Ranking the Best Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Towns! Faction TIER LIST

[@Norovo]

Useful links: ⭐ Fheroes2 Explained (Overview): kzbin.info/www/bejne/eaCmanR7aJmpgM0 ⭐ Buy Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Gold Edition at GOG*: af.gog.com/en/game/heroes_of_might_and_magic_2_gold_edition?as=1673737379 *This affiliate link supports the channel at no cost to you. You need official Heroes 2 game files to properly install Fheroes2. ⭐ Fheroes2 Project homepage: github.com/ihhub/fheroes2 ⭐ Fheroes2 Download page: github.com/ihhub/fheroes2/releases ⭐ Fheroes2 Installation guide (Windows, Android, etc.): github.com/ihhub/fheroes2/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md

[@rusinoe8364]

I loved the titans and the wizard faction when I was a kid. My mom taught me multiplication with titan-based word problems.

[@Nexiusify]

That’s an awesome mom

[@CazaDeYork]

That's a great story. I, too, had trouble with understanding that 46 skeletons were not, in fact, a skeleton with 46 health. At six years old, it taught me a lot.

[@xenird]

@@CazaDeYork I thought the rectangles with the number of units are guns.

[@Rob-b2q8p]

@@CazaDeYork I mean it kind of is it’s health

[@Atrahasis7]

HOMM3 is a legendary game, but for some reason I really love these pixel graphics more than 3.

[@blacklight4720]

No way, not for me. I like classics, but there is a limit to what graphics I can tolerate.

[@Atrahasis7]

@@blacklight4720 its not about graphics, its about aesthetics.

[@blacklight4720]

@Atrahasis7 You probably right, it wasn't the right word. I can tolerate heroes 3 aesthetics, but heroes 2 is too much.

[@Atrahasis7]

@@blacklight4720 One could reach a middle ground, I like the colourful DOS classic fantasy aesthetic of 2, but with unit design of 3. Lets say.

[@TheAltair256]

recommend you checking out the HOMM3 mod The Sucession Wars. It merges HOMM3 mechanics (works with HD+ too) to aesthetics/pixel graphics of HOMM2, a lot of new sprites made by the team that feel vanilla even and they add 2 new towns

[@HappySack]

Great video, for those who are curious about what the Knight's unique building is: it makes their castle walls stronger but if you're preparing to get attacked at home then you have bigger things to worry about.

[@reynthyme9868]

Back in the day, my brother and I had endless debates over whether the Knight or Necromancer was the better faction. It's nice to finally know that I was 100% correct the entire time!

[@Rob-b2q8p]

Knight top unit does additional damage to the necromancer

[@TejoY]

Great list Noro. I'd love to see a Heroes 3 version too :)

[@edoethalesmo]

Great tier list, kind of a mini guide to all towns ! Thank you!

[@OtterSC2]

Super hyped for more homm2! I know 3 is objectively the best but 2 will always be my favourite

[@Alex-il2pq]

Great summary of all towns! One special mention still I would add to the necromancer which you didn't touch on is that in early game you can get the bone dragons up and running really fast enabling you to expand very quick in the early game which can give you a huge advantage early on

[@jgmweston]

Posting engagement for the algorithm, also this is very thorough! My favorite was always the Sorceress town as a kid.

[@stanislavmigra]

I liked Heros 2 best from all the games. And spent by far most of the time on it. Of course Necro was my favourite Town

[@rado78231]

Great and thorough job as usual! Thank you for the nostalgia hit.

[@Raziel_J]

Great tier list Noro, very thorough and well explained. I started with HOMM3 and I never played 2 so this list provided me with a deep insight about the factions. Overall, I'd would say that HOMM3 addresses the faction's weak points that you mention in the video. Others of course carried on, for instance, Tower is still pricey and very dependant of precious resources. I hope you can bring another tier list faction for HOMM3. 😊

[@sesimondo7393]

I agree.

[@Alpostpone]

HOMM2 and HOMM3 factions feel too different from each other. Castle no longer has any of its weaknesses and is a powerhouse. Rampart with its weak ranged and flight feels more like Knight faction with its cheap solid walkers with dragons glued on top. Warlock loaned "angry brick" penultimate unit to Tower. And so on. Barbarian/Stronghold feels pretty much on point though. HOMM3 is far more balanced, but I can't help but feel that factions have lost some personality that had radically different play styles and difficulty. Good riddance to Peasants, though. :D Norovo made HOMM3 Dungeon town guide and review with rankings, but that series never got follow-up. Here's another vote for more town guides and rankings for HOMM3.

[@chuckwood3426]

HMM2 had amazing music, but in every other way the sequel surpasses it.

[@zeusapollo6504]

@@chuckwood3426 Homm 2 had a way more interesting faction balance, since its more about numbers and resources and not just raw stats and power, in Homm 3 its more main streamed raw stats, with knights suddenly have one of the most powerful units with archangels, while in homm2 knights and babarians were really strong on small and middle maps, and wizards and warlocks on big maps. Stuff like this got lost in part 3. Music is much much better.....even the combat music which is non-opera, and the campaign is much better, too, prefere long compaigns to episodic ones. Homm3 just simply had way more support and dev attention than homm2, just look at the addons alone.

[@kane_lives]

@@zeusapollo6504 LOL, no. Warlock is the best faction hands down because its strong on virtually any map. Warlock is just about the only one who can EASILY clear a Gold mine with stuff like "Lots of Elves" guarding it on day 2, barring some extremely favorable circumstances otherwise. Everything in the early game also has very little HP, so the Warlock unloading 3-4 Cold Ray is absolutely devastating to early game armies.

[@alanfrost75]

Sorceress was my fav town. There is something in this analysis that just doesnt quite capture its advantages. I recall being able to get out there with upgraded druids and elves so quickly - which really means that until the Wizard gets titans (which as we know takes a good chunk of time), you are the undisputed king of range. And if you leave the dwarves behind to begin with, you can attack very quickly and slice through creatures that dont fly. I won so many games in hotseat against Wizards and Warlocks with the Sorceress just by being so far ahead by the time they got their top units.

[@DarkflameEmperor]

Heroes 2 was so good in the aspect that each one of the town types was my favorite at one point. But Dungeon is my current favorite followed by Sorceress, then Necro Wizard next, then Knight, and the last is Barbarian. But the strangest thing is I really like each of the factions and they all feel relatively different to play.

[@Zooooch1989]

Honestly Sor was always my favorite. I think part of it is the high chance of getting luck and archery on every level up, giving your two fast range units good stopping power

[@BaronKresnar]

Phoenix plus mirror image spell rocks the battlefield!

[@kevinmcinerney8840]

💯 agreed. Sorceress rocks. It’s as good as knights and barbarians in early game and small maps. Like you said you can rush out elves and druids asap and that gets you access to mines and resources faster than anyone without taking much loses. Yes the other classes can roll in end game but it takes so long to get there and the thing people never mention is the sorceress will probably have taken over a wizard or warlock castle within the first month because it’s so fast to get rolling. The only time a sorceress struggles is large maps.

[@OlavDenDeilige]

A crucial spell to the Sorceress is Mass Slow. You will almost always get to cast that first because of the speed of the Phoenix, and then you can deal tons of damage with Druids, Elves, and even get your Sprites going without any retaliation. Against slow units you can just strike and return. However, this won't work against Black Dragons and not that well against Titans either. I agree with the video's assessment of the faction. It is just a little bit too squishy in the late game.

[@JarinCOD]

Crazy. I didn't play this game for many years, yet I made the same tier list before watching the video, with the exception of Barbarians which I had in A. I would love to see this for Heroes 4.

[@johnmurdoch8534]

I almost always played as the knights but they were hardly the best. Crussders are just so cool.

[@Golemoid]

Easily my favorite unit in the game, way cooler than the angels from HoMM 3.

[@thejoin4687]

Knights aren't the best, but they dress the best.

[@sozhran]

HoMM2 is a beautiful game, nice to see it getting some love! Overall great analysis and list, but Sorceress?.. She's an A-tier town at least. She's not that fragile, has excellent initiative most of the time (even without phoenixes) and I rarely feel outclassed when playing her.

[@jamesdavey9690]

Sorceress and Necromancer have always been my favourite towns.

[@kairos468]

Fantastic content! Keep it coming.

[@Tibor0803]

Sorceress in my honest opinion is seriously underrated, but whatevs. I love that faction. Really versatile in it's powerhouse on both might and magic side of the story.

[@ClassicalRaritiesChannel]

This is awesome but will we ever see a continuation of the Heroes 3 Town Strategy Guide series? Have thoroughly enjoyed your video on Dungeon but was a bit disappointed to find out that it was the only one 🙃

[@Raziel_J]

Same here. I hope he will continue the series.

[@Norovo]

I can't commit to doing a full series (takes me too long) but there should be at least one more on its way

[@Raziel_J]

@@Norovo that's great news. Instead a full video for one faction, what about making a similar video for HOMM3? I mean, a tier list video like this one.

[@ClassicalRaritiesChannel]

​@@Norovo yay!! 🎉

[@JoLiKMC]

I'd love to see you make a tier list for the first game. I'm sure a lot of it would be similar, but there might be some surprises!

[@xombienecrone508]

The problem with trying to rank these castles is the map. Large map with lots of resources? Wizard and Warlock have the best end game. Everyone else just falls behind the pure damage and endurance of these two power houses. Small map with close by neighbors? Barbarian and knight. They can get out of the starting gate faster the heavy hitters. If the map has very rough terrain, the barbarian scores an even higher advantage, able to scoop up resources faster than anything, providing an advantage before the magical classes can build an army. The necromancer is balanced across all map sizes. They aren't hyper focused on any specific rare resource, the highest being sulfur at 15. It's possible to get bone dragons in the first week on normal difficulty. The sorceress, I never liked all that much. I believe she has the weakest cost efficacy out of all the other heroes. Plus if there isn't any water in the map, she only has access to 7 secondary skills.

[@kane_lives]

"The necromancer is balanced across all map sizes." But not on all difficulties. On Impossible it is often THE worst, because no native ranged units for a LONG time because you start with nothing, and skeletons are made of paper with only 4 HP each.

[@aceshighdueceslow]

your note about using Phoenix to cheese, spent movement points do stay with Heroes if you are able to save them in fights and rehire them. You can still cheese this if it's a late game (I have totally done this on "capture x town" or "defeat x hero" maps, where the final battle needs softening up) because you will likely have high power and knowledge, and relatively high movement points for the hero if all you give them is a stack of Phoenix. I recently did a playthrough of the Alteris maps Fheroes2 adds and thanks to rolling Elemental Storm and Dimension Door, I could storm the final castle about 6 times a turn just by rotating heroes and artifacts

[@Tr33ba1t]

would love to see you tackle Dervish and Witch, the two factions added by HOMM3 the succession wars

[@Norovo]

Need to play that mod more. But it's very different in a lot of ways, even for the original factions (new specialist heroes, one new unit per town, etc.)

[@Tr33ba1t]

@@Norovo yes it is diffferent in a lot of ways, such as Crusaders having significantly increased health (knight is still severely underpowered lmao)

[@karel3183]

Sorceress is the best because it's bright and colourful! I was quite scared of this game when I was a kid. Playing as humans was ok as far as your home town was concerned but you were surrounded by all these monsters and you had nothing to hit them back with. Most of the other towns were creepy. The sorceress town was the only one better than humans both in regards to aesthetics and power.

[@akse]

When looking at these units and towns I think I never really played HOMM2.. I think I played the first one a bit and then third one a lot. I think I had HOMM2 for just a tests on my phone like 13 years ago. It was this Linux based phone (nokia n900) with scummvm which could emulate some old games.. it was kinda cool but tricky to play :)

[@justdracir8197]

I think the advantage of the sorceress faction is the versatility. You don´t have the heavy hitters or the super late game but you are fast, your units can dish out damage and you have strategies. Also dwarfs with magic resistance. That can be a pain in the ass for casters.

[@mikeyshanghai9801]

I think you need to take into account the cost of building creature dwellings a bit more. It takes forever to get to Green/Red/Black dragons and Titans. Also, you massively under-estimate Sorcerers. Sprites and Dwarves don’t really matter, because you can build to obtain Greater Druids and Grand Elves literally in Week 2 and has a good chance of going all the way to Phoenixes in Week 3 or 4. So Sorcerers can move all out to attack really early with a full range of creatures. Sorcerers are good spell casters as well, and with Phoenixes, Greater Druids and Grand Elves, you are almost guaranteed to cast the first spell (which can be a Blind on the enemy’s fastest unit) and then deal out damage from all your creatures before the enemy even gets a chance to attack.

[@TheStisen]

Are you gonna make other Heroes 2 tier lists too? This one is really informative and have great value

[@grinchforest948]

Very nice video, but I cannot agree with Necromancer as S tier because of zombies and mummies. They are slow, not bulky units which do not help you with anything except being the cannon folder to create your skeletons. Slow growth of other units also does not help. It is a bit of shame that fraction do not have access to the ghosts, directly from the castle.

[@fcuk_x]

yup, this list is sus.

[@Lightmaker5]

I played more Heroes 1 than 2. Only Fheroes2 made it shine like Homm1 and better. When you go into a town and back to map the music continues where it stopped. In Homm2 it was very annoying listening to music restarting all the time. Heroes 3 I didn't play much because it's not really a sequel. The towns are different, the heroes are different. I don't like the style of it. It's feels kinda dark. Heroes 1 feels magic and Fheroes2 is like you found a treasure box.👍 I prefer the Sorceress town. Most peaceful town of them all. Heroes 3 removed it.😭

[@dmr87]

Thanks, have you done one for Heroes 3 as well?

[@Norovo]

Nope. Feel like nobody would agree on that one tbh! So hard to rank them across different map types / formats

[@mrmarmellow555]

Thank_INK 'Ewe ‼️ #Those_were_THE _AFTernoonz👍my_frend⚜️👍🙄

[@rasmuswellejus]

That’s one of my all time favorite games! You got yourself a new sub 😊👍 personally I like Necromancers Warlocks and Wizards the two latter ones are just expensive to play

[@Alpostpone]

They just work best in larger maps. In late game, the power bottleneck is probably how much gold you can pump through top tier dwellings and that's where Wiz and Warl excel. Weekly outputs of lower dwellings become chump change.

[@rasmuswellejus]

@@Alpostpone true

[@sandmaenchen]

Interesting analysis. I never really played HoMM 2 apart from a couple odd scenarios, maybe because I already had HoMM 3 before I got the second one. Similar vid on HoMM 3 factions would be fascinating. If memory serves me correctly, when I was playing my first 200 hours or so, I used to always pick factions with higher focus on magic and "late game", like Tower, Dungeon or Rampart, but after proceeding through difficulty levels, started preferring Castle and Stronghold.

[@zeusapollo6504]

Play the homm2 campaign its really great(archibald side)

[@TheKingNaesala]

I loved this game as a kid but there was something I was definitely missing. it always felt like monsters and enemy towns snowballed much faster than i could keep up with with needing to run back to resupply and taking small losses here and there. I think I beat the evil campaign but never the good one or most the maps. Would love to see some videos about how to play the game properly and such, maybe see if I can get back into it!

[@alanfrost75]

Just based on what you wrote, I assume you don't use hero chaining. In both H2 and H3 (probably also H1, but I cant remember that far lol) hero chaining is just insanely powerful, and it means you dont need to go back to re-supply.

[@TheKingNaesala]

@@alanfrost75 That makes sense! Seems kinda janky but if the game was designed with it in mind that definitely would explain my struggle lol.

[@7deuc2e38]

@@TheKingNaesala i watched speed runs of the campaign and then tried to replicate the strats, it's actually pretty easy. There are so many fights that as a noob looked unwinnable to me but when you know what you're doing it becomes very doable

[@wesleyrussell8386]

Great video! I gotta go look and see if you have a tier list for heroes 3 now!

[@seanwool]

One thing that puts wizards above warlocks for me in late game is the fact that the titans draw all of the enemy attacks. With a hero with high attack and defense skill, this makes the halfings very efficient. With such a hero, you can sweep an entire area without losing a single unit. This isn't so with a dragon/centaur combo in the warlock faction since the centaurs are attacked before the dragons.

[@shuva21]

You may play barbarian castle with a warlock hero, mass haste, mass slow and other spells quite change the game, and with artifacts attack and defence skills can be bolstered as well ;)

[@PlanetZoidstar]

Warlock Castle with Barbarian Hero is just plain evil in the early-to-mid game. Those Offense Skill-ups turn your Centaurs, Gargoyles and Griffins into killing machines.

[@shuva21]

@@PlanetZoidstar I agree, in an early game yes, but later you would still rather have magic based heroes leveled up :}

[@PlanetZoidstar]

@@shuva21 Unless you can manage an all Black Dragon army. Though Warlock Black Dragon Armageddon spam may be even better.

[@sergiotimonlopez4671]

Or playing necromancer with a barbarian hero, it’s amazing! vampires, skeletons, liches multiattack, bone dragons… (even zombies do damage with barbarian hero haha)

[@kacpi1008]

Nice. Would love to see the Song of Conquest tier list :D

[@Norovo]

Maybe one day, but if I did one now it would become outdated super quick due to new patches. Not such a risk with a 27 year old game, haha

[@florianschulz3027]

while i agree that stand alone, barbarian is better than knight, knight is vastly superior as an augmenting faction, being able to cover weaknesses of other factions reasonably well and do so for dirt cheap. rangers, champions and crusaders in particular offer a lot for very little money.

[@ABlackHorse]

I think this TierList is pretty accurate for begginers/intermediate level and some experts. For competetive play (on most of the maps) I would say Knight is like A or S tier and Necro is at very bottom which is very counter-intuitive and funny at the same time ^_^

[@bingobongo1615]

I never felt necromancers being OP in heroes 2. high resource costs, a weak top level creature and rather smallish maps making extreme skeleton spam like heroes 3 rather difficult. In heroes 3 the are borderline unfair though…

[@BenjaminGlatt]

Necromancer heroes starting with Haste gives great momentum to your big skeleton stacks early on.

[@kane_lives]

You will still eat all ranged attacks, skeletons not fast enough to attack 1st turn and you have nothing to block archers with early game.

[@skullowner3999]

O that brings back memories still remember when i was a kind i spam 32167 😋

[@user-zu5um2vo4w]

Wish there was ones for the others too😂 line up the most powerful from each. Dragons, Titans, Cyclops, Pheonix

[@niki8280]

Do you have a town music tier list yet?

[@Norovo]

Nope. Whole soundtrack rules though.

[@jameswinterbigtop4441]

the other benefit of wizards Titans is the original AI used to focus on attacking them if in range. Made the titan a bit of a cheese with the enemy AI

[@omfgacceptmyname]

ive played h2 and h3 casually for maybe 20 years, and i never knew h2 vamp lords had life drain 😱

[@Alpostpone]

That's impressive, because that's, like, the most important special ability of any town unit and central to efficient Necro play. After Ghosts, Vampire Lords make the best doomstacks because if they outnumber enemy enough, they just never take any losses.

[@wheresmycoffeewmc]

Great video! Thanks!

[@Chompchompyerded]

My all time favourite HOMM game has to be HOMM 3, but UbiSoft Nerfed it and made it pretty horrible. Of the HOMM games which haven't been nerfed, HOMM 2 is the best, IMHO. One thing to know is that you should get Barbarians for scouting. They have the most movement points. Get Warlocks for fighting, and if you're lucky enough to get the 5th level spell Armageddon, and you have built up enough black dragons so that you can slot a stack of them in each slot, you can cast Armageddon with impunity, since black dragons are immune to it. If you've been fighting your warlock since the beginning, it will have built enough spell power to do a huge amount of damage to your opponents, and you will then you can use the black dragons to clean up.

[@joshuastamand7653]

The Barbarian class is used to kill the warlocks and switch classes in the mid game.

[@the_kombinator]

I remember borrowing HOMMII from a friend in like 1997, and for some reason I damaged the CD (it made a mark on the disc, I think something fell on it) - My 12x CDROM played it no problem, but his 2X didn't anymore. I was considering buying him a used NEC 6X CDROM (I Worked in a computer store at the time) but I found an open box HOMMII in the back room and my boss sold it to me for $15 - the CD was there and in tact. I still have the damaged CD, I just finished playing off it on my 233 MMX rig :D

[@67L48]

Knight: peasants are worthless. Rangers are good, but so slow that they just never last long. V Pikemen are average. Swordsman are very useful and have an excellent chance at a second/morale attack. Champions allow you to go first. Crusaders are beast with the double-attack and require no extra resources to recruit. If Rangers were as fast as Grand Elves, then I'd love the Knight class. Wizards: Golems are worthless. Halflings are nearly worthless because of how slow they are. Boars are subpar, but fast. Rocs are a good beast-like attacker, but a tad too slow. Archmages and Titans are probably my two favorites in the entire game. Titans will also draw all enemy attacks, so your mages, halflings, etc. will never get attacked when the Titans are there to serve as meat shields. The downside is the huge draw on resources and gems. Mages, Library, etc. require so many resources that it takes forever to develop into the good stuff. Warlock: Obviously, Black Dragons are awesome. But, Hydras are just worthless. Yes, they can be meat shields, but they are so slow that I just can't ever use them. Minotaur Kings are really good. Griffens are just too slow. Gargoyles are probably my favorite L1 creature, but they're pretty weak. Centaurs are subpar. They're just fast enough to get into combat, but they're so weak and the double tile footprint makes them much harder to defend. Basically, it's just a race to the dragons with the others being collection of so-so armies. Sorceress: Dwarves are worthless. Too slow to get into action and their magic resistance just doesn't factor into much of anything. Sprites can be used strategically -- their numbers grow pretty high, pretty fast and can be useful since there is no defensive attacks against them. Grand Elves and Druids are super fast, strong, and spawn in decent numbers. Probably the best mid-tier group. Unicorns are always hard for me to use. By the time they get into the action, my ranged troops have done the heavy lifting. As a L5 creature, they're scarce in the early game and by the end-game, I just don't need them -- ranged troops + phoenix are doing the heavy lifting. Phoenix' speed is awesome and they're a decent troop, if not a bit weaker than the other L6s. Because of the ranged attacks + flight of phoenix and sprites + speed of all the troops, this is a very playable class. Barbarian: Goblins are worthless. Ogres are too slow to be worth anything, but the upgrade is one of the best tanks out there. Orcs are also too slow, but the chiefs are pretty function and can grow into a sizeable force. War Trolls are the best troop -- durable, do tons of damage, and heal between rounds. They also sock up the attacks to protect the Orc Chiefs. Wolves are serviceable and super fast, so they can help out a ton. Cyclopes with the double-tile attack are good beast-mode troops. Overall, a pretty well balanced set. I always like having two legitimate ranged troops. Necromancer: Skeletons are worthless ... even with necromancy and growing the force, they're just too slow to do much. And, they're so fragile that they get blown away pretty fast. I hate never having a morale boost and a mixed team means negative morale. I also hate the splash damage of the Liches. They're pretty powerful, but unusable about a third of the time without causing friendly fire. Dragon Skeletons are awesome, but they're so dang slow. Vampire Lords is probably the shining jewel here with the ability to regenerate from kills and the negation of defensive attacks. Zombies are nearly as worthless as Skeletons ... too slow to be a viable offensive troop and too weak to be a viable meat shield. Mummies' in-game movement is so painful that I can't hardly stand to have them, but the upgraded version can be a decent troop. I avoid Necromancer at all costs. Sorceress is probably my favorite game experience, because the upgrading path is not too daunting and I like most of the troops. Wizard is a close second, but it's just so hard to wrangle up all of the gems to advance, that it can be frustrating. Warlock is great, but really only for dragons. Barbarian is a close 4th, followed by Knight. Necromancer, while objectively more powerful than Knight, is my least favorite class.

[@kane_lives]

Heavily disagree with all but the Knight, Barb and the Warlock. Necro can't really be in the same tier as Warlock, the latter has no weaknesses (except perhaps bad mage guild RNG which can leave you without a direct damage spell) at any stage of the game, and it is exceptional in the early game where Necro is terrible. Sorc is above the Wizard because the Sorc at least has Sprites to blocks ranged units immediately in the early game, and Rocs are same speed as Sprites. Both are much worse than Gargs, but Sorc gets them earlier, is much cheaper, and is not hampered by the Slow halfling speed burden on their heroes. Necro is way too slow to get going, so the Sorc would still go above it for me. Even the Warlock's Scouting skill is actually very useful unless you constantly savescum (save/load game) every turn to take the most optimal turn.

[@AbadGorilla]

Thanks for the heroes content. Can you make a video about The Succession Wars mod ?

[@FredrikLarssonPhoto]

Awesome to see some new videos from you. Have your ever tried some of the newer HOMM games? :)

[@Norovo]

Not for very long unfortunately. I do prefer the older style but trying to keep an open mind

[@FredrikLarssonPhoto]

@@Norovo I always loved to play HOMM3, but did not like some of the later after that.. but I've played some of the most recent and came to like them. Would be very interesting to see you play some of newer HOMM-games to have your thoughts and playstyle there aswell :)

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

Have you checked out the map the Colossal Cave? (For homm2, part of POL base game) It's like the other cavern map you did, but much much much bigger

[@Norovo]

I saw it on the list and thought it looked pretty interesting, I'll hopefully give it a go at some point

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

@@Norovo You should just load it up for a few seconds just to look at the mini map haha. It comes with a warning for older hardware. It's stupidly big.

[@GreetTheSacredCow]

Amazing content.

[@offroadturkey]

love heroes 2! keep em up!

[@alexanderpetrousis4893]

How do i make 1 Stacks in homm2?

[@Vindrael]

heyo Norovo, sorry for asking this on unrelated vid but i watched your old HoMM 3 plays and it seems HoTA and yours different? can't seems to find a way to let me see enemy movement range and some of the UI also different. Is it using different HD or something else? Thanks in Advance for any who can help

[@Norovo]

Holding shift or control while hovering over a unit should show the movement range on HD mod. But if the UI looks really different, it might be the SoD_SP addon, which only works with SoD (not HotA)

[@clarkkent2273]

Hi Norovo, where are you from?

[@Norovo]

The south of England

[@Deadknight67]

I started with Heroes 2 and I loved the knight but even as a kid a realized, their units were weak and would never compete against other faction. Which is sad because I love the idea of the crusader being an elite footman. Overall they are too weak and not really worth playing, I am not sure what was their balancing process, especially when you compare them with Necro or Warlock factions

[@Alpostpone]

Balancing is an artifact of HOMM1, where towns are even more clearly tiered: Sorc and Barb are mid tier, Knight is lower tier and Warl is upper tier. HOMM1 was a rather quickly made game about funny fairytale creatures bonking each other and probably never went through a long balancing process like people are used to today. I play Knights because I like the theme and it's an underdog faction that gives fun plays.

[@Winnetou17]

Yeah, it's a bit sad. Maybe it would work if there was another upgrade, like the dragons have ?

[@CristianCiupe]

So for heroes 3 they decided to bump Castle "a bit" :)

[@justdracir8197]

I really liked back then to play as the Humans / Castle faction however in the end i kinda disliked them. They are just frustrating to play with. And any AI hero with lightning can just decimate your army and you cannot do shit against it.

[@AdamEornom]

I really liked the video, but since I am so far off from Heroes II that I heard some of these dwellings from HotA, I want to comment on something completely irrelevant: Your video titles. I mean, those pun included names like "We Reap What We Slow" and "A Mage Walk Into A Dragon Utopia" are gold. They make my day, and if you can continue with them that would be great (also that occasional "I'll frickin do it again" kind of memes are top notch).

[@andreperusso]

Great video. Yet I'm afraid I have to disagree about Knights being the worst. In medium maps they are excellent. And there are several medium maps to play. To me, the worst is the Necromancer. They are expensive and not that great units, especially the lower tier.

[@Grubnar]

You forgot to talk about Fortificarions. I agree with almost everything you said, but I feel like you are missing the point by ranking the Factions the way you do. While Knights and Barbarians are inherently weaker than the Wizards and Warlocks in the long run, their whole point is that they will devastate them on a small map and a short game. It matters not if at turn 60 you will have a mountain of gold and a legion of Black Dragons, if at turn 5 your opponent has smashed down your gate and is breaking your skull with a wooden club! The key point is "Time".

[@zeusapollo6504]

Its numbers vs might & magic, a common trope in the might & magic series, people that are not old enough to play homm series from the very beginning simply do not know that. Growth rates are very different, too in additon to cost.

[@kane_lives]

Not on Impossible difficulty. While Barbarian might rush successfully on lower difficulties, that is still not guaranteed. Knight can't do anything on higher difficultes, because it's just terrible since their tier1 is garbage and it needs A TON of useless buildings to even upgrade to Rangers. IIRC HoMM 2 has no randomly generated maps, and most of the small maps are weird in some way. If it had Homm3 style random map, On Impossible the barb is very slow, because even upgrading Orcs is sometimes not that easy, and what are you going to accomplish at turn 5? If they add moat you have no native fliers, unless you get RNG on secondary heroes, and Moat's -3 defense alone is devastating at turn 5. Your damage dealers (Wolves and Goblins) are made of paper and there is zero chance you are going to get anything done vs their ranged units behind castle walls. And at 2nd week not even your superior stats will save you when they double your population.

[@omgopet]

A thing to note is that, even though necros don't get ranged units util t5, you can build a mausoleum fairly early if you skip vamps. Even on very hard or impossible, you just need a couple of chests and campfires (+ a bit of luck) to get it before the end of week 1. In fact, you could theoretically get bone dragons as well if the map has enough free resources. Lock is definitely a league above shitty towns, but it doesn't compare to necro, which is by far the best town. On small maps, necro gets their t5 and t6 units the fastest and end the game quickly. On big maps, they can abuse vamps and necromancy to become completely unbeatable. Also, it's probably your preference/bias, but wizard is much worse than you give it credit. Everything is expensive, and your best early game units are slow, making it hard to gather resources quickly. The units are very squishy and vulnerable to ranged damage while fighting neutrals. You have to invest a steady supply of rocks into just keeping your ranged stacks alive, preventing you from having a flying power stack. Therefore, once you start fighting enemy heroes, they will most likely have an advantage in terms of ranged units, which is ironic.

[@ahmadabughazaleh0]

Oh green and red dragons together, it's like kingdom rush origins Beresad and Ash lived in peace together in ruined temples of ancient elfs but in Frontier (the original time) Ash will join your adventure but Beresad will turn against you for wealth. It's kinda same here red and green dragon were together but in next part which is (HOMM3) red will join evil side when green the good side, how ironic.

[@timmietimmins3780]

Surprised how this worked out. I disagree completely. The only thing about my list that matches yours is that I have sorc and barb in the same tier (but not the same tier as you). Sorceress comes online fast, because like the barbarian, the starting sorc build requires NO filler (either irrelevant creature buildings, or taverns or thieves guilds, or whatever.) Basically, you need a statue ,tree house, a well, a crystal garden, the archery range, stonehenge, mage guild level 1, and fenced meadow in week 1. that might not even take you all of seven days, depending on your starting town. And ALL of those buildings help you creep out the map. Sorc also creeps probably best of any early faction, because you don't have to avoid buying all your units right away: unicorns do not require an upgrade, greater druids are basically identical to druids for killing neutral mobs, grand elves can situationally be upgraded on day 8-9 and do fine as regular elves, and sprites have no upgrade. Sorc comes online VERY early. A tier. They lack super tanky units, but there is just no reason late game to be running off a single town, nor early game to be relying on no neutral monsters. Also, phoenixes are crazy because they are friendly fire machines. Black dragons actually start in a position to friendly fire their own team. A single phoenix can make a dragon shoot it's own team in the face. Necromancer town has nothing to do with necromancy skill prior to the expansions. just recruit a necromancer out of any other town, and the ability to recruit additional necromancers is irrelevant, as necro starting units are trash and you don't need necromancy skill on your secondary and tertiary heroes. Necromancer is situationally interesting as they can rush bone dragons on week 1, but then .... sure, you can kill stuff with 4 bone dragons on day 9-10, but you still move around the map laughably slow and have nothing else to add to your stack and don't have the gold to recruit more stuff anyways. Necromancer HEROES are S tier, necromancer town is probably a B or lower. Barbarian is very gold efficient and hits very hard in week 1. If you get a hill fort it's absolutely insane, but even so, you are very very gold efficient. If you need to kill big stacks with wolves, just split off single wolves. Maybe not a multiplayer thing, but in single player, this works very well. A tier. Barbs are also an excellent primary or secondary hero, so the ability to mass recruit barbs is not bad. Early warlock heroes are great, because they start with very fast monsters and 3 spell power. You can safely interact with artifacts on the world map, because "rogues jump out" is survivable with cold ray, magic missile, and a single gargoyle, and it is much safer to play aggressively when you have scouting on noncombat heroes. Obviously though, the warlock town is just tier S+++ with a bullet. It's absurd to have it in the same tier as a necromancer town. The ivory tower upgrade is much more expensive than the level 1, because it requires the ruinously costly early library, and combined, they cost more of every resource including gold. Because rocs are slow, halflings are fragile, and boars are terrible, Wizard early creeping is very mediocre, and week 2 is rough, because getting titans week 2 is ridiculously optimistic and building a giant, ever, is a desperation move. Titans aren't locked behind a double dwelling upgrade, but the gold cost is exactly the same and that matters a lot because dragons are cheaper than titans. Sure, you save some ore, but that's it, and it is perfectly viable to go early green dragons to creep. Green dragons are amazing, giants are laughably bad. A tier. (they do have endgame power, but they just get there so badly and if you don't have additional castles, how do you figure it even matters if Archmages are any good, because you can't even afford all your Titans). It is absolutely not true that the wizard can compete with the warlock "at any stage of the game". In particular, you cannot compete in week 1 (when griffins will jump on top of your halflings), week 2 (when you will have absolutely no giants and your opponent might have green dragons), week 3 (when you still won't have titans but your opponent will still have dragons and may have black dragons), or week 50, when a large stack of black dragons can roflstomp a large stack of titans and costs less.

[@TheValentineEnemy]

What about knight? Curious now.

[@timmietimmins3780]

@@TheValentineEnemy yeah, that was an oversight on my part. I have it, by far, the worst town in the game, which I admit, is the same as this tier list. They take massive attrition during sieges due to how weak to towers their rangers are, they require a ton of redundant buildings, they are wood heavy, making them slow to upgrade especially while upgrading neutral towns to castles, and they generally get poor total power per week generation, and power per army slot. They have some quite gold efficient units (champion in particular is a steal), but lack of an endgame pounder like a bone dragon, lack of ability to fight tier 6 monsters from endgame towns (in particular, they have no answer to dragons or warlocks at all because everything they have dies to chain lightning and almost nothing they have can even trade with a green dragon), and inability to snowball by efficiently sieging down enemy towns like war trolls can makes them a solid F tier.

[@kane_lives]

Excellent analysis except one minor nitpick: Sorc can sometimes start without the Dwarf Cottage, and you will have to build Tavern if you want the Cottage.

[@timmietimmins3780]

@@kane_lives True, but I would argue you never want the cottage. It's a gold sink for a terrible low impact troop. Heroes 2, gold is very much a limiting factor, so it makes sense to focus your funds into getting quality, over quantity, of stacks. The power of sorc towns is that you never need to recruit a single dwarf and you can creep aggressively and start swapping in other monster types, be that neutral or other faction monsters. hero.

[@kane_lives]

@@timmietimmins3780 I find that in fheroes2 default AI (they've reimplemented it from scratch, some bizarre copyright issue it seems) misjudges Castle defense strength completely, way worse than the original. (On the other hand you can cede castles to the OG AI and it will leave a lot to garrison, allowing you to divide and conquer - fheroes2 AI on the other hand almost never does this). Therefore, on Impossible you sometimes want to get some meat just to dissuade computer opponents, this is where Dwarves can sometimes be useful. Again, not disagreeing with your points, just adding more context for other readers, who are not advanced players.

[@rafaelsimon7643]

Is there one video for heroes 3 town tier list??

[@Igor369]

On other channels yes.

[@Alpostpone]

There's only Dungeon town guide where he gives it a rank, but that's it. Hope we get more ranked guides.

[@vojtechvanek1686]

Completely agree with the list

[@winoodlesnoodles1984]

I do agree with the overall analysis of Wizard. It should be pointed that Halflings and Rocs are easily the best early game clearing combination. This makes the Wizard town the best early on. This is why it is my preference. Best early game and extra spells for the late game make it a solid choice on the vast majority of maps.

[@kane_lives]

LOL, no. If you run into any ranged units faster than Avg. speed of your Rocs, your Halflings are toast. Warlock is just about the only one who can EASILY clear a Gold mine with stuff like "Lots of Elves" guarding it on day 2, barring some extremely favorable circumstances otherwise. Everything in the early game also has very little HP, so the Warlock unloading 3-4 Cold Ray is absolutely devastating to early game armies. Wizard would need RNG to hire a Warlock hero day 1 to do that. Even then, you may get a Warlock without ANY Gargs (big LOL when that happens).

[@winoodlesnoodles1984]

@@kane_lives ROFL!!!! Early game Warlock units get wiped attempting to clear gold mines. The Gold Mine clearer is the Sorcerer with Grand Elves and Great Druids that both go before Ghosts. To be fair, Gargoyles are the best teir 2 unit. However, the only way to get them in decent numbers in the first couple weeks is to take over a second Warlock town or to get some to join you for free. They get shredded by Ghosts, so there is no way to use them against Ghosts unless your intent is to make more Ghosts. As for blocking ranged units, neither Gargoyles nor Griffens have the health to last long. Whereas Rocs have enough health that, used well you can often get by without losing a single Roc. Gargoyls and Griffins just can't do that. That is why Wizards are better at early game clearing. The big early game step for Warlocks are Hydra. Hydra have enough health pool to allow the warlocks to use offensive spells to get the job done. That is providing you somehow have gotten enough knowledge to shoot more than 3 offense spells.

[@kane_lives]

@@winoodlesnoodles1984 Mate, you're playing on low difficulty if you can get to Great Druids easily. Your Ghosts examples is just bizarre, it's just 1 unit out of almost a hundred. it also cannot be hired. It is extremely rare unless the map is scripted. It's simply pointless to use it as an example of anything. The fact that you think you need a big stack of gargoyles to be effective tells me you don't even understand basic game mechanics. You only need 3-6 split into 3 groups to take on Lots of Grand Elves if you have offensive spells. Griffins/Centaurs/spells will do the damage. Gargoyles don't even attack deliberately. "you can often get by without losing a single Roc. Gargoyls and Griffins just can't do that. That is why Wizards are better at early game clearing." It's not about "not losing units", it's about how quickly you can clear the map, even if you have to spend some gold on units killed. Warlock is the only faction that is guaranteed to start at 1200 movement points 1st turn because it never starts with any unit slower than Average speed. That's like having Logistics or even Advanced Logistics advantage on other factions. Warlock does not drop below that until you get secondary stacks, or get Hydras, which is very rare to want on the main hero. On Impossible difficulty every unit and every piece of resource is hard to acquire. Depending on the map, Rocs can even take like up to day 5 to build on Impossible. Gargoyles are available immediately, unless you get that rare tier1 only start, but that's around 10% chance.

[@winoodlesnoodles1984]

@@kane_lives Do you even play the game? Gargoyles get crushed by most tier 3 creatures. That is why you need numbers. As for ghosts they are highly relavent as there are haunted gold mines on most maps. If you can clear one in the second week of a map that allows you to build more rapidly and purchase more troops. Troops win maps. Thus being able to purchase more, increases you ability to take more resources/mines/castles and then win the map. This isn't rocket science and should make sense to anyone capable of strategic thinking.

[@kane_lives]

Yeah, I do play the game, and apparently play it better than you. I've cleared 5 scenarios on Impossible difficulty today, all with Black Dragon rating. Most on Small maps, but 1 of them was a Large map, it's called "Decisions". By the time I got Titans (You start with a Town, not even a Castle, I chose Warlock and deliberately let them take over the town to upgrade it into Castle for me. It was still less efficient to get Dragons than just up the Cloud Castle) A haunted gold mine had a horde of Ghosts in it, which were enough to kill even a Titan on a non-main hero. And at that point it is almost pointless to commit Titans to taking over haunted gold mines, because it makes more sense to take over enemy castles instead. This isn't rocket science and should make sense to anyone capable of strategic thinking. Your game score is calculated based on only 2 things: Your difficulty and how quickly you killed everybody. The game does NOT care how much gold you made or how flawless your fights were.

[@MWBFurlong]

Isn't 'S' tier supposed to be special or situational in that they can be very powerful or weak depending on the context. But you use it simply as a tier above A tier.

[@elrit6]

most tierlist have that, im not sure why myself

[@dukefleed4280]

my favorite faction alway was warlock/dungeon/chaos in all heroes games. I like H5 dungeon the most.

[@thearpox7873]

For me, there is only one question that really makes or breaks it before a game is started: Will there be a lot of ore(and more rarely, wood)? If the answer is no, as it might well be on higher difficulties, around half the factions are useless if not outright impossible. The so-called fast game factions are especially hungry for basic resources, leading to bottlenecks that make you miss playing Wizards..

[@Norovo]

Hmm, good point. I assumed good availability of the basic resources but maps without them can play very differently

[@thearpox7873]

@@Norovo As if the Dungeon wasn't buff enough! You can actually have a decent starting army running on just gold and a single sulfur mine! Or a single gem mine if you can scrounge five ore somewhere. (Which lets be honest, you probably can.) It may be a bit of an extreme example, but I recently played a game where the starting surrounding stacks were strong enough to attrition a good chunk of my Week 2 army, so I had to pick and choose. Oh, and RNG'd Elf Archers guarding the ore mine, because of course.

[@Lavafish2525]

will you be playing Age of Wonders 4?

[@Norovo]

Unlikely, hard to find the time to learn new games atm and feel like I missed the boat a bit

[@dyinganthem]

homm3 version please!

[@Malekhan]

Sorceress is by far the best. Best in initiative, huge in magic, a lot of movement on the world map, great shooters. Very often a battle ends before the enemy takes his first turn, so the enemy can't do anything at all

[@jayshepherd9633]

I always thought each faction’s heroes brought out the best in the other factions. For instance, a high level knight or barbarian with black dragons is an absolute pain. A decent spell book with a wizard combined with the first 3-4 level of knight and wizard troop is a tough opponent as well.

[@jarunia17]

YAAAASSSSS

[@eXtreamAngel]

Knights. The most favorite faction was Knights. I like the look units of all units of that faction, and all of them has upgrades. The real threat for this faction is damage magic. I faced too many times with warlock heroes 1 lvl with 3 spell power that kill 1 crusader each time I try to kill him cuz they have fast Gargolye that take first turn almost all the time. You either have to spend mana on Haste or Slow eatch fight that can be a draw. And I like archers. They are strong as for lvl 2 units. And Crusaders - are the most cool looking unit in the game, but to be honest, they die very quickly from mages cuz of low HP. Barbarian. The least favorite faction. I don't like how look their units b their town. They also die very quickly from mages, but their cyclopus can hold 1 Lightning fron 3 Spell Power heroes, what is good. They have strong Trolls, and dangerous ogres, but I see them dangerous as an opponent, but not as a part of my army. Elves Second (after knight) favorite faction cuz they have many affortable archers that can be used from the start of the game. The faction is not that strong, cuz their units have less HP than even Knights, but their Phoenix is looking cool. The only problem is that he dies also very quickly (((( And there are all beautiful female heroes. I like Luna and Rebecca, so they always the main heroes of my army ))) Wizards The only reason to play for me were Titans and the fact that there are 3 ranged units. They can take many melee enemies from the start of the game cuz of Halflings, but if you will not get mages quickly then you will struggle. Titans are awesome, and will be very dangerous with Resurrection. If there are no Black Dragons, than getting Titan is almost a win-game for this faction, and I can't say the same for other factions (instead of Warlock with their Black Dragon), cuz they odn't have such a cool lvl 6 units. Warlocks. 3rd playable faction. I have only 3 reasons to play it: 1. 2 gold income buildings. 2. Black Dragons + Armageddon 3. Level 1 heroes + Lightning to kill some units in enemy army. Despite that, your heroes almost always come with Gargolyes. You can take a few of them to have First Turn, use magic, and then retreat. Hydras is a good defensive unit for holding the enemy attacks while casting magic on your enemy. I don't like how Warlock units look, except Dragons, and always feel that their units are weak in comparison with other factions: their Centaur has only 4 or 8 shots, and are weak as an archer. Flying units have good attack and speed, but low HP and defence, It's hard to kill melee units. They are only good vs Archers and for defending your city when the enemy has no mana for arrows, no archers or flying units, and you fly from side to side and casting Lightning. Necromancers Maybe the 2nd least favorite faction after the Barbarians. I don't like them cuz they are hard to play at the beginning, but their units looks nice. Their Bone Dragon has only 4 initiative, what means that they will take the same tuyrn order as skeletons, and are weak. The really 2 units that can do something, are Liches with their incredible defence, and Vampire Lords. Skeletons are good in numbers, but when you don't have anyone to kill, you will not get any skeletons from your enemies. AI usually use damage magic if there are many skeletons so their number greatly decreases after 2-3 fights with good armies.

[@ilejovcevski79]

Not sure putting Necromancers in the S is warranted under the standards of evaluation presented. As you mentioned, under the right circumstances, their late game can be very strong, nigh on unstoppable, but "right circumstances" are the key words here. You can just as easily be stomped out by Knights in the early game, or by Sorceress in the mid game. A strong A tier, vying for the best A with the Wizards, sure. But S? Nowhere near the power house. Mostly agreed with the other ratings, as well as the non-balanced nature of the game. I miss the days when the choice of a playable faction was a difficulty level of its own. And by far, my favorite Heroes game to boot!

[@davidmccormick550]

Wizard, Necro, Warlock, Druid, Stronghold, Castle.

[@Carrotdone]

New video 😎

[@Tennouseijin]

(opinion before watching the video... let's see if I change my mind after watching :P) Having spent tens of thousands of hours playing HoMM2 as a child... and later going back as an adult (but only single player), I'd say: Knight - rather weak. While the units are cheap and you can develop quickly, making it possible to rush enemies before they develop their castles and armies... if you don't win quickly, you're kinda screwed. Also kinda boring, having almost all units be ground melee troops, which also limits your strategic options. Barbarian - slightly stronger than knight, with a more diverse army giving more tactical options. Still inexpensive units and buildings, making aggressive early game possible, while still capable of winning mid-game engagements if your trolls and cyclopes far outnumber their dragons/titans etc. Sorceress - fun to play, thanks to many fliers and ranged units, and strong magic. Given enough resources, they can survive early-game, dominate mid-game, and even win late-game wars, if you have enough phoenixes to account for their lower stats, and still beat dragons and titans. Their ultra speed is of massive benefit, giving you initiative in combat and opportunity to cast spells first before the opponent. Necromancer - a unique faction... given a good start, they can reach bone dragons on first week, and start to dominate early game. Even without bone dragons, liches and vampires alone are strong and can win you early and mid-game encounters, while you build a massive skeleton army. They are a very strong all-rounder, strong in early, mid and late game. Although that depends on availability of resources a lot - on higher difficulties and maps with scarcer resources, they take more time to get the ball rolling compared to knight/barbarian, and even sorc. Warlock - tricky and complex to play. Geared more towards late-game where, given enough resources, they can make an unstoppable army of black dragons, they still have some tricks up their sleeve to help them 'survive' early and mid game, although winning might be tricky against factions that have a stronger early-game. You have the dungeon - an amazing faction building, and pretty good low-tier units - centaurs, gargoyles and griffins are quite capable of winning early encounters. Minotaurs and hydras are ok, but situational (ok, teleporting a hydra into the midst of enemy army sounds fun, but I don't remember it being a game breaking strategy). Overall pretty rewarding to play when you do ultimately crush the enemy with that army of black dragons, but the path to victory requires some patience. Wizard - my favorite faction, as I love having 3 ranged units and mass slow -> obliterate everything with minimal loses. But that's the end-game. And doesn't always work. Getting there is tricky, as it's one of the expensive factions that require a lot of gold, not to mention the other resources. And their early-game is kinda mediocre. Really need to get those rocs and wizards to carry you until you can start churning out those titans, and casting high level spells. So again, challenging start, very rewarding finish. All in all, who is strongest largely depends on the map. Small maps with weak monsters will favor knight/barbarian and maybe sorc/necro, as they can rush to an early victory. Large maps with plenty of room to expand before you meet your neighbors, and with strong 'gatekeeping' monsters that prevent early rushes, give late-game factions time to build up and overcome early-bloomers.

[@shyllo]

I like the list, I get the impression Titans and dragons are late game towns and the rest are more mid game oriented.

[@scyyyy]

wait.. trolls have regeneration?

[@scyyyy]

wait, crusaders deal double dmg to necro?

[@scyyyy]

wait, upgrading costs the double? oh shit i clearly didn't play this game enough

[@Norovo]

Dw, I played it loads growing up and never picked up on half this stuff

[@seawind930]

I thought these were Lego box sets for a second

[@tiata23]

i think you're sleeping on barbarian

[@omfgacceptmyname]

h2 is only missing some minor stuff. *wait turns*, maybe 4 more secondary skills, army management hotkeys, town-specific defender buildings into permanent stat buffs.

[@Norovo]

Hero specialties is the biggest thing I miss

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

@@Norovo Hopefully that'll be in the fHeroes expansion

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

Not a fan of waiting myself. Too easy to cheese AI, and slows the game down. Maybe some compromise like a new tactics skill which lets you wait 1, 2, 3 times per round depending on the difference in tactics between you and your opponent, or specific creatures like wolves gaining a wait power.

[@Wiktorino1984]

Still Knight can be S tier if you fast control map and take other castles. Its all depends of map cheap doesnt mean bad thats i love H2 castles are very diffrent and don't try be ballanced. You allways will use diffrent units from diffrent castles when you play serious.

[@kane_lives]

Knight isn't S tier under any circumstances. Archers are very slow and Rangers take a century to upgrade because of all the prerequisites. It doesn't have anything in particular that makes it much better than other castles at taking other castles except for Ballistics. Warlock has a ton of flyers + offensive spells which devastate early game armies.

[@gosufana]

I assume you play on big maps and very long games by this tierlist, my experience on Beltway (Medium sized map ) FFA exlusive games but from my experience the tier list is the following: S tier : Warlock A tier : Wizard / Barbarian B tier : Necromancer C tier : Sorcerer D tier : Knight

[@kane_lives]

Sorry, you need to swap Wizard with Sorc, Wizard's too expensive for Impossible difficulty. Sorc hero has 3x the chance of Wizard to get Archery, and 1.5x more likely to get Luck, while Wiz is 1.5x more likely to get Leadership. However, there are more neutral buildings to get + Morale. There are only 3 skills that directly affect Combat: Leadership, Luck and Archery, Archery being the strongest. And if we're talking Impossible difficulty, the Necro is VERY map dependent and can be as terrible as Knight tier, because it has no shooters until tier 5.

[@TheNovicek]

Disappointing. You're comparing incomparable. Heroes 2 isn't 3, the factions aren't meant to be symmetrical. Knight and Barbarian are early game factions that let you capture castles very early on. Their T6 units aren't meant to compete with Titans or Black Dragons in terms of stats. That's by design. But at the very least, you should have mentioned that buying a week's stack of Crusaders/Cyclops is still cheaper than buying a single Titan/Dragon and in Heroes 2 you are heavily gold limited - while you buy 2/3 of those expensive T6 units, the other factions can buy out all of their units. So you're correct when you say some factions just can't match others in the late game. You're just missing the point that they are never meant to. Wizard/Warlock dominate it because of its power units, but you also need to have several castles already in order to being able to fund them. And for that, knight is as good a start as any, because by the time a Wizard is starting to get their mages, you end up sieging their castle with 3 stacks of moderately tanky unit types (pikemen, swordsmen, cavaliers) and with a guaranteed ballistics skill. Anyway, I don't play MP to really say you can make use of these things in there, but the fact that the factions aren't balanced the same is even mentioned in the manual. Also a side note - mass haste is a fheroes exclusive spell, not in the base game.

[@Runenschuppe]

I always tended to play Knight and just conquer a Sorceress and a Warlock to get to their units.

[@zeusapollo6504]

Personally i think Babarian is best, the high attack power with their early cheap and powerful units just steamroll the maps......heck even bigger maps, since the growth rates of their late tier units is higher, too and i got all the other castle types and can probably mass dragons/titans myself, too if the map is that big.

[@kane_lives]

Sorry, but you're talking low difficulty only. And that is easy and boring. Knight is just TERRIBLE on Impossible, you can't capture squat. There are maps where even getting to Rangers is HARD.

[@johnhawkins5314]

At one point long ago, my grandad bought a Win 95 pc and as a kid I play HOMM2 on it I don't remember much other than Black Dragons go brr and SkeleStacks go brr HOMM3 feels better balanced

[@airelemental193]

in fHeroes v0.95 was capturing mills like mines, and few more interesting things, but in v1.0 i can not find this additional options

[@GreatgoatonFire]

Its so weird, some factions have been pretty much the same from HOMM2 onwards but some HOMM2 factions feels so bizarre. Griffins Centaurs in Warlock?

[@Waterd103]

I mosly disagree with the list. While I agree Knights are the worst. Barbarians are so much better than the rest of the factions.. I would say is S Barbarians, A Sorceress, Wizard, Dungeon , B, Necro Knights. I could be convinced that Wizard is S.