Heroes of Might and Magic

[T-hawk]

I learned how to unfocus from linear time with Civ 5, since there's so many subsystems that work best with their own sub-narrative.

I actually didn't know at that moment that I was done with my own castle. I wrote that line in later. I had expected my path to be to send all the early troops one direction, and then on day 8 (when castles produce new troops) chain a hero pipeline all the way from home to the other target (the human plays before the AI so can use his weekly troops before the AI can buy any.) I got lucky in several areas: that one peasant stack was weak enough that I could beat it sooner than expected with just ogres, in finding just enough ore to build the troll bridge early which came to enough power that I didn't need the week-2 troops, and in that the AI's forces were so split up (although that's not uncommon at all in HOMM 2) that I probably didn't even need the trolls.

The entire game took under three hours. I didn't have much of a contingency plan since "just start over" would be such a catchall anyway. I even did so once after my first attempt (with a Knight castle) failed when I lost one fight to an AI hero who got to the free archer dwelling before me.

[TheMeInTeam]

I know the guides you're reading, it's a similar issue with later HOMM game guides too. Playing HOMM 3 on impossible in campaign (only available in Shadow of Death, others are fixed) or HOMM 5 on heroic, it is consistently more optimal to press the attack quickly rather than building up.

On some of the more tight maps in both games, I'm not sure it's possible to win otherwise. The second Crag Hack map in HOMM 3 comes to mind, and numerous HOMM 5 maps go from "borderline impossible" to "you can win this map with troll picks like destructive magic as only school on Agrael" by attacking early. The nature of the games makes this obvious in retrospect; in addition to increasing your own resources and possible recruiting structures faster, you are denying these to the enemy. Many maps seek to be more difficult by supplying the other side with freebies, these can become YOUR freebies.

[T-hawk]

Oh, and BTW, do you have any source for the HoMM2 speedrun times?

Found it, thanks to remembering enough details (the author's name) to find a url that archive.org had crawled.  I threw it here: http://dos486.com/heroes2/ninghui.html

It only covers Archibald's campaign in detail; the link to Roland's is long dead and I can't find it on archive.org and I remember that being unfindable back in the day as well.

[Deceptus]

A guy figured out how to beat the Armageddon's Blade standard issue map "Elbow Room" on 200% in only one day

There's a longer video that explains everything step by step (including the necessity of starting as Teal), but it's only in Polish.

HoMM3 HD feature of being able to pick a specific tavern hero for hire has been used. I assume it could still be done with less favorable RNG, simply with more loading.