Heroes 3 Strategy: Town tier list

Heroes 3 is unbalanced as hell

Does a horse go Clip Clope or Clip Clop?

The fact that Inferno is so underpowered makes the wins so much more satisfying for me. But I do wish they'd buff them a little more.

What is a picket?

What is JC?

Hey you were suppose to make some self development videos like you said I cant find them!

my favourite town, ever since I started playing the basic version of HOMM3 is Castle. I think Fortress and stronghold are my least favourite. I know Inferno is the weakest by far, but it's way more fun to play than those 2. After buying Armageddon's blade back in 2000, I can't say I've played Conflux alot. in Heroes of Might & magic 2, warlock was my favourite class to play, because it got black dragons. Wizard did get titans which were the second strongest unit. HOMM2 has classes instead of the towns being called something.
I did install Horn of the Abyss, but I can't say I've played that version much. I prefer the original. I know they nerfed Necropolis in HotA.
Adela is a good castle hero right? she starts with diplomacy.

After playing WoG the regular HOMM3 just feels lacking. When everything is OP nothing is op, except necro. Tactics and first aid seems pretty busted, and you can achieve some wild zergs to fight other zergs

Stronghold is the best town. You can't lose with town theme that majestic.

Hi! Just arrived and subscribed to your channel, I'm French.
What is the cove exactly? I did not remember thus town... How can we play this? Is this an unofficial Russian mode or something like that? I remember that some years ago I've downloaded something in Russian language, but I do not remember how I found that. Sincerly,
Kad

its funny i play cove all the time and i can beat AI 98% of the time... other towns i struggle badly..

1 - Necropolis
2 - Conflux (Elemental)
3 - Castle (Humans)
4 - Tower (Mages/Magical Creatures)
5 - Dungeon (Underground/Mythical)
6 - Rampart (Nature/Elf/Dwarf)
7 - Fortress (Swamp Creatures/Gnolls/Lizards)
8 - Stronghold (Orcs/Ogres/Cyclopes)
9 - Inferno (Demons)
10 - Cove (Pirates)

This is my ranking based on a consensus from multiple good sources and from 20+ years of experience with the game.
Having no lv4 and 5 magic guild on Fortress is a considerable drawback sometimes, so much that I find it basically on the same ranking as Stronghold.
I personally really like Dungeon and Inferno.

Necro is the Cheat Town. Unstoppable.

Stronghold are very good town with cheap army and great growth with super offence heroes , If I want cheap buildings and get stronger very fast this is the right castle (Watch out for mage heroes) , I saw that most its missions in story got upgraded as fast as you can and do money or attacking in time limit .
Inferno for me is stronger than castle by himself: I would say the two has nearly same towns (Not strategical , power or mage towns) they are in center and his some own specials , but Inferno mostly spawn in underworld (just enough thats its good strategy for another good town there) its in lava terrain, even so when you find multiple Inferno towns you will control the underground with gates , for me its solid town and sometimes I got afraid of it more than castle in most times (wothout sultan with Armagedon) .
See that everyone else have different idea , still I'm afraid of this town .

Mine, but I play offline.
Castle-Like the theme, like the units(except halberd) and overall a great town. Only flaws are crossbowmen and crusaders are slow, but overall great! A+.
Heroes: Valeska, Loynis, Clerics.

Conflux: Best mage town for me, as the Spell school rocks! Overall great group. A+
Heroes: Any are good, they all have a use.


Stronghold:
Quick Rocs/Thunderbirds. Wish the Cyclops weren’t gated behind orcs and Ogres, but.. B+
Heroes: Battle Mage all the way, and Shiva.

Are the other castles from an expansion?

Man, good content but you talk too much and say little.

One thing i dont get: You claim Nekro's units arent that good, but then say Liches are good, Knights are good, Skeletons are decent, Wraiths are ok; only Zombies are slow/weak and Ghost Dragons. And the latter can age stuff and are fast...

Edit out all the throat clearing next time, please.

Ghost Dragon is very weak but 1 stack Age gamble can seriously pay off - with Ageing attack being possibly one of the most powerful debuffs in the game.
It's not as powerful against weaker units with a lot less health (it is still quite powerful, almost halving the damage needed to destroy the whole stack) - but it's very strong against high HP, sturdy, units.

Just from an offline perspective I think that some towns are actually superior. Most of you guys propably only play the large maps but on the small maps towns like Rampart are actually very good because they have very good early units.

Hello, why is Cove town down? Haspids are best 7lvl monster in game. And have 2 archers and sea witches are best archer in game vith magick speels. Your conclussion is not correct. Conflux is not good town. Only phoenix are good with her speed at game, all other units is to weak.

I always go for Armageddon und the spicy bois and golden/black dragons. I often reach the point of dealing almost 4.000 damage with armageddon.

Anyone know where I can get the expansion?

A few thoughts (not that any of them matter really, see shortly afterwards as to why) on your rankings. You said up front, and thanks for that, that your main focus is the performance of each town in JC template games under HotA, my thoughts are for more "generic" games, perhaps longer games, campaign scenarios and stuff like that, you know, Heroes 3 stuff! So, JC/HotA aficionados can safely disregard my post completely.

Necropolis IS the king of the endgame, if you let it. Their ability to amass skeletons (and Power Liches in So D, with that darned Cloak!) is truly overbearing but you CAN hold them off by using a combo of high attack, high battle speed units AND good numbers of effective shooters (with a sprinkling of Expert Earth to Mass Slow their bony behinds while you shoot them to...death? Undeath? I'm confused here.)

Dungeon IS the most well rounded town in any game. It has THREE flyers, one of them invulnerable to magic, one a really good hitter that paralyzes you and one that hits like a boomerang with no retaliation! TWO shooters, one suffering no mellee penalty and the other able to stone your a$$. TWO ground units, one that is one of the best hitters out there, always with at least +1 morale (Minotaurs/Kings) and the other....kinda of "meh" but it is a level 1 unit so what did you expect? Dragons?? 😋

Castle is higher in my book, for a variety of reasons. Early game Marksmen can make or break you, unlimited retaliation from Royal Griffins (yes, they only have 25 HP, kinda standard for lvl 3, but they generate in good numbers), ressurection by your Archangels (plus, you go first in ALL battles except Phoenixes and Azure Dragons). Castle also has some decent heroes, Valeska as you mentioned, rules early on, and so does Adela, if you can get her (level her twice, get Expert Diplomacy, some money flow and you can hire half the map on week 1!), Christian and his Ballista can do wonders early on, especially if you land Artillery in his first level up, Edric, Whatshisname with the Monk specialty and Tyris rock their respective creatures with their specialties so you want to make armies for them that are ONLY their specialty creatures (I know, it is hard to have many Cavalries/Champions for Tyris on week 1 but we can dream, right?). Adelaide and Loynis with their Water Magic dependent spell specialties (I know, Water Magic is a pariah in JC, I am discussing H3 now and I maintain that it has its uses and they are many. You want Mass Bless? Mass Weakness? Mass Forgetfulness? Mass Prayer? Clone your Archangels? Teleport over walls? Get Earth....sorry, Water Magic to expert!).

Rampart also has a "hidden" use in longer games (generally, "longer"=anything that sees week 3) and it is being your BANK! 10% for cash on hand on day 7 for each Treasury?? Yes please! You mean, if I roll 3 Ramparts by the end of month 1 (easy there fellas, again, it is NOT JC!!) I get 30% MORE MONEY on the start of next week, EVERY week?? YES, PLEASE!! Plus, Kyrre STILL rocks the roads in my games, nobody nerfed her!😉

For the others I don't have much to say, even though you were talking about a different game (see postscript) you said, more or less, what I would say about them (not about Cove, never saw it, never wanted to see it).

P.S. Having a game like Heroes 3, with its campaigns, expansions, stand alone maps AND PvP templates (which are not solely for PvP but are mainly used for it, no?) and focusing on an unofficial expansion and, more than that, ONE specific template is kinda like having 100 fingers and using only ONE to type! Or, perhaps more aptly, having 100 fonts to choose from and always using Ink Free.

Low key wish you went with worst first, because after I saw Necro & Conflux, I kinda sat there feeling like I knew the most relevant info, and skimmed the rest.

how do you clear a dragon cave for the portal of summoning on day 1 or 2? with only a few trogs? is there a trick?

I thought a big part of Horn of the Abyss was buffing Inferno in a bunch of ways. They're still the worst even after that? Can't they just... keep buffing them some more, then?

Where can I buy homm3?

Inferno is the best town

What do comments like 1 2 1. 1 1 7 1 2 3 etc. Mean I'm kinda new.

One thing you overlooked about rampart is the fact that Jazel exists. Given how common interference artis are her specialty makes a colossal threat to any hero especially magic ones. Your Solmyr has 40 spell power? Nah, more like 7. It's not to be underestimated

Good video. A few disagreements and 2 major mistakes. The first big one is the Luna comment. Yes, she is OP, but she is never the only or the biggest reason why Conflux is strong. Conflux without Luna beats ANY other town in any map, EXCEPT Necropolis on a larger map. Those two belong in the OP category together.

You also underestimated Castle, Stronghold, and especially Rampart. Having Fortress and Tower above Rampart is the second major mistake.

IMO this would be the tier list with no specific order inside the tiers:
OP - Necropolis, Conflux.
A - Castle, Dungeon, Rampart.
B - Tower, Fortress, Stronghold.
C - Inferno.

Hey dude what does 121, biome and "pay for" mean? Are there a coin flip in PvP btween two factions?
Thanks!

I didn't play homm3 for over 15 years and recently started watching competitive games on yt to see how it works now. I'm confused why you put necro so high, I saw other players/streamers pay to play dungeon, conflux or castle over it...

Dungeon seems really overpowered on these very fast maps where you can get a t7 dwelling right off the bat and tomes/spellbinder's are easy to get as well. Fortress also seems insane if the majority of your army will be wyvern.

edit: so sad to see Inferno fall so low. In SoD it used to be the only town to rival Necro (which was usually banned in pvp) and Conflux due to demon farming.

Necro is nerfed in tournament mode. Does that impact?

For Jebus, this is a solid list. I think Castle and Dungeon are tied at S, but everything else made sense. Outside of Jebus, I think Cove is on par with Conflux. The speed, specials and hero specials make Cove a nightmare to deal with. Cove hero with Resistance is super cheap.

I don't play or watch conpetative jc, but I really enjoy your videos.
Can you make a video about the pvp combat of jc?

Alex_The_Magician i rly like your guid :) you help me a lot so thanks for your work :) keep it going ! is cove so week tho O_O?

I'm glad I have some validation with Necro and Conflux. I keep arguing with a friend that Necro and Conflux has weaker units overall. That it will depend on the hero to make it work.

I waited so much, thnx a lot!