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plz 4 my sake and all others shorten that up i hate reading so if ya dont mind could you make that any shorter

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The question has plagued Heroes players for the entire duration of their Heroes playing careers (Well me anyway ). I think now, it has reached a point, where we will be able to solve which castle and efficiency program is suitable for the map, and the opponents on it, being experienced Heroes players.
Things that need to be taken into account, I feel are, the net spending cost, and the castles advantages and disadvantages, obviously. An aim here, is to build the castle up economically, without any stalls, or drawbacks.
So, this is post is about the strategy on how to use a certain castles strengths to the best ways possible, and how to hide their weaknesses.

(Info Sourced from mmportals.com)

Shall we start with the Castle town? Now we do know that it is generally quite fast, and the units deal high amounts of damage. Although the hit points of creatures are average, and the mid game units are an average assortment. The basics of castles we already know, but what and how will the special abilities of certain creatures affect other castles?
The Heroes, Clerics and Knights both have quite clear preferences on which of the four primary skills. A downfall of Castle heroes is their inability to learn Necromancy, mainly because it is the totally opposite order to Castle.
As you may or may not know, the Castle town has the highest upgraded structure cost in the game, costing 98,500 gold to complete. Another aspect that hurts the castle, is that you will need 6 gems per week to spend on recruiting Archangels, which leaves you 1 day of recuperation, and hardly allows for any further buying of any other structures demanding gems.
Since two of the creatures in the Castle town have 2X attack, it is useful to use bless and prayer to heighten the damage done. This is extremely useful against creatures with high and low hit points, for the reason that the high creatures are not as safe with the double strike and 1X retaliation, and the lower levels are disposed of more easily.
The main objective of castle troops as high damage troops, they need to deal damage as efficiently as possible, this has much also to do with speed, and that is where tactics comes in hand, as the army has the ability to advance about 1/5 of the battlefield.
A main focus on the battlefield is dealing the damage capabilities of the Castle units as quickly as possible, so one makes use of the high amount of creatures before they are deteriorated. This, doesn’t prove to be to hard, as the Castle creatures are quick, and have the aid of spells like clone and haste behind them.

Map and Surroundings:
If you are a defensive player, who likes to build up the necessary equipment to fuel the expensive Castle town, you are better off on L and XL maps under very hard and impossible difficulty. With the Castle, smaller maps and easier difficulty settings, one should be able to concentrate more on troop raising. If playing on impossible difficulty setting, you won't have any money or resources to start with (except you got the "bonus" there). So if you want to build something in the first turn you must move out with your hero and collect money and resources. If you find a treasure chest, take the money. If you locate an Ore Pit or a Sawmill take it immediately. You will need all resources sooner or later and it can't hurt to take a mine as soon as possible, but you don't need to rush things. On very hard difficulty you will recruit another hero on the first day and equip him or her with a spell book. (If it is a Knight)

With this (brief) information, you will be able roughly to figure out what towns and creatures will suffer heavily under castle, and ones, which will hurt them. But, I’ve decided to expand more on this particular topic.

Castle does well against:

Dungeon:
As the creatures are well catered for by all aspects of Castles hard hitting department. The Archangels, Champions, and Crusader will usually outplay the Black Dragons, Scorpicores, and Minotaur Kings. Although the only problem is the Scorpicores Paralysing attack, as it can put a serious halt in your advance.

Necropolis:
Life vs. Death, and spells come in very handy with this town, as they generally counter one another! The number of skeletons is probably one of the biggest threats of the Necropolis town, as the Necromancy skill can see experienced heroes with over 600 skeletons. They are dealt with predominantly from your shooters, zealots and marksmen, while the crusaders and Champions dispose of the Ghost Dragon, and the Archangels can focus on the Dread Knights.

Stronghold:
An advantage against the Stronghold for the Castle town, is that they predominantly focus on the offensive aspect of battles, and care little in the ways of defence, which suits Castle particularly well, as they can easily cut them down with heavy hitters. The only trouble is, that the stronghold are also very proficient in the ways of attacking, so the best strategy to have is hit them as hard as soon has possible.

Castle suffers against:

Rampart:
As they are resistant to many direct damage spells, and are relatively quick at high levels, and match Castle troops in many ways. Also they have high HP, so it will take longer for your own troops to cut them down. Therefore, you are better off using spells on yourself, such as mass bless.

Inferno:
Inferno heroes especially heretics are quite proficient in Fire and Earth magic, so they may use the Armageddon and Berserk spells to quickly cut down forces, but not caring much about their own. A good way to get rid of Efreets is using shooters, as the fire shield effect cannot come into play. Pit Lords can prove a nuisance, when the constantly keep resurrecting Familiars every time you defeat them, and the three headed Cerberi are always a threat. Devils are easily catered for by the Archangels, and if you must attack Efreets by hand-to-hand, it should be completed by Champions or Archangels.

Yes, the Castles is very strong, but it also pays for that, literally with the cost involved in recruiting those pricey upgrades. The Castle’s strength lies within its creatures and spells, and without the necessary combination, Castle can get flattened by the Inferno and Rampart towns.
These are the average statistics for creature growth and accumulation:
Having a fully built up town with all upgrades, you can recruit 2245 Hit Points per week which is average. You have to pay 29580 Gold and another 6 Gems for them, so the average HP cost you roughly 13.2 gold which is second, only to Inferno. The HPs do the most Damage of all towns, relatively (per HP) as well as absolutely.

If you know these facts already, please contribute with your knowledge, and provide us with your town strategy, since it is beneficial to all to share information around, so that everyone learns from it.
Please, if I am wrong in a certain area of my post, please don’t hesitate to point it out, since I am sure there will be some.
I hope this proves helpful to the newcomers to Heroes and the Community.
The vibe or meaning of this post is to help with castle strategies, and how effectively the money is spent on a town’s creatures and hero investments. If you have questions, please ask them here.

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