"And One For All" is an example of what I'm looking for. Where every player's start is a mirror of what other players get.

Well one that quickly comes to mind is Crimson & Clover. It's a 4 player free for all OR 2vs2 Med map. The bad thing is that not all towns do well out of the gate which gives other towns a clear advantage.

That's kind of why I asked for "balanced" maps. Honestly the more I play this game the more I realize that their concern was with pumping out as much content as fast as possible, as opposed to taking their time to make fewer maps that were balanced and highly replayable. Feel the same way with the faction imbalances, they went quantity > quality.

Game is way overrated. Aside from the visuals it's pretty much a mess. Nostalgia is a *****.

Keep in mind a couple things here. How can you possibly make every Faction of a game "Balanced" without making them cookie cutter copies of each other that become stale within a week???
There are some towns that do better for the long haul and some do better in the short term, but there are always ways to limit weaknesses. Just because these ways are not obvious for someone who's been playing for a couple days does not make the game bad.

The first part of Heroes 3 was released early Feb of 99, the first expansion over half a year later in Oct 99 and the final expansion another 7months later in April 2000. Also the last Expansion was a stand alone which people did not need to have the other 2 to be able to play which is a lot more than other companies were doing. After purchasing the game itself there were no fee's to be able to play either, and the game regularly received support and updates.

I really need to ask you if you are actually a fan of "Turn Based Strategy Games" or not and if yes then which ones would you consider to be superior to H3? Or which ones did you just enjoy more?

I will admit I prefer older games that didn't rely on graphics so much over gameplay as far to many of them do now. OR ones that try drain you dry with subscription fees, "Pay2Play" or "Pay2Win" mentalities that cost so much money in the long run.

Heroes Chronicles, which is still H3 just stand alone expansions, on the other hand was clearly a cash grab by a company that was struggling at the end and I would never recommend them to new players sadly as they only offer the campaign mode with really 0% replayability.

Master of Orion 2 and Master of Magic are including H3 my Top 3 favorite TBS games although recently Eador Genesis has been trying to compete for my time haha.

Most maps where every faction is playable (you can play with every color) should be quite balanced. It means you can win that map whatever color (player) you start and whatever town you choose. You can have a tough time with some but it should be winnable. Sure, once in a while some nasty things happen, like a strong army joining the enemy but even that can be overcome.

Take in account there is no perfect balance. Some castle needs more lumbers and some need more crystals.
For ex. you play Red and Stronghold and next to your town you find 5 gems.
AI playes Blue and Tower and also finds 5 gems. Those 5 gems helps a lot the Blue player because Tower needs a lot of gems to develop but doesn't help you at all, because gems aren't really needed by Stronghold.
The same, if both of you have a gem mine near your castle. Doesn't help you but it helps Tower a lot.

Unfortunatelly, I don't remember any map which is as close as possible to a perfect balance.

If you play Red and find the Blue player very strong and giving you a hard time then restart the map and play Blue instead. If now the Red is kicking your ass then probably not the map's balance is your problem, but you are doing something wrong.

Do you intend to play versus human opponents or only versus AI?

I don't even think HoMM3 was ever intended to be a professional competitive game so being fully balanced wasn't really the main focus of the game ever. It's not like Warcraft.

A single match would take way too long anyway to be suitable for real competitive matches.

You'd rather play it because it's fun.
And for that you have a lot of content. Probably just playing through the campaign is over 100 hours playtime.
People just like it that they can beat 100 times their own army by good strategy for example. HoMM3 was never highly praised because of how well balanced it is, it is praised because it's really fun to play.

There is quite some replayability on the non-campaign maps but not because the maps are balanced but rather because there are so many different factions and starting positions that can make each match completely different.

If you are looking for a more balanced and competitive turn-based strategy RPG hybrid game then I'd recommend Battle for Wesnoth.

@EvilLoynis Have you ever thought that companies that made games like Heroes 3 went bankrupt *because* they put so much work into each game they released? Developers like this literally worked themselves out of business, they were so passionate about what they did they put everything they had into their games and did not think twice about the business end of things. What they ended up doing with "Heroes Chronicles" to try and keep afloat isn't any worse than what a lot of companies nowadays do, it's just that they bottomed out anyway because by then they were in too deep to get out.

Like it or not the reason gaming is "worse" nowadays is because if developers didn't end up learning from the mistakes of those that overworked themselves, charged too little for their product and went bankrupt, we wouldn't have a game industry anymore. It's like when people complain about maps for shooters not being free anymore and how there isn't enough long-term support after a game is released anymore. We never should've become accustomed to free content, support years after a game had been out and was no longer being monetized by the developer, or getting massive amounts of content for dirt cheap. The fact that we got so much for so little is literally what killed some of our favorite game developers. There's idealism and then there's reality. If you like gaming you really just have to accept that those days are over because there's no longevity in those business models.

Yes it's all about big money these days, but we still have games. The alternative is going back to the 90s, and getting one or two more insanely good games out of developers before they become rubble, and then we in turn have nothing new to play 10 - 15 years down the line because noone in their right mind would want to run a business where the customer expects you to go bankrupt so they can have a high-quality product.

Agreed.

Look at it as challenge. Playing swamp map with Fortress? Easy. Playing swamp map with any other faction? Challenge. Playing large map with wisdom, earth magic and town portal spell? Easy. Playing large map without a hero who can cast Town Portal at advanced/expert earth magic? Insane challenge.

That's why Heroes 3 rocks, because every map and race combination gives a different experience, even though this comes at the cost of competitive multiplayer.

To start I did and still do play H3 for fun and I find it quite enjoyable to play the different factions and try out different ways to win vs different opponents.

That being said there was quite a bit of competitive PvP tournament playing of this game. There was a site called toheroes.com, aka Tournament of Honor, that is fan made and let people keep track of the people the played against and the maps they played on. ToH is still going to this day although it's for the newer Heroes series now but you can still report games played on H3-5 maps for points.

What players mostly did was play something called Random Map Templates, which were guide lines for the Random Map Generator to produce well balanced maps for ppl to play on and took out game breaking things like Dimension Door and Fly so that the game could be more fun. I will admit that H3 games took around 2hours each to play but it was pretty fun.

I am including a link to the Tournament of Honor site where you can download Random Templates and other fan made maps that are well balanced for playing.

http://toheroes.com/h3maps/Random.htm

To use Random Templates

1. Choose the template you want to use from the above site and RIGHT CLICK and choose "Save Link As..."
2. Copy that file to your Heroes 3, Data Folder (default path is something like C:\Program Files\GOG.com\Heroes 3 Complete\Data)
3. Rename the File you just moved to "RMG"
4. Launch Heroes 3, New Game, Single or Multi, choose Random and input settings (keeping in mind the template you have chosen).
5. Enjoy

To confirm that it worked ounce your in your game press "i" for Scenario Information. You will see on the right side it says "Map Created by the Random Map Generator, Template was (whichever you chose)"


NOTE - you will see info about version #'s but if you have the gog version, which is Heroes 3 Complete, you don't have to worry at all, you have the most uptodate.

hey! I saw that you are looking for a challange. If you really do, and think all the years you have played heroes will help you finish the map you're wrong. I bet that when you will get to the middle part, killing 3000 ghost behemots, you will give up :), then The Lone Knight is a map worth playing

Warlords.

Extreme Imbalance is what made Heroes, well, Heroes.