Heroes3 AI vs AI test fights

I've been doing AI vs AI fights, mostly for fun and data gathering on Heroes of Might and Magic III using the Horn of the Abyss unofficial expansion pack. I've now finished all of the Castle fights (although I need to redo Castle vs Rampart). Castle is kind of the default, but it is also the strongest faction. Or, at least that was my hypothesis. I think my data gathering bears that out.

I tried to flatten the impact of any variable other than the strength of the creatures themselves. I had might heroes who's secondary skills were replaced with non-combat ones that would have no impact, I gave them no spellbooks (except Tower's Alchemist and Necropolis' Death Knight, because they start with one by default). I also attempted to run combats on terrain that had the following traits: 1) a truly neutral terrain which benefitted neither faction, 2) two two terrains that are favored by each of the two factions, 3) the terrains that align (no pun intended) with the alignment of the faction. And for each of these terrains, I'd run two AI vs AI battles, one in which the Castle hero attacked the other hero, and one in which the other hero attacked the Castle hero.

In practice, because Castle is the most powerful, they were often overwhelming the other faction. When that was happening, I sometimes didn't do the Holy Ground, because that (usually) just favored the Castle faction even more (unless they were fighting another Good Aligned faction, in which case the effect was neutral.) When that happened, I'd use a different neutral terrain just for visual interest. For the factions that started your Might hero with a spellbook, I also did Magic Fields and Cursed Ground to see if that made any difference. That was Tower and Necropolis, so instead of 10 fights, they had 12 each.

What were the results? You can watch them here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3rBWzgVK9hyRwW6i1OsOjZf-aKkdXwie

Or, I can give you the summary here. Again; Castle vs Rampart needs to be redone with a few more battles, but I don't expect that to change the big picture result at all. Both are good aligned and both have Grass as their favored terrain, so no terrain gives either one an advantage over the other.

Castle beats Rampart: 4-2

Castle beats Tower: 8-4

Castle beats Dungeon: 9-1

Castle beats Inferno: 8-2

Castle beats Necropolis: 12-0

Castle beats Stronghold: 6-4

Castle beats Fortress: 10-0

Castle beats Conflux: 8-2

Castle beats Cove: 7-3

As I said, Castle is clearly the most powerful of the factions, at least in terms of raw troop strength. In some cases, this was dramatic enough for absolute blow-outs and even complete shut-outs. Rampart, Stronghold, and Tower were the only ones that gave them even a little run for their money, and the new Cove town did OK. Necropolis and Fortress were especially disappointing, being completely shut out, and I expected Dungeon to do better than it did. In comparison, even though not even close to a win, the Conflux and Inferno both did better than I expected, because I didn't think of them are particularly strong factions to begin with.

Working on Rampart as the follow-up, and then I'll keep going down the line. I suppose at the end of the day, I won't do Cove, because by the time I get to Cove, it will have already have played against everyone. Here's the current status...

Read horizontally, i.e. 8-2 means the horizontal axis had 8 wins, and the vertical axis only 2.
Castle	x	8-2	8-4	9-1	8-2	12-0	6-4	10-0	8-2	7-3
Rampart	2-8	x	6-6	8-2
Tower	4-8	6-6	x
Dungeon	1-9	2-8		x
Inferno	2-8				x
Necropolis	0-12					x
Stronghold	4-6						x
Fortress	0-10							x
Conflux	2-8								x
Cove	3-7									x
	Castle	Rampart	Tower	Dungeon	Inferno	Necropolis	Stronghold	Fortress	Conflux	Cove

It's a good thing that the Horn of the Abyss changed the Conflux favored (or native) terrain from Grass to the Grass lookalike Highlands, but we still have two that have Grass as a favored terrain, and nobody has Sand. With the addition of Cove, we have two on Swamp too.

I think Fortress could have been retooled graphically to be a sand/desert lizards and hyenas; that would actually probably fit even better for the troops than Swamp. Of course, the only reason that they're two on Swamp is because of the unofficial expansion pack, and Sand makes no sense for the pirates of the Cove. Ah, well.

I really like the new Wasteland terrain, but that's just the first taste of what is supposed to come out with a new faction (yet another neutral; someone should bulk up the Evil and Good!) and a new campaign, etc. I'm not sure that I'm sold on the new faction; it's got a little bit of a Forgy vibe, except instead of cyperpunk zombies, it's steampunk cowboys. I guess it's OK.