Ideas I read about
Things in this section are not written by me. I am just copying it, normally without
approval of the origianl auther. But since I am not selling this, it should be ok and I will give
the authhor credit. If you read your idea here and don't want me to use it drop me a mail ok?
Something you need to know before you read on.
Here is how this page is set up. I will try to list all the tips I received. I will however try to eliminate repetiton. Whenever you see some people's name and email address in blue color following a tip, that means those people have also mentioned this tip.
I will try to add comments at the end of every tip in red, to tell you what I think of it and if I have validate this tip.
for any tips listed below. If you lost the game using these tips, the tipper's email address is here :)
>
The Dragon/Armageddon Combo
Well almost everybody mentioned it and I am tired of typing all those emails, you know who you are :)
This one actually should be obvious I believe most of you know this anyhow.
If you can afford it, use it. It won't hurt you anyway.
Undocumented trick
Mike J. Konstantinov
How to split the units of one type (sample: if you have 13 Phoenix
then 3 you want leave in city and 10 take for battle).
At first you must be in the Castle(Town) or meet other hero owned by you
1. Select a unit (just click on it!)
2. Hold down SHIFT and click on place where the units can be
3. Dialog box appears and you can DO IT
4. Push OK button :-)
This is a very useful trick that can come handy in some situation. If you leave this site with just one tip, this should be it.
Shuttle (Joe Novicki) -- This is the original text written by him on PC game online magzine or
something close. :) sorry don't remember the name.
Say a large army is about to strike your castle, which is defended by a very weak hero. you
have a good army close by, but it can't reach the castle to drop off needed defenders. Your weak
army can reach the good army to trade units, but it can't get back. Solution: Move the weak hero out
just one step from your caslte. Buy a new hero. Have the new hero go out, trade units with your good
army and head back to the castle. Now your weak army should be able to reach the new army, make the
trade and get back to the castle to better defend it. ... More heroes can be thrown in if needed.
Rachael Tang ([email protected])
1) The knight is probably the easiest to play: While he has no modifiers
in the adventure window, his attack and defence are similar to the
barbarian's - except I believe he gets an extra point in something (count
them - everyone gets a certain number of points, he gets one more).
It's morale +1 morale.
His troops are the cheapest to make. When the Warlock is busy trying to make
minotaurs, for example, you can be working on Paladins. They are the
weakest per unit, which can be a pain, BUT you get more of them each week,
and, by a cost - to - hit point/damage value, are the best value out
there. You can, for example, have some five or six paladins per the
warlock's dragon - by cost. In reality, you will have them weeks, maybe
months, before he has _any_ dragons - and even then, he doesn't get many.
You could conceivably have 20 paladins to his one dragon. Keep in mind
that dragons do enough damage to kill two or three paladins. I believe
it's four or five (check my numbers? I'm not looking at the book right
now) paladins can kill a dragon with one shot.One dragon do 25-50 damage, Paladins have 50hp each.
2) The enemy troops _always_ try to kill your archers/druids/trolls first.
If he has gargoyles and dragons, frequently, one will attack archers, the
other paladins.
the orders (*roughly*) go:
whatever's nearest them, unless they have missile weapons.. in which case:
archers trolls druids centaurs
orcs elves
whatever's nearest/does the most damage.
Your castle defense will also follow this, so don't expect a lot of help
killing ogres if the attacking enemy has many orcs and several ogres - the
castle will kill almost all of the orcs before it will bother with the
orcs.
Also, if all the missile weapons creatures are killed, it may not attack
the same creature every time. It will attack the one most likely to do the
most damage, by its own calculations. 7 wolves will get its attention
rather than 6 ogres, even if they're both right next to your units.
And be careful to take into account the number of hit points and defence
abilities of each unit. 24 dwarves are capable of taking on a number of
unicorns, even. They're tough enough to make it through, and do enough
damage - and the unicorns will, on their turn, move into range for the
dwarves to attack. :P
If a group of units is in the adventure screen, I've found that it's a
good idea to approach them with many of _that_particular_unit_. There is a
random chance that they will want to join you - that chance goes up
significantly if you have more of that unit than they do. In other words,
if you have 45 peasants, and they have 24, they're more likely to want to
join you than if you have ten - in fact, they will almost never join you
if you have fewer than they do.I think it's purely depend on strength. If you have overwhelming troops again his, you have a better chance.
About the Ultimate Artifacts: the game cheats. It will randomly dig in
many places, but, if you don't play a little bit on the offensive and make
sure you have as much of the map uncovered as possible, you may get
problems. Frequently, when you finally do get to the point where tha
artifact is, you will see _one_ digging hole. They knew exactly where to
look? I think not - I've seen them have fewer obelisks than I at that
point - and I had only found one or two. This only happens if you don't
pursue exploration, however. If you do, they go on the defensive, and
won't go looking like that.No offense... but have you ever seen a strategy game that the computer DOES NOT cheat? I haven't
The catapult: it doesn't always take two shots to break down a wall. It's
random. There is always the chance (I find that "chance" to be better for
the enemy, actually) that you will hit it right, and break it down in one
shot, in one place or another.
In your summary of the units for battle worth, you forgot one thing: you
included the price of the individual unit, but neglected the price to
build their dwelling place.
No I didn't. That's in the dwellings section.
As I said, paladins are _cheap_. They may not be strong compared to other units "in their class", but you can have a hell of a lot of them before any other of the big units can be built.
When you start the game, you can choose which hero you play with, even in
the standard game. If you have a problem with the one you've been given,
you can restart. It is random, but it's usually different each time (so
you won't get the knight twice in a row, if you don't want him...
usually). Simple numbers. :P
Actually, the single scenarioes give you random starting castles if the maker of the map intended to do so. In campaign game you got to choose what kind of castle to start with.
Steve McInerney ([email protected])
One tactic I've had a bit of success with:
An enemy lords hero is encroaching upon my territory - aiming for one of my
castles. S/He's too powerful to take on with any heros of my own nearby.
I use a nearby hero or make one if necessary to grab all the troops I can
outa the castle - recruit and grab existing and run away leaving the castle
undefended.
The enemy hero will auto capture the castle, generally leave a garrison and
move on.
Now I find I can usually take on both the hero and the castle seperatly and
win it back with minimal losses. I prefer to take out the hero first as s/he
is usually taking over mines etc as well.
The only time I've found that this won't work is when my forces will win
very easily against an enemy hero then the comp usually won't leave a
garrison. It just takes me a couple of days to get a hero to be able to
retake the castle. Although I will (where possible) strip troops from a
castle to deny the resources to the enemy defences for my retake.
This is what I call Rogue's way :) This is also mentioned by
B.C. French
It is very easy to trick dumb or average opponents with one
simple strategy: they can't resist an empty castle, no matter who is
lurking around. You can use a modification of this strategy on smart
or genius opponents, if some certain situations apply.
You can play dumb and average opponents like puppets, because they
don't view lurking heroes as much of a threat. Load up your hero
with all your castle's troops and step outside about three moves,
and wait for the enemy heroes to swoop down. This is a great trick
for stomping weak heroes that would just go around snatching up
treasure and stealing your mines and just being annoying. Once the
hero has gotten in range, use your loaded hero to show him just
who's boss in this burg. You can use this to great effect with a
one-two punch, using a weaker hero to step in and out of the castle
and a stronger hero lurking nearby to stomp unwary heroes.
Also, if you time it right, you can let the enemy build up your castle like magic guild and such for couple of days. Before a new week starts (which means more troops for enemy) take back the castle with... AAAARRRRGGGHHH.... Level 4 magic guild!
I've found the teleport spell to be invaluble for retaking castles -
teleport a large group of swordsmen/minotaurs etc in and blood city!
A good defense for castles:
I have flying creatures - enemy no/little shooters/flyers
keep flying outa range of ground troops - casting spells to counter enemy
castings (if possible) and let the tower bolt deal out the punishment. may
take a while but has been very successfully used.
Yeah just keep running. Also make sure enemy don't have troops with FAST speed or they just might catch you. Not always but the danger is there.
Also mentioned by
Larry Lehtinen ([email protected])
A good attack for castles:
The comp has only left one stack of troops in a castle, you have no troops
to leapfrog the walls.
Cast blind/paralyze on the enemy and keep recasting as wears off till the
castle walls are broached. While the walls are coming down advance ground
troops to the wall then surround the enemy stack then mass attack. The
tower bolt will only fire just b4 the first enemy move. It is sometimes
useful to skip your shooters when using this method as the tower bolt can be
very punishing to them.
If you blind/paralyze all your enemy troops (yeah fat chance) the tower won't do anything to you :) the tower requires at least one moving troops to shoot.
BTW this mechanism will also work on defense but isn't as effective as you
must recast the paralyze/blind each round as the tower bolt dispels it
Paul Harden ([email protected])
1) If at all possible buy a lot of one archery unit type ie) 100 to 200
Druids or even Centaurs.They can come in very useful against Dragons.
(that damn anti-magic thing has cost me more heroes than anything else)
Well maybe not centaurs, one hit from dragon, at least 250hp and 200 centaurs only got 200hp totally :) Those advanced shooters like druids and trolls sure come handy against dragons as long as you surround them so dragons can't get next to them. You all well know that shooters do shitty hand-to-hand damage.
2) If you have a powerful army early in the game, let your enemy build up
his/her city before you take it(let them spend there mercury on a Red
Tower, chances are they won't have enough resources left to buy any high
level units).Doesn't have to be the beginning. This should work all the time. On the other hand, by doing this, you assume the risk of facing some dragons or phoenix
3)Remember the names of enemy heroes that almost beat you, as you may get
a chance to hire the bugger yourself. My rule of thumb is: check the heroes' poll first day of every week. Make sure you see their experience levels. That way, you never miss an experienced hero who might carry some artifacts.
4)Try to take the mines early, even if you don't use resources right
away, you will need them later when building units.So true. More is better than less, even better than none.
Stephen Young ([email protected])
I believe that spells are some of
the most powerful parts of the game...
Some of the more useful spells being
teleport - useful in castle assault or against groups of shooters...
paralyse - versus shooters , or those masses of hydras...
also a special note is that any enchantment that is cast onto a creature
seems to be removed by casting another one...ie curse, berzerk, or paralyze can be removed by casting bless on a creature.Yeah don't we all know that?! :) Heroes of Might and Magic II is gonna change all that.
flying units seems more useful in landing near/attacking shooter units...
hmm another thought... more specific against ghosts... and some special cases
like the hydra (with multiple direction attacks), griffon (with unlimmited
retalliations),etc...
Hmm... let me see, use hydra against ghost, best if you use hydra alone. I have received a lot of mails on this tip too. Here is the list
Phil Rennert ([email protected])
Lupu
This thought is that there are cases to be made when it is more useful to
sit a unit next to an enemy unit and skip an attack...
This is most notable when you've got maybe 20 archers versus a large number
of hydras of ghosts in melee. Attacking with those archers against the
ghosts
merely makes them bigger... but delaying (not attacking) can allow more time
for bolts or other units to get into range/finish off their opponents...
Berzerk is someone useful against the big creatures... but why not use it on
the enemy shooter masses... they attack a big creature, get pounded, and the
big creatures also get hurt and retaliate...That's what berzerk is for :)
A combination of Dimension Door and Town PortalThat's Town GATE should enable you to
protect your cities very very efficiently...
peasents & goblins are useful only en masse... (about 150 of them can do a
eal decent ammount of damage... teleport into a castle and you might have a good deal...
Other observations...
I think the CPU's generally leave their castles lightly defended right after
a hero leaves... that's the time to strike with a teleport spell and a paladin
group...
CPU's units tend to want to attack your shooter units, no matter how many of
them you have.
Phi Vang ([email protected])
For a
cheap game, go to multi-player mode. Then, do hot seat for two players
and no computer enemies. put yourself (2nd player) at easy and first
player(opponent) at expert if you can. Pick mission Jolly Roger or Two if
by Sea. First player is normal, while you have three castles. two of them
will be built up a bit for you already. Happy killing! If you lose, then
you really are horrible at the game.
A strategy for defnding a castle and you have little money:if you have
enough money for a powerful troop, buy it. enemies can try to kill it and
you will take down some of the enemy. also buy a flying guy to move
around. if you notice a enemy coming,build up you mage guild to have a
better castle shot. Bring a powerful hero near the castle and if you're
lucky,the comp. will be a wuss and run away. be sure to stay though, for
the enemy will come back if the hero leaves.
For beginners:I think beginners should use knight castles or sorceress
castles.knight guys have good defense for their price compared to
barbarians. sorceresses are all around pretty good. warlock and barbarian
guys are for experts.I really think which castle to pick is a matter of peference rather than which is better than others
Adam Farrell ([email protected])
When fighting against another superior spell casting hero save your spells, especially if you only
have a few low level spells !! Let the copponent castt blind or berserk on onne of your troops
then laugh in his face when you counter the spell by casting bless or protection on the same
troop. Why bother waitinng to cast disspell magic the next turn when you can get rid of a
bothersome enchantment and enhance your troops at the same time? Only if you have the last move for the turn. Or, the computer may cast at the last move, doesn't happen much but it happens. Still it's wise to cast spell right after computer does his to counter it.
david ([email protected])
make sure a heroes is not left on
a special event or housing at the turn of the week, because
then it will not be replenished for the next week.
Phil Rennert ([email protected])
Suicide bombers
One time I had oodles of money saved up, but an enemy hero was about to take my
undefended home castle (Warlock, with 4th level mage guild). So I recruited a
warlock hero, who came with a gargoyle (first action), ran out and attacked
him, cast one big spell (armageddon is nice, or meteor shower, or even fireball), then died. Then I did it again. And again. Six heroes and 15,000 gold later, I got him. One condition, you have to have some offensive spells. I think all kinds of hero will do but warlock has the highest spell power.
To defend against enemy suicide bombers with these spells, don't put everything
you have in your army, in particular leave out your light troops
(shooters/flyers). But you need to have enough to win, or he might not cast
them. Best is a big stack of dwarves/pikes/swords/ogres/hydras.
Build a thieves guild only when you need to see what's in an enemy hero/castle
to make an attack/don't attack decision.
If you play Warlock (my favorite), on turn 1 you can build a nest, and have 2
types of flyers (griffins, gargoyles) plus your centaurs. This will kill any
stack of shooters (elves, centaurs, archers, orcs, not really druids) fairly
easily: you just fly next to his 2nd and 4th group to suppress their shooting
while your centaurs still shoot. So you can get objects/mines guarded by a
shooter stack on turn 1.
Often if I want to play a certain type (warlock, barbarian), I just quit and
restart a few times until I get it. Sometimes I play whatever I get, though.
Many scenarios (especially player-designed) revolve around genie lamps. If you
can get a good one early, you can probably take any castle in the first couple
of weeks, so once you have it, stop scavenging and charge for where you think
and enemy castle will be.Just make sure you have enough money and some crystals
Remember the available heroes get reshuffled every week. So if you don't like
the types offered, you may want to wait a few days. ALso fleeing on Day 7 to
save a good hero won't help, unless you have the money to recruit him again
before the day ends. Also the AI players don't build until after your Day 1
turn, so you have until then to take their castles before reinforcements.
Try to figure out what the critical resource will be in a scenario. If it's
money, try castle-izing villages you take early, if you can hold them, and
keep the gold of treasure chests. If it's rock(I think he meant orc) or wood, your buldup will be
limited early, so you'll have plenty of money while you hunt for what you need.
If it's another resource, remember your mage guild building will be slow, so
recruit fighting heroes as opposed to spell casters. If it's your critical
resource (like sulfur for Warlocks), you're in trouble: send heroes far and
wide to find it. If you have plenty of money and there are plenty of goodies
to pick up, buy lots of heroes early and send them out on grabby expeditions,
if you lose one, no big deal. I often try to build up one hero (take
experience
instead of $$), and give him most of the troops, while the others are
expendable. Though sometimes it's good to have another hero good enough to
beat rogues/villages/minimal enemy heroes.I usually do that too but again it's your call, and it depends on your scenario really.
In your initial castle, and in others you take, plan your building program so
you
get what you need done by the weekend: you can only build one thing/turn.
Wells are good Day 7 builds, since they only do anything then.
The AI players seem to only dig holes when they find the ultimate artifact.
So if you see a hole, you can stop checking obelisks, and start watching out
for the tough stack that's out there somewhere. Often I check an obelisk or
two
to see if the ult. artifact is in my backyard, if not I forget it, if so, I
recruit cheap ditch-digging heroes to flood the vicinity of the center of the
puzzle map, without waiting to see most of it. Ditch-diggers turn in all their
troops except one goblin or so, for use by the fighting heroes. But you need
one fighter with the digging heroes, to guard them.Why take away all the troops from digging hero? This hero will keep the ult. artifact if he/she dig it up. It can't be transfered, if you keep a fighter hero guarding the digging hero, why don't you just let the fighter hero do the digging and let the other one off to do something else?
If you have plenty of money and your best hero is about to get caught by an
enemy, one possibility is to duck into the nearest village, castle-ize it,
recruit whatever's there, and try to survive with the walls and artillery to
aid you. Of course, this depends on your and his creatures. If you're a turn
ahead of him and you do this on Day 7, you can then recruit and build a mage
guild to help your artillery before he gets there. One time I was in a race
to a genie lamp I was about to lose, so I castle-ized a village, recruited
a barbarian in the castle and passed him most of my troops, and he ran out and
grabbed the lamp, then next turn took the new castle back from the enemy hero.
(My original hero surrendered in the castle after a couple of rounds of
artillery, then I recruited him back at home.)
In general, I tend to castle-ize villages as soon as possible unless I think
I can't hold them. The 5000 gold cost is repaid in a week (7 days times
1000 - 250 gold difference each day), then it's gravy.Yeah always do that.
It often takes a few days to buy the new week's production in a castle. If I
have a hero waiting there to receive it, he can often use the time while
waiting
to run out for a quick morale/luck/mill/small creature dwelling, and be back
by the time the army is ready.Why does it take a few days? You can buy up all the troops in dwellings in one turn if you have enough money/resources.
Goh Yu Tak Benjamin ([email protected])
My General Strategies:
I generally prefer to play as a Warlock. Even in standard
games, I keep restarting till I get a Warlock castle. Sorceresses
aren't too bad, either, with it's great shooters and phoenixes. I like
Warlocks mainly because of the Dragons, but in general, I think
phoenixes are still just about as powerful.For the same amount of money, regardless resources, Cyclops give you the highest hp total but slowest speed. Phoenix should have the highest damage ( a little more than the others), Paladin and Dragon are about the same. Immunity to magic is a big plus for dragons. I guess that's why most people will prefer dragons. In this case we ignored the dwelling cost which is just scary for black towers.
For any strategy game, my strategy has always been the same: get
the best technologies/structures/creatures, amass a HUGE "MEGADEATH"
army, and blast the enemy to bits. I used this strategy in Master of
Magic, Master of Orion, and Heroes of Might and Magic (HOMAM,
incidentally! :-)) and I usually succeed.That's not always gonaa happen. Sometimes you just can't catch up with enemies' building rate.
My beginning strategies:
(Note: I am an extremist kind of guy, and I only play against
two types of computer players - Dumb or Genius. I also always play
against three computer players - I figure they would enjoy fighting each
other.They do. Unless, of course, you choose king of the hills then they pile up on you. In truth, I usually play against Dumb computer opponents, but I
did manage to complete the campaign in 698 days on my first attempt, so
I don't think my strategies are too bad :-))
When I first start, I just get my hero to explore and pick up
unguarded treasure chests and resources (mines too, of course!) I don't
let him get too far, though; he/she must be at most 3 turns away. At
the same time, I build up all the creature dwellings to my maximum, then
build a well.Watch your money there. If you don't have enough money to get all the creatures out of the dwellings, then you are building for other players. I then save up the rest of the money for the week.If you have any left that is :)
Another of my strategies is to always get the exp points from treasure.
I only keep the gold when:
(1) I cheat - with 100 for each attribute, I don't need exp at
all! :-)
(2) A enemy hero with a formidable army appears near one of my
capital castles, and I'm almost out of gold.
When the first week is over, I quickly rush my single hero back to my
castle and recruit the most powerful monsters for my hero - except when
I intend to attack shooters - see my combat strategies below. This is
usually my final recruiting for my hero for quite some time. After
that, my foremost priority is a sulphur mine (mercury mine for sorceress
castles, crystal mines for the others). This is EXTREMELY vital for my
strategy. My next priorities are an ore mine (wood for knight castles)
and then a gold mine/gold-producing artifact/another castle from a town.
Note that I only build another castle if I am REALLY desperate! After
this, my hero generally does exploration and quite a bit of fighting
(with neutrals. To search for the enemy is to invite trouble at this
stage - my army is definately quite incapable of castle siege!) I wait
till my sulphur (or mercury or crystal) resources reach 20, then I
quickly build a Dragon Tower - yes, this means I can get a Dragon Tower
REALLY FAST!!!! I again rush my hero home, recruit 4 dragons (waiting
if I have to), then get my hero to do some SERIOUS exploration.
My exploration strategies:
Combat with neutrals (early in the game)
Against low-medium level foot-troops, I usually use my hydras
and minotaurs to face them, keeping my other troops away. Especially
for hydras, the enemy is ridiculously stupid. They seem to have a hobby
attacking hydras. The result - they pulverise themselves and leave me
without a scratch.
Against shooters, there is some difficulty tackling them, but
not if you follow this strategy. As a Warlock, I can recruit two types
of flying troops, and this is particularly useful. What I do is that
each type of flying unit is placed such that they are adjacent to 3
shooter troops. With two flying types, especially the griffons, any
neutral shooters, except perhaps trolls, are easy as pie to defeat.
Combat with enemy heroes
Unfortunately, I do not have any particular strategy against
other heroes - when I do fight them, I usually already have the top
creatures, either Paladins, Cyclops, Phoenixes or Dragons. There are a
few execeptions though.
Enemy shooters:
In general I don't bother too much about the shooters.
I don't attack them directly. I concentrate more on the more powerful
and dangerous units of a enemy hero's army, like calvaries and wolves
(yes, I find wolves quite dangerous!). What I do is that I place my
unit next to the shooter at the same time, thus reducing their ability
and allowing me to retaliate.
Castle Defence Tactics:
The funny thing is, whether the computer is a genius or a dummy,
it always has the same priority - bash up "poorly defended" castles.
They always forget spells and the castle garrison, which often are
determining factors in a battle. What I do is that I leave my castle
apparently undefended (when it actually has lots of creatures in the
dwellings, backed up with lots of unused gold - remember, I don't
recruit too often!) What happens is that I measure out a force which
just balances the enemies', taking into account the garrison there, as
well as any other hero there. (In general, I use about 2-4 hydras, with
a few other troops if the enemy has the blind/paralyze spell. Actually,
I just keep "AUTOLOADING" until I get the right combo.)
The result is that the enemy often weakens itself by sending
continual attack waves, and by the time I reach their capitial with my
main hero, the enemy is very easily defeated.
More will be added as they are mailed to me :)
