DISCUSSIONS on “Rules for online games in HoMM3 and formulas for calculating player rating.”

I'm telling you, it's a map bug. The real passages are guarded, but this one seems random. You can't use it. Sorry for the grammar – blame it on the ladies!

I've studied the issue of generator errors when dividing the map into zones. I've gathered a good amount of empirical data on this topic.

So, sometimes passages are created that shouldn't be there. That is, the generator simply forgot to place a rock or another similar obstacle there. This most often happens when it simply can't place that rock, or that rock is removed later when objects need to be placed there.

The most common case is a mine and a descent into the subway. The generator often places them on the edge of a spawn point (mines are almost always like this), right next to obstacles, and then, seeing that there is no room for guards/resource piles, it simply clears the space for them, removing rocks and creating an unintended passage according to the template structure. The latter is just my assumption about the generator's algorithm; perhaps there is another reason, but the fact remains that a very large percentage of buggy passages in Might and Magic 6 are located near mines/teleporters/descents into the subway.

It gets even more interesting – the generator apparently creates roads after generating the map and doesn't distinguish between buggy and non-buggy passages. In a match of the Autumn Cup against Bayazet, we had 3 active (i.e., actively used by us) buggy passages on the map, and all 3 had roads through them. And the "official" passages between zones were somewhere in the back, on rough terrain; I only found them after the game.

Therefore, my opinion is that you can use buggy passages because:
1) In general, it may not be clear whether a passage is buggy or not.
2) There may be no guard on the passage because the opponent or the computer has defeated it.
3) Even if it's buggy, but there's a road through it, it's somehow wrong to force the player to look for a non-buggy passage on rough terrain.
4) The computer doesn't care whether something is buggy or not; it just runs around and gets in the way.

So, if there's no guard, then who cares, we just run through. And borderline situations (i.e., there is a guard, but only 2 screens to the right) are by default resolved in favor of the player.

In CM (Cossacks: European Wars) compared to Might and Magic 6, it's a little easier in the sense that the number of zones per unit area is smaller, and the number of connections is also smaller, so there are fewer bugs. But they have a greater impact, especially bugs with the Global Order.