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

Heroes of Might and Magic II (HoMM2) town rankings. This is my beginner friendly guide to the pros and cons of each faction, their best creatures, hero primary and secondary skill progression, and so on.
⭐ Fheroes2 Explained (Overview): • Huge Gameplay Improvem...
⭐ Buy Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Gold Edition at GOG (recommended)*: af.gog.com/en/game/heroes_of_...
*This affiliate link supports the channel at no cost to you. You need official Heroes 2 game files to properly install Fheroes2.
Timestamps / Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:23 Barbarian
04:43 Knight
08:16 Necromancer
11:46 Sorceress
15:15 Warlock
18:46 Wizard
⭐ Fheroes2 Project homepage: github.com/ihhub/fheroes2
⭐ Fheroes2 Download page: github.com/ihhub/fheroes2/rel...
⭐ Fheroes2 Installation guide (Windows, Android, etc.): github.com/ihhub/fheroes2/blo...
⭐ The Clearing (map playthrough): • Heroes of Might and Ma...
Please note I can't help with individual technical problems - sorry. I suggest asking for help on the official Discord or other community pages if needed.
Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
#heroesofmightandmagic #homm2 #heroesofmightandmagic2

[@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

[@user-kl9bi4jt4t]

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]

@@user-kl9bi4jt4t I thought the rectangles with the number of units are guns.

[@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.

[@TejoY]

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

[@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!

[@edoethalesmo]

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

[@rado78231]

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

[@kairos4486]

Fantastic content! Keep it coming.

[@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.

[@kanelives2895]

@@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.

[@wesleyrussell8386]

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

[@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.

[@ethanatkins1973]

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.

[@TheStisen]

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

[@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.

[@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

[@OtterSC2]

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

[@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!

[@jgmweston]

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

[@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.

[@wheresmycoffeewmc]

Great video! Thanks!

[@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

[@offroadturkey]

love heroes 2! keep em up!

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!! 🎉

[@AbadGorilla]

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

[@jamesdavey9690]

Sorceress and Necromancer have always been my favourite towns.

[@GreetTheSacredCow]

Amazing content.

[@vojtechvanek1686]

Completely agree with the list

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@Kondoor249]

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.)

[@Kondoor249]

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

[@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)

[@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.

[@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 :)

[@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

[@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 :)

[@jarunia17]

YAAAASSSSS

[@BenjaminGlatt]

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

[@kanelives2895]

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.

[@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)

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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

[@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).

[@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.

[@joshuastamand7653]

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

[@CristianCiupe]

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

[@Carrotdone]

New video 😎

[@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.

[@skullowner3999]

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

[@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.

[@ahmadabughazaleh8246]

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.

[@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.

[@niki8280]

Do you have a town music tier list yet?

[@Norovo]

Nope. Whole soundtrack rules though.

[@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.

[@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.

[@clarkkent2273]

Hi Norovo, where are you from?

[@Norovo]

The south of England

[@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.

[@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 ?

[@dyinganthem]

homm3 version please!

[@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.

[@kanelives2895]

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]

@@kanelives2895 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.

[@kanelives2895]

@@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]

@@kanelives2895 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.

[@kanelives2895]

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.

[@tiata23]

i think you're sleeping on barbarian

[@kanelives2895]

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.

[@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.

[@kanelives2895]

"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.

[@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

[@seawind930]

I thought these were Lego box sets for a second

[@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.

[@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…

[@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.

[@kanelives2895]

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]

@@kanelives2895 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.

[@kanelives2895]

@@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.

[@mrmarmellow563]

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

[@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.

[@kanelives2895]

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.

[@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

[@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.😭

[@stassenchr]

I like your channel, but whereas I share your love for 3, heroes 2 to me has not aged well enough to enjoy anymore

[@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

[@CrazyFlyer5551]

Bop for the algorithm

[@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?

[@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

[@kanelives2895]

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.

[@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.

[@kanelives2895]

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.

[@Rencol666]

Weird as it is, i loved the barbarian town. In some cases i had cyclops out before wizards even got mages and B-lined unsuspecting enemy town without any defenses or walls, building tower, leaving other units behind, and retreating. By the time they got back to "their" town i had castle up, bombarding them with arrows while turtling inside with beefy ogres. And if they decide to go after me or my town, what are they gonna do? Send gargoyles against cyclops? The same thing i liked to do in H3, where its possible to have behemoths out in the FIRST week.

[@minakoaino3917]

imbalance makes homm better

[@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

[@bartolcherry2200]

i know it warlock will win cuse of dragons and knight will lose cuse of pesants

[@tomtomwhatwhat22]

Is this Tommisalami?

[@AlexanderMakarov88]

Knight is the best S tier (better than barb): Stack of paladins cheaper and powerful that stack of cyclops. Best defense castle in early game. Fastest and cheapest attack in the start +good chance for wisdom comparing with barb. Best debut in the game with knight give you the keys to the other castles where you will get the keys to the winning of the late game.

[@kanelives2895]

This is the dumbest comment under this video. The competition for that title is fierce, but you've won it fair and square.

[@GrinningAries]

If there was a way to improve the knight with new unit traits and graphics, I would consider putting cavaliers on pegasi so they could fly, and have them be extra effective against dragons as paladins are vs. undead (calling upon the old knight vs. dragon paradigm). Then, have paladins cast bless on themselves whenever they attack, and more immunities against more status affecting spells cast against them. No idea how well that would work toward balance improvements but its a shame their faction is so weak. I have a soft spot for knights and human factions and characters living in otherwise fantastical worlds, as well as this factions' unit graphics.

[@DeathmanElf]

Before watching it, Necromancers top tier ;3

[@steveo252]

No way mage guild isn’t S-Tier! I get the cost, but the library alone makes them worth it! No other special building comes close to the Library.

[@kanelives2895]

Dungeon is stronger. Library doesn't even guarantee good spells, just more spells. Dungeon is always useful up until the game is basically already won.

[@vazzeg]

I grew up with this game only now at 37 I realized it says "adobe" and not "abode". Damn, my brain must have autocorrected it...

[@transcendent8839]

XD

[@thamirivonjaahri6378]

Always thought of Knights as "starter" town, since all of it is just lackluster and totally baseline-ish town, but also easy to comprehend as a result. Only tricky unit is cavalry due to jousting bonus, which is not apparent ability to new players. I personally also find pikemen to be utter rubbish and don't even get me started on peasants (they are just utter pain and burden being slowest, weakest and least damaging unit ever with just 1 point in each stat often times slowing advance of your army to a crawl. There is no single instance in which you could say they are at least usable). Still they have crusaders with their double attack and Knight heroes often have one of the most rounded stats of all heroes on the map (Jack of all trades kinda thing). Barbarian town is all about rush and extremely aggressive gameplay. Goblins and orcs being cheap and with stats focused on attack they both can totally dominate early battlefield. Pathfinding itself is also very helpful in rushing strategies and early expansion. Their overreliance on attack over defense can be a big time burden in the late game though due to attrition which can easily deplete their numbers to the point where otherwise "weaker" towns just roll over them with their sheer numbers. Sorceress town is imo all about battle speed and spells (basically any unit other than dwarf is so freaking fast you often end up being first to move). Combine it with huge magical potential (often have highest spell power of all heroes on map) and you have pretty devastating combo, which later on becomes almost a necessity to counter other towns since their heroes have very little to offer in terms of attack and defense. Technically you can also take all units for the ride (except for those lazy slowpokey dwarfs) and have very decent amount of move points even without logistics. Warlocks have excellent units, but also ludicrously expensive town (dungeon definitely helps out, but you still need second town to recruit most available units per week and three towns to buy them all). They are great for those who love to make very elaborate long term plans since you often end up planning more than ten turns in advance including what to buy on market as resources they need to advance are putting alot of strain on economy. However their beefy units combined with huge magical potential of warlock heroes (often have highest amount of mana points from all heroes on map along with very good spell power) make them very good late game dominators. Necromancers are the crazy town of this game having three insanely strong units (well one..the mummy is strong only because of the curse, but skeletons and wamps totally dominate most of their respective tiers), then you have one average unit (bone dragon, weaker than regular dragon but also considerably cheaper and can be reanimated if eliminated) and then you have weirdly overpriced liches, who have slow dwelling growth and often times end up doing more harm than good. And then you have zombies, which are just most useless unit right after peasants not worth of being even a spank fodder, or garrison...their price simply doesn't justify anything of that sort. Also since they are all undead, it can be very problematic to combine them with any other towns (morale drop of living units requires your hero to have leadership to counter negative effect. Good luck getting it as necro though) and you often times also need completely different spellcasting strategies compared to most of other towns. Wizards are opposite of sorceresses in that they are focused around defense and with mostly slowpacing units (half of their units are in slow category), since often times their heroes end up getting defense skill upon lvling up, but virtually no attack skill at all. Their units reflect this as well. Halflings are good ranged unit, but they are painfully slow (their turn as such come svery late and they also significantly slow heroes down on the map) and prone to unpredictable dmg output (1-3dmg with quite low AP of their own), boars are fast and relatively good meatshield (since they occupy two fields they can easily defend halflings, or mages) but they absolutely lack any serious offensive capability (their AP is kinda weak for a second tier unit), golems are slow AF, but also very tanky fot their tier and spell resistant with average dmg output (best left to defend the town), rocs are imo best used as versatile flyers who can both protect friendly ranged units and block enemy ranged units, being tanky enough and fast enough (and big enough) to do both, mages again despite being ranged are more defense oriented (no melee penalty, quite beefy for a ranged unit) leaving titans to be the only unit with stats more or less rounded around (except for price, which is just so much it makes one wonder if it's not better just to grab similar tier from other town). The biggest drawback is same as for warlocks being their units and town upgrades being mindboggingly overpriced and causing severe developmental bottlenecks in result. Basically the very fact that game is this "disbalanced" is what makes it so entertaining as it requires people to deploy vastly different strategies for each faction.

[@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.

[@kanelives2895]

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.

[@JoshuaHill182]

mine would be: S: Warlock A: Necro B: Wizard and Sorceress C: Barbarian D: E: F: Knight Which is interesting because Castle (Knights in homm3) are by far the best town.

[@br3ak_]

Castle is by far the best town in H3? On what template? In what kinds of situations? At what point(s) in the game? If you think there is a "best" town in Heroes 3 you definitely didn't play it at a high level. Even Inferno, which is arguably the worst town according to the majority of people, can be a top tier town, if not the best, if very specific conditions are met - one common scenario would be between newbies that tend to play huge maps generated by the RMG, their demon farming strategy is huge at that level and relatively easy to pick up without considering tempo efficiency.

[@jgmweston]

Castle definitely got a huge glow-up in HoMM 3.

[@Raziel_J]

1. They added fly bulky creatures. Griffins are fast, have a good amount of health and Royal Griffins can retaliate endlessly. Angels and especially Arch Angels are one of the best, if not the best tier 7 creature. 2. Removed peasants and brought pikemen and halberdiers to the table. Archers are bulkier and faster. 3. You can buy the stables and give a enormous movement boost to all your heroes every week. 4. Apart from gems for Angels and 5 cristals to get swordsmen, you can do just fine with ore and wood, mostly. And if you happen to have a mystical garden nearby you can have your gems supply covered. I could go on, but going for Castle is never a bad option in HOMM3 and is definitely one the best options. It is not coincidence that the whole HOMM3 story revolves around it and therefore they gave this faction a enormous boost.

[@omfgacceptmyname]

castle is under necro and flux, but better than everyone else because of angels. they have sort of the opposite problem to what norovo described here: it's extremely expensive to buy angels in town, but always worth it.

[@JoshuaHill182]

@@br3ak_ In general, im always happy when i roll castle, rarely the case with most other towns in most templates. There arent many templates where i wouldnt want to play castle yk. They went from f teir to s in one game for sure

[@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

[@DoCKathos]

I've always preferred wizards over warlocks, even though they're a lot harder to build up than warlocks are since they need all precious resources at all stages of the game whereas warlocks really only need gems and sulfur for a while. I think wizards units are generally better early and still very comparable late, I'd rather take golems with me than hydras. Depending on how many towns there are, the library can give you a huge advantage over other factions. I still think they're S tier, but not as good as warlock or necro on average because of the resource dependency. Sorceress I think is a fair bit better than barbarian as well, if there was an A tier candidate then it would be sorceress. Rip knight's, nobody likes you.

[@kanelives2895]

Nope, Wizard is just way worse than Warlock at any stage of the game. Warlock is just about the only one who can EASILY clear a Gold mine using native troops with stuff like "Lots of Elves" guarding it on day 2, barring some extremely unfavorable 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. The only way to replicate this is to hire a Warlock hero day 1 as a different faction, and that's very RNG.

[@Nodwick123]

Imo if you town can build black dragons its S if only titans A and rest in game is F tier and not worth your time tbh.