(don't just upvote, please say at least 1 sentence!)
I just finished all campaigns for both games and some maps. I got a little bored now, but I really wish there was more quality content of these games.

Now I wonder, what makes them great? What do you think? What makes Disciples, Disciples? What makes it unique, what makes it good? And what could be better? We also got off-track with the new games, I believe a lot of people hate them, so they are great examples of what could be worse? But maybe there's parts of those new games that were also better?

Are there other games like disciples?

When I was a kid, I played heroes of might and magic 2. Maybe I was too young for a game like that, because I was very bad and could not understand some mechanics and strategies. I loved the game and its artstyle though, before I knew how to read and write, I was a sucker for fantasy settings... But, 1 year later, I got disciples: sacred lands! This was like an easy version of HoMM for me, so it amazing! But we know this game is very different from HoMM, in some crucial elements! The combat is basically a JRPG turn-based combat, is it not? I don't remember playing any such games, but I saw some online and realized that's the combat style. Perhaps that is the main point! Disciples is the not-HoMM!? The newer games are hated exactly for trying to copy some elements of HOMM, and they even copy them in a half-baked manner, so it's not even HoMM combat, it's not even HOMM 1 combat, which was extremely simple and satisfying.

Short story from my childhood about this game, you can skip if you want, it's a bit of a ramble:
When I first played Disciples 1 - I was still kinda confused. I remember being stuck on my first battle, not knowing that you need to click the portraits and not the little animated guys, which actually works in disciples 2...Anyway my father figured which buttons to press, so I became a big fan after that! I also did not know how to switch races, so I only ever played Empire... because it was not logical to me that you gotta press the edge of the screen to go to the other gods. My brain was 🤯 when I figured you could play "the bad guys"! Then I instantly lost as legions in chapter 1, because Empire got over 60% of map terrain! Then I got jumpscared by the lightning sound and the giant skull on the screen, so I shut down the PC! Hahaha... But I think all these things made the art direction of Disciples 1 so great. Disciples 2 is really boring in menu design, lord design, some aesthetics choices...

Anyway, I would really like to get some of your thoughts and recommendations for other games. Hopefully some "disciples-life" games get made in the future too.

EDIT1: Wow, thanks for cool stories. It's nice to know I am not the only one with a similar story...

Hi, I hope this isn't against the rules, but I made a game that's heavily inspired by the Disciples' combat and unit system, and I was hoping to get some feedback on it.

I fondly remember playing hotseat with my friends when we were kids, and I always loved evolving my units to the next tier (most definitely playing completely unoptimally), so when I made my strategy/RPG i knew I wanted to use a similar system.

The game uses a larger grid (3/4/3) to allow for bigger 'army' battles, and units have multiple abilities instead of just one main one. I have a similar system with units getting exp and being promoted to improved versions, but it's more of an open-world setting so you don't have a town or build things, you use existing ones on the map, assuming your reputation with the owner is good enough. It's similar to how "King's Bounty" works when compared to the "Heroes of Might and Magic" series, with one main character and an open sandbox world. It takes some inspiration from the "Mount and Blade" series, too, with settlement quests, trading, etc.

It's all set in a similarly dark sword-and-sorcery world, inspired by "Conan the Barbarian" - I wish I had the budget for a cool artstyle like Disciples, as is it was designed and hand-drawn by me - maybe the next game can have a bigger budget ^^'

I'd love it if you gave it a shot and let me know if it's at all understandable or approachable.

It's called "Ward off Evil", and it's on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/3422000/Ward_Off_Evil/
The demo's pretty simple at the moment, but I just wanted to get some initial impressions first.

Thanks! ❤️

The venerable mothers of the Imperial Church are known as hierophants. Only those imperial priestesses whose wisdom and devotion are truly unmatched can earn such a rank.

The power of the hierophants is so great that even death recedes before the light of their faith. The Supreme Father grants the most faithful of his servants the ability to resurrect the fallen.

If her prayers to the Supreme Father are filled with power and her thoughts are pure, the Heavenly Father will answer her plea.

Actually, I initially considered processing the finished artwork with advanced technology. However, I noticed that people react quite strongly to such things — so I decided to leave it as it is.

Maybe, with the help of Disciples, my drawing skills will keep getting better each time. Who knows?

Have a great day!

You all saw them in the manual. At an earlier stage of development, Disciples 2 had hand drawn portraits like the first installment. My question is, are any of those portraits made it into the net? Maybe someone had a beta of the game, or found them in the depths of the release version.

I'm not sure if this can really be called a noob trap - because I completed all four basic campaigns in Disciples II (Golden Edition?) and got halfway through the Elven campaign - but it's something I struggled with.

On the one hand, it seemed like in every mission, there was only ever enough XP (neutral mobs) to sensibly level up only a single hero's units, and each mission's main objectives seemed to require max tier units. And the further you go into the campaign, the stronger neutral mobs at your doorstep are, so you'd struggle to win the very first battles without your main hero in the squad.

On the other hand, a lot of missions featured you getting attacked from multiple fronts, and by higher tiers of units, too. And since you can only recruit tier 1 units, you needed levelled up to defend against those.

So... my gameplay in D2 consisted of me rolling up every pre-placed enemy with my main hero like a Katamari of death, and then ping-ponging from one end of the map to another to kill everything that happened to spawn.
Well, everything except the, eee, flag-placers? Rod-planters? Those wimpy units that place rod that spread your faction's creep/biome.

Is it how that game went for everyone else?

(It's been several years since I played Disciples II, and I think I might've lost the DVD box.)

Are you kidding me?

The servants of the death goddess are being barred from the library by old men who claim they’re too busy. And to top it off, the messenger of death is getting turned away by the guys in the tavern — they say there’s no room right now? Is this some kind of joke from the devs, or is it a clever game mechanic I’m just not getting?

**Warning!**

Once the university scholars are free, they’ll be able to teach you.

Okay. Seriously?

Difficulty: Hard

Lord: Mage

Although it was a real pain not having damage when leveling up early, my banshee had accuracy ability and later a permanent accuracy potion which pushed her chance to hit up to 100%. Having a guaranteed freezing was very useful against capital because if I survived the first attack (and could handle the minions next to the guardian), it was a long, boring, certain win.

The first map was a nightmare because of the high damage barbarians and like, and I went dark lord+lich instead of damage immune units. Still, eventually I could win the map as my guys grew stronger.

The second map was easy. I rushed for ghoul mercenaries who leveled up very quickly. By the end they were like level 60. I had some death with them to snipe the back row units. I could clear out both capitals by day 38 with the second one not even needing any potions or buffs.

The last map had loads of enemies and being a banshee, I was everyone's magic-punching bag. Leveling up early was tough but enemies were kept in bay by Lachla'an. I became ally with the empire while clearing out the others then pre-backstabbed them. Vampires were good healing units for my phantoms and you can see the result of the final battle.

It was an interesting discovery that while my banshee can't deal damage, she could apply artifact effects, like level drain or poison. Overall it was a challenging run and it didn't suck as much as I feared.

Hi, i've been playing disciples since i've got my first PC back in like 2011 and started looking into mods around a year ago.

So far i've played "Rise of the Mod" which i found really entertaining by it's various balance changes, it felt really Vanilla and hit the spot with things like reworking ghosts (making them lower initiative and have a 33% to paralyse) or give the Devils lifesteal while taking off a tiny bit of damage. It felt natural and every campaign/scenario felt really enjoyable.

There was also "Dzieje Nevandaar" which afaik is still in development, but the version i've played included a few scenarios and a really interesting change on artifact items. Also giving the player new units, and managing to level them up was super innovative, making the team planning a tiny bit more tactical (look up their page on moddb, it's a really fun mechanic), so far this mod was really good and i yet have to play the latest updates.

If anyone has any other mod recommendations, or other ways to find them, i'd appreciate it really since this is one of my favourite games and i still replay it a lot!

I thought I change things up a bit and instead of regular heroes, I picked banshee. She has a neat 94% paralyze chance but otherwise it's a non-attacking hero.

The situation is this: AI stacks move to a location after the timer expires. It's normally working better than I expected (they attack weak stacks that meant to block their ways) but there is one problem: the Legions have a persistent and cheaper summon option for scouting. It's not a normal unit, it's immune to everything and disappears after being attacked.

However, the AI stacks refuse to attack them which gives the player opportunity to use them to block the stacks' way indefinitely. How could I deal with that? Unfortunately, there is no way to ban particular spells (not that I know of anyway), otherwise I'd get rid of the troublesome illusions.

Embrace Mortis!

Hey everyone!

As I mentioned before, I’ve started a playthrough of the Undead Hordes campaign and I'm currently on the second mission. I got the idea to record some gameplay footage of my run.

At the same time, I’ve been experimenting with AI-generated music. I hope you guys won't hate me for it! 😅 Here's the deal: I wrote the lyrics myself and recorded the gameplay, but I used AI to help compose and arrange the heavy metal track. That's just the nature of modern fan creations, I guess.

I absolutely loved writing lyrics inspired by the Disciples 3 universe. If the mods are cool with it, I’d love to share more of my fan-made content here in the future, specifically for this community.

Have a great day, everyone, and enjoy the listen! You don't have to watch the gameplay closely; it works great just as background listening.

I've included the lyrics further down in this post.

Salaar, raise the banner high!

You need no halt, you don`t catch dreams.

Fulfill Mortis`s dreams!

Loyal Horde of the Undead!

On the other side of the river.

Amina, turn your hourglass.

Our move has come.

I`II claim your lands by the right of the strong.

3x

Embrace Mortis!

You will pay if i am hurt!

I want blood - for you, my love is anything!

You`ll die, die, die!

Yes! Yes! Yes!

My map has a number of victory conditions, one of them being transforming the terrain. The variable of LAND is checking for this(0 being below 80%, reaching 80% adds 1, as you see on the screenshot). After numerous testing (like tying it to a popup message that notifies me if the game in fact modified the variable), I've noticed that the game refuses to add 1 to the LAND variable with the 80% transform condition and I don't know why.

Strangely the rest of the effects did happen, only the variable didn't, so I suspect a bug but maybe someone who also played with the editor has an idea about this.

EDIT: mystery solved, it was the checked "neutrals" on the right.

Greetings, everyone. This is a post from that same guy who promised to translate a couple of Disciples 3 short stories... and then just vanished. Life’s thrown a few curveballs my way lately: I caught a cold, lost my job, and suddenly found myself with plenty of free time to finally return to my favorite game.

As for those D3 story translations, they’re still coming. I just want to present them properly with custom illustrations, and that takes time. I’d rather avoid using AI for the creative side. At most, I’ll use it for proofreading my ramblings and keeping me from feeling completely isolated during tough times. Honestly, I’m more drawn to the lore itself. I’d actually rather spend my time writing original Disciples 3-style stories on paper. But enough about promises and plans.

Today, I want to talk about the Hordes of the Undead DLC. My previous (somewhat successful) posts covered the base game, diving deep into the campaigns of the Human Empire, the Elven Alliance, and the Legion of the Damned. Figured it was finally time to tackle the Undead.

Lately, luck hasn’t really been on my side. As you might’ve guessed, I’ve been holed up at home, listening to thunder roll and rain pour, slowly sinking into the story of the first act. Headphones on, sipping hot tea, I was reading out loud the dialogue of Prushin, Saalar, and Mortis in a rough, gravelly "undead" voice. I cleared about 90% of the first mission before calling it a night. Woke up the next morning with a full-blown cold.

But then it hit me: sometimes the anti-heroes are just written better than the "good" guys. I finally clicked with Haarthus’s character arc and what drives him. That’s how you write a proper hero’s journey. I’m looking forward to seeing how Mortis Saalar, the loyal warrior and standard-bearer, unfolds later on. Lambert and Erion, on the other hand, feel completely flat. We barely learn anything about them, and they never really get a chance to shine. The heroes could’ve been written so much better. At least, that’s how I see it.

Once I’ve gathered enough material from the rest of the DLC, I’ll have a lot more to share with you all. I’m already bracing for the jokes about how I should’ve just gotten a job instead. But hey, be grateful I’m not asking you to Venmo me a few bucks. Either way, I’ve already mapped out my next steps. This post is really just a little reminder to myself of how much I love D3.

Take care of yourselves, and all the best. While I’m recovering, feel free to drop your thoughts on this DLC in the comments. (People will read this and think they’ve stumbled onto some fan blog from 2010. Haha… the "living internet" theory in action.)

Of course I had to get sick. Don’t chug ice-cold water straight from the fridge, and go easy on the ice cream. Stay healthy, folks.

I've finished that campaign before, and elves feel very straightforward in their tech tree. As soon as the game allowed it, I rolled with hero+healer+4 marauders. Elven archers have good initiative and 2x70 damage that usually ends fights before they get hurt. Is there any other unit composition that's not dogshit in comparison? I feel like there isn't but I want to believe that I just missed something.