Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or 4 (persistent world mode)

Question

A friend and me would like to play HOMM 3 or 4 online against each other but without the need to finish the game in a single session. Rather, we would each like to be able to make the move, then do something different and only switch back when its our turn again (maybe receive a signal), so that a game might go over several days or possibly even weeks! You get what I mean.

I searched the internet for existing solutions but without any success so far.

The only possibility I could think up on the spot was sending (e.g. mailing or whatever) each other an updated savegame each time, which is kind of clumsy...

Do you know of any more elegant solution? Whether it already exists, or how it might be put into practice? I highly appreciate your suggestions!

Answer 1

What you are looking for is called "Play-by-mail" mode. Unfortunately, quick search didn't yield any results for HoMM. But if you check this list on Wikipedia Play By Email Video Games, there are some similar turn-based games with this feature, and the most notable are Civilization series and Age Of Wonders series.

And for HoMM you already know the solution:

sending (e.g. mailing or whatever) each other an updated savegame each time

Answer 2

You need to share the saves folder with each other. This will greatly improve the speed with which you can send moves to each other. Any cloud storage service will work.