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While I'm finishing my renovation and writing a general FAQ for Heroes 3, I suggest playing the Clover Kingdoms map. It's easy, but quite interesting. ;) Here's its description in my walkthrough: ;)
I, like most fans of the game (I think), have never had the task of completing a map in the shortest possible time. I believe that this is not a defining factor in the game. Let me explain.
1. When playing ANY map, the player first assesses its playability, i.e., the plot, well-designed and complex (complex for those who like it, because my wife likes easy ones) walkthrough, and that it's not tedious.
2. The monotony of actions (killing legions of monsters standing one after another; accumulating countless riches that won't be needed later, etc.) can sometimes bore the player on a particular map.
3. The landscape and scenery, as well as the well-placed castles, forests, mines, etc., always attract the player's attention.
4. Well-thought-out puzzles give the player something to think about.
5. Tactical combat that cannot be completed in a monotonous way. That is, the player always strives to win any battle without losses.
6. Finally, the game itself awards points, which I adhere to and try to earn more of.
And so on. This list could go on forever.
I mean that replaying a map several times is a waste of time, because the main thing is to complete it and complete it beautifully! I don't think it's worthwhile to set a goal that would only be about that.
Now, let's move on to the Clover Kingdoms map itself, kindly provided to me by Sir Demyan. I played this map as "The Shadow of Death," and I wish you the same.
So, describing the walkthrough day by day in this map doesn't make sense, since there are many possible ways to complete the map. But there are a few nuances:
1. In the first week, you need to not lose a single unit and capture 2 castles.
2. The second week should bring another 4-5 castles. Here, you must defeat the enemy who owns these castles (the castle with the hippos) with the legendary knight Gelu, specifically with his archers.
At this point, the walkthrough of the map is practically complete, but I will still describe a couple more gameplay moments.
3. When capturing the tent guarded by Fairy Dragons, don't attack with your entire accumulated army. It's better to do this:
a) Take all the hippos you have at the time.
b) One Thunderbird.
c) The remaining empty cells should be filled with the cheapest units, preferably not from the main castles.
One in each cell. The hippos should be in the upper left corner at the beginning of the battle (or in the lower left, if you prefer).
d) During the battle, the first move should be to cast Anti-Magic on the hippos. If you don't do this, your hippos will die before they can even move. Standing in the corner, you must not leave the area. You need to hit the evil dragons so that the first hit is on the dragons that will move after the first ones. This is done so that the full force of the attack is present in the game, because if you hit the first dragon first, when it strikes back, it will fall dead because it will be attacked by our strongmen - hippos (there is enough strength for a larger number of units), and the second dragons will have a great opportunity to complete their attack without a response.
If you hit the second dragon first, most of the second and first dragons will fall.
In any case, the number of killed will be greater if you attack two units instead of the first.
This is just one of the tactics; you can experiment with magic in many ways, but since everyone has different magic, I won't dwell on this. The only thing is that it's quite difficult to get magic above level 3 in this part of the map (at least I didn't find it. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, I don't know), so don't practice too much. Run to your first castle and, as a sign of gratitude, take 10 hippos from the hut of the seer.
Well, then, when the hero learns levels 4 and then 5 of magic, the game becomes uninteresting (in my opinion).
4. The tactics for fighting other dragons are slightly different from the one described above (I will describe the walkthrough below).
So, southwest - Angel Castles. In fact, everything is simple. In one turn, you must definitely get from your border gate to the enemy castle. At the same time, don't run into the strongest one, because you might not collect enough bones. And having learned the magic of restoring life, in the first enemy castle, I met the strongest enemy hero, who attacked me.
A long and tedious battle led to my unconditional victory.
The tactics are quite trivial: "Slow," "Haste," or "Prayer" and "Blind," then attack one pack of units with the whole army (of course, blinding him at the moment when he is supposed to make his move. If you don't do this, the enemy may use his magic to do something unpleasant for your knight), killing the second-to-last monsters, spend all the magic on restoring your fallen soldiers. Then cast the terrifying magic (if there is any left) on your own (if there is any left), "Bloodlust," and finish off the unfaithful. In this way, the artifacts that he carried with him become your inheritance. Then everything is simple; the enemy has weak heroes with a weak army.
Here, Gelu joins, and the whole company quickly captures castles and resource mines.
And the main hero runs to the next key keeper's tent and defeats the crystal dragons. I describe the tactics:
a) Take angels and snipers into the army.
b) Cast "Mass Slow," and then 3-4 (or better 5-6) turns of "Bog," depending on how it lands.
c) Blind one.
d) Fly around the map with the Angels, attracting the dragons, and shoot with the archers.
If, God forbid, one of your own is hit, then we successfully resurrect him.
By the way, the "Teleport" magic may come in handy. Take the gift from the key keeper in the form of 20 angels (I don't remember the exact number, since I'm writing at work, and I played 3 days ago, so I'm writing from memory).
5. Next, southwest with the Devils. Again, everything is simple, even simpler than with the Angels, we rush in, defeat everyone, and capture everything. Fortunately, there are 8 knights.
Here is another tent. Rusty Dragons guard it. I don't think I need to explain; everything is quite simple. We return to the first castle and take another trophy, 100 devils, from the key keeper.
6. And here is the northwest with the Titans. Having defeated everyone, in my opinion, the only task left is to kill the azure dragons.
I describe my tactics. It's long, but almost without losses. I don't like losing my units. If you play without this tactic, you can complete the game a week faster.
a) Knowing almost all the magic, namely "Frenzy" and "Summon Elemental," we calmly and quietly kill 100-107 dragons and run away. The main thing is to move 1. But we have a lot of castles with phoenixes.
So, we take one phoenix for each subsequent attack and take it. As well as several units in each cell, so that there is an opportunity to escape. We do this for about 10 turns.
When there are only a few Azure Dragons left, the victory comes without losses (a clean victory).
That's it, we rush, get 200 titans, and dive into the dungeon, having previously gathered all our strongest army.
This is a simple way to complete this somewhat boring map.
There are too many resources, numerous monsters, and castles in the map.
Again, this is my personal opinion. But in general, it's a good map. I would give it a rating of 7 out of 10.
Sincerely, Sir VDV_forever
Yes, I almost forgot, here is the map itself:
Let's download it together.
This is the map
