u/dota2portaltv

I've been playing basically all HoMM titles for decades now (older gamer), thousands of hours poured in single player games and campaigns. I will play them until the end of days.

I would very much like to try out multiplayer and see how it goes, but my current opinion of MP gameplay boils down to this:

• You spend most of the time battling AI and not real people.
• You do your best to strategize around challenges and that can take hours before your first battle against your opponent if we min max our every move.
• You try to make an experienced guess about the enemy army composition and build, but it still feels like you are going in blind in your first battle that usually determines that final outcome

At the moment, it feels like a game of Age of Empires where you spend hours building up an economy and maxing out your population with a balanced army and then you fight the enemy, not really knowing what kind of army they have. In AoE, you could at least scout to see what your opponent is doing and get ready for it. If you lose a fight, you still had ways to come back. What I am trying to say, I guess, is that I would wish for a way to get solid info about my opponent as the game goes to potentially prepare myself better for a fight instead of just hoping that my "educated" guess about their race and hero will be good enough when we meet the first time.

Is there a map template or a game mod that allows for a more proactive gameplay session? Or is this really how a HoMM multiplayer games are played and it's just normalized?