Just realized there was this separate forum,(instead of the M and M forum)....so here this is again:

I've given up playing this until I can figure this out. Last two games I have zero gold to use for recruitment.

My first time through, I did have like 20k for recruitng, but after my initial recruitment, my gold balance sat at 0 for a long time, until my army was gone and I lost my leader. In my 2nd and 3rd games, both given up in frustration, I never even got gold in the buildings for recruitment. So, I am unclear on how I got some the first game, and it never recovered any gold. While my castle has 20k.

I scoured the rulebook, Googled it, looked through 10 pages here, and have gotten nowhere. Is this a glitch? How do I build my army?

Each town you control should generate 1000 gold each turn, iirc. Building a Statue in a town will increase that by 250 gold per turn. A Warlock town can build a dungeon for an additional 500 gold per turn. There will probably be loose resources scattered around, some of which may provide gold, and each gold mine you own will provide 1000 gold each turn.

Buying new heroes to lead your creatures, recruiting creatures, and building structures in your town are all actions that will spend your stockpiled gold.

Which map or campaign are you playing?

I was playing the SP campaign.

I know my castle/town was making gold.....but my buildings I built, that allow creating and recruitment all show zero gold balance. So, many turns in, I have built all these buildings but have my hero running around, unable to fight, as all we have is our initial weak units.

My first game it worked at first....I made a bunch of Rocs, Iron Golems and Mages. But, once my balance reached zero in that game, I have yet to be able to build/recruit a single solitary unit, and have no idea why.

Is this clear? Does it make any sense? I have plenty of money available in that first castle/town.

My bad....I figured it out......guess more patience is necessary....no units available at times and I was looking at the zero money but that was before I upped the units.

One thing I'm finding is in campaign, I think some factions are better than others. Was doing ok until my two heroes met up with a hero from the north, who had 4 crossbowmen and one of those badass dudes that throw the rocks....already got soundly defeated by a pack of those. Near instadeath in those two battles. Not sure my castle can hold up to that group....retreat! Maybe it's time to try the dark side.

OH! I see the disconnect now.

Gold is one of the resources used in the game, stockpiled for your whole empire's use. It is not stored per town; you should be able to see how much gold (and other resources) you have available to spend by clicking on the status window in the bottom right of the screen (there are a few different informational displays available through that window).

Time for a short detour: game turns are called "days", where each turn is one day. There are seven days in one week, and 4 weeks in one month. There are no years. After seven days, the week indicator goes up by one and the day counter resets to one.

The numbers you are talking about are actually the stockpiled creatures in your creature generators, not gold. When you first build a generator, it will have one week's worth of creatures available for hire. Every built creature generator will have a new round of creatures on Day 1 of each week (in every non-neutral town, anyway). When the next week starts, check your town; your creature generators should have a new round of creatures available to hire.

Also, each faction has creatures of different tiers. Higher tier creatures cost more to hire and tend to be more powerful (though "power" varies by situation, since a stack of halflings tend to be more valuable behind castle walls than a stack of boars, even though halflings are tier 1 and boars are tier 2).

Also also, be aware that some creatures have no upgrades, but some creatures can be upgraded. If you have unupgraded creatures, you can upgrade them (for a cost) at a Hill Fort map site or at a town with the upgraded creature dwelling. For example, if you have a stack of magi, and you take them to a Wizard town with the Upgraded Mage Tower built, then you can spend gold to upgrade your magi into archmagi. Double click on the unit stack to see the upgrade button.

Last note: the rock throwers sound like trolls, which are Tier 5 creatures. They are pretty tough. :)

Thanks for the tips....I may try games besides campaign.....campaign doesn't seem to be going so well for me, choosing the light....

One of the big things is to consolidate most of your creatures on to one hero, who will do most of the fighting. The more consolidated force that you can bring to bear, the fewer losses you'll take in combat, allowing you to keep going.

Also, make sure to hire at least one more hero (possibly more, depending on your resources and needs). This/these secondary heroes can take care of scouting and scooping up loose resources for you, so your combat hero can focus on fighting (thereby opening up new areas for your scouts to explore and loot).

I hear you....I gave up on my last game after the blue man group came after my one Hero pack and then attacked my city and had very high #s and some intense spells, like nothing I have.

What really confuses me is how this new campaign I just started, I don't even have much of the map uncovered, and the green group suddenly appeared in my area......they have 42 Centaur, 27 Goblins, 22 Orc Chiefs, 5 Wolfs and 4 Orc Lords!....puts my army to shame. Don't think I even have half that # of units.

How in the hell could they have that much that soon in the game? I'm starting to wonder about this game, that gets bandied up so much. Sure seems there advantages to certain areas or colors.

Campaign maps start each player with armies set by the map designer. Some maps may be designed to give an unfair start, although I don't recall any early HoMM2 maps that are supposed to be heavily biased against you. Exactly which mission is this?

Depending on which map you are playing, the opponents will have a head start in build up or creature count, which you'll need to apply some skill to offset. The very early campaign maps shouldn't be particularly balanced against you, though.

If you are just starting, then maybe start with some of the easier scenarios to get your feet wet and learn the basics. I do seem to recall that the expansion campaigns were a fair bit more difficult than the original campaigns, so maybe save those for later. Your first campaign(s) should be siding with Roland or Archibald against the other.

Exactly which campaign and which mission are you playing, and what month/week/day is it when you get overrun?

I am just on the very first scenario of the Original campaign. Where you have to take 3 castles to the N.

I started yet again, and even took out one marauding hero group......am amassing a large hero army, so we will see how it goes.....but given the one has crossbowman, wolves, etc, etc, I feel this side does get the shaft in this scenario.

I did look through the scenarios, and only saw one coded as "easy". If this falters again, maybe I'll go do some of those....upon first starting, I kind of figured those were for AFTER the campaign, like most games.

Maybe I'm just really used to games starting you out slow and easy now.....if you start this one on campaign, not much easy about it, it seems.

I believe the first map has all three opponents unalloyed with each other, so they will fight each other as well as you. You just have to come out on top when the dust has settled. Later maps WILL get much more difficult.

It will probably be worth your while to go through some of the easier single scenarios first to learn tactics and strategy, both for the adventure map and for combat.

Since it looked like you needed some guidance, I figured I'd record myself playing through this scenario. Here's the video. Please bear in mind that I did get lucky here and there, so it might seem like I had it really easy. I beat the level during the third game month, which is kind of late in this particular case. But anyway, I hope this'll expose you to a few basic and advanced strategies. Below are my comments next to the times they occur within the video.

00:16 ~ I left my Halflings in town for the time being, as they will slow the hero down.

00:18 ~ Splitting up creature stacks can be done by selecting them and Shift + clicking on an empty slot.

00:58 ~ I was lucky enough to find a Barbarian hero for hire. Barbarians and Knights have higher Attack and Defense than magic-based heroes (Sorceress, Warlock, Wizard, and Necromancer), so try to hire one.

05:43 ~ These Trolls guard the entrance to your territory. In all my years of playing this scenario, this was the first time the enemy didn't break through and invade. Perhaps I got lucky this time, because it's normal to have unwanted company by the third or fourth weeks.

07:06 ~ Since I'm ending my Barbarian's turn inside the town, I garrisoned all the slower creatures (i.e. Halfings and Rocs) and left the Boars intact. This ensured that the Barbarian would begin the following turn with as many movement points as possible.

07:46 ~ Barbarians and Knights do not begin with Spell Books, so remember to purchase one!

11:26 ~ I usually recommend taking Gold from treasure chests. It's tempting to choose EXP so you'll level up faster, but the free Gold can really help you afford buildings and creatures.

12:49 ~ This Wizard is transferring reinforcements to my Barbarian. Using multiple heroes really saves you time and legwork.

19:14 ~ I'd normally choose Pathfinding, but since this particular map is all grass (easy terrain), Leadership is more useful.

24:34 ~ When fighting groups of ranged creatures like these Halflings, it's very handy to have two stacks of flying creatures (e.g. Rocs). If you can position them in between two ranged creatures, you'll force them to fight hand-to-hand. That'll prevent them from shooting at your own fragile ranged creatures.

25:21 ~ One thing you'll notice me doing often is transferring my Barbarian's slower creatures to a nearby hero. Once again, this is so the Barbarian will be able to move farther the next turn. Just remember to give the Barbarian's creatures back to him when he needs them.

26:05 ~ I'd forgotten that my initial Wizard was carrying the Thunder Mace, which was the starting bonus I chose at the beginning. Here, I made sure to transfer it to my Barbarian. Note that I didn't transfer the Halfings or Rocs back to him yet (in order to keep him moving farther).

29:33 ~ Both here and at 30:15, I got very lucky. Creatures offering to join you is a rare treat, but unfortunately, we cannot rely on this happening all the time. Zombies and Dwarves are very slow, so you'll see them mostly relegated to my scouting heroes throughout this video.

30:50 ~ This is a bizarre playthrough. It's amazing that my opponents are eliminating each other while leaving me alone.

36:29 ~ I decided against battling these Centaurs because they're the same speed as my Rocs. A Centaur stack was likely to move before my Rocs could tie them up, and I didn't want to risk losing any Archmagi.

37:38 ~ I hoped that adding 34 Dwarves to my Barbarian's army would prompt the Gargoyles to flee, but my plan backfired. Thankfully, the ensuing casualties were relatively minimal.

40:35 ~ There are usually better secondary skills to choose than Eagle Eye, but Navigation is useless in this scenario.

49:32 ~ The enemy Barbarian player has been eliminated. As you know, it's usually this guy who pushes through the Trolls and threatens us during the first game month.

56:23 ~ Much like with the Centaurs, Trolls are the same speed as my Rocs. I decided to play it safe.

1:05:12 ~ Magic-based heroes aren't the strongest generals, but their spells really hurt...

1:09:29 ~ The Xanadu gave my Barbarian +1 to Attack, Defense, Spell Power, and Knowledge since he's Level 10.

1:09:57 ~ I wasn't expecting to field Dragons or even Giants during this playthrough, but the opportunities arose.

1:11:17 ~ Sadly, I forgot that my Barbarian didn't have the Wisdom secondary skill. No Level 3+ spells for me.

1:18:51 ~ I decided to do some resource trading. In order to buy a few Black Dragons, I needed more Gold.

A few additional notes, from the very early parts of the video:

~1:00 - He gave one boar to each of his wizard heroes because he planned to use those heroes as scouts. Their job is to run around uncovering the map and scooping up any resources they can find. A hero's base movement each turn is determined by the slowest speed among the creatures he is leading, so you generally want to give each scout a single, fast troop. Make sure the single creature is disposable; you want powerful creatures helping the hero(es) that will be doing the fighting, not tied up with a scout hero.

1:50 - There is a windmill guarded by skeletons. Some locations on the map, like this windmill, provide a bonus each week when visited, but they only provide that bonus once a week, and only to the first player (human or AI) to visit that site in the week. A windmill gives a small amount of a random resource. There are also creature generators that you can find, which will allow you to hire one week's worth of that creature. Note that the map location generators need to be visited every week to hire their creatures; generators in your town will continue to stockpile creatures each week (so you can come back a month later for 4 week's worth of creatures), but if the map location creatures aren't hired in a given week, then that week's worth of creatures are gone forever.

2:25 - His barbarian could have taken the goblins and the orcs along with the Wizard troops, but chose not to do so. The orcs would have slowed him down. They move even slower than halflings, and a paltry 4 of them won't add much damage to make up for it.

The goblins would not have slowed him down (being faster than halflings), but mixing troops of different castle types does cause morale problems. If all troops on a hero are from the town type (or all are neutral, I assume), then each stack gets +1 morale (morale ranges from -3 to +3, with zero being the base). For each different town type (with neutrals being their own "town" type) represented in the army, every stack gets -1 morale (so mixing 2 different towns sets morale at 0, 3 puts morale at -1, etc.) Mixing necromancer troops with other troops gives an additional -1 (the living don't like working with the dead). Note that some units (like undead) are immune to morale, good or bad, and always have a morale of zero. Artifacts, skills (leadership), and events can give a hero morale bonuses or penalties.

~4:00 - Notice how he moves the melee troops to barricade his shooters. This is a very common tactic; it helps keep your shooters from being tied up in melee (where they do half damage and may suffer retaliation attacks).

~8:50 - If your hero's army is significantly stronger than an independent stack of creatures on the map, that stack of creatures may try to flee instead of fight. If you let them flee, then you won't get any experience for the fight, but you don't risk any combat losses either. Usually you'll want to fight them so you can get the experience, but sometimes (like against ranged creatures), you might want to preserve your creatures more.