[RG]Heroes Of Might And Magic Collection

Description:
Heroes of Might and Magic is a series of video games originally created and developed by New World Computing. As part of the Might and Magic franchise, the series changed ownership when NWC was acquired by 3DO and again when 3DO closed down and sold the rights to Ubisoft.[1] The games feature turn-based, fantasy-themed conflicts in which players control armies of mythical creatures. The series began in 1995 with the release of the first title, and has most recently seen a release in 2007 with an expansion to the fifth title.
The series is directed primarily at the DOS and Windows platforms, with sporadic support for Mac OS over the years. Heroes III was ported to Linux.[2] GameTap has carried the first four games in the series since 2006.[3] Remakes have appeared on the Game Boy Color.
Gameplay
The Heroes series is within the genre of turn-based strategy. The titular heroes are player characters who can recruit armies, move around the map, capture resources, and engage in combat. The heroes also incorporate some role-playing game elements; they possess a set of statistics that confer bonuses to an army, artifacts that enhance their powers, and knowledge of magical spells that can be used to attack enemies or produce strategic benefits. Also, heroes gain experience levels from battle, such that veteran heroes are significantly more powerful than inexperienced ones. Experienced heroes may persist through a campaign, but do not carry over between single scenarios.
On a typical map, players begin a game with one town of a chosen alignment. The number of different alignments varies throughout the series, with the lowest count of four appearing initially in Heroes I and peaking at nine in the Heroes III expansion Armageddon's Blade. Each town alignment hosts a unique selection of creatures from which the player can build an army. Town alignment also determines other unique traits such as native hero classes, special bonuses or abilities, and leanings toward certain skills or kinds of magic.
Towns play a central role in the games since they are the primary source of income and new recruits. A typical objective in each game is to capture all enemy towns. Maps may also start with neutral towns, which do not send out heroes but may still be captured by any player. It is therefore possible, and common, to have more towns than players on a map. When captured, a town retains its alignment type, potentially allowing the new owner to create a mixed army. A player or team is eliminated when no towns or heroes are left under their control. Barring any special conditions, the last player or team remaining is the victor.
A side objective commonly appearing in the series is the acquisition of a powerful object called the "ultimate artifact," (Heroes I and II), grail (III and IV) or Tear of Asha (V), buried under a random tile on the map. As heroes visit special locations called obelisks, pieces are removed from a jigsaw puzzle-like map, gradually revealing its location to the player. Once found, it confers immense bonuses to the player capable of breaking stalemates: the grail can be taken back to a town and used to build a special structure, while the ultimate artifact provides the bonuses directly through possession.
Time and resource model
Each turn (consisting of all players' moves) is represented as a single day, and days are organized into cycles of weeks and months (measured as four weeks). The primary resource is gold, which is generated by towns on a daily basis. Gold alone is sufficient for obtaining basic buildings and most creatures. As construction progresses, increasing amounts of secondary resources such as wood, ore, gems, crystals, sulfur, and mercury are required. These resources, as well as gold, are produced at mines and other secondary structures, which are located on the map and require heroes to capture them. As with towns, mines can also be captured by enemy heroes, presenting an additional avenue for conflict.
At the start of each week (each day in Heroes IV), creature dwellings produce new recruits. In some of the games, the start of a new month causes neutral armies to spawn all over the map, providing fresh challenges and opportunities.
Combat
Whenever a player engages in battle, the game changes from the adventure map display to a combat screen, which is based on either a hexagonal or square grid. In this mode, the game mimics the turn-based tactics genre, as the engaged armies must carry through the battle without the opportunity to reinforce or gracefully retreat. With few exceptions, combat must end with the losing army deserting or being destroyed, or paying a heavy price in gold to surrender. Surrendering allows the player to keep the remaining units intact.
Creatures in an army are represented by unit stacks, each of which consists of a single type of creature, in any quantity. A limited number of stacks are available to each army, varying by game. Players generally maneuver their stacks attempting to achieve the most favorable rate of attrition for themselves. The games also have an automatic combat option that allows the computer to make tactical choices for a player. Heroes participate in battle as well: passively by granting bonuses to their army, and actively by engaging in combat and casting spells. In most of the games, heroes do not act as units, and cannot be harmed. However, in Heroes IV they do act as regular units and can be "killed"; dead heroes are transferred to a dungeon where they can be re-recruited by the battle winner.
Combat is affected by several random factors. In addition to simulating dice rolls to determine damage, a variety of influences including hero abilities and special bonuses determine a unit's luck and morale ratings, which affect the likelihood of those units triggering a bonus during combat. A unit that triggers good luck deals more (or receives less) damage, and a unit that triggers high morale receives an extra turn. In some other games, luck and morale can also be negative, with opposite corresponding effects. Luck and morale can be improved by hero abilities, artifacts, and spells. Morale may suffer with overwhelming odds in combat or by mixing incompatible unit types (eg. Chaos with Order.)
Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest was created by New World Computing as a mix of two computer games: 'Might and Magic' and 'King's Bounty'. King's Bounty gave the concept of a hero that runs around the map, seen from the top, and collects creatures to fight for him, as well as resources to buy those creatures. As for Might and Magic (series), it has provided a setting for the game: heroes, creatures, land and quests were mostly like in Might and Magic. The mix appeared to be a whole new kind of game that fans loved: four castles with associated buildings, creatures and heroes, system of resources, hero skill advancement and magic, various map locations, artifacs that enhance heroes' abilities and the ability to have several heroes at once.
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Heroes of Might and Magic?: A Strategic Quest swept awards for 1995, including Strategy Game of the Year from Computer Gaming World, Turn-Based Strategy Game of the Year from Strategy Plus, Editor's Choice from PC Gamer, and Golden Triad from Computer Game Review. I still find it enjoyable to play. It is an excellent learning tool for people new to Heroes series.
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Heroes of Might and Magic 2: The Succession Wars is a turn based strategy war game for PC. It is based around the same concept as Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest - heroes running around the map with creatures in their armies, battling other creature and hero armies, gaining experience and learning new skills, collecting resources and artifacts, capturing mines and castles and building improvements to existing castles in order to produce and hire more powerful creatures. Usually the aim is to rule the world by defeating all other heroes and capturing all of their castles. A player can have multiple heroes either running or sailing around the map or garrisoned in a castle.
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Heroes of Might and Magic III is a turn-based strategic war game, set up in a classical role-playing game Environment. It involves capturing and developing towns, gathering resources, assembling armies and sending them into combat. Each town has a theme and can only raise the type of creatures appropriate to that theme. The resources (gold, wood, ore, gems, crystal, mercury, and sulfur) can be found mostly in mines and are gathered once a day. They are used to build new buildings in your towns, to improve existing buildings, to buy armies, etc. Each army is led by a hero and consists of up to seven stacks of creatures raised in towns or recruited in countryside. The armies are sent into tactical combat, which can occur either in countryside or in towns. If the attacker captures the town, the winner can recruit the creatures raised in that town afterwards. Each game scenario (regular or campaign style) has its own objective which can vary from capturing a specific castle, defeating a specific hero or monster, gathering gold, or finding the Holy Grail (just to name a few). The game bears some similarity to Heroes of Might and Magic II, but it has been vastly re-vamped. HEROES III is set in the same world as HEROES II and MM6 (Might and Magic 6) and continues the story-line of those two games. It is set in another country (Erathia), but there will be some significant differences between HEROES III and HEROES II. Features page contains a detailed list of game features and changes from HOMM2.
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Heroes of Might and Magic 4 is radically different from Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Some of the major differences are: 3D perspective on the adventure map and on the battlefield, heroes now take part in battles along with their creatures, six towns with standardised graphic layout, no more creature upgrades, requirement to select between creature dwellings, addition of potions, heroes of the same type are identical, different primary and secondary skills system, more spellcasters among creatures, schools of magic are aligned with town types, creatures can walk on the map without heroes. Clearly, the intention has been to make a unique game, not a bigger and better Heroes 3.
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Heroes of Might and Magic V is the next installment in the venerable and long-standing Heroes of Might and Magic series. Heroes V was released in May of 2006. It is the first time in the product's history that it is being developed by a company aside from New World Computing and 3DO, the publisher. It is the Russian company, Nival Interactive has the main responsibilities for developing Heroes V and its expansions, overseen and published by the world-renowned French game developer, Ubisoft.
I just added a few more of:
Heroes.Chronicles.Clash.Of.The.Dragons
Heroes.Chronicles.Masters.of.the.Elements
Heroes.Chronicles.Warlords.Of.The.Wasteland
Heroes.Of.Might.And.Magic.V.Limited.Edition.Bonus. Discs-Unleashed
Some Extras such as: Dox / Updates / Gameinfo / Map Packs etc...