A Town Guide

Fortress

Overview: The fortress is new to Heroes III and is the weakest town type. Its early troops and late troops are weak when compared to other town types' creatures, but its mid level creatures (the basilisk and gorgon) are actually good. This town type does have some very useful special buildings, but it is very weak in magic. Its heroes have good defense, toughening up this town's otherwise weak creatures, but even the witch lacks the magical aptitude of more adept heroes like the wizard and warlock. If playing this castle type, jump up the tech tree to wyverns and basilisks early to take over the map early and look to conquer enemy towns immediately. You must support your troops with magic if you play this town type.

Pros: Two flying units (one mid and one late), mid level creatures are strong; can get wyverns very early; heroes' defense bonus makes monsters tough; cheap units; most creature dwellings are cheap; good special buildings.
Cons: Very weak in magic, slow troops; only one weak ranged attacker; weak late game units.

Creatures
The fortress suffers from a lack of strong low- and high-level troops. The gnoll is a fairly good first-level troop, but the lizardman, despite its ranged attack, is one of the weaker second-level creatures. Serpent flies, and even the upgraded dragon flies, are only useful for their speed in that they might allow you to cast spells first, but otherwise, they are too weak to do much more than annoy your opponents. Only in great numbers are they any good. Basilisks are surprisingly strong compared to other fourth-level troops, and they remain one of the best fourth-level units even when upgraded. Gorgons appear strong, but when stacked up against such creatures as minotaurs and rocs, come out on the losing end. However, they do offer good defense and can soak up a lot of punishment for the fortress creatures. The wyvern is pretty weak for a sixth-level creature, but has good speed and flight. Luckily, you can acquire it within three days, so build the wyvern's nest quickly for an immediate advantage. The hydra is itself a strong unit, but lacking superior speed and any outstanding special abilities, is probably the weakest of the seventh-level creatures. But it becomes useful if you want to attack multiple enemies at once. Definitely upgrade your troops if you have a fortress town; the troops here need the extra durability and speed that upgrading brings.

The saving grace for the fortress creatures is their special abilities. Basilisk petrification and the gorgon's death stare are very useful when they do occur. Petrification allows you to direct your attention to other creatures, and the gorgon's death state has a 10 percent chance to kill one enemy unit outright for every 10 mighty gorgons. The poison of the wyvern monarchs, though, isn't nearly as useful, as it merely reduces the first creature's hit points in the poisoned stack by 50 percent.

Even more so than other town creatures, fortress creatures need lots of magical aid to be most effective. Use teleport spells to instantly move gorgons, basilisks, and hydras across the map to strike immediately. If you can do this, and support them with magical aides like bless, bloodlust, and stone skin, then your troops will be much more effective.

Buildings
The fortress creature dwellings aren't as expensive as those of other town types (except for the gorgon dwelling), which saves this town from utter uselessness. You'll need sulfur for some late dwellings, although not to the degree of the dungeon town. You will need to get extra wood and ore mines and find some extra sulfur early if you want to jump to the hydra pond your first week.

In a great design decision to balance the fortress, you can get wyverns in two turns by building the lizard den, which opens the wyvern's nest the next day. This gives you a tremendous jump on the competition. Scrambling up the building tree should be a recommended strategy because as long as your high level troops are battling other towns' low level troops, you are fine. However, once enemy towns have time to build up to the same level creatures, you are in trouble.

Unfortunately, you need the serpent fly hive before you can get the basilisk pit and you need both the lizard den and the serpent fly hive for the gorgon, which itself isn't required for the hydra pond (which thankfully is cheaper relative to other seventh-level dwellings). That means the gorgon lair is almost like a dead end. You are better off climbing swiftly through the rest of the dwellings, ignoring the gorgon lair and going for the hydra pond after you get wyverns and basilisks. In general, there are no building dependencies like with the castle and tower towns, except for the ridiculous gorgon lair upgrade, which requires the expensive resource silo first. The only horde building for this town increases gnoll production.

The special buildings aid greatly in castle defense; glyphs of fear boost defense during sieges by +2 and the blood obelisk boosts attack by +2. The permanent +1 defense modifier given by the cage of warlords is also a great boon. The blacksmith builds a first aid tent, while the resource silo adds +1 ore and +1 wood per day.

The fortress grail building is the Carnivorous Plant, which yields an additional 5000 gold each day, increases weekly creature growth by +50 percent, and boosts a defending hero's attack and defense ratings by +10.

Magic
Fortress towns are incredibly weak in magic, being restricted to level three mage guilds. This deprives them of such offensive spells as meteor shower and chain lightning, and it also robs them of vital adventure spells like town portal and dimension door. In the later game, their weaker troops really need strong heroes and magic for help, so you better go looking for enemy towns to take because there isn't any magic here. Frenzy is a particularly powerful spell to use on fortress creatures, which have high defense, but you'll need to find another town type to learn this spell; it's fourth level.