Heroes of Might and Magic II Mod

[grobblewobble]

Dragon growth should be minimum 1+2 from well if dragon cities are to be of any use.

Someone already tested this, and found out changing the base growth of dragons doesn't influence dragon cities.

I wouldn't mint them staying at 3(if nerfed).

The advantage of reducing growth rather than nerfing is that it creates more diversity.

There is no need to ban wisdom from might heroes, they can learn it, but it wont help them much if they have very few spell points.

It helps them on larger maps, where they get the time to boost their knowledge and spellpower with artifacts and special map features. On smaller maps wisdom is a useless skill, unless the mage guild is going to be cheaper.

No offense, but it looks like you are on a good way to ruin a perfectly good game.

Could you please be a little more specific about the reasons you think so?

You have to consider the changes in every respect. For example: Every nerfing of a very good creature in the game - like Titan and Dragon - will be a buff for the Necro. There must be creatures balanced so that you still can beat a Necro on a large map - and beating a Necro on a very large map might become very difficult when your Blackies or Titans just got nerfed to 200 HPs or 2 creatures per week.

In Heroes 3, this is very relevant. In H3 necromancy is the easy way to win a large map, while things like black dragons aren't that important. But in H2, it's the other way around. There exist no necromancy amplifiers, no artifacts boosting necromancy and no heroes who specialize in necromancy. And no skeleton converter. You can never raise more than 30% as a necro in H2, while in H3 you can get something like 80% IIRC.
Also, in Heroes 3 there is no well. The creature growth of different tiers in H3 is balanced in such a way that black dragons are a nice addition to your army, but in H2 they are a nigh-invincible stand-alone force.
Of course, if the map maker decided to place a legion of peasants on the map somewhere, a necromancer will win. But you can't take every possible map into account, because it is fundamentally impossible to have a balanced game on every possible map. You have to assume some kind of "average" map.

The same is true for taking away higher magic from Knights and Barbarians completely - they will just be useless on a larger map because there is no way for them to D-Door anymore, for example, not to mention the many SP-maps that will get unplayable due to this.

Don't forget every faction can use every hero type. That is a fact we'll have to live with, because it can't be modded. So I don't think any SP would become unplayable. You can always hire a wizard if you really need someone with wisdom. Also, I highly doubt might heroes would become useless on larger maps. On larger maps your army is going to grow big, so they will still be attractive. And they can still cast spells like blind. You can't learn dimension door, but that spell is often not available anyway, even on large maps (because you still need to be lucky to get the spell in your mage guild).

[Jolly Joker]

You forget the Evil Shrine in PoL that gives another 10%, up to a maximum of 60% if you have more Necro towns.
On an XL map this may lead to rather impressive amounts of Skeletons. But no matter, how big the skeleton hordes are, nerfing Dragons/Titans by one third of their strength will mean that the army strength based upon them will be one third smaller - compared to any Necro and no matter what happens with Knight and Barbarians. Now take into account further that Necro, Warlock and Wizard are all 3 supposed to get stronger in terms of their army the bigger the map and the longer the game, you see immediately that a nerf of Titans and Dragons automatically has direct consequences on the balance between those first and foremost.

For Knights and Barbs not gaining access to higher level magic means you can forget them as heroes for larger maps, simple and easy, because you never can get higher view spells, movement spells, Holy spells, mass spells and so on. This means, you cannot catch a fleeing magic hero with D-Door and has other harsh consequences that make those heroes all the more useless the longer and bigger a map is. It means furthermore, that good magic artifacts are wasted on them (while good might artifacts are not on magic heroes).
It means that they will be boring to play for good measure.

Lastly it makes no sense to balance the game so that you MUST hire certain (alien) hero types depending on map type and faction in order to have a chance to win because the availability of alien heroes is completely random. Indeed a good solution here would be to simply set the chance of availability for all towns to the minimum of what is possible.

[Pacifist]

Hello!, I was very excited at first when I saw this thread and some mod possibilities being available. Unfortunately they seem possible only in parts where the game is perfectly balanced in my opinion. Just ask yourself the question why you love that version so much If it were umbalanced in the points you want to change now you wouldn't have had that feeling as the best Homm game, no? Ok, we can change costs, growth, etc with exe editor but it doesn't mean we have to. Better not to mod than mod and completely umbalance the game. All factions are perfectly playable as they are. Even magic heroes vs might, the only need is to adapt to the circumstances and use the possibilities of magic heroes.

Fliers going to the opposite side of the field despite their speed is a particularity of H2 and a general strategy for warlock, stronghold in early game vs ranged stacks. Why do it the H3 way? The wait button is also a nonsense for me and source of exploits only. H5 made a good compromise with the initiative system but I still prefer H2 system, simple and clear.
The broken arrow is not necessary either, the games just plays differently and it was there before H3 and enjoyable like that.

What I would like to change is the real bugs of the game like hero rehiring + refill spell points in wells + dim door that allow you to win the game in 1 day once you have enough gold to rehire you hero for 2500 gold several times. Some nice interface options like always reserving the first artifact slot for magic book or allowing to move artifacts betweem slots. Unfortunately those changes seem impossible only with hex editing.

Well, just some ideas, there are many but I thinhk we still don't have the tools. Maybe a programmer specialist can help like in the Wog team but only with hex editing I don't think we are going very far except compromising an already ood game. Sorry if this seems pessimist.

[Ya5MieL]

Not at all, it makes sense

As i mentioned in my posts.. all the changes were simply proposals, ideas that were tied to the moment... or in other words just an introduction of what can be changed so people would have easier debate over that stuff. I'm not enforcing anything in any way, nor do i think any of the ideas is great.

Basically the only thing i would like to see (and have already done in my game) is that hero skill progression table unification.
I don't know would it be good or bad for balance, i just dont like the lvl10+ tables in h2/3.. the unique one for all levels in h5 seems better to me.

All other balance issues seem to be more or less well done (or badly done but can't be changed)

[Jolly Joker]

The hero progression table as it is in H 2 balances different map sizes: the main differences between hero stats will be developed within the first 9 levels, after that, differences in hero development are marginal.
That means, the stat differences for heroes aren't that much more different on S or XL maps, at least in theory. Likewise in theory this would make things easier to balance because you can calculate with pretty safe stat differences no matter the map size.
This is just an explanation, mind you, not a plead for keeping it.

[grobblewobble]

All factions are perfectly playable as they are.

Against the AI, yes. Against the AI you can get away with suboptimal playing styles/heroes/factions and still win. But in MP things are different.
That is where the game balance could be improved with a mod.

Even magic heroes vs might, the only need is to adapt to the circumstances and use the possibilities of magic heroes.

Could you give us an example?

You forget the Evil Shrine in PoL that gives another 10%, up to a maximum of 60%

Yes, sorry. I don't have PoL myself, that's why I forgot about it.

For Knights and Barbs not gaining access to higher level magic means you can forget them as heroes for larger maps, simple and easy

The only real reason you can "forget about them" would be dimension door (and advanced town portal). View spells can be cast by secondary heroes; mass spells are no more than a way for magic heroes to overcome their weakness on the battlefield, as I see it. Dimension door is a problem in itself. So far, two ways to handle dimension door have been proposed. This spell could either get an appropriately high mana cost (40 mana?), or be given a really small chance to turn up (just like advanced town portal).

[Pacifist]

All factions are perfectly playable as they are.

Against the AI, yes. Against the AI you can get away with suboptimal playing styles/heroes/factions and still win. But in MP things are different.
That is where the game balance could be improved with a mod.

Well, I speak with my experience of multiplayer games in H2 not counting SP games where normal maps can be won with any faction anyway. In MP the knights and barbarians have to play differently but that doesn't mean rush to attack the opponent as there could be some big surprises if you do so vs an experienced player. A single lightning bolt spell can destroy your army more surely than the bonus of att/def your hero gives to your troops. I once made that mistake with a barbarian hero and his troops coming from a town that had the cyclops built in first week. I was confronted to the ennemy hero (a warlock) and lightning bolt after lightning bolt my army (although much stronger than his army) was completely decimated. Too early. There is no general rule, that's the fun of this game, you have to adapt to all factors of a map.

Even magic heroes vs might, the only need is to adapt to the circumstances and use the possibilities of magic heroes.

Could you give us an example?

Magic heroes rely on spell power and knowledge to compensate the physical advantage of might heroes. There are some choque points in the game with relative army sizes where this balance changes. Larger armies benefit more from att/def bonuses, but that also depends on how the magic hero is developped. It depends on his spell power as a destructive spell * spell power can do more damage in a round than the att/def bonus and this at once. Armaggedon comes to mind with Dragons but chain lightning too. But for any value of spell power there is an army size where this is not enough to compensate. Then it's a question of tactics, of player skills, imagination. Unfair tactics of rehiring a hero with full movement not counted, the only question is to build armies with heroes that can deal more damage to the opponent than damage received. A magic hero with crappy troops can kill in short time some valuable crusaders or champions in view of a future final battle. Divide to conquer : send some heroes to kill the champions, crusaders, even at high costs then with main hero with big SP and some blind or paralyze spell, slow, etc not even damaging spells the might army becomes helpless. Well of course it's just an example, there are many other possibilities. The hydras for a warlock can be a bless (their speed can assure them the last spell and the first spell in next round....means 2 blinds ). Another example is the dimension door spell not counting the well bug. How much more movement can do a wizard or warlock vs a knight or barbarian?

Ok the knight captures a warlock castle and suddenly has Dragons...new strategies to adapt. You look for Titans or other troops that can be resurrected. Then again there is a point where ressurection is not enough to compensate, you have to find the right moment to confront. I understand it's too general but simply put the best player will win and not because he has the best town or hired the best hero .

[Jolly Joker]

I agree fully with Pacifist.

[gravyluvr]

@Balance

There are six town types so we essentially have six creatures form each level. There are neutrals but since they down dwell in towns we can leave them out for now.

Equip two identical heroes w/ three level 6 creatures.

There are 10 different lineups of 3-on-3 with 6 creatures. Use three week's growth to determine domination.

Right now we have 3 weeks of growth @

Titan 9
BDragon 9
Ghost Dragon 9
Phoenix 9
Crusader 12
Cyclops 12

Three of them have upgrades to go through so their should be some consideration to this... (if you nerf the Titan/Dragon you should lower the building requirments and raise the price of a Cathedral).

I think we might that ideally the Titan and Black Dragon would remain at 3, The Gost Dragon and Phoenix would grow to 4 and the Crusader and Cyclops would grow to 5.

Now we get into faction balancing. We can either improve stats or growth or improve costs. We need to be careful not to try to make each creature just like the others in their group and this itself is fairly difficult thanks the game's natural rock-paper-scissors match up style.

In the end we might try to keep it close so that three week's growth of one level should compete (roughly) with one week's growth of the next level. And that three week's growth of the entire town would compete with three week's growth of another town type.

Or not...

[Campaigner]

Well, I don't care about XL or RPG maps so that's gone.

My main gripe is that might vs magic is completely unbalanced and it is connected to the spellsystem.

Knights and Barbarians already make their troops monsters with their great Attack & Defense. If they continue to get access to Wisdom, (even at basic lvl), then they can cast Mass Haste/Slow which will decide the current battle right there! And even TWO lousy points of spellpower are enough!
At advanced Wisdom, they can cast the gamebreaking berserk which is just lol....

At Expert....they can use Dimension Door once and ambush the Warlock/Wizard....and in the ensuing battle they use the broken Mirror Image and duplicate one of their superpowered stacks and slaughter the magicuser.

It's just as Grobblewobble say, the highertier spells should be exclusive to the magicheroes to even things out.


And finally, I'm gonna play singleplayer the most but I want the broken stuff fixed and I also want it to be fair (otherwise I wouldn't be so involved here).

[grobblewobble]

I understand it's too general but simply put the best player will win and not because he has the best town or hired the best hero .

Maybe it's because you are more experienced with MP games than me, or maybe it's just my playing style. But I do have a strong impression certain factions have better creatures available while other factions have better heroes. For example, if the map is large, I wonder how to beat a warlock castle with a might hero once he gets black dragons. That can be surprisingly fast, because if you're not bothering to build a high-level mage guild, you can trade for a lot of additional gold and sulfur instead.
If you compare this strategy to playing with warlocks and hoping to get armageddon or dimension door, notice that:
a) building up a level 5 mage guild *after* spending tons of sulfur on dragons is a slow strategy, even for large maps
b) you are much dependent on luck, because you are likely to get a less fancy level 5 spell instead
If your answer is titans + resurrection, there's the same problem. Building a level 5 mage guild after first building the Upgr Cloud Castle takes ages, and you can still only hope to get resurrection.
Or let's look at the small map "the other side". It is in itself a balanced map, a small and rich map. It has a necromancer and a wizard castle. Of course the necro will have 4 bone dragons in week 3 or 2. What should the wizard do to counter that?
Don't get me wrong, I do like this game very much. But I also think some modding here and there could improve it.

[gravyluvr]

The Shrine is only available in POL... Could that be a requirement for Ghost Dragons? If not... couldn't we create a requirement of either a statue or a skullpile to nerf the GhostD rush?

Also... A Level 20 hero looks like this with no additional artifact or power-up help.

Class A D P K
Barbarian 10.7 7.1 3.6 3.6
Knight 7.55 8.35 4.55 4.55
Necro 3.95 3.95 7.55 8.55
Sorceress 3 3 7.7 10.3
Warlock 3 3 10.3 7.7
Wizard 3 4 8.5 8.5

The Secondary skills offered goes like this...
Second Skill Barbarian Knight Necro Sorceress Warlock Wizard
Archery 60% 40% 20% 60% 20% 20%
Ballistics 60% 100% 60% 60% 60% 60%
Diplomacy 40% 60% 40% 40% 40% 40%
Eagle Eye 20% 20% 60% 40% 60% 60%
Estates 40% 60% 40% 40% 40% 40%
Leadership 60% 100% 0% 20% 20% 40%
Logistics 60% 60% 40% 40% 40% 40%
Luck 40% 20% 20% 60% 20% 40%
Mysticism 20% 20% 60% 60% 60% 60%
Navigation 60% 40% 40% 100% 40% 40%
Necromancy 0% 0% 100% 0% 20% 0%
Pathfinding 100% 60% 60% 40% 40% 40%
Scouting 80% 40% 20% 20% 80% 40%
Wisdom 20% 40% 100% 100% 100% 100%

Anyone figure out how to adjust those yet?

[Campaigner]

Yeah Gravy, we can adjust that table.

[Jolly Joker]

I still think the best way to start this is finding a way so that the might stats of a hero will only be added to their native creatures. This is the least intrusive way, but guarantees an effect. It WILL disrupt only those maps where you are for example a Barbarian and are required to get Black Dragons or Titans from somewhere to kill some incredibly strong skeleton Horde. However, since it was a MOD that could be undone for those maps.
But in real life this would work well, I think, because you couldn't combine the supreme stats of the magic town creatures with the power of the two might heroes which could happen as well on bigger maps when you start out as a Knight but conquer a neutral Warlock town switching to building them up.
Using magic with those Knights is not that disrupting, since the creatures are so much worse - early in the game HPs are so low that a Lightning Bolt is enough to disrupt them, and later the magic towns get the advantage of much better creatures.

So the question is: would it be possible to mod the game so that hero might stats are only added to friendly and neutral creatures, but not those of other towns?

Another possibility might be to mod some of the Hero skills that way that they give some advantage for certain creatures or towns. Navigation for the Sorceress, Pathfinding for Barbs and so on. This could be some additional creature growth, it could be a stat boost for a certain creature type or it could just be additional money for the owning player and a certain town type or a combination of it. It could be a lot of things, but the main question is what CAN be done?

Once the game is modded so that you can safely say that certain army types will always be led by certain hero types, things will be a lot easier to balance.

About the Bone Dragon Rush. This should be possible only on small maps on easy difficulty with no boundaries between players. On normal difficulty it's still possible on maps with easily accessible resources, but it does some not without a price and the other towns, while not building their level 7 will be able to build as well. Looking at the Necro creatures you have the disadvantage that you will have to leave your level 2 or 3 at home and that your creatures are fairly slow as well including the Bone Dragons, so the only way to get going is with the Vampire Lords or with the Bone Dragons OR with Skeletons and spells. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

[grobblewobble]

About the Bone Dragon Rush. This should be possible only on small maps on easy difficulty with no boundaries between players.

Just to be sure i just played a test game on "the other side" against the AI on impossible. Week 3 day 1 I had my 4 bone dragons, as well as 16 mummies, 7 vampires and 6 liches. The opponent had no giants yet, the best he had were mages. Which was to be expected. Of course against a human player I would likely have gathered less resources, but still. This was on impossible! There isn't much special about the map, except that it's quite rich.

A laboratory is easy to build, really. Getting 5 resources of every kind isn't so hard, it's much easier than getting 20 resources of one kind. Getting 10k gold is easy as well, with some treasure chests around. With a bit of luck, you can find an additional pile of sulfur or two for the mausoleum, trade for what you are still missing and you're settled.

Looking at the Necro creatures you have the disadvantage that you will have to leave your level 2 or 3 at home and that your creatures are fairly slow as well including the Bone Dragons, so the only way to get going is with the Vampire Lords or with the Bone Dragons OR with Skeletons and spells.

Well, yes. So we have a faction that's devastating on small, rich maps and weak on small, poor maps.

[Jolly Joker]

Where's your problem with that? Try Dominion on impossible and see what you can do there.
I should edit that. A serious MP map should be balanced so that difficulty levels play a role. An overabundance of money and resources makes no sense because the difficulty level gets unimportant. So you shouldn't base balancing considerations on badly constructed maps.

[grobblewobble]

Alright, this map is a bad example. But you don't need a map as rich as this one. If a map has a mine of every kind nearby, guarded by the usual level 1/2 monsters, and also has some random resource piles to be grabbed and some chests (not unusual by any means), building a laboratory in the second week is doable, even at impossible difficulty. If in your opinion maps like these are insuitable for serious MP play, you are excluding a whole lot of maps.
I'm not saying necro needs a big nerf or anything, just that a slight adjustment could help here.

[Jolly Joker]

How about a reduction of resource pile ranges? I always felt that they were too big and are just right now in H 5 because the piles have too much of an effect.
If you see how small the difference between diff levels actually is and how small income from mine and towns is the effect of those is too big anyway. A reduction of those a la H 5 would make a lot of sense - it had the added plus that you really COULD put something onto the map without disrupting everything.

[gravyluvr]

I still think the best way to start this is finding a way so that the might stats of a hero will only be added to their native creatures.

First, I don't think that is very possible - second - it changes the game too much and would ruin games with certain specific town types designed into the game.

Once the game is modded so that you can safely say that certain army types will always be led by certain hero types, things will be a lot easier to balance.

Yuck. The one great thing about HOMM is the distinct advantages and characteristics of each class (with the exception of the Wizard).

Warlock is Power MU w/scouting (Sauron / The Eye from LOTR)
Barbarian is the pathfinder (Genghis Khan)
Knight is the might lord (King Arthur)
Sorceress is the Smart Sailor (The Good Witch aka Hermione from Potter)
Necromancer is the - duh - necromancer (Dr. Death)
Wizard - tweener of Sorceress and Warlock (Gandalf)

The beauty of HOMM to be able to use any creatures with any heroes - do we really believe the Hydras like the Griffins more than the Rocs?

Besides - morale penalties are in place to keep the mixing to a minimum.

[Jolly Joker]

Damned if I know what you are talking about.