on normal and still getting grief. I can easily win any given battle, but the enemy's *great* at attrition and can simply overwhelm me with numbers (and 14 spellpower lightning bolts). Every time I go off in one direction to grab a castle, a hero comes from the other to take my initial castles. When I beef up my garrisons and leave heroes behind, they can win individual battles but with dreadful losses, and by week 3 I'm seeing a conga line of enemy heroes coming after me, and meanwhile leaving units at home cripples Raeleg on the offensive. My saving grace is that I have summon phoenix on Raeleg, but fighting enemies in castles simply gives them too many rounds to take potshots at me to survive.

Before commensing with griping (it'll come, don't worry ), let me ask for suggestions. Taking the first two castles is easy enough, and really the only thing you *can* do, but then I seem to have choices. I can focus on one castle and go for upgraded units. I can try to maximize production of units and upgrade later. I can ignore (say) dragons and try to upgrade everything else. Ore in particular seems in short supply for me, and getting two forts+citadels+castles uses a frightful amount that could perhaps better be used to upgrade many of my dwellings. Etc. By the third week, I'm low on resources from my massive building and low on units from attrition. Anyone want to chime in on how they beat this map? General stuff, please, not "I used the plague tent-minotaur combo" or whatever.

Now for the griping/agreeing with the original poster:
My heroes come into this map level 18 and 14 respectively. I have no idea what the level cap is but clearly I'm not there. While I wasn't trying for the ultimate, I also wasn't power gaming. I didn't level up my heroes to the max on previous maps. I didn't build up all mage guilds to the max. I didn't have all heroes visit all power up locations. Etc. If I wanted to do tedious things to make myself better, I'd simply skip the middle part and enter in the cheat codes. Fighting more neutral stacks than I absolutely have to is drudgery that's more like work than fun. Ditto with traipsing my hero around 5 or so castles to reach all mage guilds.

Because I'm not a HOMM genious by any strech of the imagination, I have no doubts that for a better player, my situation would be salvageable with no problem. But if it should turn out that I have to restart the campaign, then I'd have to agree that this refects poor design on the part of the developers. If advice boils down to "you should have done x two maps ago" then the player's real fault is that they're not clairvoyant, which definitely takes away from the fun factor here.

[Gaidal Cain]

When I came to that map, I also had big problems. Raelag was quite OK, but I hadn't used Shadya at all, and so she was useless to me, so I restarted the previous one (thankfully it was faster now that I knew the layout). What I would suggest that you do is that you try and capture both towns as soon as you can, and then try if it's possible to split troops between them so that both can clear mines. Come week two, you should hopefully be offered one of the heroes you defeated earlier who might be good enough to replace shadya and take care of defending your homeland. Station it in the most developed of your castles (try to focus as much as possible on one of them for high-level production and build mostly economy in the other early on). THen send Raelag through the portal next to the other castle with as much of an army that you think you can spare.

If this doesn't work, I'm afraid that you better start cheating to get some better stats on your starting heroes, and some useful spells- Meteor Shower is very useful, as is Summon Phoenix if you have Summoning magic.

[GatorG]

Here’s my experience with this map on Heroic. First, I’m an old hat at this game playing since HoMM I. My heroes did not have empowered spells, summoning magic (phoenix), or town gate when starting this map.

My first go round on Heroic, I captured the first town and took all the mines with hardly any losses. I also built the first town up before the waves of enemies started attacking. I killed the first hero, but then the Mass Decay hero attacked me and he had more creatures than I did and I lost.

So, I thought about a different strategy and it worked (so far). Second, I’m only on four towns and a defeated inferno hero twice; however, I feel that the map is roughly over now that I have town superiority.

What I did was capture the first town again and took all the mines I could (one had upgraded succubi). Build the town up with the thought that they have more enemies and creatures than I do (I believe I only upgraded enough to Matriarch Witches or something). Then, the Mass Decay hero came through the western gate and I ran for the eastern gate. One of the heroes got in my way, but I took him out. I started for the eastern town, but they had a too strong hero at the bottom of the path coming for me, so I ran for the middle town with him on my heels. Took the middle town (had lost the first town). By this time all the enemy heroes are after me. So, I ran up to the northwest to see if I could take that town, but it has the garrison, so I swung south on the western part of the map and took the middle western town (near the dragon utopia).

By this time I had lost the middle castle. Here’s where I got “lucky” or chose the right strategy. The Mass Decay hero went behind the northwest garrison and stayed there. The rest of the heroes left me alone. So, I think by approaching their “home” town it scripted their strongest hero to defend. This gave me enough time to upgrade the town I took to get some needed money, experience on random mobs, and take out the strong heroes one by one. In the meantime I also took the Dragon Utopia and it’s 20,000gp (and town gate spell). I hired all the strong heroes I defeated and checked the artifact merchant for the expensive good artifacts I needed. Once I had defeated 3 of the 4 strong heroes and had enough of an army to handle the first inferno army, I went south and took the other town. (Remember to visit the +2 attack/defense power up and I visited the above ground area in this area)

The first inferno hero came for this town and I waited for him recruiting from both towns before he hit. He was easy at this point. Cleaning up the rest of the area and any enemy hero that decided to attack. By this time I had capped (and luckily got empowered spells). Then, I moved to the middle town because it was the weakest. After that I went for the northeast town and moved toward the southeast town wiping the second inferno hero, which didn’t slow me down too much.

So, this is the point I’m at…outside the fifth town. It should only be a matter of cleaning up the two bottom towns and wiping the northwest hero before the third inferno hero gets to me, if I wish to run from him. Course I haven’t checked the garrison yet though…lol.

I don’t know if this is “the” strategy to use, but there are ways to beat this map…

[zhuge]

An interesting map with lots of chases and action.

I took Enlightenment, Luck, Destructive Magic, Sorcery with Raelag. With the extra stats from Enlightenment. 20% off spell costs from Arcane Training and Mana Regeneration I never really needed to stop to recharge mana, even though I was casting Empowered spells the majority of the time. Empowered Fireballs deal very nice damage to packed formations and with Lightning Bolt/Master of Storms you can prevent enemy troops from causing too much damage. With Meteor Storm and higher level spells it would have been easier still which I unfortunately did not manage to learn in previous missions.
Logistics would have been a great skill to have in this map as well.

A Warlock not having Destructive Magic and proper spells would be a pain to play as much of the damage here comes from spells (same goes for the AI controlled heroes).

I noticed a couple of situations where the AI would not take an empty castle. My main heroes were too far off and not enough troops to defend so I just bought whatever was left and got a hero to move them out, hoping that if enemy neglected the castle by day 7/day 1 perhaps I could sneak in. Would think that some strategy map AI tweaks are still needed here as sometimes enemy heroes appear to stand still for a whole day as if they were confused as to where to go.

If you get one of the enemy Warlocks who are usually about L20 and have
good Spell Power, bombing an enemy hero who is within 1 day's travel of your castle is always an option.
However the game now does not seem to allow repeated bombing attempts by the same hero. Once you rehire the hero, his/her movement points are zeroed, even if you had movement points to spare before fleeing.

[Mujin]

I love this map, for me the AI did keep reclaiming their castles so it was kinda a chore to ship the troops out, recombine with the nearby castle and retake it again.

I knocked out the heroes with the biggest armies early and their armies got smaller and smaller as the game wore on.

Hydras and minotaurs were kept in the main 2 castles to keep red at bay, till Raelag came back to finish him off.