HoMM 5 >Buildings
In all installments, the Heroes series had two main limitations on the growth
of forces. The first one was money. The second one was the number of
creatures available in town. Personally, I believe that money should be the
primary limiting factor.
In the various installments, the value of money could increase or decrease.
In HoMM3, the value of money was clearly the lowest. A town could produce
4000 per day (9000 with a grail), but the top level creature could cost 5000
gold per unit. In HoMM4, gold wasn't worth much more, but it did become a lot
scarcer. A town could only produce 1000 gold per day as a maximum. Many maps
did not have goldmines and the nobility skill wasn't a whole lot of help,
since it would only contribute a few hundred per day, unless you were at high
levels. A money creating artifact could therefore also imbalance MP severely.
To do a bit of math: In HoMM3, a fully build capitol was almost self-
supportive. This means that the amount of money that a capitol produces was
almost enough to buy all creatures in the town on a weekly base (assuming
that a castle was build). However, in HoMM4, the amount of money that a town
produced per week was not even enough to buy the top level creatures alone
(and that's not even counting the nobility skill). While this could add some
strategy, it was usually just frustrating. The only way to get enough money
to buy all creatures from one town was to conquer other towns, just to use
them as "moneybags".
I plan to go back a bit to HoMM3 in this aspect and severely devaluate the
worth of money. This means that a town may produce up to 8000-10000 gold per
day (after lots of building and planning), but one black dragon may then cost
up to 12000 gold per unit (and other level 6's between 7000 and 9000). In
other words, you have more gold, but things will cost you more.
This leaves quite a number of possibilities to get more gold, while not
having the problem of an infinite amount of gold, so that your only limiting
factor is the growth of creatures. It also allows the scheme to build many,
many buildings in your towns in order to make them produce actual large
amounts of money. The economy may also be more complicated (though I'll try
to keep the amount of micromanagement at an absolute minimum) and it will be
more important than ever to hold on to your towns. But then again, the plan
for more buildings also includes the use of many defensive structures. Taking
over the enemy stronghold will become really hard, if it has been fully
build, and every town will have different defenses.
I realize that the descriptions of the buildings can be confusing here. So I put them all in a list, which makes it much easier to look at, but there won't be any extra descriptions. Just the building, the prerequisits and a basic description of what it does. As you will later see, a fully build town with all economic and defensive structures can easily require over fifty builds.
Economy:
This is where choices will have to be made in the build-up of towns. The bare minimum is the village, which produces 500 gold per day and does nothing else. The marketplace comes back as a building which has to be build. It is more expensive then ever, but now actively contributes money, aside from being a trading post. The presence of a marketplace increases the town income from all structures by 25%. The marketplace can be upgraded to a market square, which increases the income by 50% (but requires quite some resources). The next level is the town hall, with a base gold production of 1000, then the city hall with a base gold production of 2000 and the capitol with 4000 per day, but there is only one of those in the country. As most of you already noticed, this is the HoMM3 system.
The maximum amount of money that a town can produce by itself is therefore
6000 gold per day (and 3000 for the others). That makes the black dragon of
12000 still a hard pill to swallow. Especially since, theoretically, a town can be upgraded to the point where production is tripled. The castle would provide a 50% increase in town production. 50% would be provided by GM Nobility. And 20% increase each from 5 farming towns.
This is where other towns and town interaction comes in. When the town has a
marketplace (or a market square, which doesn't matter in this case), you can
buy a guildhouse. This guildhouse will determine what kind of economy your
town has. The options are: "Traders Guildhouse", "Farmers Guildhouse"
and "Miners Guildhouse". They all interact and all build up differently. The
landscape is also going to matter, since miners would not be able to get a
whole lot of stuff from a grassfield or a forest. Neither can farmers grow a
whole lot on rocks.
Towns can now have trade routes with each other. The trade routes with the
traders towns are the most important, since they actually produce the money.
But there can also be trade routes between the miners town and the farmers
town, because the miners need to eat and the farmers need tools and
materials. In order to start a trade route between two towns, you need the
following:
- Marketplaces in both towns.
- Guildhouses in both towns (not the same guildhouses if farmer or miner).
- Caravans in both towns (which should be less expensive than in HoMM4).
- A governour (either a hero, a lieutenant or a captain).
- A distance of less than 5 caravan days.
*Note: You can upgrade the caravan to a portal, which increases the distance
per day, and therefore the 5-day radius.
The links with other towns works as follows:
Trader- Trader:
- 500 gold per day if both have a marketplace.
- 1000 gold per day if one has a marketplace and the other has a market square.
- 2000 gold per day if both have market squares.
Trader- Miner:
- 500 gold per day if trader has a marketplace.
- 750 gold per day if trader has a market square.
- 1250 gold per day if trader has a market square and a storage.
Added to that a certain amount of gold, depending on how much mining ground (rocks and mountains) surround the Miner in a 20-tile radius. With more buildings, other resources may also be produced.
Trader- Farmer:
- 500 gold per day if trader has a marketplace.
- 750 gold per day if trader has a market square.
- 1250 gold per day if trader has a market square and a warehouse.
Added to that a certain amount of gold, depending on how many trees (forests) surround the Farmer in a 20-tile radius. With more buildings, other resources may also be produced.
Miner- Farmer:
- 50% increase in production for both towns (only for the variable amount).
*Note: A Farmers or Miners town can only link to one Traders town.
As you can see, the environment around the castle is actually going to matter, and the mapmaker can make some decisions about that. Additionally, I would like it if the mapmaker could specify certain spots where a town could be founded (the player would build a village hall of the town of his choice). It would make some interesting campaign possibilities. Only heroes would be able to do this, and they would have to sacrifice a certain amount of XP worth of creatures (because towns don't grow out of nowhere, they have to be build).
The point is that the towns cannot just initiate as many trade routes as they
want. The amount of trade routes that can be formed is equal to the nobility
skill of the governour of that town. So it will become important to have a
hero with a good nobility skill.
The problem would be that you need to hire a hero with nobility for every
single town that you own, just to benefit from the trade routes. Personally,
I disliked all those semi-heroes in the first place, and I believe that HoMM2
had the solution.
Lieutenants and Captains.
In every town, you can build a Lieutenant's Quarter. The lieutenant cannot
travel, but acts in the town as a hero that has Basic Nobility, Basic Estates
and one of the following (choice of the player): Basic Attack, Basic Tactics
or Basic Magic (depends on town). The Lieutenant's Quarter can be upgraded to
a Captain's Quarter. The Captain has Advanced Nobility, Basic Estates and
(depending on the choice of Lieutenant):
-Advanced Attack, Basic Melee, Basic Marksmanship.
-Advanced Tactics, Basic Defense, Basic Magic Resistance.
-Advanced Magic, Basic Spell Points, Basic Spell Power (magic of town).
The Lieutenant or Captain will fight during a siege, as long as there is room in the garrison. The Lieutenant with the statistics of a level 1 hero. The Captain with the statistics of a level 4 hero. The advantage is that you will still have a hero-like figure without having to buy a hero (which may not even be possible, because of the one-hero-per-week rule). The disadvantage is that this hero can only learn the spells of this town's mage guild, does not level up, cannot travel and cannot use artifacts. The Quarters will be less expensive than a hero, though.
Traders town:
For the whole thing to work, you must have at least one Traders town, since
this is where it all happens. I therefore strongly recommend that the Capitol
is always a Trader's town (since you will probably put your highest noble
hero in the capitol, and you need high nobility here).
The Trader's town is formed by having a Merchant's Guildhouse, which is the bare minimum of the Trader's town. After that, you can build a lot to start increasing the production of the town. The guildhouse by itself doesn't do anything, except that it allows the formation of trade routes and it may be a prerequisite for other buildings.
The next building is a choice between the warehouse and the storage. The warehouse increases effectiveness of trade-routes with farmers. The storage increases effectiveness of trading with miners. Since this is a choice, you can't have both.
If you went for the warehouse, then you can build a timber shop, which produces an amount of wood per day, depending on the amount of trees surrounding the farmers towns. Since every tree counts, you can get really weird numbers, like: 2.587 wood per day. This just means that this much wood is added to the tally each day, and when a whole point has been filled, one wood becomes available. It works the same as the creature production of HoMM4.
If you went for the storage, then you can build a bricklayer shop, which does exactly the same thing, but then for ore. Note that the timber shop and the bricklayers shop will only function when a wood or ore depot have been build in the farmers or miners town.
Regardless of which way you choose, you can spend 3 building points in the following. You can use your building points to upgrade the structures or have some variety, that is up to the player.
- Spell merchant: Sells spells randomly of all schools, from level 1,2 and 3.
- Spell market: Sells spells randomly of all schools, from level 1,2,3 and 4.
- Spell hall: Sells spells randomly of all schools, from all levels.
- Gathering hall: Allows recruitement of heroes from mistrusted alignments.
- Gathering beacon: Allows recruitment of all heroes.
- School of elegance: Teaches nobility to a hero for a price.
- Academy: Teaches nobility, attack, tactics and scouting for a price.
- Banker's hall: Get better rates on all other non-creature money transfers in town.
And you will always be able to build the blacksmith dwelling. Without any trade routes, it will just sell unenchanted items. With a trade route to the farmers town, you will also be able to buy potions and with a trade route to the miners town, you will be able to buy treasure artifacts. All shops replenish their stock every week (except that the treasure artifacts that a shop sells are always the same, depending on town type).
Farmers town:
Note that when I write "farmer's town", that also includes forestry and possibly fishing. The counting of trees is for the fertility of the land. It's just easier to visualize. When you decide which guildhouse to build, you will be told how many tiles with trees and plants (that includes farmland) and how many tiles with rocks or mountains there are surrounding the town. But on the adventure map, trees are just easier to visualize for the player when deciding whether to attack the town and add it to the economy.
The farmers town is more straightforward to build than the traders town. After you have a farmers guildhouse, you can build a silo, which increases creature production in the town by 20%. If you have a silo and a caravan, you can build a food trader post, which increases the creature production of one specified town that is connected to the farmers town by 10%. This number increases to 20% when the caravan is upgraded to a portal.
The wood depot is another important building. It doubles the wood production of any sawmill within the 20 tile radius of the town and allows the production of wood in a connected traders town. Note that this may boost your wood production by possibly more than 5 per day, but the demand for wood may also increase significantly. A level 6 structure could easily demand 50 wood and/or ore. A lot of resources could also be spend on advanced defense structures.
Then there is the potion store, which will sell a variety of potions and replenishes it's stock each week. When you have this structure in the farmers town, the blacksmith in the associated traders town will also sell potions, though not as many and not with as much variety as the farmers town.
If the town has a shipyard, you can also build a fishermans wharf, which just increases the gold production of the town by 500 per day (requires a trade route to a trader).
Miners town:
This town deals with resources that are dug up and extracted from the ground. On average, a miners town will produce more gold per day than the farmers town, to compensate for the farmers ability to increase creature growth. So it will be a decision for the player to make a proper farmer/miner ratio. After you build the miners guildhouse, you will be able to build the extractor, which increases the town gold production by 1000 per day (requires a trade route to a trader).
Another building is the ore depot, which doubles the production of ore of any ore pit within the 20 tile radius. It also allows the production of ore in the connected traders town. Once you have the ore depot, you can choose one depot for a rare resource (gems, sulfur, mercury, crystal). This will double the production of any mine of that resource in the 20 tile radius and allows the production of that resource in the traders town in the same way as ore, but with half the amount (so if the ore production is 3.016 per day for that town, then the rare resource production would be 1.508 per day). This works as long as the connecter traders town has a ore depot. No extra building is needed.
Then there is the master smithy, which allows the sale of a large variety of items, treasures and minor artifacts. When this building is build, the blacksmith in the associated traders town will also start to sell treasure artifacts, but with less variety than the master smithy.
These are the buildings for the economy that are common to every town. There are a number of economic structures that are town-specific. I'm not going in more depth about those, but you will see them in the list of economic structures.
Now for a bit of math. Let's assume that everything is maxed out. You have three towns (trader, farmer, miner). Remember that the market square increases all income by 50%, which is calculated into the numbers.
6000 (capitol)
6000 (two city halls)
1875 (trade route and storage)
1125 (trade route)
1500 (extractor)
750 (fishermans wharf)
3000 app. (farmland yield, 50% for miner-farmer link added)
3000 app. (mining yield, 50% for miner-farmer link added)
23250 per day
162750 per week.
Had these towns been individual, the gold production per day would have been 12000 per day. As you can see, the trade routes make a significant difference. But now for the costs on a weekly base per town. Again we assume that everything has been maxed out for creature production. This number will vary per town, but I'm making an approximate average. With these three towns, the increase in creature growth will be 120% for the main town, assuming that you have a GM Nobility governour of the main town.
16000 (2 level 6, 8000 each)
8000 (4 level 5, 2000 each)
5600 (7 level 4, 800 each)
3300 (11 level 3, 300 each)
2160 (18 level 2, 120 each)
1500 (30 level 1, 50 each)
36560 per week base
80432 per week in actual cost
Now, we assume that the the miner and the farmer are maxed out on buildings as well, but they only have a captian as governour, meaning that the total bonus in creature production will be 90% for the farmers town and 70% for the miners town. Calculating from the base amount:
62152 per week for the miner
69464 per week for the farmer
212048 per week for all three towns
49298 per week deficit
So the total yield of money does not pay for all the towns. But how often is it going to happen that you have three towns and build every single building in all three of them? According to the numbers, you can get all creatures from two of them and have a bit left. However, it would take months before you have gathered enough money to build all dwellings and structures. By then, you probably occupied a number of new towns, which you can add to the economy, but not build up.
Notice that the total amount of micromanagement is minimum. Once the trade routes are there, you don't have to bother about anything anymore. You just have to initiate the trade routes and make new ones if you (re)capture a town.
