Heroic: heroes

[Groovy]

What do you think of this another idea:
You have a hero and an army. Your army is under your command, although they also protect you. If you make heroes enter the fray, not like Heroes 4 (I enjoyed that feature, though ), but closer...

Sorry if I focus on just the parts of your post that interest me the most (for now). I think that your idea of including heroes in the combat arena in the leadership role has the potential for greatness. What would work really well with it is to localise the hero’s effect on the army – give attack and defence bonuses only to the units near the hero, the same with morale bonuses, special abilities, enchantments, the works. This way, manoeuvring the hero across the battlefield becomes really important, and adds a crucial tactical element for the player to master.

[Panda Tar]

Sorry if I focus on just the parts of your post that interest me the most (for now).

You're forgiven.

I think that your idea of including heroes in the combat arena in the leadership role has the potential for greatness. What would work really well with it is to localise the hero’s effect on the army – give attack and defence bonuses only to the units near the hero, the same with morale bonuses, special abilities, enchantments, the works. This way, manoeuvring the hero across the battlefield becomes really important, and adds a crucial tactical element for the player to master.

That's the point! For now, a hero is just a thing that cast a spell and bless a foe (bless because it looks like it's touching the foe, not slashing it down).
For a siege, to conquer the castle, hero should ENTER the castle (specially when it's not protected), not only visit an enemy unguarded castle and simply everyone thinking it's ok for that hero to domain them (they have walls for what?), even when the invading hero has no army. It's so lame.

[Groovy]

For a siege, to conquer the castle, hero should ENTER the castle (specially when it's not protected), not only visit an enemy unguarded castle and simply everyone thinking it's ok for that hero to domain them (they have walls for what?), even when the invading hero has no army. It's so lame.

That should be easy to fix. Perhaps have a permanently manned garrison as soon as defensive walls are built, akin to garrisons defending flagged adventure map structures within the town’s sphere of influence.

Example:
The first four lines of the battlefield (4 squares long per whole battlefield wide) are, by default, available to hero for positioning him/herself. Hero can move to and fro within that area and take actions within it. That area may increase as your nearest troops move forward into the battle, so hero have a larger area to move. Hero cannot get in the same line of any unit, only behind the front lines.

The hero can inflict melee damage over enemy troops that are 4-square away from him/her, and can only be targeted by enemy troops if there are no foes within a 4 square-radius around that hero. Hero ranged attacks can reach like 20 squares. Until it comes a range that a hero can actually attack the opposite hero directly.

I’m curious why you think it’s necessary to restrict the hero’s participation in battle like that. Mind you, I haven’t played HoMM 4 extensively, so I don’t have a good feel for this combat model. (on the bright side, I’ve just purchased HoMM 1-5 complete, so I’ll make up for some lost time. )

If a hero loses the battle without being killed, he'll flee to the nearest town, as if being an invisible caravan, to be hired again.

Why to be hired again instead of just remaining in employment?

If a hero wins the battle, but is killed before the end, his troops will return to the nearest town as being a visible caravan carrying the dead hero back home. Troops fighting without a hero won't respond to commands and will act as they think it's best. They'll get a morale penalty along with all passive abilities the hero was providing them. If a unit has a resurrecting/raising ability, that unit will automatically cast it over the hero.

I’m a bit concerned about this scenario. It can give a weaker defending army an effective means of thwarting an invasion by a stronger army by targeting its hero. I wouldn’t want heroes to end up like those in StarCraft – kept safe in a corner because they are too valuable to lose. For the combat model that you propose to be utilised to its full potential, I think that players must feel safe to throw the hero in the thick of things and support the troops in the front line.

If hero is not ressurrected back to action within one week after being killed, he/she won't be available to hire anymore.

Do you have any concerns about running out of heroes on a large map?

[Panda Tar]

I’m curious why you think it’s necessary to restrict the hero’s participation in battle like that. Mind you, I haven’t played HoMM 4 extensively, so I don’t have a good feel for this combat model. (on the bright side, I’ve just purchased HoMM 1-5 complete, so I’ll make up for some lost time. )

In H4, you could have many heroes in the same party. They were just like another unit, but they had skills, spells, etc, so, when they were strong, they could kill 1-3 black dragons per hit, avoid retaliation, do real ruckus, but not overpowered to completely take the place of stronger units. Before playing H4, I'd HIGHLY advice you to download Equilibris mod. In addition to a broad range of interesting features, it fixes many balancing issues making the game fairer, harder, really better.

I think that the hero should be really involved in the battle. The sort of involvement may vary, but the current situation as we see in H5 and H6 is that hero plays a far distant whole. It seems it's not so linked to the troops. One may disagree with me, but that's how I feel about it. Heroes 4 is the opposite. Heroes are too involved, so I thought finding a point between here and there would appease my feelings about this involvement.

Why to be hired again instead of just remaining in employment?

True. Maybe costing only 1 gold? For honour? Surrendering heroes would return still employed though.

I’m a bit concerned about this scenario. It can give a weaker defending army an effective means of thwarting an invasion by a stronger army by targeting its hero. I wouldn’t want heroes to end up like those in StarCraft – kept safe in a corner because they are too valuable to lose. For the combat model that you propose to be utilised to its full potential, I think that players must feel safe to throw the hero in the thick of things and support the troops in the front line.

Yes, you're right. For this matter, it might be better tweak things a bit. But thwarthing another hero with a weaker army is way more effective if the one leading the small army is a stronger hero. Because if it's not, units may get killed fast and the hero won't be able to lead an attack on the other hero. I thought your post about managing the hero at the backlines, getting closer to troops to improve effectiveness in leadership, quite a good solution for this.

In addition to that, I'd propose that heroes could ask for a duel before or while engaging a battle. How the duel system would work...that must be discussed.

Do you have any concerns about running out of heroes on a large map?

Here, I'd suggest a Mercenary's Guild. If you run out of heroes (which would mostly blame you as a lame player or very unlucky one), you can visit the Mercenary's Guild to hire a Neutral Hero. Neutral heroes would be a non-faction bunch of people with some different skills but with less advantages while leading an army, less synergies with the army. These mercenaries could be really numerous and if they were taken down in battle, would respawn at the Mercenary's Guild, all their evolution lost, as if they were a new hero.

[Groovy]

A huge evolution grid sounds right up my alley. I still remember playing fan-made HoMM 3 maps that felt positively epic – lasting for days and involving clashes of thousands of level 7 creatures (unlike the campaigns that I’ve played, which were comparatively modest in their sweep). A skill tree that can go the distance with that kind of map would be warmly appreciated.

Let's see this example, unfinished though:
...
What do you think?

I like the structure and size of the skill tree that you propose, particularly the hierarchical nature of improvements.

I’m not sure how complete your model is, so here are a few additional suggestions, in case you haven’t considered them:
• What attracts me the most to skill trees is unusual skills; skills that break the mould: “+X of what you already have”. Being able to share the mana pool with the spell casters in one’s army, for example. Or learning how to negotiate for specific skills, spells or shards with wandering monsters. Of course, these skills are highly dependent on the richness of the game itself.
• It makes sense to me to make skills dependent on prior hero actions, as I’ve mentioned before – not being able to master Artillery without having used war machines before, etc.
• I still like milestone levels . They help break the potential monotony of continuous incremental improvement and give the player something exciting to look forward to.

[Panda Tar]

I know what you mean about milestone. It sounds really nice. I could implement milestone in the grid as well, if you don't mind. 5 in 5 levels, most likely.

There are many ideas surrounding the skill grids at the moment, you see, because the grid will actually involve almost everything. It won't just involve actions taken like hiring units, moving, etcl. But, whenever it concerns a change of a characteristic of either a hero, a town, landscape, units, or else, the skill grid will be there. So, it's a really huge and complex thing to design, specially because it's meant to be not hard to understand. There'll be differences between the main hero and second hero to learn, given that the main hero is a RULER, and the second hero is a LORD/LADY. The Ruler has acces to all skills regarding the kingdom. But the Ruler also has a unique skill, MENTORING, that'll allow him to pass knowledge on his ruling skills to a secondary hero, although this secondary hero will only really be able to use those skills when the main hero gets killed.

For some uniqueness or unusual skill that you mention, something has been implemented. See what you think:

Perfect skills. They are acquired after certain requirements are met. These requirements are solely regarding other skills mastering, because each of those skills already have their own requirements, which involve many aspects of the game, like even regarding playing experience (sailing, controlling a war machine, etc).

An example could be the perfect skill Languages. Requirements such as Diplomacy, Mediation, and some more else are needed to make a hero learn this skill. It's a hidden skill, that's not visible on the grid. So, all perfect skills are "gifts", suddenly earned after hard work, and I mean to make them numerous, with many combinations, as a reward for those who seek them (after knowing there are such things first, of course haha). Languages guarantee good terms on relationship amongst all races in advantage to that player needs, such as agressiveness of troops, prices, loyalty, morale, and other stuff. This is all under balancing yet, but that's how it is.

[Groovy]

Well, it looks like you’ve got the matter well under control.

I must say, soft skills like your Language group could contribute a lot to game immersion, at least for me.

[Groovy]

Before playing H4, I'd HIGHLY advice you to download Equilibris mod. In addition to a broad range of interesting features, it fixes many balancing issues making the game fairer, harder, really better.

And I thought that, two expansion packs later, the game would be well balanced.

[Panda Tar]

Well, things haven't improved much due the Expansions, so, Equilibris saved them all.

[Panda Tar]

I’m curious why you think it’s necessary to restrict the hero’s participation in battle like that. Mind you, I haven’t played HoMM 4 extensively, so I don’t have a good feel for this combat model. (on the bright side, I’ve just purchased HoMM 1-5 complete, so I’ll make up for some lost time. )

Just realized a possible way to make it not so dangerous for a hero to get killed in battle maneuvering.

If hero can be targeted by units, damage taken could be similar to that inflicted on walls and towers. A hero gets thougher when leveling up and thus being able to resist more attacks. Example: a lv 1 hero can be hit up to three times before collapsing, when not protected by nearby troops. A lv 10 hero can be hit up to 6 times, and so on. This way, a hero would be able to march back to allied troops without simply getting killed by 1 hit.

[Groovy]

And I thought that heroes were going to have health, defence, and all that good stuff. I don’t think I’d appreciate a hero collapsing after being hit by a peasant three times.

[Panda Tar]

haha, only if you do leave some lousy peasants get next to your hero. Hero could parry/dodge attacks, couldn't? Besides, you hero is supposed to be next to your troops giving them some nice boosts, no?

[Groovy]

Parry? Dodge? Fess up, Panda, you have a whole different set of combat abilities in mind when it comes to heroes! Why not come clean and share them?

[Panda Tar]

Parry? Dodge? Fess up, Panda, you have a whole different set of combat abilities in mind when it comes to heroes! Why not come clean and share them?

*demented giggle*

Let me gather this and that from previous posts to redo a proposal...copying...loading...copying...pasting...pasting...editing...loading...gritting teeth...farting...loading...

Goddamn, it took longer than I thought.

I'll present the general conception of a battle engagement in three situations:
(R) - Regular battle against creatures
(H) - Battle against enemy Hero/and army
(S) - Siege combat

ENGAGING BATTLE
(R) You can trigger the battle normally. If you're too powerful, units may attempt to flee or join you. If you're alike in power, you may either try to fight or leave them. If you're too weak, you'll engage a forced battle, from which you cannot run away.
(H) You can trigger three options (I'll explain them later):

• Duel
  Diplomacy
  Attack

(S) You can trigger two options (also explain later):

• Start siege
  Leave site

HERO'S ATTRIBUTES
In addition to skills and spells we know the hero will have, he'll also have COMMADING and DUELING attributes (Expert Guide feature only! ).
1. Commanding (for (R), (H) and (S)): attributes that boosts army attributes of all friendly stacks which are within the area of effect o around the hero (explained further down).

• Attack
  Damage
  Defense
  Morale
  Luck
  Spell Points

2. Dueling (for (H) and (S)): hero attributes regarding hero vs hero fighting and self defense/improvement (explained further down).

• Attack
  Defense (decreases physical damage)
  Spell Power (increases magical power)
  Magic Defense (decreases magical effect)
  Damage
  Resistance (blocks a magical effect)
  Speed (higher speed is higher initiative, dodging rate and accuracy – dodging avoids physical damage)
  Movement Points (to move on the battlefield - when speed rises, movement points may be added)
  Morale
  Luck
  Hit Points (HP vs heroes)
  Stamina (HP vs units)
  Spell Points

BATTLE – Have this in mind now:

Where the blueish hexagons would be where you hero can move on the battlefield at the start of the battle (which would be, of course, larger and movable (which means that the limits of that blue area would increase when troops started getting killed or getting too crowded in the center of the battlefield). The area of effect of your hero Commanding attributes is 10 hex-radius. The area of effect of your troops protective limitation (which would not allow an opposing unit to attack your hero) is 5 hex-radius (imagine that the troop was on the position 11 of that board, so your hero could be anywhere on the rest of the board that he/she would be protected as long as that troop was standing - this situation can be tweaked though if the protecting unit gets blinded, paralyzed, petrified or immobilized in any ways).


(R) Your hero cannot be targeted by units when they're not following another hero's bidding. So the hero can move to and fro around the battlefield in the best suitable way to command his troops in that battle. While casting offensive spells, the nearer the hero is from the target, stronger is the spell (when target get's within hero's 10-hex radius of influence that is). Hero can inflict melee attacks on any foes within that 10-hex radius area. Ranged attacks can be performed if hero is skilled enough to do so. Ranged attacks have twice more range of effect (20-hex radius).

In (R) battles, Hero can flee. If loses a (R) battle, hero gets killed.

(H) Your hero can walk around the battle freely, but now he can be targeted by enemy troops if he's out of their protective radius. He can also engage a battle against another hero on either battlefield or on a duel (chosen while engaging battle).

If hero is attacked by regular units, he can be damaged losing Stamina. Stamina is usually low, but a troop hit will always take 1 stamina per time. Hero can dodge attacks. High tier units have more chances to inflict a successful hit.

If hero is attacked by another hero, he'll lose HP, and all the Dueling Attributes will be applied. This is what happens on a DUEL too. You'll have the whole battlefield at your disposal to fight your opposing hero with the best of your abilities. Duels are advisable when fightning even heroes.

In a Duel, hero can surrender before getting killed. If opposing hero accepts, he'll have the right to choose one of the three conditions:

• 1. Your hero is spared, but loses all your troops (and then sent to your nearest town)
  2. Your hero is spared, but loses all your equipment (sent to your nearest town)
  3. Your hero, items, troops are spared, but you'll have to pay a ransom for safe return (sent to your nearest town)

If hero gets killed though, half his troops gets scattered and the remaining forces will regroup randomly on player's towns after two days. This is also what happens when the hero is killed in the middle of a battle, before his troops are destroyed. Half the remaining troops will scatter, and the other half will return to town.

If hero doesn't attempt to flee before the last troop is slain, if the last allied stack gets killed, enemy hero can either kill that hero or take him for ransom: this last option is only when the Main hero is captured.

Killed heroes are automatically taken to nearest Temples on the Adventure map, where they can be retrieved and resurrected by the player within 7 days. If not, they won't be able to be used again.

In a (H) battle, area of effect abilities/spells will damage both troops and hero (regarding HP and Stamina differences of course).

If the local tavern run out of heroes, mercenaries can be hired instead, although they are rather different from heroes: their area of influence in battle is 5-hex radius only, cause no positive morale over troops, has no faction abilities, has no diplomatic events, cannot learn ruling skills or abilities related to leadership and kingship.

(S) Entering a siege battle is mandatory even when there are not defending troops. If there are not defending troops, hero will enter the siege battle alone and will have to use his abilities to break in the defenses and enter the town in order to conquer it.

If there are troops defending the town, the battle commences.

The layout in a Siege battle is different. Hero can only move at the backline, behind this troops and cannot be targeted by enemy hero directly, only through troops or area effect spells/ability. Hero must also be within range of war/siege machines in order to activate and use them – for both attacking and defending heroes, although the latter will also have Defending buildings to work with.

If defeated, hero will only be able to flee if there's not remaining defending ranged troops. If there are ranged troops defending the town still, hero'll be killed.

If winner, invading hero can either kill or banish the defending hero (who will be released at the nearest town the day after) – or taken captive for ransom if Main hero.

If you engage a siege battle but decides leaving the site, you leave your back open to ranged attacks, so your troops will get damaged equal to 1 attack of all ranged defending troops spread amongst your units. E.g.: if 10 titans and 10 archmages are defending the town, your troops will be damaged by those troops and the damage will be divided proportionally amongst all troops.

DIPLOMACY
Diplomacy events bring options: surrender and truce. In Multiplayer games, with allied heroes, a third option shows up: join forces. When the player is weaker, surrender shall appear. If both armies forces are even, surrender and truce will appear. If the player is stronger, truce will appear.

But after battle commences, only surrender and flee options will become available.

"This way, it would give a bit more importance to the hero in a battle, plus skills and strategies - and also make the player take care of heroes, rather than only care for creatures."

In order to have such features implemented with heroes, many new skills and abilities could exist, but that's something for Expert Guide only. I think that covers the most of what I'd call my Heroes Hero-in-Battle design.