Homecoming

Homecoming is the first scenario in the Long Live The Queen campaign. Something I didn't catch the first time around is that the map is supposed to be located near Bracada.

In Heroes III, each faction is associated with a different type of terrain. For example, the kingdom of Erathia (the human knights) are associated with grasslands while Nighon (dungeon overlords) is associated with underground tunnels. The map designers all did a good job ensuring the locations were consistent with their arrangement on the larger continent. Bracada (wizards) is associated with snow. The map is filled with snow. It all makes sense.

Too bad Gavin Magnus, the immortal king of Bracada, is nowhere to be seen. He basically does nothing in Heroes III. Then, in Heroes IV, he suddenly becomes a nihilistic megalomaniac who commands robot dragons and tries to take over people's minds. Yeah.

We start with Christian the knight and a bunch of archers and pikemen. There are also four ships that are supposed to represent Catherine's landing party. The archers and pikemen quickly join Christian and make him so overpowered that 90% of the random enemies on the map flee in terror.

The ultimate goal of this map is to capture the town of Terraneus, which is located in the Nighon tunnels. Most of the overworld is completely optional however.

Case in point, there's a portal in the upper-right corner of the map that leads you to a large snowy forest with endless artifacts. They're not needed to win the map, but are really tempting to pursue. I was distracted by them and ended up getting Christian lost in the tundra for several weeks.

In Heroes III, the type of terrain your hero travels on will affect his army's movement speed. Unless the hero has pathfinding skill, snow and desert terrain are best avoided. With Christian essentially trapped in Siberian winter, I knew I had to recruit a second hero. Lo and behold, Sandro the necromancer was waiting in the tavern.

The entire story of the Shadow of Death expansion focuses on Sandro setting into motion all the terrible things that happen in Restoration of Erathia. Seeing Sandro partnered with Christian, attempting to save Erathia from evil forces, is pretty funny. His appearance in this map is probably due to a map glitch. As far as the story is concerned, Sandro was betrayed by Vinneas Filmar, the king of necromancers, and rotting in jail. Therefore, we'll pretend this is Sandro's Earth-2 counterpart: Sandra. God, I wish we could rename the heroes in this game.

Later, I recruited Caitlin the cleric because, well... you can always use an extra 350 gold. I doubt Caitlin will really contribute much in the later maps in terms of combat. Clerics are pretty much the worst heroes in the game. However, you can never have too much gold.

You can tell Terraneas is an evil town because there are dead bodies littered all around it. This is actually 'cursed ground,' a special terrain that prevents heroes from casting spells. Thankfully, knights are naturally bad at magic. So fighting on cursed ground actually gives Christian the advantage against Terraneas' magic-savvy warlocks.

On to the next mission!