Your aim is to gain control of castles and resources, and to use these to produce castle improvements and fighting units to aid you in your quest, all the time building up the abilities of your vital heroes. The main map view, showing a hero about to attack a castle. The main view shows the whole game map, and the bits you've explored. In some cases it pays to leave these monsters in place as a defence against aggressive enemy heroes. Movement on map is done by days, with each hero moving his or her allowance per day.
Mines produce each day, so every day is vital.
For example, a mansion in a necromancer's castle will generate 3 vampires per week for hire. If you have the gold you can buy them into your army by visiting the castle, assuming you own it. Inevitably you'll have a battle, either meeting an enemy hero, attacking a monster stack, or assaulting an enemy castle, with or without a defending hero. Each unit stack in your army fights in the battle, using all its abilities while the non-fighting hero sits back and directs the action, casting spells when available. This part of the game is great fun in its own right, just like the mini-games in Masters of Magic , only with much chunkier and prettier SVGA graphics.