Hello,

I found this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/HoMM/comments/3nc976/best_way_to_play_homm3/

They discuss ways to improve the gameplay of HoMM3.

Would it be ok to have combat animations speed up in a run?

This thread is a couple months old now but assuming you're referring to crAnim.txt, my guess is probably not

To speed up combat animations, put this file http://wca.org.ua/speedrun/Cranim.txt into game installation folder /Data/Cranim.txt