You knew it was coming... favorite Heroes game

[UndeadHalfOrc]

I don't really include H1 because I didn't play it that long, except that I remember the campaigns were very challenging.

Only if you play as Knight or Barbarian.

If you played as Warlock, not only did you get the best creatures (ie dragons) every map, but you didn't have to do the most challenging map in the campaign (against, surprise, Warlock). A total breeze.

[ThunderTitan]

You know, my love for Titans comes from the first H2 game i ever won... I played Wizard against Warlock...

[BoardGuest808888]

Vote Heroes II

Might have played Heroes III longer than any other games, but Heroes II still had certain impression that irreplaceable even with better gameplay, graphics, sound, etc. Might because of its simplicity instead.

[Old_Man]

I have to say Heroes of Might and Magic 2, because that was the first one that I played, and that, in my opinion, is the one that attracts me the most.

It has wonderful graphics, it has a nice A.I, it has nice monsters.

Basically, everything about it is wonderful.

Sure, the towns might be unbalanced, but that does not matter to me.

They are all good and bad in their own little ways, and that is why I like it.

[grobblewobble]

Voted HoMM II.

Considering game balance, I think II and III are about equally (un)balanced. The greatest improvement in III IMO was replacing the well with the fort/castle system. Now lower level creatures actually matter in the endgame.. that's cool.

At the other hand, I don't like the changes to secondary skills at all. IMO it's a total chaos with so many secondary skills in HoMM III, with a few must-have ones, but a lot of skills with next to no use.

And the worst game imbalance was not fixed at all.. might vs magic heroes. Yes, the damage formula was adjusted, but might heroes were largely compensated because creatures got more hitpoints*, while spells did not do more damage - and the best spells in the game (mass anything) require elemental skills, not insane knowledge/spellpower, or even wisdom.

What's worse, the necromancy skill was way overboosted:

- larger and more neutral stacks to turn into skellies to begin with
- heroes with special bonuses
- many artifacts with more bonuses
- vial of life blood
- skeleton converter
- necromancy amplifier

Ouch..

But in the end, the decisive factor is the warm feeling and attractive style of H2.

* EDIT: I mean total HP, from higher numbers & actual HP combined

[UndeadHalfOrc]

The greatest improvement in III IMO was replacing the well with the fort/castle system. Now lower level creatures actually matter in the endgame.. that's cool.

Yes, very good point.

At the other hand, I don't like the changes to secondary skills at all. IMO it's a total chaos with so many secondary skills in HoMM III, with a few must-have ones, but a lot of skills with next to no use.

True, and I changed the useless skills probability to appear to almost 0 in my custom H3 patch. And in the same patch, Earth Magic is no longer a "must have" skill.
However you have to concede that in H2, there were 8 slots but so few skills that most high Heroes looked exactly the same: Wisdom, Logistics, Ballistics, Pathfinding or Navigation, Diplomacy, Archery, Luck, and finally Leadership or Necromancy. No variation.

And the worst game imbalance was not fixed at all.. might vs magic heroes. Yes, the damage formula was adjusted, but might heroes were largely compensated because creatures got more hitpoints*, while spells did not do more damage - and the best spells in the game (mass anything) require elemental skills, not insane knowledge/spellpower, or even wisdom.

True. I raised the MP cost of mass spells in my patch to slightly offset for this.

What's worse, the necromancy skill was way overboosted:

- larger and more neutral stacks to turn into skellies to begin with
- heroes with special bonuses
- many artifacts with more bonuses
- vial of life blood
- skeleton converter
- necromancy amplifier

Here I have to strongly disagree. It's unlikely that all of these factors will come in play at once. And don't forget that they changed the formula after a few official H3 patches; it was based on the absolute number of monsters killed, in H3 it's HP based. More balanced, IMHO.

For instance, in H2 if your necro% was 30%, you would raise 300 skeletons from 1000 peasants.

In H3, since skellies have 6 times the HP of peasants, you would raise only 50 skeletons from those 1000 peasants if you had a necro% of 30%!! To raise the same 300 skeletons, you would have to kill 1000 gnolls (same HP as skeletons).

[grobblewobble]

Uhm.. I guess my version of HoMM 3 is still unpatched.

[Yurian Stonebow]

Heroes III is THE game for me. This is the first and last time I ever used capital letters in the middle of a sentence here on the CH forums -I Promise- That's how much I love the game. Like I have stated elsewhere I'm a Heroes III veteran (and a fanatic) with my gaming experience now past 8 years. And counting.

"Erathian banner should always be respected, never disgraced"






Yurian

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Yurian, have you ever tried modding/balancing H3 yourself?

If not, you might be interested in my custom H3 balance patch. 6 years in the making!

[Metathron]

HoMM II and IV for me, but I gave my vote to IV because I've been playing it much more in the last couple of years and I had a feeling it would have fewer votes.

[Yurian Stonebow]

UndeadHalfOrc, I haven't modded Heroes III or touched its files in any way. Though I must admit that the thought has crossed my mind. There are some nuisances still left in the game after latest SoD patch. Eagle Eye skill is perhaps the top-ranking. It's basicly useless.

Anyways, I don't know coding or other software tricks so I stick with Heroes III Complete with its version 4.0.

I have tried WoG but found it to be anything but a balance mod, in fact it seems more appropriate to describe it as "Revolution Mod". There are simply too many far reaching changes in Wog for me to enjoy the exprience. What I found to be what I was looking for in the Wake of Gods was rearrangements of skills and some changes in existing units. For example, adjustments in Eagle Eye, Mysticism and Sorcery were quite nice. Also limiting weekly Phoenix growth to 2 instead of 4 was much needed and sensible.

I will download your patch and have a look on it. I can assure you that I appreciate already your hard work with testing the patch. Indeed no product of quality can be made without numerous checks and fixes. Perhaps I could ask you to try some of my H3 maps in exchange





Yurian

[Humakt]

Heroes of Might and Magic 2

I started the series with this game. I did like it but I don't remember being that fondly of it (IMO Heroes 1 & 2 still loses to excellent Warlords 2 Deluxe" in playablity)

+ Cartoonish Graphic Style
+ Non-linear campaign (thought I'd wish we've had real military campaign like in Warlords Battlecry 2 or much more story oriented like in Disciples 2)
+ AI (but thruthfully it was only decent because game was otherwise rather simple)
+ Some Music was good....
- .... but rest sounded like (quality) midis.
- Portraits
- Combat too simple especially compared to later HoMM's

Heroes of Might and Magic 3

This was the game that really got me into HoMM's and mapmaking.

+ Combat System was a huge improvement over HoMM 2 (especially Tactics was nice improvement)
+ Numerous adventure objects
+ Heroes had special skills (thought wish they were more balanced)
+ Map and Campaign Editor
+ Eight (nine) sides and players
+ Solid expansion in Armageddon's Blade (RMG, new town)
+ Town screens looked good
- Terrible combat AI
- Other expansions were waste of money and space
- Conflux was very unbalanced (there were other balance problems, but not as obvious (except maybe gremlin rush))

Heroes of Might and Magic 4

Despite buggy initial release (thought it wasn't as bad for non-americans) this was in my opinion great game since the very beginning that only got better with upcoming patches and Equilibris mod.

+ Great map editor with scripting system
+ Gorgeous adventure map graphic
+ Numerous adventure map objects
+ Very good combat system
+ Solid portraits
+ Heroes in combat
+ Lots of different spells
+ Caravans
+ Skill system
+ Nice adventure map music
+ Good combat AI (excluding sieges)
- Difficulty system flawed/bugged
- Initial release
- Expansion packs are worthless
- Adventure map AI buggy/bad and needs help to be competitive
- Balance problems (fixed by Equilibris)
- Death faction rather dull

Heroes of Might and Magic 5

+ Best animation in the series
+ Great unit graphics
+ Great expansion packs
+ Music is nice
+ Some nice town screens (especially Haven)
+ Heroes had special skills (thought wish they were more balanced)
+ Skill system
- Too few spells
- Map editor
- Scenarios are a lot smaller
- Initiative system needs some workaround
- Fewer adventure map objects

My choice is Heroes 4.

[okrane]

Heroes 4 all the way. I just love heroes in combat

And agree with the post above. Although I would like to say that all these games were nice at their time and it's hard to compare them...

I would rather say I am a HOMM lover...

[ThunderTitan]

Heroes of Might and Magic 2

- Portraits

Eat your tongue out... the improvement in resolution didn't even come close to replacing how cool H1&2 portraits where from a "rotten teeth, bad hair etc" point of view.

Heroes of Might and Magic 5

+ Best animation in the series
+ Great unit graphics

Now this i wonder how will fare the test of time. Frankly i find neither very impressing, even if each unit probably has more movements/animation then in previous games, quantity isn't quality.

[Darmani]

Heroes of Might and Magic 5

+ Best animation in the series
+ Great unit graphics

Now this i wonder how will fare the test of time. Frankly i find neither very impressing, even if each unit probably has more movements/animation then in previous games, quantity isn't quality.

No, HoMM V definitely has better quality of graphics. However, I personally like to separate graphics and art, where graphics is all the shaders and reflections and 3D stuff you have (basically the technology of the visuals), and art is, well, how good it looks. IMHO HoMM V has excellent graphics and mediocre art.

[ThunderTitan]

Only if you consider 3D > 2D... from a visual PoV 3D only recently has started not to look blocky and rough.

[Ohma]

Voted HoMM 2. Yeah, mostly for nostalgia reasons, I was too young to really grok 1 when my parents bought it, and 2 was the first game that my parents and I installed on our (then) new laptop, so we got to play hot seat games at the coast when it was to stormy to enjoy the beach.

But I do also feel that 2 did have more character (as other people have mentioned) than the other games, mostly because it *was* cartoony, and the factions were much more differentiated from each other than in 1.

I'd rank each game accordingly.

2: Still simplistic enough to get newbies into a game in just a few turns, but complex enough for each game to present different challenges, great art direction and atmosphere, balance for a few factions is still a problem though.

3: *SOLID* game play, some welcome changes to old game mechanics (I liked the backpack for artifacts), mostly good art direction, setting could've been a bit less obviously tied to the M&M franchise (though I may be alone in thinking that that is a problem).

1: Fun (even after about 11 years), simple enough to just jump in without needing too much help, but perhaps a bit *too* simple, factions aren't very well defined, balance issues, charming art direction.

5: Nice art direction (even if it does borrow too much from other popular fantasy games *cough* WoW *cough cough* Warhammer), balance issues, bugs, DESPERATLY wants you to know all about its setting for some reason (which I find annoying), way too few multiplayer maps, map editor is a piece of dren.

4: A few interesting/welcome game play changes (secondary skills, flaggable windmills, the caravan), a lot of annoying ones (moving creature stacks, heroes in combat), terrible art direction (like they just had someone rig a few models in Maya and called it good).

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Ohma, that's a great analysis. I agree pretty much to everything you just said about each game.

And I agree, H2's strongest point over H3 is more different factions, and with my new H2 custom balance patch, it's more fun than ever (I just completed my first H2 game in years with that balance patch, it was me, (a Necro vs the other 5 factions, all allied against me. A blast to play). Simplest and easiest change is to change Dragon and Titan growth to 2 instead of 3 ( though I did a lot of tweaking). All that's left to do is tweak the spell appearance in guilds.

[ThunderTitan]

moving creature stacks

You know that one could be turned ON and OFF, right?

[Metathron]

moving creature stacks

You know that one could be turned ON and OFF, right?

Yes, but even with that option, neutral stacks would still move about, especially when one of those Month (or is it week?) of the... spawnings occured, and having to watch those creatures move aimlessly can be very frustrating. Not sure if that's what Ohma was referring to, or if he simply wasn't aware of that button, but there you have it.