It has been a long time since V0.8 was made on-line. Recently, I received emails from several HOMM2 players. So, I knew there are actually good players who read my guide and use it. Also, I got some useful ideas from them, so I finally got the energy to replay Archibald's campaign and upgrade this guide. This guide is not completed yet, I will continue updating it for a while. If you would like to contribute information to this guide, discuss some strategies about this game, or make spelling/grammar/content corrections, feel free to email me.
5.Archibald's Campaign: Analysis and Optimal Plans
6. Roland's Campaign: Analysis and an 89 days' plan (To be completed.)
One interesting question to ask is what is the highest score possible for HOMM2, both in campaign games and standard games. This is not an easy question, however, I believe I am very close to the answer now. Following are game records I played or saw. The result for Roland's campaign is not optimal, and I can't remember all requirements and plans clearly, Luming did that about 3 to 4 months ago.
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I know many of you will not believe this. My third campaign yielded 97 days, which was recorded in V0.8 of this guide. That's already a result many of you won't believe. However, there are people who read my guide and understood it, tested it themselves and actually beated my record. Tim did this, he finished Archibald's campaign in 83 days. Even when I began my fourth Archibald's campaign, after knowing that 83 days is attainable, I can't imagine under 70 days is possible. So I can understand if you doubt my result. However, if you are a good HOMM2 player, I really hope that you will read my guide before making any judgment. I also include all the saved games for the whole evil campaign. For each scenario, 2 or 3 files are included, STARTE?.GMC is the start map, it is included only if I impose some conditions on start configuration; STOPE?.GMC is the saved game before the last fight , another one is WIN_E_?.GMC. You can also download separated file for each scenario. Just do any test on this saved games you want, check the start game and the stop game with my plan.
Well, you might ask: "How to do this?". The answer is "Read this guide, it is all in it.". However, I can give you a quick answer here.
This guide is intended to supply strategies and detailed campaign plans for the great strategy game Heroes of Might and Magic 2: The Succession Wars by New World Computing.
Most of the strategies and tactics in this guide are what I came up during my HOMM and HOMM2 playing. I never played multiplayer games, and only some standard games in HOMM2, what attracts me most is the campaign game. I focused on how to win as quickly as possible, and find out the what is the highest score possible for HOMM2. And this is what this guide is about. I believe this guide has something not contained anywhere else.
Special thanks to Luming Wang, many thoughts in this guide come from him. We actually played many games together. I must admit, he is even more extreme than I am, just that I played HOMM2 much more than him. He is also the first reader of this guide and provided many valuable strategies and suggestions.
I had to really thank Tim Maxwell, Hans and Frank Cardillo. They are all very good HOMM2 players. Without their support, I won't get the energy to update this guide. Also, they provide some very good strategies, which are included in this guide.
Also, I would like to thank Jay Lou and Arkady Zilberberg. They are all very good players. They provide valuable strategies and the suggestions on my plans, which are included in this guide.
This strategy guide is not a FAQ, neither is it an introductory strategy guide. It is intended for good players only. Well, then what's a good player? In gaming world, many people think they are good. Of course, some are really good, but many are not as good as they think they are. One criteria is this. If you can finish one campaign in less than 200 days, then you are good. You might not actually do this, but at least you should know that you can do it and how to do it.
Being a good player, you should already know the basics of HOMM2, like what are those spells mean, what will each skill give you, etc. This guide focuses on how to win as quickly as possible. Since the score depends essentially on speed of winning, this means how to get the highest scores possible. To put it straight, this is not a guide telling you how to win, rather it is a guide on how to win in the the quickest way. You should already know how to win by yourself.
I haven't found any introductory HOMM2 guide yet, but there is a great HOMM strategy guide by Yujun. It contains all you need to know to start playing HOMM, and most of its contents apply to HOMM2. There is an article by Wade on the HOMM2 Bible site. It is an email with subject Re: HOMM2 Way of the Necromancer, and the title is "SO YA REALLY WANNA BE A VAMPIRE - THE WAY OF THE NECROMANCER". It is more than a great guide for necromancers, there are many good stuffs about the new features of HOMM2 playing.
Of course, to get the highest possible score, one need to use L/S a lot. Besides, the revealing map cheat code is also useful. I use that at the beginning of each scenario to scrutinize the map to form a plan, and during the play to check out enemy heroes' moves. Of course, I will not play the game with the map open, I'll load the game saved before the cheat code is inputted. I also use cheat code 32167 during planing phase. It is useful for measuring the time needed for one hero to reach its target, or to test something quickly without fighting all the monsters. Some people may think this way of playing as cheating, but for me it is just another type of game playing.
IMO, there are three different types of game playing. First, play a game without knowing the map beforehand and don't use L/S or only use it in very restricted way. By this approach, you can enjoy the fun to explore the unknown, but it is difficult to achieve a high score. Second, play a game which you already know the map, either by checking the map at start or by playing the scenario several times, but restrict usage of L/S. Multiplayer games on premade maps fall in this category. This way, you can still experience the thrilling of unexpectedness while have the fun to devise interesting strategic plans. The third way is what I used to play the campaign. This gives you the chance to make great and detailed plan beforehand, test your plan in the actual playing, try out different tactics in a fight to achieve best result. Basically, it allows you to use every bit of your wit to achieve perfection. Each way gives player some kinds of enjoying, people can choose what they like.
Even those players who think my way of playing is cheating, they have to use L/S in the way they view as cheating sometimes. Say, when you finally reach Roland or Archibald and find out that he has resurrect, what will you do? Although this is still a winnable situation, most people will restart to avoid this. So, what's difference? We both have particular objective and impose some conditions on starting configuration to be able to get the objective. They want a not so difficult win, I want a quickest win possible. It is just that we have different objectives, thus imposing different conditions. Many people will use L/S after making a mistake, basically, what I do is similar. Just in my view, a mistake may be much smaller, an unnecessary extra move, a monster unnecessarily being killed in a fight. If this will endanger my plan for quickest win, that is a mistake for me.
Besides, the third way of playing is the only way to yield out a comparable result for everyone. Otherwise, luck will determine the most part. Say, whether you get a couple of groups of dragons on the map in Greater Victory will affect the speed of winning by more than 2 weeks. The way to eliminate luck is to allow everyone get full advantage of it. Also, nobody can tell if one used L/S and cheat code or not. I believed that I can win Archibald's campaign in 100 days without using L/S or cheat code. Let us say I did this and gave that result instead of this 64 days campaign here, how many of you will believe me? Since nobody can tell whether one use L/S and cheat code or not, to get a comparable result, one has to allow everybody to use it whatever way they like.
If you don't like my way of playing, forget about the days and scores in this guide, just read the strategies and plans here, find whether they are useful to you in whatever types of games you play.
HOMM did keep me up till 5am in the morning for one week, and make me unable to go to sleep before 3am the following week. Even after I went to bed, my brain was still full of the thoughts of the game, mostly what strategies can I use to achieve better result. I played the campaign game in HOMM three times. The first one was only after 2 standard games, and it lasted 498 days. A second campaign yielded about 240 days. After a few days' rest, equipped with new knowledge got through the second campaign, I went for a third try, which lasted 140 days. I thought that was pretty good then. Yes, it was, however, from today's point of view, 40 days' improvement is definitely possible.
HOMM2 did similar things to me like HOMM. Now, I've played the campaign games four times, but all of them are on Archibald's side. During my first campaign, I didn't use the revealing map cheat code except in scenario 10: Greater Glory and my objective was not to achieve as high scores as possible. I just wanted to enjoy the exploration. That campaign lasted 363 days, which yielded a bone dragon. After a while, I began the second journey. This time, I already focused on how to finish it more quickly, it took 146 days. Upon finishing it, I told my friend: "It is impossible to improve this by more than one week.". Then I began to write this guide. As I was doing it, my confidence diminished. "Are these plans the best?, How about this one?", I asked myself. At last, I decided, "I got to try it out myself.".
So I began the third campaign. Although it was one campaign, I replayed most of the scenarios at least twice. I can't remember the exact times the last two scenarios being replayed, but I did spend nearly two days in real life on it. I improved the first scenario by 1 day, the second one by 2 days. It was the decision to fight scenario 4 that greatly improved the result. I not only improved this single scenario by nearly 2 weeks, but also got ogre alliance which shorten the Dragon Master scenario by more than one week. At last, I replayed the last two scenarios once and once again to cut more than 10 days down. Then I finished the early version of this guide.
I got few response from HOMM2 players for the previous version of this guide, which was pretty disappointing. However, as time went by, there came people telling me that they read my guide and find my strategies useful. Tim even managed to beat my 97 days record by 14 days! he finished Archibald's campaign in 83 days. Then, I finally got the energy to replay Archibald's campaign and improve this guide. I used the strategy of hiring lots of heroes and using their initial troops to attack, this greatly improved map 1, from 16 days downto 6. I also took advantage of 32167 to measure time needed for a plan before actually playing it. This helped me to decide what is the theoretical lower-bound of each scenario playing it. And thus gave me objective I should pursue, it turned out that every objective was finally reached. This yielded out a 64 days campaign. Unbelievable, huh? I can't imagine it myself just several days before I finish it. It is near optimal, I believe that the only chance to improve it is to cut one day in Slay the Dwarves.
I also played Pyramid under difficulty impossible, just to get the highest standard score possible. The result is 9 days, score 420. One day's improvement might be possible, but definitely very difficult.
The question is which side is better, good or evil? By better, I mean can be finished in less days. I prefer the evil side. Scenario 4 will award you ogre alliance in following scenarios, this sharply shorten the days needed for scenario 5 and 7. While scenario 7 will award you dragon alliance in following three scenarios. These dragons will make up the main force you need for all fights, you don't need to build anything at all. Besides, warlocks and barbarians are what I like most. Roland don't have dragon alliance, thus one must build up castle to gather troops in at least one scenario, this means at least 2 more weeks.
By hiring a hero, you get two things. The first is a hero with certain attribute data and some special skills, the other is the initial troops come with it. So to decide which hero to hire, you must know what do you want. Do you want a hero who can walk fast in desert, water, or just to gather certain kind of troops?
In HOMM, barbarian heroes are definitely the best. I only preferred spell casters during the first half of my first campaign. Back then, I built up heroes' spell power and used spells to win. Suddenly, I tried barbarian heroes in one scenario, then I knew, to win quickly, barbarians are the best. They will not suffer penalties when moving on deserts, swarms, etc., this will save game time greatly in most scenarios. Besides, if you want to win by spells, you need to build up high level magic guild, which consume a lot of resources. And the heroes must go back to castles to recharge spells from time to time. All these will spend much more time than an approach using barbarian heroes.
While in HOMM2, all heroes can learn pathfinding. And there are usually roads connecting castles where no penalty occurs. This makes barbarian heroes less unique now. However, I still like barbarians the most. In quick games on complex terrain having few roads, barbarian heroes are definitely the king due to their advanced pathfinding even in level 1. Moreover, barbarians have other advantages. One is its high attack power, which many good players are already enjoying. Still, another advantage of barbarian which is less noticed is its strong initial troops. Barbarian heroes may have about 20 goblins and 3-5 orcs in the start, which is strongest compared to other type of heroes. With several barbarians' troops gathered together, you can have about 100 goblins which can kill many things in one attack. More than 15 orcs can also do considerable damage.
As for other types, in some cases you can go with whatever heroes. However, there are situations where you want a specific type of heroes. Warlocks may be the second choice in most situations. They have high spell power, and fastest troop speed. Its initial troops are also good, a fastest flying unit, and some shooters, just not as many as barbarian's goblins. I will definitely hire some warlocks in any scenario to get gargoyles, they can be used to tie up enemy shooters, or to be carried by walking heroes to get full speed. Sorceresses are extroadinary useful for their advanced sailing skill. This is the key to several scenarios, like final combat in Roland's campaign. Whenever you need to travel by sea, you should think about sorceresses. I don't like their initial troops, though, no shooters and dwarves are usually useless.
Wizards have advanced wisdom, this makes them useful when you want a hero to learn level 4 spells, which is a rare case. Theirs initial troops are similar to warlocks, but halflings have slow speed, and boars can't fly, which makes them less attractive compared to warlocks. Knights are good for their defense and/or leadership, some artifacts can only be got when the hero has leadership skill. I don't think knights is useful in other cases. Their initial troops are similar to barbarians, but peasant's very low speed makes them far less useful. Necromancers are good for their necromancy ability, but they are only useful when you are using necromancer's castle, which I do not like so much. Its initial troops are reasonably powerful, but with no shooters, no flying unit, average and very slow speed, you can do very little with them.
In every game I played, an aggressive approach was used. To attack in the earliest time is my strategy. So low level troops are of most importance for me. By low level troops, I mean those you can get in the first week even in hard level resources, normally the first three to four types of troops. Since the objective is to win a game sooner rather than later, hero's moving speed is essential, this is determined by the slowest type in the army. Since first attack is one of the most important factors in a combat, the speed of the fastest monster in an army is also important.
Flying units are best against shooters cause most shooters' hand-to-hand fight abilities really suck. Shooters are most effective against those slow moving ground units. However, flying units, when facing ground units, will have a bad time. Ground units are usually stronger than those birds. (Here, I am only talking about regular troops, not including those phoenix and dragons.) However, I prefer shooters and flying units. There are two reasons for this. First, I try to win every battle with as little loss as possible, shooters can kill enemies from range, and flying units can move everywhere in batter ground. Second, an aggressive approach requires you to do many castle assaults, ground units can not get into battle position for several turns, during this time, your troops will suffer great loss from enemy's garrison.
2.3.1 Warlocks.
This is my favorite. Some people says that warlock need build to win. I can't agree with that. Using my standard, the three low level troops have one shooters, two flying units. Slowest speed is average, which is the best you can hope in early game. Gargoyle is very fast, which will give you first attack in nearly all combats. Griffin has all-around ability and can retaliate unlimited times.
The most important strategy of all is to be aggressive, more aggressive, and even more aggressive. Try to attack at the first possible time. Many players know this, but most of them are not aggressive enough. Many of the following strategies are on what is the most aggressive approach and how to get it.
This is a newly added part. And this knowledge is one of the two major things which enable me to improve the previous 97 days campaign to 64 days. And this enables me to say that my plans are optimal. To be able to devise an optimal plan, first you should understand all strategies and tricks in this section. Then you must be very familiar with the map, so you have to plan and play it several times before finally reaching an optimal plan. You should be familiar with different routes to enemy targets, know what on the map can speed up one route, what can potentially waste more time.
Then you can start to make the optimal plan. Use the revealing map code, check the map and identify enemy targets which you have to capture to win, say, castles, towns, heroes, etc. Read the scenario description, sometimes you don't have to capture all targets to win. Then you need to divide heroes and troops into several armies, each taking care of some enemy targets, and decide the routes of these armies. Choosing routes is always the most difficult part. You have to decide which route is affordable, which route have obstacles you can't handle. This takes experience and familiarity with the map, the rule of thumb is to use the most aggressive approach, choose the shortest route possible.
Then find the longest routes, measure how long do you need to get them. The way to do this is to use 32167 on your hero heading this route, dismiss all other troops for full speed, walk this hero directly to target. Then try to shorten it, maybe in the cost of lengthen other routes. This way, you can find out the theoretical lower-bound for a scenario, and then you know what goal you should pursue. You also know which route is the bottleneck so that heroes for that route must rush without wasting any moves, which routes are less critical so that heroes can pick up resources or help heroes on other routes.
This is one easy but important strategy if you want to finish the campaign quickly. As I said, you should avoid castle building whenever possible. Actually, this can be done in all scenarios of Archibald's campaign. In Barbarian Wars, it is the lamps. In Slay the Dwarves, it is dwarf cottages. In Turning Point and Dragon Master, it is ogre alliance. In Rebellion, it is archer house and peasants which are the source of skeletons. In Country Lord and Greater Victory, it is dragon alliance. In the last scenario, Apocalypse, carrying over forces will do the job.
However, outer source of troops may sometimes be misleading. In most cases, you don't need all the sources to win, just get what you need and attack. In Dragon Master, the best approach is to ignore 3 groups of ogres in the north, you don't need them to win. Sometimes, outer sources may not be as quick as hiring heroes, focusing too much on outer sources is then misleading. As in Slay The Dwarves, you only need to visit several dwarf cottages to win. So you have to balance outer sources and troops from heroes or castles. They are all methods, not goals, to win is the goal.
Even in a standard game where you must build up castles, this is still a good thing to do. After all, the more troops you can find the quicker you can win. So, try to find some troop residences, there are usually many of them, pick up what's necessary. Also, a group of monsters joining in early stage of the game can also be very helpful, but it is random so you can't predict that, thus can't depend on that. I remember in HOMM, the only standard scenario marked impossible is Jolly Roger, it might be impossible if you don't know the map beforehand and don't send out ships. There are 8 small islands in eight directions, each has an unguarded lamp together with gem resource. I sent out a sorceress to get 4 of them, and then the game became a walk in the park.
This idea is essentially due to Luming, he used it a lot and formulated it. This helps me to cut the days for First Blood from 16 days to 6 days, you can imagine how powerful it is. The essence of this is to gather troops through hiring a lot of heroes.
Every good player should already know the importance of more heroes. More heroes mean more moves, more maps you can explore, more resources to pick up, more mines to be able to capture, more of everything. However, the reason I mention it here is that you can use heroes in a slightly different way, namely, using its initial troops. The underlying rationale is this, we know it is better to build up a troop without building up a castle. However, sometimes, you may not be able to find outside sources in time, but heroes always provide a reliable source for troops, as long as you have money. You might argue, the troops of one hero is too weak to do anything useful. Well, that's because you don't hire enough heroes. Then, you might ask, how many is enough? Let us put it this way, don't build anything at all in the start, spend all your money in heroes, pack their troops together and see what can be done with this troop. Usually, lots can be done. Sometime, you can capture several enemy castles simply by troops coming with heroes you hired. Time is everything, when you attack early, the enemies are much weaker. Of course, this is the extreme case, in some occasions, you need to build a few things. But at least you should kept in mind that there is such an approach.
As to which kind of heroes to hire, as I stated in 2.2, barbarians are the best. Several barbarians' troops and a warlock's troops can form a pretty powerful army.
By this approach, soon you will find that you are in the situation where you have already hired 8 heroes such that you can't hire any more. Now it is the time to let some of heroes retire. One way to retire is to attack something, either a enemy hero or monsters. Then you have several choice, namely, retreat, be defeated or surrender. By retreating, you can hire this hero again, thus get new initial troops. If the next hero you want to hire already appears, you can choose to let this hero be defeated. Also, you can choose to surrender, this preserves the troops with the hero.
This is a strategy for campaign games as well as standard games. Computer AIs will not defend their castles with powerful armies. Actually, human players will not do that either. In most cases, I don't defend my castles at all. But they are computers and you are humans, you can predict or watch their moves and be more aggressive than they, thus get more advantage out of this. I am not saying that the computer AI is dumb, actually, I think HOMM2's AIs are quite competitive in adventure. (Its battle AI can and should be improved greatly.) Still, a good human player can do much better than it. It can't be compared to Deep Blue :)
IMHO, the most important role of a castle is to provide new troops every week. If you can sneak an enemy castle in the end of this week, you can view that castle as yours. Although enemy are getting money from it, but they are also spending the money building it up, and during building up they spend a lot of other resources as well as gold. You can just wait until the enemy has built a perfect barrack for you and go get the troops. What a deal!
In the case where the enemy has stronger troops than you. You need to do a real sneak attack. I did this once in Dragon Master scenario. This normally requires carefully planning. You should let the troops stay out of enemy's sight for as long as possible. Two days' distance is usually enough if the enemy hasn't explored much towards your direction. When time comes, your troops should rush at enemy's castle directly. The first question you face after capturing enemy castle is whether to defend it or just hire all troops inside it and run. Sometimes, you can do a castle defending with old troops strengthened by the new ones and defeat enemy's powerful army. But in most cases, hire and run is better. Since if the enemy do attack, then he must have an army at least comparable to yours, although you may win such a fight, it will be a costly victory. If the castle produce different types of troops from the ones your hero have, hiring another hero is necessary. Prepare enough money before the castle attack when you plan to do this.
Sometimes, your army are more powerful than the enemy's so you don't need to do a sneak attack. But do remember to capture their castles before the enemies have the chance to hire newly generated troops whenever possible. If you are playing against human players, remember this strategy. You can use it against others, but you should also be prepared for it. Basically, you need to have a strong army which is able to go back to defend or recapture your castle before other guys have the chance to hire the troops.
I found this strategy back when playing HOMM. Some may not think this as a strategy. After all, if you can't defend your castle, enemy will take it, everybody know how to do this :). However, what I mean by this is not to defend your castle even when you can do it. Instead, do a strategic retreat and deliberately let the enemy take your castle. However, you must know what to do after the castle being captured. In one word, you must take it back. Now you might ask, then what good will this strategy do? First, you gain the time to gather stronger troops and take back with minimal cost. Secondly, computer AIs will leave some troops to defending the castle, while splitting one powerful army into two is one of the biggest mistake one can make in HOMM2. Usually you can kill the defending troops without much effort. At the same time, enemy army is weakened. Thirdly, the enemy will build up buildings for you.
The first case to use this is when you don't have enough troops to defend your castle. Sometimes, you will lose the castle defending battle. Other times, you know you can win the combat, but will suffer great loss. Well, in these cases, get all valuable troops in the castle and run with them. Computer AIs will attack a castle first if you have both an empty castle and a hero with decent army.
The second case is that you have an army slightly stronger than the enemy's one. If you sit in the castle, enemy dare not attack. But you try to attack and kill it, you must pay a high cost. Then you should leave the castle empty. Enemy hero will take it and leave some troops to defend it and go out. Now you can attack the castle with no or negligible cost. And enemy army has been weakened. If you still can not beat it easily, do this again. This is the most effective way to wear down a powerful enemy army. There are two extra benefits of this approach. One, your hero get a lot of experience through these fights. Each successful castle assault will award 500 extra experience. The other is that the enemy may build up buildings for you.
You may also use this when you can easily defeat the enemy army. Sometimes, you want a building badly, but just can't get enough resources for it. Then you can let the enemy take it and see whether they have the resources. Normally, they have more resources than you are. But be careful, be prepared for the situation where the enemy build a green tower and hire one green dragon. Normally, I will not let the enemy build top-ended building for me. I'll let them build swarm, and build tower myself. But I did see many cases where the enemy built a green tower, but didn't hire the 1 dragon in it. Perhaps it is because that computer AI will build a tower whenever its resources reach the requirement, thus doesn't have the resources to hire right away.
The essence of this strategy is don't leave any useful troops in the buildings in the castle. You can give your enemy your castle, but NOT TROOPS.
This strategy is always useful when you want to finish a scenario more quickly. In most scenarios, you need to capture enemy castles as well as defeat enemy heroes to win. Castles do not move so they can easily be targeted. But heroes do move, and they will always run when your army is much more powerful than theirs. Chasing an enemy hero is usually time consuming. Don't do that. Try to make them come at you instead. The way to achieve that is by weakening your troops. Let the computer AIs think they have a chance to win, and beat them by your tactic skills.
This strategy is mostly used after you've captured enemy's castle, and there are several enemy heroes around. As I remember, in HOMM, you can simply move your hero out of a castle and enemy heroes will go for the empty castle. In HOMM2, computer AIs are smarter, they will not do that when your powerful army stand beside the castle. But you can always dismiss some of the troops and stay in th castle waiting for enemy heroes' attack. Castle defending is often easier, if both have similar armies, you can usually win with little cost. Luming reminded me the following idea. Sometimes, you can just leave your powerful troops in castle, then enemy heroes will attack you when finding out you have only weak troops with hero. I can understand this when enemy doesn't have thieves' guild. Computer AI can't see the troops and is not smart enough to reason that you have powerful troops in castle. I believe that they don't cheat on this, (actually I can't find out that they cheat anywhere, the developers did a great job!), so this can be used to catch enemy heroes who have no castle. However, sometimes, computer AI will do this even when they have thieves' guild, at least I believe they have one. Even more strange is that sometimes they will not do this. Anyway, it never hurt to try.
In Country Lord, enemy heroes attacked my dragon troops from time to time. I had one hero with 2 red dragons, another hero with 4 green dragons. Enemy heroes usually had, say, 3-6 palladins/crusaders, several champions, a pack of pikemans/swordmans, and some rangers, peasants. By careful tactic arrangement, I managed to win most fight without any loss. Sometimes, there were 2 or 3 enemy heroes attacked one of my heroes and being defeated in one single turn. This saves a lot of time since I don't need to chase those heroes.
Let two heroes move together. Say, one of your hero is the primary hero who will do the fight, and his move will determine the speed of your campaign, then you want him to move as quickly as possible and don't spend time for those resources blocking the road. Here is what you should do, use another hero to carry slow troops for the primary hero and clear road for him, I call this buddy hero. Whenever the primary hero need the slow troops to fight, the buddy hero give the troop to him. Whenever the primary doesn't need to fight till the end of the turn, the buddy hero get the troop back. Whenever there is some resource on the road, the buddy hero pick it up to clear the road. You might ask, but the buddy hero will be much behind the primary hero, is this trick really useful? IT IS. First, you can use two or more heroes as buddy heroes. Second, the primary hero must do the fight and pick up experience to improve attributes while buddy hero can skip all these and go directly to where he is needed. Third, the buddy hero may have higher level logistics and/or pathfinding and for some reason you must use another hero as primary hero. Fourth, the buddy hero can be one day behind the primary hero because the next day he can move first and give all his troops to the primary hero, this way, you can still save one day, etc.
This method can be extended. Say, you want to start an attack on day 1 of the next week cause you need the new troops to win. You do not need your primary hero to sit in the castle on the end of day 7. Instead, you can let another hero sit in the castle, and the primary hero stop at a place where the second hero can reach. Furthermore, you can let both of them only having fastest type of troops, let all other troops stay in the castle. This can really speed up the progress. Of course, you can do this with more than two heroes.
There are some other forms of buddy hero, with more heroes usually. In First Blood, I use two heroes to walk at full speed, and a third hero to carry slow troops for them, the two full speed hero head for two targets, by this way, I managed to reach last enemy on day 6. This can be used in other situations. Say, the primary heroe need to walk a long way, but the buddy heroe won't be able to catch up the primary hero all the way. Then you can start with 3 heroes, 2 of them walk at full speed, when the third hero can't catch up, he give troops to the second hero, which become a new buddy hero. This way, the primary hero can walk at full speed longer. Of course, you can use 4 or more heroes to do this. Basically, with more heroes, many more interesting things can be done, just use your imagination. This trick is useful in nearly every game.
Castles can be used as buddy hero. Everyone knows that while staying in castle overnight, one should leave slow troops in castle. However, with castles, many more things can be done, because you can hire new heroes in castles. When capturing castles, I always try to capture it with at least one move left, so that I can leave the door open, newly hired heroes can go out and continue the fight.
Everybody knows heroes can exchange troops and/or artifacts, but here I am talking about 5 or even more heroes form a pipe line. By such a pipeline, you can transport something from one end to the other end in one day, and transfer it all the way back in the next day. In many scenarios, you want to get some good stuff and bring it back. Then in the first day, send one hero for it, the next day, send another one after it. Send one more hero every the other day. This way, as soon as the first hero has arrived the target, you already have a transport line to where it is needed. In one day, you can send that back. You can also send out these heroes earlier, but you just to need to arrange their positions carefully. I always hired a lot of heroes in campaign games. Most times, I spent the money down to nearly 0 on the first day. In nearly every game, some sorts of hero pipes are used.
Following are some common senses rather than strategies, but people don't do these all the times. And I must admit, it is very difficult to stick to these rules strictly, but to achieve best result in a game, that's what you must do.
3.9.1 Only get the resource you really need.
In a game where you have detailed plan. You know how many gold and resources are needed before hand. So you can carefully plan which mines or resources to take. This is easy to say, but really difficult to do correctly. Resources are easier to plan cause the amount needed are easier to calculate. However, sometimes, you must decide whether to take a mine or several resources or find a combination of them. It can be very hard to find the optimal solution, I think it is a NP-hard problem :). Good understanding of the moving mechanism in HOMM2 and some calculation will help, but do a test will always be the best approach. Only by testing, you actually know, how many a resources contain, and what is in a fire. As to the treasures and gold, it is even more difficult to decide. If you know how many gold you will need, you can skip those useless ones. But this is usually not the case, anyway, gold is never a bad thing. But the baseline is this. In every plan, there are one or more heroes who are bottlenecks. Their time on the road will determine the whole time of the plan. You should plan these heroes' moves carefully. Don't use them to get resources which can be picked up by others.
Even in a game where you don't have a detailed plan. You should still keep this rule in mind. You don't need everything on the map to win. If you know the castle types on the map, you can always know what kinds of resources are most wanted. In the long run, mines are much better than resources. But if you need them right away, resources have advantages over mines.
This rule also applies to gazebos, stone standings, forts, mercenary's camps and artifacts. I never visit those places which temporarily increase luck or morale. Many artifacts are of little usage. Identify those useful artifacts and only get them. You must consider the time spent and the benefit got and decide whether it is worth it. Common sense and experience will do a pretty good job here. But you can push this to extreme and try to skip everything. In the campaign games, my criteria is this, for those bottleneck heroes who will have a tough battle in the future, visit these stuffs only when it will delay him by just one step. That is the situation where those things are right beside the route. Of course, a nomad boot or a true compass deserves more attention. And in a not so carefully planned game, the criteria can be lessened.
3.9.2 Dismiss troops whenever you have a good reason to do so.
Everybody will dismiss a troop to have its slot for a better one. You can also dismiss a troop to get an empty slot for tactic purpose. In the weaken yourself strategy, you dismiss some troops to entail enemy heroes to attack. However, there are cases where you dismiss troops for reasons other than these.
One of them is slow speed. However, you should only do this when you know that they are useless in the future. If possible, leave them in castles and/or towns, or give them to other heroes. But sometimes, everything else is impossible, then you must dismiss them without hesitation. I dismissed the orc chiefs at the very start of Greater Victory, sometimes even griffin and skeletons. In Country Lord, I dismissed the two group of ogres immediately after they joined me since I only need dragons to win.
Another reason to dismiss troops is morale consideration. When a hero has necromancy, some skeletons will come up after every fight if there is an empty slot. Sometimes, these skeletons have no usage except to decrease other troops' morale. That's when you want to dismiss them. You can also dismiss some troops to make the army contain fewer aligns of troops, but I never met a suitable situation to use this.
3.9.3 Carefully Plan Every Move (To be completed)
I got the following ideas through my observation, they may be wrong. A hero can move in 8 direction, one step to the corner takes more time than one step to the side, but less than 2 step to the side. Turning in one square doesn't seem to spend time. Picking up a resource spend the same time as you move into that square. Don't always use the path chosen by computer. Say, if you are going to pick up some treasure on the roadside. The computer will make your hero stop at the corner and pick it from there. If your hero is going to pass its side anyway. Go directly to its side and pick it up vertically, this way, you save about a half step.
I rarely build up spell guild and thus not good at using spells, that's why there is no discussion about adventure spells in the earlier version. However, I found that some spells can be critical in attaining the quickest win, for example, summon boat and dimension door. In many scenarios, the water is the only or the quickest way to get to enemy. However, you may not be able to build a ship quickly enough, say, you don't have castle near the water, not enough woods, or whatever. But there may already be a ship on the map, use summon boat to get it. There are at least two scenarios during Roland's campaign where this is essential for a quick win. In Defender, you need boat to reach barbarian enemy on the island to the south. In the last scenario, Final Justice, water is the quickest way to reach Archibald. Combine summon boat with scorceress's sailing skill, you can get a 9 days' win.
Everybody knows the power of dimension door in adventure. It is only that in our aggressive approach, there is usually no time to get dimension door before you win. However, this may not always be true. Tim devise a 8 days plan for the last fight in evil campaign by using dimension door. The point is that you can learn this spell in enemy's castle. When you reach Lakeside on day 6, it should already has a level 4 magic guild, just build one more level, you have a chance to get dimension door there. By casting 4 dimension doors, you can reach Archibald in 2 days from Lakeside.
Other adventure spells like town gate, town portal, may also be useful, but I haven't got a chance to find an useful case for them.
3.11.1 Hire heroes to wear out strong enemies. By Luming
I know each of you guys may already know that if we have to against a strong hero, we can send a lot of our heroes to do the suicide attack to waist his MP and army and after that we send our the strongest hero to kill him. In the "Who am I" story, I finished in 12 days(correct? Ninghui? I forget). I captured the last castle and had to killed the hero who is much stronger than my "Who am I" hero. Fortunally, I had more than 10000 gold and I bought 4 Warlock heroes to weaken him. (I always like to use the warlock hero to do the suicide attack. They have the most MP and they have the gargoyles to guarantee a round more they can stay alive and the shooter to absorb the attack.) and finally, I won.
Comment by me. Many people like to use dragon and amagedden to wear out or attack enemy, but actually, low level spells can also be very useful in many situations, especially in a quick game. Lighting bolts and Cold ray are the ones to be used in most cases, sometimes even magic arrow will work. Divide your troop into 5 group, usually you can last a few rounds to do enough damages. This made me think of other cases where Luming used wearing out enemy strategy, in The Gauntlet and Final Justice of Roland's campaign's final fights. In The Gauntlet, we want a win with least cost because the troop will be carried to final scenario. So Luming arranged another hero who carried the troops not to be carried over to attack first, this wear down enemy's troops and waste his spell points. It greatly decrease the cost of the final fight. Everybody knows what will face you in the final fight of the last scenario. With carried over forces of only 10 dragons, the fight is a nightmare. Again, Luming managed to get two boats, and send two sorceresses to Archibald, carrying all forces, the weaker one attack first.
3.11.2 Use surrender! By Jay Lou
In fact it was almost nine as the last enemy hero was just out of my reach. Even if I hire a new warlock hero I still can't reach him. Finally I figured out a way. My primary hero was finishing up the wizards and he had advanced logistics. I let him take only the faster troop (no orcs) and fought the wizard hero. Just before I was about to win I surrendered. Now I can rehire him in the knight castle and he was able to reach the knight hero. As for the wizard, any newly hired hero can beat him :)
This strategy is not only useful when playing your style of game, it's useful in a normal game as well. Imagine an enemy hero is sneaking up on your castle and your primary hero is way over on the other side, you can use this surrender and rehire trick. In fact you can use it again after you badly hurt the enemy hero, then your primary hero would magically appear in a frontier town and continue his/her quest. This makes the statesman's pen (whatever it's called) a very useful artifact. Using this trick an enemy hero or an enemy castle with a captain can be think of as a town portal that costs money :) And if you have lots of money it's even better than town portal since you get full movement and basic spell points when you rehire.
Comment by me. This basically enables to use one single force to fight at two far apart locations during one day. Hero suiciding is sometimes the quickest way to relocate hero, while this is a way to relocate an entire army. So you have many choices for hero suiciding, to retreat, to be defeated or to surrender, choose the best for different situation.
Tactic combat is a very interesting part of HOMM2. And like the strategic part of the game, it is easy to learn, well, not so easy to master. Sometimes, good tactics can turn a complete defeat into a great victory.
I always think the tactic combat as a war chess. Each fight is a unique chess configuration, some are simple to solve. But some are really tricky, there may be some exotic tactics to achieve the best result. To be a master, you need experience, imagination and calculation. Actually, I think that is true for every kind of chesses. But to play a chess, you first need to know the rules. Although they are the basics, nevertheless, they are essential, all other tactics are based on them.
The first thing you need to know is the combat sequence. You should be able to tell exactly who will move next during a combat. The rule is simple, the combat sequence is determined primarily by speed, slower troop can never move before a faster troop. If two troops of one side have same speed, the sequence is determined by their start positions, from top to down. In the beginning of the first round, attacker will move first if both sides' fastest troops have same speed. Then the algorithm try to move troops of two opponents alternatively whenever possible. By possible, I mean the speed requirement is not violated. That is to say, if both sides have a very fast troop, then whoever doesn't move at the end of the first round will get first attack the next round, same applies to every new round.
A troop being blinded or paralyzed will be passed, and once it is passed, it will not move during that round, although a further attack will invalidate the spell. So, you can attack a blinded enemy if you know his turn has been passed and the blind spell will go off the next round. Also, a spell's effect will diminish at the beginning of each turn if its time is up. For example, in a combat you blind enemy's fastest troop and get first attack every round. However, if the spell only last to the third round, then in the beginning of the fourth round, the spell goes off, and enemy will move first. So be careful, you may need do something when the spell is still in effect.
The second thing to know is how the damage is computed. Damage is based on the number of units in a stack, the damage they do, and their attack and defense ratings (modified by the hero's attack and defense skills). Each unit has a damage value (e.g. 3-5, 25-50). The damage being done is computed by an random number in this range (unless it is blessed or cursed) multiplied by the number of monsters in that stack. This valued is further modified by attacker's attack value compared against defender's defense value. A higher defense value will reduce damage by 5% per point of defense over attack. While if the attacker has the edge, he'll do 10% more damages per point of attack above defense. A good luck rainbow will double the damages being done. Shoot over castle walls has 50% penalty. In the most intense combats in HOMM, I would look at the bottom of the screen and tried to remember how many damages an enemy unit received to know how many hit points it still had. A nice improvement of HOMM2 is that you don't need to do this tedious work yourself, computer will do it for you. Do a computation or at least a estimation when needed, it will pay off.
There is an old saying in China: "Know yourself, know your enemy, you can win every battle.". I think the reason that to beat the computer AI is much easier than to beat real person partially due to the fact that you can predict what computer AI will do. Computer AI will always try to attack you shooters first, then flying units, then ground units. I am not sure whether flying units are definitely targeted before ground units, but they do have a much higher precedence than ground ones. Perhaps, they will only do this when they have shooters. In the same type of troops, computer will attack the most powerful one first. If two troops are the same, it will attack the one on the topmost (the initial position).
Most of the time, computer AI will move all ground units towards the target it selected. However, sometimes it will decide to protect its shooters. But if there are your troops within its range, it will definitely attack one of them. It will choose the target by the above rules. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage. For example, enemy has a stack of powerful ground units with average speed. Normally, it will reach you shooter in three rounds, However, you can use flying units to delay this. In the first round, the ground troop march towards your shooter, then in the second round, you can move a bird into its range but to the opposite direction of your shooters. Then it will go back and attack your bird, thus is further from the shooters. At the mean time, you can use shooters to kill it or damage it badly.
Computer AI will cast a spell whenever it has a chance to do so. So if you want to blind an enemy troop, wait after computer AI has the chance to move at least one of its troops. Otherwise it will be able to cast a counter spell on the blinded troop.
You can't do this in HOMM, it is new in HOMM2. IMHO, it is simply the most important tactic in HOMM2. It is amazing to see such a simple tactic has so tremendous usages. The simplest case is that you have a troop so powerful such that you want to split them to eliminate several enemy troops. However, its usage is much more than this. Let us see what you can do with this simple tactic.
Split weak shooters to attract more enemy attention. Say, you have 3 centaurs, they will die in one enemy shot, however, if you split them up into three group, they will attract three attacks. At the same time, your other troops can do more valuable stuff.
Split flying units such that they can tie up more shooters, since each unit can only tie up two shooters in HOMM2.
Split flying units to tie up enemy shooters for more rounds. Sometimes, you want to eliminate enemy's ground units first, but you don't want enemy shooters to shoot at you during this. However, your flying units is too weak to last more rounds, or you don't want them to suffer great loss. Then you can split flying units to have several groups each containing 1 unit. And flying them to tie up the shooters one per round.
Split troops to distribute damages on enemy troops more precisely. Split troops to eliminate several enemy troops is a special case of this. Sometimes, you can't and don't need to eliminate enemy troops by one attack, badly damaging them is enough. Split one troop enable you to damage two enemy troops per round. Sometimes, enemy has several groups of ground units, one shot at each group is not enough, and you don't have the time to shoot twice at everyone. Then you can split your shooters into two and shoot three times per group. This way, you can do 1 and a half damage as the old approach.
Split troops to diffuse damages received. Say, if you have 10 black dragons in 1 stack, 300 damages will kill one. However, if you split them into 5 groups, theoretically, you can absorb more than 1400 damages without a single dragon being killed. Of course, things are not that easy, enemies will always attack the strongest, topmost dragons when possible (This may not be always true, computer AI will try to kill one dragon if all groups contain same number of dragons), but you got the idea. The key point is to use those who are not enemy target to absorb the retaliation or tie up some shooters. Once in a fight, one of my hero have 10 black dragons to attack an enemy hero with titans, rocs, archmages, and so on. At first, they always kill one of my dragons, I tried several times, and figured out splitting to 1, 1, 8 will do the job.
Split troops to let some troops to absorb the retaliation. This is similar to the above one, I mentioned it separately because by this I mean the case where the troop to absorb retaliation only has a weak monster, thus it will die in retaliation. I remember an interesting combat I fought. That was in the beginning of Country Lord scenario, I got to defeat the enemy hero to the left of my hero. In that fight, the enemy hero had 8 cavalries and some rangers, my hero had 10 minotaurs, 30 gargoyles, and 50 centaurs. It was easy to beat him, but I wanted to win with minimal cost . The battle field had a long valley on the top of the screen, then I split 30 gargoyle into 1, 1, 28. The first gargoyle wasted cavalries' retaliation, then cavalry marched into the valley towards my centaurs, now another gargoyle blocked cavalries' back, and 28 gargoyles went beat the rangers, then minotaurs attacked cavalries in the front. The next round cavalries, found him surrounded, attacked the gargoyle on his back. In the beginning of the third round, enemy hero fled. I won with the loss of 3 gargoyles.
In castle defending, split troop to block the holes of the wall. I remember one castle defending very clearly. That's in the beginning of the last scenario Apocalypse, an enemy knight who with 5 champions and 10 rangers was near my Necromancer castle. That castle had buildings up to laboratory, but I wanted to defend it with only 2 liches together with the troops came with a Necromancer. It looked easy, but enemy would punch a hole on the wall the first time its catapult fired, and the garrison would not do much damage each round. So I split skeletons and zombies each into 2 group. During the first round, I blinded the champions and shooted at the rangers. At the same time, the skeletons and the zombies blocked the holes. From the third round on, the rangers were dead, I use everything on that champions. He could kill a blocker every round, but then I moved another one into the position. When the champions finally got to the liches, he only had 1 in his stack, thus could not do enough damages to kill even one lich. Actually, if I used skeletons only, the loss can be limited to a few skeletons.
In castle defending, split your troop to last more rounds. In the case where enemy is weak but you are even weaker, you might want to use the garrison to kill enemy. Sometimes, you can use a flying troop or a fast moving troop going around to achieve this. But there are many cases, where the enemy has shooters and/or flyers, or your troops are not fast enough. Then you might need to use this tactic, splitting your troop into 5 groups, enemy will need several rounds to kill them all, hopefully, the garrison can kill all enemies in this time.
Split your troops to change the combat sequence. Say, you want to fly your gargoyle to tie up enemy shooters, however, enemy has cavalries who will damage gargoyles greatly. Then you can split your gargoyles into 2 groups and skip the first one, now enemy cavalries will move and you can tie up enemy shooters with your second group of gargoyles. Another example, you have powerful ground troops and enemy have flying units. You know that the flying units will go after your shooters and you want to kill them with the ground units, but they have same speed and your ground troop will always move before enemy's flying units. What could you do? Split the ground troops or another faster troops to make enemy's birds move first.
I am pretty sure that there are many cases I havn't included. You can create your own. So, it is good to keep at least one empty slot when hanging around. This pays when a group of monsters decide to join you. Furthermore, it gives you the chance to split troops before a combat. In most case, you can come up with a splitting plan by simply checking enemy force. Of course, if you use L/S, you may have more chance to achieve best results. However, one situation where splitting can be bad is that enemy hero has spells like chain lightning, death ripple, etc. But in most case you only split out one single unit, so it will not hurt you much. And this tactic is most useful when using weak troops against powerful enemy, after all, who need tactics when having 10 black dragons against some peasants. If you are going to lose a fight with splitting, you are very probably to lose without it.
Some people think this is the most important tactic. I agree with them to some extent. However, I found casting spells have less varieties than splitting troops. Once the magic you hero know has been fixed, you have much less space for creativeness. But I must admit, spell is the thing which can turn a defeat into a victory.
Due to my aggressive approach, I seldom build level 2 magic guild in early phase. I prefer to learn spells in enemy's castle. And I focus primarily on level 1 and level 2 magic. It feels so good to see how a simple haste, bless, blood lust, slow, blind, cure, stoneskins/steelskins, disrupting rays can change the result of a combat. Haste is a very good spell, it can make your powerful ground troops move into battle position quicker as well as change combat sequence. Some people think slow is only useful when you don't have blind, I can't agree with this. Slow has advantages over blind. You can shoot up a slowed enemy when it painfully move towards you, while an attack on blinded enemy cancels the blind effect. Casting slow on flying units make them unable to move freely to every square on the screen, they must move like ground units with reduced speed (Anyone knows if this is true for phoenix?). Besides, slow can change combat sequence in a different way from blind do, which makes it useful in some cases. Another advantage slow has over blind is that you can't blind Necromancer's troops, while slow doesn't have that limitation. Casting protecting spells on shooters when attacking castle is always useful, you can also cast it on those units who will go into close fight soon. Before casting bless, always check the troop's damage range. Cast it on troop with 5-7 damages is not as good as cast it on one with 4-8 damages. I use cure mostly for its ability to regenerate HPs. Although it only does 5*spell power, it is sometimes essential to make sure your troops don't die. Disrupting ray is sometimes the key to win, I found this out in my second campaign's last fight against Roland. Roland had incredibly high skills, something like 10, 14, 9, 11. And he had 12 titans in his group. My Archibald had poor attack and defense skills, so although I had 18 black dragons I still lose the fight several times, I almost thought it was impossible to win that's when I thought about disrupting rays. So, next time, I cast disrupting rays on Titans every turn, each round their defense will decrease by 3, I won at last. Disrupting rays is most useful when you try to take out an strong enemy troop with all your troops attacking it. Here, disrupting ray is better than bloodlust or bless on a single attack unit. To decide whether to use bless, blood lust, or protecting spells on your own, or disrupting on enemy, you need experience as well as some computation. You want the best result with minimal spell points spent. As to 3rd level spells, mass haste is very useful. I seldom use level 4 or level 5 spells because when my hero learn those spells, it is usually the situation that I've already conquered more than half of the map and my hero doesn't need those spells to win. For attack spells, I always use lightning bolt and cold ray. Magic arrow is useful when you don't have the above two or when the enemies are so weak such that magic arrow is enough to take them out. Fireball and cold ring are useful when you can at least kill one enemy or ther can attack three or more enemies.
Another great usage for spell casting is to change the randomness during the fight. Sometimes, enemy has good luck to do double damage or high morale to attack twice or their genies cut your dragon troops in half. You don't want this, do you? But you load the saved game, fight again, then same thing happens, you try again, the same thing happen again. Did you ever have such experience? I had my own. I think the reason is that HOMM2 saves random seed along with the game, so if you fight the same way, exactly the same thing will happen again. What you need to do is to fight a slightly different way, say, some troops attack a different target, but sometimes, you do need to stick to your old combat plan. Now what you can do is to change spell casting. If you cast it when the first of troop moves, now wait a turn, cast it when your second troop move. Maybe cast a different spell will also do the job, but I am not sure about this, you can try it out yourself.
Yet another purpose to cast spell might be waste enemy's spell. Sometimes, enemy hero has spells like lightning bolt and cold ray. You don't want him to cast them. So you can cast, say a bless on your most powerful troop, a blind on enemy's troop, etc. Most of the time, computer AI will cast a counter spell. So the idea is if you want to waste enemy's spell, cast a spell before enemy. If you really want to, say, blind some enemy troop, cast it after enemy has the chance to cast.
There is a tricky usage of spell, which is due to Tim. In the last fight of evil campaign, Roland has mirror image which he want to use on his Titans. Tim don't want this to happen, he then casted a curse or something on Titans, Roland is not happy about this, thus cast anti-magic on Titans. You know the spell power Roland has, so too bad, he can't cast magic on Titans before the end of the fight. I don't know whether anti-magic will work against resurrect. If it is the case, then an easy win is possible even Roland has resurrect. Anyone know this?
Some people think that magic guild yields out magics completely randomly, I really don't think so. I believe that you can predict, at least to some extent, which spells will be available when you see the spells of the first level. I tried to do this in HOMM but with no luck. However, in HOMM2, the magic guild are classified as Warlock's, Wizard's, Scorceress's and Necromancer's. I believe that there are several models for each of these classes. Once you know which classes is a magic guild of and see the spells of the first level, you know which model it is and know what are the following spells. Maybe two models of a same classes share same level 1 spells, but at least you can predict to some extent. Of course, it is also possible the case where magics in each levels are independent to each others. Then no prediction can be made. Since I don't use high level spells much, I don't have enough saved games to do this research. Anyone interested in this can create a map which enable building magic builds to the fifth level at the beginning. Then he can play it many times and record the result.
Manipulate enemy moves.
Following are the detailed plans I used in my fourth Archibald's campaign. They are the best plans I know, and very possible the optimal ones. There have been major improvement over V0.8 for several scenarios. This part makes more sense if you've played Archibald's campaign before. You can print this guide down, sit down before your PC, start an Archibald's campaign, input 8675309 at the beginning of each scenario and read these plans before the map. This is the best way to read it.
There is a slight possibility that one day improvement can be made on Slay the Dwarves. I believe that's the only chance to improve this 64 days result.
Although this is the first scenario, it is arguably the most difficult one. Many people have done extensive research on this map. I spent 16 days during the last campaign journey, which already took me much time and thinking. However, while looking at the old plan now, I found that it was full of wrong decisions. Attacking on the trolls on day 1 of the second week, no attempt to get monsters joining me, no splitting troops to attack several enemies simultaneously. I felt that 16 days is the worst possible. Anyway, I guess one reason that this map is so difficult is that it is the first one. When we play it, we know less as we do when playing later scenarios, thus tend to make wrong plans. With wrong plans in head, we can't find the correct one later.
Okay, return to the map. You get Necromancer's castle automatically, no choice. I think this reflects HOMM2 designer's intent to introduce you to the new type of troops. Since if there is a choice, you might choose your favorite in HOMM, now it forces you to taste how a Necromancer feels.
Now, let's study the start configuration. The map is medium and only contains one continent. You start with one hero and one empty castle. Your are in the northwest part and are secluded from three enemies by several trolls. Start resources are in easy level, and there are decent resources near your castle. Three enemies represent three different good forces, they start with similar situation as you. There are routes leading to their castle, however they are all blocked by monsters, pretty strong monsters.
Now, let's make the plan. The first question is what's the theoretical lower-bound of this map. By measuring the distance from you castle to SE wizard castle, the answer is 6 days. Then the question is what will potentially prevent you from finishing in 6 days. Again, the answer is clear, the monsters who block the road. So we need to check out the monsters, basically, you need to defeat 4 or 5 group of monsters, depending on which road you take. Well, we have bad news here, these monsters are pretty strong, and it looks that we don't have any outer source of troops. However, keep in mind that we can always gather a troop of about 100 goblins, and a pack of orcs by hiring heroes. Still, this troop is not powerful enough to deal with some monsters, so we want a starting configuration where the blocking monsters are relatively weak. By restarting several times, you can get a map with lots of gargoyles on the road to NE Sorceress Castle, a pack of iron golems on road from NE Sorceress castle to SE Wizard castle, several liches on the west road to SW castle.
So, the theme of the plan is to hire a lot of heroes and use their initial troops to attack. Build only a 2 level magic guild, spend all money on heroes. We can form two army to attack simultaneously. Form army 1 on day 1 by hiring several barbarian heros and 1 warlock hero, use three heroes to carry all the initial troops from barbarian and warlock heroes in this troop. Move this troop all the way to the east. This army will take out both Sorceress and Wizard. It will defeat trolls on day 2, defeat gargoyles which block the road to Sorceress castle on day 3. Use buddy hero trick to make sure 2 of the 3 heroes in this army walk at full speed. Then on day 4, one hero walk into Sorceress castle, the other full-speed hero move directly towards Wizard castle. Hire some more barbarians in Sorceress castle, kill the Sorceress enemy hero. And prepare to send troop to the hero heading for Wizard castle. This hero can capture Wizard castle on day6, and enemy hero should be very near, just hire another hero to kill him.
We are left with Knight castle. On day 2, build level 2 magic guild, hire some Necromancers and one more Warlock. The skeletons and Warlock troops form the second army. Use a necromancer to head this army, with spells this army can take out Knight enemy. This army begin its journey on day 2, and kill liches on day 4, kill Knight hero and capture its castle on day 6. Basically, you need to hire a lot of heroes. So first be careful with the money, it should be enough. And there is a market near trolls, you can sell all resources there. All together, some 12 to 15 heroes are needed. This is over the 8 heroes limit, so some heroes need to suicide, find a group of monsters and attack. You can choose to retreat or to be defeated. Retreat you will get it back avaible to be hired immediately. If you don't want to hire it, let it be defeated.
Following are some details. Choose 2000 gold to start. On day 1, build a magic guild. Then hire one warlock and as many barbarians as possible (You may have to hire a necromancer to begin this process), and the barbarians must have orcs in their initial troops, Warlock must have gargoyles. Some of the hired hero walk around to pickup some near gold, when their work is done, they could retire.
It is easy to see that you can't reach Wizard castle in less than 6 days, so this is optimal.
The map is small, you are in the southeast part, and the three enemies are in three other corners. The roads to them are blocked by orcs. Enemies start with the usual empty castles and new heroes, but you already have 30 nomads in the home castle. It looks very easy, huh, you can just go beat the enemies with the nomads. I though it was easy until I found out that the enemy in northwest also had a pack of nomads in his army, he hired them in a desert camp. So we need to find something other than the nomads to win quickly. You already find it, don't you? Yes, the LAMPs, they lie to the east of the home castle, mhhh, the genies. So, here is the new plan. One hero goes southwest. Another hero goes north and beats northeast's hero then goes directly for northwest. Yet another hero captures northeast's castle.
Here are the details. Choose warlock castle, the crypt and magic guild are already built in the beginning. The magic guild should have magic arrow, if not, restart. Hire 2 warlocks and a barbarian on day 1, try several times you can achieve this, it is random which new hero will be available after you hire one. On day 1, build nest. Then hero 1 carries about 18 nomads, 4 griffins as well as all centaurs and heads for southwest. Hero 2 carries gargoyles and 12 nomads, he goes directly for the lamps. Hero 3 is a barbarian with only one gargoyle, he should sit at a place near the orcs blocking the north road, but still reachable by hero 2 on day 2. Yet a hero 4 should go get all treasures to the left of your castle. On day 2, hero 1 attacks orcs blocking the road then turns the treasure behind the orcs into gold. Hero 2 fights monsters guarding the lamps then get the genies and transports all genies and gargoyles to hero 3. Now, hero 3 goes north, kills northeast enemy's hero, then goes northwest. During day 3 and 4, hero 1 should conquer southwest. Hero 2 and 4 conquers northeast, remember, they still have nomads. Hero 3 should capture northwest's castle near the end of day 4. Then hire a new hero in this castle, give him/her all hero 3's troops and let him/her kill enemy's remaining hero.
To win in 4 days is the best possible result. You can't reach the northwest castle within 3 days.
Don't choose this scenario, choose the next one instead. This scenario is more time consuming and doesn't give you ogre alliance like scenario 4 does. I chose this one in my first two campaigns. The reason that I chose it in the first campaign is just because it is 3, not 4. The second time I checked both maps of the two scenario. Scenario 3 only had 4 castles while Slay the Dwarves had so many towns and castles. Considering the speed of dwarves, I decided to fight Scenario 3 again, besides, it was more familiar to me. In the third campaign, trying to get the best result, I decided to give Scenario 4 a try. Then I knew I'd made such a mistake in my first two campaigns. In Scenario Necromancer, you start with no castle while the enemy starts with several giants, it is simply impossible to win without at least two weeks' troops. Actually, I spent more than 3 weeks to finish it. However, in Scenario 4, you can get troops in dwarf cottages and start the fight right away.
The map of this scenario is quite complex. The home castle is located at the northeast corner. You already have three dwarf towns in the start, they are in the middle area of the east side, laid from north to south. Three heroes are under your command from the beginning. One sits in home castle, one near the dwarf town to the south. Another hero stays near an enemy town, he is surrounded by monsters and need someone else to rescue him out. Enemy also has 3 heroes from the start. Besides, it has 3 towns on the north side of the map and 1 castle together with 2 towns along the south side. All towns in this scenario only contain dwarf cottage and can not be upgraded to castle. You have 6 battle dwarves in each towns initially, but they are not enough for an immediate all-out assault. However, there are many dwarf cottages on the map, utilize some of them will ensure a quick win.
Choose Barbarian to start. You may already noticed, there are a compass near the NE enemy town, and a red boot near your home castle. The requirement I posted on starting configuration is that the compass and red boot must be given me free, that is no money needed, no wisdom or leadership required, no one guarding them (like a black dragon). The farthest enemy target is a castle and hero in the far west. Given red boot to a barbarian hero, he can get some dwarves in the middle of the map and reach enemy castle in 8 days.
The hero in the south enter the nearest town, hire battle dwarves, get a magic book, then try to attack enemy town in SW, there are two paths to it, find a feasible one. I had 5 orcs, 22 goblins, and 6 battle dwarves. It is possible to take out a pack of dwarves with small cost. Then enter two dwarf cottage and get more dwarves, capture enemy town and go all the way to west, and catch another enemy town.
The hero surrounded in the north can get compass on day 1, it was lots of goblins guarding it, which is easy to deal with. I gather almost all initial troops from heroes hired in home castle, and send a hero with this troop go directly west. He need to kill one blocking monster group before reaching the north hero. This troop will take everything out on the north, namely, 3 towns. The enemy hero in north died when she tried to attack group of blocking monsters.
I send several heroes to the middle of the map, the one with red boot will get dwarves from 2 cottage and go all the way west, he can reach enemy castle on day 8. Other heroes gather some troops and deal with enemy heroes who will appear around here.
The difficulty is on how to capture all enemy heroes, basically, you can somehow control enemy heroes' moves. They will move accordingly to your moves, whether to attack something or not, whether move one more step or stop. These will affect enemy heroes' moves, I don't know how, but I can test all possibilities by retrying. I will avoid enemy moving which can forbid me from winning in 8 days.
Even 8 days is not theoretical lowerboud. It is possible it is 7 days, you can reach enemy castle in 7 days. And there is even a small possibility to make it in 7 days.
By finishing scenario 4, you get dwarf bane and ogre alliance for all following scenarios, this means that all dwarves will run when facing you and all ogres and ogre lords will join you when you meet them. This makes this scenario extremely easy. The map is small, your castle is in the northeast. Three enemy castles are in three other corners, only the northwest one has a hero in it. You can reach any enemy castle in three days, and there are three groups of ogres near the routes to three castles. So the plan is simple, hire two more heroes, go get the ogres and conquer. However, there are two small problems. The first one is that some monsters are blocking the road to the southwest castle, and the ogres are beyond them. If the hero goes around the monsters, he can not reach enemy castles on time. What you need to do is to hire one more hero and let him get the ogres on day 2 then upgrade them and pass them to your attacking hero. Another problem is that the enemy hero may run when he sees your powerful ogre lord troops, then after your hero conquers enemy's castle on day 3, he can't reach him. Even the usual trick to hire a new hero in the newly conquered castle may not work because the enemy hero is so terrified that he runs to the northwest corner, the newly hired hero can reach his side, but doesn't have time left to attack. The way to deal with this is to dismiss several of your ogre lords, don't make your troops too fearsome. This trick can always be useful when you want to finish a scenario more quickly. If you can make enemy hero attack and then beat him, why spend the time chasing him. This trick is used mostly in castle defending, since you can win a castle defending with weaker troops. Use your tactic skills to beat computer AIs. However, there is only one thing you need to keep in mind when using this trick, don't weaken your troops so much that it is you who are beaten.
Anyone can see this is the best result one can get. No further improvement is possible.
This scenario is very interesting. There are swarms, zounds or even a legion of peasants everywhere. You don't know what a legion really means until you see one. To the east of the home castle, there are a legion of peasants guarding a whole lot of goodies, most people will go there to see if they can win the fight. Well, I did this in my first campaign, what I saw are 5 groups of peasants, each containing 800. I was really astonished at the sight. However, these peasants are good source of skeletons. If you fight most of peasants, you will get a LARGE legion of skeletons near the end. I got more than 5k in first campaign journey.
Okay, now forget the peasants and check out what's really important. The home castle is on the east coast, while three enemy castles are in the west, two in the north, one in the south. The paths to them are blocked by throngs of archers. You get two heroes. One of them is Corlagon, a level 5 knight with a bone dragon and 40 skeletons. And gargoyles and griffins are best against shooters. You did choose warlock castle, didn't you? Furthermore, there are several archer houses which can be used.
If you restart the game several times, you may notice that there may be a group of ogre lords in the middle of the map. Just to the northwest of those archers who block the road connecting two Knight's castle. That is the requirement on starting configuration.
On each road from home castle out, there are a few throngs of archers. However, you must know, this throng may not be the same as that one. On each road, the first throng contains 100 archers while the second one has 150 or 200. Corlagon's initial troop strengthened by some centaurs, gargoyles and/or griffins can kill 100 archers with small cost. However, an easy win against more archers is impossible without some archers from archer house or more skeletons through killing peasants. The important questions is that what's the best route to take out three enemies.
Started with Warlock castle. The best route is to attack north Knight castle first. Capture it in 4 days. Split your troop up, hire another hero to attack Wizard castle.
---------Following is an old 7 days plan, to be updated.---------
Started with Warlock castle. The route I took is the same as in my guide, namely, first go south to the middle, then go west to the road, then go south towards enemy castle. The first goal is to capture that Knight's castle in 4 days, and I want Corlagon has one more move after he capture the castle. This can be done by not wasting a single move of Corlagon. I hire 2 warlock heroes on day1, now I have three warlock heroes. Move Warlock 1, and Warlock 2 towards Corlagon with a single gargoyle, Warlock 1 ahead of Warlock 2. Warlock 3 sit in castle with gargoyles.
On day 2, I hire 3 griffins and 1 centaur in home castle, DON'T PICK UP ANY TREASURE NOW. Warlock 3 bring the troops to Warlock 2, then move Warlock 1 and 2 towards Corlagon, Warlock 2 bring troops to Corlagon. Then Corlagon kill 100 archers with cost of 3 griffins. Now, let Warlock 1, get all of Corlagon's average speed troops. This is important, if you use Corlagon to give troops to Warlock 1, you can't make the goal.
On day 3, move all heroes along the route. Make sure Warlock 2 be able to reach Corlagon in one day. On day 4, Warlock 1 give troop to Warlock 2, Warlock 2 then give troop to Corlagon. Enemy hero should sit on the road to enemy castle, defeat him and capture enemy castle, then Corlagon move to southeast for one step.
The second goal is to clear the road to the north on day 5. There are 200 archers there. That's REALLY difficult to beat, I almost felt desperate for a while, but finally, I figured out a way. That is, you must manage to get more skeletons. So, make Corlagon to go southeast, then north on day 5, along the road, Corlagon can kill 25-30 rangers and 500 peasants, which will give you 150 skeletons.
Still, you need the hero to attack have haste and high attack power. I got haste in enemy's knight castle. So I hire a barbarian, and move it one step southeast. (If you can't get it, use Necromancer instead.) The barbarian got all of Corlagon's troops except gargoyle. Now, hire another warlock, he got all of barbarian's troop except gargoyle. Then the barbarian went all the way north, the warlock left all troops in castle except 1 bone dragon. He went to the archer house to the northeast of this castle. That conclude day 4. On day 5, hire another Warlock, give all troops in castle to Corlagon. Then Corlagon go along the route described above until he can't move. The warlock heading for archer house kill rangers and get all of corlagon's troops, then get the archers, then head west and give archers, skeletons, and gargoyles, and bone dragon to barbarian. Barbarian attack 200 archers with one bone dragon, 240+ skeletons divided into 2 groups, 3 gargoyles, 12 archers. I managed to kill those archers with cost of all gargoyles and archers, 20+ skeletons. After defeating archers, the barbarian move northeast to empty the road.
Now, everything is easy. Warlock 1,2,3 go northwest, Use usual buddy hero technique, this army can reach northwest castle in 7 days. Just be careful, preserve Warlock 1 and 2's moves whenever possible, use warlock 3 and barbarian's moves. The troops of this army contains ogre lords, one bone dragon and 180 skeletons from barbarian. The remaining heroes go northeast. Just make sure Corlagon can reach the 500 peasants above the archers killed on day 7. With centaurs and orcs from barbarian's initial troop, this will give you another 150 skeletons. Transfer these troops all the way north to barbarian, who should be very near to both enemy hero and castle now. The remaining fight should be easy.
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You can choose not to fight this scenario and go directly to scenario 8. However, DO NOT do this. This scenario will prove to be the most awarding one you can fight. It will give you dragon alliance in the following three scenarios, what a deal! You can't get it anywhere else. The key to win fast is ogre alliance. However, during my second campaign journey, I didn't have ogre alliance, caused by the wrong decision to fight scenario 3 instead of 4. In that time, I came up with a sneaking enemy castle up plan, which led to success in about 3 weeks. That is pretty fun too. I will present both the ogre plan and the sneak attack plan in the following.
First, as we always do, analyze the start configuration. You start with a reasonable powerful troop, hard level resources and practically nothing in home castle. Your home castle is on the east coast. The objective of this scenario is to capture the dragon city located deep in the desert which lies in the far west inland, what a long way to go. You do have two enemies of warlock castle, well, they are armed to teeth. If you build thieves' guild, you may notice that there are a few green dragons sit in their castle right when they start, and a pack of minotaur kings make their already formidable armies even more powerful. I don't know exactly what their castles have in the beginning, but I do know that when I sneaked in both enemies' castles on day 1 of the second week, they had all buildings up to upgrade maze and swarm.
You may have already noticed that there are several groups of ogres, each labeled a pack of or lots of, 2 groups in the middle of the map, 3 more in the north, 2 others near your castle, and more elsewhere. That's what you can depend on. However, you must know that you don't need all of them to win. With over 70 ogre lords, you can capture dragon city. So you only need to gather 3 other groups of ogres, togethered with 18 coming with your hero, that will be enough. Take the middle 2 group and the nearest one from home castle. There is a Hill Ford near the 2 groups of ogres in the middle, where ogres can be upgraded. And forget about your enemies, just focus on how to get your primary hero to dragon city as soon as possible. The shortest path begin just to the north of the ogres in the middle. Take the west path, after hitting the road, go directly west to enter the desert. In the desert, take the north route to dragon city.
Here are the details. Choose barbarian to start. You will get some ogres in the start and a barbarian primary hero, which is best for moving in desert and fighting dragons. Your primary hero is already level 5. Different barbarian heroes will have different secondary skills on level 5, restart until you find one with expert pathfinding and advanced logistics. Of course, expert logistics would be better, but I can't find such a hero.
On day 1, move primary hero 2 steps out of castle, hire a barbarian and a warlock. Give each hero a gargoyle and leave all other troops in castle. Move primary hero and hero2 (buddy hero) west, the remaining hero3 go northeast to get ogres there. On day 2, hero3 get the ogres and treasure there then head back. Hire hero4, gather up all troops and give them to hero2. Primary hero get one group of ogres in the middle and give them to his buddy. The buddy hero get the other group of ogres there and upgrade them. Primary hero then go north by the west route, stop just one step away from attacking the monsters blocking the road. On day 3, hero2 give all troops to primary hero. From then on, the primary hero go by himself. He should reach dragon city on his last move of day 7, assuming not wasting any moves enroute.
Okay, what if you don't have ogre alliance? Then the job is much more painful. I met this situation during my second campaign. Unable to come up a good plan, I played with the map all open, ended every turn doing nothing and looked at the enemy to see what they were going to do. Soon, I found out their weak point. Yes, their armies were strong, but their heroes went around with powerful troops and were busy with mines and resources. At the end of the first week, they would be away from their castle and not able to go back in one day. The troops they left defending their castle are rather weak. I guessed they wanted to hire a new hero on day 1 of the next week so their primary hero needed not to go home. But I would not give them the chance to do that. Here I got my plan for the first week -- sneak in their castles on day 1 of the second week. So, I start with a warlock castle to make it easier to merge troops, and carefully planted two heroes 2 days' distance from enemy castle and outside enemies' sight. On day 6, these heroes go all the way towards enemy castle. Enemy hero is too far to stop me. I got both castles on day 7.
Then I buy up all troops in south castle and left that castle to enemy. With all my troops combined, I managed to eliminish one enemy. The next week, I sneak up remaining enemy's castle again, they just don't learn. This time, I defend the castle and get rid of this enemy. I also build up a dragon tower in north castle in week 2. Then I planted a heroes pipeline to the desert. On day 1 of the fourth week, I have 7 dragons, which is enough to capture dragon city. This plan is far from perfect, but it is pretty fun while carrying out. I believe, by optimizing it, win in 20 days can definitely be made.
You start with a hero with decent troops in the south and no castle. Enemies has a castle and two towns in the north to start, all of them are of knight type. There are many treasures and gold to the left of your hero, but an enemy hero is inside it. However, with the capture of dragon city in last scenario, you have dragon alliance now. There are five groups of dragons on the map. Two groups of green dragon are in the west, two groups of red dragons in the middle and one group of black dragons.
Choose basic logistics. Ignore enemy hero in the west at first. Capture nearest castle in 3 days. Hire two heros, one go northwest, one go north. Both walk at full speed. Main hero follow the hero to north. Northwest hero get ogres and dismiss them, go for the north group of green dragons, ignore the south one. He can capture westmost enemy castle on day 9, then send two more heros out from this castle. One aim at middle enemy castle, the other prepare to kill enemy hero in the island. The two heroes go north, dismiss ogres joining them, gather two red dragons, take out the town enemy will capture and go for eastmost enemy castle, kill all enemy heroes along the road. You also need to hire another hero in home castle on day 5, and use it to kill southwest enemy hero. The north route, go through ogres and dwarves, is due to Tim, he used that in his 83 days campaign, that saved about one day.
It is very tough to carry out this plan within 10 days.
You start by one town and one hero, Corlagon, a level 5 hero with powerful troops. Corlagon has a nomad boot, you also got a chance to choose another artifact for him, I always choose dragon sword. Corlagon is at the southwest corner, the objective of this scenario is to gather enough troops and capture the town in the northeast island. To reach it, you need to capture the Warlock town on the shore. There are three routes to that town, all of them are very long. The troops led by Corlagon at the end of this scenario will be carried over to the final confrontation.
To finish it the quickest way, dragon alliance is the key. So, you need to get some dragons on the map. There are 6 places on the map where dragon may appear. Two on each route, one on the end of the route, one in middle. The ones in middle of Barbarian and Necromancer routes are not on the main route, too many extra moves are required to get them. Thus, the best configuarion is that dragons appear at the other four places . Two groups of several dragons are enough, although the more the better.
Then you need to choose one route, preferably guarded by dragons, because then you don't need to fight out, and dragons can be used to capture Warlock town. The goal is to capture Warlock town on day 9, and move at least one step from the town gate. Still, you need resources to upgrade town into castle on day 9, and build shipyard and a ship on day 10. That's 50 woods, 20 ores. Careful plan every move and only pick up resources absolutely necessary. I would suggest a test on every resource along the route at first. After capturing the town, upgrade it to castle, hire 2 or 3 heroes to get other dragons you need. Then you can win in 12 days.
Tim first did this scenario in 8 days. Following is excerpt from his campaign plan. The basic theme is to make Archibald reach Lakeside on day 6, that is the wizard castle closest to the entrance of the small maze to Roland's castle. Then build a level 5 magic guild, and hope to get dimension door, then with 4 dimension doors, you can reach Roland on day 8. Pray that Roland don't have resurrect(true) or summon elements, you can win. The details may not be exactly the same, as long as you can achieve above goal.
----------Following part is by Tim Maxwell-------------------------
TM - I chose not to use the Barbarian Hero but Archibald to defeat Roland. First with the Warlock hero, I dropped all but 1 Centaur for max. movement, to get as much gold as was near him, then headed west to get resources. This is important! The Necromancer got the gold near it, then went to the castle. Bought 1 Bone Dragon, 2 Lich, 3 Vampire, kept my original skeletons, zombies. Spells I had were slow, which was the only one you needed. Slowed Rangers, attacked Champions with Bone Dragon through first castle wall opening. Flew Vampires over to Rangers, Liches nailed read end of Champions, careful not to hit Bone Dragons too. This fight was over quick. The Barbarian, got his gold, went to the castle, bought everything he could. I then EMPTIED Archibald of everything except the 13 Black Dragons. I had a feeling this is all I'd need. Run Archibald North along the road. End of Day 1.
Hero attacked my Necromancer, I won. Other hero ran around near Barbarian. Bought more troops for Barbarian, upgraded Orcs then attacked enemy hero. Got out of it any way I could. Then had Barbarian head for wood near the northwest of his castle. Warlock continued getting mines, campfires and resources and headed towards three piles of gold. Necromancer left everything but 1 skeleton, went to get wood, woodshed, mercury mine and prepared to turn north. This is very important! Archibald runs north, with increased movement since the dropping of troops. Grab any gold box for experience! End of Day 2
Day 3, Barbarian get/got wood, headed for mercury mine and windmill east of him. Necromancer got mercury mine and heads north grabbing chest boxes for gold and what lies up the path!
Warlock hero continues getting gold and heads for pile of sulfur near sulfur mine. He then prepares to run north. Archibald continues north and then turns east, running along the road all the while grabbing exp for those dearly needed next two levels! Very important too! End of Day 3.
Day 4, Barbarian should have wood and near mercury mine or windmill, go for whatever you need. Warlock will be there shortly so doesn't matter much. Necromancer should not run past Trading Post, since he will be trading resources so you have10 each! Archibald should run past the walk-in Wizard castle since it only has a level 2-spell guild. After going east alittle more then north following the road, the Wizard castle up there has a level 4 guild we're more interested in!
Day 5, if Archibald happens to have some massive number like 60 or 70 spell points available, you may want to consider filling up at one of the wells along the way to attack the Wizard castle on Day 6. You'll be full on points and ready to move on once the castle has been obtained. By now your other two collecting heroes should have found all they could. The necromancer should be waiting at the trading post so we can upgrade the castle we'll capture on day 6 to a level 5 Mage guild! End of Day 5!
Day 6, Archibald attacks Wizard Castle with level 4-spell guild. It may be defended, it may not. In my game I had 13 Black Dragons from the Dragon Alliance in the previous map. They can handle anything waiting at the Wizard Castle. Get the Castle; use the Necromancer to even out your resources to 10 apiece cept for wood and ore, of which you only need 5. By this time you should have amassed 20K or more in Gold, and really be able to upgrade that mage guild! Hopefully after Archibald attacked the castle, he got two levels and one of the secondary skills available was Expert Wisdom for those really fun level 5 spells. Was one of your spells Dimension Door like mine was? I finished out my turn at the castle with 40% of my movement still to be used. I needed to recharge my spell points by waiting since I had only 40 points before the battle, but now had 50 and needed the full 50 points for 5 Dimension Door spells directly to Roland's front yard!
Day 7, Archibald immediately Dimension Doored up North, found a spot that I could Door to in the northwest corner of the screen, went there, Doored again as far north as I could then ran out the turn, saving two Door spells for the next turn. Other heroes don't matter at this point. May want to pull back Necromancer in order to avoid having it attacked from the north.
Day 8! It's fighting time! Move Archibald three or four spaces to the north, then Dimension Door either directly east or west of the teleporter. Split your 13 Titans into either 7/6 or 5/4/4 combinations for effective damage against the Titans. Should be one space to move after killing titans to enter the teleporter. May have enough movement left to attack Roland on your own and have 11 spell points for fun in the final battle.
In my battle, it was 13 of my Black Dragons and 1 Titan I bought at the Wizard's Castle I got the Dimension Door spell -vs- only 5 Titans, 3 Rocs, 2 Mages, 4 Iron Golems, 8 Boars, maybe?
The defending troop numbers jump bigtime after Day 9, like 5 Titans to 9!, so you better get there on Day 8 or else! Now, if it happens that Roland has Mirror Image or True Resurrect for his spells, you're probably doomed. Even all of your starting Day 1 troops cannot handle Roland creating a Mirror of 5 Titans if that castle wall in front of the Titans isn't broken.
In my game, I figured out a way around the Mirror Image problem. I split my Dragons into 9/4 and put the Titan in the last spot of the army. When I attacked, I immediately 'Cursed' his Titans, which he didn't like, because he'll cast Anti-Magic on them by the start of his second attack. Which, if he has Mirror Image, he will not be able to cast that on his Titans, only his other little troop stacks. Pretty slick eh? Shame that spell will last 10+ combat rounds too due to his 'free' exp from the map author. I finished off the fight losing the Titan to the Rocs and castle missiles while losing only 3 of the Dragons in the group of 9, none in the group of 4. It really helped when the Castle wall broke in front of the Titans, that way I got both groups of Dragons on these guys.
-----------------End of part by Tim Maxwell-------------------------
89 days is not an optimal result, however, all except the first scenario are nearly optimal, only a couple of days' improvement is possible for a few maps. The improvement on map 1, although may be big improvement, is also very difficult to achieve. 30 days are spended in The Gauntlet, to get a troop with 10 black dragons. I felt that this is the minimal force you need to take out Archibald in Final Justice, and gathering troops in this map is the best approach, then 29days are optimal. However, this may be wrong, anyone know a better approach?
The basic idea to win Pyramid quickly is to capture Warlock eastmost castle before day 1 of the second week, it will be lightly defended, if defended at all. Then there will be black dragons waiting for you to hire. After that, everything is easy.
However, to achive this is not easy, you have to deal with the other two enemies during first week. Basically, I hire lots of barbarian heroes and use their initial troops to attack. I didn't build a single building in any castle. Totally, I hired a few warlock and 8-10 barbarians, of course some barbarians suicide (attack monsters and retreat) so that I can hire him again.
I improved my previous result 10 days by help from Arkady Zilberberg. He told me that the oasis can be used to recharge move points, so that hero 1 can reach gold mine on day 1. This speeds up the initial process so that I can reach eastmost warlock castle on day 7, thus gain one day. Still I don't know whether 9 days is the lower-bound. I can't see anything which clearly prevent a 8 days' win, also I can't see a clear way to do this in 8 days.
Choose barbarian to start, the requirements on staring configuration are following:
There are several configurations which can fulfill these conditions.
During the first 5 days or so, hire a barbarian hero whenever you have money, always try to hire a barbarian who has some orcs, 4 or 5 is prefered, and always hire them in the frontier castle.
To carry out this plan, you have to fight every fight carefully, especially in the early phase, avoid any cost whenever possible. I can't remember very special tactics used here, but definitely you must have good tactic skills.