Heroes 3 fan-made balance patch (mod) updated!

[Akingboy]

Very good!

I read bit about changes and thought this

Learning
From 5% 10% 15% to 15% 30% 45%
Are you sure of this? Sounds really big change. Its over double to original. I ofc might be wrong but sounds too big to me. I really am not the right guy to judge your changes you have done so awesome job there but just asking what you think about that Learning yourself?

About balancing conflux I suggest you to make Earth/Magma elemental better. They are worst lvl 3 class me and my friend can think of And maybe buff fires dmg by 1 or 2. What you think of the cost of psychic elemental? I think it should be lowered a bit. The building or upgrade or the unit itself. I dont know. But somethings too expensive in them (maybe)

EDIT: We thought also that phoenix must be better. I know they have reincarnation thing but if they die they most likely (80% certain) die again. So it doesn't help a lot. Maybe increase their HP?

Gr.
Akingboy

[BAD23ro]

[UndeadHalfOrc]

About Learning:

A long time ago most experts (Jolly Joker wrote a very nice and long essay, I'll try to find it) agreed that Learning, as it is at 5%/10%/15%, is not only the worst skill, but completely counter-productive, because you accumulate experience to LEARN skills, and Learning steals one of your valuable slots, and those 3 levels where you spent a Sec. Skill selection on Learning could have been spent on something better.

Further, the experience required to level up gets exponentially higher, so your Expert Learner (as it was at 15%) will have AT MOST one level over an otherwise equivalent hero, and this hero will have spent his points on something more useful like Archery or Offense, etc.

With a 45% value, I'm hoping your hero will have 2-3 levels higher than average, and while this still won't compensate for the loss of a potential secondary skill, it will give you more primary skill points from those extra levels.


About changing the stats of Air/Water/Fire/Earth elemental:

Remember that there are level 5 spells that conjure the basic version of those units. It's a big mess to balance both the Conflux town, and the summoning spells at the same time.

And...

I really am not the right guy to judge your changes

Not true at all... anybody who spends time playing Heroes 3 has a valid opinion that is as good as mine

[Akingboy]

Ok got your point and now it actually seems pretty well balanced now ^^
You dont need to find that essay

Gonna test your patch now. Im so excited.
Its great that people respect good old games like this and still try making it better. You have putten lots of effort on this mod.

GL with the conflux balancing. Its bit messy

EDIT: I saw I get 47 imps per week. Are you sure this isn't too much? Imps are my best units now

[Zubbus]

Everyone's opinion matters to me, and it isn't relevant to me whether you plan to use the patch or not.

My only concern is to achieve perfect balance, and I may be wrong in some things. That's why I'm looking for feedback, so people can point out my own mistakes.

If you say so
If it's your mod, you mod it the way you like. You are not right or wrong either way.
But for me personally, there are quite a few units that I don't feel need tweaked at all.
Centaurs are already some of the best lv 1s out there. Gold for Gold Pikemen pwns Archangels in like 2 turns. (I know you put up the cost of Pikies) but Centaurs aren't far behind. They make up with more speed.

Likewise some units are by nature more attack oriented. Like all the 2-attack units and most of the no-retal units. Their damage output already give you more than your money's worth. Their defense is supposed to be their weakness. If you raise their defense as well, they're simply too overpowered. Yes, I'm talking about Marksmen.

I know they have abysmal defences, but they are shooters, so as long as you keep enemies away, they are already ripping holes. I know they are much weaker than Grand Elves, in every way, but Rampart only has 1 shooter, where Castle has 2, and Castle is already quite powerful overall.
So Marksmen may not be the best of the best, but they are already very practical and very powerful.

Fortress is supposed to function well at lower levels, but Lizard Warriors already don't compare to Marksmen (Marksmen win due to going first) nor Gnolls to Halberdiers, so Castle already outperform Fortress at both low and high levels. For armies that are already stronger than most others, nothing really needs boosting.

Each army has 7 unit types and they're supposed to have different strengths and weaknesses. So an army may have stronger shooters but weaker flyers. If you flatten all of them out then Unicorns, Black Knights and Champions would be identical and so would Black, Gold and Ghost Dragons.

At the risk of being too blunt, if you really want perfect balance, you might as well just play chess

Basically, I feel those that really need tweaking are armies that are too weak (inferno and fortress) and armies that are too strong (castle and conflux).

[Corbon]

Hello,

first of all sorry for bumping a semi-old threat, but it's the one that caught my attention and brought me here

I am currently fiddling around with the stats and one of my main concern is to get Conflux on an even level with the other towns, which means that Lv 2 needs a good nerf, Lv 3-4 some minor fixes and Lv 5 some drastic buffs. And by tuning those elementals, the Summon Spells need a revamp too.

These are the current stats for my unupgraded elementals.

Air: 8 Atk, 8 Def, 20 HP, 2-6 Dmg, 7 Spd, 175 Gold
Water: 9 Atk, 9 Def, 25 HP, 3-7 Dmg, 5 Spd, 225 Gold
Fire: 10 Atk, 9 Def, 35 HP, 6-8 Dmg, 6 Spd, 300 Gold
Earth: 11 Atk, 11 Def, 50 HP, 8-12 Dmg, 4 Spd, 400 Gold

Obviously, if you have the choice, summoning Earth would always be the best option, regardless of unit speed. In order to balance this, I modified the amount of elementals summoned per Power.

Untrained / Basic: 4 Air, 3 Water, 2 Fire, 1 Earth
Advanced: 5 Air, 4 Water, 3 Fire, 2 Earth
Expert: 6 Air, 5 Water, 4 Fire, 3 Earth

Now, by multiplying the amount of HP and Damage at a given Level reveals that at Untrained / Basic, Air will be the best option. On Advanced it's almost even and on Expert, Earth will still be the best choice, though Fire is never a bad cast at any Level, especially regarding the unit's speed of 6.

Here's a "net gain" overview.

Untrained / Basic
4 Air: 80 HP, 16 Dmg, 700 Gold (winner)
3 Water: 75 HP, 15 Dmg, 675 Gold
2 Fire: 70 HP, 14 Dmg, 600 Gold
1 Earth: 50 HP, 10 Dmg, 400 Gold

Advanced
5 Air: 100 HP, 20 Dmg, 875 Gold
4 Water: 100 HP, 20 Dmg, 900 Gold
3 Fire: 105 HP, 21 Dmg, 900 Gold (winner)
2 Earth: 100 HP, 20 Dmg, 800 Gold

Expert
6 Air: 120 HP, 24 Dmg, 1050 Gold
5 Water: 125 HP, 25 Dmg, 1125 Gold
4 Fire: 140 HP, 28 Dmg, 1200 Gold
3 Earth: 150 HP, 30 Dmg, 1200 Gold (winner)

Now since that is a good bit more powerful than the original Summon at Expert, I am currently pondering over the MP cost. Currently 40/32.

The upgrades have been adjusted accordingly to the fixes, which finally turns Magma Elementals into a formidable tank/guard unit, albeit a bit slower than before (5 Speed).

Of course, the remaining Conflux units and heroes required some overhaul too. Elementalists for example now start as 0 0 3 2 (same as Warlock).

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Nice work Corbon...

Now all we need, besides incorporating these conflux changes in my patch, is SERIOUS multiplayer testing... ( I hardly even tried conflux since I disable it most of the time)

[Corbon]

I am a 100% Solo player myself, so any changes done to balance PvE might have very different effects on PvP games (yes I'v been playing WoW for too long).

For example, my current skellies have 8 HP, that's a 33% increase (Warrior Def lowered by 1), obviously a huge buff for Necromancy but the AI won't be able to fully exploit it (hiring Tower heroes and trashing Gremlins etc.). In the same way, a Warlock with Expert Int might dominate much stronger opponents (troops-wise) with Summon XXX Elementals because he can simply afford it.

[Suleman]

The new version's link doesn't work. Can you reupload it?

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Sorry, I thought I had edited my post to correctly point to the newer version. It should work now.

[mr.hackcrag]

How did you manage to change secondary skills?

[UndeadHalfOrc]

hex-edited the ICD file.

[Corbon]

There's something weird about Expert Haste. Whenever I cast it, slower units will get a bigger speed bonus than faster units. For example, Master Gremlins get a +8 Speed (5 to 13), while Titans only get +5 Speed (11 to 18). Is that intended? Maybe it's affected by +Speed Artifacts.

[Jolly Joker]

Looks like you are playing with Cyra.

[Corbon]

True dat. I forgot that lower creatures receive a bigger bonus.

[Yurian Stonebow]

UHO, I'm sorry if this has been proposed before but I think that we could afford to raise spell points needed to cast Teleport on Advanced and Expert levels. I'm not sure on the presice numbers, but the current figures reduce the cost too much. This is especially true when you have Mages/Archmages in your army. Just a suggestion, but it would be cool if you could take this idea into consideration.



Yurian

[UndeadHalfOrc]

About Teleport: I already did that Yurian, one of the first things I did. I simply did not document spell point changes, that and probabilities change would have taken too large of a log file.

I did point out in my log file about the general spell point increase of Mass Spells ( an idea I blatantly stole from JJ almost a decade ago), but that's it.

[Jolly Joker]

I don't think it's stealing when you pick up ideas that are freely und publicly exchanged, but still thank you very much for crediting me.

[Yurian Stonebow]

Good to hear that the Teleport spell received additional balancing. I always privately thought that the amount of spell points needed to cast the spell was way too low on Advanced and Expert changes.

As for it being an undocumented change, well, I can say that it's been fun trying to figure those out in official patches (as they put it: "and many more"). In other words, perfectionist map makers and Heroes fans such as myself would probably ducument every change they've made but this is rather pedantic and therefore I wouldn't encourage others to do so. You're doing a good work and great service to Heroes fans by the means of your personal patch. Keep the good stuff coming. And thanks especially for the Logistics, Behemoth and Cyclops changes !



Yurian

[Corbon]

There's still some oddity with the Fight Value which I don't get.

Air Elemental: 324
Storm Elemental: 324

Water Elemental: 315
Ice Elemental: 315

However, any even matchup of Air vs Storm should result in a Storm win, ditto for Water vs Ice. I assume that you didn't change any value in your patch. It seems to ignore speed and certain abilities like shooting and melee penalty.

Edit: The original fight value also ignores double shot (Marksmen and Grand Elves having the same value as Archers adn Wood Elves) but NOT double strike (Crusader, Wolf Raider).