Economy in Heroes-IV

[okrane]

Great ideas all of them... me like

[Galactygon]

Why not have a lord start out with basic combat in addition to nobility and estates?

Hmm... perhaps Nobility could have a side effect of enhancing many all-around abilities at a limited manner - as in a Rennaisance man who happens to know a lot of lore.

A few side effects I am thinking of:

- As the educated elite, the hero levels up faster.

- GM Nobility might teach you *all* of the primary & secondary skills in the game at basic level, except for Charm, Necromancy, Sorcery, Summoning, and Resurrection. These skills would be "hidden", and would not take up skill slots, as well as level-ups in case the hero wishes to "re-learn" a "hidden" skill.

- GM Nobility might allow the hero to learn 7 primary skills rather than the standard 5.

-Galactygon

[okrane]

I agree with the bonus experience gain... that could be useful.. the rest is just too complicated.

Maybe a lord could receive experience points when collecting stuff, falgging mines, building things in his town etc..

[ThunderTitan]

How about if GM Nob allows you to teach other heroes the basic secondary skills you have ala Scholar besides the extra exp?

[Siegfried]

I agree with the bonus experience gain... that could be useful.. the rest is just too complicated.

Maybe a lord could receive experience points when collecting stuff, falgging mines, building things in his town etc..

What i'd like would be:

Nobility + mining: exp by flagging mines
Nobility + estates: exp by building in town
Nobility + diplomacy: exp from fleeing stacks (similar to stealth, where the hero gets exp from bypassing stacks)

[Meandor]

Nobility + mining: exp by flagging mines
Nobility + estates: exp by building in town
Nobility + diplomacy: exp from fleeing stacks (similar to stealth, where the hero gets exp from bypassing stacks)

Imho this and starting with basic combat would fix Lord.

[Siegfried]

I'm not sure if initial combat skill would be necessary. Combat is useful, no doubt. But the game itself always presses towards combat. So a lord, who gains exp slightly faster than others probably gets combat sooner than others. So it should not be necessary to initally give that to the lord.

[Black Ghost]

Welcome, nice to be back after a long period of time...

Recently having my exams completed I’ve turned to play all h4 campaigns, scenarios and fan-made maps. I’ve started considering the way of improving economy since having “h2-week” and remembering what Dalai mentioned: economy isnt’ the strongest side of h4 compared to previous games.

1) The first thing to be mentioned is marketplace (AI can’t use it), which ruins economy completely (let alone merchant guild on the adv. map): too cheap resources. IMO prices should go towards h1-3 marketplaces, so that:

ore/wood – ore/wood (5=1); ore/wood – rare res. (10=1); ore/wood – gold (1=20)
rare res. – ore/wood (3=1); rare res. – rare res. (5=1); rare res. – gold (1=50)
gold - ore/wood (400=1); gold - rare res. (1000=1)

Merchant Guild would be cheaper:
ore/wood – ore/wood (3=1); ore/wood – rare res. (6=1); ore/wood – gold (1=25)
rare res. – ore/wood (3=2); rare res. – rare res. (3=1); rare res. – gold (1=65)
gold - ore/wood (275=1); gold - rare res. (650=1)

2) Secondly, town’s economy should be enhanced. Important is also defining here:
village: Village Hall, Prison & Dwelling lev1
town: Fort, Town Hall, Prison, Tavern, Dwelling lev1, Dwelling lev1 & Magic Guild lev1

Truly H3 towns produced too much gold, but I suppose that max 1250/d would be fair under following conditions:

Village Hall – no gold
requires: -
+500gold/d

Town Hall – 2500, 10w, 10o
requires – Village Hall, Fort
+1000gold/d

City Hall – 2500, 5w, 5o, 3 csmg
requires – Town Hall, Citadel
+1250gold/d


Fort – 5000, 20w, 20o
requires: Village Hall

Citadel – 3000, 5w, 5o
requires – Fort, Town Hall

Castle – 4000, 10w, 10o
requires – Citadel, City Hall

IMO having villages with only upgraded City Hall giving +1000/d doesn’t stress to search for gold-mines & waterwheels or to send “scouts” picking resource piles. Btw. building Castle in a place with only Village Hall is silly, as such a powerful fortification needs normally only City with many citizens.

3) As for Lord I’d weaken Estates to: 75,150,225,300,375/d +10%/lev for B,A,E,M,GM. At this rate 10lev E sitting only in town produces 450/d. To that moment other players may find gold-giving artifacts or mines so its not overpowered. Besides 4/6 factions are able to hire Lord so not only Order may enjoy Estate’s boost.

4) Moreover, creature banks should be redwelled at full, as capturing such one with 4-7 weak units and getting normal reward is more than cheat.

5) Finally, Treasury in Academy should work as additional B.Estates and only if the town had a governour (75/d +10%/governour's lev)

[Chorus]

What I would like to see most regarding the economy is some ultra-expensive items or dwellings to soak up resources later in the game. I've found that once my town is built up, I soon have far more resources than I need.

I remember seeing a "funny" recycle bin, but maybe that's not a bad idea! Is there any way to just assign a count to the items you deliver to the pawn shop and then reward the seller with a choice of either gold or experience?

Potion = 100GP or 50XP
Item = 200GP or 100XP
Minor = 500GP or 250XP
Major = 1000GP or 500XP
Relic = 5000GP or 1000XP

[...]

This might also allow someone to resource pile items into cheap items that they would then trade for XP but at that point if they have that much cash then they are probably in either mop up or one obelisk away from finding the grail. What would be the harm?

Dumping items for experience would certainly clean up the inventory. A few comments:

• 1. Players may accidentally sell off a (crucial) quest item.
  2. Players might abuse it. Buy a bunch of items at the blacksmith then trade them for experience to jack up heroes. I'd hate to be incentivized to buy experience for cheap because then playing the game becomes a timesink of non-heroic activity. The AI would never keep up. Low sell rates as Gravyluvr describes would be pretty pointless for powerful heroes later in the game. High rates lead to comment 4.
  3. It may be easier to allow the player to do a direct gold for experience trade. In terms of Heroes economics, experience is the most precious commodity.
  4. The problem remains, though, that the player who is already winning could snowball to victory with "bought" heroes. This could be mitigated depending on the system's implementation, e.g. charging the player a one-time 100,000 gold per level might do it - a super Tree of Knowledge.
  5. Consider different effects for SP vs. MP. In SP, we can get long drawn-out maps where the player is overloaded with resources, so allowing it to buy superheroes isn't so bad. In MP, we get the snowballing effect for the winner.

One idea to make Nobility more effective in the economic realm is to link Nobility levels with better marketplace exchange rates. This could be abused with multiple Nobility heroes, so either their number would have to be limited somehow or only the best hero with the highest Nobility would affect the exchange rates. At least this gives the player some incentive to hire a Lord.



Later Thoughts:
Actually, Gravyluvr's idea has already been done before. Recall the Altar of Sacrifice from Heroes 3. Good heroes could dump their artifacts on it; evil heroes could tie down their creatures; neutral heroes could do both. Sacrificing artifacts for experience gave good heroes a pittance, even relics were only minimally helpful. By contrast, creature sacrificing could allow evil heroes to become extraordinarily powerful because they were only limited by time (weekly creature growth) and gold (to buy the creatures). Essentially, the evil heroes could transform gold into experience. If I recall, the interface was fairly intuitive.

There are problems with implementing something like this for EQ:

• 1. How to differentiate good/neutral/evil heroes. What about crossovers, e.g. Heretics (Life + Chaos)? One thing Heroes IV did well was to show that the alignments themselves weren't good or evil but that they were simply opposed to one another and they each contained good/evil within them.
  2. Unequal micromanagement. Good players spend more time ferrying artifacts and potions to the "Altar" than Evil players do ferrying creatures.
  3. All other problems listed above.

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

I've though of something. How about troops all having a maintanance cost, so they extract gold from your pool every day.

On the other hand, one can indefinately invest in towns, making them produce more gold after a period of time.

If you fail to mantain peace and harmony (ie your town is besieged) then your not established investments are lost.

So you can either recruit creatures with one's gold and forfeit your capacity to support a larger army later, or the other way around.

Another possibility would be to have a maximum population of each creature.

So there would be a limit on the total number of say dwarves that you can recruit.

One could invest in increasing the population of a creature, by converting your current stored creatures.

This would thus increase the rate at which they grow.

The total population would be controlled by the total wealth.

[sirxenofex]

I think we should make a summary of what the problem is and what can be solved by the mod of Equilibris and what can not be solved here.

The economy in Heroes 4 is weaker than the previous ones and also Heroes 5 indeed. But like Dalai said, Heroes 4 put more emphasis on heroes, not economy. We are here to talk about some improvements on the present Heroes 4, so any radical changes are not appropriate here.

Actually, the economy now is just OK. In other words, its hard to change. Players complain about the economy in Heroes 4 because its significant differences from other heroes games: the town hall's income is vastly reduced, the effect of marketplace is vastly increased as well, and then, the town buildings become much less than before. The decrease of the town hall's income can be offset by the increase of the effect of marketplace and the decrease of the town buildings in number. In Heroes 3, resources are resources. But in Heroes 4, resources are also gold. Marketplace is frequently used to trade for desired resources or to sell resources for gold to buy creatures. The three changes are tied together so we can not just change one or two of them. It's hard to add buildings into towns, so it's hard to change.

Another difference from Heroes 3 is the difference between Capitol and normal towns. In Heroes 3, selling resources for gold is not efficient so the gold income is mostly from direct sources: town halls, gold mines, heroes' ability and artifacts. The most of all is from town halls. One player can own only one capitol which produces 4000 gold/day, while the other normal towns only have 2000/day. With 4000 gold/day, it is possible to recruit all the creatures from a town having its castle and all the creature dwellings built. It's obvious that 2000 gold/day towns can't. When we have more than one towns, we must choose among the towns or creatures. In Heroes 4, the town hall's income is far not enough. We are forced to sell resources or capture gold mines. There are no difference between having only one town and multiple towns, for the gold income from towns are only a small portion of the total.

[okrane]

I agree... I have no problems with the economy in Heroes 4 and I don't think any drastic changes should be made.

[csarmi]

Problem is town hall and such pay back insanely slowly. 15 days or so? Come on, game won't even last that long...

[darknessfood]

Problem is town hall and such pay back insanely slowly. 15 days or so? Come on, game won't even last that long...

Mwoah, i think that's ok... No problems there!

[okrane]

Then lower its cost

[dD_ShockTrooper]

Perhaps to fix the endgame economy, creature growth could scale based on how much time has passed in game. For example, base creature growth could increase by 50% for every month that has passed (obviously have a rolling increase rather than a sudden jump). This additional time based creature growth should still be affected by things like nobility and breeding pens in order to not render them redundant later on. Perhaps lower level creatures could have a higher growth rate increase as the game continues to make them less useless in the lategame?

Also, heroes purchased later in the game should be given bonus starting exp based on how many days have passed, so right from when you purchase them they gain a few levels. Obviously, the cost of the heroes in the tavern would have to continue to increase to match this starting XP.

Finally, I'm not sure how viable this would be to implement given there is nothing like it in the actual game, but perhaps there could be a way to 'sacrifice' certain creatures in town to activate effects similar to those mentioned earlier; like sending ghosts/vampires/bandits via caravan to harrass an enemy's town and reduce its economy or growth rate, or deploying leprecauns/peasants/dwarves to increase your town's income or output of certain mines etc, sending pirates/bandits to areas of the map to steal money and generate revenue, using satyrs to increase creature growth. All of these things would permanently remove the creatures used to grant a small temporary bonus that last for a week or two (or large bonus if you use an army of them).

Not sure how feasible these would be in the H4 world or how game changing they'll be, but you wanted economy related suggestions and thats all I can think of.