Posts from The Restoration of Erathia

"The Restoration of Erathia"

While I'm here...
...I wanted to ask about the original campaign from the previous century, "The Restoration of Erathia."
I'm generally not into fantasy. But this affects games of a higher caliber, with 3D accelerators, starting with the 5th installment of the Heroes series. I haven't tried the others.
And in this campaign, it's kind of strange. I don't like the limitations imposed by the developers.
There's no point in exploring the entire map, using teleporters, or uncovering secrets, because:
there's nothing to do in the far corners. The map can be completed without them. The enemies are in open areas; after defeating them, you confidently step into the Dungeon and achieve a well-deserved victory.
Furthermore:
you can only "save" (transfer to the next map) 4 heroes. And the strength of EACH is limited to only the 6th level. So what's the point?
Next.
On the third map of this campaign, there's almost nothing to do. If you use heroes that have been leveled up on previous levels, all the enemies are defeated in 2 weeks. That's it. I tried it. After that, you deal with defenseless griffon nests.

It's not better afterward. We move on to the next campaign. It turns out that you need to level up the heroes to the 12th level, and they are immediately transferred to the third map of the campaign. Where is the hero leveling up?
I like it when maps are presented one after another, and on each map, the hero gradually levels up. There's none of that in the original campaign! And that's how I built my campaigns (a long time ago, when I used to make them).
My example: on the 1st map - up to level 4, on the 2nd - up to level 7, and so on, over several maps.

In other words, the limitations imposed by the developers seem absurd, contrived, and deprive experienced players of almost all the joy of playing.
I tried another campaign. It's hardcore. They give you nothing, and the enemies are powerful. I don't like that either. What's the point?

So, what do you think about this very first campaign in "Heroes"?
For reference: I play (and create maps) on a Celeron 333 MHz computer, on Windows 2000 (a couple of months ago - on Windows 95 English version), 128 MB of RAM, with a DVD drive, and it runs from the original CD (it won't run without it). Russian version from "Buki."

That's why I'm not interested in playing these campaigns - there are too many arbitrary, and in my opinion, ridiculous limitations. The hero is simply not allowed to develop.

I never played through the campaign of Heroes 3. Except for "Chronicles of Heroes," and even then, some parts felt uninspired. Campaigns for the original Heroes games are just random maps with some literary text in the events. Nothing interesting.

It was evening, and I had nothing to do. I decided to play the "Restoration of Erathia" campaign out of boredom.
I already knew that, given the starting conditions, the first map is easily completed. So, I decided to make things more challenging.
Here's how I play: using the market (if there isn't one, I build it on the first turn), I sell all resources and convert them into gold. Then, I sell all the gold and convert it into wood. I sell all the wood for gold. I give the remaining gold to the enemy and start with 0 resources.
I gather all the troops, then release them all, except for one pikeman, so I have someone to move around with. I recruit only knights (not mages).

And then, I started making some unconventional decisions. Once a week, I hired a knight and sent him on a journey to capture resources. By sea. I tried to attack the enemy city in the southern part. I captured the city, but the enemy came and drove me out because his army was much stronger. And there were no troops in the city to buy. In fact, there were no buildings at all in the beginning. So, I had to evacuate urgently.
Things got worse. The enemy came to my gates, to the main city. I fought him, fought him, and won, but nothing really came of it.

Second attempt. I didn't attack the enemy's Castle. Instead, I went to an intermediate snowy field, but I couldn't capture anything there. Again, it was a failure.

Third attempt. Since nothing was working, I resorted to the last resort - cheats.
Using cheats, I sailed to the enemy's Castle and captured it on the first turn.
But here's the problem! There are no buildings! I had to build a tavern (to hire heroes) and a market (to sell everything I didn't need) on the first and second turns. Then, I waited for the next week.
On the second week, I sold all the resources and gave the rest to the enemy. When I had 2500 gold, I bought my first real knight hero.
And then the enemy came. I summoned my cheat hero from retirement three times to defend against the enemy. Then, my hero gathered enough troops to defend himself without the help of cheats.
It's impossible to build a Town Hall in this enemy city to earn 2000 gold. So, my income was limited to 1000 gold from this city and 1000 gold from the original. In a few weeks, I built a hippodrome and started defending against the enemy. The game started to progress.