Completing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 – All For One

I… I am a masochist. I have (dreadfully) decided I want to complete every scenario in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 which, in the complete edition, amounts to a grand total of more than I care to count – including maps from the base game and the two DLC’s it received. This is going to take many weeks and, dare I say, maybe even a year given as I am not looking to rush through it; it’s just something fun I thought I’d work towards when I’ve not got much going on.

Map Details:
-Name: All For One
-Objective: Destroy all enemies (Free for all, no teams)
-Loss Condition: Lose all towns and heroes
-Number of Players: Three (Red, Blue, Tan)
-Two Level Map

All For One
I choose to play as the red player, setting my spawn in the north-east of the map and choose the Tower faction because they are a powerful faction that I rarely use. This is mostly due to a lack of experience with them, as I typically favour might heroes that can segway into magic in the mid-late game, and Tower is all about the magic all of the time. I start with a wizard hero to mix things up more; her name is Cyra and she starts with a specialty in Haste, allowing her to spawn with and cast that spell with increased effectiveness. This spell allows units targeted by it to move further and act quicker in battle. I decide to go with gold for my starting bonus, and leave the AI factions, starting heroes and bonuses to be entirely randomised. The last thing I do before starting is set the difficulty to hard.

Off the bat, my strategy was to build a mage tower asap in my town before focussing on economy buildings up until the point I had a city hall. After that, what I built was largely in response to what I needed based on how the game went. I start running around the map with two heroes – Cyra to kill creatures and earn experience, and another to grab resources, flag overworld structures and ferry units to Cyra – and all goes smoothly.

All For One is a map I know like the back of my hand. It was the first map I played on Heroes 3 and one I used to practice when I started enjoying the game more. This meant I not only knew how to find key artefacts to maximise my experience from Seers huts, but also the start locations of both my enemies and how the AI typically behaves.

I was right in assuming Blue and Tan players, who had spawned as the Castle faction and Inferno faction respectively, would start fighting over the neutral Necropolis and Stronghold towns in the east. It seemed Blue had recently kicked Tan out of the area by the time I arrived, and it wasn’t hard for me to beat up on an already damaged Blue player. I took the Necropolis, Stronghold and then his fortress town further south. At the same time, Tan was making a come back and lay siege to the Stronghold multiple times before taking it, and then the Necropolis again soon after. My secondary and third heroes kept Tan out my main territories while Cyra eliminated Blue from the game, before acquiring some Angels from his Castle (hurray!).

My secondary and third heroes secured the Necropolis from Tan but couldn’t push further forward, as he decided to launch attacks from the centre of the map which featured a subterranean gate to his primary holdings. Once again, their job became to hold the line. After retaking the Stronghold, Cyra sailed to the north east of the map to capture a small Dungeon town, eliminating Tan’s ability to attack from multiple directions. She then used a gate over there to go underground and attack a second Stronghold. From there she was able to steam-roll into Tan’s Inferno, but not before knocking through his spare underground Stronghold and Dungeon towns.

Tan’s overworld scouts began to desperately attack my territories that they knew they had no hope of capturing, in an attempt to stay in the game. They were shooed away from each and every one. And that is the relatively easy story of how I won All For One.

In truth I should have played on Expert. Don’t worry though, not all of them will be as smooth as this. For all the time I’ve put into the game, there’s still so many scenarios I’ve never even touched and I expect to cause me a lot of pain.

Refer to top image for Cyra’s final stats and army prior to her game-winning battle. My final score is below: