Completing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 – Buried Treasure

Map Details:
-Name: Buried Treasure
-Size: Medium
-Two Layer Map
-Objective: Destroy all enemies or find specific artefact (Titan’s Gladius)
-Loss Condition: Lose all towns and heroes or fail to find artefact before another player.
-Difficulty: Hard
-Number of Players: Four (Red, Blue, Tan, Green)

Player Details:
Red (Me): Dungeon Town. Deemer as starting hero (Meteor Shower specialty). Gold starting bonus.
Blue (CPU): Tower Town. Fafner as starting hero (Naga Specialty). Gold starting bonus.
Tan (CPU): Inferno Town. Zydar as starting hero (Sorcery Specialty). Artefact starting bonus.
Green: (CPU): Necropolis Town. Nagash as starting hero (Gold Specialty). Resource starting bonus.

Buried Treasure is a nice change of pace, with each player starting on a comfortable and easily defendable island from where they can launch overland and underground incursions from relative safety. I picked Deemer because I figured this would lead to the AI getting large armies, and thought Meteor Shower’s area of effect would help quell the hordes to come. Also he has a cool portrait. I picked Dungeon because, though not the best overall town, they are the most interesting in terms of unit variety and unique buildings.

Aside from flagging mines, much of the early game consisted of ferrying low-tier units to Deemer and having them throw them at creature banks to get fat stacks of cash. I quickly levelled up Earth Magic and used mass slow to cheese a lot of creatures and get a second underground Dungeon Town. Something to note when playing as Red on this map; you can see where the Titan’s Gladius is from your underground area, thus giving you an advantage over the other players.

Early in the game I stumbled upon the Angelic Alliance – an extremely powerful relic artefact that allows Castle, Rampart, Tower, Stronghold and Fortress creatures to be in the same army without suffering morale penalties, as well as casting expert Prayer at the start of every battle and giving you a whopping +21 to all four primary skills. But I was playing as the Dungeon and it was thus impossible for me to wield it. However, I could disassemble the artefact to at least get the sweet buffs the items that crafted it could give me.

I lost my mind a bit on this one, becoming so obsessed with finding the artefact that I lost my primary town twice and even both of my only towns once, having to circle back to get them again. This was all avoidable, but I had tunnel vision for the artefact. The Green player was steamrolling everyone else and would have won by domination, had I not been so quick on my feet. I constructed two level 5 mage guilds but got none of the best spells like town portal, dimension door or fly, and thus had to sail and walk everywhere. Luckily Deemer’s stats were so through the roof that his army of relatively low level creatures plowed through the various level 7 enemy encounters in the last stretch of the map, where the Titan’s Gladius is found. I took it with ease once I had my borders secured. Indeed, the meteor shower came in clutch against the Titans and Red Dragons who frequently clumped up and had multiple stacks wiped as a result of me haing expert Earth Magic and Sorcery.

Buried Treasure is a very fun map that always leaves me feeling rewarded and satisfied for my efforts.

Refer to the top image for Deemer’s final stats prior to him winning by finding the Titan’s Gladius. My final score is below: