Heroes of Might and Magic IV is on the way. It's scheduled to be released for Windows on September 15, 2001. Whether or not it will actually be released then has yet to be seen. A Macintosh version of the game has not been announced, but it is definitely feasible.

Heroes of Might and Magic IV takes place after Heroes III, but on a different continent. Erathia, the setting of Heroes III, is destroyed by a cataclysm and one of the survivors of this vaguely described disaster is a woman named Emilia Nighthaven. She hopes to restore peace and order to the world, but the Immortal King Magnus wants to stop her. (my money's on the immortal king guy!) King Magnus has Dragon Golems and an artifact that can control the minds of others. Emilia, on the other hand, doesn't have anything cool like that at all, but her struggle to defeat Magnus will take place through the game's seven single-player campaigns.

A decent amount of information has been released so far, but a lot is still unknown. All of the new screenshots are 1024x768 or 1280x1024, which are two of the resolutions you can choose to run the game in. An early report said 800x600 would also be an option, but based on the pictures, it looks like the game would be very cramped on the screen if you used 800x600. It may no longer be an option, but since that would leave out lots of laptop owners, I would imagine that it will remain available. Some other information:

• Running Heroes IV With Virtual PC
• Towns
• Magic
• Interface
• Screenshots
• Macintosh

• There will be 11 starting classes for heroes: archer, barbarian, rogue, fighter, warrior, sorcerer, lord, priest, necromancer, shaman, and enchanter.
• As your hero gets stronger, there will be 37 advanced classes for them to choose from based on the skills they've learned.
• Heroes will have 9 statistics: Damage, Hit Points, Spell Points, Shots, Luck, Morale, Speed, Movement, and Experience.
• Heroes will have 9 primary skills, each with three associated secondary skills. The primary skills are: Combat, Tactics, Scouting, Nobility, Life Magic, Death Magic, Order Magic, Chaos Magic, and Nature Magic.
• Secondary skills will have 5 levels of mastery.
• Heroes can fight in battles, and there will be "hundreds" to choose from.
• You can have more than one hero in an army, or an army with no heroes, but are still limited to having 8 armies on the map. Also, armies without heroes may run from, or join, enemy armies.
• Armies without heroes can pick up artifacts, but cannot use them. Creatures with hands will be able to use potions though.
• If one of your heroes is defeated in battle, they can be brought back to your town to be resurrected if the rest of your army wins. If your army loses, your hero can be captured by the enemy.
• Every creature in the game will have a special ability.
• There will be Caravans you can use to transport creatures to distant heroes.
• Retaliations (counterstrikes) will be done at full force, instead of at diminished forces like in previous Heroes games. (King's Bounty also had retaliations at full force.)
• Two combat lines allow you to keep your archers in the rear.
• Water will be more interesting, with hireable pirates, sea monsters you can fight, and more adventure map locations to visit.
• There will be a two-level fog of war, much like in StarCraft or WarCraft II. One level will show you all terrain for areas you have previously visited (mapped out) and a second level will only let you see enemy heroes and creatures that you can currently see (like if a lookout tower or hero is nearby.) This makes it possible for enemy heroes to sneak up to one of your towns if you're not careful.
• You will have to build mines on top of resource locations to collect from them, instead of flagging existing mines.
• Castles won't have automatic arrow towers anymore, but there will be arrow towers that can be build where you can put your shooters.
• System Requirements: Currently, a 200Mhz Pentium with 64MB of RAM is being targeted. This may change when the final game is released. If/when a Macintosh version is released, I'd guess that it will have similar requirements to Heroes III (Any G3 or higher) but possibly more RAM will be required.

Scanned images from the June 2001 issue of CGW: (Quality is about as good as you can get from small magazine scans.)

A Large Battle

Academy

Ruins

Last Update: May 9, 2002

Copyright © 2000 - 2002 Rocco J Carello