Hey, what is your favorite town vs AI and why?

Hi there! I'm new to the series - and everyone in the world seems to have played it but me!

Would you recommend the original or HoTA and why? Thank you.

Hi Heroes!

Sorry if you already this before: after 30 years, my dream map is finally done!

It started with Jules Verne's novel in 1995. In 1998, as a kid, I drew my first map concept hoping to make this for Heroes II someday. In 2020, I finally started building it.
And since one week, thanks to the HotA Crew's work and 9 months of great feedback from the community, it's complete with all 12 factions!

This is a Giant map (252x252, up to 6 human players, 8 total). You can play it solo or 2v2v2 co-op.
It works for all skill levels - from casual players on Easy (Pawn) to speedrunners doing Impossible 200% (King) in 62 days.

Note : Careful with difficulty selection, "Queen" and "King" difficulty are very hard.
For a first run, unless you're very experienced, choose between "Pawn" or "Rook".
"Rook" is the most balanced difficulty on my map.

Your playtesting over these 9 months really helped <3
The map is now in its final form. Thank you!

Download: Maps4Heroes - The Mysterious Island

The adventure awaits!

Probably old news to a lot of people here but I didn't know.

I was aware of HoMM3 and HotA before OE but barely ever played it.

So after about 80 hours of OE which left me severely disappointed with it's AI, I wanted to explore what's the best way to give in to that admittedly quite compelling gameplay-loop.

So I played 2 games of HotA yesterday. One on a small and one on a medium map. Both with 2 AI opponents.

So I gathered stuff around the hood, built up my town and eventually felt ready to venture out of my starting zone. I got a 2nd hero to use as delivery boy to my 1st. When I ran into the first AI hero it was quite disappointing. It was weaker and it fled. But then it got a lot more interesting.

The AI had several heroes who all were weak compared to my main. But it never let me catch up to them. They basically lured me away from my town and then came in from another angle, forcing me to return. Once one of their heros briefly captured it but instead if defending it, ran off together with it's troops.

Then came the message that the AI I didn't have contact with was eliminated.

So the one that contained me with several mediocre heroes lurking around from different angles had done a successful campaign against the other AI while doing all of that.

I tried different directions to get more vision to see them early. But to no avail. As soon as I was too far away from one area they came back from another.

And then eventually their main hero came. Decked out in T5-T7 units of 2 different factions and with extremely good stats.

So basically they have used decoys to keep me at bay the entire time while farming up their main to insane power, only pulling the trigger when there probably was nothing left to farm for them.

It just seemed so smart and immersive to play against.

OE AI, by comparison just bumrushed me and either it worked and I died in week 2 because I couldn't develop yet or it fails and I can then mop them up because they don't retreat, don't avoid my heroes and continue suiciding heroes into me.

The other thing that was better than OE was the map. The underground layer and the coast with ships just added more venues to get around. Not just silly portals everywhere.