I've been thinking a bit and figured it would be helpful to put together some of the things I've learned running this game that would have really helped me out when I first started. If someone else is trying to bleed some more life from Heroes of Might and Magic 2 by speed running it this might help them hit the ground running and understand what's going on in other runs.

1: Turn off sound effects in game:

 -In my first few runs I encountered a lot of stuttering on hero movement and occasional input delays when turns started. Turning off sounds effects fixed both these issues and made the game run a lot smoother saving considerable amounts of time

 -Turning off sound effects also removes the pre-battle fanfare, allowing units to act sooner and saving roughly 3 seconds every battle

2: Saved inputs:

 -When something is happening in game such as an enemy attack, or an animation playing out, inputs you put in during this time will be acted out as soon as possible. This can save a lot of time by inputting whole combat turns if you're certain of where enemies will be (such as ranged units).

 -In combat: I mostly use this to cycle to my most powerful units. If I know my main source of damage will be my third unit moving and the others won't provide a meaningful benefit to the combat I'll input 2 skips and the attack command, this way the game will immediately skip past the unimportant units in the battle with  almost no delay. (A note: do not do this if you have bad morale as you'll have a high chance of skipping right past the unit you wanted, I have absolutely killed a whole run doing this).

 -In castle: When building a building you can set up your next action while the animation plays out. Either hit esc. to exit as soon as possible, or click the fading in building and ready your mouse in position to buy units as soon as you can.

3: Hotkeys:

 -Use as many hotkeys as you can to reduce likelihood of misclicks and required mouse accuracy.

Enter: Default yes/confirm option. Also selects a highlighted hero or town Esc: Default no option. Also leaves current screen or town H: Cycle heroes (Will not select heroes without movement) T: Cycle towns (T,enter: to quickly select and enter town) E: End turn (E,enter: if you have heroes with movement remaining) M: Confirm selected movement path for a hero C: Cast spell either overworld or in combat S: Skip a unit in combat I: Brings up info screen, useful for restarting in campaign runs.

4: General tips and tricks

 -Hiding ranged units

Select compact formation in the hero screen. Place your ranged unit in slots 2 or 4 and flank with you two slowest units. This leaves only a single hex in front of the shooter which can ideally be filled with your fastest unit as soon as possible

 -Turn cycling

If you need to cycle through a lot of turns for resources, creatures or whatever reason, dismiss all heroes if possible to skip confirmation menu, and set enemy visibility to no view if you feel safe enough.

 -It's a timed speedrun, not a days speedrun

While rushing the enemy is usually the best strategy, sometimes its faster to cycle a week or two to be able to skip combats, get stronger units, or let the map develop. It might be faster to run turns instead of sending out a hero to gather resources in some situations.

 -Block Stone Liths

By standing on the dimension doors around the map you can stop enemies from travelling through them. This can potentially seal off sections of the map allowing to leave castles undefended or safely build up a powerful force to sweep the scenario with.

That's about all I can think of right now, but if anyone else has anything to share I would love to see it.

This being the first game I've speedrun I didn't think anything of rebinding the hotkeys for this game to reduce hand cramps after reading a now defunct rules page on speed demos archive that stated one to one keyboard remapping was typically allowed.

While looking at the forum posts for Heroes 3 I saw that changing the key bindings was ruled against which scared the heck out of me as I might have inadvertently cheated every run I've submitted since my 18 second easy skirmish run. While there's not too much benefit to clustering most of the hotkeys as I can already span E to Enter (the most important pair), there is definite consistency and speed added from the new proximity of my escape key allowing me to exit menu's and claim exp from treasure chests faster without wildly viper striking across the keyboard.

Seeing as I was about to start attempting runs on the Roland campaign category I figure I might as well look for a ruling before I flush 100 attempts down the toilet.

To preemptively advocate for it, my opinion on changing key bindings is that it adds accessibility to a game and removes advantages that could be gained from different hardware, such as mini/travel keyboards, laptop keyboards, split ergonomic keyboards or alternate layouts such as Dvorak which can give easier access to hotkey locations as given. It also removes the advantage given by large hands such as my own which can span most of the hotkeys barring esc, (albeit painfully) while being technically available to anyone without additional purchase.

I know now that this wasn't the obvious conclusion I thought it was and probably should have been asked prior to submitting 13 potentially tainted runs. But better late then never I suppose. I look forward to the ruling so I can carry on trying to quietly usurp Hydralicious in the Roland campaign.