About to play this for the first time, got the complete edition from GOG

about to play this for the first time, got the complete edition from GOG
anything i should know before playing?

bump

The game is addictive.

Beware.

Have fun

Take gold from treasure chests early, they allow you to build more units and buildings early. You can always get EXP from fighting creature stacks on the map. Prioritize resource mines before picking up individual pieces of resources on the map. Logistics is a legitimately busted skill.

Don't play inferno. Inferno is by far the weakest faction. Necropolis and conflux are overpowered.

This isn't the correct answer to the "do I choose gold or exp from treasure chests?" question.
Neither is choosing exp.
The correct answer is it depends on your play style and whether you want your hero to build up his secondary, and primary skills, or if you want money to build up your town and troops.
Both give you a pretty much equal advantage because the game is so balanced in many ways.

Just like going with a might hero or a magic hero are both good choices for their own reasons.

Isn't it the Barbs are the weakest?

Your hero's movement range per day is based on the speed of the slowest creature in your hero's army.

If a ranged creature has an ability called "no melee penalty", that means it won't have its damage reduced by half when an enemy creature is next to it in combat like it normally would. However that ranged creature still can't shoot ranged attacks until the enemy creature is no longer beside it.

"No obstacle penalty" means your ranged creature doesn't get 50% reduced damage for shooting an enemy creature on the other side of siege walls.
"No range penalty" means your ranged creature doesn't get 50% reduced damage when targeting an enemy creature who is more than 9 hexes away.

Also terrain penalties when moving on the world map, and shit. Look into it.

No, the correct answer is depends on the map and resources you have available, if you have an overwhelming surplus of gold you pick exp, if there is low amount of monsters in the map you pick exp, if you have enough gold to buy the creatures of your town but lack other resources to build the town up you pick exp

in any other case you pick gold, which should be around 80% of cases

No. Inferno has by far the weakest early game units and if I remember correctly even the worst T7 unit as well damage/defense wise. Barbs can with ease get the behemoths units by the start of week 2/end of week 1 and just snowball.

>snowball
>not Necro
I do remember that the behemoths are good though.

>snowball
>not Necro
I did mention that necropolis is one of the strongest along with conflux.

Buy HD version

Yeah alright. That sounds good.
Also, OP, undead and non-living creatures aren't the same thing.
Both can't be resurrected, (undead can be with "reanimate undead", both can't be affected by morale (positive or negative), both can't be affected by mind spells, and both are not affected by a Vampire Lord's life drain skill.
The exceptions to these rules, for some reason are Stone and Obsidian Gargoyles, who are considered non-living, yet are still affected by morale and mind spells, but not the other two.

Also only undead are affected by "destroy undead" spell, and only undead are NOT affected by the "death ripple" spell.

Yes, but that's the snowball group.
>tfw you love necros in games, but you're a faggot for using the OP group

>buy HD version
Are you intentionaly trying to bamboozle him?

install this fan HD version

Don't listen to this asshat.
The HD version doesn't include the much loved expansions, or map editor.

do this unless you like 800x600

Research till level 4 magic. If no teleportation skip town and go to next.

best fucking game ever.

tips:

>you should almost always take gold from treasure chests, xp is negligible and you will get more than enough from map encounters
>avoid stacks of shooter monsters on the map early on to avoid unnecessary early casualties
>generally speaking, rushing capitol ($$ making) is never as good as building creature dwellings + citadel/castle, provided you are clearing the map efficiently
>learn to use multiple heroes to move troops across the map quickly ("Chaining")
>that being said, it is good to have 1 "main" hero to mostly level and fight your big battles
>logistics/air magic/earth magic should pretty much always be prioritized, given the choice

have fun

gold will be better than XP 99% of the time. 1 hero level will have virtually no effect on your game; 2000gp will enable you to build something at least a turn early.

you can get multiple hero levels by beating a big stack of zombies/dwarves/etc on the map, which more than makes up for those silly little chests.

Archangels + Cloning (Watermagic) = Undefeatable combo due to ressurection.

I would never do such a thing, the HD version isn't perfect but the Ubisoft team really did go all out and put effort in.
DELET THIS

Also only do it if you don't mind being forced to have the towns and battles awkwardly done in a separate window on top of the world map, ruining muh immersion.
nah stick with 800x600. The way it's meant to be played, baby.

>complete edition from GOG

You did good.

Don't, its garbage and it actually manages to look worse and doesn't have the expansions

do you guys prefer one OP hero or several similar stat wise? or maybe one OP and another weak for exploring the map?

>1 hero level will have virtually no effect on your game
I disagree. 1 more level can mean a lot going from an advanced elemental secondary to expert. but yeah early on, I guess choosing gold is better because you won't have that many spells anyways.
I agree with everything else you said.
Good advice overall.

If it's a XL map, I usually try to have two main heroes getting levels and shit so I can defend and conquer more areas. I also like having 2 or maybe even 3 shit heroes with like 1 fast creature in their army just for uncovering the land and grabbing unguarded resources.

depends on how big the map is (e.g. how long the game may be). i shoot for as many heroes as i can afford (which generally means filling all 8 slots within the first few turns), fanning them out in all directions, and chaining my troops appropriately to clear key map points ASAP. after that i focus on 1 hero (usually Dessa / crag hack or some other logistics/offense-focused hero). if i have time i will beef up one or two others as a "secondary" heavy-duty map clearer, but even if i'm playing huge jebus random maps it's rare for games to last that long unless i am purposely dicking around

i can understand that, but it's so situational (and left to random chance--you can't guarantee you will have the opportunity to get the skillup you need) that i generally wouldnt risk it. it would mostly only be critical if you could go from adv air/earth --> expert air/earth for mass haste/slow, which makes most armies unstoppable.