Might & Magic: Heroes 5.5 (unofficial)

[Kalah]

I might think about re-arranging later, but I always want a separate forum for the latest game in the series so that it is easy to find for new players. The H6 forum never became very active, so I didn't want a separate forum for that anymore.

I'm getting the sense that this H5.5 thing might need a separate sub-forum like WoG and Equlibris have. What do you guys think?

[magnomagus]

Hi, Kalah, normally I would say great, but I don't think the mod (actually H5 in general) has enough traction on CH. According to google activity is currently: 1. HC, 2. Facebook, 3. Moddb, 4. GOG, 5 Steam, 6 Celestialheavens. This is also why i get sloppy checking this thread sometimes.

If you are interested in improving activity concerning old games, my advice would be to start with better news coverage. The CH news page seems to have only concern for H7 news (and fewer and fewer people care about that every day). H5.5 was not posted, neither was the HOTA update, VCMI update or the polish Forge Town and probably a bunch of fan work I forget. If there are not enough mouse-clicks modders move to other communities and the lurkers go with them!

[Panda Tar]

Hear, hear.

[Kalah]

@magnomagus: thanks for the advice; I'd like to have a more active news section but sadly I'm unable to pay close attention to the gaming community these days due to my real-life commitments, and the news are therefore usually limited to tips I get.

The forum on the other hand more or less runs itself. Still, since it took 3 days for anyone to notice my post here you're probably right that the activity level doesn't warrant a separate subforum.

[Yurian Stonebow]

H5.5 was not posted, neither was the HOTA update, VCMI update or the polish Forge Town and probably a bunch of fan work I forget.

Talking about a missed opportunity, those Sighisoara guys haven't updated their thread since Last Christmas. Of course their work is nowhere near as famous as that of the others listed here, but still they could have posted something. (not that they are any news, anyways)

How is it that CH missed the announcement of the only Heroes III faction that actually features a female unit with fully exposed breasts?

[magnomagus]

We are now at RC8 with new in-game skillwheel:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/might-magic-h ... /downloads

[parcaleste]

The in-game Skill Tree looks beautiful now.

But I think there is a bug/glitch with the Barbarian branch - each of the classes development is exactly the same.

[magnomagus]

This issue has now been taken care of in new release RC8b

[cjlee]

OK, this is a bit of a necropost, but I seem to have found a game breaking bug in H5.5.

I can't get past the fifth map of campaign 1 of Heroes V vanilla. I did not apply any custom settings or extra mods. Basically just installed H5.5 straight out of the box and ran it on Heroes TOTE v3.1.

I recall that some people had difficulty getting this map to end back before 5.5 came out. But IIRC, their problem was due to attacking, and winning, against the red town in the SE. This was not expected by gamemakers, so anyone who defeated the red town could not proceed after that. I didn't do it; I am not such a great player.

Any advice would be appreciated. Or if you can post savegames from the H5.5 campaign so that I can try restarting the game at later points, that would also be appreciated! I really would like to play H5 campaigns again on the 5.5 mod!

[parcaleste]

I am still keep getting this whenever I install, reinstall or whatever the mod:


The old Editor is working fine, but the new one - tsk.

[cjlee]

Just a bit more feedback for Magnomagus:

Have you guys ever considered adding a Flanking or Take Cover ability to H5.5?

Many things about H7 were lousy, but they got some things right also. Two ideas I put up for your consideration are:

Flanking

and

Taking Cover behind obstacles.

I suspect that coding these might not be difficult. H5 has probably hard coded all units on the same side to face the same direction. So to do full flanking, could be any attack that comes from the square directly opposite the facing direction.

For Taking Cover, I notice that the game is aware of castle walls. When there is a breach, shooting through the breach incurs only the normal ranged penalty if any. Ranged attackers that are not lined up with the breach continue to get penalized. Maybe stones and other obstacles on the battlefield can also be redefined as mini castle walls. Of course magic attacks like the Magi's attack will not be affected.

Ultimately the H5.5 team has given H5 a new lease of life for maybe another 10 years. With the entire Heroes franchise in abeyance now thanks to Ubisoft, I think it is safe to say that any effort spent in improving H5.5 will be good for another decade to come!

[magnomagus]

I strongly dislike flanking

i do like interaction with objects, but this is not possible it would also require a larger universal battlefield size to be more meaningful.

@parceleste: patch 3.1 missing or installed in wrong directory.

[parcaleste]

@parceleste: patch 3.1 missing or installed in wrong directory.

Oh, man...

Thanks for the replay, anyways.

[cjlee]

i do like interaction with objects, but this is not possible it would also require a larger universal battlefield size to be more meaningful.

Haven't you guys done just that with the new crypt/ abandoned mine battle sizes? I'm very happy with your new battlefields and wish it was possible to implement them more often.

Frankly, all your crypts, vaults, abandoned mines etc have really interesting garrisons leading to new challenges. I can't imagine going back to H5.0 anymore.

At the very least can't ordinary battlefields be expanded to the size of the battlefields seen during castle sieges? But admittedly that will require more balancing work on the slow walkers.

One observation I've made about H5.5 is that the slow walkers seem as weak as ever, while the nightmares have gotten more powerful and dangerous. Now a Nightmare can just run into the middle of the enemy, stand there, and when it is the enemy's turn they all get damage just from the searing aura alone. In contrast Zombies, Horned Overseers are still the type of unit you buy only as an afterthought. To save money I usually don't use the Hire Everybody button and it is perpetually the zombies and overseers that I want to skip hiring. Maybe these guys can be made really cheap? After all you guys have done plenty of work to make different perks and abilities so much more useful.

For example in the past I would never dream of getting shatter dark on a Sylvan hero. Now your Rangers are so much might-ier, and so vulnerable. So I got Shatter Dark. And to my amusement, whenever the enemy cast Mass Weakness or Curse of the Netherworld it was like being scratched.

[magnomagus]

It is impossible to change the ordinary battlefield size.

I can make good use of slow walkers saving up more valuable creatures, sometimes I don't even put the valuable creatures on the battlefield, to make the slow walkers see more action.

[cjlee]

It is impossible to change the ordinary battlefield size.

I can make good use of slow walkers saving up more valuable creatures, sometimes I don't even put the valuable creatures on the battlefield, to make the slow walkers see more action.

This might be a factor of gaming style I guess. I can't visualize what you are doing, because to me, most of these slow walkers have only 2 purposes.

1) as sacrificial stacks to block the enemy

2) as sacrificial stacks to absorb retaliation.

OK I figured out what you mean. You field the slow walkers to get killed while the hero plugs away with spells, summons and hero attacks, right? In a battle where the hero does everything eg Warlock, Sorcerer, you don't need fast units, you just need durable ones.


That said, Heroes 7 has deliberately turned that upside down by linking stack death to morale and performance of the rest of the army. It's a different, and equally valid logic. H7 forces you to not sacrifice 1-unit stacks and put all your troops to good use.

[cjlee]

OK, I just tried playing H5.5 on the maps included with the installer ie the official H5.5 team RMG maps which have presumably been examined and playtested and distributed to everyone.

I'm truly impressed.

See here, I've always regarded myself as a pretty average player. A guy like me should not be able to crank up the difficulty more than 1 level above normal. I did not like it that on Heroic, the official H5 campaign was usually easier than on Normal. (I've mentioned this in some of my numerous posts in the H5 walkthroughs, since I often have played through on Normal, Hard and Heroic.

I also had the experience (posted in the h4 walkthroughs) where I advise players to play on hardest difficulty Champion because on Champion the AI usually can't beat the neutrals, leading to a weak and undeveloped AI by the time you march into their territory.

The H5.5 mod in-game info tells us that due to the official H5.5 RMG maps already being adjusted properly, we should not crank up the difficulty unnecessarily. So I put the difficulty as Neutral Champions: Normal. Lookahead: Hard. Difficulty: Hard. AI Rush Discount: Off. Time Limit: Unlimited.

These are pretty easy looking settings, aren't they? On Heroes7, I'm used to setting all the difficulty at max and deliberately choosing Deadly battles to fight.

Doesn't work that way on Heroes 5.5. Hard means Hard. I've had a hard time fighting, and at the end of the first month I'm still at level 14 and haven't cleared my home area. I can't even get out of my home area without sustaining casualties of over 50% my army. I haven't even met my other enemies, and already I'm drained.

The enemy is not just numerous. Numbers have never meant a thing in the old Heroes. We all know that if we can find some exploit eg enemies not attacking summoned creatures, puppet master/hypnotize/frenzy tricks, we can go up against impossible odds and use that battle as a springboard for leveling up.

Well, doesn't work that way in H5.5 anymore. This is an AI designed by enthusiasts who have spent a lot of time thinking and playing the game. Neutral stacks of moderate size are all capable of inflicting heavy damage on my forces. No more 'brainlessly bullying slow walkers for easy experience'. Even the 'low threat' stacks can do me some harm. Most battles I can't just click through 'shoot' 'shoot' 'shoot' brainlessly. On Week 5 I hired everyone in my castle, and that still isn't enough to break through the neutrals guarding access to other areas without severe casualties. There's no such thing in H5.5 as accumulating a huge army to steamroll the AI in boring late game battles.

Yup, these guys have made a Heroes AI better than the former best heroes AI, H3 AI.

Thanks guys!

[magnomagus]

It can also be done with might heroes, i have cleaned up entire areas with only using pit lords, horned overseers and succubi

[cjlee]

It can also be done with might heroes, i have cleaned up entire areas with only using pit lords, horned overseers and succubi

What you have done is to make different play styles viable.

Unfortunately playing in these different play styles really requires a lot of mindset change. I'm not used to the setup above for instance, having learned from H5 vanilla that it is a guaranteed losing lineup.

It's so amazing that H5.5's biggest challenge is really not external at all- it is internal to the gamer, who has to put aside his old habits and relearn.

I would very, very strongly recommend that anyone coming to the game now, should start with heroes 5.5. Don't start with the inferior H5. You'll learn lots of silly exploits and unbalanced habits that, after much gaming on H5, take a lot of trouble to unlearn on H5.5.

[cjlee]

OK, to continue my observations and feedback...

Mod called for

I noticed this, and it calls for a mod to be addressed.

In Heroes 2 we had the problem where boats would sometimes block the shore leading to some maps being un-finishable.

This problem was resolved in later Heroes, where you had spells like Scuttle Boat or the ability to move from one boat to another. IE if the shore is blocked by empty boats you could still move from your boat to that empty boat before going onshore.

In H5.5 we can't move from one boat to another but we also can't scuttle boat. Sometimes a narrow shoreline is blocked and nothing can be done.

Neutral Buildings

The traditional problem with scaling up the difficulty with neutral buildings is that in late game these are no longer viable. Getting a miserable +2 artifact in exchange for battling huge armies comprising of 4-7 stacks of ranged attackers, supporting spellcasters and heavy meelee doesn't make sense.

But H5.5 mod has very wisely created damn good reasons why you still want to attack neutral buildings in late game. Now you get Tier1-3 troops free as well in addition to money and permanent stat increases aka 'you have found a mage journal knowledge increase permanent +1'. It's called 'prisoner release'. These are awesome concepts which should be applied to future Heroes games and other Heroes mods.

Let me go further and suggest that in future, building scripts should be also written with hero level and army strength in mind. EG if you are a level 35 hero with an army worth 100,000xp, you should face a tougher battle than a level 25 hero with an army worth 50,000xp. The minimum guardian size should be a level 15 hero with a 10, 000xp army. That way nobody will try to get an easy artifact by risking a level 2 hero with a 100xp army.

Diplomacy


I have some suggestions for diplomacy.

You rarely get the chance to learn diplomacy in campaign and using it often messes up things if your army gets ultra big.

In RMGs, if you make your own map and don't act to balance things, putting diplomacy on your main hero could wind up creating a snowball where your army gets exponentially bigger and game gets mindlessly easy.

In custom scenarios made by mapmakers, most stacks are set to 'always fight' which makes diplomacy useless.

Let me humbly suggest that instead of making your army bigger, why not change the diplomacy skill to be one that lets you pass blocking neutrals without a fight?

EG the more diplomacy you have, the easier it is for you to make a blocking stack vanish for a day. Then you can walk down the road, or access a mine, or building, etc. The stack will appear again in the same place the next day, so if your diplomatic hero isn't around to negotiate things again the stack will fight.

The diplomacy skill won't apply to garrisons and gates, so you still won't be able to talk your way around a bunch of bunkered down soldiers who don't want to hear your silver tongue. Likewise diplomacy won't help you when you are invading some abandoned mine or mage vault or dragon city where the most desirable artifacts are being held.

This ensures that diplomacy cannot get you past important map objectives, but high level diplomacy eg on a level 30 hero will allow that nasty stack of 200 water elementals to move aside for a day. (200 WE for instance, are not enough to defeat most level 30 heroes in late game, but they are still enough to cause severe casualties if they are set to always fight anyone without diplomacy.)

New Artifacts

I seem to have missed any documentation on new artifacts and artifact combos.

The H5.5 system now offers special rewards for collecting all the pieces of an artifact. I traded in the Dwarven armour, and found the bonus very poor. (I think I lost all spell immunities that the artifact set offered in exchange for a combo artifact that only adds to my stats).

Then I traded in the 8-piece Dragon set. Now this set is much more important than the total sum of the stats it increases. Each piece of this artifact increases the initiative of part of your army by at least 10%. EG melee 10%, shooters 10%, flyers 10%, casters 10%, war machines 10%. Then 2 artifacts increase small and large creature initiative by 5% each. And there is a 50% immunity to cold.

And you get additional stats +4 each when you have collected all 8 pieces of the Dragon set.

All these bonuses vanish when the Dragon set is traded in for the Cuirass of the Dragon father, +5 to all stats. but by the time your hero has collected all 8 pieces, typically his stats are in the stratosphere. Immunities and increases to your army initiative by 15% each are far more valuable.

Granted that combining all stat increases in one artifact gives you the ability to put on other artifacts, but since few artifacts increase creature and war machine initiative I totally see no justification for swapping the entire Dragon set. You can always wear the ring of celerity alongside the Dragon Set.

I think this is one of the less attractive changes in the H5.5 mod. I certainly won't be permanently trading in my combo artifacts in future. (I'll still do the load and save trick, just to see what each combo swaps for.)

I also tried trading in the Royal Heirloom - and got 50,000 xp as a reward. Problem is, by the time you pick this up, 50k xp is nothing. It is not even half the xp you get from a big battle in late game - not even worth half a day's journey to the sacrifical altar.

Heroes 5.5 is unique in that Magnomagus and his team have spent a lot of time thinking how to scale benefits and bonuses. Most of their scaling has been extraordinarily effective and far sighted. One suggestion could be to scale up rewards for trading in certain boss artifacts also. For instance the Royal Heirloom could yield xp equal to 1/4 the experience needed for this hero to reach the next level. Since by the time you get a rare artifact like this your primary hero is already at least level 20, it would be an artifact worth the effort to get and the time spent travelling to redeem your reward.

Ideas for new spells

Mass Regeneration

I would like to suggest one new spell, Mass Regeneration. I'm sure we have all felt irritated that some battles just can't be finished with no casualties because the damage is spread out, or because the enemy uses an area of effect spell.

To prevent this spell being overpowered, maybe the healing can be limited to 1/4 the power of a normal regeneration spell, except it applies to all injured stacks in your army. That way everyone injured by a fireball can heal.


I have an idea where some spells are only available via special spell scrolls that you get at the Dragon Utopia or dig up as a treasure.

For instance:

Mass Resurrection

Same as Mass Regeneration, except with only the ability to heal 1/4 as many hp across the entire army. Nonetheless this is a very powerful spell, so a normal level 5 mage guild shouldn't have it.

Summon Avatar of Death

Basically Arantir's signature spell. Since it is very dangerous to have both Avatar of Death and the normal Phoenix on the battlefield at the same time, this spell should only be found on a rare scroll.