Scenario Notes

This page contains my notes on the scenario maps that come with Heroes IV and its expansions.

I'm taking these notes in order to figure out what I like about the game and maybe learn something about map design.

A Tale of Two Enemies

Play 1

Very straightforward map, suitable for introducing beginners to the game. Not very much fun, though. Each player has a town and access to a mine of each type. The players are separated by a wall with a few guarded garrisons in it. There are also two ways to get around the wall, similarly guarded. Your starting hero is level 5. Other than that, everything is bog-standard.

There are no really challenging fights on the map (I only saw one rank 3 monster and no rank 4s) and very few interesting decisions to make.

Ratings

Ancestral Home

Play 1

You play against two computer players who are not allied. You have to get to them and conquer their towns before they can get to yours. You have several advantages: access to extra creatures, items, and powerups, and a back door to get into their base, which they are blocked from using.

Beyond the Lake

Play 1

You start with all buildings and two mid-level heroes (levels 10 and 15). I liked the accelerated start — it provides more tactical options — but the fights didn't seem to have been made more difficult to match. The only slightly difficult fights are the rank-4 "bosses" you have to get past to reach your opponent, and fortunately for me, the AI player took care of those right at the moment I wanted to attack.

I'd recommend this map as a way to introduce new players to the midgame.

Chasing Reptiles

Play 1

Pretty standard symmetric two-player map. There is one route to the other player, and the first one to traverse it gets a bunch of free items. My one complaint about this map is that the layout of each player's side is very linear with the town at one end, which results in a lot of running back and forth despite the small map size.

The scenario has a (very thin) plot. At least they tried.

Danger in the Trees

Play 1

In this scenario, you set out to conquer the Jumbled Wood, which isn't really all that jumbled. There are several side quests, but who has time for that? I ignored the quests and just cruised around the map taking every town. Maybe if the AIs had defended themselves better I wouldn't have felt the urge to murder them all as quickly as possible.

The map is generous with gold (you get a mine pretty early) so Order might be easier than other alignments.

Overall, a memorable map, though I wish the quests had been more integral.

Escape from Biggun's Playground

Play 1

This map annoyed me. You're railroaded onto a linear path, so it takes a long time to get anywhere. The quests are simplistic. The writing is obnoxious. Your opponents are stationary targets. It has its moments, but it greatly overstays its welcome.

Forest Frenzy

Play 1

Interesting asymmetrical two-player map. Both players have Nature towns, but one is restricted to wolves, tigers, griffins, and faerie dragons, while the other is restricted to sprites, elves, unicorns, and phoenixes. There is a third, computer-only player, whose town cannot be captured by either human player. The game ends when either player's town is captured. There are several portals and looped paths between the towns, and a couple gold mines to fight over.

I can see this being a fun map if played against another human. Unfortunately, the computer players are too weak to make for a fun fight. I was able to hold both gold mines pretty consistently. I won because my opponent left their town empty, and I strode in with a single hero. Kind of anticlimactic.

Another downside is that there's a lot of micromanagement since each player is trying to kite the other. This would make turns take a long time in a human-vs-human game.

Hell hath no fury...

Play 1

Might is probably the easiest alignment on this map, where you fight against Chaos and magic resistance is quite helpful. There are plenty of opportunities for hero progression, and I was able to get Grandmaster in all combat skills by the end of the game. A memorable map.

Manifestations

Play 1

Fun two-player duel between life and death. You start with a level 17 hero and no town, and must race to a central cache of treasure and then defeat your opponent's hero. Unfortunately, the AI is terrible at this map. I don't know if it misjudges the fights (underestimating its hero) or what. The fights against neutral creatures are also quite easy, some bizarrely so — why did the mapmaker even bother putting them there? I would play on a higher difficulty setting next time. I imagine this would be fun to play against another human, but it might turn into a battle of who has the best adventure-map micro.

Marauders of the High Seas

Play 1

You start with a single archer hero, and no access to taverns, and must conquer a series of towns to ultimately defeat the pirate "boss". The map suffers from too much adventure-map micro - lots of scouting enemy towns with a single unit to see if they're empty, caravanning units from creature dwellings, etc. I defeated the AI's main army halfway through the game, and they never recovered, so the boss fight ended up being anticlimactic. Being limited to a single hero made for an interesting game, though, since I could only threaten one town at a time, and had to use my main hero to take mines.

Petty Claustrophobia

Play 1

Proof that you can fit 6 towns on a small map. There are also portals everywhere so the map is indeed quite claustrophobic. You play as Death and must conquer 2 Life and 3 Nature towns. The map is generous with gold, but for some reason, none of the AIs got level 4 creatures.

Return of the Devil

Play 1

On this map, you have to defeat the final boss in 3 months, while 3 computer players interfere.

Revolution

Play 1

Oddly, this map has an asymmetrical plot (a peasant revolt) but a symmetrical layout. Maybe there's a political message there? Probably not.

I'm not sure why the map self-describes as "expert level". The fights were quite easy, and the map is generous with gold and units. One interesting feature is that the passage to the other player's area can only be traversed if you have more than 15k gold, which delays the rush for fourth-level creatures.

Run! Cronx is Coming!

Play 1

This map gives you an ally who is more of a hindrance than a help. You have to rush to grab the gold mines and creature dwellings before they can. I won pretty quickly due to the AI's stupidity. I feel like the boss hero (a level 20 warlord) could have just walked across the map and taken my town if the AI had known what it was doing.

The Beowulf Tales, Part 1

Play 1

This map strained my trollstrat-fu to the limits. At one point I had to conquer a town by repeatedly attacking with a single Barbarian equipped with Potions of Immortality, retreating home each time his health got low. You start with only Beowulf and can't get more heroes. Your enemy (Chaos) can access your half of the map via one-way portals, so you have to play pretty defensively. The winning strategy seems to be to sit at home and guard your towns most of the time, which seems rather un-Beowulf-like.

The Ultimate Mug of Ale

Play 1

A map with an actual plot! I might even have laughed at the humorous dialogue!

You have to get past a couple of opponent players to get to the boss. The first of these has a random alignment and can be eliminated; the second is always Chaos and can't be eliminated. The swamp, snow, and water covering most of the map make it seem larger than it is.

Three Queens

Play 1

Symmetrical 3-player map. Each player can rescue a level 15 general from prison by defeating a few hundred skeletons. This puts Death at a slight disadvantage, since it's hard to keep vampires alive when fighting undead. As with many of these maps, I imagine this one might be fun to play against other humans, but vs. AI it was pretty boring.

A Land Without a King

Play 1

Beautiful, naturalistic map. It felt like I was exploring a real place instead of an artificial game level. There are many locales with distinct personalities. It's interesting to see the differences in design style between this (medium-sized) map and some of the small maps. This map uses distance, not just guards or barriers, as an obstacle. Especially in the early game, the choice of whether to go in one direction or the other felt like an important one with opportunity costs. The map gives you a lot of free stuff, rewarding exploration. Gold is oddly scarce but other resources are abundant. I would have appreciated a few more towns on the map since it felt like progression stalled after the first month.

Bandits of the Rifen Maze

Play 1

Several things about this map annoy me. The boss enemies are stationary targets. There's a time limit, and the map is literally a maze, so there's a lot of micromanagement and caravaning armies around. I didn't have quite enough time to explore the whole map, yet the endgame felt very slow and tedious because I was just building up armies and sending my heroes around to collect powerups. At least there's lots to explore, and the fights are fun.

Barbarians from Below

Play 1

Two teams of two — Death and Nature against Life and Order — face off across Barbarian territory. There are a few weird things about this map. One is that your second town shares your ally's alignment, which is awkward because the allies have incompatible alignments. I delayed capturing my second town, hoping that I could grab the Death town on the other side of the river and let my ally have the Nature town, but it eventually became apparent that that was infeasible. The other weird thing is that you can't get spells in your main town past first level, making it even more important to visit the other town. The barbarians didn't put up much of a fight, but there is a timed event on their town that causes it to revert to the Might player a few days after capture.

Beebee and the Three Pigs

Play 1

This map has a humourous and well-written story, a naturalistic design, and lots of resources, towns, and creature dwellings. The fights were mostly easy, but I would say this is on the more challenging end of novice level — perhaps a good third map for new players. You have to balance attacking and defending, since the AI has as portal to your main town.

There is one linear main path with "dungeon" branches. I would have liked to be able to use the portals that are provided for the AI player, but as it was there was a lot of caravan and dwelling micromanagement, which made for a tedious late game. There were also, in my opinion, too many towns — 8 in total. 3 or 4 would have been better for a map of this complexity. I didn't need most of the towns I took.

Boring's Mountain

Play 1

True to its name, this map is pretty boring. There are four gold mines in the center of the map, and you are racing the other player to capture and hold them. With two treasuries, gold really wasn't an issue, though.

The scenery is of inconsistent quality.

Conquest of Four Lakes

Play 1

A slightly-asymmetrical four-player map with fixed alignments for each town. Seemed pretty well thought-out; e.g. the Chaos player's lake is larger to give them a chance to use Seamanship (I didn't, though). Resources are abundant, and there's a trading post in the center of the map to squabble over.

Death from Above

Play 1

Interesting: the Death player gets a Bow of the Elf king at the start of the game, presumably to make Venom Spawn more worthwhile. I still went for Vampires and Necromancy, though. Every player gets an Angel's Blade, presumably because Death is OP.

You have to defeat the two other playable towns before you can get to the boss fight. I'm not sure what the point of that is. It just dragged the game out.

I don't know what makes this map "advanced". The fights were easy, and you get a lot of free stuff at the beginning.

Demonary of Doom

Play 1

Whoever said this was an intermediate map was trolling hard. This is probably the most difficult Heroes IV map I've played. You start with a Druid, a bow, and a staff. The opening scenes involve some very tight puzzle-battles where you need perfect tactics and timing. Put off the fights too long and the AI players will destroy you. Take the fights too early and you'll lose too many units to survive the next fight. The game culminates in a fight against several dozen evil sorceresses and about a hundred venom spawn — a battle I only won by repeatedly sending in 3 heroes with combat and magic resistance and retreating each time someone died. You can't even use immortality potions because the sorceresses will dispel them with Mass Cancellation.

Dog Days

Play 1

A rather sparse symmetric multiplayer map. The towns are about 4 days' march from each other, so you'll need careful timing and scouts to conquer your opponents. The most interesting feature of the map is a central town that starts out neutral. I don't know if the alignment is random, but on my first play, it was an Order town. Order is very good at town defense, so this town was hard to retake (I got to it first, then an AI took it before I had time to build up defenses).

Like so many of these maps, this one would be more interesting with human opponents. With so few landmarks, the map relies on the players to make things interesting.

Dungeon Crawl

Play 1

You fight against Death and Chaos in a maze of tunnels and portals. One neat idea: keymaster tents near the enemy towns give them a fast path to you (via portals) and also let you fast-travel to them, once you find the tent. Death is probably the hardest alignment for this map, yet I still found it pretty easy. You get a gold mine right at the start, and 3 free Champions every week.

Field of Life

Play 1

The scenery on this map is reasonably well-done, but so samey that it was actually disorienting. The goal is to run around collecting powerups and capturing towns more efficiently than your opponent. I guess that's the goal of all Heroes maps, in some sense, but it felt particularly tedious here.

Fire and Ice

Play 1

The only really notable feature of this map is the large lake you have to cross to get to the other player. I feel like a broken record saying this, but the AI played very poorly, so the final battle wasn't interesting at all.

Weird thing: each side of the map has a neutral town on it; the one on my side was almost unguarded and had very few buildings, while the one on my opponent's side was reasonably well-guarded and built-out. Might be a mapmaker oversight?

Gory Days

Play 1

There are too many towns and way too many creature dwellings on this map. The towns have random alignments that don't seem to correspond to the players' alignments. The map is divided into "rooms" and the paths between rooms are guarded by powerful mobs. I found the early game fights too difficult and the late game tediously easy. The scenery wasn't horrible but felt very contrived. Overall, this is a great example of what not to do in a multiplayer map.

Griffin's Gold

Play 1

The early game was good: some altars provided interesting hero progression paths. The late game dragged, though. I felt like I couldn't lose after I had 3 towns, but there were still two more to take. Lots of gold gives Order a boost on this map, while the neutral Nature town gives Life and Chaos a bit of a boost. That means Death is nerfed by comparison, which seems okay.

Gulf of Nayr

Play 1

A simple 1v1 map with abundant treasure chests and bandits sneaking around near your base.

Harpy Horde

Play 1

A very good map! Choices in the early game felt consequential, and the endgame didn't drag out too long even though there were a lot of towns to take.

One thing I learned from the design of this map: build levels of scale into your path network. At the largest level of scale, the map is a big letter E with one player starting in each branch. But within those large-scale pathways, there are many smaller obstacles that make planning a route interesting.

Analysis

This was the first map that motivated me to open it up in the campaign editor and take a closer look at how it's constructed.

• You start with a level 1 hero with a crossbow and an axe, a town with a hall, fort, tavern, and level 1 dwellings already constructed, and no troops.
• With few exceptions, monster strength is not customized at all.
• Artifacts and resources on the map are random. However, the type of resource mines is fixed, and each town starts with a resource pile of each type nearby.
• The player start areas are not symmetrical. You get roughly comparable stuff to the other player, but not the same stuff.

Head of the Dragon

Play 1

I made a strategic error in this game that resulted in a prolonged standoff: I built a magic-focused army to fight Chaos (black dragons). One interesting thing about this map: control of harbors is important so your caravans can cross the ocean.

Horseplay

Play 1

This map has a similar vibe to Field of Life - a bunch of scattered powerups and a rather bland style (if you don't factor in the map art). There are some odd choices: you start the game with all your mines already claimed, and they're locked away in an inaccessible area of the map. There are not one but two keymaster tents you need to get before you can access your opponent's half of the map. It's not clear to me that these choices affect gameplay much. Annoyingly, Nature is blocked from getting the Creature Portal, which means you can't get some of the best creatures (water elementals and mantises). You're also barred from getting elves, griffins, or phoenixes. I spent 5 levels on Grandmaster Summoning, and all I got out of it was... 12 water elementals.

Ice Age

Play 1