FAQ - Guide for Heroes of Might and Magic

Heroes of Might and Magic FAQ V0.8a

This quarterly publication is intended to offer 
tips and address some of the frequently asked 
questions (FAQ) on the strategy game Heroes of 
Might and Magic by New World Computing.  Because 
the answers may not be complete, please feel 
free to ask questions.

This FAQ is not intended to answer questions 
that can be located in the manual.  If you need 
to know how to learn a spell or how to move 
troops from one hero to another, buy the game 
and read the manual.  The information in this 
FAQ are from personal experience, numerous 
posters on comp.sys.ibm.pc.strategic and George 
Ruof & Clay from New World Computing.  Some 
stats are taken from article reviews 
(paraphrased of course).

If  you would like to contribute information to 
this FAQ, write sections that has not been 
completed, or have questions about this game, 
make spelling/grammatical corrections (English 
is not my native tongue), please feel free and 
send me an email at [email protected] with 
the subject line containing the words "HoMM 
FAQ".  This FAQ is not complete.

A MS-Word 6.0 version of this document is also 
available by request.

Last Update:  February 3, 1995

***This will be the last update to the FAQ until 
the Windoze 95 version comes out.  It would be 
nice if I can get a evaluation copy so I can 
update this FAQ (HINT! HINT! George and Clay! :) )

1.  What is it?/Answers to FAQ
2.  General Tips
3.  Cracking the AI
4.  Tips on different creatures
5.  Tips on Campaign
6.  Tips on Single Scenarios
7.  Add-ons/Windoze `95 News
8.  Gripes/Suggestions.

1.  What is it?/Answers to FAQ

### What is it?  I hear the game is like MOM!

Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) is a fantasy-
strategy game put out by New World Computing.  
Many people compared this game to Warlords II 
(WAR2) and Master of Magic (MOM) because of 
their similar style in play and strategic 
planning.  It's more like a hybrid of WAR2 with 
the addition of spells, castle building, and a 
combat sequence similar to Master of Orion 
(MOO).  Many of the creatures in this game are 
from an older game called "King's Bounty", also 
published by NWC in 1991.  "King's Bounty" will 
be included as a bonus in the Windoze '95 
version of HoMM (To be released in February or 
March)

###  Is there a multi-player option?

HoMM allows modem, network, and hot-seat play.  
The network play is via Netbios although many 
people on the net reported problems with the 
network setup.

### What are the requirements to run this game?

HoMM requires a VESA compatible video card, SVGA 
monitor, CD-ROM drive (other requirements are on 
the box that's not in front of me.)

###  How about a description of the game play?

You start off with a hero with a group of 
monsters for the hero to lead.  You can have as 
many as 8 heroes at the same time.  The hero 
starts off in a castle where you can build 
different type of buildings by providing 
resources such as wood, coal, gold, mercury, 
etc.  There are different type of buildings 
providing different functions.  Some provide 
production of different monster troops.  Some 
provide spells for the heroes to learn.  Some 
provide scouting information and such.

The resources you will need can be obtained by 
controlling a mine with a hero or have the hero 
scout out for the resource piles that can be 
located throughout the map.  (mines provide one 
or two units of resource per mine type per day 
depending on the resource type - for example, a 
coal mine controlled by you will provide you two 
units of coals per day.  You can take control of 
other castles and towns.  Buying recruitable 
troops and building buildings in a castle all 
require gold.  Gold can be obtained either from 
a mine (1000/day), castle (1000/day), or a town 
(250/day).

A town/castle can provide recruitable troops 
depending on what type of buildings it has.  
There is a set number of recruitable troops 
available each week.  Once you recruited all the 
available troops, you must wait until the 
following week if you want to recruit more 
troops.

###  What is the object of the game?

The object of the game depends on the type of 
scenario.  Most of the single scenario series 
require you to defeat all other players.  In 
some campaign scenario, you will be required to 
find the "Ultimate Artifact" or to defeat the 
"Dragon Fortress".

###  How do I install the DOS version in Windoze 
'95?

Many people reported problems installing from 
within Windoze '95.  The DOS/4GW with the DOS 
version of HoMM just chokes during the 
installation.  (I didn't have problem with XCOM 
and Warcraft 2 which also use DOS/4GW)  What you 
do is before you install, start the computer in 
DOS mode, install, then you can play HoMM in the 
Windoze mode.

###  The Fuzzy Logic on the number of monsters

While it was a good idea to give a approximation 
of the number of monsters contained within an 
enemy stack, it would've been a better idea to 
also include the equivalent of theses 
approximations in the manual :).  Also, it's 
kinda hard to tell which description means more 
than another with these words (and may confuse 
foreign players).  I think Warlords 2 uses the 
length of the flag in a army stack to indicate 
the number of units in a stack, maybe something 
similar will show up in HoMM2.  Well, here's the 
chart:

Few---------------1 to  4
Several-----------5 to  9
Pack-------------10 to 19
Lots-------------20 to 49
Horde------------50 to 99
Zounds!----------100+

### Moral/Luck Boost

Good moral will allow some of your creatures to 
attack twice in a turn during the combat.  Bad 
moral will stop your creature from attacking 
during a turn.  Good luck will allow some of 
your creatures to do double the normal damage 
during that single attack round.  Moral and luck 
can be raised and lowered by several factors.

  * Visit fountains, statues, etc. will raise 
moral/luck, but these will only last for one 
battle.
  * Artifacts carried by the hero can also 
increase moral/luck.
  * A Knight hero gives the stack +1 moral.
  * If you have a stack of creature from the same 
type of castle, you get +1 moral.
  * If you have a stack of creatures from 3 
different types of castle, you get -1 moral.
  * Remember, Genies, Rogues, and Nomads are 
another type.
  * If you have a stack of creatures from 4 
different types of castle, you get -2 moral.

###Can I remove a Cursed Artifact?

NO.  Avoid it since you can tell what it looks 
like.  It's basically a blue pendent.  You can 
also tell when the computer simply ignores that 
artifact.  If you do acquire it, the only way to 
get rid of it is the kill off the hero.  If the 
hero is a high leveled one, you might want to 
keep it and give the hero some other artifacts 
to offset this penalty.

###Attack and Defense!

The damage inflicted by a creature is increased 
or decreased by 10% for every point of 
difference between the attacker's ATTACK score 
and the defender's DEFENSE score.

Example #1:

1 Attacking Dwarf has    ATTACK=6
                         DEFENSE=5
                         DAMAGE=2-4
1 Defending Minotaur has ATTACK=9
                         DEFENSE=8
                         DAMAGE=5-10

When the Dwarf Attacks Minotaur, the Dwarf's 
ATTACK score is 2 less than the Minotaur's 
DEFENSE score, so the actual damage is
(Amount of Damage)x((Def's DEF) - (Att's ATT))%
which is
(2, 3, or 4) x 80%.

I think the final number is rounded up because 
you never see anybody dealing 0 damage.

###Where's the *@&!^# Ultimate Artifact?

It's usually in the middle 4 squares of the map, 
and the puzzle pieces covering that section are 
usually the last one to go away.  If you figured 
out where the puzzle map is on the big map, you 
can use several heroes to dig in the center 
area.

### What the *#(&^$ is the Attack Order?

Please verify this if anybody have factual 
answers to this.  From observation and a couple 
of people from the net, it's as follows:

The Attacker's first FAST creature goes first, 
then the defender's first FAST creature, if 
either side run out of FAST creatures, the 
remaining FAST creature from the other side will 
go.  This repeats for medium and slow.  Example:

Defender:  Paladin (FAST)
           Cavalry (FAST)
           Archer  (SLOW)

Attacker:  Phoenix (FAST)
           Elf     (Medium)
           Dwarf   (SLOW)

Order
-----
Attacker's FAST - Phoenix
Defender's FAST - Paladin
Attacker's FAST - None
Defender's FAST - Cavalry
Attacker's Med. - Elf
Defender's Med. - None
Attacker's Slow - Dwarf
Defender's Slow - Archer

  I seem to recall Cavalry going before the 
Paladin though. so I may be wrong on this :(

2. General Tips

Heroes

Heroes play a very important role in this game.  
Heroes can travel outside of the castle by 
itself or with a group of monsters (a stack).  
Most of the heroes have "attributes" that can 
increase its ability to win a combat or increase 
attributes of it's troops.  These are like 
"skills" that can increase with experience or 
with an artifact.  These attributes are:  Attack 
(A), Defense (D), Skill (S), and Power (P).  

The hero's Attack and Defense attributes are 
added to the monsters contained within the same 
stack as the hero.  So a group of 50 peasants 
with attack and defense of 1 might be a easy 
kill, but if they are grouped with a hero with 
the attributes of A:15 and D:15, the peasants 
become monsters with the attack and defense of 
16.

The ability of a monster to hit another monster 
is increased/decreased by 10% for every 
difference of a point between the attacker's 
Attack attribute and defender's Defense 
attribute.

(Table and equation to be inserted in the next 
version of FAQ)

Constructing your Stacks

Most of the people will have multiple heroes, 
but only one that they concentrate on by giving 
him/her most of the experience points and magic 
items in a way that they construct a "ultimate 
stack/hero" with this hero.  Once constructed, 
this ultimate stack is very hard to kill off.  
The computer doesn't seem to do this so their 
forces are a little more spread out.

When arranging monsters with the hero, place 
your range strikers on the left-most and right-
most slots.  When you are in a combat, the left-
most slot monster will appear at the top-most 
slot in the battle scene, and the right-most 
slot monster will appear at the bottom-most 
slot, so the least amount of monsters can fly up 
to them and attack them.  If you place any 
monsters that takes up 2 spaces (wolves, 
Griffins) right next to your range strikers, the 
range strikers can only be attack by one flyer 
group of monsters at a time.

Types of Heroes

Barbarian - A Barbarian hero will usually 
increase attacking skills when they get more 
experienced.  The monsters lead by a Barbarian 
hero are fairly good on damaging opponents, but 
only OK in defense.  The biggest plus the 
Barbarian has is no penalty on movement over 
different terrain.  This could come in handy 
when you want to grab all the resource piles in 
a swamp, desert, of tundra area without having 
to spend too much time.  They are especially 
handy in deserts if there are unguarded Genie 
lamps laying around.  Barbarians have average 
movement, average sight range, and poor magic.

Warlock - A Warlock hero will usually increase 
spell power when they get more experienced.  
This could be deadly if the warlock has any 
offensive spells such as Armageddon, Lightning 
Bolt, Fireball and such.  A powerful warlock 
combined with a group of dragons and the 
Armageddon spell could be real deadly.  The 
other special power warlock has is the ability 
to see further than the other type of heroes.  
This ability is only useful at the beginning of 
the game because once you explore an area of a 
map, you won't have to have somebody in that 
general area to see that area of the map.  The 
"Fog of War" option in Warcraft 2 would add some 
good strategic twist to the game.  Warlocks have 
good movement, great sight range, and poor 
attack/defense.

Knight - A Knight hero will usually increase 
defense power when they get more experienced.  I 
personally find this the best attribute over the 
others.  A stack of 20 dragons with a +10 
defense from a hero will beat a stack of 50 
dragons with a +1 defense.  The knight's special 
attribute is increase in moral for the monsters.  
When you group of 50 archers gets a moral boost 
and attacks twice, that's 2x2 = 4 attacks that 
can wipe out most of the stacks.  Knights have 
poor movement, average sight range, and poor 
magic.

Sorceress - I don't know why they don't use 
Witches-Warlocks and Wizards-Sorceress, but 
anyway, a Sorceress hero will usually increase 
in spell knowledge when they get more 
experienced.  This could be handy if you have 
the paralyze spell so you can use it to get 
multiple attacks in before you opponent can even 
retaliate.  The special power for the Sorceress 
is extra movement while in water.  Sorceress 
have good movement, good sight range, and poor 
attack/defense.

Castles

There are usually 5 different levels of monster 
housing you can build to start producing these 
monsters for recruitment for each castle.  Other 
than that, most of the other structures for a 
castle is pretty much the same.  Some people 
find it better to quickly build up a mage tower, 
while others will concentrate on the monster 
housings first.  It might be better for 
Sorceress/Wizards to build up a mage tower first 
because of the spell power they have, but either 
way, it'll be up to you to weigh the advantage 
of having spells in the beginning or more 
powerful monster in the beginning.

Barbarian - A barbarian castle/hero combo is 
considered to be the weakest by most people, but 
I find them very useful.  The one monster you 
don't want to overlook are the trolls with 
regenerating ability.  You can build a bridge 
that creates trolls on the first week (If you 
have the settings to EASY or if there are enough 
coal/wood resources around), and a group of 
these can take out most of the monsters guarding 
the mines and resources.  Not many defending 
monsters can do more than 40 points of damage 
per turn (that's the troll's hit points), and 
you can decrease that damage/defending-monster-
group by using Troll's range attack ability.  
If/When they do move close enough, only 2 
monster groups can attack at the same time 
anyway.  These are the monster groups you can 
usually defeat without losing a single troll 
(Dwarves, Peasants, Swordsmen, Pikemen, Archers, 
Goblins, Ogres, Wolves, Faeries) I can usually 
take out the first computer opponent within the 
first two weeks with a group of 6 trolls because 
the castle isn't built enough to create more 
than 40 points of damage from the garrison.  The 
highest order monster from the barbarian castle 
are the Cyclops.  They require an initial 20 
crystal for the housing, then additional crystal 
for each Cyclops generated which can be 
expensive if there isn't a crystal mine around 
that you can control.

Knights - A knight castle/hero is a pretty good 
combo.  Since the monsters generated in a knight 
castle generally have higher defense points, if 
you combine this with a knight hero's defense 
bonuses, a knight castle is hard to defeat.  
Knight castle lacks flyers so unless you want to 
just sit there and get pounded on while 
defending a castle, you better get flyers or the 
teleport spell.  You can also develop a knight 
castle as fast as a barbarian castle with the 
exception of the highest order monster (Paladin) 
which requires an initial investment of 20 
crystals.  Paladin units however does not 
require additional crystals to be recruited.

Sorceress - Sorceress castles might be the 
hardest castle to build up because of high 
amount of resources it requires.  To even get to 
the 3rd level monsters (Druids), you'll need to 
construct a mage tower which requires 2000 gold 
alone.  The Sorceress castle does produce the 
best combo of range attackers / flyers / 
defenders.  A full blown sorceress castle has 
the phoenix to be the first initial attacker 
because of the speed, and therefore the chance 
to cast a spell before anyone else.  The Phoenix 
can also do a lot of damage and stop any range 
strikers on the opposing side.  The druid comes 
next with speed and does the range damage to any 
potential flyers that might be coming in.  The 
unicorn will do a good deal of damage with the 
possibility of paralyization and the 
archer/dwarf round out the good defense/range 
striking tactics.  The highest order monster 
housing (Phoenix) requires an additional 20 
mercury to be built (Druid housing takes up some 
of that initial mercury you have also), and an 
additional mercury unit to produce.

Wizard - Easier to build up than the Sorceress 
castle except for the highest order monster 
(Dragon) which requires 15000 gold and an 
additional 20 sulfur to build the housing.  You 
can probably produce a gargoyle crypt and a 
griffin's nest in the first few days and send 
out the hero with the 3 monster types to destroy 
most of the weaker guarding monsters.  The 
centaurs can function as a range strike against 
any thing while the high speed of gargoyle and 
to some degree, the griffin can stop any range 
strikers.  This combo of 3 can take out:  
goblins, archers, elven archers, dwarves, orcs, 
and peasants.  Once you construct the dragon 
tower however, the game is pretty much yours 
(unless another player has a dragon tower).  The 
computer will only attack a castle guarded with 
ONE dragon with a strong stack.

Spells

###  As a general rule of thumb, any direct 
damage or global damage spells are great with 
heroes with high Power attributes since the 
amount of damage is multiplied by a hero's 
Power.  A decent Skill attribute won't hurt 
either since you can have the hero roam and 
combat longer without having to run back to the 
castle to refresh a spell.  Once a spell is 
cast, it is gone.  You must return to the castle 
with the Spell Tower containing that spell to 
re-learn it.

###  In a combat scene, if you go first, you get 
the chance to cast a spell first.  It will be up 
to you to decide to either cast a good spell on 
your troop, cast a negative spell on the 
computer's troop, do direct damage to the 
computer's troop, do global damage, or to wait.  
One "goofy" thing about this game is that one 
spell "overrides" another spell (except when 
Anti-Magic is cast).  For example, if I cast 
"Curse" on one of the computer's troops, he can 
cast "Protection" on the same turn and nullify 
the "Curse" spell.  The only exception I believe 
is the effect of Paralyze stays even if you 
overrides it with another spell (somebody 
verify?).  So maybe it would be good sometimes 
to wait for the computer to cast that negative 
spell on your stack and you can cast a positive 
spell on your stack to negate and enchant your 
stack with one spell.

###  A player cannot cast spells or use the 
Ballistas in a castle if all the troops 
controlled by the player are blinded, or 
paralyzed.

Anti-Magic - A good spell to cast over your 
"good" units, particularly your missile units 
since the computer usually targets them first 
with negative spells.

Armageddon (4)- A really good global damage 
spell when used in conjunction with a dragon 
stack or Anti-Magic spell.  An experienced hero 
with high Power attribute can really do damage 
with these combos since his dragon troop or 
anti-magiked troop(s) won't be affected by this 
spell.

Blind - Similar to paralyze where a troops is 
immobile for the number of combat turns equal to 
the opponent's hero's Power.  I believe it is 
weaker than paralyze because on the turn the 
Blind spell wears out or canceled, the victim 
can attack that turn.

Lightning (2)- A good spell to take out 
powerful/obnoxious stacks.  I love using these 
on the genies since they are pretty deadly with 
their special 1/2 stack attack and high attack 
attributes.

Storm - A weaker form of Armageddon spell, but 
still pretty good and faster to learn than 
Armageddon.

View All - An OK spell.  By the time you can 
afford to construct that 4th layer for your 
spell tower to get this spell, the game is 
pretty much done.  Useful at the end when you 
want to locate that last castle/town of the 
computer to finish him off.

View Resource - Could be handy if you know what 
kinda resource you will need to build a certain 
type of building.  For example, a Warlock will 
want to look for all the unguarded sulfur 
resource he can find because sulfur is necessary 
to construct Swamp and the Dragon Tower.



### Nifty Spell Combos

Anti-Magic + Global Damage Combat Spells
Haste + Hydra
Paralyze + Range Strikers/Castle
Pestilence + COP: Black. oops, wrong game :)


3.  Cracking The AI

The computer AI in the strategic gaming industry 
is still in its infancy.  I've posted articles 
about how they are mislabeling the computer in 
games such as Master of Magic and Master of 
Orion as "AI".  You might see some comparisons 
below to other strategy games as examples.  A 
very very few games out there have an AI that 
learns from your actions and mistakes and 
increases its knowledge from experiences much 
like a human being's brain and learning 
abilities.  I know of one chess game that can do 
that.  Blizzard claimed that the "AI" in 
Warcraft 2 also has a "Learning AI", but either 
it has learning disability or it just isn't true 
because it seems to be dumber than the AI in 
Warcraft 1.  Most of the games out there are 
based on a rule-based knowledge base AI and can 
not learn from user's actions.  It doesn't mean 
you can't create a good AI with that parameter.  
Heroes of Might and Magic is one of the games 
with a better non-learning AI.

Many games compensated the weak AI by giving the 
computer bonuses at a higher setting.  The 
Master of XXX series from SimTex/MicroProse 
compensated the "hard" and "impossible" AI 
settings by giving the computer 25% to 50% 
bonuses over the human opponent in resources 
such as gold or $$$ and production power.  The 
bonuses are in effect from the beginning to the 
end of the game.  In HoMM, the computer does get 
a compensation, but only at the beginning of the 
game.  In some of the scenarios that's marked as 
"hard", the computer might start off with more 
resources, or a lot of resources close by, or a 
castle with some pre-built buildings.  Once this 
is done however, the computer doesn't "really" 
(see below) get any other bonuses throughout the 
game.  This allows you a chance to catch up and 
have a shot at defeating the computer because 
you are not falling behind by +25% to +50% every 
turn.

A.  The case where "AI" stands for "Automatic 
Intelligence"

The computer has a better sight range than the 
human players depends on the AI difficulty 
settings.  On the highest setting, I believe the 
computer can pretty much see the whole map in 
the very beginning.  This could be very useful 
in locating the necessary resources, mines, and 
artifacts.  This advantage decreases as the 
games goes on because you pretty much slowly 
balancing out this advantage by exploring.  This 
also explains why once you leave your castle 
unguarded, you might see a computer make a 
straight line for your castle even if he hasn't 
explored that area yet.  Warlords 2's AI 
actually sends out scouts when the "hidden map" 
option is on.

B.  The case where "AI" stands for 
"Automatically In"

- Free Stacks - The computer's hero has 
"incredible" luck in getting country side 
monsters to join his group.  This advantage may 
be OK toward the end of the game, but it can 
easily tip the balance of power at the beginning 
of the game.  According to NWC, the possibility 
of a monster group joining your hero's stack 
depends on the following things:  Strength of 
your stack, type of monsters in your stack, type 
of hero.  More than once I saw a computer stack 
marching toward me with peasants, archers, and 
30 gargoyles at the beginning of the game.  Even 
if I find out which stack is joining the 
computer and try to get to it first, it doesn't 
always work.  Another time I checked a computer 
and he had a stack with griffins, centaurs, and 
peasants, and when he merged with a stack of 
gargoyle, he got about 34 of them.  I then 
reloaded the saved game and try to get the 
monster stack myself and only 18 joined me.  I 
repeated this several times and verified it but 
NWC said that shouldn't happen.  The computer 
also seem to know which monster stack will join 
his hero too.  I've seen the computer walk past 
2 or 3 monster stacks, free resources and etc. 
in a bee-line to another monster stack and poof!  
It joins his stack of monsters and then turns 
toward my hero to attack him.  From my 
experience, I found the monsters stacks are more 
likely to join me if I have the same monster 
types and a strong stack.

C.  The case where "AI" stands for "Automatic 
Instill-energy"

Ummm.... the "Instill Energy" phrase is borrowed 
from Magic:  The Gathering :).  This might just 
be my imagination, but have you noticed how the 
computer unit always get "lucky" and does twice 
the normal damage, and high moral and get two 
attacks.  In the mean time, you're carrying a 
four leaf clover and the horse shoe and all the 
moral medals and your units still attack like a 
normal troop?

AI Faults

###  The "Can't catch me" trick.  If you are 
defending a castle and have fliers, even if it's 
only 5 faeries, keep them around.  If the 
computer is attacking with slow monsters, you 
can just fly from one corner of the screen to 
another while your ballista does its damage to 
the computer monsters.  Watch out for the 
"haste" spell.  The computer doesn't use this 
trick.

###  The "Teleport" trick.  If you have more 
than 1 dimension doors, you can pretty much get 
most of the artifacts without having to deal 
with the guardian if there's an open space by 
it.  Normally, once you move next to a guarding 
monster stack, you'll have to battle with them, 
but with dimension doors, you can teleport right 
next to them, pick up the artifact, and teleport 
out.  I first learn this trick from watching a 
computer doing the exact same thing!

- The AI will often leave a castle weakly 
guarded if it has a hero to send out.  If a 
strong computer stack comes your way and you 
can't defend your castle, you might want to 
leave the castle and have the computer take over 
it.  It will then proceed to split his stack 
into 2 weaker ones so you'll have a better 
chance to defeat the computer or take back the 
castle.

4.  Tips on different creatures

Knight
Peasant - Not too good at all, even if you have 
high stats heroes.  Slow, low damage, you might 
want to have some to fill slots to protect your 
range strikers or from a castle being invaded.

Archer - Slow, but they do good damage in a 
large group.  

Pikemen - Pretty good and cheap defense, 
especially when protecting range strikers.

Swordsmen - Another good, cheap 
attacker/defender.

Cavalry - Very good attacker and defender for 
the price.  It's fast so they get to do most of 
the damage first.

Paladin - Cheapest Elite creature you can get.  
They do really good damage and double attacking 
make them very dangerous.



5.  Tips on Campaign



6.  Tips on Single Scenarios

I generally like to set my difficulties to 
Easy/Normal, depending on the level, and for 
computer intelligence, I usually set it at 
genius.  I believe the higher intelligence of a 
computer, the more area of the map the computer 
can see.  I believe at the genius level, the 
computer can pretty much see the whole map at 
the very beginning!  This is tolerable, but not 
a necessary cheat on the computer part.  I also 
like to set the King of the Hill option to true.  
My logic for this is would you rather fight 3 
computers with one castle each (producing 
weaker/spreadout units) or would you rather have 
one computer with 3 castles (producing 
mass/powerful units)?  With this option on, it 
might be a little harder in the beginning, but 
nothing compares to the end when you're fighting 
one powerful computer opponent.

For beginners, you might want to try EASY/Dumb 
setting just to get a feel of how the AI works.

Badlands - Very easy to win.  Just make sure you 
start off at the upper right area of the map.  I 
tried it at the highest settings for everything 
and won easily with a Dragon rating.  The trick 
is to get enough money in the beginning to get a 
Barbarian hero.  Have this hero go into the 
desert at the right side of the map.  When you 
go there, you should be able to pick up a lot of 
free resource, artifacts, gold, 2 towns, and 3 
genie lamps.  There's one undefended lamp in the 
middle/right of the desert, and once you start 
with the genies, most of the foes will fall in 
the desert.  With the genies from these lamps, 
you can pretty much claim all the desert.  After 
this happens, the hero is highly experienced 
enough to conquer the other opponents easily.

Jolly Roger - Normal.  I believe one of the 
computer opponent actually starts off with a 
fully blown Warlock castle so don't be surprised 
to see dragons marching your way on the first 
week.  The trick is to construct a boat and go 
to the desert isles at the N, S, E, W, NW, NE, 
SW, SE corner of the map where each contains an 
unguarded genie lamp.  Be sure to return these 
FAST to a guarding hero to fight off the 
dragons.  Once you fight off the dragon stack, 
get the castle QUICK and you pretty much have 
the game when you get the full blown warlock 
castle.


*** I might add more, but with the release of a 
map editor and random map generator, it will be 
hard for me to keep all the different scenarios 
in this FAQ.

7.  Add-ons/News

There are no map editors or any kind out there 
right now (see Section 8. Gripes/Suggestions).

I just received new information from a 
representative (Clay) of New World Computing 
about a map editor.  A random map generator AND 
a map editor will be available for the Windows 
`95 version of the Heroes of Might and Magic 
(see below).  For DOS users, an upgrade is 
currently being developed right now (but not 
promised) that will include the map editor, but 
I'm not sure if it will include the random map 
generator.  More information will be provided 
here as I receive more details.

There's a saved game editor floating out there 
by Gary Blatt, and I believe it can be located 
at the following web site: 
http://rampages.onramp.net/~gbconslt.

There's also a universal saved game editor by 
Overkill/Mortuai that will edit scored, creature 
types in an army, resource, gold, spells, 
artifacts.  It can be located at 
hhtp://www.ici.net/customers/overkill/overkill.h
tm under the "UGE Page" option at the home page.

*** Windows 95 Version and Heroes of Might and 
Magic II! ***

Here's posting I grabbed from George Ruof of New 
World Computing about the Windows `95 version 
and HoMM 2:

"Heroes for Win95 will basically be the same 
game but it will be a native 32 bit Windows 95 
app using DirectDraw.  The networking and modem 
code will be unchanged to maintain compatibility 
between the DOS and Win95."

Additional information:
"The Win95 version should be out around the 
middle of February.  It includes more scenarios, 
a scenario editor/random generator, CD-Audio 
soundtrack (yeah!!!), and the original King's 
Bounty game"!!!

"We are planning for Heroes 2 which we would 
like to ship for next Christmas.  The details 
are still in the early planning stages, but it 
will be based on the existing Heroes engine.  I 
would like to support both IPX & TCP/IP for 
networking, but we're still not sure if we will 
be able to.  Right now the DirectPlay component 
of Microsoft's game SDK seems fairly incomplete, 
but hopefully by next year it will be updated 
and prove to be a good networking solution.  If 
not, we'll see what happens. :)  I will 
definitely argue for Internet play every day (or 
so) until it ships."

8.  Gripes/Suggestions.

Gripes

The biggest gripe many people have is the 400+ 
megs of digitized music/sound on the CD that 
plays continuously (when you have the music 
turned on).  So the CD-ROM drive is constantly 
reading/playing these digitized files from the 
drive.  EVERYBODY I know eventually ended up 
turning the music off, and some people I know 
even turn the sound off.  I contacted New World 
Computing and they said it's the only way to can 
"copy protect" the CD.  If you spend 3-4 hours 
on a scenario, that means the CD-ROM drive is 
constantly spinning/reading for the 3-4 hours.  
This is not as simple as playing a music CD 
because the computer actually has to play these 
wave files and take up valuable system resource.  
So most of us consumers ended up suffering with 
the lack of music which other new games are 
taking advantage of the small midi files and 
abundance of wave table sound cards out there to 
provide a great gaming atmosphere.  I know for a 
fact that there's a pirated copy out there that 
doesn't require the CD-ROM and doesn't have the 
400 me baggage so their copy-protection attempts 
are kinda futile.  CD-ROMs can also be 
replicated for less than $7 now.  They should at 
most check to see if the correct CD-ROM is in 
the drive (a la Warcraft 2) for copy protection.

The second gripe is the lack of map/scenario 
editor.  New World has one in-house that they 
said we wouldn't want the way they have it now, 
but I think anything is better than nothing.  At 
least release the specs so somebody can work on 
it.  The last I heard they are working on a map 
editor to be bundled with the Windows 95 
version.  I hope we won't have to pay for the 
editor alone.  (see Section #6 for great news on 
this topic)

This great game however is relatively bug free.  
Some people have modem problems with it but 
that's few.  Most of the people were able to run 
it under Windows `95.  One minor bug is when 
your hero is in a boat, don't use the Town Gate 
spell or else you will end up with a boat in 
front of a castle with the hero stuck in it.

One person on the net said it kept crashing but 
the game works fine now after he scandisk or re-
formatted his hd partition.

Suggestions

Suggestions for patch/upgrade/HoMM 2:

* Simultaneous damage.  When 2 creatures come 
face to face, they should do simultaneous 
damages to eachother.  It's hard to imagine a 
pack of Griffin would just sit there and wait 
for a pack of wolves to maw it until it's their 
turn.

* Hero bonuses should apply against spells.  
Right now, a +50 defense troll can still be 
killed by a 50-point lightning.

* Add toggle on/off for the ability of a monster 
stack to join your hero group.

* Increase in stats for native monsters 
depending on the type of terrain.  (ie, phoenix 
should not fight too well in the snow/tundra)

* Fatigue-Damage ratio for monsters.  How many 
times can those dwarves swing those axes at full 
strength/damage?

* Health-Damage ratio for monsters.  Wow, that 
unicorn can still do full damage even if it only 
has 1 life point left.  I'm not sure how to 
integrate this since the monsters are grouped 
into one type, not individuals.

* Terrain Bonuses - Wow, that goblin has no 
problem walking on that molten lava!  And the 
fire-breathing dragon is having no problem with 
the tundra!

################################################
########


This FAQ may be distributed freely on the 
Internet. Copies can be made freely, as long as 
it is distributed at no charge and no further 
modification, and the disclaimers and the 
copyright notice are included.  Commercial On-
line services may write for permission to carry 
this FAQ on their service, and will be held 
responsible if this FAQ is located on the 
service in any form without written permission.  
The fee for the following services are as 
follows:

America On-Line - $100/year.
CompuServe - $75/year.
Genie - $50/year.
MSN - $5000/year.

(C)1996 Blue Orchid Technologies

George Lin
748 E. Pumping Station Rd.
Quakertown, PA  18951