I always develop a secondary hero, often a tertiary one, and always buy the full complement of eight heroes. They always pay for themselves sooner or later by gathering the weekly cash and rare resources from windmills and water mills and leprechauns and such. They're so valuable doing that, though, that I often don't bring one along with my main hero, especially on a resource-rich map.

Instead, I tend to send my hero around with an open slot, especially if he has diplomacy. Usually the missing troop type is a slow defensive unit, like the dendroids (trees) if I'm playing Rampart, or a unit that is very expensive and slow to accumulate in large numbers, like the manticores if I'm playing Dungeon. Leaving a less useful stack behind at home can help defend the castle, too.

Same here. I won't cripple myself with lots of different creatures just to prove that Leadership is good/necessary.

Some of those artifacts are really great (Shackles, tomes) and should replace morale artifacts, but others .....not necessarily: archery items are good only if my hero has Archery as secondary skill, orbs can be skipped. A single spell that is so important and I don't have it already? How often does happen that? Only in the first weeks of play, when Leadership is indeed effective.
Other artifacts also give moral bonuses: a certain ring gives +1 morale and +1 luck, a pendant gives +3 morale and +3 luck !!!!
Lots of map structures (temples, flags and others) give +1 or +2 morale until next battle. Angels/ArchA give + 1 morale.
I've been in too many situations when my troops had +5, +6 morale :). Even if I don't achieve the morale that I would have with Expert Leadership (only +2, instead of +3) a skill slot is wasted for only +4% chance to act again.

And, the suckiest situation ever...when enemy hero has Spirit of Opression.

Yes, it's a good skill in the first weeks/months, but being one of the best 8 skill for a hero? Certainly not!

Leadership just for getting extra attacks in battle is not phenomenal. Not that it won't sometimes make a huge difference in battle -- it does. But it happens too infrequently. When leadership really shines is when you have diplomacy. Diplomacy's ability to pick up stacks of troops on the road is easily one of the best in the game, leading to much more powerful armies, the ability to defend and retain more castles simultaneously without having to hang around them all the time with your main army, and, since those troops are sometimes free, effectively a vastly greater wealth which in turn makes you strong enough to build and conquer more quickly and develop still greater wealth. But if those extra troops cripple your own troops by freezing them in battle so they lose a turn, it's a mixed blessing at best. Leadership is the skill that makes diplomacy even more crazily powerful.

I always think of leadership in concert with diplomacy. Leadership on its own is not so great. Diplomacy on its own IS great. Diplomacy PLUS leadership is amazingly powerful.

You make a very, very good point. Leadership is not as useless as I originally thought it would be.

That being said, we've only got eight skills. I can only speak for myself, but, I need Logistics, I need Offense, I need Armorer, Wisdom and Earth magic are must, except on very small map where I can ignore Wisdom. And like you said, Diplomacy is great. So I'm already at six skills. I know from experience that a well placed mass haste or mass bless can be very devastating for my opponents, alternatively, with expert tactics, I can both mass slow my opponent and pre-move my melee units halfway across the field before the combat begins, so that's one more skill for one of these.

So, I'm left with a last skill slot, and there are minor artifacts and landmarks to boost my morale, the speed artifacts are a good substitute for Tactics, the Bow of the Sharpshooter or the Golden Bow can replace Archery just fine, there are artifacts that gives magic resistance, landmarks that replenish or double your mana, but there is no spells nor artifacts nor landmark that can make or break a siege as quickly as expert Ballistics. Earthquake is not reliable, Teleport just sends one unit to the slaughterhouse if it doesn't have backup, an all flying/ranged roster is not a good solution and ignore half of the units in the game, as for Cyclops, I rarely ever go that road in the Stronghold tech tree, I prefer the Behemoths. So my last skill would be Ballistics.

I am aware of how situational Ballistics is, it is only in use in siege, but without it your units will get decimated every round your catapult misfires, which can quickly turn an easy victory into a Pyrrhic one.

That's my typical optimal build up, it's not carved in stone, sometimes if the map requires Pathfinding, or if the game throws a lousy skill at me, I will dismiss Ballistics but most of the time it tends to gravitate around these skills, at least for me. And that's why, even tho you've made a good point about Leadership, I'd still go for another skill instead.

Ballistics seems to be rather undervalued.
For me it's one of the skill I try to give my generals.
Controling the catapult gives two major advantages when attacking cities:
1. You are ensured of getting off the first spell.
2. There's a good chance you'll destroy the gate in the first round. Combines with Mass Haste it can really reduce the beating your troops take.

On larger maps where you have more than one general, it may be a good idea to have one with Ballistics skills and one without. The latter can have all the fast flyers, while the Ballistics guy keeps the infantry and cavalry.

Having several distinctly different armies is also more fun than just one über army or several armies that are virtually clones of each other.

Few Cyclops Kings in army (can destroy castle walls) eliminates the need to pick Ballistics skill.

WTF?! Forum deleted my message as I was finishing it up?!

*Sigh*

My personal preferences will not jive with what others here advise. This is because of several reasons. Chiefly:

I play randomized huge maps, usually starting with Necropolis and Thant.

I do not play multiplayer anymore (not since the early 2000s I think) and have no real interest in 'created' maps anymore (played a whole ****load of them back in the day) because the quality of such maps tends to be like the quality of certain popular fan-made mods: Very bad!

Having said that:

1) I seldom find Might Heroes to be really any better than Magic heroes. It is quite easy to level up attack and defense to ridiculous levels even for Magic heroes. I tend to choose heroes (when I do choose them) based more on what their special is than whether or not they start with a '1' rather than '0' for attack and/or defense. Of course this won't apply for different maps of different sizes with different structures to visit etc. Might heroes develop Attack and Defense much more quickly than Magic heroes, but I like having higher Power and Knowledge skills for various reasons.

2) I do not place upper tier importance on 'Logistics' skill because A) it is usually pretty easy to get to stables and movement boosting items and such and B) If all goes well in hero development I will be traveling via Town Portal and Dimension Door/Fly. I would rather have Earth magic, Wisdom and even Ballistics because I don't like my stacks of Dread Knights being stuck behind castle walls unable to join the fight and cannot use Cyclops (whose ability IS dependent on your Ballistics skill in terms of chance to hit and number of boulders).

3) I always concentrate on getting the 'Capitol' built by the beginning of week 2, THEN I work on unit buildings. This means getting the maximum money and money means everything in most huge maps.

4) I never buy an ammo cart because it provides a tasty target for Magogs (and Liches if I happen to have living units in my army and for whatever reason had to stick them next to the ammo cart) but this is a minor thing. Most battles do not last long enough to run out of ammo.

5) Starting with Barbarian Strongholds or Swamp Fortresses is a no go for me. I have actually seen many maps in which Town Portal and/or Fly & /or DD were not available at any of the towns so choosing to start with a town that has NO chance of getting TP or DD seems risky to me. I can beat the game easily without TP or DD or Fly but these games feel more like work than gaming.

6) I avoid Fire Magic unless the only other option is Eagle Eye, Learning/Scholar or scouting (for my main) or some such. Fire magic just does not seem overly useful for me. Blind CAN be useful if you get it early but it is quite common to run into heroes whose armies are partly or wholly immune to Blind (meaning some troops are immune or all of them are due to that necklace). Armageddon is of little use to me as a Necromancer (in fact it is only really useful if you have upgraded dragons and/or golems in your army).

Here are the CONS:
1. It's usable only when attacking a town.
2. Some armies manage to get along just fine without this skill (Dungeon, Castle, Tower) because they have good archers and strong fliers.
I agree it's a very good skill for Fortress, but only good/so-so for other factions.

I agree with Heroes Specialties being the #1 reason I choose them or not. They can really really make or break your game quite easily. Starting Stats are really not worth worrying about but the starting special and skills ARE.

For a Might Hero that just goes nuts is Crag Hack ofc. His Specialty boosts Offense skill like crazy. Mephala does the same but for Defense/armorer.

As for my 8 skills for my main Hero they would have to be the following, in no order:

Offense
Wisdom
Earth Magic
Logistics
Tactics
Archery (only with Rampart, Dungeon, Castle and Tower towns though)
Armorer
Water Magic (Great with Bless, Prayer and even Cure)
Intelligence

Most of what you said makes sense to me, except for these:
Stables are not that easy to find, unless you found a Castle town, and there are a lot of maps where Town Portal and Dimension Door/Fly are not available. Even if you find all those, there is no such thing as moving too much. The movement bonus gained by having logistics is cumulative with the one gained by Stables. If you have Logistics you will fly more and will cast TP and DD more, because casting these spells take out movement points, so the more you have, the better.

and the 1) part...

Instead of a magic hero with stats like these (Attack, Defence, Power, Knowledge) 20 20 30 30 (and no Offence and Armourer, unless I found a University) I prefer to have a might hero with something like 36 25 20 20. In my opinion, if these 2 heroes will meet, the latter will win most of the times. Arguments:
- All Might hero troops will deal 80% more damage (16 more attack points than enemy defence points * 5%). In melee, the damage bonus will be 110% (because Expert Offence gives another 30% bonus, Offense has high chance to be one of the might hero skills).
- The magic hero troops will deal in melee only 85% damage (because of the Might hero's Armourer 15% dmg reduction, high chance for the might hero to have this skill). There will also be a damage reduction because he has lower attack skill.

If they both have 30 Archangels (among other troops), the Might hero's first strike against enemy's AA will be:
1500 base damage + 1200 (80%) + 450 (30%) = 3150 (12 AA will die !!!!!, that’s 40%)
If the magic hero will strike first he will hit the enemy's AA:
1500 base damage - 160 (penalty because he has lower attack) - 225 (because enemy has armourer) = 1115 (4 AA will die). Even if they hit first, they will be vanquished in the 3-rd round of combat.
Can the magic hero compensate with spells?

It would be interesting if the magic hero could spend his mana to deny the might hero spell casting.
For example the magic hero has 300 mana, while the might hero has 100 mana.
Let's say the magic hero could sacrifice 200 mana to dry up the might heroe's 100 mana.
Now who would win with only he magic hero being able to cast Mass Slow, Mass Prayer, Blind, Berzerk etc?

Might hero will have 200 spell points, Magic hero will have 600 spell points (with Exert Intelligence). The Might hero will try to finish the battle as quickly as possible, before he ran out of spell points (that’s 8 rounds if he only cast Implosion, but he will have better spells to cast).
If they both have Expert Earth (and I don’t see why they wouldn’t have) then:

- Magic Hero’s Implosion will deal 2550 (2932 with Expert Sorcery). Might hero’s Implosion will deal 1800 damage. 1132 more damage every round in favour of the Magic hero. But in the first round the Might hero have 2000 more damage in his favour only from the Archangels, not to mention the other troops. If both heroes have 40 or 50 AA then the Might hero’s advantage is even higher.

- Magic Hero ressurection spell will bring back to life troops of total health 1660 points. That’s less than might hero’s Implosion, so it’s not worth it.

- Magic Hero Earth elemental spell will summon 120 Earth elementals, that’s a total of 4800 health (hit points). In his turn, the might hero will try his best to neutralize these troops and finish the battle in less than 8-10 turns. He can afford to attack the Earth elementals with one of his troops because he does about triple damage comparing to the Magic hero’s army, and he still has a spell to cast.

Might hero could cast Armaggedon if he has the right setup (Dragons/Phoenixes/Efret/Magic Elemental etc, Expert Fire and have the spell, of course). I think this is the only situation when the Might hero has a chance to win this fight.

The larger the armies the lesser chance for the Magic hero to win. As blueskirt42 said in a previous post: „Generally, there come a point in most maps where your and your enemies' army strength grow so fast that your Spell Power skill just cannot keep up, and when you think of your next spell to cast, you realize that a well placed mass Haste, Bless, Slow, Shield, Prayer or Clone can be more devastating to the enemy, and/or beneficial to you than spells that heavily rely on Spell Power.”

That is the trick to win the fight, I'm waiting on opinions how to do that and not lose the battle before all Might hero' spell points are wasted.

Logistics. Extra movement in the early stages can give you an unassailable lead in resources\towns and thus army strength.

> Might hero will have 200 spell points, ...


When I see these kinds of analysis they always seem to assume high level heroes with large armies. Like you would see on large maps after many turns.

What about small maps? What if the heroes fought in the 2nd week?