Heroes of Might and Magic II Mod

[Lord Belphegor]

Kristo, exactly what i was thinking
I gave the peasants a speed boost to slow (i think their biggest drawback was the speed) and a HP of 3 (2 would be more ok i guess). They still keep 1 in all other things, but their sheer number and the fact that they might get a chance to attack can make them worth recruiting. Maybe make the price 25 GP with the updates. Another idea about the peasants was to make them earn 1gp/day as in h4/h5, this wouldn't ruin anything about h2's gameplay but i think it would be very difficult to implement.

I think it's useless to have the flyers not fly over the whole map, because that's the whole idea with them in h2. Same goes for penalties for shooters, if you want them not to have a shooting penalty, get the golden bow

Finally, as i said before, i played a bit with the exe in hex workshop and i think i figured out some things Kristo left unexplained (btw great work man)

Bytes 2 to 6 indeed offer the computer a hint about the strength of the unit. It will attack or avoid a fight based on this stuff. Another user pointed to the Fight Value, this might be the name for it. We have two values here:
- four bytes (2 to 5) surprisingly store the strength of the unit (fight value), it's suprising because we have four bytes so the strength can go up to 2 billion or something (whatever max long int is). I put a 01 in the 5th bit of a peasant and with an army of a single peasant all monsters either fled or offered to join my army;
- byte 6 seems to be related to strength too but it's more chaotic and still remains a mistery to me. it seems to go up with creature level but not in the same degree as the Fight Value, also i thought it was a unique code for each unit, but more units happen to have the same value, so it's a mistery for now;

Byte 22 the Attack-type flags as Kristo pointed is byte-coded:
- 1: 2hex
- 2: fly
- 4: ranged
- 8: 2hex attack
but it seems to hold more than this info because if we go up we find
- 16: a bizzare mode when the creature does not take part in battle and vanishes after it, it's not found in the normal state but maybe it's the effect of a spell
- 32 to 128: no visible things here

Byte 23 Other Flags, has other uses than the obvious 4 (undead):
- 1: mirror imaged creature (transparent, 1 HP, same damage)
- 2: red creature (maybe bloodlust? but does not carry the effect of the spell as it has normal attack)
- 4: undead
- 8 and 16: apparently nothing, could be spells that affect the creature but are not graphical
- 32: brown (ressurected? but does not dissapear after battle)
- 64: gray (stoned but can move)
- 128: apparently nothing

Using value 68, i made a "Ghost Peasant" which looked gray and carried the undead flag

Also, if you look a bit further there are some bits about spells!
Spells occupy 22 bytes but i haven't figured out much. This is how they go:

0-7 Name
8 Zero
9 Level
10 ?
11 ?
12,13 This gives a round value together so i guess it's a 2-byte int, it is not however the damage of the spell (which i couldn't find in those bytes) but maybe a valuation of the power of the spell
14 Mana
15,16,17,18,19 usually 0A but 00 in case of summon elemental and the death spells
20 ?
21 ?

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Congratulations to everyone so far who are looking in the creature data,

In the meantime I'm trying to find the Building Costs, and unfortunately, I've been unsuccessful. There are no building names to help track them, so I tried looking for the gold costs of the most expensive structures.
I have many found hex entries for 12500 (D4 30) and 15000 (98 3A) gold, but looking for 10000 gold (10 27) yields no results in the entire Heroes2w.exe file !?!?!

[doom3d]

I have many found hex entries for 12500 (D4 30) and 15000 (98 3A) gold, but looking for 10000 gold (10 27) yields no results in the entire Heroes2w.exe file !?!?!

Maybe costs are in "x*500 gold" form?
-> 12500 gold = 25*500, 25=19(h). 15000->1E, 10000->14.
1000->02.

Or " x*250 gold "? -> 32, 3C, 28, 04.

Just an idea, haven't tested.

[UndeadHalfOrc]

That's a good hypothesis, but then it would be nearly impossible to find the data then since you confined it to 1 byte only. There would be millions of bytes with "14" or "15" in it.

From he layout of the file I'm pretty sure the building data can't be in the first half...

Ok, I talked to my brother who's an experienced programmer about my problem.

If we're serious about reverse-engineering the code, the very first thing we need now is an ASSEMBLER DEBUGGER.

With one, we could insert traces inside the code (and breakpoints) that would give us all the clues we need as to where to perform the "code surgery". It's certainly the only way we could reliably change game behavior (and not just unit data tables).

Anybody here ever had experience using one?
I did some programming before (and am familiar with basic debugging principles such as breakpoints) but never on any Windows platform.

[Kristo]

Looking at the code while it's running is the only way to figure out how it works. The trick to using the debugger is to know where to put breakpoints. You have no way of knowing where a relavant piece of code might be. This is the brilliance of what the WOG people have done. I'd imagine it's a very long and tedious process to find a spot in the code that's useful. It probably explains why you use events to write ERM.

If by some chance you can find a key starting point, e.g., the instruction that starts a battle, then you can go to work. You replace that instruction with a jump to the address at the end of heroes2w.exe. Then you can write code in your favorite language to do whatever, compile it down to machine code, and link it to the end of the file. And keep in mind the following requirements:

1. Push all the registers to the stack before doing anything to them.
2. After you do whatever you're going to do, pop all the registers back off the stack.
3. Then execute whatever that instruction was that you replaced.
4. Jump back to the address immediately following it.

And oh BTW, you also have to find where key in-game data about players and their armies is stored. Only then can you do something useful with your patch.

Disclaimer: this is the best way I could think of to make a mod work - I've never done this before. If anyone (hint: WOG experts) has a better way, please post and correct me.

[Jolly Joker]

Not wanting to spoil the fun here, but aren't you people forgetting something here?
With Heroes 2 the attack/defense difference is 10%/5% per point, with the difference between creatures being half as big as in 3. What that means is, that creatures by themselves are comparable with 3, but heroes double as effective in the might department. If a high level Knight with his army meets a high level Warlock with his army the Warlock's creatures, even the Dragons won't do much damage against the Knight's creatures and the best the Warlock can do is cast Armageddon or Elemental Storm right away.
Which is, in my opinion, how the game is balanced. The might hero factions have low HPs which makes them vulnerable for magic damage, but their heroes give them high might values. Warlock is the other extreme. Sorceress is the typical high speed raider - starts with Navigation and gets 2 medium level shooters and a low flying no retal unit plus the fastest unit around, while Wizard and Necro are in between and fairly good balanced.
In the end the Titans rock, but you have to get them first which is the big problem - Giants are pretty sucky.

That leaves six well and very bravely designed cities - with one main flaw: you can obviously hire NON-faction heroes. While the battle of a Knight and his army against a Warlock and his army may be an interesting clash of might against magic, a battle between a knight and his army against a warlock's army led by a knight or barbarian will be slaughter.

I think, that the only mod Heroes 2 needs is a program addition that will make only the town's hero's available in each town - that is, Knight's town would have Knights to hire only (and a maximum of 2 per week) and so on.
Second thing is that maps should give access to water for the Knight and the Sorceress at least.
A brilliant map in this respect is the Dominion map.

[doom3d]

I agree with Kristo.
AFAIK,
In H3 WoG, we have the original H3 exe with breakpoints and some bugfixes.
Every breakpoint has an ID. Slava's extension starts an interpreter. It checks, if we have an ERM trigger with the same ID in the savegame. (H3 wog savegames are compressed using gzip, it contains map info with standard savegame info+ERM code, uncompressed size 4GB!)
Trigger sections will be executed in the order that the interpreter finds them.
We have acces to a part of the game's internal variables (like unit HP) via ERM commands, and have also ERM variables.
Just an analogy: breakpoints-user commands, Interpreter-shell, ERM code in savegame- dll.
So the WoG extension adds external function calls to a library placed in the savegame.

If You plan to write H2 mod this way, than it's better to create external creature stat tables, and a stat editor with GUI interface. The editor would translate GUI based instructions to flags and byte sequence changes. Of course, You will need breakpoints for every stat read operation in the exe and a stat reader extension. When You start a new game, actual values should be stored in the savegame. (shortly: creature stats remapped from exe to savegame)
Same could be done with buildings.
After that You may add scripts and a script interpreter..
You will need a disassmebler+debugger to do that.

I guess that prices are stored as x(*y gold), because You didn't find an existing price in the exe file.
Please, have a look on the price list, and try to find a common divider >1.
Maybe we have different y values for creatures and buildings.
Try to find the biggest common divider, that gives you positive results for all existing building prices.

Now I go back to debug my WoGmod build10. Aloha.

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Jollyjoker,

But even if hero selection is restricted, what happens in a large map then when the knight conquers his first neutral Warlock town, and the Warlock conquers his first Knight town? If it's early enough, the knight is gonna switch to Warlock troops, which are gonna crush everyone else due to superior attack/defense. Sorry JJ, but I have to disagree with you there, creature nerfing is the way to go.

[Jolly Joker]

You know that's wrong.
A Knight with a Warlock town will beat the crap out of anything no matter how much you nerf Titans and Blacks. If you nerf Blacks and boost Crusaders the regular Knight will just more easily pound the Warlock on bigger maps.
The only way to go here is CLEARLY to first find a way to confine each town strictly to their own heroes (adjusting Morale might help as well). AFTER that you may adjust some small things like adding a couple HPs here and a defense point there. But if it's possible for each town to use EVERY hero, creatures are simply irrelevant.

[grobblewobble]

You know that's wrong.
A Knight with a Warlock town will beat the crap out of anything no matter how much you nerf Titans and Blacks.

Why? Black dragons are uber, the way they are now. But the other warlock units aren't that special. They're not bad, but they don't "beat the crap out of everything", either.

I just don't see why one would have to restrict heroes to their own towns to get a good balance. If might heroes are currently superior to magic heroes, this balance could be adjusted, separate from the balance among towns.

But if it's possible for each town to use EVERY hero, creatures are simply irrelevant.

How do you mean? The creatures, their costs and the costs of their dwellings define the power of a town in H2. How are creatures irrelevant?

[doom3d]

I don't like to mess up things. Creatures should be balanced against creatures, heroes against heroes, skills against skills.. (+In H3 WoG, commanders against commanders. )

[UndeadHalfOrc]

People, good news!

Dragon City red dragon growth is surprisingly completely unaffected by setting warlock dragons growth to 0! It seems to have its own set growth rate. It starts at 2 in the first week (where I captured it, in my test) and adds 1 additional red dragon per week.

So, we can safely set dragons/giant & titan growth to 0 without any negative consequences!

[Lord Belphegor]

I have tested my changes a bit, it seems setting the Fight Value too high causes problems with the AI, I left it for peasants at a ridiculously high rate (about several hundred million), it did funny but logical things as attacking heavily defended towns with a couple of peasants and lower troops or running away from my 2 peasants. But at a certain point, it seems that it got the AI in an infinite loop as i ended my turn, it remained blocked on a certain player colour. After i exited and changed peasant rating back, it worked very well. I still left HP 3 and speed slow for peasants and i think it's a good thing, it really makes them useful. Still just 1 for others.

It's great that we can have 2/week for dragons and titans, this is what i always thought was the best solution.

Maybe we can go two way:
Nerfing:
Titan 250 HP
Green Dragon 150 HP
Red Dragon 200 HP
Black Dragon 250 HP
(and maybe lower the costs a bit)

Upping:
Crusader 75 HP
Paladin 60 HP
Cyclops 90 HP
Phoenix 120 HP

Maybe we can have those BOTH, because the blackies and titans really mean game over even with the weakest warlock against a very good fighter. Like, it's meant to be balanced, but it really turns out not to be. The dragons and titans are too much of a challange for the other last level troops.

I understand the principle of Nerfing being Good, but i don't think the problem is with Dragons being too hard for lower level troops. I mean, it's what i like about H2, not like in H3 when you lose not because the opponent has archangels or champions but more likely because of that horde of griffins or annoying pikemen. So for me it's okay for them to be too hard for lower level troops. The idea is balancing Dragons and Titans with the other sixth level troops. And the other 6th level troops need a boost. I'll playtest my idea and see which combination turns out the best and I'm convinced you'll do the same too.

Also, I told you i found a piece of code that stores info about spells. Has anyone looked into that? From what i found i can change the level and cost of the spell but maybe someone can find where the damage is stored.
I'd really like to have some spells stronger because they seem cool but never get used. Like fireballs, it's so nice they have a great area of damage but 10 HP per unit is less useful than 25 HP on a single unit with the bolt.

So i'd upgrade:
- Fireball and fireblast to 15 HP
- ripple and wave to 10 and 15 HP
- Holy word and shout to 15/20 or 15/25
Also maybe make hypnotyze a fourth level spell, it's useless anyway and i think it's harder to influence how it works, but it would be great to remove it to save that place for the 5th level spell for a real spell.
Dimension door still remains the problem, maybe it can be cancelled somehow or (more difficult) make it possible to be cast only once/twice/thrice a turn. Or maybe make it cost more, that would be easier, but it still would ruin it once you teleport near a well and continue the endless cycle. Maybe 30 mana would be a good price.

I hope i'm not boring you with my long posts and that someone is still reading them And i look forward to hear from you. I really love Heroes II and i think it's the best game in the series (and number one from all pc games for me)

[Jolly Joker]

I don't like to mess up things. Creatures should be balanced against creatures, heroes against heroes, skills against skills.. (+In H3 WoG, commanders against commanders. )

That's very obviously not the way H 2 is designed. H 2 tries to balance might against magic, not creature against creature. This makes a very interesting game.
The thing is simply if you have a very good might hero with the crap troops the crap troops are no crap troops anymore in the creature versus creature department. However, the crap troops are still low HP troops and can be damaged heavily by a high Spell Power hero and a damage spell.
You could bring in other considerations. Sorceress works with speed and shooting, for example. And so on.
You could just say there is no balance. It can go this way or that depending on what happens on a map.
There is no good way to stop Black Dragons led by a might hero. Or Titans as well. That's not a creature problem. It's a hero problem.

[grobblewobble]

That's very obviously not the way H 2 is designed. H 2 tries to balance might against magic, not creature against creature. This makes a very interesting game.

Can't agree with this one. H2 does try to balance creature against creature, by giving them different growth ratings. The well screws things up a bit, unfortunately. If you compare warlock creatures and knight creatures, yes, the warlock creatures have better HP and damage. But keep in mind the knight creatures all have higher growth ratings, which balances things out quite well, except for dragons/crusaders. Still, building crusaders takes much less precious resources than building black dragons.

So, creatures are balanced in two ways:
- quantity versus quality (the well spoils this a bit)
- relatively cost-effective, but lower-power troops versus relatively expensive high-power troops

Where "expensive" includes the cost of creature dwellings. Once you have that black tower up, black dragons are good bang for your buck.

With Heroes 2 the attack/defense difference is 10%/5% per point, with the difference between creatures being half as big as in 3. What that means is, that creatures by themselves are comparable with 3, but heroes double as effective in the might department. If a high level Knight with his army meets a high level Warlock with his army the Warlock's creatures, even the Dragons won't do much damage against the Knight's creatures

This is an important point. I agree might heroes are too good. It's an exaggaration to say even black dragons do little damage, but might heroes are certainly overpowered because of this reason.

Your proposed solution, however, doesn't seem to work because of what UndeadHalfOrc said: even if you can only hire "matching" heroes in your town, it's still possible to hire creatures from other factions with your hero. So far your only suggestion to get around that has been to give a hero with foreign troops a morale penalty (which is already the case for undead), but is that going to work if your average knight has expert leadership and 2 morale boosting artifacts?

The easiest and most elegant solution would be to make sure both creature power and hero power are balanced out. There's already been a lot of talk on how to balance the creatures, the remaining problem is what to do about the heroes.


Lord Belph:
Congrats, you did great work on all the byte codes. I'm not an expert hex editer, but here's a list of possible unit flags, in case you did not think of one of those yet:

- 2-hex creature
- ranged / flying

- attacks twice
- 2-hex attack
- attacks six targets (hydra/lich)
- no retaliation
- unlimited retaliations
- no melee penalty

- can't be cursed/double damage vs undead
- blinds enemy
- curses enemy
- drains life
- lower enemy morale
- chance to dispell enemy
- chance to half enemy stack
- killed units become this

- chance to resist spells
- half damage from elemental spells
- immune to elemental spells
- immune to mind spells
- immune to all spells
- being an earth/air/fire/water elemental (all have special resistances/weaknesses to certain spells)

It's great that we can have 2/week for dragons and titans, this is what i always thought was the best solution.

Maybe we can go two way:
Nerfing:
Titan 250 HP
Green Dragon 150 HP
Red Dragon 200 HP
Black Dragon 250 HP
(and maybe lower the costs a bit)

Upping:
Crusader 75 HP
Paladin 60 HP
Cyclops 90 HP
Phoenix 120 HP

I like those changes. For paladins/cyclops, increasing growth is also worth considering.
The corresponding theoretical costs, to maintain the cost - effectiveness:
Black dragon 3651 gold, Red dragon 3130 gold, Green dragon 2598 gold, Titan 4564 gold
Lowering all dragon / titan costs with 500 gold looks appropriate.

So i'd upgrade:
- Fireball and fireblast to 15 HP
- ripple and wave to 10 and 15 HP
- Holy word and shout to 15/20 or 15/25

Sometimes you need a spell that deals as little damage as possible, but to all troops. When your opponent has a hero with high spell power and has 5 stacks of 1 gargoyle, for example. In such a case I want to cast death ripple, even if it damages my own units. That's why I'd like to keep death ripple as "crappy" as it is. For the other spells, I'd agree.

Also maybe make hypnotyze a fourth level spell, it's useless anyway and i think it's harder to influence how it works

Maybe there's a simple "damage" field that determines how many HP a stack can have to be hypnotized? In that case it wouldn't be so hard to change at all.

Dimension door still remains the problem,

The "more mana" solution sounds good. Knowledge is the least important skill of the four, but with DD it starts to pay off.

I hope i'm not boring you with my long posts

Definately not. Keep up the good work.

[Jolly Joker]

I see this the other way round: as long as you'll find no way to really limit the use of creatures to their own heroes and vice versa all other mods are pretty useless because the differences are too big.
Seen in detail, I think for Necro this problem doesn't exist - on the other hand Necro and Skeleton balancing has always been a problem in itself.
For the rest, I'd say that the trouble is only for the Knight and Barbarian Heroes leading Wizard, Sorceress and Warlock towns.

In theory there have to be maps possible where a player starts for example with a Knight and a Warlock town, which would mean that you could easily play the Warlock town with the Knight, so, right, limiting each town to hiring only that hero would solve some problems, but not all.
The Moral Penalty is no good either, I have to confess. You may play a map as a Knight where you face a Warlock and a very powerful Wizard wuth the map being designed so that you'd have to beat the Warlock first to get access to Dragons, then, with the help of the Dragons AND your powerful might stats beat the Wizard's Titans. So that should be possible as well.

Still, with limiting the hiring of heroes of that town it would at least be up to the map maker whether "hero abuse" would be possible on a map or not which would be better than the current situation.

[grobblewobble]

I see this the other way round: as long as you'll find no way to really limit the use of creatures to their own heroes and vice versa all other mods are pretty useless because the differences are too big.

There is another possibility. Att/def could maybe be set to +5%/-2.5% damage, like in H3? But there are other options as well. Making spells a bit more expensive, so that might heroes can't cast them so easily. Nerfing +kno and +pow artifacts, so that it becomes less easy to cast spells for might heroes. Increasing the cost of a spellbook. Maybe even lowering the costs of mage guilds. All of this would help magic heroes.

Still, with limiting the hiring of heroes of that town it would at least be up to the map maker whether "hero abuse" would be possible on a map or not which would be better than the current situation.

You have to design quite unusual maps for that! On about 90% of the existing maps I know, buying creatures from other town types is a logical thing to do. Especially true for large maps, where balance becomes a real problem. Even the presence of a simple random town (not city) is enough to enable players to do that. They just have to upgrade it to a city.

[Lord Belphegor]

OK let me make a list with what we CAN change right now (discovered either by Kristo and/or myself):

- All attributes of all creatures (att, def, HP, gold, speed)
- Creatures movement and attack (2hex, shoot, fly, double attack)
- the Mana Cost, the Level and the PROBABILITY for a spell to appear in a certain castle (yes, it is there, that's why the necro gets holy spells rarely or the other way around. and yes, that's why town portal and summoning spells are so rare)
- the valuation that computer gives to creature strength and magics' strength (for example you can alter the valuation of creatures for the pc and you can lower disrupting ray which is set at a very high value and that's why he always uses it foolishly instead of frying your units with lightning bolts)
- the building costs of buildings (in all resources, i found that yesterday, what a great moment )
- game text

Here's a list with what we CAN'T change at the moment, but theoretically is possible to find:

- Price in resources for creatures
- Creatures special attributes
- Damage of spells, yes it isn't in the table that stores all other data
- Modifying artifacts (i'm still looking for them )
- Order of building, and prerequisites

And these things CAN'T be changed at all simply with hex editing:

- setting att/def to lower percentages (but i don't want that anyway because it's not suited to h2)
- limiting hero hiring to own town
- adding new creatures (but i wouldn't want that either)
- <add drastical change here>

Looking at these lists, I'm waiting for your proposals on how to change these values.

About the titan/dragon problem, it's ok to have 0 growth, well gives you 2, but there's another problem: when you build the building you'll only have what the base growth gives you, meaning you'll build something with 0 creatures. This isn't a problem in itself but maybe it makes warlocks and wizards too weak. Here's a little calculation:

1. If you build Cathedral 1 week earlier than Tower
week 1: 2 crus 0 drag
week 2: 6 crus 0 drag
week 3: 10 crus 2 drag
week 4: 14 crus 4 drag
week 5: 18 crus 6 drag
week 6: 22 crus 8 drag

2. If you build Cathedral in the same week as Tower
week 1: 2 crus 0 drag
week 2: 6 crus 2 drag
week 3: 10 crus 4 drag
week 4: 14 crus 6 drag
week 5: 18 crus 8 drag
week 6: 22 crus 10 drag

the limit for both is n-> infinity gives 1/2 ratio but of course infinity isn't reachable and it takes long for the dragons to reach the crusaders. with the modifications in troop strength, they'll never beat them. same goes for cyclops, titans. we have some solutions:

- make tower and castle cheaper so you can have dragons and titans earlier
- keep 3 cretures/ week
- don't modify hp
- all these changes are really ok and the game is ballanced

Only testing can tell which solution is best.

[Lord Belphegor]

Ok because the real beta testing is the one you do yourself I made myself a test map with a hero with X crusaders and the enemy with Y bdrags. I gave both heroes 20000 exp which would be something normal in a few weeks. I'll make a table with X and Y and see what balance it brings.

Code: Select all

Crusaders : 75 HP
Dragons : 250 HP

If you want i can give you the map, it's the same map i use for spell testing too so you have two castles with mage guilds too (not that you'll need them).
I also gave the enemy a radius of 2 and some spell scrolls around that he'll usually use to fry your crusaders (lightning bolt, cold ray).

Code: Select all

CRUSADERS vs  DRAGONS = RESULT
  6 vs  2 =
10 vs  2 =
10 vs  4 =
14 vs  4 =
14 vs  6 =
18 vs  6 =
18 vs  8 =
22 vs  8 =
22 vs 10  =

[/code]

[grobblewobble]

Hmm, maybe it's more fair to assume the cathedral is built one week earlier? Would like to help, I will do the same test with the current HP and growth to see how it turns out.

Of course a test like this can't take all the factors of real gameplay into account, like the fact you will more often lose some crusaders in a small fight than dragons..

edit
Ok, have results. Assumed the cathedral is built one week earlier. Six crusaders defeat 1 bl dr easily, but four black dragons defeat 10 crusaders easily. So after the first week it's hopeless for the crusaders. What else was I expecting.