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Heroes of Might and Magic FAQ V0.8a
This quarterly publication is intended to offer
tips and address some of the frequently asked
questions (FAQ) on the strategy game Heroes of
Might and Magic by New World Computing. Because
the answers may not be complete, please feel
free to ask questions.
This FAQ is not intended to answer questions
that can be located in the manual. If you need
to know how to learn a spell or how to move
troops from one hero to another, buy the game
and read the manual. The information in this
FAQ are from personal experience, numerous
posters on comp.sys.ibm.pc.strategic and George
Ruof & Clay from New World Computing. Some
stats are taken from article reviews
(paraphrased of course).
If you would like to contribute information to
this FAQ, write sections that has not been
completed, or have questions about this game,
make spelling/grammatical corrections (English
is not my native tongue), please feel free and
send me an email at gcl0@eecs.lehigh.edu with
the subject line containing the words "HoMM
FAQ". This FAQ is not complete.
A MS-Word 6.0 version of this document is also
available by request.
Last Update: February 3, 1995
***This will be the last update to the FAQ until
the Windoze 95 version comes out. It would be
nice if I can get a evaluation copy so I can
update this FAQ (HINT! HINT! George and Clay! :) )
1. What is it?/Answers to FAQ
2. General Tips
3. Cracking the AI
4. Tips on different creatures
5. Tips on Campaign
6. Tips on Single Scenarios
7. Add-ons/Windoze `95 News
8. Gripes/Suggestions.
1. What is it?/Answers to FAQ
### What is it? I hear the game is like MOM!
Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) is a fantasy-
strategy game put out by New World Computing.
Many people compared this game to Warlords II
(WAR2) and Master of Magic (MOM) because of
their similar style in play and strategic
planning. It's more like a hybrid of WAR2 with
the addition of spells, castle building, and a
combat sequence similar to Master of Orion
(MOO). Many of the creatures in this game are
from an older game called "King's Bounty", also
published by NWC in 1991. "King's Bounty" will
be included as a bonus in the Windoze '95
version of HoMM (To be released in February or
March)
### Is there a multi-player option?
HoMM allows modem, network, and hot-seat play.
The network play is via Netbios although many
people on the net reported problems with the
network setup.
### What are the requirements to run this game?
HoMM requires a VESA compatible video card, SVGA
monitor, CD-ROM drive (other requirements are on
the box that's not in front of me.)
### How about a description of the game play?
You start off with a hero with a group of
monsters for the hero to lead. You can have as
many as 8 heroes at the same time. The hero
starts off in a castle where you can build
different type of buildings by providing
resources such as wood, coal, gold, mercury,
etc. There are different type of buildings
providing different functions. Some provide
production of different monster troops. Some
provide spells for the heroes to learn. Some
provide scouting information and such.
The resources you will need can be obtained by
controlling a mine with a hero or have the hero
scout out for the resource piles that can be
located throughout the map. (mines provide one
or two units of resource per mine type per day
depending on the resource type - for example, a
coal mine controlled by you will provide you two
units of coals per day. You can take control of
other castles and towns. Buying recruitable
troops and building buildings in a castle all
require gold. Gold can be obtained either from
a mine (1000/day), castle (1000/day), or a town
(250/day).
A town/castle can provide recruitable troops
depending on what type of buildings it has.
There is a set number of recruitable troops
available each week. Once you recruited all the
available troops, you must wait until the
following week if you want to recruit more
troops.
### What is the object of the game?
The object of the game depends on the type of
scenario. Most of the single scenario series
require you to defeat all other players. In
some campaign scenario, you will be required to
find the "Ultimate Artifact" or to defeat the
"Dragon Fortress".
### How do I install the DOS version in Windoze
'95?
Many people reported problems installing from
within Windoze '95. The DOS/4GW with the DOS
version of HoMM just chokes during the
installation. (I didn't have problem with XCOM
and Warcraft 2 which also use DOS/4GW) What you
do is before you install, start the computer in
DOS mode, install, then you can play HoMM in the
Windoze mode.
### The Fuzzy Logic on the number of monsters
While it was a good idea to give a approximation
of the number of monsters contained within an
enemy stack, it would've been a better idea to
also include the equivalent of theses
approximations in the manual :). Also, it's
kinda hard to tell which description means more
than another with these words (and may confuse
foreign players). I think Warlords 2 uses the
length of the flag in a army stack to indicate
the number of units in a stack, maybe something
similar will show up in HoMM2. Well, here's the
chart:
Few---------------1 to 4
Several-----------5 to 9
Pack-------------10 to 19
Lots-------------20 to 49
Horde------------50 to 99
Zounds!----------100+
### Moral/Luck Boost
Good moral will allow some of your creatures to
attack twice in a turn during the combat. Bad
moral will stop your creature from attacking
during a turn. Good luck will allow some of
your creatures to do double the normal damage
during that single attack round. Moral and luck
can be raised and lowered by several factors.
* Visit fountains, statues, etc. will raise
moral/luck, but these will only last for one
battle.
* Artifacts carried by the hero can also
increase moral/luck.
* A Knight hero gives the stack +1 moral.
* If you have a stack of creature from the same
type of castle, you get +1 moral.
* If you have a stack of creatures from 3
different types of castle, you get -1 moral.
* Remember, Genies, Rogues, and Nomads are
another type.
* If you have a stack of creatures from 4
different types of castle, you get -2 moral.
###Can I remove a Cursed Artifact?
NO. Avoid it since you can tell what it looks
like. It's basically a blue pendent. You can
also tell when the computer simply ignores that
artifact. If you do acquire it, the only way to
get rid of it is the kill off the hero. If the
hero is a high leveled one, you might want to
keep it and give the hero some other artifacts
to offset this penalty.
###Attack and Defense!
The damage inflicted by a creature is increased
or decreased by 10% for every point of
difference between the attacker's ATTACK score
and the defender's DEFENSE score.
Example #1:
1 Attacking Dwarf has ATTACK=6
DEFENSE=5
DAMAGE=2-4
1 Defending Minotaur has ATTACK=9
DEFENSE=8
DAMAGE=5-10
When the Dwarf Attacks Minotaur, the Dwarf's
ATTACK score is 2 less than the Minotaur's
DEFENSE score, so the actual damage is
(Amount of Damage)x((Def's DEF) - (Att's ATT))%
which is
(2, 3, or 4) x 80%.
I think the final number is rounded up because
you never see anybody dealing 0 damage.
###Where's the *@&!^ Ultimate Artifact?
It's usually in the middle 4 squares of the map,
and the puzzle pieces covering that section are
usually the last one to go away. If you figured
out where the puzzle map is on the big map, you
can use several heroes to dig in the center
area.
### What the *#(&^ is the Attack Order?
Please verify this if anybody have factual
answers to this. From observation and a couple
of people from the net, it's as follows:
The Attacker's first FAST creature goes first,
then the defender's first FAST creature, if
either side run out of FAST creatures, the
remaining FAST creature from the other side will
go. This repeats for medium and slow. Example:
Defender: Paladin (FAST)
Cavalry (FAST)
Archer (SLOW)
Attacker: Phoenix (FAST)
Elf (Medium)
Dwarf (SLOW)
Order
-----
Attacker's FAST - Phoenix
Defender's FAST - Paladin
Attacker's FAST - None
Defender's FAST - Cavalry
Attacker's Med. - Elf
Defender's Med. - None
Attacker's Slow - Dwarf
Defender's Slow - Archer
I seem to recall Cavalry going before the
Paladin though. so I may be wrong on this :(
2. General Tips
Heroes
Heroes play a very important role in this game.
Heroes can travel outside of the castle by
itself or with a group of monsters (a stack).
Most of the heroes have "attributes" that can
increase its ability to win a combat or increase
attributes of it's troops. These are like
"skills" that can increase with experience or
with an artifact. These attributes are: Attack
(A), Defense (D), Skill (S), and Power (P).
The hero's Attack and Defense attributes are
added to the monsters contained within the same
stack as the hero. So a group of 50 peasants
with attack and defense of 1 might be a easy
kill, but if they are grouped with a hero with
the attributes of A:15 and D:15, the peasants
become monsters with the attack and defense of
16.
The ability of a monster to hit another monster
is increased/decreased by 10% for every
difference of a point between the attacker's
Attack attribute and defender's Defense
attribute.
(Table and equation to be inserted in the next
version of FAQ)
Constructing your Stacks
Most of the people will have multiple heroes,
but only one that they concentrate on by giving
him/her most of the experience points and magic
items in a way that they construct a "ultimate
stack/hero" with this hero. Once constructed,
this ultimate stack is very hard to kill off.
The computer doesn't seem to do this so their
forces are a little more spread out.
When arranging monsters with the hero, place
your range strikers on the left-most and right-
most slots. When you are in a combat, the left-
most slot monster will appear at the top-most
slot in the battle scene, and the right-most
slot monster will appear at the bottom-most
slot, so the least amount of monsters can fly up
to them and attack them. If you place any
monsters that takes up 2 spaces (wolves,
Griffins) right next to your range strikers, the
range strikers can only be attack by one flyer
group of monsters at a time.
Types of Heroes
Barbarian - A Barbarian hero will usually
increase attacking skills when they get more
experienced. The monsters lead by a Barbarian
hero are fairly good on damaging opponents, but
only OK in defense. The biggest plus the
Barbarian has is no penalty on movement over
different terrain. This could come in handy
when you want to grab all the resource piles in
a swamp, desert, of tundra area without having
to spend too much time. They are especially
handy in deserts if there are unguarded Genie
lamps laying around. Barbarians have average
movement, average sight range, and poor magic.
Warlock - A Warlock hero will usually increase
spell power when they get more experienced.
This could be deadly if the warlock has any
offensive spells such as Armageddon, Lightning
Bolt, Fireball and such. A powerful warlock
combined with a group of dragons and the
Armageddon spell could be real deadly. The
other special power warlock has is the ability
to see further than the other type of heroes.
This ability is only useful at the beginning of
the game because once you explore an area of a
map, you won't have to have somebody in that
general area to see that area of the map. The
"Fog of War" option in Warcraft 2 would add some
good strategic twist to the game. Warlocks have
good movement, great sight range, and poor
attack/defense.
Knight - A Knight hero will usually increase
defense power when they get more experienced. I
personally find this the best attribute over the
others. A stack of 20 dragons with a +10
defense from a hero will beat a stack of 50
dragons with a +1 defense. The knight's special
attribute is increase in moral for the monsters.
When you group of 50 archers gets a moral boost
and attacks twice, that's 2x2 = 4 attacks that
can wipe out most of the stacks. Knights have
poor movement, average sight range, and poor
magic.
Sorceress - I don't know why they don't use
Witches-Warlocks and Wizards-Sorceress, but
anyway, a Sorceress hero will usually increase
in spell knowledge when they get more
experienced. This could be handy if you have
the paralyze spell so you can use it to get
multiple attacks in before you opponent can even
retaliate. The special power for the Sorceress
is extra movement while in water. Sorceress
have good movement, good sight range, and poor
attack/defense.
Castles
There are usually 5 different levels of monster
housing you can build to start producing these
monsters for recruitment for each castle. Other
than that, most of the other structures for a
castle is pretty much the same. Some people
find it better to quickly build up a mage tower,
while others will concentrate on the monster
housings first. It might be better for
Sorceress/Wizards to build up a mage tower first
because of the spell power they have, but either
way, it'll be up to you to weigh the advantage
of having spells in the beginning or more
powerful monster in the beginning.
Barbarian - A barbarian castle/hero combo is
considered to be the weakest by most people, but
I find them very useful. The one monster you
don't want to overlook are the trolls with
regenerating ability. You can build a bridge
that creates trolls on the first week (If you
have the settings to EASY or if there are enough
coal/wood resources around), and a group of
these can take out most of the monsters guarding
the mines and resources. Not many defending
monsters can do more than 40 points of damage
per turn (that's the troll's hit points), and
you can decrease that damage/defending-monster-
group by using Troll's range attack ability.
If/When they do move close enough, only 2
monster groups can attack at the same time
anyway. These are the monster groups you can
usually defeat without losing a single troll
(Dwarves, Peasants, Swordsmen, Pikemen, Archers,
Goblins, Ogres, Wolves, Faeries) I can usually
take out the first computer opponent within the
first two weeks with a group of 6 trolls because
the castle isn't built enough to create more
than 40 points of damage from the garrison. The
highest order monster from the barbarian castle
are the Cyclops. They require an initial 20
crystal for the housing, then additional crystal
for each Cyclops generated which can be
expensive if there isn't a crystal mine around
that you can control.
Knights - A knight castle/hero is a pretty good
combo. Since the monsters generated in a knight
castle generally have higher defense points, if
you combine this with a knight hero's defense
bonuses, a knight castle is hard to defeat.
Knight castle lacks flyers so unless you want to
just sit there and get pounded on while
defending a castle, you better get flyers or the
teleport spell. You can also develop a knight
castle as fast as a barbarian castle with the
exception of the highest order monster (Paladin)
which requires an initial investment of 20
crystals. Paladin units however does not
require additional crystals to be recruited.
Sorceress - Sorceress castles might be the
hardest castle to build up because of high
amount of resources it requires. To even get to
the 3rd level monsters (Druids), you'll need to
construct a mage tower which requires 2000 gold
alone. The Sorceress castle does produce the
best combo of range attackers / flyers /
defenders. A full blown sorceress castle has
the phoenix to be the first initial attacker
because of the speed, and therefore the chance
to cast a spell before anyone else. The Phoenix
can also do a lot of damage and stop any range
strikers on the opposing side. The druid comes
next with speed and does the range damage to any
potential flyers that might be coming in. The
unicorn will do a good deal of damage with the
possibility of paralyization and the
archer/dwarf round out the good defense/range
striking tactics. The highest order monster
housing (Phoenix) requires an additional 20
mercury to be built (Druid housing takes up some
of that initial mercury you have also), and an
additional mercury unit to produce.
Wizard - Easier to build up than the Sorceress
castle except for the highest order monster
(Dragon) which requires 15000 gold and an
additional 20 sulfur to build the housing. You
can probably produce a gargoyle crypt and a
griffin's nest in the first few days and send
out the hero with the 3 monster types to destroy
most of the weaker guarding monsters. The
centaurs can function as a range strike against
any thing while the high speed of gargoyle and
to some degree, the griffin can stop any range
strikers. This combo of 3 can take out:
goblins, archers, elven archers, dwarves, orcs,
and peasants. Once you construct the dragon
tower however, the game is pretty much yours
(unless another player has a dragon tower). The
computer will only attack a castle guarded with
ONE dragon with a strong stack.
Spells
### As a general rule of thumb, any direct
damage or global damage spells are great with
heroes with high Power attributes since the
amount of damage is multiplied by a hero's
Power. A decent Skill attribute won't hurt
either since you can have the hero roam and
combat longer without having to run back to the
castle to refresh a spell. Once a spell is
cast, it is gone. You must return to the castle
with the Spell Tower containing that spell to
re-learn it.
### In a combat scene, if you go first, you get
the chance to cast a spell first. It will be up
to you to decide to either cast a good spell on
your troop, cast a negative spell on the
computer's troop, do direct damage to the
computer's troop, do global damage, or to wait.
One "goofy" thing about this game is that one
spell "overrides" another spell (except when
Anti-Magic is cast). For example, if I cast
"Curse" on one of the computer's troops, he can
cast "Protection" on the same turn and nullify
the "Curse" spell. The only exception I believe
is the effect of Paralyze stays even if you
overrides it with another spell (somebody
verify?). So maybe it would be good sometimes
to wait for the computer to cast that negative
spell on your stack and you can cast a positive
spell on your stack to negate and enchant your
stack with one spell.
### A player cannot cast spells or use the
Ballistas in a castle if all the troops
controlled by the player are blinded, or
paralyzed.
Anti-Magic - A good spell to cast over your
"good" units, particularly your missile units
since the computer usually targets them first
with negative spells.
Armageddon (4)- A really good global damage
spell when used in conjunction with a dragon
stack or Anti-Magic spell. An experienced hero
with high Power attribute can really do damage
with these combos since his dragon troop or
anti-magiked troop(s) won't be affected by this
spell.
Blind - Similar to paralyze where a troops is
immobile for the number of combat turns equal to
the opponent's hero's Power. I believe it is
weaker than paralyze because on the turn the
Blind spell wears out or canceled, the victim
can attack that turn.
Lightning (2)- A good spell to take out
powerful/obnoxious stacks. I love using these
on the genies since they are pretty deadly with
their special 1/2 stack attack and high attack
attributes.
Storm - A weaker form of Armageddon spell, but
still pretty good and faster to learn than
Armageddon.
View All - An OK spell. By the time you can
afford to construct that 4th layer for your
spell tower to get this spell, the game is
pretty much done. Useful at the end when you
want to locate that last castle/town of the
computer to finish him off.
View Resource - Could be handy if you know what
kinda resource you will need to build a certain
type of building. For example, a Warlock will
want to look for all the unguarded sulfur
resource he can find because sulfur is necessary
to construct Swamp and the Dragon Tower.
### Nifty Spell Combos
Anti-Magic + Global Damage Combat Spells
Haste + Hydra
Paralyze + Range Strikers/Castle
Pestilence + COP: Black. oops, wrong game :)
3. Cracking The AI
The computer AI in the strategic gaming industry
is still in its infancy. I've posted articles
about how they are mislabeling the computer in
games such as Master of Magic and Master of
Orion as "AI". You might see some comparisons
below to other strategy games as examples. A
very very few games out there have an AI that
learns from your actions and mistakes and
increases its knowledge from experiences much
like a human being's brain and learning
abilities. I know of one chess game that can do
that. Blizzard claimed that the "AI" in
Warcraft 2 also has a "Learning AI", but either
it has learning disability or it just isn't true
because it seems to be dumber than the AI in
Warcraft 1. Most of the games out there are
based on a rule-based knowledge base AI and can
not learn from user's actions. It doesn't mean
you can't create a good AI with that parameter.
Heroes of Might and Magic is one of the games
with a better non-learning AI.
Many games compensated the weak AI by giving the
computer bonuses at a higher setting. The
Master of XXX series from SimTex/MicroProse
compensated the "hard" and "impossible" AI
settings by giving the computer 25% to 50%
bonuses over the human opponent in resources
such as gold or $$ and production power. The
bonuses are in effect from the beginning to the
end of the game. In HoMM, the computer does get
a compensation, but only at the beginning of the
game. In some of the scenarios that's marked as
"hard", the computer might start off with more
resources, or a lot of resources close by, or a
castle with some pre-built buildings. Once this
is done however, the computer doesn't "really"
(see below) get any other bonuses throughout the
game. This allows you a chance to catch up and
have a shot at defeating the computer because
you are not falling behind by +25% to +50% every
turn.
A. The case where "AI" stands for "Automatic
Intelligence"
The computer has a better sight range than the
human players depends on the AI difficulty
settings. On the highest setting, I believe the
computer can pretty much see the whole map in
the very beginning. This could be very useful
in locating the necessary resources, mines, and
artifacts. This advantage decreases as the
games goes on because you pretty much slowly
balancing out this advantage by exploring. This
also explains why once you leave your castle
unguarded, you might see a computer make a
straight line for your castle even if he hasn't
explored that area yet. Warlords 2's AI
actually sends out scouts when the "hidden map"
option is on.
B. The case where "AI" stands for
"Automatically In"
- Free Stacks - The computer's hero has
"incredible" luck in getting country side
monsters to join his group. This advantage may
be OK toward the end of the game, but it can
easily tip the balance of power at the beginning
of the game. According to NWC, the possibility
of a monster group joining your hero's stack
depends on the following things: Strength of
your stack, type of monsters in your stack, type
of hero. More than once I saw a computer stack
marching toward me with peasants, archers, and
30 gargoyles at the beginning of the game. Even
if I find out which stack is joining the
computer and try to get to it first, it doesn't
always work. Another time I checked a computer
and he had a stack with griffins, centaurs, and
peasants, and when he merged with a stack of
gargoyle, he got about 34 of them. I then
reloaded the saved game and try to get the
monster stack myself and only 18 joined me. I
repeated this several times and verified it but
NWC said that shouldn't happen. The computer
also seem to know which monster stack will join
his hero too. I've seen the computer walk past
2 or 3 monster stacks, free resources and etc.
in a bee-line to another monster stack and poof!
It joins his stack of monsters and then turns
toward my hero to attack him. From my
experience, I found the monsters stacks are more
likely to join me if I have the same monster
types and a strong stack.
C. The case where "AI" stands for "Automatic
Instill-energy"
Ummm.... the "Instill Energy" phrase is borrowed
from Magic: The Gathering :). This might just
be my imagination, but have you noticed how the
computer unit always get "lucky" and does twice
the normal damage, and high moral and get two
attacks. In the mean time, you're carrying a
four leaf clover and the horse shoe and all the
moral medals and your units still attack like a
normal troop?
AI Faults
### The "Can't catch me" trick. If you are
defending a castle and have fliers, even if it's
only 5 faeries, keep them around. If the
computer is attacking with slow monsters, you
can just fly from one corner of the screen to
another while your ballista does its damage to
the computer monsters. Watch out for the
"haste" spell. The computer doesn't use this
trick.
### The "Teleport" trick. If you have more
than 1 dimension doors, you can pretty much get
most of the artifacts without having to deal
with the guardian if there's an open space by
it. Normally, once you move next to a guarding
monster stack, you'll have to battle with them,
but with dimension doors, you can teleport right
next to them, pick up the artifact, and teleport
out. I first learn this trick from watching a
computer doing the exact same thing!
- The AI will often leave a castle weakly
guarded if it has a hero to send out. If a
strong computer stack comes your way and you
can't defend your castle, you might want to
leave the castle and have the computer take over
it. It will then proceed to split his stack
into 2 weaker ones so you'll have a better
chance to defeat the computer or take back the
castle.
4. Tips on different creatures
Knight
Peasant - Not too good at all, even if you have
high stats heroes. Slow, low damage, you might
want to have some to fill slots to protect your
range strikers or from a castle being invaded.
Archer - Slow, but they do good damage in a
large group.
Pikemen - Pretty good and cheap defense,
especially when protecting range strikers.
Swordsmen - Another good, cheap
attacker/defender.
Cavalry - Very good attacker and defender for
the price. It's fast so they get to do most of
the damage first.
Paladin - Cheapest Elite creature you can get.
They do really good damage and double attacking
make them very dangerous.
5. Tips on Campaign
6. Tips on Single Scenarios
I generally like to set my difficulties to
Easy/Normal, depending on the level, and for
computer intelligence, I usually set it at
genius. I believe the higher intelligence of a
computer, the more area of the map the computer
can see. I believe at the genius level, the
computer can pretty much see the whole map at
the very beginning! This is tolerable, but not
a necessary cheat on the computer part. I also
like to set the King of the Hill option to true.
My logic for this is would you rather fight 3
computers with one castle each (producing
weaker/spreadout units) or would you rather have
one computer with 3 castles (producing
mass/powerful units)? With this option on, it
might be a little harder in the beginning, but
nothing compares to the end when you're fighting
one powerful computer opponent.
For beginners, you might want to try EASY/Dumb
setting just to get a feel of how the AI works.
Badlands - Very easy to win. Just make sure you
start off at the upper right area of the map. I
tried it at the highest settings for everything
and won easily with a Dragon rating. The trick
is to get enough money in the beginning to get a
Barbarian hero. Have this hero go into the
desert at the right side of the map. When you
go there, you should be able to pick up a lot of
free resource, artifacts, gold, 2 towns, and 3
genie lamps. There's one undefended lamp in the
middle/right of the desert, and once you start
with the genies, most of the foes will fall in
the desert. With the genies from these lamps,
you can pretty much claim all the desert. After
this happens, the hero is highly experienced
enough to conquer the other opponents easily.
Jolly Roger - Normal. I believe one of the
computer opponent actually starts off with a
fully blown Warlock castle so don't be surprised
to see dragons marching your way on the first
week. The trick is to construct a boat and go
to the desert isles at the N, S, E, W, NW, NE,
SW, SE corner of the map where each contains an
unguarded genie lamp. Be sure to return these
FAST to a guarding hero to fight off the
dragons. Once you fight off the dragon stack,
get the castle QUICK and you pretty much have
the game when you get the full blown warlock
castle.
*** I might add more, but with the release of a
map editor and random map generator, it will be
hard for me to keep all the different scenarios
in this FAQ.
7. Add-ons/News
There are no map editors or any kind out there
right now (see Section 8. Gripes/Suggestions).
I just received new information from a
representative (Clay) of New World Computing
about a map editor. A random map generator AND
a map editor will be available for the Windows
`95 version of the Heroes of Might and Magic
(see below). For DOS users, an upgrade is
currently being developed right now (but not
promised) that will include the map editor, but
I'm not sure if it will include the random map
generator. More information will be provided
here as I receive more details.
There's a saved game editor floating out there
by Gary Blatt, and I believe it can be located
at the following web site:
http://rampages.onramp.net/~gbconslt.
There's also a universal saved game editor by
Overkill/Mortuai that will edit scored, creature
types in an army, resource, gold, spells,
artifacts. It can be located at
hhtp://www.ici.net/customers/overkill/overkill.h
tm under the "UGE Page" option at the home page.
*** Windows 95 Version and Heroes of Might and
Magic II! ***
Here's posting I grabbed from George Ruof of New
World Computing about the Windows `95 version
and HoMM 2:
"Heroes for Win95 will basically be the same
game but it will be a native 32 bit Windows 95
app using DirectDraw. The networking and modem
code will be unchanged to maintain compatibility
between the DOS and Win95."
Additional information:
"The Win95 version should be out around the
middle of February. It includes more scenarios,
a scenario editor/random generator, CD-Audio
soundtrack (yeah!!!), and the original King's
Bounty game"!!!
"We are planning for Heroes 2 which we would
like to ship for next Christmas. The details
are still in the early planning stages, but it
will be based on the existing Heroes engine. I
would like to support both IPX & TCP/IP for
networking, but we're still not sure if we will
be able to. Right now the DirectPlay component
of Microsoft's game SDK seems fairly incomplete,
but hopefully by next year it will be updated
and prove to be a good networking solution. If
not, we'll see what happens. :) I will
definitely argue for Internet play every day (or
so) until it ships."
8. Gripes/Suggestions.
Gripes
The biggest gripe many people have is the 400+
megs of digitized music/sound on the CD that
plays continuously (when you have the music
turned on). So the CD-ROM drive is constantly
reading/playing these digitized files from the
drive. EVERYBODY I know eventually ended up
turning the music off, and some people I know
even turn the sound off. I contacted New World
Computing and they said it's the only way to can
"copy protect" the CD. If you spend 3-4 hours
on a scenario, that means the CD-ROM drive is
constantly spinning/reading for the 3-4 hours.
This is not as simple as playing a music CD
because the computer actually has to play these
wave files and take up valuable system resource.
So most of us consumers ended up suffering with
the lack of music which other new games are
taking advantage of the small midi files and
abundance of wave table sound cards out there to
provide a great gaming atmosphere. I know for a
fact that there's a pirated copy out there that
doesn't require the CD-ROM and doesn't have the
400 me baggage so their copy-protection attempts
are kinda futile. CD-ROMs can also be
replicated for less than $7 now. They should at
most check to see if the correct CD-ROM is in
the drive (a la Warcraft 2) for copy protection.
The second gripe is the lack of map/scenario
editor. New World has one in-house that they
said we wouldn't want the way they have it now,
but I think anything is better than nothing. At
least release the specs so somebody can work on
it. The last I heard they are working on a map
editor to be bundled with the Windows 95
version. I hope we won't have to pay for the
editor alone. (see Section #6 for great news on
this topic)
This great game however is relatively bug free.
Some people have modem problems with it but
that's few. Most of the people were able to run
it under Windows `95. One minor bug is when
your hero is in a boat, don't use the Town Gate
spell or else you will end up with a boat in
front of a castle with the hero stuck in it.
One person on the net said it kept crashing but
the game works fine now after he scandisk or re-
formatted his hd partition.
Suggestions
Suggestions for patch/upgrade/HoMM 2:
* Simultaneous damage. When 2 creatures come
face to face, they should do simultaneous
damages to eachother. It's hard to imagine a
pack of Griffin would just sit there and wait
for a pack of wolves to maw it until it's their
turn.
* Hero bonuses should apply against spells.
Right now, a +50 defense troll can still be
killed by a 50-point lightning.
* Add toggle on/off for the ability of a monster
stack to join your hero group.
* Increase in stats for native monsters
depending on the type of terrain. (ie, phoenix
should not fight too well in the snow/tundra)
* Fatigue-Damage ratio for monsters. How many
times can those dwarves swing those axes at full
strength/damage?
* Health-Damage ratio for monsters. Wow, that
unicorn can still do full damage even if it only
has 1 life point left. I'm not sure how to
integrate this since the monsters are grouped
into one type, not individuals.
* Terrain Bonuses - Wow, that goblin has no
problem walking on that molten lava! And the
fire-breathing dragon is having no problem with
the tundra!
################################################
########
This FAQ may be distributed freely on the
Internet. Copies can be made freely, as long as
it is distributed at no charge and no further
modification, and the disclaimers and the
copyright notice are included. Commercial On-
line services may write for permission to carry
this FAQ on their service, and will be held
responsible if this FAQ is located on the
service in any form without written permission.
The fee for the following services are as
follows:
America On-Line - $100/year.
CompuServe - $75/year.
Genie - $50/year.
MSN - $5000/year.
(C)1996 Blue Orchid Technologies
George Lin
748 E. Pumping Station Rd.
Quakertown, PA 18951
This quarterly publication is intended to offer
tips and address some of the frequently asked
questions (FAQ) on the strategy game Heroes of
Might and Magic by New World Computing. Because
the answers may not be complete, please feel
free to ask questions.
This FAQ is not intended to answer questions
that can be located in the manual. If you need
to know how to learn a spell or how to move
troops from one hero to another, buy the game
and read the manual. The information in this
FAQ are from personal experience, numerous
posters on comp.sys.ibm.pc.strategic and George
Ruof & Clay from New World Computing. Some
stats are taken from article reviews
(paraphrased of course).
If you would like to contribute information to
this FAQ, write sections that has not been
completed, or have questions about this game,
make spelling/grammatical corrections (English
is not my native tongue), please feel free and
send me an email at gcl0@eecs.lehigh.edu with
the subject line containing the words "HoMM
FAQ". This FAQ is not complete.
A MS-Word 6.0 version of this document is also
available by request.
Last Update: February 3, 1995
***This will be the last update to the FAQ until
the Windoze 95 version comes out. It would be
nice if I can get a evaluation copy so I can
update this FAQ (HINT! HINT! George and Clay! :) )
1. What is it?/Answers to FAQ
2. General Tips
3. Cracking the AI
4. Tips on different creatures
5. Tips on Campaign
6. Tips on Single Scenarios
7. Add-ons/Windoze `95 News
8. Gripes/Suggestions.
1. What is it?/Answers to FAQ
### What is it? I hear the game is like MOM!
Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) is a fantasy-
strategy game put out by New World Computing.
Many people compared this game to Warlords II
(WAR2) and Master of Magic (MOM) because of
their similar style in play and strategic
planning. It's more like a hybrid of WAR2 with
the addition of spells, castle building, and a
combat sequence similar to Master of Orion
(MOO). Many of the creatures in this game are
from an older game called "King's Bounty", also
published by NWC in 1991. "King's Bounty" will
be included as a bonus in the Windoze '95
version of HoMM (To be released in February or
March)
### Is there a multi-player option?
HoMM allows modem, network, and hot-seat play.
The network play is via Netbios although many
people on the net reported problems with the
network setup.
### What are the requirements to run this game?
HoMM requires a VESA compatible video card, SVGA
monitor, CD-ROM drive (other requirements are on
the box that's not in front of me.)
### How about a description of the game play?
You start off with a hero with a group of
monsters for the hero to lead. You can have as
many as 8 heroes at the same time. The hero
starts off in a castle where you can build
different type of buildings by providing
resources such as wood, coal, gold, mercury,
etc. There are different type of buildings
providing different functions. Some provide
production of different monster troops. Some
provide spells for the heroes to learn. Some
provide scouting information and such.
The resources you will need can be obtained by
controlling a mine with a hero or have the hero
scout out for the resource piles that can be
located throughout the map. (mines provide one
or two units of resource per mine type per day
depending on the resource type - for example, a
coal mine controlled by you will provide you two
units of coals per day. You can take control of
other castles and towns. Buying recruitable
troops and building buildings in a castle all
require gold. Gold can be obtained either from
a mine (1000/day), castle (1000/day), or a town
(250/day).
A town/castle can provide recruitable troops
depending on what type of buildings it has.
There is a set number of recruitable troops
available each week. Once you recruited all the
available troops, you must wait until the
following week if you want to recruit more
troops.
### What is the object of the game?
The object of the game depends on the type of
scenario. Most of the single scenario series
require you to defeat all other players. In
some campaign scenario, you will be required to
find the "Ultimate Artifact" or to defeat the
"Dragon Fortress".
### How do I install the DOS version in Windoze
'95?
Many people reported problems installing from
within Windoze '95. The DOS/4GW with the DOS
version of HoMM just chokes during the
installation. (I didn't have problem with XCOM
and Warcraft 2 which also use DOS/4GW) What you
do is before you install, start the computer in
DOS mode, install, then you can play HoMM in the
Windoze mode.
### The Fuzzy Logic on the number of monsters
While it was a good idea to give a approximation
of the number of monsters contained within an
enemy stack, it would've been a better idea to
also include the equivalent of theses
approximations in the manual :). Also, it's
kinda hard to tell which description means more
than another with these words (and may confuse
foreign players). I think Warlords 2 uses the
length of the flag in a army stack to indicate
the number of units in a stack, maybe something
similar will show up in HoMM2. Well, here's the
chart:
Few---------------1 to 4
Several-----------5 to 9
Pack-------------10 to 19
Lots-------------20 to 49
Horde------------50 to 99
Zounds!----------100+
### Moral/Luck Boost
Good moral will allow some of your creatures to
attack twice in a turn during the combat. Bad
moral will stop your creature from attacking
during a turn. Good luck will allow some of
your creatures to do double the normal damage
during that single attack round. Moral and luck
can be raised and lowered by several factors.
* Visit fountains, statues, etc. will raise
moral/luck, but these will only last for one
battle.
* Artifacts carried by the hero can also
increase moral/luck.
* A Knight hero gives the stack +1 moral.
* If you have a stack of creature from the same
type of castle, you get +1 moral.
* If you have a stack of creatures from 3
different types of castle, you get -1 moral.
* Remember, Genies, Rogues, and Nomads are
another type.
* If you have a stack of creatures from 4
different types of castle, you get -2 moral.
###Can I remove a Cursed Artifact?
NO. Avoid it since you can tell what it looks
like. It's basically a blue pendent. You can
also tell when the computer simply ignores that
artifact. If you do acquire it, the only way to
get rid of it is the kill off the hero. If the
hero is a high leveled one, you might want to
keep it and give the hero some other artifacts
to offset this penalty.
###Attack and Defense!
The damage inflicted by a creature is increased
or decreased by 10% for every point of
difference between the attacker's ATTACK score
and the defender's DEFENSE score.
Example #1:
1 Attacking Dwarf has ATTACK=6
DEFENSE=5
DAMAGE=2-4
1 Defending Minotaur has ATTACK=9
DEFENSE=8
DAMAGE=5-10
When the Dwarf Attacks Minotaur, the Dwarf's
ATTACK score is 2 less than the Minotaur's
DEFENSE score, so the actual damage is
(Amount of Damage)x((Def's DEF) - (Att's ATT))%
which is
(2, 3, or 4) x 80%.
I think the final number is rounded up because
you never see anybody dealing 0 damage.
###Where's the *@&!^ Ultimate Artifact?
It's usually in the middle 4 squares of the map,
and the puzzle pieces covering that section are
usually the last one to go away. If you figured
out where the puzzle map is on the big map, you
can use several heroes to dig in the center
area.
### What the *#(&^ is the Attack Order?
Please verify this if anybody have factual
answers to this. From observation and a couple
of people from the net, it's as follows:
The Attacker's first FAST creature goes first,
then the defender's first FAST creature, if
either side run out of FAST creatures, the
remaining FAST creature from the other side will
go. This repeats for medium and slow. Example:
Defender: Paladin (FAST)
Cavalry (FAST)
Archer (SLOW)
Attacker: Phoenix (FAST)
Elf (Medium)
Dwarf (SLOW)
Order
-----
Attacker's FAST - Phoenix
Defender's FAST - Paladin
Attacker's FAST - None
Defender's FAST - Cavalry
Attacker's Med. - Elf
Defender's Med. - None
Attacker's Slow - Dwarf
Defender's Slow - Archer
I seem to recall Cavalry going before the
Paladin though. so I may be wrong on this :(
2. General Tips
Heroes
Heroes play a very important role in this game.
Heroes can travel outside of the castle by
itself or with a group of monsters (a stack).
Most of the heroes have "attributes" that can
increase its ability to win a combat or increase
attributes of it's troops. These are like
"skills" that can increase with experience or
with an artifact. These attributes are: Attack
(A), Defense (D), Skill (S), and Power (P).
The hero's Attack and Defense attributes are
added to the monsters contained within the same
stack as the hero. So a group of 50 peasants
with attack and defense of 1 might be a easy
kill, but if they are grouped with a hero with
the attributes of A:15 and D:15, the peasants
become monsters with the attack and defense of
16.
The ability of a monster to hit another monster
is increased/decreased by 10% for every
difference of a point between the attacker's
Attack attribute and defender's Defense
attribute.
(Table and equation to be inserted in the next
version of FAQ)
Constructing your Stacks
Most of the people will have multiple heroes,
but only one that they concentrate on by giving
him/her most of the experience points and magic
items in a way that they construct a "ultimate
stack/hero" with this hero. Once constructed,
this ultimate stack is very hard to kill off.
The computer doesn't seem to do this so their
forces are a little more spread out.
When arranging monsters with the hero, place
your range strikers on the left-most and right-
most slots. When you are in a combat, the left-
most slot monster will appear at the top-most
slot in the battle scene, and the right-most
slot monster will appear at the bottom-most
slot, so the least amount of monsters can fly up
to them and attack them. If you place any
monsters that takes up 2 spaces (wolves,
Griffins) right next to your range strikers, the
range strikers can only be attack by one flyer
group of monsters at a time.
Types of Heroes
Barbarian - A Barbarian hero will usually
increase attacking skills when they get more
experienced. The monsters lead by a Barbarian
hero are fairly good on damaging opponents, but
only OK in defense. The biggest plus the
Barbarian has is no penalty on movement over
different terrain. This could come in handy
when you want to grab all the resource piles in
a swamp, desert, of tundra area without having
to spend too much time. They are especially
handy in deserts if there are unguarded Genie
lamps laying around. Barbarians have average
movement, average sight range, and poor magic.
Warlock - A Warlock hero will usually increase
spell power when they get more experienced.
This could be deadly if the warlock has any
offensive spells such as Armageddon, Lightning
Bolt, Fireball and such. A powerful warlock
combined with a group of dragons and the
Armageddon spell could be real deadly. The
other special power warlock has is the ability
to see further than the other type of heroes.
This ability is only useful at the beginning of
the game because once you explore an area of a
map, you won't have to have somebody in that
general area to see that area of the map. The
"Fog of War" option in Warcraft 2 would add some
good strategic twist to the game. Warlocks have
good movement, great sight range, and poor
attack/defense.
Knight - A Knight hero will usually increase
defense power when they get more experienced. I
personally find this the best attribute over the
others. A stack of 20 dragons with a +10
defense from a hero will beat a stack of 50
dragons with a +1 defense. The knight's special
attribute is increase in moral for the monsters.
When you group of 50 archers gets a moral boost
and attacks twice, that's 2x2 = 4 attacks that
can wipe out most of the stacks. Knights have
poor movement, average sight range, and poor
magic.
Sorceress - I don't know why they don't use
Witches-Warlocks and Wizards-Sorceress, but
anyway, a Sorceress hero will usually increase
in spell knowledge when they get more
experienced. This could be handy if you have
the paralyze spell so you can use it to get
multiple attacks in before you opponent can even
retaliate. The special power for the Sorceress
is extra movement while in water. Sorceress
have good movement, good sight range, and poor
attack/defense.
Castles
There are usually 5 different levels of monster
housing you can build to start producing these
monsters for recruitment for each castle. Other
than that, most of the other structures for a
castle is pretty much the same. Some people
find it better to quickly build up a mage tower,
while others will concentrate on the monster
housings first. It might be better for
Sorceress/Wizards to build up a mage tower first
because of the spell power they have, but either
way, it'll be up to you to weigh the advantage
of having spells in the beginning or more
powerful monster in the beginning.
Barbarian - A barbarian castle/hero combo is
considered to be the weakest by most people, but
I find them very useful. The one monster you
don't want to overlook are the trolls with
regenerating ability. You can build a bridge
that creates trolls on the first week (If you
have the settings to EASY or if there are enough
coal/wood resources around), and a group of
these can take out most of the monsters guarding
the mines and resources. Not many defending
monsters can do more than 40 points of damage
per turn (that's the troll's hit points), and
you can decrease that damage/defending-monster-
group by using Troll's range attack ability.
If/When they do move close enough, only 2
monster groups can attack at the same time
anyway. These are the monster groups you can
usually defeat without losing a single troll
(Dwarves, Peasants, Swordsmen, Pikemen, Archers,
Goblins, Ogres, Wolves, Faeries) I can usually
take out the first computer opponent within the
first two weeks with a group of 6 trolls because
the castle isn't built enough to create more
than 40 points of damage from the garrison. The
highest order monster from the barbarian castle
are the Cyclops. They require an initial 20
crystal for the housing, then additional crystal
for each Cyclops generated which can be
expensive if there isn't a crystal mine around
that you can control.
Knights - A knight castle/hero is a pretty good
combo. Since the monsters generated in a knight
castle generally have higher defense points, if
you combine this with a knight hero's defense
bonuses, a knight castle is hard to defeat.
Knight castle lacks flyers so unless you want to
just sit there and get pounded on while
defending a castle, you better get flyers or the
teleport spell. You can also develop a knight
castle as fast as a barbarian castle with the
exception of the highest order monster (Paladin)
which requires an initial investment of 20
crystals. Paladin units however does not
require additional crystals to be recruited.
Sorceress - Sorceress castles might be the
hardest castle to build up because of high
amount of resources it requires. To even get to
the 3rd level monsters (Druids), you'll need to
construct a mage tower which requires 2000 gold
alone. The Sorceress castle does produce the
best combo of range attackers / flyers /
defenders. A full blown sorceress castle has
the phoenix to be the first initial attacker
because of the speed, and therefore the chance
to cast a spell before anyone else. The Phoenix
can also do a lot of damage and stop any range
strikers on the opposing side. The druid comes
next with speed and does the range damage to any
potential flyers that might be coming in. The
unicorn will do a good deal of damage with the
possibility of paralyization and the
archer/dwarf round out the good defense/range
striking tactics. The highest order monster
housing (Phoenix) requires an additional 20
mercury to be built (Druid housing takes up some
of that initial mercury you have also), and an
additional mercury unit to produce.
Wizard - Easier to build up than the Sorceress
castle except for the highest order monster
(Dragon) which requires 15000 gold and an
additional 20 sulfur to build the housing. You
can probably produce a gargoyle crypt and a
griffin's nest in the first few days and send
out the hero with the 3 monster types to destroy
most of the weaker guarding monsters. The
centaurs can function as a range strike against
any thing while the high speed of gargoyle and
to some degree, the griffin can stop any range
strikers. This combo of 3 can take out:
goblins, archers, elven archers, dwarves, orcs,
and peasants. Once you construct the dragon
tower however, the game is pretty much yours
(unless another player has a dragon tower). The
computer will only attack a castle guarded with
ONE dragon with a strong stack.
Spells
### As a general rule of thumb, any direct
damage or global damage spells are great with
heroes with high Power attributes since the
amount of damage is multiplied by a hero's
Power. A decent Skill attribute won't hurt
either since you can have the hero roam and
combat longer without having to run back to the
castle to refresh a spell. Once a spell is
cast, it is gone. You must return to the castle
with the Spell Tower containing that spell to
re-learn it.
### In a combat scene, if you go first, you get
the chance to cast a spell first. It will be up
to you to decide to either cast a good spell on
your troop, cast a negative spell on the
computer's troop, do direct damage to the
computer's troop, do global damage, or to wait.
One "goofy" thing about this game is that one
spell "overrides" another spell (except when
Anti-Magic is cast). For example, if I cast
"Curse" on one of the computer's troops, he can
cast "Protection" on the same turn and nullify
the "Curse" spell. The only exception I believe
is the effect of Paralyze stays even if you
overrides it with another spell (somebody
verify?). So maybe it would be good sometimes
to wait for the computer to cast that negative
spell on your stack and you can cast a positive
spell on your stack to negate and enchant your
stack with one spell.
### A player cannot cast spells or use the
Ballistas in a castle if all the troops
controlled by the player are blinded, or
paralyzed.
Anti-Magic - A good spell to cast over your
"good" units, particularly your missile units
since the computer usually targets them first
with negative spells.
Armageddon (4)- A really good global damage
spell when used in conjunction with a dragon
stack or Anti-Magic spell. An experienced hero
with high Power attribute can really do damage
with these combos since his dragon troop or
anti-magiked troop(s) won't be affected by this
spell.
Blind - Similar to paralyze where a troops is
immobile for the number of combat turns equal to
the opponent's hero's Power. I believe it is
weaker than paralyze because on the turn the
Blind spell wears out or canceled, the victim
can attack that turn.
Lightning (2)- A good spell to take out
powerful/obnoxious stacks. I love using these
on the genies since they are pretty deadly with
their special 1/2 stack attack and high attack
attributes.
Storm - A weaker form of Armageddon spell, but
still pretty good and faster to learn than
Armageddon.
View All - An OK spell. By the time you can
afford to construct that 4th layer for your
spell tower to get this spell, the game is
pretty much done. Useful at the end when you
want to locate that last castle/town of the
computer to finish him off.
View Resource - Could be handy if you know what
kinda resource you will need to build a certain
type of building. For example, a Warlock will
want to look for all the unguarded sulfur
resource he can find because sulfur is necessary
to construct Swamp and the Dragon Tower.
### Nifty Spell Combos
Anti-Magic + Global Damage Combat Spells
Haste + Hydra
Paralyze + Range Strikers/Castle
Pestilence + COP: Black. oops, wrong game :)
3. Cracking The AI
The computer AI in the strategic gaming industry
is still in its infancy. I've posted articles
about how they are mislabeling the computer in
games such as Master of Magic and Master of
Orion as "AI". You might see some comparisons
below to other strategy games as examples. A
very very few games out there have an AI that
learns from your actions and mistakes and
increases its knowledge from experiences much
like a human being's brain and learning
abilities. I know of one chess game that can do
that. Blizzard claimed that the "AI" in
Warcraft 2 also has a "Learning AI", but either
it has learning disability or it just isn't true
because it seems to be dumber than the AI in
Warcraft 1. Most of the games out there are
based on a rule-based knowledge base AI and can
not learn from user's actions. It doesn't mean
you can't create a good AI with that parameter.
Heroes of Might and Magic is one of the games
with a better non-learning AI.
Many games compensated the weak AI by giving the
computer bonuses at a higher setting. The
Master of XXX series from SimTex/MicroProse
compensated the "hard" and "impossible" AI
settings by giving the computer 25% to 50%
bonuses over the human opponent in resources
such as gold or $$ and production power. The
bonuses are in effect from the beginning to the
end of the game. In HoMM, the computer does get
a compensation, but only at the beginning of the
game. In some of the scenarios that's marked as
"hard", the computer might start off with more
resources, or a lot of resources close by, or a
castle with some pre-built buildings. Once this
is done however, the computer doesn't "really"
(see below) get any other bonuses throughout the
game. This allows you a chance to catch up and
have a shot at defeating the computer because
you are not falling behind by +25% to +50% every
turn.
A. The case where "AI" stands for "Automatic
Intelligence"
The computer has a better sight range than the
human players depends on the AI difficulty
settings. On the highest setting, I believe the
computer can pretty much see the whole map in
the very beginning. This could be very useful
in locating the necessary resources, mines, and
artifacts. This advantage decreases as the
games goes on because you pretty much slowly
balancing out this advantage by exploring. This
also explains why once you leave your castle
unguarded, you might see a computer make a
straight line for your castle even if he hasn't
explored that area yet. Warlords 2's AI
actually sends out scouts when the "hidden map"
option is on.
B. The case where "AI" stands for
"Automatically In"
- Free Stacks - The computer's hero has
"incredible" luck in getting country side
monsters to join his group. This advantage may
be OK toward the end of the game, but it can
easily tip the balance of power at the beginning
of the game. According to NWC, the possibility
of a monster group joining your hero's stack
depends on the following things: Strength of
your stack, type of monsters in your stack, type
of hero. More than once I saw a computer stack
marching toward me with peasants, archers, and
30 gargoyles at the beginning of the game. Even
if I find out which stack is joining the
computer and try to get to it first, it doesn't
always work. Another time I checked a computer
and he had a stack with griffins, centaurs, and
peasants, and when he merged with a stack of
gargoyle, he got about 34 of them. I then
reloaded the saved game and try to get the
monster stack myself and only 18 joined me. I
repeated this several times and verified it but
NWC said that shouldn't happen. The computer
also seem to know which monster stack will join
his hero too. I've seen the computer walk past
2 or 3 monster stacks, free resources and etc.
in a bee-line to another monster stack and poof!
It joins his stack of monsters and then turns
toward my hero to attack him. From my
experience, I found the monsters stacks are more
likely to join me if I have the same monster
types and a strong stack.
C. The case where "AI" stands for "Automatic
Instill-energy"
Ummm.... the "Instill Energy" phrase is borrowed
from Magic: The Gathering :). This might just
be my imagination, but have you noticed how the
computer unit always get "lucky" and does twice
the normal damage, and high moral and get two
attacks. In the mean time, you're carrying a
four leaf clover and the horse shoe and all the
moral medals and your units still attack like a
normal troop?
AI Faults
### The "Can't catch me" trick. If you are
defending a castle and have fliers, even if it's
only 5 faeries, keep them around. If the
computer is attacking with slow monsters, you
can just fly from one corner of the screen to
another while your ballista does its damage to
the computer monsters. Watch out for the
"haste" spell. The computer doesn't use this
trick.
### The "Teleport" trick. If you have more
than 1 dimension doors, you can pretty much get
most of the artifacts without having to deal
with the guardian if there's an open space by
it. Normally, once you move next to a guarding
monster stack, you'll have to battle with them,
but with dimension doors, you can teleport right
next to them, pick up the artifact, and teleport
out. I first learn this trick from watching a
computer doing the exact same thing!
- The AI will often leave a castle weakly
guarded if it has a hero to send out. If a
strong computer stack comes your way and you
can't defend your castle, you might want to
leave the castle and have the computer take over
it. It will then proceed to split his stack
into 2 weaker ones so you'll have a better
chance to defeat the computer or take back the
castle.
4. Tips on different creatures
Knight
Peasant - Not too good at all, even if you have
high stats heroes. Slow, low damage, you might
want to have some to fill slots to protect your
range strikers or from a castle being invaded.
Archer - Slow, but they do good damage in a
large group.
Pikemen - Pretty good and cheap defense,
especially when protecting range strikers.
Swordsmen - Another good, cheap
attacker/defender.
Cavalry - Very good attacker and defender for
the price. It's fast so they get to do most of
the damage first.
Paladin - Cheapest Elite creature you can get.
They do really good damage and double attacking
make them very dangerous.
5. Tips on Campaign
6. Tips on Single Scenarios
I generally like to set my difficulties to
Easy/Normal, depending on the level, and for
computer intelligence, I usually set it at
genius. I believe the higher intelligence of a
computer, the more area of the map the computer
can see. I believe at the genius level, the
computer can pretty much see the whole map at
the very beginning! This is tolerable, but not
a necessary cheat on the computer part. I also
like to set the King of the Hill option to true.
My logic for this is would you rather fight 3
computers with one castle each (producing
weaker/spreadout units) or would you rather have
one computer with 3 castles (producing
mass/powerful units)? With this option on, it
might be a little harder in the beginning, but
nothing compares to the end when you're fighting
one powerful computer opponent.
For beginners, you might want to try EASY/Dumb
setting just to get a feel of how the AI works.
Badlands - Very easy to win. Just make sure you
start off at the upper right area of the map. I
tried it at the highest settings for everything
and won easily with a Dragon rating. The trick
is to get enough money in the beginning to get a
Barbarian hero. Have this hero go into the
desert at the right side of the map. When you
go there, you should be able to pick up a lot of
free resource, artifacts, gold, 2 towns, and 3
genie lamps. There's one undefended lamp in the
middle/right of the desert, and once you start
with the genies, most of the foes will fall in
the desert. With the genies from these lamps,
you can pretty much claim all the desert. After
this happens, the hero is highly experienced
enough to conquer the other opponents easily.
Jolly Roger - Normal. I believe one of the
computer opponent actually starts off with a
fully blown Warlock castle so don't be surprised
to see dragons marching your way on the first
week. The trick is to construct a boat and go
to the desert isles at the N, S, E, W, NW, NE,
SW, SE corner of the map where each contains an
unguarded genie lamp. Be sure to return these
FAST to a guarding hero to fight off the
dragons. Once you fight off the dragon stack,
get the castle QUICK and you pretty much have
the game when you get the full blown warlock
castle.
*** I might add more, but with the release of a
map editor and random map generator, it will be
hard for me to keep all the different scenarios
in this FAQ.
7. Add-ons/News
There are no map editors or any kind out there
right now (see Section 8. Gripes/Suggestions).
I just received new information from a
representative (Clay) of New World Computing
about a map editor. A random map generator AND
a map editor will be available for the Windows
`95 version of the Heroes of Might and Magic
(see below). For DOS users, an upgrade is
currently being developed right now (but not
promised) that will include the map editor, but
I'm not sure if it will include the random map
generator. More information will be provided
here as I receive more details.
There's a saved game editor floating out there
by Gary Blatt, and I believe it can be located
at the following web site:
http://rampages.onramp.net/~gbconslt.
There's also a universal saved game editor by
Overkill/Mortuai that will edit scored, creature
types in an army, resource, gold, spells,
artifacts. It can be located at
hhtp://www.ici.net/customers/overkill/overkill.h
tm under the "UGE Page" option at the home page.
*** Windows 95 Version and Heroes of Might and
Magic II! ***
Here's posting I grabbed from George Ruof of New
World Computing about the Windows `95 version
and HoMM 2:
"Heroes for Win95 will basically be the same
game but it will be a native 32 bit Windows 95
app using DirectDraw. The networking and modem
code will be unchanged to maintain compatibility
between the DOS and Win95."
Additional information:
"The Win95 version should be out around the
middle of February. It includes more scenarios,
a scenario editor/random generator, CD-Audio
soundtrack (yeah!!!), and the original King's
Bounty game"!!!
"We are planning for Heroes 2 which we would
like to ship for next Christmas. The details
are still in the early planning stages, but it
will be based on the existing Heroes engine. I
would like to support both IPX & TCP/IP for
networking, but we're still not sure if we will
be able to. Right now the DirectPlay component
of Microsoft's game SDK seems fairly incomplete,
but hopefully by next year it will be updated
and prove to be a good networking solution. If
not, we'll see what happens. :) I will
definitely argue for Internet play every day (or
so) until it ships."
8. Gripes/Suggestions.
Gripes
The biggest gripe many people have is the 400+
megs of digitized music/sound on the CD that
plays continuously (when you have the music
turned on). So the CD-ROM drive is constantly
reading/playing these digitized files from the
drive. EVERYBODY I know eventually ended up
turning the music off, and some people I know
even turn the sound off. I contacted New World
Computing and they said it's the only way to can
"copy protect" the CD. If you spend 3-4 hours
on a scenario, that means the CD-ROM drive is
constantly spinning/reading for the 3-4 hours.
This is not as simple as playing a music CD
because the computer actually has to play these
wave files and take up valuable system resource.
So most of us consumers ended up suffering with
the lack of music which other new games are
taking advantage of the small midi files and
abundance of wave table sound cards out there to
provide a great gaming atmosphere. I know for a
fact that there's a pirated copy out there that
doesn't require the CD-ROM and doesn't have the
400 me baggage so their copy-protection attempts
are kinda futile. CD-ROMs can also be
replicated for less than $7 now. They should at
most check to see if the correct CD-ROM is in
the drive (a la Warcraft 2) for copy protection.
The second gripe is the lack of map/scenario
editor. New World has one in-house that they
said we wouldn't want the way they have it now,
but I think anything is better than nothing. At
least release the specs so somebody can work on
it. The last I heard they are working on a map
editor to be bundled with the Windows 95
version. I hope we won't have to pay for the
editor alone. (see Section #6 for great news on
this topic)
This great game however is relatively bug free.
Some people have modem problems with it but
that's few. Most of the people were able to run
it under Windows `95. One minor bug is when
your hero is in a boat, don't use the Town Gate
spell or else you will end up with a boat in
front of a castle with the hero stuck in it.
One person on the net said it kept crashing but
the game works fine now after he scandisk or re-
formatted his hd partition.
Suggestions
Suggestions for patch/upgrade/HoMM 2:
* Simultaneous damage. When 2 creatures come
face to face, they should do simultaneous
damages to eachother. It's hard to imagine a
pack of Griffin would just sit there and wait
for a pack of wolves to maw it until it's their
turn.
* Hero bonuses should apply against spells.
Right now, a +50 defense troll can still be
killed by a 50-point lightning.
* Add toggle on/off for the ability of a monster
stack to join your hero group.
* Increase in stats for native monsters
depending on the type of terrain. (ie, phoenix
should not fight too well in the snow/tundra)
* Fatigue-Damage ratio for monsters. How many
times can those dwarves swing those axes at full
strength/damage?
* Health-Damage ratio for monsters. Wow, that
unicorn can still do full damage even if it only
has 1 life point left. I'm not sure how to
integrate this since the monsters are grouped
into one type, not individuals.
* Terrain Bonuses - Wow, that goblin has no
problem walking on that molten lava! And the
fire-breathing dragon is having no problem with
the tundra!
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