r/heroes3 • u/HuaHuaMei • Dec 31 '24
Question Is this game hard or I’m hopeless?
Edit: wow, I wasn’t expecting so much positive and helpful feedback! Seems I really need to pay more attention to skills and level up more heroes in the first scenario so that I have more peeps to move the army around. I think I’ll just give the mission again sometime this week and see if I can make things work a bit better for me. Thanks!
I’ve had the game since it first got released, but it was way too hard for me to play when I was a kid so I just kinda goofed around, recruited “cool” looking monsters, and maybe managed to finish like the first mission of each campaign, but that was it. I tried to replay it multiple times over the years as I love everything about it, but I always felt overwhelmed and ended up quitting.
Now I’ve decided to give it a proper go and figure it out - first campaign was fairly simple, I got strong magic heroes and managed to win without any difficulties. I thought hey, maybe I got a tiny bit better at it.
Then I started the second campaign, I believe the English title is “spoils of war”or something similar? Played swamp then stronghold, built up some nice heroes, all went well.
I picked swamp for the 3rd mission, played for the last 3h and I still didn’t win, even thought I think the game is kinda leaning my way now. I lost waaaay too much time chasing the red player around the middle of the map - somehow all my heroes move super slow, I thought swamp would slow fortress heroes down? Either way, it’s a drag and I think I’m doing something seriously wrong, I feel like I’m always one step behind the enemy.
I like figuring games out by myself, I don’t really read guides or watch tutorials unless I have to, but I think I could really use some tips or suggestions that would help me get a bit better as I play. I’m a huge M&M fan and I’d love to beat Homm3 at some point but sometimes I feel like I’m just too daft to play it.
Thanks in advance!
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u/Zarni_woop Dec 31 '24
For me it was the hota campaign that made me realize “I’m not good at this game at all”
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u/guest_273 Thunderbirds Jan 06 '25
The HotA campaigns are made with the intention to give players that played these 20+ years a challenge. Most people played Heroes 3 a little bit once ever 5 or so years, so when they return they've forgotten how to play properly. You need to refresh your gameplay, familiarize yourself with the new Factions in single-player scenarios and only then jump in the Campaigns.
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u/Zarni_woop Jan 06 '25
I tried a single impossible scenario and was smoked like a fine ham. I think I need to approach this with more humility and start on some normal maps.
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u/guest_273 Thunderbirds Jan 07 '25
I did a 200% difficulty playthrough of the 'Forged in Fire' Campaign last January on my YouTube channel. I also got smoked pretty badly on a couple of maps on my first attempts.
Want to hear something funny? It was done on the 1.7.0. update. 1.7.1. came out and made most maps even more challenging! xD
Currently playing trough the new 'All in' Campaign and Map 2 also smoked me. But I blame the AI ally for ... well not allying too well. Xd
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u/Leather_patrol Dec 31 '24
Jebus and any tournaments are hard, just like any other cybersport-ish game.
But you don't need that to have fun, and having fun is the most important thing. Just play some lower-difficulty maps, and have a good time!
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u/Leandertjes Dec 31 '24
the movement speed penalty is based on native creature terrain, so if any of your creatures aint native to swamp youll suffer the penalty, you can lookup the different terrain penalties
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u/Titowam Dec 31 '24
It has to do with the monster faction?!? I thought it came down to the faction that your hero came from, like Solmyr = Tower = Moves through snow with little penalty!
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u/Spins13 Dec 31 '24
The campaigns are pretty easy.
Mostly, you want to pick the right skills (you may want to restart some scenarios until that witch hut next to you gives you a good skill) and visit all the stat bonuses on the map (it can be annoying to do this with 7 heroes when they carry on but it just makes everything easier). Also get as many spells, especially level 5 as you can on every map.
Skills you want most of the time : Logistics, Earth Magic, Wisdom, Diplomacy, Air Magic, Offense. Intelligence is pretty nice if you have dimension door so you can spam it and still have plenty of mana to fight. You can add it some fighting skills for the rest depending on the situation like Armorer or Archery or a specific skill for the campaign such as Pathfinding for that campaign you are struggling with.
I’ll add in a little trick. On maps where Mage guilds are limited to level 3 or less, you can still get Ressurection and Chain Lightning by hiring the specific hero who has it and build up a Scholar hero to level 4-5 to share the spell
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u/bombswell Dec 31 '24
I’ve been playing this game from 7-33 years old, I am still mediocre at it. I still can’t beat the Dragon Slayer campaign. I have a walkthrough bookmarked, but I was so frustrated I couldn’t do it myself that I had to step away for a few months! 😖
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u/Disastrous_Elk8098 Dec 31 '24
Ive been playing froma young age aswell. My father showed me the game when i was about 6 years old and now we always play hotseat together. Im 18yrs old now and im still charmed by this game and its soundtrack.
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u/1714alpha Dec 31 '24
I feel similar to this. I've played so many different games which I love playing, but in order to be truly "good" at them, you have to spend a ton of time and energy learning how to min/max a bunch of very technical game mechanics. For me, it quickly starts to break the immersion in the world of the game, and starts to feel like I'm just responding to formulas and flowcharts for actions instead of creatively playing on my own. I enjoy solving puzzles, and I'll pursue a tough challenge just for the satisfaction of the problem-solving aspect of it, but I don't want to have to memorize every hack and cheese tactic in the game just to win.
In the end, I just don't care enough to become "good" enough for competition-level play, or even beating the hardest levels all the time. I enjoy it most when I can learn how to do cool things, and feel somewhat competent, but not have to be a legal scholar about it. I appreciate the talent and skill it takes to create such a complex game and learn fully master it. But I have more fun just dicking around with my favorite monsters.
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u/Disastrous_Elk8098 Dec 31 '24
I feel the same. Just yesterday, while i was playing hotseat with my father, the game put me on necropolis. I found a few neutral dwellings and other castles and made a production line of skellies. I, 18yrs old male giggled like a little girl when i saw that i had over 3k skellies.
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u/mineczka Dec 31 '24
Me too, I beat some of the maps but I can't get through any campaign yet 😅 And it's not even high difficulty. It's frustrating sometimes.
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u/Ok_Kangaroo_5404 Dec 31 '24
It's been a long time since I played the campaigns, but Iirc the key to winning them is a chain of heroes to funnel troops to the front lines
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u/civnub Dec 31 '24
The key to the campaigns is to powermaxx your heroes in every mission, dont do the objective untill you've visited all overworld permanent stat objectives on the map, learned all the available spells and gotton as much secondary skills as possible, that way by the last level of the campaigns your combined stats would be over a 100 and you could just go clearing half the map with spells and your tavern starting army.
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u/Deerdren Dec 31 '24
If I recall, you can get pathfinding in that mission, which would really help you traverse the swamp.
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u/Jhonkanen Dec 31 '24
The main difficulty is figuring out the battles. Who goes first and how far you can move and not get hit and how to utilize the wait. See lexiav for really high level battles
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u/LizzielovesMommy Dec 31 '24
Homm3 is, in my opinion, about two things only: power hero and power stacks.
You generally don't want lots of heros with a handful of levels. You typically want a superstar that gets all the levels and the best troops and the best skills. You miiighhhttt have a second combat oriented hero, but most of your campaign games are one superstar fighter with all the others gathering resources, ferrying troops around and exploring.
Campaign maps especially have "zones". Your starting castle is in an area surrounded by impassible terrain with a few exits. Those exits are guarded by monster stacks ranging, depending on the scenario, from easy to absurd. It's very much a learned talent, but judging when you can burst through with your fighting hero is useful. A big tough creature can often be worth way more than a lot of little ones. So early game build order is important. Can you get that tier five or six dwelling the first week or two? I'd usually rather have a single behemoth than twenty goblins. Don't be afraid to split stacks. Absolutely skip building creature dwellings you don't need. Some troops are best left in your castle, and you don't have to hire them immediately! Or at all. Dwarves, golems, stuff like that is slow. And they slow down your army.
The single best tip I have for combat is the WAIT command. Not defend, not moving a little. Wait. It's absolutely a critical skill for luring in enemies, getting them to waste counterattacks and pummeling them with ranged, and multiple stacks of your creatures. If you both have a hundred skeletons, them hitting your hundred first is the worst outcome in most scenarios. Hitting them with your hundred first is better. But best is making them waste the counterattack hitting a single bony boy, and your 99 others grinding them to dust. If they have nothing but slow troops left, pull your creatures back and get a few free turns of ranged damage.
Your enemy is always expanding. Their combat hero might be snowballing into an avalanche. More fights means more exp, access to resources, artifacts and castles. Turtling up and slowly building your castle is not a beginning of game strategy to me. Do you really need a marketplace? No! Slice through the map and steal what you need! (Ok yes, the exchange but still. Probably not a first or second week priority. Or sometimes ever)
If you can fight and take an enemy castle on day seven, guess who has a lot of replacement creatures and guess who doesn't have them?
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u/PrizeCompetitive1186 Jan 01 '25
Check lexiav youtube/twitch channel. It really helped me to learn the game
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u/Ok_Menu_4152 Dec 31 '24
Campaigns are hard but the regular maps are easier and more fun in my experience.
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u/GradSchool2021 Dec 31 '24
I don't consider myself a good player, I've never played this game competitively, and I've never read a guide.
However, I have beaten all campaigns on the hardest difficulty (with all maps explored, all resources collected, all buildings entered etc. - basically 100% completion).
My only advice is to keep playing, try new strategies, save often, and be creative. Practice with random maps against hardest AI. My GOG account says I've sunk 800 hours into it. It helps that this game is not graphically intensive - I can play while I'm on the plane or at a coffee shop.
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u/OkAmListening Dec 31 '24
It's been a long time, but I had watched some YouTube play throughs. Not even sure of this sub's rules about suggesting a you tube channel since I just joined, but if you search "MeKick HoMM3" you should find them. While watching these for fun, I ended up really learning strategies about unit stacking and rushing resources while I reminisced on playing as a kid (similar to you, just sight the cool creatures...and novel spells). I did a playthrough after watching a few of his videos and was able to go much farther in the RoE campaign (still didn't finish, but I also wasn't persistent after a few defeats).
In short, I do think the game's hard, but watching others to see their tricks makes a world of difference.
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u/yannis_ Dec 31 '24
Also I recommend norovo. He plays PvE but you can really learn by watching. Attack early, split empty spots with 1 of a until to absorb retaliation, focus on a heroes strengths. We once did a skeletons only map vs impossible ai enemies
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u/p_nut_ Dec 31 '24
Some things to keep in mind:
It's usually good to fill out empty stacks with 1 of a fast unit you can use to kite AI and soak up enemy retaliations. So they counter and overkill a 1 stack then you gang up on it with the rest of your troops. Fortress upgraded tier 3 are some of the best units in the game to do this with
Armies don't have a move limit, heroes do. You should be able to out manuver the easy campaign AI pretty easily by chaining heroes together and moving your troops down the chain.
Slow troops mean less starting movement range for a hero. It's sometimes better to leave slow units at home until you can chain them into a fight where they are needed
Its helpful to know which skills are good/bad. It depends on situation but logistics, offense, wisdom, earth magic & air magic are almost universally good, eagle eye and learning are universally terrible