Civilization 3 Heroes of Might & Magic 3 Mod!

[Blake00]

I'm a huge Civ and HoMM series fan yet somehow I didn't know about the Conquests of Might & Magic 3 - Civilization 3 Mod until recently lol!!!

Basically this guy has completely converted Civilization 3's UI, graphics, units, techs, factions etc to be in the Heroes of Might and Magic universe. Looks like he's gone in a very HoMM3 direction (with a bit of HoMM4) which is cool. I've mucked around with a few Civ3 mods in my time and I've never seen so many elements changed so much. He's even got HoMM3 unit upgrades in there lol! Obviously being a Civ game we're not going to get zoomed in combat but his mod allows for some very fun situations eg being able to colonize/make new cities, farm the lands and expand all over huge worlds effectively carving out your own story. Basically a more sandboxy global HoMM3 haha!

Annoyingly most of his picture links are dead but thankfully I found some working one's which I'll stick below. I don't think he's working on it anymore however from the sound of things in his thread he's actually finished it! If he visits CivFanatics again I might try and talk him into making a ModDB page. Can't wait to play it properly!!

Quotes of picture and info posts I found at CivFanatics:

Game Screenshots:

Gameplay



Civilopedia




Advisors





Armageddon's Blade (Spaceship Victory)

Civilizations and Units



A huge variety of spells (converted from HoMM3) are also included, as well as many additional misc graphics.

Castle - Castles are home to the Cleric and Knight hero classes. Castle armies are primarily composed of human men-at-arms, though these towns have also formed an alliance with the griffins and are under the protection of angels. With two types of ranged attack units and two flying unit types available, Castle-based armies are well equipped to quickly engage and defeat their enemies.

Inferno - Inferno towns can be found in Erathian regions blighted by the emergence of the underworld on the surface. Demoniac and Heretic heroes stand in uneasy alliance with these towns. Inferno armies have great hand-to-hand attack units and are only slightly hampered at the lower levels by a lack of flying units until the awesome, teleporting devil and arch devil units can be brought into play.

Neutrals - Neutral creatures are those that reside in the land of Antagarich whom do not normally belong to a specific town type. The neutral town is the only town capable of building structures that will produce Level 8 and Level 10 creatures. They do not have any special town buildings or a grail structure, but can become a serious threat if left unchecked.

Dungeon - Dungeon towns are built by Warlock and Overlord hero types to act as bases from which to wage campaigns of conquest for wealth and power. Similarly minded creatures are attracted as allies. Other Dungeon creatures are in thrall to their masters. Dungeon armies are possessed of a variety of long range attacks, have effective damage dealing troops, and have the ability to greatly disrupt the strategies of their enemies.

Conflux - Conflux is the town of the Planeswalkers and Elemental Lords. Nobody knows why they have suddenly decided to appear in this world and assist the humans with Catherine Ironfist in the head to fight Kreegans invasion on Antagarich. The Elemental Lords didn't reveal their reasons, though their help was invaluable and happened to be the decisive factor in the final victory of the humans over the devilish aliens. It was in the war for the fable monstrous Armageddon's Blade that the first sightings of the strange Conflux towns have been reported.

Necropolis - Necropolis towns are overrun and ruled by undead creatures. They are natural bases for the Necromancer and Death Knight hero types. Necropolis armies have many units with abilities to weaken their opponents. One of their greatest strengths is the ability to amass countless numbers of skeletons. This quickly gives them an edge over equal or even more powerful enemy units.

Fortress - Fortress towns are built at the edge of swamps and are often used as bases by the Beastmaster and Witch hero classes. Their armies are primarily made up of deadly creatures--born of the swamps, and then subdued and trained for warfare. While among them there is only one ranged attack creature, Fortress units are possessed of many special abilities to offset this deficiency.

Tower - Wizards and Alchemists study their arcane craft in Towers. Tower populations are comprised creatures bound into service by powerful magic, made on the spot, or allied with the town through ancient pacts. Tower armies have uniformly good stats and some of the best range attack units available.

Rampart - The Druid and Ranger hero classes are native to Ramparts, which are built by creatures in allied defense of the unspoiled wilderness regions of Erathia. With two slow unit types, Dwarves and Dendroids, Rampart armies may be best suited to defensive tactics. Most of these creatures, however, have enemy hampering abilities that can be used to turn the tide against many opponents--especially those dependent on magical attacks.

Stronghold - Stronghold towns are built by alliances of tribes and are frequented by the Barbarian and Battle Mage hero types. Armies composed of Stronghold-based units have a balanced mix of ranged and hand-to-hand attackers. With the inclusion of the stronger units, these armies are particularly well-equipped to deal with attacks on other towns.

That is how far I've gotten in 83 turns. Been building city improvements and doing a small amount of exploring. The borders are from Pounder's Stockade Mark I mod in case you're wondering.

After 107 days of my last game I have this bit of advice for folks.

1. Don't build scouts. You have too great a chance of meeting raiding parties and losing the scout. Build combat units instead and let them go exploring.

2. Workers, lots of workers.

I'm starting a new game to try out building a lot of workers, so what follows is the sole screen capture for the last game.

[Blake00]

I couldn't find my old Civ3 Gold cd so I bought it cheap on steam!


So of course that means I've finally tested it! This mod at least initially appears as nothing short of a friggin masterpiece! I've never seen Civ3 altered so much in my life. Almost every part of the game is altered. New intro ripped from Heroes of Might & Magic 3, new menu image & music from HoMM3 (although I got a black screen at first but clicking seem to stop it), entirely new world/terrain graphics from HoMM3, your palace upgrade screen is now the HoMM3 city screen slowly getting built (different ones for each race if you switch the files), the city sky view screen is now a map of Erathia, all gui & menus have been given a HoMM3 look (thank goodness as I never liked Civ3's gui), all cities/units/techs have been changed to HoMM equivalents, and the Civ3 soundtrack is replaced with HoMM3s. It really feels like HoMM3 but with the freedom and sandbox goodness of Civilization. Also once you go above the original race count you get 'castle 2' 'inferno 2' etc meaning you can go up to Civ3's max player count of 31, just imagine playing an epic 31 player HoMM3 style Civ game on a huge map!! :O


I'm gonna play the hell out of this in the near future and will prob do a video too!


My test run screens:

[chumchu]

As a big fan of HOMM 3 and mods this is right up my alley. Will try it out!

[chumchu]

Also, I have made my own balance mod to HoMM3 and Homm 3+ Hota if you are interested:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vjefaxmanjgq3y...n.odt?dl=0

[haphazard1]

As a big fan of HOMM 3 and mods this is right up my alley. Will try it out!

Seconded! Thanks for posting about this, I had no idea it existed. Very neat idea, and it looks like fun.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

This is a great find of a mod. I’m still a huge civ 3 fan.

[Blake00]

Also, I have made my own balance mod to HoMM3 and Homm 3+ Hota if you are interested:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vjefaxmanjgq3y...n.odt?dl=0

Cool, thanks! Is HOTA good? I've seen some pretty impressive screenshots from it of custom races etc. I tribute it on my HoMM series website but haven't tried it myself yet. I've tried the HoMM3 HD mod and the Succession Wars HoMM2 style mod for HoMM3 which were very cool.

As a big fan of HOMM 3 and mods this is right up my alley. Will try it out!

Seconded! Thanks for posting about this, I had no idea it existed. Very neat idea, and it looks like fun.

This is a great find of a mod. I’m still a huge civ 3 fan.

Yeah I'm super impressed so far. One of my my mates is having a Necro game right now and apparently he's raising skeletons after battle so its even got stuff like that implemented into Civ which is freaky!

I've also recently found another HoMM mod for Civ in a German Civ forum.

This time it's a HoMM2 mod for Civilization 2. However sadly the guy went and got himself banned lol but thankfully we were able to track each other down on a different Civ forum and he speaks great English (thankfully as I only speak English and bad English lol) so we're now working together on finishing it. It's not going to be as amazing as this HoMM3 for Civ3 mod but we'll do the best we can haha.

EDIT: Have made a separate thread for the HoMM2 Civ2 mod here:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...p?tid=9775

Screenshot of our work:

[Dark Savant]

I really should get around to trying this, but you know, too many games, not enough time to play them all.  

I'm actually starting to write an extended strategy guide for HOMM 4, which I strongly feel is neglected.  Yes, its strategic AI sucks something fierce, but good mapmaking can overcome that, same as for HOMM 2.  HOMM 4 can deliver epic heroic development that HOMM1-3 and 5 don't (I haven't played 6-7), even though all are better balanced.

Actually, I recently replayed the HOMM3 original campaigns at Impossible level.  It's still a mediocre campaign on top of an excellent system -- I think HOMM3's canned campaigns are the weakest out of HOMM1-5 -- and unlike HOMM 4, mapmakers didn't crank out some incredible third-party campaigns.

[Brian Shanahan]

Blake, any problems installing the mod in Steam? I'd the same problem as you (well almost, I only lost my Conquests DVD) and bunged a fiver at Steam for Civ 3.

[chumchu]

HoTa is well worth checking out for any fan of HoMM 3. It is a good fan expansion that provides an interesting new faction, new artifacts, new maps and adventure map object. It is definitely better than armageddons blade. It is themed around naval maps and adds lots of maps and objects for that. In general it is a polished product which is not always the case for mods.

The biggest part of HoTa for me is that it includes lots of QoL changes like one click switching of armies between heroes, autoresolving of combats et.c. that I would not want to play without now that I have tried it.

Hota also introduces some balance changes. I agree with nearly all of them but I feel that they are too small in some areas. My mod is mostly done to address three imbalances: that might heroes are better than magic heroes; that you only use a fraction of the spells in the game as certain spells are plainly better than others (e.g. expert haste/slow); and that certain creatures and factions are weaker than the others (e.g. inferno).

If you want to try the modmod. Just paste this file over the same file in HotA data map: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pshhks9c9lyea2...g.lod?dl=0.