[Madam Corvax]

I just got myself the golden edition for Christmas. Anyone here who plays the game? I would be happy to exchange hints:
1. Which combination of magical and non-magical skills you find most advantageous? I really like Nature and Death, makes for great summoning skill

2. What are the bast ways of killing black dragons?

3. Which beast in each type of the city are your favourites?

4. What is your favourite type of city and hero?

I hope there is SOMEONE here who plays it

[Laughlyn]

Sorry haven't gotten round to playing IV, played I-III, but I'm somewhat interested in knowing what they did to the game system, I struck me that they'd just cloned Age of wonders, with the spheres, battle field heroes ,and stuff. Put me off somewhat.

[Madam Corvax]

Never played Aged of wonders. I tried to play version III at one point, but I thought the interface too difficult after playing version IV.

A guy I know plays only version III, and he thinks things have been improved in version IV. For example, you can now leave some of your troops to guard mines, if you wish. And the figures are in 3-D now, which makes the battles more realistic.

And music is really magnificent, I wish I had a recording of that. The GOld edition is even better than the standard.

[looktothesky]

I've always wanted to play IV but like Laughlyn I've only played I - III. III is my favorite by far right now, but if IV improves on it then... all the better.

[Madam Corvax]

At least I highly recommend it. Remember, if you play it I am here for exchanging hints.

[Ninja Duck]

I don't know if you've ever heard of anything like this, Madam Corvax, but I've only played Heroes I-III.

I would like to try Heroes IV, but I don't think my computer could handle it. But I've been told that the skills system for III is better, because in IV, the heroes of the same type are too much the same.

And they killed off some good heroes between III and IV. That sucks.

[SimeSublime]

I'll be getting it from a friend next time I see him. Don't know when that will be though. I'll let you know when I've played a bit.

[Madam Corvax]

Ok, I'll wait for you, guys .
Let me know if you played it.

[Laughlyn]

Just picked it up from a second hand shop with a bunch of other titles for £20.
I'll give an opinion by the end of the week.

[Laughlyn]

Okay, I've played it now (4 scenarios 2 campaigns, and a bunch of multiplayer maps). so I can saely voice an opinion. It has gone all age of wonders on us. Sad really because it's not a bad game, it just looks like NWC saw how successful SOW was and decided to try to implement it's elements as much as possible. For the benefit of those who played the first 3, here's a quick lowdown on some of the major changes:

+ Heroes on battlefield - Can now be mugged by monsters, but the leveling up system is better, and has more rpg elements, which is pretty cool.

+ 6 town types (down from 8(9)) - not such a bad thing because no town sucks anymore, heroes and troops now have alignments which they don't fight well with (negatie morale).

+ Towns can now build 5 creature structures, from a choice of 8. Building one locks out another, so you get a range of creatures to choose from. Adds to the tactical depth of the game. downside is, they've scrapped the upgrade feature, but no one used unupgraded creatures anyway.....

+ Better campaigns. More RPG like, more character focused. Campaigns are based on the towns like in HOMM, rather than a selection in the later games.

+ Guards. As M.Corvax mentioned, you can guard mines. Cuts down on the 'random hero with 3 pixies screwing up your infrastructure' element of the game. But do you really want to waste your creatures as just guards?

On the flip side though, not all the changes have been positive.

- Worse graphics - Admittedly this was never a 3d-multi lens flare-environment mapping series, but the switch to isometric graphics (ala AOW) hasn't helped. The animation's nice in places, but he whole thing looks very rough around the edges. The Heroes series always had a certain 'charm' to the graphics, which has been largely lost in the translation. Even the town graphics have suffered.

- No more logistics - Remember the days you spent organising a string of heroes to deliver troops across the map? gone. Towns can now organise caravans instead to draw troops in from over a large distance, or tap those creature structures that you never visit. Probably the worse sin of the programmers, but it's caused by.....

- Armies don't require heroes - From a design point, It would be pretty damn annoying if your hero got wacked by a black dragon during a scrap, and then your entire army disappeared without him, but because armies can now just be creatures, the creatures have their own move distances, which screws up the logistics element.
BAD NWC! VERY BAD NWC! This raises the question of why bother to guard a mine when the troops could just patrol the map?

Okay bitching aside, only some rationality from now on. As formentioned, the programmers have tried to copy AOW, not a bad idea, except they lost the major features of their game in the process, and if it came down to graphics, AOW2 would be handing them their P45's. Oh wait, this was 3do's last game wasn't it?

The heroes, buildings, RPG elements. and guards are all good ideas, which added to the game, but they had to go and remove the logistics, the main element of the series.

Bizarrely enough though, despite teh flaws, my 'must keep playing' switch was clicked on by HOMM4, the aforementioned campaigns in particular. Which explains my absense from the world for a few days. Curse you M.Corvax!

But to prove I'm not just on an angry rant, and to answer the dear life stealing madam's questions.

I'm more inclined to tied to the tactical skills, with a twist towards the order ones (nobility, mining, estates) and the order magic. The life magic resurrection ability rules.

Black dragons are definately too tough, but the growth is appauling, even with master nobility, so I find it's best to use their magic resistance against them and knock them on head by another level 4 unit with dragon strength cast on it (double damage and hitpoints). put that on a phoenix and you're laughing. They're also a bit slow (movement wise) so you tend to get the first hit. First strike units like the mantis or the cavalier work well (particularly if you get a good run up with the later).

Monks, Djinn (SPELLCASTERS!), Vampires, Black dragons(least favorate town),Elves,Cyclops.

City type is the nature one (can't remember the name) for the bonus summoned creatures, and the high number of flyers and archers. Suits my play style happily.

Anyway. Thank you Madam Corvax for taking the better part of a week from me, I'm going back to my social life now. See you at the bar.....

[Madam Corvax]

Oh dear, now it is my fault, isnt' it?

Now seriously, you confirmed my preferences.

I think the Order towns actually rule, and the genies are the best creatures ever. Use illusion spell and you don't need to waste any of your own creatures. I also find the hypnotise spell for heroes absolutely ultimate, you can just win any abttle with a couple of mages with hypnotise spell and some units with ranged attack.

Now the good part of the nature spells is the quicksand... if your opponent does not have any units with flight or ranged attack and you do, you just use one hero to create layers and layers of quicksand and then you just slowly finish them off...

Creatures: life town - definitely monks and Angels of light - crusaders and knights just suck big, you can easily kill them with the above mentioned method with quicksan.

Order - I love mages, the poison spell can finish off any city (provided no ranged attack unit inside on a tower), and genies and titans, nagas and gold golems and golem dragons - see above.

Nature - I don't like phoenixes, byt they might get better with the dragon strenght skill, you are right (but I don't like the graphics, phoenixes look like roased chickens), so I go for fairy dragons myself, still don't know if I prefer unicorn of griffs. I do like elves, I always go for ranged attack if I can.

Death - vampires are cool, but venom spawn are not bad either. But I always develom necormancy skill so after each battle I have two or three vampires more. And I prefer devils to bone dragons.

Chaos - medusas (ranged attack!) effreti - pretty formidable and black dragon.

And from the creature portal in the nature town I really love water elementals, they can do the quicksand spell and ice bold - very effective.

Any more hints from you?

[SimeSublime]

Got the game on Sunday. Not done much else since then. After struggling through the tutorial(it just doesn't give you enough info at places), I got an idea of what was going on. I picked a random easy senario to start. Unfortunally, it was the three pigs one. Now, the patch says that it fixed the victory conditions so it doesn't just go on forever, but I disagree. So, after running around trying to work out what was wrong until I noticed it was 2:30am and I had the early shift the next day, I decided to go to the campaignes. I'm mid way through the first at the moment. Infact, the only reason I'm not playing it now was that I decided to check in here.

So far, favourite towns: Don't know, only seen Nature, Chaos, Life and Might. Well, I saw Order in the tutorial, but don't remember much about it as I didn't know what was going on at the time. All I can say is that Might sucks.

Heroes: The Fighter classes seem much the same. Usually prefer archers over melee. Spell casting, I have to say I love Priests. Mass ---- Ward, Mass Bless, Celestial Armour, Prayer(if army is light) and Guardian Angel Spells. Not to mention the joys of Grandmaster Resurrection. Then make them a Monk or Heritic(Law or Chaos Magic)for some offensive power. Choose whichever you can get spells for. Not to mention that Heritics ignore wards. Very nice.
I'd like to play as a dead team with a necromancer, but I haven't seen any levels which do that.

As for units, I prefer ranged things such as monks, as well as the flying dragon-like-types to take the front lines. Seeing as archers don't(or at least shouldn't)see much combat, they don't get hit so often, so it's easy to make large stacks of cheapies. Hence I was carting around 2000 crossbowmen at one stage.

[Laughlyn]

Installed the game at work, now I'm playing through the order campaign quite happily, Since it's one of my prefered sides i'm still enjoying it. Black dragons do remain the ultimate killer for them though. Genies are useless since you can't even target them for illusion, as are mages, the titans ok, but you just don't have enough firepower to nail the scaly blighters.

One question has come up though; do multiple hero bonuses stack? so if you have 2 heroes with max tactics, do you get +9speed +6move? or the offensive multipliers? Haven't had the time\inclination to properly investigate that. anyone else?

One thing I have noticed is a bit of a lack of large multiplayer maps, We've played the same 2 maps twice now. HOMM1 had loads, and HOMM2 had a couple of long game ones. (HOMM3 didn't have any explore and conquer big maps, so it's discounted).

[Madam Corvax]

Well, Chaos is not a good opponent for any magic attack in general, not only for Order. I'd say I prefer orfer to Life anyway, because life lacks the offensive magic, except for the Death opponent.
With genies, you can just multiply whatever you want, if I play against chaos, I usually multiply titans for ranged attack.
But against other types there is no better magic than order - SIme mentioned 2000 crossbowmen, but one "Forgetfulness" spell makes them ineffective, and if you add "mass slow" then it gives you a lot of advantage.

Sime - some maps allow you to choos the type of city you want to be. But I agree, there is not enough large maps. In the Gold editions I have now there are sixteen more campaigns and lots and lots of new maps, and I am not even halfway through it. When I had my old game, I liked to play "Zanfa's challenge" and I developed some pretty cool heroes.

As to Laughlyn question - no idea. I never actually thought of that, and the question is how to check it anyway? but I thought about another issue. I usually develop some scouting skills, to have more movement on the map. If you have more than one hero in the team, does you movement ability reflect the hero with the greatest skill, or the skill of the actual leader?

[SimeSublime]

I'm trying to play the campaigns in the order they're given. I walked straight through the Life one(Life is just awesome), but can't even beat the first level for Might. Sure, I don't much like the Might team, but this is ridiculous. By the time I get a bit of an army happening, the opponent walks in with one three times my size, with units that I can't even unlock(my cities say they're unallowed or whatnot).If I try to race through the first bit to get the city(and hence more units)earlier, I get killed by the neutral units. And this is one the novice difficulty! I've tried it a few times now, and have no idea if I'm just unlucky, or I'm missing something rather important.