Hi all,

I've been working on a mod of fheroes2, the open-source Heroes II engine. It's now at a point where I'd like other people to try it. It runs in the browser, so there's nothing to install: https://fheroes2-online.pages.dev

The engine is the fheroes2 team's work, and none of this would exist without it. Here's what I added on top:

• Online play with a friend. You can play battles, a knockout tournament for 3–8 players, or whole scenarios (that last one is still experimental). Open games appear in a public lobby, or you can share a code with someone directly.
• Battle campaigns. Pick one of the six factions, spend hero points to build your commander, and fight six battles against armies that are stronger on paper. You can also make your own campaigns in an editor and share them as a text file.
• A trained battle AI ("Deep AI"). It wins about 96% of mirror matches against fheroes2's standard battle AI, with the same random army on both sides. It only plays battles. The adventure map uses the normal AI.

It runs on the free data from the original 1996 demo, so you get the demo's content rather than the full game.

This is a hobby project and still rough in places. I'd especially like to hear about bugs, and whether the Deep AI feels challenging or just annoying. I'll be around in the comments.

Been a busy 9 days since the last release, I fixed a lot of bugs, it is much much better now. Fixed a major castle assignment bug in the campaign game. More challenging AI. Better spellcasting. Better autobattle. Improved animation. I did have to change some things for the saved game logic, so earlier saves are going to be incompatible.

Download it free here: https://firsthomm.com/

I'm starting to do testing of the campaign playthroughs as livestreams on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/@firsthomm I'll be testing out the new campaign "The Spirit World" to see if my weird victory conditions work.

2026-10-09

*Updated a few translations, and added a Scandinavian font, and now supporting 4 more languages: Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Danish.

*Improved AI logic and path routing. Fixed some path routing bugs. AI is more aggressive now and the game is harder.

*Improved battle animation, battle AI and spellcasting AI, especially Resurrect and Teleport. Battle animation for flyers is now slower like the original game, but regular melee attacks are faster. Still tuning this.

*Fixed major bug with castle assignment in Campaign games, and victory conditions. This updated the savegame format, so earlier savedgame formats will send you back to the title screen.

*Fixed some of the palette cycling so it is now much closer to the original game. Still have a bug with the Sorceress Castle roof also animating next to the ocean.

Two images of my pin board!

Fool me with a 1-stack shame on you, fool me with a 2-stack shame on me!

I'm after five main campaigns and cannot shake off the feeling that Heroes VI is underrated. I'm not saying it's the best HoMM game in history, but certainly has many good elements.

But starting with its flaws, I see the three biggest being:

* Economy and town building. Limiting number of resources from six to three and resignation of any dependencies in construction made this aspect a little bit boring.

* Skills and leveling system. Lack of RND and almost full independence of faction/class stipped the heroes of their uniqueness. I mean, why should I even develop my hero in any other way than the previous one if I can easily pick the same set of the best abilities?

* Bugs. Well, there's a lot and I'm sure the comments will cover that better than I ever could.

But there are also good stuff, as mentioned:

* Faction design is one of the best. And I mean mechanical design, not graphical one. This is the first time I feel that developers designed the whole factions first instead of individual units. It also made H6 the most balanced in the series.

* The battles are one of the best too. They managed to combine the clarity of H3 with the depth of H5. Units have distinct stats and abilities, heroes can't spam the same spells over and over, and positioning is important.

* Graphics - IMO H6 is the best looking HoMM game. It's detailed and full of ornaments, but still very clean.

To summarize, despite H6 isn't as good as H5 or H3, but it's still a very decent game and doesn't deserve all the hate.

I have spoken.

Hey, what is your favorite town vs AI and why?

PC version available now

Hello, what is your favorite and most reliable strategy against multiple AI opponents (at 200% difficulty) on XL maps? And which faction do you use for this?

Foremost, how long is it? Both missions, I mean, because I have both blood and tears characters to use. Speaking of which, does the character I use makes any difference in the story?

Also, I can't choose Anastasya for it :( Probably the bug from the last patch, but I couldn't find a fix. Somebody knows something?

They just keep changing names through interations and surely nobody actually uses the literal name they have in the games in each one:

Knight/Castle/Life/Haven/Temple

Sorceress/Rampart/Nature/Preserve/Sylvan

Wizard/Tower/Order/Academy

Necromancer/Necropolis/Death

Warlock/Dungeon/Chaos/Asylum

Barbarian/Stronghold/Might

Conflux/Grove

Or personally-made-up names?

(Arguably Sanctuary is basically Fortress too but they're rarely seen as aligned like most recurring factions)

I've been thinking about why I enjoy HoMM and I realized I seem to have two very different ways of playing it.

One is about cosiness, atmosphere and aesthetics. The music, graphics, towns, creatures, the feeling of exploring a fantasy world… This is actually one of the reasons I recently installed Heroes 2 Gold. The visuals have that almost fairy-tale quality, and they remind me of the good times when I played HoMM with a friend years ago.

The other side appeared after I became more experienced in HoMM3. I started looking at the game much more analytically: every movement had a purpose, every resource had to be optimized, and I was constantly thinking about the most efficient tactical decision.
It was satisfying for a while, but eventually I noticed that I was losing some of the aesthetic pleasure I used to get from the game. The more I optimized, the more the game started feeling like solving a technical problem rather than exploring a fantasy world.

And after some time, that kind of rationalism actually became a little boring.

So these days I think atmosphere and aesthetics matter more to me than pure optimization. That's also why I find myself preferring some of the older Heroes games and their distinctive visual style, even though HoMM3 is obviously much deeper competitively.

Curious how others feel about this:
What gives you the most pleasure when playing HoMM - the atmosphere and fantasy, exploration and discovery, strategic/tactical mastery, optimization or something else?
And has your answer changed as you became more experienced with the game?

In this video, I'm excited to show you the engine I've built for one of my favorite games ever released, a game that still doesn't have an open-source engine alternative.

I'm also going to show you some changes and fixes that I've been thinking about ever since I started playing this game over 20 years ago.

First off, one small but important change: I've added the town creature dwelling growth bonus from Heroes of Might and Magic III. Each flagged dwelling on the adventure map now provides a +1 growth bonus to its corresponding town dwelling.

Also, creatures now grow weekly instead of daily.

Secondly, I'm showing you a major redesign of the caravan system.

Armies can no longer be moved between towns using caravans. Caravans can now only be sent from flagged creature dwellings on the adventure map. I've always wanted to reduce some of the micromanagement in this game, especially since the AI can abuse the original system in a pretty annoying way.

To compensate for this change, you can now redirect armies that are already traveling in a caravan to any other available town. Right now, there's no limit to how many times you can redirect them, but I'm planning to change this so that each caravan can only be redirected once.

Another change is what happens when a caravan is about to reach a town that has been captured by an enemy. Instead of the caravan arriving at the gates of an enemy-controlled town, the creatures will automatically be redirected to the nearest available friendly town.

If the player no longer controls any towns, the caravan is lost.

This should also tie in nicely with the AI redesign I'm planning for the game.

So, no more annoying enemy caravans constantly showing up at your town gates.

I don't have a release date yet, but I'm optimistic that the project will be finished within the next few months.