Heroes 4 The Restoration of Axeoth

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

I played the first map of Warlords of the Wasteland, and didn't go very far. but then again, I'm not good at barbarian heroes and first maps are usually pretty hard when you're leveling your heroes and just about anybody is capable of killing these baby heroes.

Ah, what difficulty are you playing on? I always just run through things on intermediate, so I don't know how the higher difficulties play. I definitely think they can quickly become impossible, especially with the enhanced AI. Let me know what difficulty you're playing on, and if it's just too much. Currently intermediate plays very close to the H3 version at the same difficulty.

I think the problem is that we have 3 level 18 heroes already. In H3, that's no big deal, because level 18 hero still needs a little army. In h4, level 18 hero is strong enough to take on a week old army by himself.

That is exactly the issue. Heroes become armies unto themselves We're hoping that will be somewhat alleviated by the fact that we will only be allowing two carryover heroes, one of which is Tarnum. I believe that has been done for the latest version of Conquest.

I don't know if you're aware, but Town Gate can be used to tp your heroes. I know in Map 4 the intention was for us to lose our starting town to an ambush, but since I could TP my Battle Mage, why not? She TPed over to the starting town and killed the attacking army singlehandedly.

While Tarnum and his other lieutenant marched everywhere alone and wiped out enemies easily.

Also, the starting town had a decent army, so it might have been possible to defend it. I just didn't want to defend the town with troops alone, because I needed my heroes to get max experience.

Ah you mentioned that and then I promptly forgot. You are correct that it would seem like the spell is intended to be banned, especially given the beginning of map 4, so I've banned it in the latest version of Conquest. Seems like we may also want to reduce that garrison as well, since it's definitely intended that the player loses that town.

That said, the storyline (about Tarnum and his background) is starting to get interesting.

I've forgotten a lot of the details, so I'm very excited to go through Conquest again once I've finished finalizing Warlords

Map 4 issues:

Map is tiny and can be finished in under a week. Since I decided to explore everything and milk all experience from the map, I delayed it and sent my heroes on a map tour at the end when I managed to get 1 hero to level 19 (with advanced death magic), so I wanted to visit all mage guilds again to get animate dead spell.

That was when we got to Day 1 Week 1 Month 2 and an important part of the storyline popped up. So actually Tarnum betrayed his own loyal captains and murdered them! This is something I totally did not expect.

I think most people are going to finish the map in under 3 weeks, which means they won't ever get to read the storyline.

This is actually a problem on the H3 side of things as well, lol. I remember playing through one of the campaigns, finishing the map, and then seeing a text in the following map that didn't make sense. Came to find out I had finished it before all of the timed events had fired.

So what I always do is get to the point where I can beat the map, save game, end turn until I'm sure I've seen all text events, load game, and finish the map.

I've been playing the H3 / H4 versions of these maps side by side, and I'm keeping track of how long it takes me to complete each one to make sure they're at least somewhat close in number of turns. Warlords is really close, so I'll keep an eye on things when I get to Conquest as well.

Recurring event at 57, 38 (5 minotaurs attack).
Problem is, at level 18 every single hero is stronger than 5 minotaurs. Even if you didn't develop any combat skills and hero was pure support (eg scouting and nobility instead of magic skills).
So that ambush is just guaranteed to be irritating without the slightest hint of challenge. I fought that battle several times because I had to go past many times. If you want challenge, make it 50 minotaurs. This is a small map with many castles, so it is easy to flee if cannot win.

Whoopsie! Sounds like I forgot to add a "remove script" command on there. I'll get it fixed

As far as the difficulty, I will absolutely be going through the later maps to increase the size of the ambush battles, as well as scaling them even bigger for higher difficulties.

Two instances where enemy troops joined me/ their flags turned red.
One is a bunch of Troglodytes in the Southwest, guarding a mine.
One is a bunch of harpy hags in the midSouth, guarding an alchemist lab.
I tried attacking them, but they just changed flag color. This is clearly scripted, since by default creatures don't do that.

Probably just missed adding a display event saying they join you, so I'll take a look!

I think the biggest issue is that I start with three level 18 heroes, and there are three enemy factions allied against me but they are all dependent on one single level 20 hero. If you started each faction with either 3 level 20 heroes each, or a level 20 hero with an army of at least 10 level 4 creatures, there will be more challenge.

Also consider the fact that this map all the 3 enemies are Chaos faction.

Chaos's main combat hero is the ranger. But they're not really that strong, since usually half their skill points will be in scouting/ stealth. So the enemy really needs supporting spellcasters or frontline level 4 dragons to help their rangers.

Yeah I'd thought about adding additional heroes for the AI towns, I just hadn't added them yet because I need to test how they do with the AI enhancing scripts. I'll be able to better determine this once I finish what I'm doing with Warlords and do a quick run through it on intermediate. In the earlier maps, with the enhanced scripting, the AI will almost never have a hero under level 7, so that's at least moving in the right direction.

As far as the type of Chaos hero, we'll take a look. We've chosen the same heroes from H3 if they're available, but we do also need to take into account H4's gameplay. Maybe we can start them with Chaos magic. The reason they wouldn't be allowed Dragons is that they are probably an inferno town in H3. If they were dungeon then they are allowed the Black Dragon cave.

Just trying to match H3 as much as possible

I think you can safely triple the starting sizes of all garrisons, neutral stacks and enemy factions without making this map too difficult for casual players.

Got it! Will make the same updates to Conquest that I have been doing for Warlords to test them out. One of which is do increase garrison sizes, especially in later maps.

Map 5, Jorm's Ambush. The objective is to obtain the Ring of Lesser Negation, but the mission description screen before mission starts says that ankh of life will carry over. Then the in-game mission description says Tarnum must gain access to Spirit of Oppression. Something seems to be wrong.

We used the Ring of Lesser Negation to replace the Spirit of Oppression, but they do not transfer to the next scenario. The Ankh of Life is replacing the Celestial Necklace of Bliss (part of the Angelic Alliance combo artifact), which carries over to the next scenario.

So the issue is that I missed a spot where we still reference the Spirit of Oppression. Thanks for catching that!

nwcprometheus suggests to me that highest level possible on this map is 22, based on presence of 2 level up trees.

This one is tough, since the experience needed to reach higher levels differs quite a bit between H3 and H4. I think we'll just leave it as is, and if it becomes an issue for some reason, such as need a certain level hero to enter an area, we can address it then.

The scenario starts with a message about a young man (cook's assistant) getting his friends to join you. That message is wrong, since you will 'encounter' the young man only when your heroes or creatures move to square 23,38.

Not quite sure what you mean here. So there is a timed text event at the beginning of the scenario, but then you have to go find them to get them to join? I'll need to take a look at the H3 version to make sure we're matching the behavior there.

Gem mine at 44, 12 is inaccessible.

Got it, thanks!

I'll look to address all these things tonight after I get home from work. Thanks again for the help!

[cjleeagain]

And to answer your questions above...

Played on Intermediate, since I also wanted to go through the missions rather than to have agonizingly tough battles every minute.

One suggestion: instead of making gamers wait and drag out their missions in order to read all the events/ scripted stories, you could put everything in a text and tell gamers to read the attached text at certain times.

Timothy Duncan did that very well in h3 missions like Goldheart.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

And to answer your questions above...

Played on Intermediate, since I also wanted to go through the missions rather than to have agonizingly tough battles every minute.

One suggestion: instead of making gamers wait and drag out their missions in order to read all the events/ scripted stories, you could put everything in a text and tell gamers to read the attached text at certain times.

Timothy Duncan did that very well in h3 missions like Goldheart.

Hey yeah that could be something. We could include the Timed Event texts (and Placed Event texts where appropriate). We probably won't add anything to the text in game to tell players to go read it, but maybe something in the scenario information could say something like, "After completing each map, take a look in Blah.txt to make sure you didn't miss any of Tarnum's adventure!"

Could be even more useful in the modded version since I'm also planning to update the texts, but still give the player the choice to have just the pure Heroes Chronicles texts in game.

[ByteBandit]

I have been going through Masters of the Elements and some changes are coming to it. Mostly Ai troops need adjusting and town buildings have been adjusted to the original settings as in the H3 version. And a few other odds and ends needed correcting.
I have also updated The Price of Loyalty.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Made the updates / fixes from CJLee's feedback on Conquest of the Underworld.

One thing that is sort of annoying that doesn't translate well from H3 to H4 is when increasing dwelling populations. In H3, there is a nice icon of the unit that shows up in the text box, while H4 doesn't show anything. This can be confusing and make you think an event forgot to do something (such as the cook bringing his friends to join Tarnum's army).

If we actually give the units as part of a display event, their icons do show up (at least in placed events, I still need to test on town timed events).

Should we maybe just give the units for these types of events, rather than increasing the dwelling populations where the player needs to purchase the units?

Warlords of the Wasteland is now in a fully testable state. The only thing I'm still doing at the moment is removing superfluous scripting from mines to help reduce the size of the campaign file, and have 4 more maps to go through until this is complete.

Edit. There is one more thing I forgot to do in the final map, which is to make the statue of legion dwellings actually match the level for the legion part, rather than make them all level 4 dwellings.

[cjleeagain]

OK, I'm on map 5, Old Wounds still.

After several easy scenarios on small maps, now I'm confronted with a huge map. The difficulty level has gone up a lot.

But hang on. It's not a challenging map in terms of battles fought. There are few really strong stacks, and these tend to be defending important places like neutral towns.

Rather, the biggest difficulty is that I'm having a huge problem trying to get my heroes any way near the level cap of 28. In fact I don't even think I can hit level 24. I'm just fighting zillions of battles with small weak creatures.

The size of the map also creates difficulties. I can find the Helm of Seeing, but doing anything to complete any quest takes a super long time since it is such a big map full of obstacles to my travel (I'm trying to play without Town Gate now since that is what the mapmakers intended.)

At present I'm not sure what to think about the fun factor.

Fighting a bunch of Chaos / Asylum opponents gets tiring after a while. This is the 5th map where my enemies are entirely chaos or death. And none of the enemy Fireguards seem to be able to cast level 5 spells, even though their castles can have level 5 guilds.

Dragons are supposed to be banned, but I saw an enemy hero with a black dragon in his army. Where did he hire it, because no castles have dragons and the enemy should not have access to dwellings? I guess one enemy castle did not ban dragons? It is probably one of the Chaos castles in the Southwest, since I have conquered the north and the east and the center island, and all Asylums I have seen so far do not have ability to build level 4 dwellings.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

But hang on. It's not a challenging map in terms of battles fought. There are few really strong stacks, and these tend to be defending important places like neutral towns.

Rather, the biggest difficulty is that I'm having a huge problem trying to get my heroes any way near the level cap of 28. In fact I don't even think I can hit level 24. I'm just fighting zillions of battles with small weak creatures.

Try just leveling up two of your heroes, since you will only be able to carryover two heroes (with one of them being Tarnum).

Still, I'm sure it will be difficult always reaching the level cap due to the much higher experience required in H4 to reach higher levels than it takes in H3.

I will also be increasing stack sizes for Maps3+ for each of these campaigns, so that should help as well.

Fighting a bunch of Chaos / Asylum opponents gets tiring after a while. This is the 5th map where my enemies are entirely chaos or death. And none of the enemy Fireguards seem to be able to cast level 5 spells, even though their castles can have level 5 guilds.

Ah there's something else we can work on. At the moment I haven't looked at adding magic or spells to the various heroes, so definitely bring up things like that. I'll look at giving certain spells to starting AI heroes. We can also add placed events to give any hired heroes magic skills and spells as well.

Dragons are supposed to be banned, but I saw an enemy hero with a black dragon in his army. Where did he hire it, because no castles have dragons and the enemy should not have access to dwellings? I guess one enemy castle did not ban dragons? It is probably one of the Chaos castles in the Southwest, since I have conquered the north and the east and the center island, and all Asylums I have seen so far do not have ability to build level 4 dwellings.

I took a look at the H3 map, and several of the towns in the southern portion of the map are actually Dungeon, so those would have access to Dragons.

As far as your other previous feedback, that should all be addressed and updated in the latest Conquest of the Underworld.

Keep the feedback coming! Thanks!

[cjleeagain]

Some thoughts about that:

It is ok for me to be giving feedback on multiple points of weaknesses that lead to an overly-easy map. But actually when you address the weaknesses, if you're going to address everything, have to do so in moderate fashion. Making one aspect harder will have a knock on effect. And if you make everything harder by 1 notch, the map doesn't get harder by one notch - it gets harder by five or ten notches.

In Heroes 3, it is normal to expect either portals or access to Town Portal on XL sized maps.

Maps 1-4 on the Underworld campaign, all maps were S, M or L. S maps most people can finish in a month, and M maps most people can do in under 2 months. So it is not reasonable to expect gamers to hang around until month 3 to read the storyline for maps 1-4.

Map 5 should be considered XL sized? It's normal to take 4-6 months to complete this map size. Some maps take over a year due to the difficulty. So the storyline can be spread out.

Having only 2 strong heroes on an XL sized map having to go all over searching for an artifact, and with Town Portal banned, makes for a significantly more difficult map already.

I really prefer to carry over 3 heroes. Map 5 is really very big, and you will cover very little ground if you only have 2 experienced heroes and have to face a little army of beefed-up level 28 enemy heroes.

If the enemy level 28s can cast Disintegrate and dragon-Armageddon, it will be extremely difficult for your secondary heroes to handle them, even if you gave them all your troops. I think your secondary heroes can reasonably go up to level 12-14 by killing the neutrals within easy reach, after which they're likely to start bumping into the enemy level 28s.

So I urge you to consider the big picture whenever doing anything that boosts the difficulty.

If you make the neutrals stronger everywhere, that could help three objectives:
1) your main heroes to get to level 27 at least
2) your secondary heroes to get to level 18-20. That would make your secondary heroes a lot more competitive against the enemy's level 28s. Two level 18s make for a good fight against one 28.
3) making the map as a whole more challenging to fight

Then you should also consider what other mapmakers have done in the past.
Wimfrits' A Wind of Thorns is extremely difficult, too hard for casual gamers interested in the storyline. I believe I never played on any difficulty higher than intermediate for A Wind of Thorns. But you could take a page from Wimfrits' deliberate use of custom and unusual troop combos for the neutrals. These not only make things challenging, but also make things very diverse.

In your current map I am fighting way too many small stacks of ghosts, skeletons, and so on.

If you mixed some armies up it would force gamers to do some thinking and adapt different tactics.


OK, also have to point out something significantly different between your maps, and most other campaigns including the official 3DO campaigns, Wimfrits' A Wind of Thorns, and so on.

Your maps are very light or restrained on buildings and events that increase hero stats.

By map 5, I have only ever gotten +3 on my heroes' spell points, by visiting one spell point increasing building.
I hardly remember any other stat or skill increasing buildings. There was one building in map 4 that could boost your heroes' non-magical skills once.
I did get melee and ranged attacks up a bit because of the Thieves' Gauntlets in Asylum towns. That was pretty much it.

All this makes our carry over heroes fairly weak. I think my level 22 heroes' base stats are fairly similar or lower than their level 28 enemies in Map 5.

Remember, carry over heroes in most campaigns don't just increase their experience points. They also visit buildings, pick up stat increasing items, and so on. As a result, they are far more powerful than their higher-level opponents in later missions.

I'm finding that my heroes die easily to Devil assassinations.

iliveinabox05, Don't mind me if this is intended. One problem of Heroes 4 is that heroes often get too ridiculously powerful. I've played level 60 heroes who could kill more than 1 Megadragon in a single blow.

So if you want Tarnum and his companions to be very much mortal heroes, that's fine too. But right now your maps are at the stage where a single hero is still capable of defeating most neutral stacks. This results in my heroes wandering the XL map with tiny armies, then running into extremely difficult bottleneck points guarded by 40 Champions or 25 Devils. And because this map is so big and there is no H3-style Town Portal spell and you are so far from anywhere else, Tarnum and his lieutenants would have to reinforce by getting big armies of level 1-3 Death or Chaos creatures from the only available towns nearby, which kind of makes a mockery of the storyline.

I think some mapmakers develop scripts to prevent you from hiring the creatures in enemy towns, or denies you the ability by demolishing the structures if you take the town. That makes a lot more sense. If storyline says Tarnum is playing Good Guy now, I really think it's silly that he has to reinforce with armies of Death creatures.

I have tried to avoid mass recruitment of Death creatures to date, but this is starting to be impossible because on Map 5 there are some important enemy stacks that I really need to defeat in order to gain access to some portals or pass some gates. My heroes are too weak to take on dozens of Devils themselves. I can't beat these stacks without mass troop numbers. And since map is too big for me to get reinforcements within reasonable time, it's much easier to just grab all the Medusas or Venom Spawn from the nearest town. Most players would do that, resulting in Tarnum conquering the underworld by being a master of Death creatures rather than being a human leader!

[cjleeagain]

Corrections:

I've done nwcprometheus, and now I realize where the Dragon wielding enemy hero is coming from. There is an asylum town in an inaccessible location underground, Ennismoor. I guess these guys are intended to be harassers to spice up the fights?

Also - I'm playing on Advanced, not Intermediate as originally stated. I think AI is supposed to play to its best on Advanced, without giving the AI any boosts.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

It is ok for me to be giving feedback on multiple points of weaknesses that lead to an overly-easy map. But actually when you address the weaknesses, if you're going to address everything, have to do so in moderate fashion. Making one aspect harder will have a knock on effect. And if you make everything harder by 1 notch, the map doesn't get harder by one notch - it gets harder by five or ten notches.

There is definitely a delicate balance with these things. I've started my play through of Conquest with the changes so I'll see firsthand what is too much and what is not enough. In the first map alone, I've needed to increase just about every stack I've encountered so far since they all want to run away.

That could actually be due to the pikemen joining you, as they're a higher level unit in H4, so maybe that's something to address first. They should probably be a reduced number.

Having only 2 strong heroes on an XL sized map having to go all over searching for an artifact, and with Town Portal banned, makes for a significantly more difficult map already.

I really prefer to carry over 3 heroes. Map 5 is really very big, and you will cover very little ground if you only have 2 experienced heroes and have to face a little army of beefed-up level 28 enemy heroes.

If the enemy level 28s can cast Disintegrate and dragon-Armageddon, it will be extremely difficult for your secondary heroes to handle them, even if you gave them all your troops. I think your secondary heroes can reasonably go up to level 12-14 by killing the neutrals within easy reach, after which they're likely to start bumping into the enemy level 28s.

What we can maybe do is just have a third hero in the map that wasn't carried over, that has a reasonable starting level and skills to help with exploration. I will be finding out pretty soon how that goes, haha

So I urge you to consider the big picture whenever doing anything that boosts the difficulty.

If you make the neutrals stronger everywhere, that could help three objectives:
1) your main heroes to get to level 27 at least
2) your secondary heroes to get to level 18-20. That would make your secondary heroes a lot more competitive against the enemy's level 28s. Two level 18s make for a good fight against one 28.
3) making the map as a whole more challenging to fight

Then you should also consider what other mapmakers have done in the past.
Wimfrits' A Wind of Thorns is extremely difficult, too hard for casual gamers interested in the storyline. I believe I never played on any difficulty higher than intermediate for A Wind of Thorns. But you could take a page from Wimfrits' deliberate use of custom and unusual troop combos for the neutrals. These not only make things challenging, but also make things very diverse.

In your current map I am fighting way too many small stacks of ghosts, skeletons, and so on.

If you mixed some armies up it would force gamers to do some thinking and adapt different tactics.

Trust me, I hear you and understand that difficulty can quickly spiral out of control when addressing each thing at the same time. I'm playing the H3 and H4 versions to make sure intermediate is at least very similar between both.

In Warlords of the Wasteland I did make some of the creature stacks contain more than just a single creature type in them, but I think this is best done for only certain important stacks, otherwise I think this port would deviate a little bit too much from the H3 version.

I'll be looking for the same thing in Conquest while I'm going through it, but if you have suggestions on particular stacks that are important in the map, such as boundary stacks between player and AI, let me know.

OK, also have to point out something significantly different between your maps, and most other campaigns including the official 3DO campaigns, Wimfrits' A Wind of Thorns, and so on.

Your maps are very light or restrained on buildings and events that increase hero stats.

By map 5, I have only ever gotten +3 on my heroes' spell points, by visiting one spell point increasing building.
I hardly remember any other stat or skill increasing buildings. There was one building in map 4 that could boost your heroes' non-magical skills once.
I did get melee and ranged attacks up a bit because of the Thieves' Gauntlets in Asylum towns. That was pretty much it.

All this makes our carry over heroes fairly weak. I think my level 22 heroes' base stats are fairly similar or lower than their level 28 enemies in Map 5.

Remember, carry over heroes in most campaigns don't just increase their experience points. They also visit buildings, pick up stat increasing items, and so on. As a result, they are far more powerful than their higher-level opponents in later missions.

I'm finding that my heroes die easily to Devil assassinations.

Technically these are 3DO campaigns, haha

But you're right about the stat structures. I think part of it is that some of the H3 stat structures don't have a counterpart in H4, like the spell power stat structure. I'll be able to take a look at what we missed bringing over during the conversion process while I do my play through, so hopefully we can get any that we missed.

I've also thought about potentially using quest huts for the stat structures that don't exist in H4, so we'll see if those can work.

iliveinabox05, Don't mind me if this is intended. One problem of Heroes 4 is that heroes often get too ridiculously powerful. I've played level 60 heroes who could kill more than 1 Megadragon in a single blow.

So if you want Tarnum and his companions to be very much mortal heroes, that's fine too. But right now your maps are at the stage where a single hero is still capable of defeating most neutral stacks. This results in my heroes wandering the XL map with tiny armies, then running into extremely difficult bottleneck points guarded by 40 Champions or 25 Devils. And because this map is so big and there is no H3-style Town Portal spell and you are so far from anywhere else, Tarnum and his lieutenants would have to reinforce by getting big armies of level 1-3 Death or Chaos creatures from the only available towns nearby, which kind of makes a mockery of the storyline.

I think some mapmakers develop scripts to prevent you from hiring the creatures in enemy towns, or denies you the ability by demolishing the structures if you take the town. That makes a lot more sense. If storyline says Tarnum is playing Good Guy now, I really think it's silly that he has to reinforce with armies of Death creatures.

I have tried to avoid mass recruitment of Death creatures to date, but this is starting to be impossible because on Map 5 there are some important enemy stacks that I really need to defeat in order to gain access to some portals or pass some gates. My heroes are too weak to take on dozens of Devils themselves. I can't beat these stacks without mass troop numbers. And since map is too big for me to get reinforcements within reasonable time, it's much easier to just grab all the Medusas or Venom Spawn from the nearest town. Most players would do that, resulting in Tarnum conquering the underworld by being a master of Death creatures rather than being a human leader!

Some of it is definitely intended, as we're trying to keep the same feel as the H3 version. There are definitely some differences that can't be avoided, such as heroes being part of the battles, so we're still working to figure out what works best that can still keep the OG feel of these campaigns.

As far as recruiting from the Undead / Inferno towns, I think that's expected. I'm not sure where in the maps it happens, but the demons do actually "join" you for a bit. You also have the demon allies along the way, but I'll be taking a close look at that stuff during my play through to see if there's anything in the text about it.

It does seem strange that you have a necromancer / demon ally in several maps in this campaign, but maybe I've just forgotten something.

I've done nwcprometheus, and now I realize where the Dragon wielding enemy hero is coming from. There is an asylum town in an inaccessible location underground, Ennismoor. I guess these guys are intended to be harassers to spice up the fights?

Ah yep, that lower town is meant to be a harasser that can show up at any point. I checked the other Overlord towns and none of them have the dragon dwelling enabled, so it's just that one.

I also found a bug that I'll need to go back and look through where any neutral stacks that have an encountered message will cause the game to crash if the computer attacks them. Surprised you haven't come across that yet!

[cjleeagain]

Response:

1) Definitely do away with the pikemen joining you in map1. H4 Pikemen are the equivalent of H3 Griffins or Ghosts or Stone Golems. Or decrease the joining number a lot.

2) I think there's no need to stick too closely to the storyline. You could have a third hero who gets killed at the end of this map 5, so the third hero helps you finish the XL map before he disappears.

3) The boundary stacks between player and the various AI regions (each region having its own death or chaos town) are pretty weak. They're so weak I don't have any sense of fighting them. I couldn't tell these apart from other neutrals.

4) I urge you not to have enemy stacks with 'dozens of devils'. In H3, devils can only kill your army not your hero. In H4, devils almost always attempt to assassinate your heroes.

5) I have an 'evil' ally for almost every map of this campaign. I tried doing NWCvalhalla on map 5 so that I could jump to maps 6 and after.

6) Map 5 is XL but so far game only crashed once, in combat, so probably part of the game engine instability thing?

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

1) Definitely do away with the pikemen joining you in map1. H4 Pikemen are the equivalent of H3 Griffins or Ghosts or Stone Golems. Or decrease the joining number a lot.

I think lowering the amount will be good. I've upped the neutral stacks around the player's area, so you do need them to tank some damage. What I probably also need to do is see about starting the number of Pikemen in the dwelling in your town starts off at 0. In the H3 version you start with the guardhouse, which clearly isn't the equivalent of the guardhouse in H4. I think starting the dwelling off at 0 should be good here.

I also noticed swordsmen weren't allowed to be built in the H4 town while they can be in the H3 town, so I updated that.

2) I think there's no need to stick too closely to the storyline. You could have a third hero who gets killed at the end of this map 5, so the third hero helps you finish the XL map before he disappears.

Easily taken care of just by only still having 2 carryover heroes on the following map, so the hero can help with the big map (I think it's #6, no?), and he won't be high enough level that the player will focus on leveling them up to take the place of the other carryover hero they've been working on.

3) The boundary stacks between player and the various AI regions (each region having its own death or chaos town) are pretty weak. They're so weak I don't have any sense of fighting them. I couldn't tell these apart from other neutrals.

Noted! I've started my play through, so I will be getting to these.

I'm playing the H3 map first, and then the H4 map, going through the campaign map by map. I'm updating stack sizes and whatnot as I go. I'll keep an eye out for the boundary stacks and see about not only making them a bit more formidable, but also adding in some different units to give more flavor to them.

4) I urge you not to have enemy stacks with 'dozens of devils'. In H3, devils can only kill your army not your hero. In H4, devils almost always attempt to assassinate your heroes.

I hear you, and that is something I will fix. Probably the stacks with many Devils can have a reduced number of Devils while adding other "Inferno" type units to alleviate the hero assassination and also add flavor to the fight at the same time.

I think many of those stronger high level stacks in the big map for Underworld can have this treatment applied to them. Probably worth doing that anywhere this is the case in the campaigns.

5) I have an 'evil' ally for almost every map of this campaign. I tried doing NWCvalhalla on map 5 so that I could jump to maps 6 and after.

It definitely seems odd, and I didn't see any text in the H3 version of map 2 at the beginning to indicate they should be allied to you. I'm going to talk it over with ByteBandit and see what we decide. There does seem to be some thoughts out there that they aren't supposed to be allied with you. Maybe all the AI don't need to be allied with each other, but maybe none of them should be allied with you until map 7 I think it is, though that's when you're actually controlling that alignment.

6) Map 5 is XL but so far game only crashed once, in combat, so probably part of the game engine instability thing?

Ah yeah the combat crash is just something that happens from time to time in H4. The crash I'm talking about is when the AI attacks a neutral stack that has a display script on the encountered event. I added a "remove script" after the display event, which causes problems since the AI enhancing scripts get injected after that and I'm guessing get removed and so certain variables don't get set.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

So far in Conquest of the Underworld, I've made the following changes:

General
- Added scripting to the beginning of each map to allow choosing of a starting bonus as it is in the H3 version

Map1
- Changed the Pikemen that join you into Squires
- Starting dwelling in town changed from Guardhouse to Squire's Guild
- Reduced neutral stack numbers from where I had them when Pikemen joined you

Map2
- Moved the Purple AI player to the enemy team since it really must be a mistake that they are the player's ally
- Moved the Blue AI player to its own team and put the other AI players on the same team

I'll be looking at updating neutral stack numbers and compositions as I go through my play through, so there will be plenty of those updates to come. I'll also look closer at the remaining maps where the player has a demon ally, and figure out what to do there. It seems like they should never be an ally, but it might be good if the different enemy players were sometimes enemies, etc. So it's just something we'll have to figure out. It could be that I just turn teams off completely so that it's everyone vs. everyone as many of the maps in this campaign seem to be.

[ByteBandit]

While ILiveInABox05 continues the fine tuning process of the existing campaigns we have up, largely due in part to the people who have tested them, The World Tree and Fiery Moon have been completed. They need to be finalized yet and will be available for download as soon as we feel comfortable with what we've done with the existing campaigns. I thought people would like to know that we are still making campaigns, but we also want quality products out there for everyone to play.
And keep in mind, all campaigns are up to date as of this posting with better gameplay than when we first put them up. The testing process by ILiveInABox05 is moving right along!
I'm currently working on the Unity campaign now, specifically, the Isle of Death map. This will be one unique campaign!

You will need to download Karmakelds Object Package in order to play The Price of Loyalty. Get it here: https://www.celestialheavens.com/links? ... k.go&id=60

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

There have been many updates and fixes to the currently available Heroes IV Chronicles campaigns, so make sure to grab the latest if you're thinking about giving them a try! Warlords of the Wasteland and Conquest of the Underworld are in a pretty good state, though I'm still working my way through testing of Conquest.

Thanks to a couple of testers, Masters of the Elements has been getting some much needed attention as well (pyroxene and Ehlesgens!). Big thanks to them as it will enable me to start looking at other things after finishing my play through of Conquest.

Also, The Price of Loyalty has been made compatible with WoW, so the object package is no longer needed to play it.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

I was reminded that in Masters of the Elements, Tarnum can upgrade Magi to Enchanters for a price (thanks Ehlesgens!).

So, I've scripted a questhut and placed one next to the starting town in each map where the player can visit at any time to upgrade Magi to Evil Sorceresses.

Additionally, if the player has any Magi in an army with Tarnum and has the funds necessary to upgrade them, the player will be prompted on each 7th day if they would like to upgrade their Magi (for times when you aren't right next to your starting town).

Currently I'm just using the difference between the cost of an Evil Sorceress and that of a Mage as the price to upgrade for each Mage, but this will likely change based on chosen difficulty.

The questhut can only be accessed by Tarnum, since it's a special ability of his.

[Pyroxene]

Wow you wanna make Magi upgradable to Evil Sorceresses? That would blow apart the balance I think.

Yet I want to play it!

[cjleeagain]

Um, I think upgrading mages to priests/ monks would be a much better idea. To upgrade to a level 4 Evil Sorceress is a bit too much (not to mention, the crazy sex change). The scenarios right now are already too easy.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Update.

On a general H4 Restoration of Axeoth project level note, there are some extremely cool things on the horizon, which may prompt us to focus on getting Every Dog Has His Day released. I hope to have more on that in the near future

H4 Chronicles
I finished my play through of Conquest of the Underworld not too long ago, and finished making updates based on that play through.

Some of the more important updates to Conquest of the Underworld:
- The final map ended up not being finishable as the way to Deezelisk was blocked right after the quest guard to reach him.

- Put Deezelisk on his own team so enemy AI heroes could not retreat to his town.

- Map7, one of the underground enemy towns was unreachable due to some rocks blocking the way

- The player does not have an AI ally on any map, as it didn't make sense and in all cases there was something to contradict the player having a demon ally, whether object placements on the map or directly in the text.

- Many passability fixes to mirror the passability in the H3 version throughout the campaign.


Masters of the Elements
- Magi can be upgraded to Evil Sorceresses for a price, either at a quest hut next to the player's main town, or once per week if the player has the funds and Tarnum has Magi in his army.

See after my update for more discussion on this.

- Brought the stat structures back in for things like the Star Axis and Garden of Knowledge.

- In Map 5 (Plane of Fire), I was using placed events to directly change a dwelling to be the player's or AI's color depending on who stepped next to the dwelling in order to determine when the player owned all dwellings.

I figured out the proper way to do this without directly changing the owner of the dwellings, so now the win condition behaves exactly as it does in H3.

- Added in missing Eyes for Huts of the Magi in map 6

- Fixed some text typos or grammatical issues, which came from the H3 version.


General campaign updates
- After Map 3 or so for each campaign, Tarnum and any carryover hero will receive Boots of Travel to account for Logistics in H3. I've found that the boots are a great fit for this purpose and enable me to make almost the exact same progress with exploration as Logistics does in H3.

- Fixed the issue of not being able to add a custom message directly to an artifact, as well as attaching a battle to an artifact.

I was using placed events around the artifact for the custom message, but then when you actually pick up the artifact, you still get the default message.

As far as attaching a battle to the artifact, I've found the best thing to do here is have an actual stack guarding the artifact and add the message scripting, etc. to the stack.

- Buff AI morale since they often have creatures from different alignments. Added this in the AI enhancing scripts as part of the placed events for increasing AI experience.

I'm sure I missed some, but those are the big ones I can remember!


About upgrading Magi to Evil Sorceresses (and to be clear, this is only for Masters of the Elements to mirror Tarnum being able to upgrade Magi to Enchanters):
It really depends on the difficulty you choose. Here are the values that we've settled on so far and have tested on intermediate difficulty:

These values are for each Magi upgraded.

Easy / Intermediate: 4000 Gold, 2 Mercury, 2 Gems
Advanced: 6000 Gold, 3 Mercury, 3 Gems
Expert: 8000 Gold, 4 Mercury, 4 Gems
Champion: 10000 Gold, 5 Mercury, 5 Gems

As you can see, if you play on higher difficulties, you will be choosing between building an Evil Sorceress, or anything else at all. If you think you're just going to sit there hitting end turn, the AI is still playing and taking very few losses along the way.

With the enhanced AI scripting, you're likely to get steamrolled on intermediate without the ability to upgrade your Magi to Evil Sorceresses, as one tester found out for us. The AI loves hiring from dwellings in H4.

Unfortunately there really just isn't any other choice for an upgrade to try mirroring the H3 version, for the reasons I've already mentioned here, and this can pretty easily be balanced out by simply tweaking the costs.

[cjleeagain]

Just gotta say, tweaking the cost of upgrades is a brilliant idea.

This will definitely greatly reduce the number of Evil Sorceresses if the gamer wants a serious challenge.

That said, I should add that if your scenarios require Evil Sorceresses to win, do mention it to the player.
Evil Sorceresses have unique qualities that can impact game balance.
First, they can cast Mass Slow.
Second, they can cast Mass Cancellation.
Third, they can teleport and attack enemies anywhere, thereby acting as assassins of enemy heroes.

These abilities may be absolutely necessary for fighting some battles.