Adventures in Enrathia!

A page for Heroes of Might and Magic 1, 2 & 3

Yesterday I was home from work, so I took a holiday from everything and went back
to playing an old Heroes 2 scenario that I had been stuck on. When I first attempted it,
I must have given it 5 or 6 different tries, plus an extra couple of aborted early attempts
while I tried to figure out what was going on. But yesterday, I resolved to conquer it.
(A man needs to take his resolutions where he can get them.) And so I gave it 3 or 4
more attempts, getting nowhere fast.

I realized that part of the problem, as far as yesterday went, was that I was out of
experience playing Heroes 2, having spent most of the past year or so playing Heroes 3,
the Restoration of Erathia. And then I was playing the Expansion Pack for Heroes 3,
Armageddon's Blade. And then I was playing the next Expansion for Heroes 3,
The Shadow of Death. Finally, before I could even finish that one, they came out with
yet another Expansion, the Chronicles of Tarnum. Oddly, they are selling that one piecemeal,
and you have to buy each one of the 4 Tarnum campaigns separately.
It's sort of a Heroes 3 light.

Anyway, I am now as good at playing Heroes 3 as you can reasonably get, but that didn't
help me yesterday when I went back to play the expansion scenario for Heroes 2 that I had
been stuck on. Because of the difference in how castles get upgraded in each game, the whole
strategy changes. You can end up crippled in Heroes 2, starting with only a few men and a town,
and still eke out many weeks at a marginal level before being able to accomplish anything.
That's normal in many scenarios, with the goal being to finally build up enough to annihilate
the boss stack that waits for you at the end. By contrast, in Heroes 3 you start with a town
that has the potential of buying whatever you want, and you don't have to upgrade it to a
castle unless you want to make that town your capital. So, you can have a pretty tough
batch of units under your command long before you are on your feet economically.

Also, the way campaigns are handled are done much differently between 2 and 3.
For the last year, I have been playing campaigns where I would end up taking a
hero with me from scenario to scenario, slowly building him up as he grew in might
and magic, so that by the final scenario, even if he started out in a brand new
town with minimal units, he could overwhelm nearly anything in his path just by
his spell-book and enhanced statistics alone.

All right, so I had to put all that away, and get re-acquainted with the original
Heroes 2 game. I finally did that by playing another expansion campaign scenario,
"Descendants." Just as an aside, I have to admit I really enjoyed that one.
It was a branching campaign, which means I could pick and choose between various
scenarios. At one point, I had the option between going after a barbarian or going
after a wizard, and at another I had the option of looking for elves or fighting
without them. I tried both choices as far as barbarian and wizard, but I took
the help of the elves. It just made the final battle more fun having all these
wandering stacks of elves and grand elves willing to join me.

Finally, I was ready to tackle the Wizard's Isle campaign. I had already done both
of the two original campaigns, Roland and Archibald, way back when the game first
came out. In fact, I had done all four of the original Heroes 1 campaigns when that
first came out. And I had now done 3 of the 4 expansion campaigns: Descendants,
the Price of Loyalty, and The Voyage Home were all completed. Just Wizard's Isle remained.
This was ostensibly a very shore campaign, with only 3 linked scenarios, plus an optional
fourth one you could skip altogether. I had done the first 2 scenarios with no problem at
all, had even breezed through the optional 3rd scenario, but the 4th one had me at a complete
standstill.

Well, no more. I resolved that by hook or by crook, I was going to beat this one. And so I
mustered all my reserves of diligence and tenacity, sat down, and promptly got my ass kicked.
Undaunted, I tried again. It was tough, because I only had a tiny island in the middle of
nowhere with a town that lacked all but the most basic amenities. After some exploring, I
managed to map out most of the outer islands, realizing that the main continent was a gigantic
spiral with no apparent way in. As I watched, there appeared to be some struggle going on
between the forces of Red and of Yellow. As I couldn't touch them and they couldn't touch
me, it didn't matter to me what they did to each other. I was able to find two more island
towns, one of them a Sorceress Town and one of them a Necromancer Town. Having built up my
original Wizard's town I now had 3 castles that were producing many men, and I had control
of all the outer islands.

After much more mapping and scouting, I was able to locate every mine but sulfur, and I used
windmills and the marketplace to keep me well-stocked with that. Once I had a sufficient
load of high-end armies, I sailed forth to the one area on the mainland I could land on,
and went off to explore that.

I was promptly killed by a stack of more black dragons than I could count,
but I believe it was about 113.

Restarting the game from scratch, I decided to ignore many of the other islands, and just build up
my one wizard's castle. I was lucky, and in my magic tower I was able to learn Dimension Door,
a very useful spell on a map like this one. I could skip the stacks of computer-Dragonboy and
just go mapping around. After all, my goal wasn't the elimination of either Red or Yellow,
it was to find the neutral city of Magic and conquer it for Blue.

Having mapped out many of the outer spirals, I saw that each had a color tent giving the answer
to a magic color barrier. Through judicious use of the Dimension Door spell, I was able to find
the path with the colored barriers all in a row. Thanks to that spell and to a Summon Boat scroll
I had picked up, I was able to bypass the many cities of Red and Yellow, ignore the barriers,
and sail across the hidden inner lake until I was all alone just outside the city of Magic.
Having a high-level stack of Titans with me, I figured out that I had conquered the scenario at
last. So I saved the game, clicked on the town...

And was promptly killed by a stack of more black and red dragons than I could count, but I
believe it was about 100 black, 50 red, plus another 100 or so each of minotaurs, hydras,
and griffins. I think I took out maybe 9 of the black dragons with my entire army before
I was annihilated.

Finally, I was in a bit of a funk, and the first dim thoughts of self-doubt flickered across
my consciousness. But, not willing to give up, I did what all men in my situation have
done since the beginning of time: I went online to find out what players have done.

The great thing about Heroes, be it 1, 2, or 3, is the total replay value. Every game
has a tremendous amount of randomization, so even if you play on the same map, you can
change your hero, your castle, your starting location, the strength of the AI and
wandering monsters, and that's in addition to all the other random elements that change
every time a scenario loads, including the shape and size of the wandering monsters,
which computer-controlled heroes have which castles, and so on. Artifacts change,
assorted mines and supplies change, gold chests and sea chests change, and so it's
very hard to duplicate any given strategy. Which is to say, I knew going online that
even if some guy said "I beat the game by grabbing the 5 ghosts sitting around by the
Light-house," that information was going to help me at all since those ghosts wouldn't
be there in my game, or they might be hostile instead of friendly. I think, mostly,
I was just looking to see that the scenario was beatable, and in a decent amount of time.
Well, it was, but not in any reasonable amount of time. Some people had explored the
islands, and some had left them alone. Some had built up the initial Wizard's castle
and some had not. Many used the elemental altars. Eventually, though, I saw that there
was one salient point to all successful strategies: there was no stealth way to easy
victory as I had been attempting. Every single guy who had beaten the Fount of Wizardry
scenario had done it the same way I had: through much mapping, exploration, saving, and
hard work. The only difference was that they had all wiped out Red and Yellow.

I could not find any good strategy for wiping out those two, especially considering
the random nature of the board. However, just the knowledge that military conquest
was the only key to eventual victory was enough for me. I mean, that was how I beat
Heroes 1, the final scenario, by stealing one castle at a time from the various AI's
until I had a sufficient force to conquer all the rest. So, I hunkered down and found
the saved game position just before I had attack Magic so foolhardily. It was
already mid-way through the 4th month, Yellow was pretty much eliminated, and I was
facing the combined might of a dozen or so Red castles.

Let's just say the next hour was not pretty. I found a castle that did not look like
it was heavily defended, a sorceress castle with no phoenixes in it, and I besieged it.
To be honest, I did it three times until I was sure I could take it with minimal losses.
I looked in the tavern and thieves guild, to see if this one castle had tipped the
balance in my favor. No, Red was still #1 in everything.

Undaunted, I went off to conquer the rest of the Sorceress spiral arm. (Each arm of the
spiral continent specialized in only one Hero type, be it Knight or Wizard, Barbarian or
Sorceress. There was no Necromancer spiral, and the majority of the Warlock castles
were around the inner lake.) Promptly, I lost my first castle as soon as I conquered my
2nd one. Both Red and I had a hero who could teleport around with glee, so it was
like some kind of magical trench warfare with the two of us going back and forth wiping
out phoenixes and druids left and right, me with Titans and him with Dragons.
I totally understand why they re-made the Sorceress castle over into the Druid castle
in Heroes 3-- it was just too wimpy as it was.

Still, I am nothing if not tenacious. Eventually, I conquered the entire sorceress spiral.
Having an extra sorceress castle of my own on an island in the northwest, I was able to
bring in a second hero and garrison the entrance to that spiral while I made forays into
the Barbarian spiral. Occasionally, I would grab a Warlock castle or so when Red
would be really annoying and try to besiege me from all sides.

But then came the tricky part: defeating the wandering computer Dragon boy. I could
tackle him, but then I'd be pretty wiped out myself, and not have enough units left to
attack the Font of Magic itself. At least not without waiting for months and months
while I replenished. And the game score is based on number of days taken to complete
the scenario, so I was not anxious to do that having already squandered 4 and 1/2
months exploring before I attacked anyone. I came upon the solution totally by
accident: unlike me, the computer was not found of grabbing all the units from a castle
and leaving it undefended. I kept losing castles and having to pop back in and re-take
them, figuring I would save the money later on for Dragons and Titans. The computer,
on the other hand, did everything possible to garrison its castles. When it did
not have enough town men, it would split the stack of any close-by hero. And so I
noticed that Dragonboy lost his centaurs after taking back one Warlock castle for the
4th or 5th time. Experimenting, I took a few towns in the spiral closest to him that I
knew I had no chance of keeping, just to see what he would do. Sure enough, he then
lost his griffins and his hydras. He was only left with dragons.

Still there were too many dragons, but further conquest and experimentation showed
that he was willing to leave 3 or 4 dragons behind in each town or castle. After
another hour or so of tackling towns and castles back and forth and back and forth,
I had him down to enough dragons where I was able to defeat him with minimal losses.
And while it had taken a few real-life hours longer than a head-to-head battle might
have taken, the game-turn monitor had not elapsed very far at all, so I had saved
several days, perhaps several weeks with my new-found strategy.

After that, Red through his remaining forces at me, but he no longer had a
teleporting hero, so I was able to conquer the rest of his castles with ease.
Well, it still took a few more hours of mopping up and wiping up towns once the
castles were gone, but I finally reached the point where I had every mine and
castle and town under my control except the Font of Magic itself in the middle.

Needless to say, I then attacked it with my hero, figuring I could now wipe the
floor with dragons with ease. I was high-level, knew all sorts of kick-ass spells,
and had a seasoned crew of veteran armies that trusted my orders implicitly.

So, I went in, clicked on Magic, and was promptly annihilated.

Realizing that there was a reason that the map was set up so that I had a dozen or so
towns and castles under my control before I tackled Magic, I went back to my last saved
position, and sat around for a week or two while all my dragons and titans and phoenixes
mated and bred. I took all my heroes and heroines except for Jeannie, (that's not her
name, but a sorceress heroine that I was using to run back and forth and back and forth
on a long spiral to collect stuff, so the name seemed apt.) and had them collect all the
high-end armies on the board. I gathered together all the dragons and titans and
phoenixes, went past the magic barriers, rowed across the inner lake, clicked on Magic.
And was annihilated, but finally, it wasn't as prompt as all the other times. I actually
wiped out 63 or so of the 100 black dragons.

Now thoroughly emboldened that I was on the right track, I went back to last
saved position, and this time sat around a full two weeks growing even more armies.
Actually, I could have gone in after a week, but I didn't know that at the time.
One of my heroes had forgotten to give my main man his stack of Titans, and so I
was even closer to winning than I realized at the time.

But it didn't matter. I waited the two weeks, becoming a Dragonboy of my own,
and finally, finally, finally, went in and kicked major dragon ass. After two years
and countless attempts, I finally am able to say: I am a Hero of Might and Magic.

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