Combat

Combat is a general term for encounters in Heroes of Might and Magic III, where heroes and their armies fight against each other in order to vanquish the hero and his troops. Combat takes place, when a player or computer attacks another hero, wandering creature stack, garrison, town, event, creature bank, or picks up a guarded artifact. Combat ends when one side's army is entirely destroyed, or when a hero retreats or surrenders. Only a hero may retreat or surrender, and a hero may only surrender to another hero, not to a wandering creature stack, a garrison, or a town without a defending hero. A hero defending against a town siege may neither surrender nor retreat unless the town is a Stronghold with an Escape Tunnel. Wandering creatures never surrender or retreat, but they may flee before the combat.

Battlefield

Combat takes place on the battlefield, that is 11 rows of 15 hexagonal frames (hexes). Because size of most the creatures is one hex, a creature with speed of 13 can traverse across the battlefield to attack another creature stack directly opposite to that creature. Additionally, a creature with a speed of 19 can traverse diagonally from one corner to its opposite corner.

Turn Order

Combat proceeds in rounds. Each hero can cast one spell each round. Each round is divided into three phases: initial, morale-waited, and waited, which occur in that chronological order. In the initial phase, creatures move in order of their speed, fastest first. A creature may wait during the initial phase, in which case the creature moves instead during the waited phase. A creature may also wait after moving in the initial phase and getting high morale: in this case, the creature will move again during the morale-waited phase. In contrast to the initial phase, creatures in the morale-waited and waited phases move slowest first.

Ties in speed are broken in the same way throughout all three phases. The rules are as follows:

• Last-Mover-Loses: Whoever moved last, or had a chance to move last, even if they waited or defended with that move, and even if the move or chanced to move occurred during a previous phase or even the previous round of combat (except in the case of the previous round of combat during a siege of a town with at least a fort; see below), loses the tie, in that the other player's creature with the same speed moves first.
  • Note that in the morale-wait/wait phases, that means the player that moved last "wins" the tie in a way because during the wait phase, you usually want to move later in the phase, not earlier.
  • Exception to the last-mover-loses rule: in a siege where the town has at least a fort, the attacker always moves first at the beginning of the round if the fastest creatures are tied; in other words, the "last mover loses" rule doesn't apply across rounds of combat (but still does apply across phases and at all other times).
• If it is the very beginning of combat, and no one has moved or waited at all, the attacker moves first.
• If it is a player's turn to move and there are multiple creatures with the same speed, the one in the leftmost slot moves first. This corresponds to the one that appeared higher on the screen at the beginning of combat for a hero without tactics.