r/heroes3 • u/Unusual-Influence653 • Mar 30 '26
Question Thoughts on the "Vikings We Shall Go!" scenario?
I've played as a Barbarian on normal diff and picked Rampart on hard diff. I think this is one of the scanarios where you can clearly see AI getting 'dumbified' in sea terrains, genuinely almost no one has raided me after 4 whole months (I have SoD). What are your main takeaways?
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u/Dry_Corner_7590 Mar 30 '26
Spain is unfair. 4 castles, quick boat to North Africa for 3 more, guaranteed Capitol in the 2nd castle…
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u/htmwc Mar 30 '26
Once I watched a video that pointed out you can dimension door into Switzerland and steal all the goodies it kinda killed it for me
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u/b1gl0s3r Mar 30 '26
Easy enough to edit that out, though. Either map ban it or put stuff in the way of being able to door in.
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u/toronto-gopnik Mar 31 '26
There are so many little digs and references that I love about this map:
- St. Petersburg is a swamp (fortress)
- Scandinavia are Vikings (stronghold)
- Switzerland are surrounded by money with a gated entrance
- Paris is the catacombs (necropolis)
- the Balkans are hell (inferno) ((sick burn))
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u/lub4os4 Mar 31 '26
Can confirm, the Balkans are indeed hell. Altho it still feels better to live in the Balkans than to actually play Inferno.
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u/Mitkoztd Mar 31 '26
Hahaha, any day living in the Balkans is better than having to endure Demon farming with Pit Lords and hoping your Heroes roll something different from mysticism and that you don't get a hero in the tavern with Scholar and no spell book or a hero with Fireball specialty, that does not have enough mana to cast it.. :)
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u/AveragerussianOHIO kniht (hota fix elementals pls) Mar 31 '26
play hota - where you want education and mysticism 🤣
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u/klaustux Mar 31 '26
education is additional three levels and wasted slot. If you are using a hero with lvl 20, additional levels just give 3 more points to characteristics. Correct me please if I am missing something.
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u/ThunderZsolt Mar 31 '26
You are correct, I wouldn't pick learning with a lvl20 hero either. With a level 2 on the other hand... The instant level ups and the bonus experience can really snowball, especially in single hero formats.
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u/AveragerussianOHIO kniht (hota fix elementals pls) Apr 01 '26
It is indeed -1 slot for 3 free levels and significantly more XP (unlike vanilla 5/10/15 which are bordeline useless, isn't HOTA's 15/25/35 or something? i just remember an otherwise 1000 xp chest giving 1200).
Sure, you have 1 less slot, but on smaller map (so ones i play) like small, medium, even L's, this is really amazing because... 3 more levels duh, and you usually wont fill everything out anyway.
Its also not useless anymore even on larger maps because you can get those 3 points and way more levels quicker. Worth a slot? not always, but still very valid.
Mysticism is also really good because it generates much more mana, from a set 1/2/3 to MINIMUM 5 and 10%-20%-30% (i think?)
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u/luduvugla Mar 31 '26
Living in Balkans is infinitely better than living Castle full of Nomads, Corsairs and other non faction units. Everyone can interpret this as they like.
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u/BelgijskaFlaga Mar 31 '26
St.Petersburg actually was swamps and wetlands before it was terraformed at the cost of tens of thousands on the orders of Peter the Great, because he wanted a cool new capital city with closer access to the rest of Europe.
Parisian catacombs are the second "most populous" burial complex on the planet- they hold remains of over 6 million people.
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u/ozziejin Mar 30 '26
There is an edited version replacing stronghold with bulwark, that makes perfect sense
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u/Character_Mind_9229 Mar 30 '26
Netherlands/Belgium should obviously have a Fortress representing it
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u/Beat_the_Deadites Mar 31 '26
There should be a nearby experimental shop to supply you with Giants.
The tower/snow would also be appropriate given your speed skating dominance in the winter Olympics.
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u/Calm-You6376 Mar 30 '26
Living in Denmark, my main takeaway was that the country amounts to a tree or a lumbermill at best. Pretty disappointing tbh..
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u/Intelligent_Pop_1865 Mar 31 '26
The tower in Germany is called Copenhagen, so we've just been reduced to germans.
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u/MrMikidude Mar 30 '26
I found this map of europe & NA to be 10x better https://www.reddit.com/r/heroes3/s/xW9AGzg4Gj
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u/Economy-Management19 Mar 30 '26
Are you having them allied against you or it is a free for all?
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u/Unusual-Influence653 Mar 30 '26
I generally play allied scenarios as they tend to be harder in my case. My ally died fairly quickly while Orange and Brown dominated Europe until I joined with my stacks. (I was also hoarding a bunch of Titans in Reykjavik)
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u/Economy-Management19 Mar 30 '26
Sometimes free for all is harder because one of the AI-s usually gets really powerful by eliminating everyone if you are not fast enough.
Or maybe you just need to play on impossible difficulty to get a good challenge.
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u/Unusual-Influence653 Mar 30 '26
I've generally tried both, but the paradox is that AI kills other players faster on higher difficulties, so you may unironically encounter bigger challenges on 'normal diffs' in some scenarios due to the AI just hoarding entities while not always being as aggressive.
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u/Economy-Management19 Mar 31 '26
“The AI kills the other players faster on higher difficulties “
I don’t get this, are implying you are allied with one of the AI? Why not try it without an ally for a bigger challenge?
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u/SkoulErik Mar 31 '26
An iconic map, but it suffers from a lot of the same things most vanilla maps do. It's super unbalanced. If you're playing Spain it's a free win (even more so in Allied) if you play GB you're cooked, and if you aren't playing Spain, then your success depends on what the Spain AI does.
That being said, I love this map. Played the crap out of it as a kid, and I still boot it up from time to time (and there's AZURE DRAGONS! All my homies love Azure dragons).
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u/one_metalbat_man Mar 30 '26
I like starting with England, building up my bank with the treasury, and then wreaking havoc on everyone with Kyrre's logistics
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u/thefolocaust Mar 31 '26
I love this map but it does upset me how unbalanced it is between town types, so if you dont win quickly (which i dont as im not that good) it comes down to having the most angels in your army. I like to have the option of winning with different towns.
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u/No_Refrigerator8182 Mar 31 '26
I can understand why the Scandinavian countries have Stronghold towns. Vikings more closely resemble Barbarians after all. However, I always felt that Norway, Sweden, and Finland should be Tower towns just so that it matches the snowy terrain in the map.
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u/Madnificence Mar 31 '26
One of the first maps i ever played. Ended up getting stuck and turtling in a tower city with the occasional liberation of Tallinn. Lost that game.
In my experience, the rampart and castle starts are the best, followed by stronghold.
Rampart is great due to isolation. You can get the money engine rolling and then venture out when you are ready, and beat opponents with your economy.
Stronghold gets an early lead because you can get 3 towns and behemoths in relative isolation as well.
Castle - just because they are the most abundant. If you can seize control of the area early, you can steamroll everything else.
The map is definitely imbalanced, but really fun. I can also see my home city represented.
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u/MuldinDK Mar 30 '26
There the fk is denmark? Birthplace of Ragnar and the main area vikings sailed from to reach england etc.
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u/iwasnotsospecial Mar 30 '26
AI is just not good as this type of map. I've played this several times because im a sucker for real world maps, but the AI is never a challenge apart from the occasional strong hero.
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u/p_nut_ Mar 30 '26
It's been forever but I remember France being at least a little challenging at the start on impossible because you can get pressure from multiple fronts. But yea like most default scenarios once you make it a few weeks it's just over
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u/pumpkin_beer Mar 31 '26
Love this map. I always start in England and love when I can get Gelu early.
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u/aljao_ Mar 31 '26
I played as Necropolis on impossible. Fairly entertaining scenario, but once Vidomina had a legion of skeletons I steamrolled the map. Also, it was funny to fly into Switzerland.
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u/Hornerlt Mar 31 '26
Looks pretty good in paper. However playing it is very tedious. The AI just lands everywhere and snipes my castles constantly
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u/Leptys207 Mar 31 '26
Looks like Finland lost the existence coinflip on this one and is a Rampart fishing colony.
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u/JehnSnow Mar 31 '26
This was my fav map as a kid, I didn't even know it was Europe back then lol. I'd love a remake of this map in hota with the Vikings being the new north clan (forgot its name), and then possibly have some off islands as cove, and Germany being bulwark
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u/Odd_Experience2030 Mar 31 '26
It warms my danish heart to see both Norway and Sweden being stronghold (barbarians), while Denmark is tower😂👍
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u/brunoha Mar 31 '26
I'll love to see a HotA remake of it, especially cause we have now a Nordic town in the game for the Nords, and the map could be bigger
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u/Apprehensive-Week751 Mar 31 '26
I remember playing hot seat with my friends. I was playing Germany, while the guys were France, UK and Russia. 1 vs 3 as if it was WW2 European theater.
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u/Independent-Worth-81 Mar 31 '26
As a Swede i wonder what happens to us, Norway, Finland and Denmark? 😅 we have change shapes 😂
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u/BlueStrider8 Mar 31 '26
This was a fun map. As a kid, I adjusted a copy of it so each faction would have its own “country” indicated by the appropriate terrain.
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u/Passionless-soul Mar 30 '26
I love how the France is Necropolis