HoMM6 gameplay discusion

[winterfate]

Indeed...

We should all send a copy of this thread to their mailboxes. If 500 people send one copy each, that's 500 copies of the same thing; they'll be forced to read it .

Suggestions eternal!!! (in the spirit of Patching eternal! and Griffin eternal!).

[Kristo]

Right... If we do that they'll be sure never to read it.

Seriously though, Ubival is going to do what's best for Ubival. While they do listen to us, they're going to make the game they think will sell the best. They'll probably ask for fan inputs when/if they get started on Heroes 6, at which point we can package up everything here with "Heroes 6" in it and send it in.

BTW, I can tell you right now that if they ever made a "fan-approved" Heroes game with every feature we ever wanted, it would be so complicated and confusing that no one would play it.

[gaspi2]

Well, I have some suggestions, too:)
(Or I can suggest whole heroes~~)

General: tier 8 added - more units(different) - more fun

Ultimate achieveable till lvl 25(that means 1 pre-req tree deleted, also gives player more choices:))

caster creatures regen 1 mana per round

Haven:
Racial(y, why not? I like the racial skills idea)
- Faith -

basic: tier 1 and 2 can worship. faith multiplier 1
advanced: tier 3 and 4 also.faith multiplier 1,5
expert:tier 5 and 6.faith multiplier 2
Ultimate: tier 7 and 8.faith multiplier 2,5(means effect of faith is multipied, meand e.g. if squire recieve 2 def. per 3 faith, then def. is multiplied by this number)

worship multiplier: 2( means peasants - 50 pes. per 1 faith, 4 another 1 faith 100 peasants are needed, then 200, 400 etc...)

ultimate: every unit now have 'faith' ability. Faith ability power doubles for units that already posses the ability(crusaders, champions and archangels/angels)

Peasants: taxpayer
1 faith per 50 peasants
recieve 1 bonus health for every 7 faith(if ultimate is avaible)

archer/crossbowman: - (precise shot)(half ranged defense when doing full ranged dmg)
1 faith per 25 units
recieve 1 more attack per 4 faith(if ultimate is avaible)

pikeman: negate 1st strike, long ranged(just like in heroes 4), 30% chance of blocking mellee strike
1 faith per 17 units
recieve 1 more defense per 4 faith and 1 initiative per 13 faith(if ultimate is avaible)

footman/squire: shield bash, (shield wall), armoured
1 faith per 10 units
recieve 2 defense per 3 faith(if ultimate is avaible)

priest:spellcaster(area heal, cleansing, retribution, song of peace), faith
1 faith per 2 priests is made
faith: recieve 7 bonus health per 5 faith

paladin/crusader:two-attacks, (faith), armoured, (death resistance)
1 faith per 3 units is made
recieve 1 attck, 1 def and 1 dmg per 4 faith

champions:1st strike, charge, hero, blessed, faith
Hero: special: 1 champion would have only 100 hp but 4 each 1 champion killed 1 crusader is raised(nasty, huh?:))
1 faith per 2 champion is made
recieve 4 dmg per 5 faith

angel/archangels: flyer, blessed, faith, (ressurection), angel(gives + 1 morale)
1 faith per 1 angel is made
recieve 20 health per 7 faith, also recieve 1 bonus mana regeneration per 17 faith
20 mana, 20 mana ressurection cost(can be halved with 'refined mana' perk;))

Necropolis:
- necromancy - (of course~~)

5/10/15/20%

perks:
1.) upgrades units from necromancy if player already owns upgr. dwelling
2.) effect of necormancy raises by 1% per hero lvl(from those 15% if expert, so at lvl 33 necromancy effect is 20%)
3.) necromancer now raises tier units equal to tier killed. Depends on necromancy mastery(basic tier 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6, 7 and 8)
otherwise raises skeletons(if player doesn't have this perk)

ultimate: necromancer is now so adept at raising dead that now he can make whole armies directly on battlefield(this means that necromancy gets it's effect right away in battle: e.g. 6 black dragons killed, 2 spectral dragons raised into spectral dragons stack etc...). Effect of necromancy doubles.

skeleton: undead, skeletal(half dmg from ranged)

zombie/ghoul: weakening strike(feed(zombie is healed after each his attack. No ressurection))

ghosts: flyer, mana drain, aging, fear(lvl 2), incorporeal
(fear: lvl 1 - 25% chance opponent won't retaliate
lvl 2 - 50% chance
lvl 3 - no retalation, enemy runs away for 1 tile(loss of initiative)
lvl 4 - no retaliaton - enemy runs away for it's maximum speed away from unit(loss of initiative)
lvl 5 - same, 10% chance that any unit on battlefield will freeze in panic(living only)

mummy/festering mumy: weakening strike(cursing attack - weakness, vurnerability and so on spells are casted upon attack( only 1 per strike of course;))

vampires: same as in heroes 4(undead, life drain, flyer, no retalation)

lich/archlich: undead, shooter, skeletal, cloud attack, (caster),
spellbook: (raise skeleton), (weakness), (mark of necormancy)

reaper: undead, life drain, raise dead, mark of necromancy, magical imunity
has low hp, but high defenses
raise dead: same as archangels(20 mana, 20 cost)

bone dragon/spectral dragon:undead, skeletal(changes to incorporeal upon upgr.), fear lvl 3(lvl 5 upgr.), (aging attack), flyer.
bone has 230 hp, spectral 180hp.

Academy:
- wizardry -

basic 10% faster initiative 4 casting
adv.: 20%, all spells at basic effect regardless on school mastery
exp.: 30%, advanced lvl
ulti: 40%, all spells are instantly on expert level.

ultimate: all spells are written to hero spellbook and hero wastes only 1/4 of mana needed to cast spells, also every spell that wizard casts is banned in opponent's spellbook.

gremlin: repair(nothing else:))

stone gargoyle/obsidian gargoyle: stoneskin, elemental,(imunite to magic)

steel golem: slow imunity, 75% magic proof, magic mirror, mechanical,

naga/naga queen: no retalation, (4-handed attack), (30% chance of blocking any attack but spell)

dragon golem: mechanical, magica limunity, negate 1st strike, 1st strike, fire breath(activated ability, makes firewall in front of dragon, 1 tile range)

mage/archmage: caster,piercing attack , (magic mirror), (magic proof 90%)
spellbook: ice bolt, fire wall, (summon air elemental), retribution, (mass cleansing), (area effect slow), (deflect missiles), divine strenght.

genie: spellcaster, magic abosrb(absorbs any spell to gain mana equal to it's mana cost), incorporeal, flyer, no mellee penalty
spellbook: blizzard(area effect - casts ice bolt on all units in affected area every turn 4 4 turns), teleport, area effect haste, pain mirror, create illusion.

collosus/titan: (ranged), no mellee penalty, lighting absorb(4 health), (chain shot), imunite to mind control

maybe later I'll write other factions(:-/)

magic schools: dark, light, summon, destructive, enchanting.

e.g. some spells:

plague(dark) - 15 dmg per 1 spellpower, 2/5/8/10%(mastery) dmg increase per turn(eg 1st 300 dmg, then 330, then 363, then 399 etc...)
frenzy/raise dead

enchanting: hypnosise, teleport...

summoning: phoenix, summon treants, etc...

destructive: armageddon/firewall etc...

and so on...:-/

Heh if u like it I can write more:)

[Ya5MieL]

BTW, I can tell you right now that if they ever made a "fan-approved" Heroes game with every feature we ever wanted, it would be so complicated and confusing that no one would play it.

So true,.... so true!

[danijel1990]

Well, Kristo, you're probably right...

[ThunderTitan]

BTW, I can tell you right now that if they ever made a "fan-approved" Heroes game with every feature we ever wanted, it would be so complicated and confusing that no one would play it.

And that's why they should only do one how I want.

[Campaigner]

I like how there is global balance (every side is different) but it should be improved with a chaotic techtree. Here's my version for the Knights in Heroes VI.

To understand the power of the units, here's a guide on the attack and defense: (Attack increses damage by 5% and defense reduces it by 2%)
1-3 = Dismal
4-6 = Poor
7-9 = Standard
10-12 = Good
13-15 = Great
16-18 = Extreme
19-21 = Mithril

Here' an example with Haven which is a towntype that gets alot of basic creatures which is quite customisable and upgradable with kinda high att & def stats but not so many hitpoints (Like Knights in Heroes II)

Squire upgrades to Maceman.
Archer upgrades to Marksman or Crossbowman
Griffin upgrades to Battle Griffin
Monk upgrades to Priest or Zealot
Choice of Paladin or Crusader
Angel upgrades to Archangel

Explanation of units
Maceman: Poor attack & defense. Increased damage and attack.
Marksman: Poor attack and dismal defense. 2 shots, significantly better initiative and increased speed.
Crossbowman: Standard attack and dismal defense. 1 shot with double damage and no range penalty and significantly increased attack.
Battle Griffin: Good attack and standard defense. Unlimited retaliations and Dive bomb.
Paladin: Good attack and extreme defense. Aura of Courage, double damage to Undead, slow.
Crusader: Great attack and good defense. Fast, two attacks, first strike and zealous.
Priest: Good attack and standard defense. Just like the Monk but with a spellbook containing basic life spells that get stronger the more Priests there are in the stack (Casting a spell doesn't use the Priests turn).
Zealot: Great attack and good defense. Better attack, defense, speed, initiative, damage and number of shots.
Archangel: Extreme attack and great defense. Better Resurrection and positive morale.

[Starbatron]

I am trying to understand how this is a global balance system...it appears, from the listing of each level (poor, standard, etc) that what you've done is make the attack and defense slightly random rather than definite. I am not sure that truly helps alot in balancing things. How would that work in actual combat? What formula would you use to calculating damage?

[Kristo]

I do like that idea but I think you have to take it all the way. Scrap the tiers concept entirely and allow multiples of each creature generator in a town. Every town has space for, say, seven generators - in whichever combination you want. Internally, all creatures are rated by something like the PEON (Peasant Equivalent Object? Number) from H4; all creature generators produce the same PEON:cost ratio per week. The upshot here is that every town type is zero-sum balanced within itself and by extension every town is balanced against every other town.

Now for the caveats. Coming up with an accurate PEON rating for every creature is hard. I think the only realistic way to do that is eliminate the creature specials. IMHO, that's not a bad thing. A lot of existing special abilities can be rolled into the base creature stats. It would certainly make the game simpler, both from a user and an AI perspective. The second problem is the cost of the buildings. With the tier system, you had a natural progression of more expensive buildings = better creatures. You might have to make them have an increasing cost, i.e., your first building costs 500 gold, your second costs 1000 + 5 wood, etc. I fear towns would lose a lot of their individuality this way.

I could see this idea opening a new strategic option, namely countering the troops your opponent decides to build. You could choose to save a building slot or two until you figure out what he's using. That way, if he loaded up on Archers, you could build a couple extra Cavalier dwellings to counter them. Replayability goes up as well since you might try different combinations of creatures in consecutive games. To compare to Heroes II, it'd no longer be a race to Black Dragons.

Thoughts?

[winterfate]

I think the idea is brilliant, Kristo!

I'll miss the creature specials though...

[atma6]

Doing away with creature specials is a bad idea, not balancing wise, but just for the lack of variety. Keeping each faction and their creatures unique, while maintaining a balance is indeed possible, it just requires a lot of effort.

[Campaigner]

I said to much in my previous post which confused you people....I need to be shorter and to the point.

With global balance I mean that balance should be just that, global and not only between towns. It should be in that one town may be strong in skills with kinda weak troops where another town has strong troops and not so strong skills and yet another town has useful troops and great heroskills but his primary stat is counterproductive in combination to his units (Sylvan). Nival almost succeded but they didn't go all the way. With a Heroes II chaotic creature generator building system it will go all the way.

Imagine one town whose creaturegenerators got many upgrades and many choices, another town got little upgrades and little choices and yet another almost no upgrades but lots of choice and some are kinda in the middle with plenty of upgrades but little choice like my Knight town.

You may also have noticed that there's no Champion. There was originally, and he had neither upgrade nor choice. Just Champion from start. But I thought that 6 creatures were enough.

This system would make towns with lots of choice powerful by adapting while f.e. the Wizards with no choice and only upgradable lvl 1-3 units (no lvl 4 for this town) would have to make do with their powerful magic skills & spells until they're able to upgrade their Mageguild so they can buy their lvl 5-7 creatures which already are considered to be upgraded. And another hindrance (in addition to not having a lvl 4 and having to upgrade the Mageguild quite a bit to be able to buy highlvl creaturegenerators) is that the lvl 5-7 creaturegenerators are as expensive as if you're buying both the basic and upgraded dwelling at the same time. This would make this town lose important creatures since they can't just buy a cheap dwelling like the Knights and later upgrade it. To compensate they would have very powerful creatures at those top three lvls. Ph34r the Titan

[Kristo]

With global balance I mean that balance should be just that, global and not only between towns. It should be in that one town may be strong in skills with kinda weak troops where another town has strong troops and not so strong skills and yet another town has useful troops and great heroskills but his primary stat is counterproductive in combination to his units (Sylvan). Nival almost succeded but they didn't go all the way. With a Heroes II chaotic creature generator building system it will go all the way.

I'm tempted to say, "If you want Heroes II you know where to find it." Seriously though, that's why Heroes II is still the best game in the series. Each faction has its own feel to it and requires different strategies to succeed. For a future Heroes game to be successful, I think you must capture this meta-feature. And oh by the way, make it fair.

On a side note, what do you think about having the creatures earn experience? Creature stacks would get promoted in the field instead of buying an upgrade at home. It could still be in the "chaotic" Heroes II style in that not every creature has a promotion available. I'm thinking the stack's experience would be an average of the number of battles fought by the stack. If you buy new creatures, you lower the average by mixing 0s with veterans. Once the stack reaches a certain average value, say somewhere in the 5-10 range, it is promoted. Promoted stacks will never go back and cannot be combined with non-upgrades. That makes the non-upgrades always necessary, and promoted stacks that much more valuable.

[danijel1990]

I don't think that global balancing is such a good idea.
Don't you like the way it is now?

[Starbatron]

I am torn about the experience idea... On the one hand, it would make for some interesting strategy, but on the other hand, how many other games are out there that use this very same concept...would it make Heroes blur into the mob of other such games?

[ThunderTitan]

No exp dammit... i already have Disciples for that.

[Campaigner]

I believe that a game that are going to be developed must have a pretty solid designdocument that are to be 90% finished before you start coding. Which means that all the core design features have been decided and works. And the design features are the essence of the gameplay. EXP in Disciples is such an element. It's a core feature that is critically important in the game. All of the HoMMs was designed without troop EXP since the developers surely thought it best that way. They probably realised that troop/stack EXP would impact the game in a way they didn't want to.

I just don't believe that stack XP is a good feature in HoMM.


Starbatron: But for crying out loud....If a feature makes a game better, why complain about it..?

note: I don't agree with the EXP proposal, just talking about the principle that people are afraid their favorite game is borrowing features from other games.

[Starbatron]

My complaint was not in reference to borrowing from other games, but rather from creating a large number of drone games that all feel the exact same. What reason would there be to buy a game that is a replica of another game with the only difference being the universe/storyline? It's not as if the storyline in this game can carry the load anyway, but that's besides the point. So we'd have several units with "experience"; maybe then we should rename it Disciples of Might and Magic

[darkpriest]

don't know if some one has mentioned this but i think it's worth mentioning. The map where the battle is going on should be much much bigger.There should be a landscape like ditches and hilltops and the units can use the terrain while attacking(hiding behind a tree, firing from behind a rock) generaly units will act with the terrain and will gain abillites based upon where they are (if some unit is in ditch it will have bonus defense). That is it

[Qurqirish Dragon]

Well, here's my idea for a creature system, which combines aspects from heroes 2 and 4, with a couple other ideas:

Some creature levels have choices (as heroes 4), some have upgrades (as heroes 2), some have both. For my listings below, I will use very low/ low/ medium /high/ very high listings for stats simply because exact numbers are meaningless until fine-tuning is needed. (and these ratings are for creatures of that level, not overall)

For example, again using the knight/ castle/ haven town:

Level 1:
Peasant - very low stats all around, taxpayer.
Upgrades to:
Militia - low to medium stats, taxpayer.
or pikeman - medium stats, negates charging bonus of enemy attacker.

Basic choice between income and combat efficiency

level 2:
Archer - medium stats, ranged attack
or crossbowman - similar to archer, but with larger range, 50% more damage, piercing shot at close range.
upgrades to:
Longbowman - same as archer, but double-shot, increased range
crossbowman do not have an upgrade.

Go for crossbows for more early-game damage, but long-term, the archers' double-strike will deal more damage.

level 3:
Swordsman: medium stats generally, but high defense.
or fencer: low defense and damage, high attack, very high speed
no upgrades

Fencers are not as durable, and will not generally do as well as swordsmen, except for...

level 4:
Griffin: high stats, unlimited retaliation, flying
or Mounted griffin: requires Fencers: relative to griffin, slightly lower speed and higher attack / defense; can attack two stacks (or one stack twice), unlimited retaliation, and has battle-dive. When the stack is defeated, a portion of the stack reappears as either a griffin stack or a fencer stack. (some of the kills were only the rider or mount). After battle, if there are both griffin and fencers remaining that were formed from this ability, as many as possible recombine.

upgrades to:
(griffin only) armored griffin. Slower, but higher defense and can stun on attack (due to additional force)

The griffin cannot fly with the heavier swordsman, so you can take a weaker level 3 in exchange for a stronger level 4. The "upgrade" is more of a "side-grade" as you sacrifice one aspect in exchange for another. ou may actually want to have some of each type- the armored form for seige defense while the "normal" form for standard use.

I haven't thought through enough ideas for the upper-level troops, but I think I have the general idea set up here. Some creatures have choices for the base creature, some for the upgrades, some depend on previous choices. Not all creatures have upgrades.