The problem with the Rampart (the forest/elven city) was that their units were so darn expensive. Nothing beats a Gold Dragon though, but that's one of two units worth having in your army -- Silver Pegasi and Centaur (upgrades) weren't up there when it came to a decent punch, and Dendroid Soldiers and Battle Dwarves were just too darn slow (even if you used Haste). The only other unit I always liked was the High Elves, who shot two times (just like Marksmen from the Castle-cities) and had a decent punch.

Well, they had a bunch of expansion packs if I'm not mistaken. I saw one with undead on the cover.. I suppose that was just a new campaign, with mayhaps one or two new units and some new items.

Armageddon's Blade added a new campaign, some new items, and a bunch of new units, such as the Troll (slow-moving hard hitter), the Boar (imagine wolfriders, but now goblins riding boars -- more comical relief than actually a good unit), Halflings (possibly the weakest level 1 unit, their luck bonus not outweighing their extremely low attack power; pelting rocks has never been more dull), and the Rogues. The fun with Rogues was, that when they were present in your hero's army, you could see what your opponent had stalled in his town ("Zounds of hellhounds" or just "several lizardmen"), and you could check out the disposition of the critters that stood in the wild. That way - with enough Diplomacy - you could check out if creatures were willing to join you, pretty neat if you find an army of 46 Ghost Dragons willing to join!!

One thing the expansion pack also added is four new dragons (in order or strength (weak - strong): Faerie Dragon, Crystal Dragon, Rust Dragon and the godfather of all dragons: the Azure Dragon). It also added a new town: Conflux, in which you could build the Elementals (Air [Storm], Water [Ice], Fire [Energy], Earth [Magma], Psychic [Magic]). The other two units were Pixies [Sprites] at level 1 and Firebirds [Phoenixes] at level 7. The animations of especially the energy elementals were pretty cool, maybe you can find them online [img]smile.gif[/img]

hmm that explains many of the new creatures from HoMM 4, which I do like, just not as much as HoMM3

Well, I used to lurk around a bit at the HeroesCommunity forum and from the gossip and beta-tester reports I got following impressions:

1. Gameplay-wise it is going to be very similar to Heroes 3. It seems like Ubisoft thought that the Heroes4 experiment was a minor failure and the Heroes3 formula is a golden one that is better not messed with.

2. While a lot of the visuals are pretty and full of character (I especially like the undead town screens) I think they are borrowing a bit too much from Warhammer Fantasy Battle miniatures for their own good. I mean, if you play (or know some friends who play Warhammer) then take a look at the Rampart faction troops and comparet them to a Warhammer Wood Elf army. The similarity is very very striking. Even the Dendroid looks like an electronic copy of the Wood Elf treant figure.

The Dungeon faction rips off the Warhammer Dark Elves in a similar faction, even down to the reptile riders and the witch elves.

The undead faction is less blatant, but I still think the vampire and zombies have taken some cues from their Warhammer equivalent.

Hmm...centaurs in HOMM3 weren't up to par? In my opinion, and the manual agrees with me on this, they were both the strongest and the fastest of the level 1 troops. Only Halberdiers compare. Yet, it was always difficut to build an incredible rampart army.

I'm partial towards the Castle just because it was well balanced, with 2 flying creatures, 2 archers, and a very good level 4 creatures. Yet it was the necromancer I had the most success with. Grab Thant as your hero (animate dead) and with a good necromancy skill you can easily form two stacks of 1300+ skeletons in each. And vampire lords are just scary [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 02-16-2006, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: dregnus ]

Vampire Lords rule if you have a large enough army of them. They aren't that strong, however, so the only edge they have is them draining life and resurrecting.

I always had the most success with Castle builds, simply the easiest to get things started. Debatably the hardest is Dungeon; the creatures are really expensive and the dwellings cost a lot too. Especially going from Red to Black Dragons costs you a fortune -- I'm forgetting the upgraded Behemoth Lair for the sake of my story ;)

Yeah I know I loved that. If you mastered Necromancy you were set in the game early on. Massive massive armies. I didn't even really need to build up higher level units. As long as I had hordes of skeletons and my vampires, I dominated. [img]smile.gif[/img]