Yup, not having their own turns caused weird time artifacts, and issues like blinding the last unit and casting whatever spells you wish with no interruption. O

Yup, not having their own turns caused weird time artifacts, and issues like blinding the last unit and casting whatever spells you wish with no interruption. On the other hand I understand why they did it - it makes the game play faster. Heroes V has an issue in that initiative is exponential. Units with high initiative can act several times more often than low initiative ones. This reduces rule clarity, and no even the extra track doesn't help much. For example it's no longer simple to figure out when the unit will act when hasted or slowed. On the flipside, HOMM1 had a blissfully stupid magic system. If you had Knowledge 6, you could cast 6 Magic Arrows, 6 Blind spells, 6 Fireballs, and 6 Armageddons. And because high level spells had no secondary skill requirements, mopping up developed enemies was a terrible slog. On the upside, it was EASY to predict how many spells you could cast. Also, shrines found outside towns vere VERY interesting and sometimes of strategic importance - because all spells would be eventually forgotten with use. If we're talking multiplayer balance, the elephant in the room is that HOMM was always a poor multiplayer game. It just wasn't designed as such. Long, sequential turns. Time-consuming battles that magnify the waiting problem (you can auto-combat but then you're playing suboptimally and throwing out the main draw of the game). You can play it in multiplayer, but anyone who insists Heroes was a great multiplayer game hasn't played a decent modern board game. Or Age of Wonders III, designed with balance in mind. "Serious" multiplayer rulesets remove several potentially game-breaking spells from the game (Town Portal, Dimension Door, Fly especially), and encourage using auto-combat. Heroes II on the other hand has separate Mass Haste (level 3) and Mass Slow (4). Initiative and Speed have an interesting interaction in Heroes IV. Remember how classic HOMM has morale which is basically worse version of Luck, because quite often there's nothing more you want to do with that unit at this time? Morale in HOMM4 made units act before all other units for which Morale didn't trigger.