Only 4 resources. Good or bad?

[Adicto]

What’s the problem with shorter matches? When HoMM 5 came out years ago the community finally admitted that spending a whole evening playing a single 1vs1 match for just 1 big epic battle was fun no longer, so devs introduced simultaneous turns and duel mode. It helped but duel mode was an unfinished sh*t and full matches still took several hours, more than needed considering that we spend 90% of that time playing against the cpu controlled environment, even in multimplayer.

If Blackhole manages to shorten game length I’ll say “thank you”.

EDIT: I put HoMM 6 insted of HoMM 5

[Pitsu]

When HoMM 6 came out years ago ....

Meh?


What makes turns long are battles. In order shorten games and make them more fun they must replace player vs AI battles with player vs player battles. Dunno how it matters whether the battles are over crystals or crystals and mercury.

[SplinterHoMM]

I like and don't like it the same time..We'll see how it works, but now makes feel some loss.What i expected from H VI was to grow in depth and complexity(good way)
I think it will make early strategy more straightforward and mines more important.
The bad side is, if there is only one crystal mine in players area and it is guarded by dangerous neutrals, your economy will suffer more than in previous games.Also,as was noted before, less resources to trade for gold in late game is important, since its the only resource you're lacking then (except you're playing H IV Academy ).
Hope there will be more 'bank' locations and other resource generators in starting area to replace those 4 mines.

BTW: they sad you can sabotage enemy mines hawing your hero nearby (their production is stopped) and hack them to work for you by entering/standing on it (resources are generated for you until hero stays in).

[Adicto]

BTW: they sad you can sabotage enemy mines hawing your hero nearby (their production is stopped) and hack them to work for you by entering/standing on it (resources are generated for you until hero stays in).

Then that control zone thing is there for preventing players from doing the infamous hit & run mine stealing tactics. It sounds better than it seemed at first.

[Kosh]

My early impressions without any more information than what we have is that I need to wait for more information haha.

But so far some random thoughts/concerns/questions about this drastic change:

- Greatly reduced amount of mines on a map to flag seems likely now

- Possibly greater "resource costs" per unit (wood for archers?), significant amounts for T7 units? Likely affected by my first point on if they decrease or increase mine amounts on maps

EDIT- also I wonder if they will introduce a high/medium/low yield mine system? to add some strategy to which mines to take, fight over. Ie a "high yield" gold mine could give 1500, medium 1000, low yield 500? shmeh just thinkin out loud:)

- I will miss trading resources my army doesn't need for gold or other resources, esp on the Impossible difficulty settings in early game.

- I will also miss deciding which mine I should take with my limited forces early-mid game (hm crystal for those vampire lords, or mercury to get them dragons) etc.

- Not sure if I see this being more strategic. The "strategy" either way is to cap your opponents mines regardless if you need them or not - because if you don't, he does! Same exact 'strategy' is going to apply here. And as per my previous point, I think this actually makes for LESS strategy early game when deciding which mines to clear/cap for yourself.

- Not really a gameplay thought, but as a long time fan of the series, stepping so far back from the "normal" resources just seems kinda wrong to me. Maybe it's just a combination of too much change? I don't know. But less races, less resources, etc,. it's just certain things are expected when it comes to a HoMM game..

So we'll have to wait and see how it's all implemented. If they can make it work, in the end it is about quality > quantity (plus we all know they are holding back races for addons/expansions..).

I just hope this game still FEELS like a HoMM game when I can finally play it.

[vicheron]

I'm saying that the new gameplay mechanic would encourage people to send in heroes alone to flag enemy mines instead of just having secondary heroes follow a main hero and flag mines along the way. That doesn't work because it's too easy to defend your mines.

My understanding of the new system encourages taking the town then getting the mines if I understand it right which I probably don't.

It encourages getting mines before your opponent since the only way for your opponent to take those mines back is to take your town, which is much riskier than taking mines.

But the trade isn't worth it, you'll be able to take their small towns while their powerful hero will be able to take your big towns. Would you be willing to trade your capitol for three towns with only town halls and level 3 or 4 creature dwellings?

Would I make the trade no I'm not saying it's a choice if all you have are lower heroes to his high level one you do what you have to in order to win or at least try to.

But why would you put yourself in a position where you only have low level heroes?

But the risk is prohibitively high.

Offensive pushes do not lessen the ability to defend since there's no persistent fog of war and no quick alternate routes between castles. If I make a push and you try to take my castle, I can see you coming 5 turns in advance and unless you have me surrounded, there's only one route from your castle to mine.

My inability to make a decent example doesn't make the strategy bad. We just need to find someone better at explaining it than me. The key to it is any resource I have is a resource my opponent doesn't. Why would their only be on way between them that sounds boring I would hope for at least 2 hopefully more to keep you on your toes. Picture this hit and run tactics with a runner hero preferably with logistics against mines I always have 1 or 2 of these things running around grabbing resources at the start of game I just put them to use after that annoying the enemy. I really should have started with that. You're right the new mechanics relating to mines blows that right out of the water.

There are only a few routes between towns because that's the way the game is made. The only exceptions are maps that have one way monoliths next to towns.

This is not Starcraft where if I wanted to raid your base, I can sneak my troops around the edges of the map to attack you from an unexpected direction and it would only take me an extra minute or two. If I tried to move a hero around the entire map and attack you from the opposite direction, it would take me 10 turns and even then you would be able to see me coming since there's no persistent fog of war.

As for having a secondary hero grab resources, as I said before, everyone already does that. You do it because it saves your main hero's movement. The secondary hero is meant to move behind the main hero since if you have him/her move into enemy territory alone, you risk getting picked off by your opponent's main hero. The computer makes this mistake all the time, they send lone secondary heroes in to flag my mines, I kill them and basically get a free experience boost, and a few artifacts if I'm lucky.

[Ankhes]

So I would like to post my idea about resources and competitive gaming and if you are not interested you can skip this LONG post. Sorry for my English in advance but I hope you can understand what I wanted to say.

At first when I saw that there would be only one resource I couldn't figure it out how could it make the game more strategic and competitive because with the typical homm economy it would be like t3 structure cost 5 crystals t4 10 crystals t5 15 t6 20 and t7 30? It would lead to rather some weird races who gather 20 crystals first and it would be some breakthrough moments instead of interesting constant battles for crystals.

What I would love to see is some more encouragement to be offensive and here I think that it would be great not to make buildings super expensive when it comes to the crystals(but still differences between costs like building for best t4 unit would be cheaper) but make the later tier units cost a lot of crystals so for example t5 would cost x gold +crystal, t6 would cost x gold + 2 crystals and t7 x gold + 4 crystals) so it won't be enough to just tech and then you can camp but if u were to cut off from more than ur one crystal mine u would not be able to build as much units as ur opponent. It might lead to some interesting different openings dependable on maps, opponent race and scout - for example you scout your opponent has just made fast t5(he spent a lot of money and lost a lot of units to get crystal mine fast so instead of teching for example upgrade your t4 and push fast before he can build enough army.

So controlling map would be much more important because I think that in Homm series overall being agressive is not important that much because you can't really put enough pressure and controlling mines is not that important because once you build up your castle you don't rly need them(even the resources you need for t7 units are easily accessible via resource silo). Moreover the defending forces has huge edge - it is defending in the castle and even if not he can supply his army immediately after the population with additional resources. Even if you try to harass and weaken enemy army by attacking it and then running away to come with stronger forces its not gonna rly work because when you run you don't gain experience for battle(I think it should be changed) and you can't buy more forces than the population let you(here it might be interesting to add for example merc camp which would allow you to buy more units than population - but the units there would cost 1.5-2x the original cost so it would allow player who has advantage(controlling map, mines etc) could use it to make bigger army at really high price. Now he is limited to the population and it is really hard to beat the player who has basically the same army strength and is defending in his own castle).

When it comes to scout I think it is really cool that you can tell how advanced tech your opponent has but at the same time without fog of war it is kinda weird that once you scout opponent you know exactly what he is doing so I would like to see fog of war ONLY on castles so you will have to scout from time to time to see what your opponent is up to.

I don't really think these changes would affect players who likes to play large (I like to play them as well with friends and AI sometimes) large armies because I think it is even almost IMPOSSIBLE to force constant fight over resources on them because distance between players is too big to let anybody effectively stop your economy nad there would be probably enough crystal mines for everyone.

I would also love to see the possibilty to modify the game we want to play (kinda like in wog there were a lot of possibilities to modify mechanics) - so if we want we can turn off mercenary camps and creatures costing crystals(the way I said I would like to see), if we want we can remove level cap, if we want we can neglect randomization then there would be no weeks of archangel +5, pile of gold would give static average number like 700g, treasure chest static 1500g/1000xp and so on.

What do you guys think?

[ThunderTitan]

There are only a few routes between towns because that's the way the game is made. The only exceptions are maps that have one way monoliths next to towns.

Remember when this used to be dependant on the map and not just another "feature"...

[Ethric]

I liked the number of resources where they were. What needs careful thought and fine tuning is what you need them for and how much you need. Some towns needing lots of one or more exotic resources to access their top creatures and abilities with other towns needing less add to the strategy and diversity.

"Look to HoMM II" is still my story and I'm sticking to it.

[ThunderTitan]

"Look to HoMM II" is still my story and I'm sticking to it.

It's your 1 good story imo.

[Kalah]

Hmm ... The thought that strikes me is that "only" four resources could affect the game's diversity.

[vicheron]

Instead of scrapping the old resource system, they should build on it and keep adding new uses for the rare resources. That's they've done in every game.

In Heroes 1, rare resources were only used to build towns and recruit high level creatures.

Heroes 2 introduced trading posts where you could trade one resource for another or for gold.

Heroes 3 introduced artifact merchants where you could trade resources for artifacts.

Heroes 4: Winds of War introduced spell shops where you could buy spells with rare resources.

Heroes 5 added creature artifacts for Wizards that let you make mini-artifacts for Academy creatures.

Heroes 5: Hammers of Fate added Rune Magic that let Dwarven creatures get buffs during battle by spending rare resources.

They can just keep building on those ideas. They could add the ability to craft your own artifacts using rare resources. They can let you spend rare resources on war machines to enchant them and make them more powerful. They can allow you to spend rare resources to strengthen your castle's defenses. They could allow you to expend rare resources to get temporary production boosts in dwellings. They could allow you to spend rare resources at the mage guild to research spells. They could bring back altars and let your heroes sacrifice rare resources for blessings from the dragon gods. There's so much they can do to add more strategic depth in how players spend rare resources.

[Mirez]

I still think people are overreacting on the resources part. In heroes 5 there wasn't much strategy involved in your castle development thanks to the town point system... :\

I really hope they are reintroducing the requirement system so you can rush to a certain unit (heroes 3 efreet rush for example)

[konfeta]

It encourages getting mines before your opponent since the only way for your opponent to take those mines back is to take your town, which is much riskier than taking mines.

That's wonderful. Except it doesn't, because the whole "can't flag taken mines" thing depends on area of influence exerted by the town in question. I really doubt they would have the area of influence extend all the way to your opponent's mines, and if they are smart, they will allow shaping it in the map editor so we can have maps where castles are nearby without intersecting areas of influence

Instead of scrapping the old resource system, they should build on it and keep adding new uses for the rare resources. That's they've done in every game.

Perhaps. But before you do that, you probably want to cut down on the actual number of resource variants you have. After a certain point, this becomes irredeemably complex and a hell to balance.

There is just so much important crap tied to the traditional HoMM resource system that every addition forces you to consider the balance of utilizing resources for town development as opposed to new features. Throw in the typically highly random nature of HoMM, and something will break. I think that stripping down the complexity and rebuilding the new resource system from the ground up with new uses in mind would be the superior approach. Just tacking new uses on an old system is creating an nonviable monster that would choke any possible strategic expansion of the concept under balancing problems.

[Ryder]

Not happy with this decision at all.

[Elvin]

I have a hunch that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Controlling resources was important in previous heroes, your primary concern in first 2 weeks was flagging mines. But if the focus is not there anymore it stands to reason that they have other plans to spice up the adventure map.

[danijel1990]

I have a hunch that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Controlling resources was important in previous heroes, your primary concern in first 2 weeks was flagging mines. But if the focus is not there anymore it stands to reason that they have other plans to spice up the adventure map.

Exactly what I was thinking, they don't wanna reveal everything just yet.

[Ryder]

I've just had an idea and I dont even know if I like it but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

Why do mines last the entire game? Surely the resource would have to run out at some time. So my thought was, at the start of each game, the mine would have a random lifespan added to it. It might give the resource for 40 days, or it might for 100 days and then just cease giving resources. Maybe even turn into a haunted mine when the resources cease.

[SplinterHoMM]

...
Why do mines last the entire game? Surely the resource would have to run out at some time. So my thought was, at the start of each game, the mine would have a random lifespan added to it. It might give the resource for 40 days, or it might for 100 days and then just cease giving resources. Maybe even turn into a haunted mine when the resources cease.

Then it rather should turn into adventure grotto - similar that was in WOG.It has branches and anything can happen depending which way you turn.

[klaymen]

I've just had an idea and I dont even know if I like it but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

Why do mines last the entire game? Surely the resource would have to run out at some time. So my thought was, at the start of each game, the mine would have a random lifespan added to it. <snip>

Why do you want to turn HoMM into Warcraft? And even randomize the mine size?
No. Just no.