Posts from Liberation

Title: Liberation
Map name: Liberation
Type: Campaign
Number of scenarios: 4
Campaign version: normal 1.00, hard 1.00
Campaign author: Kvant
Campaign description: We have firmly established ourselves in the scorched lands of Erathia. First, we must liberate Steadwick, our capital. Then we will move on – and we will not stop until the last invader is banished forever!
Game version: 3.1
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The campaign is a reincarnation of the campaign from the third Heroes game.
The campaign is created in two versions: normal and hard.
In the hard version, the number of neutrals, starting and other armies has been increased, and other minor changes have been made to make the game more difficult.
Enjoy the game! :)
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In the hard version, I have increased the difficulty compared to my other hard campaigns. Therefore, the difficulty is higher than before.
I would like to express my gratitude to Jack_of_shadows for the hint about the transferable artifacts!
Before completing each scenario, I recommend creating a unique save.
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13.05.2017
The hard version has been moved to the development archive.

I might play it on my streams. I’ll be a bit of a tester.

I might play it on my streams. I'll be a bit of a tester. :)

Okay! But it's still better to play the campaigns in the order they were released. ;)

:smile03: Hooray! We finally waited for it!

Good! But it's still better to play through the campaigns in the order they were released. ;)

Is there a specific order?

Is there a specific order?

Yes. You can find it in my signature.

I played the hard version with a specific hero and completed the first mission in about six months. Honestly, my feelings are quite mixed. I didn't like the following things. First, the map feels bare; there's a lot of empty space, and, most importantly, it lacks the usual buildings found on normal maps that provide money, resources, artifacts, or boost stats. I was especially disappointed by the absence of a mentor and a church (where I could have hidden that useless general; I don't remember his name). Second, despite their power, the AI heroes behave rather foolishly. Instead of joining forces, they attack individually and sometimes get defeated (although, at first, it was with significant losses). Furthermore, they ignore the possibility of preparing their troops, so I ran around the castles and collected the "harvest." Also, near the end of the game, I encountered highly leveled human heroes (level 27) in the tavern, which I hadn't seen before. The question is, if it wasn't me who defeated them, then who did? The ending was disappointing; I expected something more epic. In general, after starting the second mission and seeing that it would be roughly the same, but with elves, I decided to take a break. Nevertheless, thank you, and good luck to the author.

Antik
Thank you for your feedback!

In my free time, I finished the campaign, completed it in 403 days, and received a red dragon. Compared to the beginning, the 2nd and 3rd missions seemed like an easy and rather short walk. In both cases, I developed human heroes, preferring engineers, as they have two castles (the absence of taverns in the cities significantly complicated the process of choosing a hero). The final mission seemed much more interesting than the previous ones. The main AI opponent is very strong, but still makes mistakes – it divides its forces. But in the end, I didn't fight him; I simply occupied all his castles, and he died, poor thing, and the game ended. The absence of a mentor on the maps is very disappointing. But overall, thank you to the author.

I played through the first "Liberation" map, and it took about 70 days. My main impression is that it feels empty. It's like crossing the Pacific Ocean alone. There aren't many things on the map: few objects, artifacts, random resources, and even monsters are scarce, almost like they're endangered. In the starting area (it takes about 2 days to travel 3 days' distance), there are only a handful of objects between the castles. With such a large area, I could only get two heroes to level 10. It takes 5 days to reach the nearest enemy castle, and there are only 2 buildings in that direction, and it's the same everywhere. I didn't like Christian's starting skills. They're awkward. It's better for the "Engineer" to take "Darkness"; the initial "Leadership" is a reference to the "Light" magic. This useless skill eats up level-ups, making it difficult to reach the "volley fire" system. I could have tolerated this if "Hotabych" were nearby, but he isn't. It's detrimental. I played the hard version on "Hero" difficulty. If the "Difficult" version is like "Warrior" difficulty, I can't imagine what it's like on normal difficulty. The AI organized three decent sieges of my castle, which took a week of game time, after which destroying the AI heroes became purely a logistical challenge. Fortunately, I managed to buy Rutger from the AI, who was the same level as my main hero; otherwise, the battle would have been endless. In the early battles, it became clear that Christian was a detriment to the army. He was dismissed. I had to go back and find Dugald in the tavern. I managed to level him up on neutral creatures. By the time the AI heroes arrived, he was one level lower than Christian, but he was able to defeat them all without difficulty. In the end, Dugald is level 26, Rutger is level 25, and Christian is level 20. Because the map is so empty, it's not even possible to feed him on neutral creatures.

I completed it on Veteran difficulty. I enjoyed it. The lack of mentors was a bit challenging, but I kept reminding myself that this campaign is a remake of the campaign from "Heroes of Might and Magic III," and there weren't any mentors in that one either. I'm looking forward to the continuation. I hope that in the future, they will create campaigns based on "Armageddon's Blade" and "The Shadow of Death."

I won the second map from the campaign in approximately 55 days. The map is not difficult again. As a major drawback, I can note the absence of a Sanctuary near the Elf Castle. Yanova's life is quite difficult; she has more chances to die than to survive. I would consider the rewritten starting skill of Dyraell, changing summoning to attack, as a positive element, but the Elf has a very strange specialization – she brings 250 coins. They pulled out her last tooth, turning her into a harmless creature. She can only be played as a minor character. My main hero was from the Human Castle, and Dougal and Elaine joined him. There was plenty of money, even without the pitiful Elven coins. With two castles and an external dwelling of archers, Dougal started like a rocket. He easily crushed all the Demon heroes. Yanova ran around, harassing the neutrals. She somehow grew to level 18.

I completed the third map in 50 days. I enjoyed this part. It's not more difficult than the previous maps, but the story is more engaging, making it fun to play. The biggest disappointment is the main hero assigned. Playing with the "spell reflection" special ability against Orcs and Humans is, let's just say, a peculiar choice. But this annoyance is easily fixed in the tavern. I wanted to get a hero from a Human castle, but it didn't work out; they all came from the Academy. I bought Hafiz and set off. By the time my hero cleared the outpost, the computer had already determined its main competitor. The Orcs defeated the Dwarves and almost wiped out the Knights. I must say, the main Orc, Argath, did a great job. While the slow-moving Academy faction captured one city, Argath took two from them. It was impossible to stop this, so I had Hafiz intentionally lose a battle against some random creature to finally corner the ubiquitous Orc. Astral spent the whole game idling. Through mentoring with Hafiz, I pumped him up to level 17 by the end of the game, and "the referee raised his hand, even though I didn't hit him."

I completed the last map from the campaign in 76 days. Not great. It felt somewhat artificial. We start with those three under-leveled heroes that were forced upon us in the previous maps. No truly "free" heroes made it to the final. The AI made all the mistakes it was supposed to. First of all, playing as the Tower, the AI took a long time to build magic towers in its castles. Then, it would come to besiege with heroes who had little or no mana. Only Lestos provided some entertainment due to his built-in "plague" ability. The AI almost didn't defend its castles, preferring to take its entire army and go on the offensive against mine. Therefore, the Tower castles were captured with microscopic losses. The game is mainly remembered for the struggle against large stacks of neutral creatures and the ordeal of navigating long underground corridors. Christian attacked enemy castles, Yanova defended her own. Astral wandered around aimlessly, collecting whatever he could find. A true miracle happened, and this old relic managed to reach the location of the only battle for which it was suitable. In the clash with Arlak, not a single spell affected my troops. After winning the battle, I thought it was all over, the finale, the ending cutscene. But no, I had to spend 4 days hunting down the Necropolis "roaches." Result: Christian level 28, Yanova level 29, Astral level 28, total 252 days (Stormlord). The campaign left a very mixed feeling. It's like trying to attach a jet engine to a dirigible. The difficulty of the task is combined with the questionable result. The maps themselves: the landscape, objects, and placement of neutral creatures – all are done at an excellent level. (Are there any complaints about the buttons? - No, the buttons are sewn on tightly; you can't tear them off with your teeth.) "Heroes 3" and "Heroes 5" have completely different philosophies of hero development and different travel spells. Therefore, the first map in the campaign has very weak gameplay, the second has mediocre gameplay, and the last has passable gameplay. The best solution would be to create campaigns "based on" the games, rather than trying to force "Heroes 5" into the Procrustean bed of "Heroes 3" maps.

I downloaded this campaign a while ago and kept meaning to play it (for nostalgia's sake). Finally, last weekend, I found the time to complete the first mission (with/without a hero) – it took 57 days. It was only interesting to play for the first two or three weeks, when I captured the first two upper Castles and freed the general. After that, the whole game boiled down to constantly (and tediously) managing caravans and positioning support heroes to ensure a timely supply of troops for the main hero. Throughout the entire game, there wasn't a single truly challenging battle with an enemy that I wanted to save. In most cases, their heroes simply fled at the very beginning of the battle, and the outpost also fell quickly and without losses. I enjoyed the only battle with neutrals – the very first one (for the Traveler's Boots). P.S. The freed general turned out to be completely useless (and even passing skills from him is not a good idea, because you can't improve his logistics skills). It would have been better if a "rogue" (similar to Diman's Grokh, I don't remember the name) was imprisoned instead. As a result, I used the general with his ballista and a large number of peasants as a guard for a frontline Castle (it turned out to be pointless – no one ever reached it). P.S.S. And also – the Castles of other factions on the map turned out to be almost useless. If the Mage Castle can still be used somehow, at least for hiring gremlins (because it's available from the very beginning, and with the creature generator, you can accumulate a decent number of these creatures, so you can replace almost useless peasants with them), then the Elven and Diman Castles remain completely "out of the picture." At least I had to take the Diman Castle from the enemy; after that, I only used it to earn money through the magistrate. As for the Elven Castle, I didn't even bother with it because the enemy wasn't interested in it either, and going there would only waste time. P.S.S.S. In general, if there was an option for an alternative scenario – to complete this map not as the heroes, but as the bad guys, IMHO, it would be much more interesting.