Heroes 3: 14 Beginner Tips & Tricks to Instantly Improve Your Play

Beginner tips and tricks for Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (HoMM3). Serves as a brief guide / overview of some game mechanics and strategies you might not pick up on in your first playthroughs. Not exhaustive.

Heroes 3 remains a hugely popular strategy game over 20 years on from its original release - it's never too late to give it a go.

*Note: As a GOG affiliate, purchases through this link support the channel via commission at no added cost to you.

Map Playthrough clips featured in this video:

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro
00:24 One Stacks / Stack Splitting
01:32 Movement Points and Slow Units
02:05 Terrain Penalty and Native Terrain
02:34 Directional Resource / Artifact Grabs
03:15 Creature Bank Formation / Unit Pattern
04:45 Checking Creature Bank Levels
05:20 Reusing Monoliths, Subterranean Gates and Other Objects
05:43 Ranged Penalty and Tactics
06:44 Upgraded Units on the Adventure Map
07:08 Animate Dead Vs Resurrection
07:36 Arrow Tower AI
08:11 A Point on Roads
08:38 Mage Guild and Recharging Spell Points
09:06 Attackers, Defenders and Terrain Bonuses
09:25 Don't Be Intimidated

❗ Recommended mods (Complete Edition only - not HD Edition) ❗

✅ Adds features such as: Higher resolution, unit battle queue, quick army management hotkeys

✅ Adds features such as: Cove town (pirates), wasteland terrain, new map objects & bug fixes

Music:
"A Little Faith", "The Pyre", "Midnight Tale", "Temple of the Manes"
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

#heroes3 #homm3 #mightandmagic

[Norovo]

To answer to some likely questions... (check the description for more info and links)

The mods I'm using in this video are the Heroes 3 HD mod (higher resolution, battle queue, QoL improvements) and Horn of the Abyss (new creatures, new features). They are mods for Heroes 3 Complete Edition and they don't work on Heroes 3 HD Edition (from Steam), which I don't recommend buying. Both of these mods are used by the majority of regular players and are high quality.

I wanted the video to be fairly snappy so I didn't cover some potentially detailed things like hero chaining. However, I'm aiming to cover more tips in future videos (so feel free to subscribe 😉).

Maps shown in the video include Gold Rush, Rediscovery, Dungeon Keeper and a random map from my Vampires Only series. I've made playthrough playlists for all of them, either already uploaded or soon to be uploaded.

[igoralpatov]

Heroes 3 tutorial in 2020? I'm here for it.

[harryoates]

I've got 20 years of experience and I'm still learning

[ArcaneAzmadi]

"Why would anyone need a beginners tips tutorial for a game that came out more than 20 years ago?"

Because it's still the best fucking game its genre has ever seen. That's why.

[YayAnOctopus]

Great content! As someone who worked on this game years ago, it's so awesome to see a community of people still enjoying Heroes III. Really proud of the game and the old team which put it together.

[ghoulunathics]

it's just staggering of how much effort and inspiration did they put in making this game. it honestly feels like if every game was this well designed and to this depth, we would have maybe 50 games in the whole universe.

[childrolland]

For 16 years, when reinstalling OS my order of installing the required software is:
1. OS (obviously);
2. Drivers;
3. Heroes 3;
4. Everything else.

[Alen]

Been playing heroes3 for 20 years and still wasn't aware of quite a few things lol

[Johnny-udmf]

I played this game 20 years ago and still playing it now. For me is not just a game, it is a piece of art.

[marcoadriao]

I've been playing this game for 20 years and I didn't knew that upgraded and basic creatures were facing opposite directions. Still having fun with this game.

[lorrispain]

I love so much when you defend a town and the enemy attacks with a strong army so you have to play the best you can to survive and your strategy ends in victory. We shall never see a Game like this again!

[gungalunga]

What I learned from this video that I didn't know after playing this game for almost my entire life:
- The pros of having 1 unit stacks
- Faster units in your army increases hero speed on land
- Creature bank (cluster) formation 1, 2 = top, 3, 4, 5 = mid, 6, 7 =bottom
- Press space to use portals???? - that's legit a game changer!
- Towers prioritizes bottom ranged rather than top ones
Noting this to remember it btw, thanks dude ^^

[Ericwvb]

A tip I have when playing with Vampire Lords (my favorite unit) : the upper and lower left corners of the battle arena are bordered by 3 hexes but the upper and lower right corners of the battle arena are bordered by only 2 hexes. That means that if you're battling living non-ranged single hex units slower than your Vampire Lords, you can wait on the first turn, then fly to the center and on turn two fly to one of the right most corners and battle at most 2 at a time. If you have blind you can reduce that to 1. This means you can take out a much more powerful army. Because you keep regenerating units as you suck out the life of the other army, the AI will attack you even though you can defeat the army easily even if it takes a long time.

[LTryt]

I really enjoy watching your Heroes 3 playthrough series. It's one of my favourite things to do to chill out after a long day. Please keep doing more!

[janbo]

One tip I would add is that the units don't have movement caps on the campaign map, only heroes do. To bring in reinforcements from towns to the main armies one can set up a chain of heroes, transferring troops from one hero to another as their movement ends.

[Thohean]

I never knew about the space bar thing for monoliths. I just always thought the computer was cheating when it did that.

[RekzaFS]

I remember going to a pc store with my dad and buying this game in 1999 or 2000 when I was 6-7 years old. It was the first game I ever had, and I've been playing it ever since. Yet I didn't know a lot of the stuff in this video, thanks a lot. If these are beginner tips I want to know what pro tips are lol.

[LeGioNnd]

- There are still beginners in this game after all these years?
- Always!

[archersterling]

I'm 22, started playing at 10 because of my older brother. I still haven't won a single game in Normal, but I just keep playing and having fun.

[MattBG]

People here talking about being 6 or 10 years old when they first played this game, but for me this is the first video game I've seen, literally. I used to watch my dad play it since I was 3, it's what defined computer gaming for me and it's the game that made me memorize everything and turn on the computer by myself and play it, when I still couldn't even read.