Played the Unification of Rife user made campaign for HoMM 3.
First map, playing the Wizard Rife who is searching for a nice present (an artifact) for his sister Sari, is extremely slow if playing on Impossible since you start with no Fort, but since there are no opposing players there's no rush (except to try to get a good score).
Second map is a rather small strategic battle map.
You have one ally (Lance) and play as Sari, against two enemy players. The enemies are not allied, though, so they never posed much of a threat.
Third map is bigger and more ambitious, and you start with Sari and Lance imprisoned, and their friend Kyllian who was killed and returned as an undead, have to rescue them. Very nice map, but could be better "scripted". At one point you are sailing down a river and can land on the north or south shore. On the south shore is a very powerful enemy hero (I lost on two tries, but could probably defeat him with very heavy losses), so I landed on the north shore and defeated the weaker heroes there. But events suggest you are supposed to land on the south shore and rescue Lance, and in the end I never did that, and the map ended seven days after I conquered all enemy castles. But still a good map despite its premature ending.
The fourth map is an XL map and very ambitious, with lots of quests (some of them very involved), quest guards, border garrisons (some which you can never pass), some huge monster stacks (like a stack of Fairy Dragons having grown 20% each week to a couple of hundred), and epic battles. There's also some C&C where you can use some artifacts to open more than one quest guard.
In many ways the best HoMM 3 map I ever played and it (Conflict of Destiny) is also available as a stand-alone map, and with a WOG version (or just played with WOG?).
Unfortunately it didn't end when I defeated Dragonrife, nor when his faction (Red) disbanded. I checked the editor and the victory condition is clear, so I'm not sure what's causing this. And the remaining player (Green) is located in an isolated pocket (no Dimension Door in the entire campaign), so not possible to defeat all enemies.
All in all much more exciting than the vanilla campaigns, and you even keep most of your troops (but no artifacts). Rife and Sari didn't keep their lvl 5 and 6 troops, though, and Kyllian only kept three of his stacks, but they were the core of his army (Skeletons, Vampire Lords and Power Liches), while Lance kept all his troops.
Diplomacy is a very useful skill on the last map.
First map, playing the Wizard Rife who is searching for a nice present (an artifact) for his sister Sari, is extremely slow if playing on Impossible since you start with no Fort, but since there are no opposing players there's no rush (except to try to get a good score).
Second map is a rather small strategic battle map.
You have one ally (Lance) and play as Sari, against two enemy players. The enemies are not allied, though, so they never posed much of a threat.
Third map is bigger and more ambitious, and you start with Sari and Lance imprisoned, and their friend Kyllian who was killed and returned as an undead, have to rescue them. Very nice map, but could be better "scripted". At one point you are sailing down a river and can land on the north or south shore. On the south shore is a very powerful enemy hero (I lost on two tries, but could probably defeat him with very heavy losses), so I landed on the north shore and defeated the weaker heroes there. But events suggest you are supposed to land on the south shore and rescue Lance, and in the end I never did that, and the map ended seven days after I conquered all enemy castles. But still a good map despite its premature ending.
The fourth map is an XL map and very ambitious, with lots of quests (some of them very involved), quest guards, border garrisons (some which you can never pass), some huge monster stacks (like a stack of Fairy Dragons having grown 20% each week to a couple of hundred), and epic battles. There's also some C&C where you can use some artifacts to open more than one quest guard.
In many ways the best HoMM 3 map I ever played and it (Conflict of Destiny) is also available as a stand-alone map, and with a WOG version (or just played with WOG?).
Unfortunately it didn't end when I defeated Dragonrife, nor when his faction (Red) disbanded. I checked the editor and the victory condition is clear, so I'm not sure what's causing this. And the remaining player (Green) is located in an isolated pocket (no Dimension Door in the entire campaign), so not possible to defeat all enemies.
All in all much more exciting than the vanilla campaigns, and you even keep most of your troops (but no artifacts). Rife and Sari didn't keep their lvl 5 and 6 troops, though, and Kyllian only kept three of his stacks, but they were the core of his army (Skeletons, Vampire Lords and Power Liches), while Lance kept all his troops.
Diplomacy is a very useful skill on the last map.
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