Heroes of Might & Magic 4 Defense Thread

[Maculo]

I am trying to install Equilibrium on HoMM4. Are there HoMM4 scenarios that anyone would recommend?

Also, I need to replay HoMM3. I listened to the intro of a HoMM4 campaign, and it discusses a prior homeland that blew up. I do not remember the HoMM3 planet blowing up.

 

[Valky]

Hah that is actually spot on, in my experience. I can now remember my sister being absolutely addicted to HoMM3 and was always playing the game. We are from eastern europe too. Funny how i had forgotten her HoMM addiction. Got me hooked on the game as well.

I've met more women who have played HOMM2/3 than any other game.

I once heard a group of 14-15 year old girls discussing it on the bus. I could hardly believe my ears.

Marry one.

 

[Lujo]

Maculo I think that it happened "between" H3 and H4, or something about armageddons blade, to justify the reset.

Equilibris seems to have a bit of a problem with autosaving is the game isn't installed in the correct folder on your computer. Save before battles and you should be fine.

As for scenarios, the campaigns are praised (some of them), but they're kind of advanced gameplay, not the best thing to jump into. I can't remember actual single player scenarios off the top of my head.


Also, remember that if you get summoning or demonology summons (in equilibris) you can use Alt-E with your hero selected to choose what to summon. The market is in one of the menus that's also something to remember.

 

[octavius]

I once heard a group of 14-15 year old girls discussing it on the bus. I could hardly believe my ears.

Marry one.

Microsoft provide me with enough nagware.

 

[Icewater]

Heroes 4 had hands down the best aesthetics of the series. The AI was junk and some of the new stuff they tried didn't work so well (heroes on field; early they're far too weak and later they're way too strong) but overall it was a solid game and I enjoyed it.

Jewbisoft had a golden opportunity to combine the best parts of every game in the series and instead chose to shit all over it. Fuck them. (Fuck them mostly at least, Heroes 6's campaigns actually had surprisingly good writing and characters for a strategy game and especially for how shitty the rest of it was, and also the art style was pretty good. A huge step up from the abortion that was Heroes 5's pumpkin people at least.)

 

[Lujo]

A few more IV unobvious handy hints:

- It went back to the pre-3 system of there not being enough gold to throw around, so DO use that marketplace to buy stuff
- The castle upgrades kind of got lost in the shuffle and don't really do much (and especially don't do what they did in 3)
- Lephrecauns. Forget about how they look, and summon the little bastards because every time you summon them their mana refreshes and they're good for another cast of max luck. And luck in this game = damage reduction. So when you summon the little twerps someone gets max damage reduction making them very, very good.
- Creatures in heroes IV die, but fat stuff tanks damage. This includes hereos and yes, this also means early on. Especially if you have Lephrecauns to give stuff max luck (but also other buffs).
- First Strike is (much) better than it looks, and using a hero or a bait unit to bait retaliation can be even more important than usual.
- Creatures are tougher than you're probably used to because there are fewer creature levels. This trips people up and it's objecitvely minor but subjectively makes you walk into stupid fights. Evil Eyes can mess you up, Griffins are a top-level unit in disguise, and stuff you don't necessarily build can be tough to actually face in combat.
- Summoning spells, there's way more to them than folks think (cover, retaliation baiting, beneficial spell casts, all sorts of stuff)
- Ballista's are slow as dirt, if you're going life give pikemen a chance, they're much better than they look and you have plenty of shooters allready.
- You can raise growth in your city if you make a Nobility guy the governor. I forgot how exactly you do this, but I think it's through the same menu where the market is. Obviously do do this, lol.
- You can take units out of the army at any point, so do. If you know you have too few IDK berserkers and that you'll just lose them in a battle you'll otherwise win, just split the crew.

VERY IMPORTANT: Your default squad formation is Front - Back - Front - Back - Front - Back - Front . Odd numbers in front, and Even number slots are in the back. This isn't obvious. Put the tanks in front and the fragile guys in the back. Lots of neat tricks that can be done and plenty of unobvious stuff to do with the formation, like putting Ogre Mages (especially Equilibris ones with an expanded spellbook) in front of Berserkers - this keeps bersekers from reaching the other side too quickly, before you got to buff them, and it also puts the fat and slow ogres more to the front. Also not all archers are backliners, guys with low range and few shots but good physical stats like Centaurs and Orcs make fine front lines (They also retaliate to enemy shots, which is likely to hit the advancing enemy front line for more damage than it would the enemy backline which is too far away).

EDIT: Oh, and you can switch between mellee and ranged for both heroes and units, which, again, is a handy thing to know when you have those semi-archer types but also a lot of melee buffs (or are facing enemy archers who's range retaliate would be favorable from them, but walking up to them to smack them upside the head would be favorable to you).

ASLO: Read enemy abilities. Mouse over, click on them, read them, as opposed to the games before you really can and it's quite informative.

ONE MORE: Especially in equilibris, things that look strictly better in theory might have a significantly worse buildup / cost / growth rate / raw stats as compared to the ability. Give stuff a chance.

 

[Xzylvador]

HoMM 3 was my favorite because it looked the coolest (in my childhood opinion).

Damned graphic whores.
HoMM 2 was superior.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I'm with you there, Heroes IV looks like ass and it goes further than that, I think they really screwed up things which shouldn't really matter but for many people do. Leprechaun just made too many people go "wtf is this doing in my heroes game". Made me think that, too. Mechanically it's better than you'd think, but it's completely out of place visually and aestethically.

The art/flavor department dropped the ball the most.

I wasn't even going to post the leprechaun, I wanted a screenshot of the battle screen but google provided me with the picture and I couldn't resist

Actually they don't die as much (or really, at all) early on as people complain about if they're in the back and you don't rush into stupid fights. And they especially don't die if you don't try to play it in the "tag youre it" was of Heroes 3 where you're not supposed to ever lose a single uint. The problem was that people couldn't tell what a stupid fight was because of all the other changes and that people were at a loss as to what to do without a hex grid.

You are overstating it. You can go through entire campaigns without a single immortality potion on any hero. I do get the frustration, and once monster stacks get fat enough heroes become a problem.

You know, I probably am overstating it somewhat. Still, I haven't played HoMM4 since whatever year it came out and it's one of the things I remember the best about it: low level heroes dying randomly. Oops the wolves can pass between these shrubs here, dead. Oops a medusa hit you, dead. Oops someone cast a spell on you, dead. Maybe it was manageable but very annoying.

And they don't devastate as much later on because it's not that difficult or impossible to drop them.

It's not impossible to kill them but they resurrect for basically free (and the potion resurrects a level 2 and level 20 hero for the same cost) and can take a huge portion of enemy army with them each time. Take something like Eador, heroes are in combat and can get very, very powerful but if they die it's a huge setback because you can lose some of your items, resurrection usually happens at your capital, takes multiple turns to start and costs A LOT of money. And yes I realize that in Homm4 it would make low level deaths even more annoying but the balance issue exists both with low and high level heroes.

Merging Inferno and Necro - meh, if you started form Kings Bounty you seen stuff move around, but it pissed me off for different and more practical reasons. The problem why it didn't work was that Inferno just didn't have enough iconic units which did anything worthwhile (or were distinct in flavor) to begin with, and that the creatures distribution made certain things very clear cut choices, and this was more of a problem for Death than other towns.

I mentioned Inferno and Necro merging specifically because it struck me as a super lazy move of just making TEH BAD GUYS TOWN when it didn't really fit together. I never played the original King's Bounty, I started with HoMM1 (I think? I didn't play it much, maybe I started with 2 and then played 1, I'm not really sure), I played 2&3 the most. I don't mind units moving around but IMO inferno+necro is like making a good guys town with knights and elves together.

When was actually the last page when people talked about HoMM VII?

I haven't even played VI or V's expansions. V was ok, I guess but I didn't really get into it. The problem with making V as close to III as possible is that most people will keep playing III (and so they did) and straying too far risks a huge backlash, so in a way they're fucked if they do and fucked if they don't, so perhaps they realized it and just gave up after 5?

 

[Valky]

I once heard a group of 14-15 year old girls discussing it on the bus. I could hardly believe my ears.

Marry one.

Microsoft provide me with enough nagware.

Install gentoo.

 

[Maggot]

Heroes 4 had hands down the best aesthetics of the series.

Spoiler

Meanwhile in glorious HoMM3 mod community

Spoiler

 

[Lujo]

I wasn't even going to post the leprechaun, I wanted a screenshot of the battle screen but google provided me with the picture and I couldn't resist

That leprechaun is "all that went wrong with Heroes IV" in one single creature. People saw it and didn't want to even think about using it because of the way it looks. And it looks terrible and is off flavor to an absurd degree. At the same time, it gives maximum damage resistance which makes things very hard to kill. Along the way people also miss that luck is damage resistance because they avoid the most common supplier of it like a plague. Then people complain that their stuff dies too easily :D Complete mess, but when you get down it, it's graphics that start the chain.

You know, I probably am overstating it somewhat. Still, I haven't played HoMM4 since whatever year it came out and it's one of the things I remember the best about it: low level heroes dying randomly. Oops the wolves can pass between these shrubs here, dead. Oops a medusa hit you, dead. Oops someone cast a spell on you, dead. Maybe it was manageable but very annoying.

This really depends on troop placement and picking your fights. Also it happened, but wasn't that big a deal if it happened. Also, I said abouve - stuff is much stronger than people expect, wolves aren't pushovers.

Some may ask - but wth they're tier 1!? Yes, in Heroes IV, but in heroes IV they basically mostly cut the fully-disposable H3 tier one unit and made tier 2 and tier 3 into "tier 1". Every castle has (at least) 8 creatures, it's just that they're packed in closer to each other.

It's not impossible to kill them but they resurrect for basically free (and the potion resurrects a level 2 and level 20 hero for the same cost) and can take a huge portion of enemy army with them each time.

Not necessarily and it also depends on how long of a scenario we're talking about. And, if they're drinking immortality they're not doing much. And also, there are spells which remove buffs from stuff, including the immortality. It's possible you cheezed it in the campaigns where you reeeeealy get to develop heroes beyond what you can expect otherwise. It's not that ressurection can't be cheezed, or that some heroes don't make rather good tanks (or that with good play you can't solo certain things with heroes), I absolutely agree but it really wasn't that big of a deal in multiplayer. Especially once you learned ways around it and there were plenty.

EDIT: Where they dropped the ball, IMO, was the "Combat" skill tree. I think they should have made all heroes more capable of holding their own without the Cobat skill, and used some of the filler slots in other skills to improve durability (if not offesnive power). IDK, but that could have been done better, lots of things could have.

I mentioned Inferno and Necro merging specifically because it struck me as a super lazy move of just making TEH BAD GUYS TOWN when it didn't really fit together. I never played the original King's Bounty, I started with HoMM1 (I think? I didn't play it much, maybe I started with 2 and then played 1, I'm not really sure), I played 2&3 the most. I don't mind units moving around but IMO inferno+necro is like making a good guys town with knights and elves together.

Then you'd be surprised that in the game which started it all, kings bounty, the "dungeon" dwelling/castle/faction consisted of skeleton - zombie - ghost - vampire - deamon (mechanically exactly the same as the genie from HOMM1/2, and with wings). It's older than you think :D Check it out, I haven't been able to find a better list (probably there is one on the net), search "PRIVATE GUARD" (player faction) and all the other ones are listed below http://www.genesisproject-online.com/Genesis/I-k/king/king.html Heroes IV took a bunch of things back to the source material, shame it got such a backlash.

Also, the distribution in Heroes IV is very, VERY obviously inspired by Magic the Gathering in every possible way. Undead and deamons are in black in MtG, Inferno - Necro remrege is completely on flavor there. But really, Inferno was the blandest of the bland spammy Heroes 3 factions, the Efreet found a home at Chaos which was fine but you really had nowhere to go with the other guys. You had hardly anything to DO with the other guys, they're all the same bland thing, and there's noone to pair the undead up with and there's not enough undead to fill up a full 9 slot castle. I mean, the poison spitting slug deamon is Lich in disguize, but Lich is "skelleton with a crown" as opposed to "skelleton".

I'm more annoyed with the Mechanical Dragon, Faerie Dragon and Black Dragon. I wish they made a Heroes game with just one, exactly one single dragon. I recently replayed some HotA Heroes 3 maps and it's like Heroes of Might and Dragons. (There was a good reason to inroduce three colors of dragons in Heroes 2 because they really needed to make the Warlock pay for the imbalanced s**t, but it got waaaaaay out of hand and waaaaay into lazy dragon spam territory by the time of H3 expansions). Technically porting the Bone Dragon into Heroes 2 to top the necromancer off started the lazy dragon spam.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Then you'd be surprised that in the game which started it all, kings bounty, the "dungeon" dwelling/castle/faction consisted of skeleton - zombie - ghost - vampire - deamon (mechanically exactly the same as the genie from HOMM1/2, and with wings). It's older than you think :D Check it out, I haven't been able to find a better list (probably there is one on the net), search "PRIVATE GUARD" (player faction) and all the other ones are listed below http://www.genesisproject-online.com/Genesis/I-k/king/king.html Heroes IV took a bunch of things back to the source material, shame it got such a backlash.

Well, I didn't know that. Even so it's a merge of two towns that got their own separate factions previously (even if many of their units weren't very memorable) and people expect the number of factions to bloat with each game. Go from 8 (9 with conflux) to 6 towns and you're sure to piss off people whose favorite town got the short end of the stick, there's no way around it. I mean, I liked Fortress in 3, so...

Also, the distribution in Heroes IV is very, VERY obviously inspired by Magic the Gathering in every possible way. Undead and deamons are in black in MtG, Inferno - Necro remrege is completely on flavor there. But really, Inferno was the blandest of the bland spammy Heroes 3 factions, the Efreet found a home at Chaos which was fine but you really had nowhere to go with the other guys. You had hardly anything to DO with the other guys, they're all the same bland thing, and there's noone to pair the undead up with and there's not enough undead to fill up a full 9 slot castle. I mean, the poison spitting slug deamon is Lich in disguize, but Lich is "skelleton with a crown" as opposed to "skelleton".

I can see that. Although asylum and stronghold are both Red with asylum going RB and academy lacks the water element aspect of U, and there were neutral units like mermaids and pirates. Come to think of it there was a lot of neutral units in 4, zombies, ice demons, I think maybe even enough to make separate necropolis and inferno with a little more work? Dunno.

I'm more annoyed with the Mechanical Dragon, Faerie Dragon and Black Dragon. I wish they made a Heroes game with just one, exactly one single dragon. I recently replayed some HotA Heroes 3 maps and it's like Heroes of Might and Dragons. (There was a good reason to inroduce three colors of dragons in Heroes 2 because they really needed to make the Warlock pay for the imbalanced s**t, but it got waaaaaay out of hand and waaaaay into lazy dragon spam territory by the time of H3 expansions). Technically porting the Bone Dragon into Heroes 2 to top the necromancer off started the lazy dragon spam.

The dragon repainting upgrading thing in 2 and 3 is pretty silly.

 

[Cadmus]

Which Kings Bounty is the best to start with? I don't want to fuck around with ugly graphics or shitty interface.

 

[Lujo]

Well, there's only 2 King's Bounties, really. The very, very old one which is a very old game with fugly graphics and a shitty interface but which created HOMM strategy games franchise, and there's the much later spiritual sucessor (with a heavy Russian aesthetic to the graphics, except more light hearted and tolerable than Heroes 5) Kings Bounty: the Legend which has a million add-ons. I've played the base (newer) game and it was rather fun. I obviously played the original, too, found it epic and wish someone remade it with updated graphics and a better interface (Altough for a game that old it's not even that terrible, and HOMM1 actually has better graphics than HOMM2 wouldn'tyouknow it)

---

Yeah there are quite a bunch of neutrals in IV, I found it actually quite interesting. I whish it was developed more and had proper expansions with more neutrals, especially spellcasting ones, because you don't need a huge stack of such a creature to cause mayhem. Handy dandy dwelling you flag, caravan the suckers home, have an extra dude you didn't pay to build the dwelling of but rather foud it on the map. This is how the original Kings Bounty worked (more or less), you only had one actual castle where you could recruit troops you'd associate with the Kinght (or haven) and you got all other guys from individual randomized external dwellings.

And there's no proper "neutrals" in IV, they all belong to factios, you just can't build their dwellings in towns. I think this was because some were deemed just too goofy to not be wilderness dwellers (Troglodytes, Evil Eyes, Leprechauns for that matter) and some simply fought for the same design space which traditionally caused sillyness (like having Zombies and Skelletons in the same castle, or like what would happen if you had Ghosts and Gargoyles - it's cool to have both in the game, but you're not giving the player much choice if you make him choose between both and if you flat out give him both you're giving him 2 overly similar units).

It's a shame porting new units (along with their external dwellings) into Heroes IV is so difficult, they would be quite fun with even more neutrals.

---

The dragon repainting upgrading spam is ludicrous. In Heroes 3 there are 8 factions (I really don't count Conflux into anything, it's a total cashgrab), and 3 of those have Dragons as their capstone. And then there's neutral dragons in seemingly all shapes and sizes. Only thing missing is Asian Chinese-Themed faction with an Asian dragon, and an all-dragon faction with nothing BUT dragons (and their upgrades, so Semi Wimpy Dragon ---> Pissed Off Semi Wimpy Dragon, +1 shots).

I'd dig a Heroes game with one NEUTRAL dragon, called Dragon.

 

[Lujo]

Btw, I haven't tried Heroes VI and VII, do either of them have mixed enemy stacks? I can't remember if 5 has them, either.

EDIT: Because the original fugly KB, which was actually a really good game, it only had mixed stacks of enemies. It was stacks of 3 different types in roaming bands on the map, and stacks of 5 enemies (if I remember correctly) in castles.

I can't for the life of me figure out why it took them all the way until heroes IV to have mixed stacks again. I mean, they're just so much more varied and have more tactical capability. Most monsters only really make sense as part of a mixed stack, they're hamless otherwise... If you can have mixes, why not have them? I'd pay money for a mod of the older games which allowed for it.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Hah that is actually spot on, in my experience. I can now remember my sister being absolutely addicted to HoMM3 and was always playing the game. We are from eastern europe too. Funny how i had forgotten her HoMM addiction. Got me hooked on the game as well.

I've met more women who have played HOMM2/3 than any other game.

I once heard a group of 14-15 year old girls discussing it on the bus. I could hardly believe my ears.

Marry one.

HoMM 3 is popular among girls in general, for some reason. In this post-Soviet culture, at least.

 

[Archibald]

Because it is casual friendly game.

 

[GrainWetski]

I'm not surprised. Played a ton of hotseat HoMM2/3 with my sisters that rarely played other games at all. They didn't even play The Sims, but they made maps for HoMM 3.

 

[Maculo]

It took me a couple of tries to get into Homm4, but now I am enjoying it immensely. It is different. Currently, I am playing the human/life campaign, and I am combining a knight with nobility/tactics (passive buffs the army) and a caster (life magic for resurrection/more buffs and order magic for charm). I thought multiple heroes in one army would be a no brainer, but the heroes are fragile. I could see why a slot lost to a hero could be detrimental, especially when armies get bigger. Still, two (2) heroes seems be a good number (one to provide passive buffs, one to be a caster, and nobility on a least one of the heroes)

The only thing that I dislike is the siege system, but that may be because the AI is so damn terrible at it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Heroes 4 has always been cool, I don't know why people are just now figuring it out. Maybe I noticed it earlier because it was my first HoMM game as a kid, but even after having played 3 I still think it's cool. It also has surprisingly good writing, especially the Half-Dead campaign, at least I remember it the most vividly, though I haven't played any of the expansion campaigns. I should probably rectify that. HoMM4 is simply different and that's why people got their panties in a twist, too bad it ruined 3DO. Anyway, did 7 amount to anything in the end? I pirated it when it came out, but it was either incredibly buggy or really boring and same-y, so I dropped it.

 

[CptMace]

Very good writing indeed. Heroes 4 remains my favourite because of that, since I never was much into multiplayer - especially considering how tedious these games were/are in hotseat mode - the solo mode was my jam, and Heroes 4 campaigns were great.
I played 7 recently, I didn't experience any critical problem. However the game really suffered from a conservative design. Basically a simili-Heroes 3. Although it's way better than 6, there's little to no reason to play it, really.

 

[cvv]

3 is great but my fondest memories still rest with 2. Maybe it's the music. One of the best soundtrack of any game ever made. The operatic stuff was so spot on omg.

 

[Maculo]

I am replaying HommIV (will revisit Homm3 after), and the first Might campaign mission is a pain. It feels like a merry-go-round between my army and the main enemy death ball. The main enemy army is 40 ogres and 90 harpies, plus other decent sized stacks.

It simply comes down to attrition. I just do not have enough to finish off all of the ogres. What complicates matters is that my Tavern is disabled, whereas the enemy has been cranking out replacement heroes. Those replacement heroes tag recruitment and resource buildings, while the main army sits back. When I go to retag buildings, the main army moves against me or recruits more ogres or cyclops at recruitment buildings, which are positioned on opposite sides of the map. To make matters worse, there are two portals, one leads to my main base and one leads to the ogre lair.

I feel like I can win eventually, but I must be doing something wrong.

 

[Lacrymas]

H4's campaigns require curiously specific tactics/strategies, usually some optimal route/building plan at the beginning. Either way, the odds are always stacked against you, so you'll have to be smart about it, if you think you can win push through it, if you think you've already lost start the map from the beginning and try something different. I also vaguely remember the Might campaign being the most difficult due to no magic. I don't think I've ran into an unbeatable mission, as in "no matter what you do some RNG is going to fuck you over and you won't be able to progress", but I might have been lucky or misremembering.

 

[Maculo]

Honestly, I am a few days too slow, which I did to build up more expendable barbarians. It won me some battles, but I think it lost me the campaign. It also does not help that I took time to get all the power-ups (defeated by my own greed). I just did not anticipate that many ogres.

I see where I went wrong, but the Might campaign does not provide a lot of breathing room, even on intermediate difficulty. Typically, I like to explore, find treasure, etc, but here I feel forced to meta-game (more so than usual).

In contrast, the Haven campaign was relatively easy, but fun in a cheesy way. I could explore, find treasure, and enjoy the map/music. The only exception was mission 4 (5?), where a Chaos hero kept one shotting Lysander with a 300+ fire ball/attack, even with master magic resistance.