March 2019 was the twentieth anniversary of Heroes of Might and Magic III, the legendary turn-based strategy game.
In the game, your heroes and their armies ride out from your towns to explore the Adventure Map, find loads of bling, and conquer other heroes and towns. Meanwhile, you grow the towns that support them. Your exact goal depends on the scenario, but I like the ones where you have to beat all the enemy heroes and towns - total victory.
Here’s a shot of the adventure map, with Red’s hero landing his ship near Purple’s inferno town. Some adventure maps have subterranean levels, shown in the second picture.
For heroes, you start with one or two and recruit others at your towns' taverns. Heroes have four primary skills - Attack and Defense help their army fight and Power and Knowledge make their spells more powerful - and they have some secondary skills like Leadership, Luck, and Wisdom. Leveling up by winning battles and finding treasure chests improves your primary skills and gives you new secondary skills. Artifacts also often improve your primary skills - sometimes spectacularly - and they can be found on the adventure map or taken from beaten heroes.
Your heroes travel with an army of up to seven stacks of fantasy creatures, where each stack contains one kind of creature. Each creature type has a level from 1 to 7; the higher level creatures are stronger and more expensive, but towns produce fewer of them. So for example, you might have a hero with a hundred level 1 creatures and only three or four level 7 creatures.
The Hero Screen shows your heroes and their skills, artifacts, creatures, and war machines (catapults, for example). The picture shows the hero screen for a high-level hero. She has a very strong necropolis army shown along the bottom - 20 ghost dragons, 73 dread knights, and 131 vampire lords are a ton. She’s also flush with artifacts, shown on the paper doll - about 10 (!) of them were just captured from another hero.
For towns, you start with one or two and capture others from your opponents. On the biggest maps you’ll eventually have to capture about twenty towns to win. You upgrade your towns with new buildings when you can afford them, up to one per town per day. Example buildings include creature dwellings, which supply your armies with creatures each week; town halls or city halls, which give you gold each day; and citadels or castles, which improve your town’s defenses and creature growth.
There are eight town types in the base game - castle, dungeon, fortress, inferno, necropolis, rampart, stronghold, and tower - and each has unique creature dwellings. For example, castle towns produce pikemen (level 1) through angels (level 7), and dungeon towns provide troglodytes (level 1) through red dragons (level 7). Each dwelling can also be upgraded once to grow stronger creatures. For example, the castle’s Portal of Glory angel dwelling can be upgraded to make archangels.
The Town Screen shows your towns’ buildings. The pictures show the town screens for a castle town and tower town with all the improvements finished.
If a hero attacks another hero, a town, or creatures on the adventure map, they fight on the Combat Screen. You can direct the fight or watch the computer do it. I usually watch, and I think the computer is better at using the hero’s spells than I am. I’ll direct it myself sometimes - if I want to conserve my hero’s spell points for another battle, lure the enemy outside of their castle walls, hide inside my walls while arrow towers pick off the enemy, or avoid damage from moat defenses.
The two pictures show a combat screen for two heroes meeting in the field and for two heroes' ships meeting.
This picture shows Blue attacking Red's stronghold town. The town has a castle, which provides the walls and the three defense towers with orcs in them.
STRATEGY
Start strong. For heroes, recruit three or four additional heroes on days one and two, and they’ll more than pay for themselves right away by vacuuming up the treasure and resources near your starting towns. Move all the modest creatures from your starting heroes to one hero on day one, and buy any low-level creatures already available in the town, then capture the sawmill and ore pit nearby. If you can, use that hero to capture the nearest enemy town in week one, to double your early strength and sideline one of your enemies. Since your heroes can only have seven creature stacks, bias toward capturing towns of the same type you already have, to produce more of the same seven creatures.
For town improvements, build your town hall, city hall, and capitol ASAP to generate revenue for buying more buildings and creatures. Building a capitol requires building a castle first, which doubles your creature growth; further maximize creature growth by building all seven of your creature dwellings ASAP. Later in the game, when you have several towns, make sure each has the castle and seven creature dwellings. You’ll be surprised how many creatures they accumulate while you’re busy with other things, and the accumulated creatures provide an instant defense to buy if the town is threatened. Each creature dwelling can be upgraded, but existing creatures can be upgraded after their dwelling, so you don’t need to upgrade dwellings until it’s convenient.
Don’t be shy about continually saving and reloading. Save your game right away on day 1, play a few weeks to learn the lay of the land around your towns, then reload and start your real game again from day 1. Save before each battle, and reload and retry close battles you lose.
Maps range from Small to Extra Large, depending on the scenario. I like Extra Large maps and I usually need more than a full day to finish one. To win big maps, your best hero will eventually need the Town Portal spell, which lets you teleport to any of your towns and kill enemy heroes that have strayed too close. Otherwise, without Town Portal, your small number of strong heroes will never be able to defend all your towns or track down all of your opponents' heroes.
For each scenario, you can choose from five difficulties, from Easy (80% rating) to Impossible (200% rating). I always choose Expert (160% rating), which is hard enough that I have to systematically save and reload, but winnable. I tried Impossible in the distant past and really did find it to be unbeatable.
EXPANSIONS AND SEQUELS
Heroes III had two official expansions: Armageddon’s Blade, which added the elemental-themed Conflux town shown below, and The Shadow of Death, which added new campaigns. Heroes III Complete combined both expansions with the base game; it came out in 2000 and is on GOG.com now.
Horn of the Abyss is a free, unofficial expansion that adds new elements like the pirate-themed Cove town shown below, and a Factory town is in progress. The art is as pretty as the original game art. Amazingly, it adds Huge, Extra Huge, and Giant maps beyond the base game’s Extra Large maps. It installs happily on top of GOG’s Heroes III Complete.
Heroes III was followed by Heroes IV through Heroes VII, which all used 3D rendering instead of 2D art like Heroes III. It’s a cliche to ding them for not being Heroes III, but they have good reviews. For instance, Gamespot gave III a 9.2, IV an 8.8, V an 8.2, and VI an 8. I played Heroes IV and Heroes VI a little around the times they came out and I liked them.
For similar games, Disciples: Sacred Lands and Age of Wonders came out in 1999, the same year as Heroes III. 50 Games Like Heroes Of Might And Magic 3: Complete includes more suggestions.
