In level 2, you start the game with an ally. Nothing in the story indicates that one of the three opponents should be an ally. In fact I believe one of the in-game text mentions three enemies.

Then on level 5 you get an ally. Again.

Are these oversights? Were they supposed to be enemies but were marked as allies by mistake.

Also, in level 4, there is an ambassador's sash guarded by a quest guard that will only give it to Tarnum. In previous levels a seer would need one, but in this level it's... useless. Completely useless because Tarnum can't even make use of its properties (it reduces cost of surrendering, but he can't surrender). So why put it there and guard it this way? Again is this an oversight/incomplete quest?

Same issue in level 7. Two allies, make this a walk in the part, a complete joke. One of the messages says that you should bring strong forces when wondering underground (where those 2 allies are) so I strongly suspect this was an oversight and they weren't meant to be allies.

You also have an ally in level 8.

I hope none of the later chapters suffer from this issue.

Maybe the designers thought that having resources on every second square didn't make the game easy enough? ;-)

I have some vague recollection about this, but I don't remember any details.

This does look like an oversight. Have you found any other allies that should not be there? I think I'll "fix" it for my extracted Chronicles campaigns I play in H3.

Only in that campaign. I've finished up till Fiery Moon so far.

Conquest of the Underworld is indeed the only campaign that has AI allies. I think it's to make your descent into the Underworld more hellish, myself, since the AI ally is as likely to screw with your head as anything.

I think it is intentional. Although I felt it is weird there was no mention of it in lore at all, I assumed it it supposed to be the one devil that joins you later to defeat your enemy (only to screw you later). I assumed tehy got ordered by their leader to help you but not contacting you to make a official deal.
Or the other more likely option is that's just another part of those shoddy Chronicles maps.

I don't think it was intentional.

A) The dialogues
Level 2: Three enemies are mentioned in one of the dialogues. Instead you have 2 enemies and 1 ally.
Level 7: Two enemies are mentioned underground in one of the dialogues. Instead you have 2 allies.

B) The difficulty: Level 7 becomes a way, way too easy.

Ah, OK.
See, that's what separate us, fantasy. :-) I was able to make up my on reasoning for it while you seek errors. :-p
/jk
But for level 7 I really thought you were supposed to be allied with some devils? Geez, it's not that far since I played it and it's all one big blur.
Shows how good the maps really are. I know most of Heroes 3 maps with eyes closed and here I can't even recall general story. The whole game is so I guess I didn't notice. :-)

Yes, which explains why you start with a devil town :) That starting town is your "ally". Oh, absolutely I can make reasons too.

Let's see:

On his way to work, one of the designers saw an exceptionally beautiful girl sitting on the subway opposite him. Her alluring face kept haunting him for the rest of the day and that was all he could think about. He put salt in his coffee, went for lunch 2 hours late and accidentally made enemies allies in some of the maps he was working on.

During testing no one caught that level 7 was too easy because, let's face it, all of Chronicles was.

Of the first six (haven't played two last two ones) I think there was two moderately difficult maps, thanks to developed enemy heroes nearby.
All in all Chronicles was a major disappointment to a veteran HoMM player like me. Ironically enough I passed them by when they were released since I thought "how much can they really milk fans of that game series". Now I wish that it was milking the fans!

That doesn't show you have fantasy, that's most likely truth. :-p

I played it almost just after replaying whole Heroes 3, last year, and I had real trouble only with 1 map. It was last mission of first campaign. I was too slow and opponent got hands of Aramgeddon's Blade. That was only real troublesome part of whole game. I felt like it was actually getting easier as I progressed. So much that it wasn't worth the trouble.

It was a typical day in Hell and the three demons leaders were enjoying their morning coffee wondering what to do, when one suggested Counterstrike.

"No, no, I don't mean the spell. There is a cool game on Steam called Counterstrike. Want to try it out?"

"Nah, I don't do Steam any more. Ever since I discovered GOG.com with their broken 'beta' unfinished client, I switched all my games to it and I haven't looked back?"

"GOG.com? Haha. Losers. Nothing compares with the evilness of Steam's DRM. And those regional prices..."

"GOG has regional prices now too. Of course GOG is more evil than Steam. They removed manual sorting. And just look at their forums. Everything is broken. And General Discussion is a dung heap, full of scammers and arguing."

"Arguing? Haha. That's evil to you? Look at all the shovelware on Steam: now that's the essence of evilness. On GOG everything is curated..."

"And because of that lots of good games are declare too niche."

"Screw you! Steam is more evil"

"No! GOG is more evil!"

And just as a fight broke out, they were each called to their headquarters. On arrival they received word from their scouts that Tarnum has just arrived on this level. A devious smile appear on the lips of one of the leaders.
"A powerful human? Good. I'll help him out. That will show those Steam-loving pussies."

... and that's why you start the game with one ally.

That was hilarious.

My first laugh of the day. +1 for great post :)