HOMM 3 : "Long Live the Queen 1" Strategy (LONG)
Sebastien Patenaude
of Might & Magic III (HOMM 3). We'll start with something rather easy
and a scenario that would serve well as a tutorial : Homecoming the
first scenario in the Live Long the Queen mini-campaign. It's unlikely
you'll have much trouble winning this one but I'll use this particular
strategy to introduce some of the concepts HOMM veterans have known for
quite a while and that might appear evident but are not always so
especially for beginners. Pay attention as some of those concepts might
reappear relatively often in upcoming strategies and I might not always
describe them.
There is no time limit here so take your time, experiment and most
importantly : have fun ! It might seem a bit overwhelming at first for
new players who've never played HOMM before but this series prides
itself on being very accessible and simple to learn while being very
deep in terms of strategy and tactics.
0) Before the scenario starts, take the rare resources bonus although
you'll not really need it since you start with plenty of resources
already. Most other scenarios won't be so generous.
1) Something that might be very easy to overlook if you don't pay
attention is the special victory condition. The vast majority of
scenarios have the same victory condition that we call standard :
eliminate every other enemy color and castle on the board. Several
scenarios also add an extra victory condition to that standard victory
condition that might be much more achievable. Some scenarios might have
only the special victory condition and not the standard. In this case,
the objective is capturing the town Terraneus so even if you capture
every other enemy town it does not really matter, you need to capture a
particular one.
2) You start with a Castle, home of knights and clerics and 1 hero
called Christian that has ballista speciality. Not a particularly good
speciality either as you'll find out soon enough.
3) As you can notice, you're surrounded by pikemen and archers, most
scenarios won't start like that but in this case, it was safe to assume
that those were free troops, meaning that when you meet them, they'll
join your main army free of charge.
4) Having wandering stacks (they don't really wander but this name is
used to designate all troops on adventure screen that are not led by
heroes) join your heroes is of prime importance in HOMM 3 and the most
successful players will learn quickly how to maximize their chances of
that happening. General rule is that your army should be twice as strong
in terms of total hit points as the wandering stack (at least it's the
way it worked in HOMM 2) although the exact ratios and probability of
stacks joining you in HOMM 3 are unknown at this time. If your army is
strong enough (read intimidating enough), the wandering stack will
either flee (most often occurence), offer to join for money (if you have
diplomacy) or join for greater glory (free troops !). What is fairly
certain though is that troops part of the same faction as your main hero
will be a bit more likely to join. For example, with my knight hero
Christian, I'd suppose that pikemen, archers, griffins, swordsmen,
monks, cavaliers and angels would be more favorable to join if your army
is impressive enough.
5) Move your starting hero in your main castle and buy a spell book for
him (or her) by clicking on the Mage Guild. It's only 500 gold but you'd
be surprised at how often people forget to buy them for their starting
heroes or might heroes they hire. Each faction has one associated might
hero and one associated magic hero (heroes of might & magic, get it ?
:-). For Castle, the knight is the might hero (starting with no spell
book and most likely to improve in attack and defense) while the cleric
is the magic hero (starting with spell book and most likely to improve
in spell power and knowledge). So, always buy spell books for might
heroes as soon as you hire them so they are able to cast spells too.
6) We'll now constitute your main army. You buy all troops available in
your current dwellings and most importantly, you hire more heroes, the
more the better. At first, always try to hire heroes associated with
your faction if possible and also pay special attention to their
specialities, some are better than others. This serves several purposes
:
a) By combining all troops on one hero, that we usually call the main
hero, the army will be much stronger, you'll fight less often and more
wandering stacks will join. Let's call this concept : instant army.
b) More heroes cover more ground which is especially important in the
early game when you need lots of resources. Main hero will fight
battles, free passages and conquer towns, the secondary hero will be
behind picking up resources, items and mines (although most often main
hero will flag the mine himself). The secondary hero can pick up most of
the stuff on the ground leaving the main army free for more important
tasks. Let's call this concept : the pack mule.
c) More secondary heroes also means that you'll see more of your
surroundings quicker making you less likely to be surprised by enemies
or to travel in the wrong direction with your main army. Let's call this
: the scouts.
d) The hero chain (which I'll explain later).
e) Extra heroes are convenient for carrying extra troops that might slow
down your main army or when your army is full. Let's call this : the
squire.
Having more heroes early in the game than my opponents has proven to be
the secret to many of my HOMM 2 victories. So in the starting game,
you'll have 1 main hero that will fight the battles and secondary heroes
that will act as pack mules, squires, scouts and links in hero chain,
most often they'll serve most if not all of those functions.
7) I know that more advanced players will argue in favor of having 2
main armies, splitting troops in various combinations. It does make
sense and we'll use it in later scenarios but I don't want to go too
much in-depth on that right now.
8) Secondary heroes who will serve as scouts should have 2 or 3 of the
fastest available troop in separate single-unit stacks. In HOMM 2, we'd
have used 2 Gargoyles in packs of 1 for example. This is so that the
hero can move farther each turn on the adventure screen (see bottom of
page 15 for explanations). This advantage seems less pronounced than in
HOMM 2 but doing that for scouts still has another advantage. If those
scouts are caught unaware by enemy heroes (and they will be), they'll
have a better chance of fleeing so you don't lose them.
9) In the early game, when you're not too much in immediate danger, you
can easily live with giving only 1 unit to each secondary hero although
if a scout gets ahead in unknown territory, it should really have more
than 1 unit.
10) As a general rule of thumb, I'd say that hiring 2 or 3 more
additional heroes on day 1 is a good idea at hard difficulty. At normal
difficulty, I'd say more 3 or 4 more extra heroes. It's not an exact
science though so go with your instincts and particularly what you see
of the immediate area around your castle. In this particular scenario
where I was rolling in dough, I could have hired 7 more heroes (for the
max of 8) on day 1 but I decided to pace myself by only hiring 4 more
and not even hiring more during the week.
11) But heroes cost 2500 gold each time you say, it's too expensive. I
personally find that extra heroes will pay for themselves very soon and
that their usefulness warrants the cost.
12) Still in the early weeks, almost always pick gold from treasure
chests as that's what you'll badly need. Only exception to that general
rule would be for main hero who gets chests of the 2000 gold/1500
experience point variety where I'm often tempted to choose experience
because the experience per gold is the most favorable ratio of all the 3
chest types (but even then, picking experience would be rare).
13) Think of an extra hero as about 2 chests. Or 1 chest and 1 pile of
gold.
14) Back to this particular scenario, I decided to go with 2 extra might
heroes (knights) and 2 extra magic heroes (clerics) who by luck were all
of the same faction.
15) Now should be the time to decide who should be your main hero and
that you'll develop more than the others. Pick the one with the best
speciality or the one that appeals more to you. In HOMM 2, I'd have said
to develop barbarian hero no matter the castle but in HOMM 3 it's
tougher to make that decision. Never forgetting about the specialities,
I'd say that in small/medium maps I'd develop more a might hero and that
in large/huge maps my main hero would tend to be more of a magic type.
I'm saying that because magic will not play such a huge factor on
smaller-sized maps so attack-defense are more important. Still it
doesn't mean your main hero should not have a spell book !
16) Ideally, in large maps, I think I'd eventually develop both a
high-level might hero AND a high-level magic hero, possibly 2 magic
heroes...
17) In Homecoming, from the choices I got, Valeska was more attractive
than the others for main hero position because of her archer/marksmen
speciality. I decided to develop more Christian anyway because that one
I knew everybody would have.
18) 2 heroes immediately boarded the nearby boats and started navigating
around picking up all the stuff.
19) Building orders will likely change for each scenario as I experiment
and depending on what is already built. But for this one, I decided to
buy the Archer's Tower upgrade right away because marksmen can shoot
twice instead of once and that's a huge improvement. I also noticed that
upgrading existing troops (in this case Archers) was a lot more
cost-effective than in HOMM 2.
20) Perhaps, something I was too used too in HOMM 2 and knights always
needing wood, I made my first objective the sawmill west of me. With all
the wood in the water, it was not that urgent anyway and I could have
gone the other direction :-)
21) As you become more proficient, you'll probably notice that there's
always one (sometimes two) particular resource that's more important
than the others for a given faction, give particular attention to that
kind of resource and look for it everywhere. It's often the resource
that the resource silo will give you (for example mercury for Inferno
and sulfur for Dungeon).
22) You'll also learn that some resources are less-needed for a given
castle, so those resources you could trade for more gold (especially
good if you find trading post in starting game).
23) A possible building order for this particular scenario that gives
lots of resources. I decided to emphasize creature production. Usually I
think I'd skip cavaliers for angels instead but we couldn't build portal
of glory in this scenario since it was grayed out.
1) Upgraded Archer Tower (to upgrade all those free archers)
2) Blacksmith (not for war machine but because it's required for
Barracks)
3) Barracks
4) Monastery
5) Stables
6) Training Grounds
7) Citadel (to improve production by 50 %)
Possible alternative, forget about Upgraded Archer Tower until week 2
and go for the Town Hall.
24) With your initial army, most stacks will certainly flee except those
in snowy valley west of starting castle. Those mines, I decided not to
liberate (too many potential casualties but perhaps not) and instead I
went back and took the north branch.
25) Deciding which fights to pick with wandering stacks is something
very important to learn. In week 1, several, packs, and lots of level 1
and level 2 troops are prime targets, level 3 troops in some cases if
the reward is worth it. Walkers and flyers that aren't too fast are
especially desirable targets while archers are much less so.
26) If a stack wants to flee you and it would have inflicted some kind
of casualties, let it flee (especially if they're shooters !). The
experience they give out is often not worth it. If you have necromancy,
you don't want to let anything flee of course as you'll get more
skeletons if you slaughter them :-)
27) For now and since you're learning the game, fight those stacks that
are fleeing to get the hang of combat. Makes for good practice when
things will become tougher.
28) Learn to love and respect the wait command more particulary on turn
1 against wandering stacks. Every stack should wait in the majority of
cases. You can always move your flyers after the shooters on the other
side have had their turn. That way, their first shot will be hampered
(broken arrow meaning half-damage).
29) The range of the shooters where they can inflict maximum damage is
10 hexes. Keep that in mind.
30) It's usually not a good idea to upgrade any creature dwelling in the
first week. You need the gold and resources to build the creature
dwellings you don't have.
31) Start of week 2 is the time to reinforce your main army by buying
the best troops you can afford. Take more than 1 day to buy troops if
you need (but not more than 3 before leaving castle). If you're really
short on funds and you need reinforcements sooner, buy the troops that
would be of most immediate help in battles, such as shooters and fast
walkers/flyers than can get to the other side in 2 turns. The best
offensive units if you want. Higher-level troops are usually more
desirable than lower-level units but be careful about that.
32) For example, in knight castle, swordsmen and pikemen would
definitely be bought last because of their relatively low speed and
because they're walkers.
33) To bring reinforcements to the front lines (read : troops from
castle to main hero), you use the so-called hero chain (it also goes
under other names). You move the first hero in the chain (usually one in
castle) to the second hero (a scout) about one day away more or less,
you transfer all troops to him except one low-level rather fast troop.
This second hero then moves his full movement allowance until he reaches
the third hero whom he transfers all his troops too except 1 or 2. The
third hero then moves to main hero and gives him the reinforcements.
Hero chains can be shorter or longer but they're very useful as you can
move troops several days worth in only 1 day.
34) At the end of week 2, near the first enemy town I took, the one
called Mirham, located in the center of the map, I then decided to
split my combined army roughly in half in order to cover more ground
(gave monks to Christian and left swordmen with Valeska for no apparent
reason :-). Valeska went southwest while Christian explored the area
around Mirham.
35) Oh yes I forgot, before the hero chain started, one of the heroes in
boats returned to main castle with all the items found in the water. I
used him as first link in the hero chain. The items eventually got to
the main hero like the troops did.
36) At the start of week 3, I really started to feel the money crunch. I
regretted not taking the gold mine earlier. Gold mines are "extremely"
desirable locations to flag and worth several deaths to get one.
37) I decided to trade most (but not all) of my resources for gold at
the trading post. I wasn't really going to buy mage guilds in this map
nor was I going to really upgrade creature dwellings except those that
fit my fancy.
38) I bought Capitol in week 3 that gives you 4000 gold each day. It
looks expensive but you can recuperate your investment in about 5 days.
39) By end of week 3, I captured Plinth (southwest town near river) with
Valeska.
40) I also saw the first enemy signs near the center town of Mirham.
Luckily, Christian was still around to deal with invaders and so he
pressed on his attack into enemy territory eliminating tan eventually.
41) By week 4, I had found underground entrance with Valeska (southwest
area) and was busy exploring it. It was very long and winding and I
still didn't know where the objective town of Terraneus was located.
42) During all this time, I was concentrating on boosting the 4 heroes
(2 knights, 2 clerics in my case) that would accompany me in next
scenario. They had to reach level 4 and I also made them visit the most
stat-boosting structures possible (like the tower giving +1 defense for
example). Remember earlier when I said not to really pick experience
from chests ? Well in this easy scenario, I could have certainly picked
more experience from chests with no problem at all, and not just for the
main hero either.
43) I finally managed to reach Terraneus at the end of that very long
underground tunnel and proceeded to conquer it with just Valeska. She
still had about the same army that she had when the army split occured
in Mirham back in week 2. Casualties were not that important, because
there would be no battle after that. Still if I didn't feel condident in
winning, I would simply have had to give her more troops by hero chain.
So I won this scenario exploring almost everything, on month 2, week 2
day 5. Locating Terraneus took the most time.
P.S. My other strategies won't be as long, don't worry :-)
Sebastien Patenaude
> 6) We'll now constitute your main army. You buy all troops available in
> your current dwellings and most importantly, you hire more heroes, the
> more the better. At first, always try to hire heroes associated with
> your faction if possible and also pay special attention to their
> specialities, some are better than others. This serves several purposes
> :
>
> a) By combining all troops on one hero, that we usually call the main
> hero, the army will be much stronger, you'll fight less often and more
> wandering stacks will join. Let's call this concept : instant army.
>
> b) More heroes cover more ground which is especially important in the
> early game when you need lots of resources. Main hero will fight
> battles, free passages and conquer towns, the secondary hero will be
> behind picking up resources, items and mines (although most often main
> hero will flag the mine himself). The secondary hero can pick up most of
> the stuff on the ground leaving the main army free for more important
> tasks. Let's call this concept : the pack mule.
>
> c) More secondary heroes also means that you'll see more of your
> surroundings quicker making you less likely to be surprised by enemies
> or to travel in the wrong direction with your main army. Let's call this
> : the scouts.
>
> d) The hero chain (which I'll explain later).
>
> e) Extra heroes are convenient for carrying extra troops that might slow
> down your main army or when your army is full. Let's call this : the
> squire.
Now this all sounds really lame and corny, especially the : "Let's call
this..." parts :-) I really need a good editor :-) Apologies to
everyone, hopefully the next strategies will be better. Guess I was just
anxious to get the first one out (also took around 4 hours to write all
that long strategy so I was probably too tired to care near the end :-)
--
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Christian Seitz
>
> 2) You start with a Castle, home of knights and clerics and 1 hero
> called Christian that has ballista speciality. Not a particularly good
> speciality either as you'll find out soon enough.
This specialty is not bad in the campaign. You can kill most wandering
stacks with one shoot in the first weeks of the later scenarios.
> So I won this scenario exploring almost everything, on month 2, week 2
> day 5. Locating Terraneus took the most time.
Hmm I think you have completed this level a bit to fast. I prefer to build
up my heroes to maximum level before I complete the scenario. You can get
impressive heroes if you do this.
Christian Seitz
KTech
: 4) Having wandering stacks (they don't really wander but this name is
: used to designate all troops on adventure screen that are not led by
: heroes) join your heroes is of prime importance in HOMM 3 and the most
: successful players will learn quickly how to maximize their chances of
: that happening.
Agreed! A skill I hardly ever took in HOMM2 was Diplomacy. In HOMM3, I
now look for it almost all the time, but usually only for my strongest
heroes (the ones with the big armies, which allows bigger wandering
stacks to join).
: 6) We'll now constitute your main army. You buy all troops available in
: your current dwellings and most importantly, you hire more heroes, the
: more the better. At first, always try to hire heroes associated with
: your faction if possible and also pay special attention to their
: specialities, some are better than others.
I agree to a certain point. If you are confident of the distance
between yourself and your enemy (ie. that the enemy isn't nearby),
purchasing a number of heroes on day 1 can be a good thing, for the
reasons explained. However, on small maps, having weak heroes exploring
the map could simply end in losing 2500 gold with little new
explored land. I usually buy at least one other hero on day 1, another
sometime during that first week, and then quickly after that.
: 12) Still in the early weeks, almost always pick gold from treasure
: chests as that's what you'll badly need. Only exception to that general
: rule would be for main hero who gets chests of the 2000 gold/1500
: experience point variety where I'm often tempted to choose experience
: because the experience per gold is the most favorable ratio of all the 3
: chest types (but even then, picking experience would be rare).
I've found that these scenarios don't require you to choose gold at all
from the chests (until you actually run yourself low). I build up my
money making town hall to city hall to citadel as soon as I can, building
necessary creature dwellings without upgrading them for as long as
possible. Making my main hero and supporting cast as strong as possible
as quickly as possible has worked for me. However, there is nothing
wrong with your strategy as you explained above, and it can work just
as well.
Just my 2c. =)
-- Kevin Lynch
alp...@is.dal.ca
Sebastien Patenaude
>
> >
> > 2) You start with a Castle, home of knights and clerics and 1 hero
> > called Christian that has ballista speciality. Not a particularly good
> > speciality either as you'll find out soon enough.
>
> stacks with one shoot in the first weeks of the later scenarios.
>
> > day 5. Locating Terraneus took the most time.
>
> up my heroes to maximum level before I complete the scenario. You can get
> impressive heroes if you do this.
Who says most of my heroes weren't at the maximum already ? I'll check
my savegame and get back to you on this. I'm pretty sure at least 2 of
the heroes were level 4.
Sebastien Patenaude
>
> >
> > 2) You start with a Castle, home of knights and clerics and 1 hero
> > called Christian that has ballista speciality. Not a particularly good
> > speciality either as you'll find out soon enough.
>
> stacks with one shoot in the first weeks of the later scenarios.
I had expert ballista pretty soon and I found out that the damage it did
was very minimal. In my opinion, not worth wasting one precious
secondary skill for.
Sebastien Patenaude
> > So I won this scenario exploring almost everything, on month 2, week 2
> > day 5. Locating Terraneus took the most time.
>
> Hmm I think you have completed this level a bit to fast. I prefer to build
> up my heroes to maximum level before I complete the scenario. You can get
> impressive heroes if you do this.
Speaking of which, I made a mistake in my strategy subtituting level 6
for level 4. Level 6 is the maximum level your heroes can obtain in Long
Live the Queen 1. So to make things more clear, here's how that
paragraph should read.
42) During all this time, I was concentrating on boosting the 4 heroes
(3 knights, 1 cleric in my case) that would accompany me in the next
scenario. They had to reach level 6 (or close to it) and I also made
them visit the most stat-boosting structures possible (like the tower
giving +1 defense for
example). Remember earlier when I said not to really pick experience
from chests ? Well in this easy scenario, I could have certainly picked
more experience from chests with no problem at all, and not just for the
main hero either.
By the end, I had two level 6 heroes (Christian &
Valeska), one level 5 hero (Sorsha) and one level 4 cleric (Loynis) and
I think they were quite impressive enough :-)
Christian Seitz
> Christian Seitz wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > 2) You start with a Castle, home of knights and clerics and 1 hero
> > > called Christian that has ballista speciality. Not a particularly good
> > > speciality either as you'll find out soon enough.
> >
> > This specialty is not bad in the campaign. You can kill most wandering
> > stacks with one shoot in the first weeks of the later scenarios.
> >
> > > So I won this scenario exploring almost everything, on month 2, week 2
> > > day 5. Locating Terraneus took the most time.
> >
> > Hmm I think you have completed this level a bit to fast. I prefer to build
> > up my heroes to maximum level before I complete the scenario. You can get
> > impressive heroes if you do this.
>
> Who says most of my heroes weren't at the maximum already ? I'll check
> my savegame and get back to you on this. I'm pretty sure at least 2 of
> the heroes were level 4.
I doubt that you can visit all stats enhancing building in less than 3 month
with all your main heroes. The max. Level of the first scenario is 6 AFAIK
and you can take 4 heroes to the next scenario.
Christian Seitz
Christian Seitz
> Christian Seitz wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > 2) You start with a Castle, home of knights and clerics and 1 hero
> > > called Christian that has ballista speciality. Not a particularly good
> > > speciality either as you'll find out soon enough.
> >
> > This specialty is not bad in the campaign. You can kill most wandering
> > stacks with one shoot in the first weeks of the later scenarios.
>
> I had expert ballista pretty soon and I found out that the damage it did
> was very minimal. In my opinion, not worth wasting one precious
> secondary skill for.
Hmm the ballista did around 100-200 damage per turn at the start of the
3rd scenario.
Christian Seitz
Sebastien Patenaude
>
> I doubt that you can visit all stats enhancing building in less than 3 month
> with all your main heroes. The max. Level of the first scenario is 6 AFAIK
> and you can take 4 heroes to the next scenario.
>
> Christian Seitz
Did I say anywhere that I visited all stats enhancing buildings with all
my main heroes ? I don't think so and I wouldn't want too. Where the
confusion occured might be with this quote :
"They had to reach level 4 and I also made them visit the most
stat-boosting structures possible (like the tower giving +1 defense for
example). Remember earlier when I said not to really pick experience
from chests ? Well in this easy scenario, I could have certainly picked
more experience from chests with no problem at all, and not just for the
main hero either."
I agree about making the silly mistake on max level, it's level 6. I
probably wrote level 4 because only 4 heroes carry over. By visiting the
most stat-boosting structures possible, I meant those on the way of the
heroes, not those completely on the other side or every main hero
visiting every single stat-boosting structure. That would take forever
and it's completely unecessary :-)
And on this quote :
"So I won this scenario exploring almost everything, on month 2, week 2
day 5. Locating Terraneus took the most time."
It only means that most of the black areas on the map were uncovered by
one hero or another. It doesn't mean all possible stacks and all
possible items were taken though.
Sebastien Patenaude
>
> In article <36F806...@total.net>, pa...@total.net wrote:
>
> > Christian Seitz wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > called Christian that has ballista speciality. Not a particularly good
> > > > speciality either as you'll find out soon enough.
> > >
> > > stacks with one shoot in the first weeks of the later scenarios.
> >
> > I had expert ballista pretty soon and I found out that the damage it did
> > was very minimal. In my opinion, not worth wasting one precious
> > secondary skill for.
>
> Hmm the ballista did around 100-200 damage per turn at the start of the
> 3rd scenario.
After your comments, I rechecked it again at the start of level 2 and
you're right, it's pretty good after all at least with Christian your
namesake (wonder if that's why you're defending him ;-). I included 2
paragraphs about that in second strategy for Live Long the Queen and my
comment about Christian in the first strategy will be removed. Let's
just say that I was totally underwhelmed with it at first but when
Christian becomes more high-level and has expert artillery, its
effectiveness rises dramatically.
Thanks for all your constructive criticisms. Hope you enjoy the other
strategies coming up and be sure to tell me if I slip up again on things
like that (like max level of carry-over heroes).