Heroes of Might and Magic II Mod

The old Heroes games developed by New World Computing. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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Unread postby Campaigner » 02 Apr 2007, 14:13

Balance is important in singleplayer too, and balance isn't just faction x vs faction y, it's alot more than that. Limited archery and flying range would be a great start.

Why do say that a player shouldn't be outgunned against the A.I on an XL map? What do you mean?

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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 02 Apr 2007, 14:42

I mean that as a single player you shouldn't lose against the AI. Whether you lose or not has nothing to do with balance, though. It has to do with the amount of cheating and the quality of AI play beside that.

Furthermore balance has nothing to do with features like shooting range or range of fliers. Those are features only. There aren't so many fliers, for example. Knight has none, to start with, and neither has Barbarian. Sorceress has two fliers and two shooters with balances the weak hero.
Necro has two and Warlock has even three, but only one very weak shooter, while Wizard has one, but 3 shooters instead.
Add to that the fact that you normally have to leave one troop outside of the equation, it's not that easy.
Halving shooting range and limiting fliers would make a complete rebalance necessary.
It would make Knight and Barbarian a lot stronger yet, as they already are.

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Unread postby Campaigner » 02 Apr 2007, 15:27

The unlimited archer and flyer range affect a game very much so it got alot to do with balance.

Actually, all factions would be weakened by my proposed change. The Knight the least but considering he's already the weakest it'll balance things out a bit.

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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 02 Apr 2007, 15:55

It affects the balance when you change it, but since it is a basic game rule, balance is normally created with the rule in mind. The same is true for battlefield size in relation to combat speed. If you'd simply made the battlefield smaller all factions would profit, but most of all the slowest.

Changing of basic game rules makes a complete rebalancing process necessary. For example if you half ranged damage for the diatance you have to add the option to melee attack for all no meler penalty shooters and so on and so forth.

However, this mod isn't my idea, so I'm the wrong one to discuss ideas with. As I've said I'd try to limit the factions to their native heroes because it's simply impossible to balance set-ups with very different creatures for serving under as difficult heroes as a Barbarian or a Sorceress on either Small or Extra Large maps.

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Unread postby UndeadHalfOrc » 02 Apr 2007, 23:04

Hi there , JJ.

At first I initially liked the idea of balancing all creatures against creatures, since it is essentially easy to do, so I pretty much disagreed with you.

But after much thought, and as you pointed out, the game WAS designed with in mind that players use the starting hero type. Unfortunately that's never the case if you play competitively (warlock players will always try to hire a knight/barb asap and use the starting warlock hero as a mere scout/ secondary hero; ironically they ARE excellent scouts).

So, since might heroes are so powerful, balancing creatures essentially will require even more so of EVERY PLAYER (cpu included) to use NOTHING but might heroes to stand an equal chance.

Not only will it make it boring and out of character ( to have a Wizard player never really use a Wizard hero, etc) but in single player, unlike a human, the AI WILL try to develop their starting heroes and that means that CPU Warlock & Wizard (with their nerfed dragons and crap att/def stats) will usually turn out to be pathetic opponents in comparison to Knight and Barbarian CPU opponents.

So yeah, it's becoming even more evident that balancing creatures is useless unless we balance the heroes too. (And that means halving the 10%-5% to H3 values, 5% - 2.5%). As somone else said already, creatures should be balanced against creatures and heroes against heroes.

Anyone up to that task?

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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 03 Apr 2007, 06:41

You'll get Heroes 3, then.

Okay, looks posting works again.

I think that the balance in the game works well, if everyone sticks to their heroes - and note that you'll do it for Necro all the time (!).

Knight, Barbarian and Sorceress will develop rapidly, have low cost and blitz the opponent. However, destructive spells work well in the beginning stages of the game while later on the powerful creatures come into play.

A very important element here is hero development, and starting with level 10 they generate not much more differences. If you compare the Attack of a typical Barbarian with the defense of a typical Warlock you'll see that it will start with a difference of +4. If they have reached level 9 the difference will be something like +8. At level 19 it will be +9 (only) though.
So the main differences between heroes will be established within the first levels, that is: even on the smallest maps, however, when maps become bigger that difference won't get much bigger. That is, if the RNG process works properly.
So the main aim must be to find a way to control hero selection.

A preferred way would be to give everyone a special skill like Necromancy.
Another, simpler way would be to ONLY add the hero stats to native creatures
That is: a Knight or Barbarian COULD lead a Warlock's town, but wouldn't have any effect on the creatures which would solve the problem.

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 03 Apr 2007, 13:23

Maybe the real problem is not heroes, but buildings.

The mage guilds are too expensive.

Of course you want to start your town building scheme by building all the creature dwellings, so you don't miss out on new creature supplies. Once all the dwellings are up (or at least levels 1 to 5), other buildings, like the mage guild, get into the picture. But in most cases you don't have the recources to build beyond level two. So you can either farm until you can finally build the mage guild up further, or you can hire a might hero and attack the enemy straight away.

Because the higher-level mage guilds are just too expensive to build any time soon, wisdom is useless in the beginning of the game. But the main feature of Magic heroes is precisely that - having wisdom in the beginning of the game! So the most straightforward way to promote Magic heroes is simply making the higher level mage guilds a little cheaper.

This would probably work just as well as changing the att/def damage formula, maybe even better. Also, it is a lot easier to do.

JJ -
A preferred way would be to give everyone a special skill like Necromancy.
Yes. If you want every faction to stick to their native heroes, special skills work best. H5 shows how well it works. Unfortunately, no one currently knows to implement that.
Another, simpler way would be to ONLY add the hero stats to native creatures
Nobody knows how to implement that, either. Another drawback of this solution is that spellpower and knowledge have no influence on creatures anyway, so it's very assymetrical.
Last edited by grobblewobble on 03 Apr 2007, 14:02, edited 3 times in total.

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Unread postby UndeadHalfOrc » 03 Apr 2007, 13:52

>>>Another drawback of this solution is that spellpower and knowledge have no influence on creatures anyway, so it's very asymmetrical.

True, but why would a Warlock or Wizard want to lead pitiful Knight troops in the first place :-)
(assuming we don't balance creatures at all)

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 03 Apr 2007, 14:09

Using a warlock with knight troops isn't such a bad idea at all. The level 1 to 5 knight creature dwellings don't cost any precious recources, so it's easier to build up the mage guild for them. The extreme speed of champions is also nice for spellcasters. So if you want to play a warlock hero, you're better off starting with a knight town. :-D

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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 04 Apr 2007, 07:32

I think, it would be enough to simply discount the might stat of a hero - don't forget that you'd lose the benefits of might-based artifacts as well.

If that is not possible, simply half the damage all creatures do which are not led by their native hero or something like that. Some massive penalties - that should be possible. It could even cost money or something.

Now for the mage guild. That's a serious point that was raised. Basically there are 3 towns that are in trouble here: Necro, Wizard and Warlock. However, lower mg cost makes sense only, if you can set mg costs for each town separately which I somehow doubt.
IN any case the point is correct, imo, that the Wisdom skill doesn't work in itself - it needs spells.
I'd suggest this way of dealing with mage guilds, anyway:
Level 1: 1000 GP + 5 W,O + 1 C,G,M,S
Level 2: 2000 GP + 4 W,O + 2 C,G.M,S
Level 3: 3000 GP + 3 W,O + 3 C,G,M,S
Level 4: 4000 GP + 2 W,O + 4 C,G,M,S
Level 5: 5000 GP + 1 W,O + 5 C,G,M,S

Library should be down do Level 3 MG cost then.

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 04 Apr 2007, 08:31

Wow, JJ, I like your suggestion! I also like the idea of making mage guilds cheaper for magic factions than for might factions, if that would be possible.

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Unread postby Kristo » 04 Apr 2007, 12:18

grobblewobble wrote:Wow, JJ, I like your suggestion! I also like the idea of making mage guilds cheaper for magic factions than for might factions, if that would be possible.
I don't. The Wisdom skill is not an effective analogue to the high level magic skills from Heroes IV. With the exception of Necromancy for Necromancers, Wisdom is the most likely skill for a magic hero to get. I know I've gotten Expert Wisdom at level 3 before. If you lower the cost of the Mage Guilds, it becomes that much easier to get the coolest spells. Also, building a Mage Guild is supposed to get in the way of building the better creature dwellings. If you lower the prices, it becomes much less of a sacrifice.

OTOH, I like the idea of limiting attack and defense bonuses to native creatures. If we could ever figure out a way to make that happen it would be a good experiment.

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Unread postby Campaigner » 04 Apr 2007, 12:46

Mage guild cost decrease is a must to make it attainable in a reasonable time. But that doesn't stop Wizards, Warlocks and Sorceress to hire Knights and Barbarians as primary heroes. It would however, make it more desirable to play the native heroes of the Wizards and Warlocks since you get to your highlvl spells much sooner.
Wouldn't be unusual to get your army blasted by a powerful Holy Shout, Chain Lightning, Elemental Storm then. Not to mention seeing Wizards jump over half the map with the allpowerful Dimension Door :D Love that spell :-D

We need to reach an agreement about what to change before we start changing stuff. And what's possible to change too.....

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 04 Apr 2007, 14:34

Kristo, your statements are exactly the reasons why I think lowering the costs of mage guilds would work.
Wisdom is the most likely skill for a magic hero to get. I know I've gotten Expert Wisdom at level 3 before.
Yes, so did I. And how useful was it, most of the time?
If you lower the cost of the Mage Guilds, it becomes that much easier to get the coolest spells. Also, building a Mage Guild is supposed to get in the way of building the better creature dwellings. If you lower the prices, it becomes much less of a sacrifice.
My point exactly. As I see it, building the mage guild is currently too much of a sacrifice. So much, that one of the reasons the AI performs bad is that it spends way too much recources on mage guilds. That is the main reason magic heroes are so hard to get going, in comparison to might heroes. If you lower the costs of the mage guilds too much, magic heroes will dominate. If you don't lower the cost at all, might heroes will probably still dominate, even if the influence of attack and defense skill would be lowered, like in heroes 3 (if someone ever figures out how the heck to do that, that is). In between there's got to be some sort of balance.

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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 05 Apr 2007, 16:52

I'm back, everyone! I was away for a while for personal reasons ( including my b-day :baby: ).
Really excited to see more and more people are looking into Heroes II, at one moment this thread consisted only of posts of grobblewobble and myself, I'm really glad that changed.
I can do the modifications I mentioned earlier about the creature's HP and growth, and magic, but the ones you mentioned in the last posts would be more difficult to implement.
I also don't agree with lowering mage guild costs, their price is reasonable because the magic in Heroes II is VERY powerful and the higher level spells are worth the cost. Also, why only for magic users? Do you think it's easier for the Knight to build the magic guild? It's never a priority for him and he needs 30 crystals to have crusaders, so he's not far from the 40 resources magic users need.
My oppinion differs a bit from grobblewobble's because I don't see magic heroes that weak in HII especially because they're commanding magic troops, and the spells are really punishing for the might side. The 10% / 5% bonuses have to stay this way because the attack and defence of troops is much smaller in h2 (maximum 15) compared to H3 (which i think it's the archangel's 25 or 30).
I'll look into the code to see if I can find anything else related to your proposals and maybe i can send you my modified versions privately (i'll write out the full list of changes in my next post)
Heroes II rules

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 06 Apr 2007, 21:09

I don't see magic heroes that weak in HII especially because they're commanding magic troops
But magic towns can hire might heroes, right?

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Unread postby Darmani » 09 Apr 2007, 03:12

As Heroes II is my favorite game of all time, I am excited to see this thread pop up. :)

The two most important questions that can be asked for the success of this modding attempt are 1)Does anyone know what language Heroes II was programmed in (probably C/C++) and 2)Does anyone have/is willing to buy a good decompiler for the answer to 1.

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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 09 Apr 2007, 10:30

As I searched quite a bit through its entrails, I can tell you for sure that it was programmed in the C language (or maybe C++ but i doubt they used this language's object programming).

By hex editing, I have found the way to:
- Change town building costs
- Change creature dwelling costs
- Change things about spells
- Change creature attributes and stats
- Change % of getting primary skills for each hero as he levels up

Of course, this isn't properly "modding" because nothing is added, but I see Heroes 2 as a perfect game, with nothing to be addedm and these things can help balance it, which is the main issue with this game.
Heroes II rules

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Unread postby Kristo » 09 Apr 2007, 13:30

Darmani wrote:The two most important questions that can be asked for the success of this modding attempt are 1)Does anyone know what language Heroes II was programmed in (probably C/C++) and 2)Does anyone have/is willing to buy a good decompiler for the answer to 1.
There are a lot of strings in the exe file that refer to source files with the cpp extension. That implies C++. You could try to disassemble/decompile the code, but I doubt you'll get anything useful out of it.
Lord Belphegor wrote:By hex editing, I have found the way to:
- Change town building costs
- Change creature dwelling costs
- Change things about spells
- Change creature attributes and stats
- Change % of getting primary skills for each hero as he levels up
So are you going to explain how to do all that, or just boast wildly that you can? ;)

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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 09 Apr 2007, 23:18

Dear Kristo, I am not boasting wildly about the fact that I found some interesting things in the Heroes2 executable. That list was to remind people what can be modified at the moment and I think it's the fourth time i've posted about buildings and spells and nobody made any proposals on that matter.

For me finding those addresses it's a very exciting and passionate journey as it requires both my undivided attention as well as my true passion for the game Heroes 2. So until I feel that anyone is interested in the amount of work i've done, please allow me not to make my results public, as I would feel quite ripped off at the moment. I can provide anyone interested (and I wrote this two times before but no one messaged me!) the modified exe. I've been running a lot of tests myself and came up with a list of modifications. I might be able to put this in a small C++ program that modifies the file location so that no maneuvering of modified executables is necessary.

It was interesting for me to find out what you think the modifications for Heroes 2 should be, and what you like from what i've proposed so far. Then i can proceed and make a patch so that anyone can take advantage of these modifications.

Here is a list of modifications i came up with until now and we all can use it as a starting point. Firstly, the modifications will not alter anything essential or add anything new here, just here to balance the game a bit:

TROOPS:
- Peasant 2HP, +1 speed, cost 25
- Paladin 60 HP
- Crusader 75 HP
- Cyclops 90 HP, maybe the cost a bit up 800+1C or 900+1C
- Phoenix 120 HP
- Giant 200 HP, 2500 gold+1G, growth 2
- Titan remains at 300 HP, growth 2, cost 4500 gold + 2G
- Dragons, remain the same, but growth 2
- Lich, cost 700, HP 30
- Power Lich, cost 800
- Dwarf cost 175
- Battle Dwarf cost 225

BUILDINGS:
- Well 5W, 5O, 2000 gold = the idea here is not to make the well a useless formality, it will have a reasonable price that would induce some strategy around building it;
- Another idea is making the special buildings tougher (they suck except Library and Dungeon that totally rule and it's not fair):
Fortification 5w, 10o, 1500
Colliseum 5w, 5o, 2000
Rainbow 5c, 1500
Storm 5c, 5m, 1000
Dungeon cost UP because it's a totally unfair building 10w, 10o, 5000
- I really don't see the point in mage guilds being cheaper, that's the whole idea, make a sacrifice if you want magic. As the warlock and wizard can afford to wait until they get their last level creatures, which will win the map for them anyway, the knight is much more preoccupied in building the cathedral for which it needs 30 crystal, and the barbarian the pyramid for which it needs 20 crystal. They can't spare 4 crystal to build 2nd level mage guild, they can't even spare the wood or ore to make the first level mage guild! But the magic user would build the 2nd level mage guild first because they need access to a serious damage spell in order to get to the more serious creatures. So as i see it now, magic heroes are the ones who build faster anyway.

SPELLS:
- Hypnotyze, level 4, cost 12, permanent until attack, attacked or dispelled
- Dim Door, cost 40

That's about it, i hope this time someone would actually bother to read my post, and, who knows!, even do the surprise of replying. I am really putting passion into this, in case no one noticed. Heroes 2 rules!
Heroes II rules


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