What HoMM Needs

[mr.hackcrag]

The Age of Wonders Adjacent Attack Rule that lets multiple heroes/armies participate in combat. This would do wonders for fixing the "build one SUPERHERO" aspect of the game. Adventure map play might be improved too. Obviously, the battle field would scale depending on how many armies are participating in battle.

[Kristo]

A three- or four-way battlefield sounds interesting. I'm sure there are lots of things that would need to be worked out, but it could be a fun mechanic. FWIW, I've found the easiest way to avoid superhero-itis is to play bigger maps. A single hero can't be everywhere at once, so you naturally need two or three strong heroes to do well.

[Blocks100]

The Total War series did this of course to decent effect, but how would it work in a pure turn-based grid combat set up? Even if the map did try to scale to accomodate multiple armies, your'e still left with a square grid - and placement of rival armies would still end up with opposition units artificially placed 'cheek to jowel' on a grid set up. How exactly did it work in AoW, did other armies 'arrive' on a later turn?

I'm not knocking the idea though - I think it's the best method I've heard of yet to remedy the SUPER HERO problem that's always plagued the series. But let's face it, Blackhole can't even muster enough energy to get town screens right, never mind multiple army combat!

[XEL II]

HoMM (and MM in general) needs to return to its root in the storyline part, i.e. bring back the excellent original Might and Magic universe.

[mr.hackcrag]

FWIW, I've found the easiest way to avoid superhero-itis is to play bigger maps. A single hero can't be everywhere at once, so you naturally need two or three strong heroes to do well.

I think that's why they created the really lame dimension door and town portal spells. And now with H6, every town will have a town portal building allowing your superhero to warp across the map to show everyone why he is a superhero and other heroes are just garbage collectors (although with area of control, that job may become more obsolete too.)

Even if the map did try to scale to accomodate multiple armies, your'e still left with a square grid - and placement of rival armies would still end up with opposition units artificially placed 'cheek to jowel' on a grid set up. How exactly did it work in AoW, did other armies 'arrive' on a later turn?

H5 and H6 are kind of funny because they have the armies set up left to right as if it was supposed to be 2D (which ain't a bad idea), but everything else is 3D. AOW did have hexes and armies could start from all directions, depending on where they were on the adventure map.

[Torur]

I always liked that about AoW, your armies had a limit of 8 units so you where forced to build many armies. And all depending on where on the adventure map you and your enemies where standing, determened how you would face each other on the battlefield.
But AoW did'nt stack your units. You had 1 unit with x amount of HP, an when that was gone your unit died. In HoMM you stack units, and that makes the idea hard to implement, as instead of having 2 or 3 armies with x amount of units, you just stack them all in one armie. + your units in AoW got exp and lvl from battles, and you heroes where also a part of the fight, and less powerfull overall compared to a hero in HoMM.

Meh, just my take on it.

[mr.hackcrag]

Maybe a way to work with the stacking is to give heroes less creature slots for units or add a statistic that determines how big of an army a hero can lead?

It works nicely without modification when you have different factions under your control (since you can't fit in all the units from multiple factions).

As for heroes, a hero's attack and defense stat should only affect the army they are leading and not stack between all units on their team.

Maybe have a rule that when a hero loses all it's units in combat, it can't cast any more spells/abilities (but that might be unecessary)? Obviously, defeated hero's would still get the tavern treatment regardless of the outcome of the battle.

[jeff]

It needs an easy to use campaign editor like the one in Heroes IV.

[ThunderTitan]

The Age of Wonders Adjacent Attack Rule that lets multiple heroes/armies participate in combat. This would do wonders for fixing the "build one SUPERHERO" aspect of the game. Adventure map play might be improved too. Obviously, the battle field would scale depending on how many armies are participating in battle.

So what it needs is to become a totally different game?

[mr.hackcrag]

Sure, why not

[Torur]

So what it needs is to become a totally different game?

Dont know if it will be such a different game, all in all. But it would make an interesting change.

Maybe a way to work with the stacking is to give heroes less creature slots for units or add a statistic that determines how big of an army a hero can lead?

The Leadership point system used in Kings Bounty might be an option. There you had a unit cap based on your leadership points, and when you lvl up you could often decide if you wanted to boost your leadership points and increase army size or increase some kind of stat, boosting you army's durability, attack, defence, spell power or other.
That would put a cap on your army and force you to build more than one strong hero. And if the game was well balanced, you would be forced to mix both your herose with both might and magic.

[ThunderTitan]

The Leadership point system used in Kings Bounty might be an option. There you had a unit cap based on your leadership points, and when you lvl up you could often decide if you wanted to boost your leadership points and increase army size or increase some kind of stat, boosting you army's durability, attack, defence, spell power or other.
That would put a cap on your army and force you to build more than one strong hero. And if the game was well balanced, you would be forced to mix both your heroes with both might and magic.

Yeah, it would also mean that if my hero is a level or two behind (because i decided to focus more on my economy and getting extra creatures, or the other guy ha an extra XP shrine) i'd also have less creatures... thus i'd be at an even bigger disadvantage (and i couldn't have used the extra creatures so there's a viable strategy gone).

Sure, why not

Because then why not just use a new IP while you're at it... or make a spin off...

[Kristo]

The trick to balancing a Leadership attribute is ensuring that it pays off to not always choose a bigger army. That's a hard problem. Leadership works in King's Bounty because you have a single hero. It's a way to throttle the player's progress through the game. In a multiple hero game I think it just becomes more of a micromanagement problem. I might need two or three heroes to control the same area whereas now I can just use one.

He who gets there first with the most, wins. That fact remains even if Leadership is capping your hero's army size. While you'd no longer have one superhero, the dominant strategy would still be to have a super army. And you'd have to work harder to keep all the heroes together. You can try this now, in fact. Split your troops between a few heroes and move them around together. Combine them into one before attacking.

Try some open free-for-all maps against lots of opponents. You'll be under attack from two or three directions at once. A single superhero won't be good enough to survive.

[ThunderTitan]

The trick to balancing a Leadership attribute is ensuring that it pays off to not always choose a bigger army.

Yeah, but that still runs into the problem of a higher level hero always having an advantage (ignoring bad builds) no matter what (as he'd have extra points to put into something)

[mr.hackcrag]

Because then why not just use a new IP while you're at it... or make a spin off...

I thought you were being sarcastic before. Well, so many aspects in these games are already copied off other things. It's just taking good ideas and building them.

Yeah, it would also mean that if my hero is a level or two behind (because i decided to focus more on my economy and getting extra creatures, or the other guy ha an extra XP shrine) i'd also have less creatures... thus i'd be at an even bigger disadvantage (and i couldn't have used the extra creatures so there's a viable strategy gone).

You would need another hero to put in the extra creatures. But I see what you mean. Your troops would still be split up if they were of the same faction and that could be bad. But it's still hard to say for sure without actually playing under these conditions.

Yeah, but that still runs into the problem of a higher level hero always having an advantage (ignoring bad builds) no matter what (as he'd have extra points to put into something)

That's still true now.

He who gets there first with the most, wins. That fact remains even if Leadership is capping your hero's army size. While you'd no longer have one superhero, the dominant strategy would still be to have a super army.

Of course you need a super army, that's how you win in this game. The point was about the gameplay aspects that would change and might be improved to create a better homm experience.

And you'd have to work harder to keep all the heroes together. You can try this now, in fact. Split your troops between a few heroes and move them around together. Combine them into one before attacking.

Just to reiterate, don't forget about holistic gameplay aspects. Splitting and combinging is definitely not the same as what I'm talking about. It ignores building and having more than one hero in combat, managing multiple armies of different factions that normally wouldn't fit into one hero's slots, the different way adventure map action might play to name just a few.

[ThunderTitan]

I thought you were being sarcastic before. Well, so many aspects in these games are already copied off other things. It's just taking good ideas and building them.

But most of those ideas are adapted to fit the way heroes plays... while adjacent battles like that would change the whole paradigm of the game, or be very broken...

Yeah, but that still runs into the problem of a higher level hero always having an advantage (ignoring bad builds) no matter what (as he'd have extra points to put into something)

That's still true now.

But it can be overcome by having more creatures then the higher lvl enemy (let say he got more XP by fighting more, and losing more units, or by picking XP over Gold)... while under the leadership system that can't happen...

And i'm talking on a purely theoretical level, totally ignoring the actual way balance dictates what situations actually have a high chance to occur... the current system was less limitations and could be balanced in more diverse ways... even if it's not.

[Torur]

The trick to balancing a Leadership attribute is ensuring that it pays off to not always choose a bigger army.

Yeah, but that still runs into the problem of a higher level hero always having an advantage (ignoring bad builds) no matter what (as he'd have extra points to put into something)

I dont really agree. Cause the point of the system is that if someone is out leveling you, you counter with more hero's and larger armies at that.

Thunder Titan said

But it can be overcome by having more creatures then the higher lvl enemy (let say he got more XP by fighting more, and losing more units, or by picking XP over Gold)... while under the leadership system that can't happen...

I guess I say the same thing as you say here. I left my com on, so I hadnt seen the new posts. Still, you counter a hero outleveling you in the same way, you're just forced to use more heroes.

[ThunderTitan]

I dont really agree. Cause the point of the system is that if someone is out leveling you, you counter with more hero's and larger armies at that.

....

I guess I say the same thing as you say here. I left my com on, so I hadnt seen the new posts. Still, you counter a hero outleveling you in the same way, you're just forced to use more heroes.

And have them near your main all the time?! Seems rather impractical, and it would just be easier to eliminate stacks altogether...

[mr.hackcrag]

eliminate stacks altogether...

How do you think about that?

[Torur]

ThunderTitan

And have them near your main all the time?! Seems rather impractical, and it would just be easier to eliminate stacks altogether...

The point with this system is that you won't be able to have just one main hero. You'll have to buff up the rest aswell.

Say if a "Super hero" attacks. Which would be better. One High level hero against 3 mid level heroes? He might out do them 1v1 both in unit numbers and spells. But when 3 heroes are casting and commanding you are just out gunned.