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: Posted 11 January 2005; by Pitsu

Realism in Homm:
How far to go?

by Pitsu

Introduction
During my years on HOMM fan community boards, I have heard many people talk about realism and HOMM. In vast majority of cases, they made me feel that the basic idea is the more realism, the better. Yet I know that reality is not perfect. I do not live in a perfect world and I doubt that copying it would create a perfect gaming system. Of course, a completely unrealistic world would be impossible to understand and would not be enjoyable, so I have asked myself how much realism we can add to a computer game. What is the theoretical limit? And what is the optimal amount? This article is written as a little philosophical essay about some game features. There is no way I can address everything, so I have picked out some points that I find most interesting or illustrative. This should be taken as my vision only and not as universal truth. I would be happy if you find something that you have not thought about so far, and if my article helps you to evolve your vision of how much realism is needed in HOMM, then it has served its purpose.

What is reality, what is HOMM
To compare and analyse these two subjects, the first and most important step is to define them. Reality is the material world we see around us. And let’s skip the theories of relativity, which claim that a human may be as tall as a redwood. Even phoenixes are not so fast that we need to consider such effects. Defining Heroes of Might and Magic (HOMM) is more difficult. I would do it as following: a turn-based game, where armies of heroes and creature stacks venture into a universe filled with a wide variety of objects. These objects are not only war-related, they are pretty much whatever designers have come up with. And the interactions that armies can have with the objects are also varied. Note that I say “turn-based game”, not “turn-based strategy game”. As you will soon see, in my opinion the required amount of reality depends a lot whether HOMM aims to be more of a strategy game or a role-playing game. That problem, however, is not the subject of this article.

Adventure map
Does size matter?
What is important on the adventure map? Should it be realistic with trees higher than humans and mountains bigger than genies (Fig. 1)? Let’s look at HOMM4. It is beautiful and much more realistic than predecessors, isn’t it? Heroes are not as big as mountains or groves. We do not see any more continents from above and adventure objects from side view. The elevation tool allows us to create more sophisticated landscapes with hills and valleys.

In HOMM3, forests and mountains are small -- or at least no bigger than adventure locations and characters. Also, there are only a few possibilities for hiding objects behind others. Thus, everything that player could interact with is underlined by size and the decorations are kept in the background. HOMM4 has some highlighting: external dwelling size depends on creature level and shrines of magic get larger for higher levels, but the main aim of designers has obviously been keeping everything (except mushrooms) natural and realistic. We can say that it is more a virtual reality than a strategic map. Only mountains would have been too big, so their size was reduced to a maximum of twice the height of trees. But dwarves are much shorter than titans or trees (see the picture again). Which style is better? It completely depends what one wants from the game. For strategy, the size highlighting is rather good because the unnecessary objects are in the background and do not disturb the overview. An overview of army placement, strategic locations, and so forth is the best way to see the weaknesses and strengths of your own and your opponent and thereby develop an appropriate strategy. For RPGs, obvious highlighting is not necessary, because it revolves around a single character. (We can discuss somewhere else whether superheroes are a result of role-playing elements or a failure of the strategy engine.) Keeping track of a single army is easier than co-ordinating movements of eight armies and needs only for the surroundings of the single army to be kept “under the player’s keen eye”.

Adventure map views of HOMM3 (top) and HOMM4 (bottom).
Pictures are taken from the editor, not the game.

I cannot resist pointing on an odd side effect of relevant sized landscape objects in HOMM4. Look at a hero travelling in forest. How far does he travel a day? He manages to pass about 25 tightly growing trees a day, a strong hundred meters if transformed to real world! It does not ruin the gameplay, and is hardly ever noticed, but can still be used as an example where HOMM3 is more realistic than HOMM4. Ship size is another thing that goes into deep contrast with overall realism of HOMM4.

Now to the absolute size. Generally, HOMM4 has all objects bigger than HOMM3, making players feel to be closer to the ground and filling the adventure map faster (Fig 1). This is a plus for object recognition – the bigger objects are more difficult to miss or to confuse with similar objects. On the other hand, the larger objects also alter the global feeling and reduce the world size. I have heard voices on Round Table saying that HOMM4 is more a “king of the hill” than “king of the world” game, and I agree with them. Ground elevation supports this feeling, because the curvatures are more like hills than continental plateaus. Terrain elevation has so far had no strategic meaning, like bonuses when attacking downhill or such, so it can be regarded as part of the landscape along with mountains and trees. In HOMM3, one could think that small hills are too small to be seen and that if they are noticeable, they are impassable (Fig. 1), which makes strategic sense.

If the relative sizes were kept realistic, zooming out would result in the loss of smaller objects. You easily see towns and mountains but a sign or well becomes just a pixel on the screen. So if we want to recognise the objects and keep the feeling of big continents, we need to implement a smart zoom function or to make a compromise with realistic sizes. However, in principle, a continental view is not necessary.

Would it be a solution if the map-maker were allowed to define the size of decorative objects? Could RPG maps can have big trees and mountains, while strategic maps use smaller ones?

Dimensions and angles
A hot topic among fans today is whether HOMM5 should be 2D, full 3D, isometric 3D (like HOMM4) or some mixture. For the moment let’s set aside arguments about system requirements. Imagine that we are so far advanced that real-time 3D can handle tons of nano-detailed objects at once on even lowest performing computers. Try to imagine HOMM3 in 3D, while keeping object sizes, colours, details, etc. the same. Is it better than the original? Maybe. Would it change the strategy/RPG balance? Why should it? The additional dimension is like the decorative landscape objects – if too pronounced, it starts to disturb the overview. How pronounced the third dimension should be depends mostly on view angle. For 3D, it is impossible to keep the twisted “land from above, objects from side” style of HOMM3. We are forced to build a united, real 3D world. From straight above, it would be 2D and if the weather is not cloudy, give an excellent overview. From the side we can distinguish monsters more easily. Here’s a strong plus for 2D – it allows combining different viewing angles, providing simultaneously overview and object recognition. Both of them are important for strategy, but the first is optional for RPG.

Dynamics
A HOMM adventure map is static and pre-defined, unlike the real world, which is always changing. Many other turn-based games--for example Civilization--have much more dynamic interfaces. Cities can be built and destroyed, forests can be chopped down, and so on. Landscape changes could be also implemented in HOMM. At certain turns the trees could change colour or snow could cover the land. Nevertheless, if we keep the turn-based principle, we have to stop somewhere. Neither HOMM nor other turn-based games can become fully realistic. And this is the point where two meaningful events (not including animations) happen simultaneously. If we allow it, we get simultaneous turns, like in Age of Wonders. The game has gotten a touch of real time strategy, and gotten closer to the dynamics of the real world, while still being classified as a turn-based game. Is that wrong? No. Several players can play at the very same moment in real time, but each of them can still control only one object at a time and only for as long as allowed by the turn. While you move your main army, your secondary army must stand still.

In conclusion, keeping the turn-based principle means that one can never make the adventure map as real as the real world with its dynamic changes. But I believe HOMM is as far from dynamic world as it can be. There is a long way to the theoretical limit of possible dynamic actions that can be implemented. The optimum has not yet been reached.

Passability
High mountains are impassable for ground troops (There is no hero named Hannibal in the game). But why can’t dragons or air elementals fly over them? The same about forests: why are they impassable? It could take longer time for big army to go through a forest than along a road, but it is possible in real world. To make Homm more real, we could implement different bonuses and penalties to movements in forests, mountains, and caves (with a penalty for flyers). Yes, native terrain bonuses are a step in this direction, but a small step. Now, however, we need a new way of creating impassable areas, or quest guards could become meaningless and storylines difficult to build. Magic barriers that even black dragons cannot ignore? Bring all the restricted areas to another plane, like underground? Could be done, but the game would be very different from what we know now. Making mountains, forests, etc. passable for at least some troops would also allow the map to become more dynamic. Passability -- or more correctly impassability -- of certain objects has so far been the main reason for keeping HOMM maps static. The possibility of adding or removing impassable objects may easily ruin the game. In HOMM4 developers took the risk and allowed mapmakers, but not players, make events that delete certain predefined objects. The feature has proved successful. We shall see whether the developers go further in HOMM5.

Minimap
There’s not much to say here. Everybody agrees that the minimap should be like an extreme “strategic adventure map” described above: the ultimate overview showing placement of water, continents, and towns (with colours). And I bet everyone also agrees it should stay 2D, not rendered 3D or twisted-time-warped 7D.

Battles
General layout
HOMM battles so far have always been in the tactical (or strategic) style, not in the RPG style. The player controls all units perfectly (hopes that reader forgets berserkers) unlike a Diablo 2 necromancer, who can only guide his pets. Therefore, a good overview of unit placement and battlefield layout is essential. Since on the battlefield creatures are larger than on the adventure map, object recognition has so far not been a problem, although it is still very important.
In general, everything said about dimensions and angles of the adventure map also applies to the battle screen. HOMM4 removed the side/top view combo of predecessors and became more realistic. I personally felt that the far horizon (montains/hills/forest) beyond the battlefield on the top of the battle screen, gave more epic feeling for battles, but sacrificed realism. A good introduction in HOMM4 was mixed terrains. In predecessors, the entire battlefield had just one type of terrain, HOMM4 can have half-snow/half-dirt or other combined terrains. This makes them more realistic and adds to the tactical possibilities.

A battle between a hero and genies. H3 at the top, H4 at the bottom.
The battle occurs in front of the behemoth dwelling shown above.

Grid system
The HOMM4 grid system is in fact more realistic than the one of HOMM3, where troop placement was restricted to certain areas determined by large hexagons. The battlefield is not much bigger, but the variation of troop placements is significantly higher. Unfortunately, the HOMM4 system, despite its realism, completely fails to be user friendly – the player has lost a lot of control over troop movement. Sometimes it is even difficult to see whether your troops are close to opponent’s archers or whether the archers can still shoot freely. Probably it was hoped that the new system and higher variation would add strategic depth, and realism was not a goal of its own. Perhaps it would have added depth if more complex controls were provided. We can only speculate how confusing or simple it would have been in that case, but we can conclude that control and overview of unit placement and movement is more important than realism.

Heroes in or out?
Another wedge in the line of fans: Many say that the untouchable hero on the side is just so unrealistic that this is a strong reason to put them on battlefield. Others refer to Edward “Longshanks” in Braveheart movie or to Napoleon and claim that it is realistic. Not everyone’s glory is from hard battles in front lines. Since both possibilities are realistic, the main discussion is mainly about personal preferences and the fun factor. A compromise that allows heroes to be either in or out is most welcome, and brings HOMM closer to the diversity of the real world. Many innovative compromises have come from the dreams of fans, and some of them may be even possible to implement.

Stacks
As I said in the HOMM definition, the game employs stacks of creatures. It is important, since unlimited stacks give endless replayability. An army consisting only of peasants can be stronger than an army of dragons even though in single-creature combats, a dragon is always stronger than a peasant. Hence, stacks are important for game fun and strategic variability. In battles they appear as single units carrying a sign “it is not only me but xxx times of me”. In reality it would not be possible--even agent Smith could not copy himself and keep the number of persons to one, while multiplying his strength. And only the top creature takes damage in attack, which is also illogical. Cyclopes do area damage to a stack of 10 titans, and one titan takes all the damage. But the damage could be split equally among stack members, being more realistic. If 200 damage is done for 150 peasants, 100 peasants would take 1 point of damage and 50 top ones would take 2 points. In that case, the whole stack would die together. To kill one peasant, you would first have to bring all members of the stack down to 1 point. It would make causalities in a victorious army much smaller, and make small armies completely useless for weakening superarmies. Damage distribution among only a few top creatures could be a compromise between realism and traditional HOMM, but again we should ask whether this piece of reality is a worthy addition.

Yet another problem: 4 stacks of 1000 wolves can surround a stack of 10 pikemen, and the pikemen can still escape the circle, just by walking away. That does not happen in reality or a in non-stack oriented game. Moreover, 6 stacks of 1 sprite can completely block the movement of a behemoth, which is also not logical. Thus, the idea of stacks and how they have been implemented are completely illogical. However, very few people even think that eliminating stack would make the more realistic or entertaining. I personally think that stacks make the game “simple to learn and difficult to master” and gives enough strategic variation to justify the loss of realism. It is close to the optimal mixture of simplicity, realism, strategy and fun. More realism could make it more difficult to learn and I am not sure that the fun and strategy factors will not suffer under it.

Towns
What about towns? It seems odd when a HOMM3 tower, placed in desert, is covered with snow and nobody is walking on the streets of the world’s most glorious capitol. HOMM4 showed a reflection of the surrounding terrain, but despite that fans are not happy with towns. The reason is that the dwellings are placed with no meaning. There is plain land and all of a sudden a huge cliff appears. Moreover, the cliff is in different colour than the surrounding. In HOMM1-3 the buildings melted naturally into the background, which gave more natural (realistic) look.

Lets look at the Rampart and imagine how different terrains could be implemented (Fig 3). Snow would be easy – just add a layer that covers ground and trees with snow. However, all buildings could also have a different, snow-covered version. Desert would need new ground and possibly less forest on the background, but might look beautiful. Lava and cursed ground: mainly dead trees and dark ground, and perhaps moonlight instead of sunlight. Note that in many cases there is even no real need to make a completely new set of structures.

HOMM3 Rampart town panorama.
Some dwellings and mage guild not fully upgraded.

The scene shown above is not animated, but in the game the only living beings in the town are the dragons where a decent number of them can be seen flying around the dragon cliff. Didn’t the player have enough crystal to buy them out? Why have they left home if the others have gone to war? It is not necessary that the inhabitants act according to the player’s mouse click or that the number reflects creatures in dwellings, though it would be realistic to have more life in towns (even in necropolis).

Photogenaity
Something where realism is important is game sales. Screenshots on the website or the CD box are the first ones that potential new customers look at. The more photogenic the screenshots, the more likely customers are to buy it. Photogenaity and realism are not synonyms, and I think both of them are important to make a game appealing. A photo by an amateur can be very realistic, but makes the viewer think only about a common workday. He has seen the object thousands of times before with his own eyes. A professional can photograph the same object under slightly different angle and the viewer will see the picture as art, as he sees the object in a new light. Not all optical effects caused by the camera have a negative influence on the beauty of the photo. What I want to say is that it is not the realistic look itself that makes people like a game like HOMM. It is the artistic view of reality.

Conclusions
You want to hear some conclusions? Lazy as I am, I would like to say “do it yourself!” and actually my aim is not to make you believe what I do. I am happy if this little article helps everyone to think more clearly about connections between realism and HOMM. You are welcome to could draw your own conclusions, but first I will give you mine.
Even theoretically, we cannot make HOMM as dynamic as the real world. Neither can we keep the sizes of adventure and landscape objects in line with common sense -- nor can we add too many decorations -- without disturbing the strategic balance of the game. For RPGs, these limits are less restricted.
But where is the line across which realism would not add more to the game? I personally think that a lot more realism can be added with dynamic changes of adventure maps and towns. Battles and 3D view, on the other hand, do not need additional realism.

There are plenty of illogical things, but many of them may be necessary for the game to play well. It is not realism that makes the game good -- it is something else.

Finally, I would like to thank Charles Watkins for correcting the most odd grammatical constructions that I wrote in the preliminary manuscript.

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Behind the Curtain: Over the Shoulder
by Charles Watkins

Part 3: Layout

In this series of articles I’m taking readers along as I make a map.

Since last time, ‘Lost Crusade’ has come alive as I placed the adventure and location objects on the map and got all the important scripts working. (Most of the time, anyway.) If you want to know more about the planning and design work, please see the previous two articles in this ‘Over the Shoulder’ series.

In many ways, this is most enjoyable part of mapmaking, so I’m almost sorry to bring it to an end. From here on out, I may make a few tweaks and embellishments, but I will probably not introduce any significant new functionality. Because I wanted to get into testing in plenty of time to finish by New Years, I have postponed writing the dialog. This will give me something to do while the map is being tested. Dialog can be done through Events assigned to individual heroes so that they speak only when the central character is present. Some of these are Triggered, some are Placed, and some are Timed. There are a couple that are delayed action—when an Event occurs a variable records the day and a Timed Event employs a numeric comparison to see whether some required interval has passed.

I had intended to create a ‘skeleton’ map with all the important objects laid out before beginning the detailing, but I found I could make better progress alternating between the activities. So each edit session, I would work on one area of the map, laying out its main objects and landscaping the area around them. Then I would come back and fill in the spaces. I did this 20 times over the course of about 3 weeks. Each time I incremented the version number so that as I go to test, the map will be version 0.21. On release, I’ll reset the version number to 1.0 and go from there.

For the rest of this article, I’d like to show you some of the notable locations on the map and make some comments about what went into them. It may come as a relief that I will not be lecturing on the history of the Crusades this time – but that will come again when I discuss the narrative and dialog. Next time, I should have test results to cover and will be ready to wrap up the project.

This is the starting area, Eleanor’s hometown of Aquitaine. After she arrives in Akkadia, Louis will capture the town and surrounding area. Each structure has a Triggerable Event called ‘LoseTown’ that causes it to change color to Neutral. Since there is the possibility that the player has a few armies running around, the same Event also unleashes a marauder to clean them up. There’s nothing they can accomplish and I don’t want to distract the player.

I had previously thought I would be able to require the player to keep the Sword of the Gods in Eleanor’s possession, but this turned out to be impossible -- as far as I can tell. The problem is you can test to see whether an army has a certain artifact, but you can’t test a specific hero. So the best I could do is make sure the sword stayed in Eleanor’s party. My script used a condition to determine whether (a) Purple player owned the sword and (b) Eleanor’s party did NOT own the sword. I did this mainly to get the initial party through the portal together with the sword. Once they enter the portal, Eleanor is ‘reborn’ in another party and the sword is long gone.

This is the Sprite Portal. The party has lost the Sword of the Gods in an ambush and will follow the trail to the Portal. I have positioned Sprites along the trail to urge the player to go that direction, but eventually it will be evident that all other paths are closed.

A One-Way Portal is embedded in a Quest Gate. To enter the Portal, the party must first satisfy the conditions of the Gate, which are to have all four nobles and the sword together. I may change this to a Two-Way Portal since the party is not coming back anyway. On coming out of the Portal the party hits a PlacedEvent called ExitSpritePortal, where the action really begins. The key to this transaction was having everything happen on the same move — the check to see the party is all together, the journey through the portal, and the events that occur on arrival.

The problem was not so much how to kill off the starting party so they could be ‘reborn’ in the new world, but how to dispose of the bodies. If I killed them at Aquitaine, some other army could take the bodies back and resurrect them. If I waited till they arrived in Akkadia to kill them, then the player might have Eleanor haul them around – and the reborn Eleanor might be disturbed to come across her own corpse. So I sent them into the dimensional void, where the player can get a glimpse at the space between worlds before the party is killed off. The bomb is to wipe out the Exit Portal so the player won’t try to get back there. Note the bubbles in the void – it turns out you can drop objects into the void using an Object Brush.

On the Figure, you can’t see the ‘ExitSpritePortal’ Event marker, but this is where the action starts. This Placed Event initiates a combat that the player cannot win and triggers another event called ‘EleanorReborn’, which performs a Change Color on an Eleanor clone to bring it into the game. I found I needed to run the ‘LoseTown’ and ‘EleanorReborn’ scripts prior to the combat so that the player would not be able to retreat and so that defeat would not result in an immediate LOSS. I also found it necessary to take the Sword of the Gods from the party, since there could have been a treasure pile if it were not equipped at the time of the combat.

This is Elise, the Nature town inhabited by Celeste and her subjects. Celeste is a powerful hero and I don’t want the player using her to carry the party, so the Quest Gate uses a NOT HAS SPECIFIC HERO condition to not allow any party through the gate that includes Celeste. Elise will first turn Green and the Purple.
Celeste needs to stay home because of periodic Orc attacks on the town.

To gain access to the town – this is the gate within the gate -- Eleanor will need either to have healed a Sprite she encounters soon after arrival, and who will then join her, or she will need to prove herself by healing a Wise Old Tree in neighboring Fredonia. (I try to give the player two ways to accomplish most main objectives.) Once this requirement is satisfied, a Triggered Event turns Elise Green, so it becomes an ally and the party can enter. On entry, they get the second main quest as the Standard Event: Entered — to locate and return with Eldaron, the Elf King. Eldaron is being held by some Orcs, but when he eventually enters Elise, it turns Purple via another Triggered Event.

There are two Quest Huts here. One sends the party off looking for the Druid Iblis and the other teaches Nature magic to Eleanor after she owns Elise. This second one uses a compound condition to make sure only Eleanor will get the skill. It is not possible for the Quest Hut to award Nature to a specific hero, so it is necessary to require that only one hero can enter. Another part of the condition determines whether Eleanor has an open skill slot and ask whether the player wants to fill it now.

Fredonia is a small human community build around a Wise Old Tree. The tree has the blight, as depicted by the overlayed dead tree. When Elise approaches, the Placed Event allows her to ‘heal’ the tree by deleting the dead part.

Each of the other dwellings has a minor quest. In one, the Mayor rewards the party for healing the tree. In another, a siege engineer needs a cart to repair his Catapult. (This will be extremely valuable in Foss as a prototype for the War Machine Factory.) A tavern offers the traditional drinking contest, and a retired soldier offers to train some Squires to be Crusaders.

Just Southeast of here there is an archeologist who can restore some nearby ruins, which show that Life was once present in Akkadia. Since this kind of work takes some time, I used the archeologist Completion Script to set a variable that indicated when the requirement was satisfied. Then a Timed Event running every two weeks checks to see whether enough time had passed, and if so to delete the objects blocking the ruins and notify the player.

Here’s the Municipal District in Foss. The Garrison is well fortified, but will Color Change to Green (ally) when the player completes the Tax Collector quest. It was not possible to uncheck “Can Remove” for a Neutral, but I found you can uncheck it if you change it to a color and it will stay unchecked when you go back to Neutral.

The Blue Keymaster provides access to Foss Town and some other areas. The Treasury Vault is where the party deposits the collected taxes, gaining access to some minor treasures. To access the Conservatory of Order, the player will need to join the Mage Guild, which is another quest.

The Tunnel goes down to the Dungeon, shown next.

The VIP section of the Dungeon needs special keys to enter, and these are available in the Guard House. The player get the keys and the guards join afte the guards get their back pay. That’s done with a Triggered Event that performs a Change Color for all the Gold Golem guards in the area.

One of the Prisons holds Godfrey, who reveals that he had found the Sword of Swiftness and hidden it before being taken captive. The Brown Idols in the cells represent parts of the map to where he buried the sword. Godfrey will take on the protector role with Eleanor and the two will have some conversations when they are in the same party. It turns out the each of the main characters represents a different type of relationship—Raymond is the friend, Hugh is the oppressor, Omar is the love interest, etc. More on this once I’ve written the dialog.

The Ninja in the bottom cell has Master Stealth, and will likely get off a surprise attack on the party. If no-one has Scouting, then the Bandits will attack with surprise as well. In the cell to the Southeast, there is a fairly well advanced Order Mage. She offers to join, but cannot leave the cell (like Celeste). The solution, which is a little different than with Omar, is to engage her in ‘shadow’ combat and allow her to retreat to the nearest town. This exploits a peculiarity whereby a Color Change performed by the Standard Event: Encountered results in the player controlling both sides in the combat.

Chernobyl is the center of Chaos in Akkadia, so I gave the landscape a random look. The Quest Gate sends the party looking for the Dragonslayer – who turns out to be the Ranger Raymond. The condition is satisfied when the party returns with Raymond and the Completion Script triggers a Color Change to Green for Chernobyl. Inside, I have seven Chaos lords, each specialized in a different spell. Once the gate is opened, they can come out—but if the player blocks the gate and keeps them inside, they will come along in the Color Change to Purple. I’m not sure how useful they will be, but filling up all 7 Garrison slots insures that the creature dwellings will be full.

On gaining entry to Chernobyl the party receives the quest to fetch a Megadragon, which will trigger another Color Change, this time to Purple, and allow Eleanor to learn Chaos Magic at the Quest Hut next door. To get the Megadragon, Eleanor needs to go to Dragon Cave, next.

There is no creature dwelling for Megadragons, so I made one using the Triggered Script for a Quest Hut. To access it, the player will need GM Stealth or beat the guard. If Raymond is in the party the player has the option of sneaking behind the Megadragon and extracting the Flaming Sword from its haunch. A Triggered Script on the Megadragon takes away the sword and replaces the Megadragon with a Troglodyte, as if it was deflated. (I may add a subquest that allows Raymond to become a Dragonmaster and in that case I will add a Color Change event to allow him to recruit the Megadragon.)

The Upper Crypt has two entries. One is a hefty Garrison and the other has a block against the Elf King. Down below are two chambers, one for Life and one for Death. This is where the Sword of the Gods and Soul Stealer originally resided.

You can barely see it, but inside the Quest Gate built into the Northeast wall is a Greater Ring of Negation. To get the ring, the player must complete the Undertaker quest, but this way I get to tantalize the player by displaying it beforehand. I’m trying to draw the player’s attention to the Crypt, since Hugh and the Soul Stealer wait below. The idea is for the player to come here after completing the other sword quests.

The Undertaker quest is optional and designed to see whether the player is committed to the principles of Life. To complete the quest, the player needs to release a Necromancer from a Prison and her presence will wreck morale if she joins the party.

The Forge has had some changes since last time. Rosencrantz gives the party a look at the towns in the game and the Idols provide maps to the Temple Treasures. This was the hardest script to code in the entire map because it has to deal with all combinations of the Sword of Swiftness, Flaming Sword, and Soul Stealer. I’m not sure I’ve got it quite right yet. The player needs either the Sword of Swiftness or Flaming Sword to enter the Forge and needs them both to destroy Soul Stealer.

I tried to do all this in a single script but it got too tangled up, so I lined up some Placed Events that the party will trigger as they approach Rosencrantz. Another complicating factor was the possibility that a player would first refuse to give up a sword and then transfer it directly into Rosencrantz’ inventory, so that DestroySoulStealer had to be written as a Triggerable Event for Rosencrantz. I set a Boolean variable to indicate that Soul Stealer has been destroyed, but the only use of it is in the Quest Gate to the East, which opens to take the party back to Earth.

I’m pleased with the way the Garden of Earthly Delights turned out. I still have to do the dialog here, but I have all the ingredients for what could be a most engaging encounter – drugs, sex, forbidden knowledge. All PG rated, you understand.

The party arrives in the little room at the Southeast and must pick someone to climb the wall (alone) to open the door from the other side. Across the entry hall is the Death Library, which will not open to any hero with Life. To exit the front door, the party will need to visit the Red Keymaster Tent across the courtyard.

This is where it pays the player to have kept Omar in the party, because having been here before, he knows the traps and can open the doors. Otherwise, the party has some challenges ahead.

The inner courtyard is where Hassan I Sabbah has lured some of Christiandom’s Champions with promises of exotic pleasures. Once under his sway, he takes them to the Dark Knights Sanctum to be reborn as Dark Champions. The elite are taken to the inner sanctum, where a reborn Iblis guards the Sword of the Gods. (It’s about time it showed up.) I’ve made Iblis a Demonologist (Nature + Death), but I have not seen whether he summons Imps like he’s supposed to because I’ve been using Quick combat for testing. I’ll have to set the strength of the Evil Garrison after I see what kind of force Eleanor can assemble. I wouldn’t be surprised if a typical party at this stage was Eleanor, Raymond, Godfrey, Omar, two good Shooters, and maybe some Angels. Some players may run one of the nobles as head of a defensive force, freeing a slot for something like Crusaders.

Hassan’s Portal leads to the basement of a desecrated abbey inside the Holy City. One of the Big Treasures is buried in the Altar room, and the Ice Gate is rigged to ‘open’ when the player defeats the Ice Demons, or sneaks past them. This is easily done with simple scripts. A cave tunnel leads to Solomon’s Stables. I don’t expect the player to recruit the Evil Eyes here, but they lend an atmosphere of corruption.

I may include some additional destinations for Hassan’s Portal. I’m thinking of a Neutral Necropolis, which could be the source of Hassan’s power. By blocking and blowing up Portals, the destinations could be made to change.

Solomon’s Stables did not turn out as well as I’d hoped. There’s something wrong with the colors and not much for the player to do. I’ll have to make it up in the dialog.

Out the Northwest are double doors to the Vault. It’s loaded with goodies, which make no difference to the ending -- so why not reward the player for getting this far? Here is the Portal to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which comes out in the marshalling area joined to the Temple complex.

Jerusalem is too expansive to show with a screen-grab, so the picture is just a bit of the City Wall. Notice the wall is rigged to come down if the player opts for the Armageddon ending, allowing the Teal Christians inside to mix it up with the Red Turks outside. The final tableau is set outside the central town, but you can’t see anything but a lot of bombs.

My original plan was to allow the player to take one side or the other in the fight, but I learned that a Color Change script for the main party would likely be deleted when the roster changes. So I could not change Eleanor’s group to Teal (Christians) or Red (Turks). The only other option would be to change the Teal or Red armies to Green, so they would fight as allies to Eleanor, but this means scripting a Change Color for all those armies around Jerusalem. I may get to it, but for now once the walls come down, it’s a free for all. This just about guarantees that the player loses, but I should also put in a time limit so the ending does not drag on too long.

For Eleanor to participate, I would also need to do something about Purple and Green armies left in Akkadia, if the other side is to have a chance. Perhaps I could create a special loss condition when the Turks are wiped out or when they take Jerusalem. I’ll have to look at this some more.

Next time: I’ll wrap this series up with an account of testing, final fixes, dialog, packaging, and release. About the time that article comes out, the map itself should be available.

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Behind the Curtain: Over the Shoulder
by Charles Watkins

Part 2: Map Design

In this series, I’m taking readers through the process of making a map. In Part 1, I settled on a story that can be played out in Heroes IV, giving players a lot of freedom while maintaining an overall continuity. I want to stage some interesting encounters that can turn out different ways and change the course of the game, and to tell the story through player interactions instead of narrative.

It’s a Large, 2-level, solo-play story map called ‘Lost Crusade’. The story centers on Eleanor of Aquitaine, who goes on a crusade to deliver the Sword of the Gods to Jerusalem, which is under siege by the Turks. Her quest takes her to another land filled with fantastic creatures and powerful magic. As she finds her way back to Earth, she meets old friends and new, arriving in the Holy Land as the warring forces are at the verge of Armageddon.

By looking over my shoulder while I put it together, maybe other mapmakers will see something they are able to use and players can get a better idea of the kind of effort that goes into these things. I’m sure there are mapmakers who just open up the editor and have at it, but I like to work everything out on paper before doing the heavy editing. I save most of the writing for the end, since it’s something I can work on while the map’s out for testing. I’m already starting to feel some urgency since I figure I’ll need to have the map out for testing by the first of December to be able to make the January contest deadline.

In this part, I finish the planning process and create the main elements of the map. This may make more sense if you’ve already read Part 1, where I laid out the storyline and gave a little Crusader history. Speaking of which, I now have some updates.

More on 12th Century

First, let me point out a typo in Part 1, where I said Eleanor married Louis VI. That should have been Louis VII.

Second, after further research, I can now fix the date as 1152. By then Eleanor had returned from the Second Crusade, and Jerusalem is under siege by the Turks. The Pope then was Eugene III, another follower of Bernard, and the Byzantine Emperor was Alexis the Great. The King of Jerusalem at that time was Baldwin III, so I have rearranged some character names to make Baldwin the king, Raymond the ranger, and Godfrey the general.

And third, I have introduced an ‘ultimate’ bad guy behind Hugh’s corruption. This is Hassan i Sabbah, founder of the Assassin cult. He ruled by terrorizing rulers and caused the fall of the Seljuk kingdom by assassinating Malik Shah.

Now that I’ve worked out the storyline, I need to decide on the main locations and characters that will be involved. For this, I’m using various lists, which are shown here. Even if I weren’t writing this article, I’d want to keep the lists since it’s so easy to lose track of things as the map is taking shape. By the time you see the lists, they will have been revised time and again as I strive to tighten up the story and tie up loose end. As I said, for me it’s easier working everything out on paper than having to change the map halfway through.

Basic elements

First I need to identify the various factions and assign them colors and alignments. To make it easy to remember, I’ll use the defaults as much as possible.

Color Assignments

Purple – Crusaders (Eleanor’s party)
Green – Arcadian Allies
Blue – Order
Orange – Chaos
Neutral – Nature, Death
Teal – Christians
Red – Turks

Character Classes

Eleanor, Priest
Hugh, Warlord
Raymond, Ranger
Godfrey, General
Iblis, Demonologist (Evil Druid)
Celeste, Druid (Fairie Queen)
Eldaron, Beast Lord (Elf King)
Omar, Paladin (Eleanor’s love)
Baldwin, Lord (Protector of Jerusalem)
Hassan i Sabbah, Assassin
Malik Shah, Barbarian (Sultan)
Rosencrantz, Archmage (Swordsmith)

All of these are heavily customized heroes with skills appropriate to their classes. To keep up morale, I have contrived to start the Warlord and General as Knights so that they will be Purple, like Eleanor.

Staging area for heroes. Some of these have two tokens, since I want to remove the initial party after they pass through the portal and have the members reappear later. Once the heroes are on the map, they can be referenced in scripts. The same goes for towns and quest locations, so I’ve also put those out.

Some of the people these characters are named after were French nobles, but I think most players would more readily identify with their English names. Thus Godfroi became Godfrey, Baudoiun became Baldwin, and Guilliam became William. Hugh, Raymond, and Louis come across OK. There will also be an assortment of minor heroes used in encounters, but since they are not involved in interactions, they can wait.

Main locations

The upper level is devoted entirely to Arcadia, with Chaos to the East and Order to the West. Eleanor will come in to the South and the corrupted part of Nature will lie to the North. The lower level will have the starting area, the end area, and enclosed locations for the Crypt, Forge, Dungeon, and Dragon Cave. The game will start in the Southwest and end in the Northeast, leaving the other corners for the ‘pocket’ locations. On a Large map, there should be enough real estate to allow a good visual buffer between the areas.

Arcadia towns:

Elise: Nature town, Neutral – I’m going to make Nature into an ally and set it up that when Eleanor takes the town it will change to the ally color. This will provide a place to retreat and I can script the Fairie Queen there. Nearby are two quest locations – Fredonia and Elf King.

Foss: Order town, Blue – This will be a walled city with rigidly squared off streets. Eleanor will be sent out into the countryside to collect taxes. As the new sheriff, she is awarded Order magic, For her second quest, she must investigate a prison break, gaining entry to the Dungeon where she can release the General and gain the Sword of Swiftness.

Chernobyl: Chaos town, Orange – this will be a disorderly collection of buildings and dwellings. The inhabitants will send Eleanor out to fetch the Ranger (Raymond), who has become a local legend and then award Chaos. But first he will get her to retrieve the Flaming Sword from the Megadragon lair.

Earth towns:

Aquitaine – Life town, Purple/Teal – this is the starting point of the quest. Near the town is a Temple complex where Eleanor gets the sword. I’ll have a path that leads to the docks, and along it I’ll have the Sprite ambush. A trail leads to the Portal that goes to Arcadia. Sometime after Eleanor crosses over, Aquitaine will be taken over by Louis, becoming Teal so it vanishes for Eleanor.

Jerusalem – Life town, Teal – this is the end of the quest. It will be a walled city with many splendid buildings, including the Mosque on the Temple mount. Inside, I’ll have the various nobles ready to parlay. Outside, I’ll put Crusaders on one side and Turks on the other, then
I’ll rig the walls so that they’ll come down on command of the sword holder.

Special Locations (not towns):

Crypt: Neutral. Underground, hidden in the depths of the Ghostwood. Chambers for both swords. Warlord (Hugh) is main encounter here.

Forge: Neutral. Part aboveground, part under. Just inside Ghostwood. Windows of the Magi. Oracles to treasures. Portals. Resources Bring swords to Rosencrantz for entry.

Dungeon: Located below Foss with many locked doors and loose monsters. Enter downtown.

Dragon Cave: Enter in the wilderness outside Chernobyl. It contains an assortment of Dragons and some minions.

Garden of Earthly Delights: Outside Jerusalem. HQ for Hassan.

Solomon’s Stables: ‘Underground’ connection between Garden and Jerusalem. Dark Champions and Temple treasures.

Portals/Tunnels

There may be other portals for minor locations, but these are the main connections between main areas:

Earth-Arcadia: Two-way Portal that will blow up after first passage, so there’s no turning back. I make it Two-way so players will be less hesitant to go through. And it’s combined with a Gate to insure that the party is complete when they step through.

Nature-Order and Nature-Chaos: These are simply paths through the forest that the Fairie Queen opens once the player becomes an ally. (More bombs.)

Forge-Earth One-way Portal: A shortcut to Garden from the Forge. Access requires taking Soul Stealer back to Rosencrantz, who will reveal location of the Sword of the Gods and open the portal.

Garden-Stables/Stables-Jerusalem: A pair of Portals allowing access to Stables of Solomon.

Ghostwood-Crypt Evil Tunnel: The graveyard area is walled and at its deepest point is the tunnel down to the Crypt.

Foss Dungeon Tunnel: Inside Foss is a tunnel down to the Dungeon. Eleanor is admitted after completion of tax quest.

Dragon Cave Evil Tunnel: Raymond follows trail to Dragon Cave, another simple tunnel. Raymond needed for entry.

Bestiary and Encounters

This is a list of creatures and encounters to be placed in each area. At first, I was going to use the creatures normally associated with each alignment, but found they didn’t always fit. So I took all the Nordic (Tolkien) types and gave them to Nature, took the Greek/Roman mythology types and gave them to Chaos, and took the Magical and Mechanical types and gave them to Order. On Earth, I’ll mainly use ordinary creatures.

Earth-1

Creatures	Encounters
Wolves	Sword quest
Bandits	Sprite ambush
Pirates	Portal
Peasants	Takeover
Monks

Nature

Creatures	Encounters
Sprites	Ambush site – sprite trail + survivor story
Elves	Fairie Queen – reveal motive + give Fredonia quest
Dwarves	Castle entry – ally + give Elf King quest
Halflings	Castle entry – return Elf King + open ways + join Eleanor
Orcs	Fredonia quest – crusader armies
Goblin Knights	Elf King quest – join Eleanor until return to town
Ogre Mages	Evil Druid – first encounter (quest hut)
Trolls
Waspworts
Mantises

Chaos

Creatures	Encounters
Satyrs	Rumor of Raymond
Centaurs	Cave -- Raymond – ally + Megadragon quest
Medusas	Contest – join + Chaos
Unicorns	Megadragon – Flaming sword
Minotaurs
Cyclopes
Hydras
Titans
Phoenixes
Dragons (cave)
Gnashers (cave)
Gargantuans (cave)
Sorcerers/Thieves
Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Eris

Order

Creatures	Encounters
Peasants	Rumor of Godfrey
Bandits	Strontium -- Tax Collector quest
Golems	Dungeon – Godfrey + sword + join Eleanor
Mages	Technomage—constructs Catapults
Efreeti
Genies
Evil Enchantresses
Dragon Golems
Lord Strontium

Ghostwood

Creatures	Encounters
Ghosts	Omar
Zombies	Evil Druid – rumor of Hugh
Mummies	Entrance to Crypt
Skeletons	Entrance to Forge
Vampires
Bone Dragons
Nightmares
Imps
Devils
Venom Spawn

Forge

Creatures	Encounters
Elementals	Rosencrantz the Magus: Sword quest
	Forge: Story of swords
	Windows of the Magi
	Oracles: Treasures of Solomon
	Portal to Garden

Crypt

Creatures	Encounters
Skeletons	Hugh + Soul Stealer
Zombies	Sword rooms
Mummies	Treasure
Ghosts
Vampires
Bone Dragons
Lich

Garden of Earthly Delights

Creatures	Encounters
Dark Champions	Temptation in the Garden
Nagas	Library of Lost Lore
Mermaids	Hassan I Sabbah + Sword of Gods
Thunderbirds	Exit to Battlefield + Obs towers
	Omar’s entry/exit to Stables

Earth-2

Creatures	Encounters
Berserkers	Arrival
Bandits	Decision
Nomads	Armageddon
Pirates
Peasants
Squires
Peasants
Crossbows
Pikemen
Crossbows
Crusaders
Champions
Catapults
Ballistae
Griffins?
Behemoths?
Barbarians
Knights

Before I start placing adventure objects on the map, I want to make sure that my scripts will work correctly. The best way to do this is to lay out the objects needed in a small area of the map for script development and testing. Testing is an iterative process and it helps to work in a small area.

When everything is working—that is, I have checked the main scripts using a test heroes—I can move the objects to their appropriate locations without worrying. While doing this, I start to flesh out the main heroes and configure the main towns. I use short descriptions to help follow branching logic, planning to go back later and replace them with the full story.

The action starts when Eleanor visits the Monastery.
The Sword of the Gods is in a room ‘below’, reached by the tunnel.

The entrance to the Crypt. I’ll fill in Ghostwood later,
after I’ve gotmy Haunted Forest obstacle brush looking
like it should. Then I’ll use the Eraser to clear paths.

Launch crusade: Deliver Prelude to introduce Godfrey-1, Raymond-1, Hugh-1, and Eleanor-1 in Timed Event. Set stage and send Eleanor-1 to Monastery. There, she is given Quest and sword. Sword is in a Pandora’s Box for Eleanor-1. If not in Eleanor-1’s possession go to LOSS condition. Initial Victory Condition is to take it to Jerusalem, but this will change.

Sprites attack: A weak party of Sprites will attack Eleanor-1 and make off with the Sword. At this point possession requirement is removed. A trail leads to the portal. I want Eleanor and the 3 leaders together when they are taken to Arcadia. A way to do this is to have them assemble at a Quest Gate. I can use HAS CERTAIN HERO requirements for all four heroes to pass through a Quest Gate. In the gateway is the Portal to Arcadia, which drops the party on an Event that triggers two Custom Events. The first is an attack that will overwhelm the party. Nearby, there is a Neutral copy of Eleanor-2 and the second Custom Event performs a color change to Purple that makes her appear. The effect to the player is that after passing through the gate, the party is attacked and Eleanor manages to escape but is left alone in Arcadia. (There are also Raymond-2, Godfrey-2, and Hugh-2 in Arcadia that Eleanor will encounter later.)

Stranded: Next I strand Eleanor by changing her home town and surrounding dwellings to Neutral. I also unleash some Marauders to wipe out any stray armies the player has left behind—a Neutral hero is stuck under an object that is removed. There’s no Tavern in the starting town, so I don’t need to worry about extra heroes. By placing the Event next to a Window of the Magi, I may be able to have Eleanor see this happen.

Sprite encounter: I use a placed event for a single Sprite to ascertain Eleanor’s intentions, while filling the player in on the reasons for the intervention and explaining that her arrival here is unintentional. The Gate was to have closed, but the Sprites that took the sword were ambushed on their return by a legion of Imps. The Imps killed almost all of the Sprites and took the sword. The Sprite tells Eleanor to go to a nearby Quest Hut where she is sent to bring back the other survivors. These are scattered in the area. When Eleanor gets enough Sprites, the Hut opens up a path through the woods to the Fairie castle by parting (blowing up) some trees.

Fairie Queen: Fairie Queen cannot pass Nature Gate to leave the area around the Castle. She sits outside so that she must be encountered before the Castle can be entered. Initially she is Neutral and with her entourage would make a formidable foe. Completion of the Fredonia quest turns her Green (Ally) so that she can be encountered safely. If the Elf King is not in the party, she will send the Party to find him. When they return with him, she will turn Purple but dismiss her armies.

Nature Castle: Like the Fairie Queen, the Nature Castle starts off Neutral and turns Green when she does. When Green, Eleanor can enter and learn Nature spells. When she enters with Elf King, it turns Purple. (This makes Faerie Dragons available to the player.)

Crusader Village. Placed so that it is not accessible until Eleanor reaches Fairie castle, the village of Fredonia is populated by the Crusaders and Pikemen from the original crusade. A Quest hut near the Fairie castle sends Eleanor to investigate (and return with one of the strangers’ objects). When she gets there, the armies will join. (May want to run a short side-quest for the Catapult.) She can also capture dwellings for Peasants, Crossbows, and Squires. Quest hut takes a Squire, a Sword, and Armor to make a Crusader. (Crusader + Unicorn + Spear = Champion?) Also have a War College, Blacksmith, Stables, etc.

Elf King: By now Green (Nature) is an ally of Purple (Life). When Eleanor recovers Elf King, he will become Purple and join the party. When he gets back to Fairie castle, it changes to Purple too, along with its external locations. Fairie Queen will stay home (cannot pass castle gate). Elf King will accompany Eleanor as far as Crypt, then he’s banned by the Death Gate. However, his main value is the equipment he brings, notably the shooter’s delight: the Bow of the Elf King.

Druid Quest: Player is offered quest to find Druid and return with Necklace. Trail leads to Crypt, where Druid waits near entry. On Encounter, Druid tells his story and offers Death magic in exchange for his life. If accepted, the party turns Neutral and joins forces of Evil. Otherwise they fight and party takes the Necklace. Rewards for completion are additional plot details and an Artifact (Tome of Nature?).

Omar Encounter: Omar is Neutral wandering in Dark Forest. When encountered he can be fought or asked to join. If fought and defeated, encounters in the Garden cannot be avoided. If he joins, romance ensues. When Omar receives Life, he becomes a Paladin. After Omar joins, a VARIABLE truelove is initialized to the current day. Then a set of Global Continuous Events are then scheduled for truelove+interval.

Chernobyl (Chaos Town): Starts Orange and changes to Green when Raymond returns, Purple when Megadragon is brought in. On Entry, Eleanor is offered Chaos magic.

Dragonslayer Quest: Rumors of great Dragonslayer lead to Raymond, after several encounters with wandering Black Dragons. On Encounter, Raymond joins and shows path to Megadragon cave and Flaming Sword.

Dragon Quest: The player has the option of slaying the Megadragon or otherwise obtaining the Sword, which is Raymond’s quest object. However, to get reward of Chaos creatures, she will need to return with Megadragon.

Foss (Order Town): Starts Blue and changes to Green when taxes are collected, Purple when Godfrey is freed. On Entry, Eleanor is offered Order magic.

Tax Collection Quest: Eleanor is dispatched to collect taxes by visiting mines. I use a variable to count the mines captured. This is incremented (PLUS) in the Captured Triggered Event. On completion, Eleanor is made Sheriff and given key to Dungeons, where Godfrey is held.

Dungeon Quest: Godfrey reports that the Sword of Swiftness was hidden by another prisoner in the Foss Dungeon. He made a map and scattered its parts throughout the Dungeon.

Forge: Requires Flaming Sword and Sword of Swiftness to enter. Rosencrantz will ally, but not join. Gives relic equipment and tells story. Can destroy Soul Stealer. Reveals Sword of Gods has returned to Earth!

Crypt: Elf King refuses to enter. Many scary encounters—melt walls to reveal monsters. Rooms for Sword of Life and Soul Stealer. Main Encounter with Hugh. If Eleanor takes Soul Stealer, it begins sapping her strength.

Garden: Portal to Jerusalem uses a Two Way portal and Gate to stop return without Eleanor. Party arrives in the Garden of Earthly Delights, held by Dark Champions, and Hassan I Sabbah who has the Sword of Gods. Hassan has been luring Crusaders here and drugging them. In this suggestible state, he brings out their hatred of the enemy and turns them to Dark Champions. Hassan tempts Eleanor. (I could temporarily change her to Neutral.) Exit to Battlefield with roaming Neutrals. Past them is the massive army of Turks, laying siege to Jerusalem in the distance.

Solomon’s Stables: Omar knows a way past the siege armies, through a Portal in the Garden. The Portal leads to Solomon’s Stables, where Josiah hid the treasures of the Temple back at the Roman invasion. From there, another portal leads inside the walls.

Jerusalem: Entry commences final sequences. Inside the walls is the Holy City with an area outside set up for a council between Baldwin and Malik Shah, both starting Neutral to avoid premature battle. Outside their forces are massed on either side of the wall.

Here are the possible endings:

Eleanor offers sword to Baldwin (refused)
- Eleanor offers sword to Baldwin again (accepts, end sequence 1)
- Eleanor offers sword to Malik Shah (accepts, end sequence 2)
Eleanor offers sword to Malik Shah (refused)
- Eleanor offers sword to Malik again (accepts, end sequence 1)
- Eleanor offers sword to Baldwin (accepts, end sequence 2)

I’ll have Eleanor do some soul searching here, get the player to think about the consequences of what might happen, including the possibilities of refusal as well as acceptance of the sword. I’ll try to make some parallels earlier in the game so players will be more likely to catch on to the winning moves.

(I thought about an end sequence where Eleanor keeps the sword and returns to Arcadia, but that would leave the crusade unresolved and her adventures essentially pointless. Would that be a victory or a loss? I really can’t say.)

End sequence 1: Having been impressed by his opponent’s refusal of the sword, the other accepts it and then gives it to his foe. Walls stay up. WIN

End sequence 2: Now believing it is God’s will, the one offered the sword a second time accepts it and uses it to bring the walls down to start the final combat. Eleanor can join this side, but player loses control. Probably LOSS

Next: Layout

Comments (1)

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Behind the Curtain: Over the Shoulder
by Charles Watkins

Part 1: Getting Started

For this series of articles, I’d like to do something a little different. Instead of talking about mapmaking in general terms, this time I’d like to let readers look over my shoulder as I create a map and get a sense of the thought process that a mapmaker goes through in the course of a project. I’ll be writing the column in-between mapmaking sessions and discussing whatever I’ve done up till then. As I write this I am in the process of checking out the main scripts, which I’ll be reporting on in Part 2. But this time, I’ll take you along as I agonize over things like names and babes.

Motivation

For me, the hardest thing about making a map is getting started. Having been down this path many times before, I know how much time and gumption that it will take. It is not an endeavor to undertake lightly. Even though Heroes IV has been out for a long time, I have not yet published a map and have begun to feel a little guilty about it. But I’ve been distracted by changing jobs and moving, and most of my Heroes time has gone into simply playing the game. I’ve managed to keep up with other fans through the Quill and the Heroes IV forum here at Celestial Heavens, where Anglespit has been so kind as to run this column. But even so, I’m overdue for a Heroes IV map.

I made four maps for Heroes III, so I should have had a couple of Heroes IV maps out by now, but actually managed only a few false starts. With Heroes III, I started with a ‘training’ map just to get some practice with the editor and the result was “Bug Hunt” – a quirky M-size map with a Science Fiction theme. Then along came the AstralWizard ‘guilds’ contest, so I made “Grandmaster,” which turned out to be a winner in its category. Next came “Kid Heretic” for the next AstralWizard contest, which had an ‘urban’ theme. I’m still proud of “Kid Heretic” and would promise anyone who hasn’t played it that if you give it try you will have a good time. Sometimes think I should go back and convert it to WoG.

My fourth map was for the final AstralWizard contest, but it did not turn out as well as the others. After getting a late start, the events of 911 jerked me back into the ‘real’ world and sucked out the energy needed to get the map finished on time. I was still reworking “Sacrifice” when the deadline came, so it went out about two weeks before it should have. Needless to say, this one did not win, but I wanted to support the contest and at least I was able to have an entry.

So now I ask myself, what is it that spurs me to make a map? History says that a contest helps, especially if there’s an interesting theme. Lucky for me MapHaven is having the ‘Gloria’ contest and there is still time to get an entry in. However, the theme calls for a female protagonist, so I’ll have to find a suitable storyline.

Storyline

I’ve done maps with female heroes (Heroines of Might and Magic?) before, but did not dwell on their feminine nature. The best of these was the collaborative Heroes II campaign “Agent of Heaven” where I worked with Corribus, Doriando, and Eric Hutchinson. The main hero there was mainly the creation of Corribus and I spent most of my time working on the supporting cast. This time I’d like to try a female lead whose gender actually matters.

The harder part is how to align such a storyline to the course of a Heroes IV game. I’d like the player to identify with the main character, but not to feel restricted to a linear progression of events. Like any Heroes IV map, there’s got to be a lot of battles as well as quests, treasures, towns, etc. In previous versions of Heroes, this was difficult to reconcile with a story centering on a single hero—even though Heroes III provided hero-specific quests—but with Heroes IV the ability to attach events to specific heroes opens up all sorts of new possibilities. Cast members can have stories of their own and I may be able to script some interactions when they are part of the same army. So I need a storyline where the main characters are established but can be developed as players wish. It also needs to allow heroes to split up and get back together.

Fortunately, I already have just such a storyline in mind. And that’s another part of the motivation—having something to say that can be articulated within the context of the game. Here it is my regret that the alienation of the peoples of Abraham, going back to the time of the Crusades, continues to shape the world today. I’ll get to tell some of the history and rumor about what went on.

This also suggests a protagonist, because one of the outstanding personalities of those times was Eleanor of Aquitaine. At this point, I should give some notes on the Crusades and the real Eleanor’s part in them.

Short history of the crusades

After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Jewish inhabitants scattered and left the city abandoned for some 60 years. In 132, Emperor Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem, and decided to construct a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount—leading to yet another Jewish revolt, which also failed. The Jews were banished and the city was renamed Aelia Capitolina. After the collapse of Rome, it fell under Byzantine rule until 638. This time the city was conquered by the Caliph Omar ibn Al-Khattab, who constructed the El-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the old Temple and the Dome of the Rock on Mount Moriah. Omar welcomed both Christians and Jews to come and worship.

The order was maintained until 1077, when the Seljuk Turks invaded Jerusalem. And though their Sultan, Malik Shah was a follower of Islam, he challenged the authority of the Caliphs, who were the successors of Mohammed. The Christian powers, under Pope Urban II, decided to take Jerusalem under their protection and marshalled the First Crusade under Godfroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lorainne. After a bloody campaign, Godfroi captured Jerusalem, but was unable to control his troops, who proceeded to slaughter much of the Moslem population.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of history’s most influential women--she was Queen of both France (Louis VI) and England (Henry II). Her grandfather was Guilliam IX the Troubadour and she was a devout follower of St. Bernard.

Eleanor led an army of courtly women in the Second Crusade and had a notorious relationship with her uncle Raymond, magistrate of Antioch. She would have remained there, but Louis insisted she accompany him on to Jerusalem. They returned on separate ships, and Eleanor had the marriage annulled—by then she was all of 19 years old.

Soon after, she married Henry Plantagenet, who became King Henry II of England. Eleanor’s children included Richard ‘Lionheart’ and 4 other sons (Guilliam, Henry, Geoffrey, and John ‘Lackland’) and 3 daughters (Mathilde, Joan, and Eleanor).

In 1187, Jerusalem fell again to Saladin of Egypt, prompting the Third Crusade under the famous Richard ‘Lionheart.’ The Third Crusade failed and Richard was held for ransom. There followed several minor crusades, and Jerusalem was briefly retaken, but in the end, the Moslems prevailed and hatreds had been born that have carried down the ages. For Christendom, defeat meant a new social order rising out of the economic system laid down by the Knights Templar, followers of St. Bernard, who are rumored to have taken fabulous treasures hidden below Temple Mount by the fleeing Jews. Eleanor became fabulously wealthy and was the most influential woman in Europe until she died in 1204.

Premise

How might the world be different if Godfroi had maintained the tolerant rule established by the Caliphs? Could Saladin’s attack have been averted? Could the peoples of Abraham found a way to cohabit the city that is holy to them all? Is it possible that a child could lead them?

In this adventure, we see how things might go differently. After all, who’s to say what might have happened if there were another place that exists beyond our own? A place where things such as a Sword of the Gods could be forged? If charged by St. Bernard to carry such a sword to the holy land to aid in the defense of Jerusalem, might Eleanor not have diverted from the Second Crusade and found another destiny?

Some other open questions to be considered: Who were the Knights Templar and what was their role in this? What treasure might they have found? Why did Malik Shah move against the Caliphs? Why couldn’t Godfroi control his men? The history books don’t say, so we … speculate.

Map design

For some time, I’ve wanted to make a map where the two levels represent two different worlds and armies move between them. I greatly enjoyed Steven Donaldson’s “Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever” series, Raymond Feist’s “Riftworld” series, and Harry Turtledove’s “Videssos” series. So with these for inspiration, I’ve taken a similar theme for this Heroes IV map that I’ve named “Lost Crusade”. It’s about a party of crusaders who start off carrying a relic sword to the holy land to help rally the forces of Christendom against the Turks. But along the way they are diverted to another land, a world with fantastic inhabitants and locations that are not known on Earth, except in legend. And as they try to regain the sword, the Crusaders are changed by their adventures so that their crusade may not end as expected.

The lower level (Earth) will be rendered using natural geography and flora. Monsters will be limited to those actually found on Earth – Pikemen, Wolves, Nomads, etc. The upper level will be more richly depicted and fantastic creatures will appear. By creating this contrast, I can have the main character react to the strangeness of some things we take for granted as players. At the same time, I want the main character to bring something new to the other world, allowing her to become a pivotal character there before returning to Earth.

I’ll call the other world Arcadia for now, but might come up with something more original later on. On Arcadia, the natural balance is between Order and Chaos, so each will have its own region on opposite sides of the map. In between, I’ll have Nature in a neutral role. Life and Death will be mainly unknown here—as are Chaos and Order on Earth. The main character Eleanor starts as a Priest(ess) and introduces Life magic to Arcadia. When she returns to Earth, she may well be an Archmage with Life, Nature, Order, and Chaos. That leaves room for a Might skill, probably Combat, but I’ll have to get her started in Order and Chaos before the slots fill up. To compensate, I’ll give her supporting characters with Scouting, Nobility, and Tactics. These skills mainly affect the party as a whole so Eleanor will not miss them.

Arcadia also needs a center of evil that I can tie back to Eleanor, who embodies the good, so I’ll have a dark forest with an Evil Druid and a spooky Crypt. This brings in Death, but I’ll make sure to see that the true evil is shown to be the corruption of Death, not Death per se.

Since I want to look at heroism in war and peace, I’ll use the sword as a motif for the map. (In addition to being a weapon, the sword is symbolic of the Cross and of the Crusader’s grave.) There are several interesting swords among the artifacts, so I’ll make the main quest object the Sword of the Gods. I’ll also bring in Soul Stealer, Flaming Sword, and Sword of Swiftness.

Gameplan

When the game starts out, Eleanor carries the sword. She is the youngest girl in a family that will eventually inherit the throne (yes, a princess), and as a daughter of royal blood she is one of few eligible to carry it. I’ll start her out with 3 companions – a General (Combat+Tactics), a Ranger (Combat+Scouting), and a Warlord (Combat+Nobility). To keep them Life aligned, like Eleanor, I need to start them as Knights, so they all get a couple of levels of Tactics. Level 10 seems about right—established heroes, but still able to grow in several directions.

As the Crusade starts out, I’ll have some Sprites come and steal the sword – I’ll set up a battle so that they get it whether they win or lose. When the player’s party follows through the portal that appears, I’ll scatter the members and destroy the portal. That leaves Eleanor alone and ready to set out on her adventure. She’ll follow the ‘trail’ of the Sprites and have some encounters with the forces of Nature, who will be faerie-types who need a couple of quests done before they show Eleanor her way through the woods. I’ll have her go on an investigation and meet up with some others who were with the starting party--and let her start making Peasants, Squires, Crossbows, and Pikemen. Then I’ll send her off to save the Elf King. This makes Nature an Ally.

I’ll give her some hints about magic swords held by Chaos (Flaming) and Order (Swiftness) so she’ll visit both areas to see whether these might be the one she seeks. (She will need to bring both swords to enter the Forge.) Of course, the powers there will have some quests of their own before they will bestow their magic skills on Eleanor. I’ll have the Ranger working as a freelance dragon slayer in the Chaos area and the General will be held as a prisoner by Order. I’ll put in a Dragon cave for Chaos and a Dungeon for Order. This leaves the Warlord to be the one who turns evil and needs killing. I’ll have him seduced by an even greater evil, which has some tie-in with the crusade on Earth. Toward the end I’ll reveal this character was also at the root of the strife on earth and get Eleanor back there in time to stop the bloodshed.

Both Chaos and Order will have relic swords, but not the sword. These will, however, allow Eleanor to meet their maker, Rosencrantz, who also forged the Sword of the Gods– and one more, the Soul Stealer. When Eleanor’s Warlord companion follows the Evil Druid’s trail into the Dark Forest expecting to find Sword of the Gods, he finds Soul Stealer instead and it turns him evil. It has previously corrupted some of the minions of Death and these have ravaged parts of the land. I’ll make a spooky dungeon for the Soul Stealer and drop a few pieces of the Warlord’s armor to set up the confrontation. I’ll try to set it up so that Eleanor needs both the Ranger and General to prevail. By then the Ranger may have picked up enough Chaos to be a Fire Diviner or enough Life to be a Prophet. The General may have leveled up in Order to become an Illusionist or in Life to become a Crusader. All the classes seem to fit the story.

Rosencrantz is the grandmaster artificer, skilled in the craft of metal work. He’s one of the Jewish Magi who fled to Arcadia after the Roman war. He will reveal the origins and powers of the swords and the way to overcome Soul Stealer. I’ll also have him provide a map (via Oracles) to the Temple treasure.

This leaves one more main character, Omar, who is also from Earth but arrives in a different way than Eleanor and her companions and ends up in the Dark Forest. (At first Eleanor might mistake him for the Evil Druid.) I’ll start him as a Barbarian (Might) and have his contact with Eleanor grant him Life magic, leading him to become a Paladin. (In fact, after Eleanor reaches GM Life, I’ll give her the ability to bestow Life magic on other heroes in her party.) Omar will be Eleanor’s love and to further balance things out, I’m making him a dashing Arab. As the two of them come together in Arcadia, they represent the hope of reconciliation of the warring parties on Earth.

Omar is drawn to Arcadia by its Cosmic Balance, as the Arabian counterpart to Eleanor, who is ambiguously European. He’ll be a son of the Caliph and eventually heir to the throne, a worthy match to Eleanor. They should meet after Eleanor finishes the Chaos and Order segments. The Cosmic Balance also accounts for the Swords. The Sword of the Gods was summoned by Bernard and his Monks to aid the forces of Life in the Crusade. But as the Sword of the Gods came to the Earth, on Arcadia the influence of the Soul Stealer grew. This is why the Sprites made their raid—to recover the sword and restore the balance. But they were not expecting that on their return they would be ambushed in turn and the Sword stolen once again. This sets the stage for the main quest. The thief will turn out to be an Evil Druid, who has been seduced by the Soul Stealer. Later Eleanor will meet him and learn the sword has passed on to the Warlord. I’ve noticed that one of the Druids has a close resemblance to one of the Necromancers. I’ll also need two portraits for the Warlord—and fortunately there’s another good similarity between a Knight and a Death Knight.

Note: At first I had planned to allow Eleanor to have children with Omar, but getting her through the pregnancy and raising the children would have required some kind of time distortion. I was going to have her visit the celestial realm, where time passes more slowly to have the babies, and later return to pick them up as adolescents. The boy would turn out to be Richard Lionheart and the girl young Eleanor, who would marry into the royal line out of Egypt. In the end, I decided this was an unnecessary complication and that I would have trouble selling the time distortion. So the babes will appear only in epilogue. Now back to the story…

The Evil Druid dwells in Ghostwood, a dark forest with a population of undead. At the heart of Ghostwood is the Crypt, which is a walled in area with an Evil Tunnel to catacombs below. In one of the rooms, the Warlord waits with the Soul Stealer. To destroy it, she must return it to Rosencrantz, who then reveals the Sword of the Gods has already made it back to Earth – and has already arrived in the Holy Land.

Then it’s back to Earth—portal travel makes for a nice shortcut—in time to catch up to the original crusade. Well almost. There will have already been a bloody battle, and some straggling armies and battle crazed creatures are left to fight. When she arrives at Jerusalem she sees it is surrounded by the Turks and must make her way inside using ancient tunnels leading to the Stables of Solomon. This will be a good place to reward the player with some fabulous treasures and some Templar lore. The final scene will give Eleanor a choice of what to do with the sword, giving players a choice of endings. She can keep the sword and join either side. If she offers the sword to either leader, the first will refuse. If she then offers it to the other, he will accept and present it to the first as a token of peace. If she offers it to either leader a second time after being rejected, that leader will accept and unleash a huge battle that is likely to leave the heroes on both sides dead.

I think I see how to script most of this—many color changes are involved, but that’s something I’ve wanted to use to give the player a chance to build alliances. By using an ‘ally’ color I can have other positions change sides as a result of the player’s actions. The way I see it, since neutrals are so much like computer positions, the main reason to use different colors is to set up conflicts and alliances. At the end, I’ll have the King and Sultan with different colors and change one or both to match Eleanor, depending on her move.

In Part 2, I’ll work out the mechanics of the map. I’ll use the editor to construct the main heroes and locations. I’ll map out the zones and the connections between them. I’ll work out the color assignments and plan the main color changes. I’ll decide which adventure objects wandering monsters to use in each area. Finally, I’ll make a list of the scripts I’ll need and test the more complex ones to save time later.

In Part 3, I’ll layout the main components in a small area and try to do a first walkthrough. Then I’ll put in the other connectors and quests, write script stubs, and see whether everything works. It won’t, so next I’ll start debugging.

In Part 4, I do the decorations. Along with landscaping, I place the monsters, treasures, and secondary adventure objects. Then I write all the text.

In Part 5, I finish up the development work by testing everything, getting some other kind souls to help, and fixing whatever is still broken. While waiting for test results, I put together the readme file and other things that I might want to include in the distribution package.

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Behind the Curtain: Epic Heroes
by Charles Watkins

Large and Extra-Large maps lend themselves to scenarios of epic scope, where players have the opportunity to develop several heroes to their full potential. Smaller maps always seem to end just when the heroes are coming into their own, and that’s why I prefer the larger ones. I find that after about 2 months of game time, the lead heroes are maxing out in their starting classes and may have begun to accumulate some side skills. By the 4th month, dual class heroes may have maxed out in both areas -- and that’s about when most larger maps are getting fun.

Today I’d like to put forth my general strategy for developing a cadre of heroes for larger maps in a way I’ve found to be both effective and fun to play. It may not work for you, since it reflects my own style of play, but even so it might give you some ideas for enhancing your own games.

Larger solo games have some distinctive qualities that shape the strategy I’m discussing. In addition to lasting longer, they also tend to give players more elbow room, which leads to more time to develop heroes before hitting the major competition. Rush strategies are seldom productive since a fast win is not a prospect. The amount of territory to be conquered means a single massive army may not be optimal – as the large force moves away, captured territory becomes vulnerable to attack. On many larger maps, the growth of neutrals poses a greater challenge than the computer players. All this means that to do well on larger maps, the player needs to develop a cadre of heroes, rather than just the main one given at the start.

There’s no serious chance that a computer player will be able to score a conventional win on a larger map. They simply lack the persistence to take out all of the competition. What can happen, however, is that the human player falls far enough ‘behind the curve’ that normal creature growth makes the game unwinnable without protracted periods of inactivity to build up to competitive strength. The point is that on larger maps, there is less urgency to engage the enemy and more time to build a force that will consistently overcome the opposition.

How many heroes?

In early stages of the game, I like to use one Main Force and a few scouts. The scouts explore the map and pick up any ‘freebies’ they may come across, but they leave most of the fighting to what I’m calling the Main Force. As the Main Force ventures farther and farther from the home town, it becomes necessary to develop a Second Force to defend the territory already conquered. Given that a town yields 5 types of armies, in each force there is room for at least 2 heroes, and usually 3 since both level one armies aren’t often needed. For this exercise, then, let’s say that 5 or 6 main heroes will be needed.

In addition to these main heroes, there will be several others acting as scouts and castle sitters. Lone heroes make excellent scouts because if they get into a jam, they can bail out with no losses. Naturally, Thieves are the best Scouts because their Stealth gets them past some unobservant guards. However, these scouts are not intended to get into fights, so there’s no need to invest in leveling them up. An exception here is the Fire Diviner or Seer, one of my main heroes who begins her career as the Thief specialist -- and usually ends up as the top hero for scoring purposes. Castle sitters are usually Lords, because of their bonuses to creature growth, but sometimes I use Druids instead to crank out masses of Sprites or Leprechauns.

Optimizing overall development means diversifying. Ideally the cadre should be able to take advantage of any kind of power-up, so all 9 ability classes should be included. If there are only 5 heroes, that means each gets two main classes with only one overlap. If there is a 6th hero, then there can be 3 overlaps. If one of the heroes is an Archmage, who has three magic classes, it adds another 1 to the total. The question is what combinations result in the most effective cadre overall. Side issues are how to balance Might and Magic, which classes to develop first, and the assignment of heroes to the main and secondary forces.

Since most of the heroes will be dual-classed advanced classes, the question is how to combine the classes in a way that provides access to as many game features as possible, while still putting together an effective cadre.

It might be fun to work out your own ‘Dream Team’ before you read further. If you post your solution at the Heroes IV forum we can compare notes. My own choices are given below. . .

There may be other winning combinations, but after hundreds of games, this is what I’ve found works well for me:

Main Force
Illusionist (Order+Tactics)
Cardinal (Life+Nobility)
Demonologist (Death+Nature)

Second Force
Fire Diviner (Scout+Chaos) or Seer (Scout+Order)
Assassin (Combat+Death)
Archmage (varies)

As I said, this combination is not so much aimed at optimal effectiveness as at opening up all facets of the game. Here we have an assortment of interesting special classes. Some may take a while to develop, but they also offer more as they come into their own – and on a larger map, there’s time to see that to happen and then to enjoy the result. We also have spellcasters from all 5 schools, plus a Might character – exactly the same division as for the game’s 6 alignments. And we have the foundation of two solid fighting forces, a Main Force to spearhead the attack and a Second Force to keep what’s been won.

Now, some players may prefer more Combat combinations, but I don’t see a great advantage in having Combat as a first or second class. The game relentlessly pushes Combat skills, no matter what the hero’s class, so Combat can become the ideal third class. The skill progression allows a hero to get GM Combat and Magic Resistance without having to take unneeded Combat skills, so it is not hard to build sturdy spellcasters as well as good fighters.

This principle also applies to Charm and Necromancy, which can increase without a large investment in other skills. Thus the cadre includes two Death and two Order heroes. The Demonologist concentrates on the main Death tree, while the Assassin concentrates on Combat while taking Necromancy as it becomes available. The Illusionist starts by concentrating on Charm, while the Seer or future-Archmage stays on the main path to get access to higher level spells as soon as possible. This may seem odd, but Charm is most valuable in the early part of the game and Main Force heroes develop fast enough to still allow the Illusionist to get the good spells fairly soon.

Why no Combat types in the Main Force? Partly because they are not as much fun to play as Magic heroes and partly because the Main Force will include 3 or 4 creatures in primarily combat roles. Also there is more upside to a Magic Hero. A hero with GM Melee or GM Archery is not going to be dealing 1000s of hit points in damage, and that’s what’s required toward the end of a larger game. For example, who has a better chance of killing a stack of Megadragons—a Might hero with the Sword of the Gods or a Necromancer with a Hand of Death spell? Of course if you really enjoy playing Might heroes, by all means include them. But consider using them as replacements for the monsters on the force rather than the other heroes. And be aware that the Combat heroes are going to top out sooner than the others and that experience they gain after that is essentially wasted. Such is the nature of the larger map.

My Main Force usually starts with a Priest or Mage. In the initial weeks devoted to scouting, it really doesn’t matter what type of hero is used. Their main job is to absorb blows that might kill low level creatures and to take advantage of the free retreats. They aren’t going to pick up chests for experience, but they will take free EPs. After a week or so there will be enough creatures in town to start the Main Force proper and by this time the Tavern will have spawned another hero.

The sequence of development varies according to the starting town and hero. Here’s a summary (which will make more sense when we look at them individually).

Priest	Main sequence
Knight	Add Order to become Illusionist
Mage	Main sequence
Lord	Add Life to become Cardinal
Sorcerer	Add Order and Nature to become Archmage
Thief	Main sequence
Necromancer	Add Nature to become Demonologist
Dark Knight	Add Order to become Illusionist
Druid	Add Death to become Demonologist
Archer	Add Death to become Assassin
Barbarian	Add Death to become Assassin

The example heroes shown here are from an Expert game of Water Wyrd, played solo. It is the start of Month 5 and the Main Force is about to get its ass kicked in the underworld.

Illusionist

The Illusionist aims to advance rapidly in Order, while adding Tactics somewhere along the way. I find Order Magic to be so useful that I always want it and my starting Mage usually stays with the Main Force throughout the game. All the level 1 spells are great to have, especially the shooter’s best friend, Precision. And high-end Order Magic includes some of the best spells in the game, including Hypnotism, which is plain not fair.

Tactics makes a good complement to Order. Since the hero wants to take advantage of both Might and Magic leveling opportunities, it makes sense to combine Order with a Might class. An Order hero will cast spells throughout combat, so it also makes sense to combine Order with a class that has good passive skills. With the Might class you can get Combat for the Hit Points and Magic Resistance, which can be useful, but Melee and Archery are basically wasted on a spell caster. Instead of going the Warlord route, which again gives a wasted melee bonus, I prefer to add a few levels of Combat and Magic Resistance as the opportunities come along.

Nobility is another candidate, offering four passive skills, but the Wizard King’s bad luck power is again wasted on a hero that serves mainly as a spell caster. And with Order comes Charm, so Diplomacy may prove redundant. Tactics provides four useful passive skills that boost the whole force and the resulting Illusionist class benefits from a +20% bonus on Illusion spells.

Minasli is a level 14 Illusionist who has picked up a couple of nice items. With Expert Order, she is already a major contributor to the cause. She will probably hand off the sword to the Assassin and continue to concentrate on Order. The Sextant will come in handy when the Main Force goes to sea.

Cardinal

Life Magic provides a lot of options for combat tacticians. Even if Priests do not deal damage in combat, they can effectively neutralize an equivalent part of the opponent’s force. The main drawback is that the middle spell levels are filled with various cures and wards before you get to the big two—Guardian Angel and Sanctuary—at level 5.

The passive Resurrection skill supports a low-loss strategy that enables the Main force to stay in the field for protracted periods. As with the Illusionist, I looked for a Might class to combine with Life, and that brought me to the Cardinal’s +5% Resurrection bonus. (With the Ankh of Life and St. Ranan’s Staff, a GM Resurrection is raising something like 70% of losses, and once the hero progresses to Cardinal the Resurrection percentage goes up another 5%.) Consider that the Main force may be in 100 battles during the course of the game and even at 5% you can see how the savings add up. Toward the end there will be some battles where losses are inevitable and it is great consolation to get the majority of them back.

The other Life/Might combos—Prophet, Paladin, and Crusader—confer powers that only affect the hero and only help in physical combat. (Now if a Crusader hero would get the double attack that Crusader armies do, this would be another story.) Also like with the Illusionist, I like to add a few levels of Combat to toughen up the hero, so I don’t always choose Nobility over Combat when Might levels are awarded. Of the Nobility side-skills, I’ve found Diplomacy to be far more useful than Mining or Estates. With the Illusionist’s Charm and the Cardinal’s Diplomacy I get a lot of enemies coming over to my side. Often I manage to come out of encounters with a better force than I went in with.

Rissa is a companion of Minasli. As a level 15 Cardinal equipped with St. Ranan’s Staff, she is already resurrecting half of the Main Force’s losses. She’d like to get an Ankh of Life as well. In combat, she casts supporting spells and uses her bow to lay enchantments on opponents.

Demonologist

The Demonologist may not be the most powerful advanced class, but it is the only one to offer special spells, so I like to include one when I can. This hero can start as either a Druid or Necromancer, concentrating on main line skills needed to advance simultaneously in Nature and Demonology. It takes some time to fully develop the Demonologist, but the result makes it all worthwhile. The Nature side can provide Pathfinding, Quicksand, and Wasp Swarm at low levels, and the Death side can provide Poison, Mire, and Fatigue – to name a few favorites. The point is that Demonologists can carry their weight in battle, even without higher level spells. Later in the game, Demonologists truly come into their own. It’s quite a jump from Summon Cerberus to Summon Ice Demon. Summon Demon has its uses, but has to be weighed against other level 5 Nature and Death spells.

The Demonologist is an exception to the Might/Magic plan with all the discretionary levels being split between two classes on the Magic side. This means that any Might levels available can go into Combat, which toughens up the character for front line duty. To push ahead in Nature and Demonology, the hero must forego Summoning and Necromancy at first. However, other heroes can make up for this – Assassins and Archmages can concentrate their Death skills in Necromancy, while Druid castle sitters can do the Summoning. (To boost Summoning, it’s better to hire another Druid than to add a level at the cost of 2000 gold.)

Lamentia is a Level 22 Demonologist and able to cast Summon Ice Demon. She has some Combat and her 435 hit points allow her to fight from the front row, which helps get her Ice Demons into the fray. However, she’s been ignoring Necromancy and Summoning in order to progress in the main sequences for Death and Nature.

Fire Diviner/Seer

For most of the game the Fire Diviner or Seer is simply a Thief, picking up Chaos or Order skills along the way when given the opportunity. In many games, these heroes will change class several times, taking whatever levels become available. By cultivating a Thief early in the game, even when playing Life or Order, I get a premier Scout who can evade guards while piling up experience. GM Stealth is like highway robbery.

This means I recruit a Thief as soon as possible and invest every possible resource in leveling her up. (I say ‘her’ because I’ve become quite attached to Erica Fade. I say ‘invest’ because she repays me many times over with resources, mines, and artifacts.) In the early weeks, she travels with the Main Force, occasionally striking out on scouting missions. This lets her ‘double dip’ by getting experience points first by Stealth and then by combat against the same monster. When she gets up to Expert Stealth, she goes out on her own to explore, loot, and rack up more experience.

I like Chaos to go with Scouting because sometimes this hero comes across a lightly defended town and some offensive capability will allow her to capture it by herself. Many maps have armies of high-level guards positioned outside neutral towns. Using Stealth, this hero can beat the wimpy (uncustomized) garrison army without disturbing the gate guards, who can then be used to ward off the competition. Archery can also provide some offensive pop, but not as much at lower levels as the Chaos direct damage spells. And since discretionary Might levels are going into Scouting, Magic levels can go to Chaos. By becoming a Fire Diviner, the hero gains a +20% bonus on fire spells. Combat levels might just as well go into advancing the Combat and Magic Resistance skills.

Alternatively, combining Scouting with Order makes the hero a Seer, which gives a +2 bonus to the scouting radius. Order magic provides some direct damage spells (Magic Fist and Ice Bolt) on a par with Chaos at the lower levels, but can’t match the higher level Chaos spells for dealing damage. Over time the Seer can develop Expert Order magic, which allows the hero to learn Town Gate, another useful spell for a scout. Whether to go Fire Diviner or Seer may depend on what magic skills the Archmage takes. So far, none of the heroes has taken Chaos, so the question becomes whether to have the Archmage develop Chaos or whether to make the Thief into a Fire Diviner. A second Order Magic caster is also a welcome addition later in the game, but that also applies in the other parts, so it may be best to have the Archmage develop it too. More on that hero later.

I also like to get my Thief a level of Life so she can learn Summon Boat. This increases movement options and helps avoid backtracking. But I don’t take a second level until the hero is established as a Fire Diviner or Seer so at future levels, she will be offered advancement in Chaos or Order skills instead of Life. The same goes for Nature. One level may be useful for learning the Pathfinding spell, which takes care of movement penalties until the Thief reaches Expert in the Pathfinding skill. (It strikes me that the Pathfinding spell is one of the great bargains in the game – a level 1 spell that duplicates a level 3 skill!) However, a second level of Nature may leave the Thief with the Summoning skill. It’s damned inconvenient to start each turn with a few Sprites or Leprechauns along, risking revealing the hero’s position to nearby opponents.

Eventually, the Thief will have explored the whole map and can rejoin either the Main or Second Force. Usually this will be the Second Force unless the Main Force is greatly in need of a movement booster. This is where developing Chaos or Order magic pays off. At very least, the Thief will be casting Confusion or Forgetfulness to negate an opponent. More realistically, the evolved Thief will come back maxed in Scouting and pretty far along in Combat with an unpredictable assortment of side-classes, some surprisingly well developed and some little more than place takers.

Kharrd the Fire Diviner has just wrapped up his career as a Scout and is ready to join the fray, most likely as the leader of the Second Force. His travels have raised him up to level 29 with practically no fighting since he split off from the Main Force early in the game. He’s maxed out in Scouting and is working on Combat and Chaos. He studied Life Magic so he could cast Summon Boat and somewhere along the line picked up some levels in Death. He was careful not to take Nature.

Assassin

The Assassin is the most nimble of fighters, thanks to the +3 speed and +3 movement bonuses. Combat and Death fit well together, not just as a Might/Magic combination, but also because Combat compensates for the lack of good direct damage Death spells at lower levels and Death offers the hero battle options at times when direct Combat might meet retaliation. With slower opponents, the hero can start a battle with a Death spell and then go to Melee.

Because Combat is the preferred class, this hero can rapidly develop all four skills and use Melee or Ranged attacks as tactics dictate. I tend use this hero on the front line, and there are a lot of nice Melee artifacts, so this hero may lead the charge. And because this hero tends to use most combat turns for Melee or Ranged attacks, she is not in such a hurry to get the higher-level Death spells. Instead, she can concentrate her Death levels in Necromancy and get to the Master and Grandmaster levels fairly quickly, bypassing Occultism and Demonology. Not only does this hero slaughter the enemy, she also raises them back to join her side!

Early in the game, the Assassin leads the Second Force on local missions such as policing the territory, eliminating enemy scouts, opening caravan routes, clearing ‘month of’ monsters, and cleaning out respawned creature banks. There won’t be a lot of experience points to be had in such assignments, but since there will only be 2 heroes in the force at that point, the Assassin should advance fairly quickly with minimal risk. By the time this hero gets going, some leveling locations will have already been located and cleared by the Main Force, and this helps too. Once the Assassin tops out in Combat, I have her start on Tactics.

At some point the Assassin may bid for a spot on the first team, either by displacing a third level melee fighter or by replacing the Demonologist. But the Second Force is more about attacking than exploring, and the Assassin will want a second roster spot for raised undead, so this hero spends most of the time with the second string.

Archilus became a level 20 Assassin after starting off as a Necromancer. He was recruited out of an Academy and it was easier to get some Combat levels for a Necromancer than to find Necromancy for an Archer or Barbarian. He is taking his chances by developing Melee and Archery instead of Magic Resistance, but he got some nice Archery gear and decided to make the most of it. Somewhere along the way, he picked up a few levels of Tactics and Nature.

Archmage

This is a general-purpose, all-around spellcaster with specialties chosen to mesh with the others in the Second Force – the Assassin and eventually the Fire Diviner or Seer. The Archmage is well suited for the Second Force, which generally does light duty protecting the captured territory. Since the other members of the Second Force are light on magic, it is up to the Archmage to provide the various boosters and enablers that the party needs.

This hero often gets a jumpstart by making a round of all the captured sites that offer magic skills and by visiting the Magic Guilds in captured towns. With a late start, there should be plenty of gold to pay the tuition. For an Academy, this starts with a visit to the University. At a Haven, it means a visit to the Seminary. By taking inventory of available leveling opportunities, I can figure out the best starting class for the Archmage.

Because Archmages need to progress in three schools of Magic, they may not get high level spells in any of them until late in the game, so the schools should be chosen based on their lower level spells. Order magic is almost essential, since at level 3 it lets the Archmage learn Town Gate, which is invaluable for a defending army that needs to get back to town in a hurry. Order also gets Forgetfulness and Teleport at level 3, and that’s another reason to get there as soon as possible. Most of the time, a hero can get to Expert Order with only 6 levels – a budding Archmage starting as a Mage with two levels of Order could get there in 4.

This leaves Life, Death, Nature, and Chaos for the other 2 classes. If the fighter is an Assassin, then Death will be covered. But if the Thief follows the path of Order and becomes a Seer, then the Archmage may want to go with Death in addition to Order. I don’t mind having two Order casters in the party, since one can concentrate on Charm and the other on the main skill progression. The Order/Death combination makes the hero a Shadow Mage, one of the best advanced classes with a +50% bonus to Ranged defense.

Order/Chaos is another good combination, making the hero a Wizard who gets 2 points off the cost of spells. While starting out, this savings allows the hero to get off a lot of spells before recharging. Also, Chaos provides some direct damage spells that complement the Magic Missile and Ice Bolt from Order.

Order/Nature makes the hero a Summoner, but the +20 EPs of summoned creature is one of the weaker advanced powers. The main reason to go with Nature is to get the useful Pathfinding, Quicksand, and Wasp Swarm spells. At level 3 the elemental summoning spells become available.

Finally, Order/Life makes the hero a Monk, whose Chaos Ward will be helpful in fighting against that alignment. Life has some very good spells at level 1 – Bind Wound, Bless, Exorcism, Spiritual Armor, Holy Word, and Summon Boat – with Heal, Martyr, and Song of Peace coming at level 2. These may be the only healing spells available to the Second Force, so Life is usually a priority. However, it is relative easy to get one level of Life and thereby access to the level 1 spells. Song of Peace may not be so attractive when the Archmage with Nature can cast Wasp Swarm instead.

If the circumstances are right, I prefer to start my Archmage with Life and Order, adding Death, Chaos, or Nature as the opportunities arise. If I’m stating with a Sorceror, then I add Order and Nature. Once established as a Monk or Wizard, I try to pick up that one level of Life. Developing 4 magic classes is within the realm of possibility, but I don’t take all 5 types of magic, since I want to save a slot for a few levels of Combat.

Maureen is an Archmage, having started as a Monk (Life+Order) and added Chaos as a third specialty. She has a large repertoire of spells and enough Combat to stand on the front row of the Second Force, shielding a low-level shooter that was no longer needed in the Main Force. Her most important spell is Town Gate, which allows the Second Force to secure the area that has already been captured by gating to towns threatened by interlopers.

Epic Adventuring

Of course game conditions may make all this planning irrelevant, but for typical larger maps, it works pretty well:

Starting with Life or Order, I am able to deploy a Priest and Mage from the very start. The main priority from this start is capturing a town or Tavern that will let me recruit a Thief.
From Death or Nature, I can start the Demonologist and either a Priest or Mage. These have access to Chaos heroes, so getting the Thief is no problem.
From Chaos I can’t get the Priest or Mage right away, so again finding a Tavern becomes a priority.
With Might, I start with a Thief and Barbarian and hope I can find a way to learn some Magic. I want to see a way to get two levels right away so the advanced class bonus will kick in and so that the hero will be offered Magic skills when leveling up.

In the long run, it really doesn’t matter much which heroes are started first, since it is rather easy to help backward Second Force heroes catch up by rotating them into the Main Force for a few battles. (I’ve even been known to have the more advanced heroes launch suicide attacks so as to channel all the EPs to ones needing to catch up. Or just letting low level heroes take the Main Force out for a short campaign while the big boys go back to town for upgrades.)

Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on just one or two main heroes? I think the answer is ‘yes’ in the short run, but ‘no’ in the long run. This is where larger maps and smaller maps differ. Smaller maps are often finished before a hero reaches Grandmaster in one class, much less two. I know some players who have never even seen a GM Demonologist. But on larger maps, heroes start to max out in one class toward the end of the second month and in a second class somewhere in the fourth. After that, additional levels are less valuable, so little is lost in stretching out development a bit. Bear in mind that lower levels require fewer EPs than higher levels. Also note that this strategy is set up with little duplication among members of each force, so that heroes are not usually competing for levels.

With a cadre of heroes to choose from, it becomes possible to assemble Special Forces designed for particular battles. There may be times when a fourth hero is preferable to a fourth army of monsters. Or times when you want multiple Order Magic heroes to thwart enemy shooters. Or a hundred other tactical deployments that would not be available with a set lineup.

And that is the point of the cadre approach. I cannot say that it will be the most successful deployment any more than I can say my own style of play is best for everyone. But I can say that it works well enough for me. What I like is that it gives me access to all facets of the game while affording me an enjoyable variety of hero play – and isn’t that why we play this game?

Do you have your own system? Want to talk about this some more? See you in the forum.

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Behind the Curtain: Wrangling the AI
by Charles Watkins

The Artificial Intelligence routines of the Heroes game engine have been a major reason for the success of the series. Having gone through several major releases and who knows how many minor adjustments, the AI driving Heroes IV computer players represents the main opponent for solo play and a big part of the multi user game.

Most every experienced Heroes III player has noted some inferior qualities of the Heroes IV AI. In fact, this is probably the one factor that has led some veteran players to shun the game. (Lack of multi user support was another, but many players hung on long enough to see it finally arrive.) We’ve seen some improvements in the more recent versions, but in Heroes IV, the computer players just don’t seem to play as well as they did in Heroes III. To be sure, Heroes IV is a more complicated game than Heroes III, but even so, there are some obvious shortcomings.

I think there is also a familiarity factor involved. As I recall, in the early days of Heroes III we also complained a lot about the AI. It did not develop castles well and often made stupid mistakes in recruiting. I remember the struggle my friend Corribus had in getting a hero to go through a Lith. But eventually mapmakers learned to live with the problems and found ways to get the AI to behave.

I have no doubt that if they had been given more time to produce the game, the developers would have addressed most of these. But as it is, we have to live with the flaws—and by ‘we’ I mean those who have found that on balance the new features in Heroes IV make it worth playing, despite the weakness of the AI.

We are only now arriving at that point in Heroes IV. Mapmakers need to accept the strengths and weaknesses of the AI and take them into account in their designs. When we get to the point where mapmakers are building maps where the AI’s idiosyncrasies support the theme or frame conflicts, then we will have arrived at where Heroes III left off.

In this short series, I’d like to take a look at the Heroes IV AI and suggest some ways of making it play better. I call this wrangling. (After all, I’m a native Texan.)

In Part 1, you’ll hear about what I’ve observed about the Heroes IV and maybe account for some its problems. I should note that I have no knowledge of the game’s internals—only some observations and experiments, plus vague recollections of what others have said.

In Part 2, you’ll get my suggestions for ways to get the most out of the AI’s capabilities. This starts with the realization that the AI will never play like a good human opponent--and that it is only one tool available for creating a challenging game.

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Wrangling the Heroes IV AI

Part 2: Wrangling the AI

Here we will look at some ways of overcoming the limitations of the Heroes IV AI, while taking advantage of its strengths. Most of these follow directly from the analysis of the behavior of computer heroes that I presented last time. Still not having completed my map for Heroes IV, I should say that some of these techniques are essentially unproven, but I’ve done enough experiments to convince me that they should work in many situations. An additional disclaimer is that my experience is mainly with single-player games and may not always apply to multi player contests. And to those who are not inclined to scripting, I should say I’ve done my best to stick with simple scripts and settings that everyone can use.

Playing like a human

Before getting into specific techniques, I’d like to get across a critical point: the AI is never going to play like a human , much less like an experienced human. It plays the way if does, and we just need to accept that. However, this does not mean that mapmakers can’t use the AI to give human players the same challenge they would meet against other competent human opponents.

It also follows that dual mode human/computer player positions should be avoided. In a typical starting position suited for a human player, there is no chance the AI will develop a computer player into a reasonable opponent. You might get one good-sized army out of the computer player’s starting town, but it will not effectively challenge even reckless human players. It may take a town or two, but it can never execute a systematic campaign to victory. It may even manage to eliminate another player or two from the game, but unless the others launch suicidal attacks on the computer player, it simply lacks the persistence to win. And of course it will not benefit from quests, objects, clues, or other advantages that are often available to players.

I see a great many 4- and even 6-player maps where all the player positions are human/computer. But I’ve only heard of a few 4-player games and I’ve never known anyone who played with 6. I think these maps must be designed that way so the players have a choice of starting positions. This allows the mapmaker to fix the types of the starting towns, while still allowing players to choose their favorites. It also provides some replay value. Too bad it makes for awful computer players. To mapmakers who simply must use fixed town types, let me suggest this: make separate versions of your map for each starting town. But it would be better to design one or two positions to be ‘random’ so that you can offer a variety of starting towns without having to include human/computer positions.

That said, lets look at some ways to wrangle the Heroes IV AI:

- Zoning
- Mines
- Town setups
- Marshalling armies
- Defending towns

[1] Zoning

To give human players the sense that they are up against another human, a mapmaker can use the RPG technique I call zoning . To use this approach, the mapmaker divides the map into zones, each suited for player forces at different levels of advancement. The zones are separated by garrisons, quest gates, or tough monsters so that forces can’t enter a zone unless they are advanced enough to take on the opponents there. This helps hold the players’ interest since it gradually opens up new areas rather than allowing them to range freely over the entire map. It also allows players to have starting zones where they can get settled into the game before encountering tougher opponents.

In a zoned game, it is clear why dual mode human/computer players are a bad idea. How do you create a starting zone suited for a human player that can also serve as a worthy challenge when occupied by a computer player? Without some heavy duty scripting, I don’t think it can. In every L/XL map I’ve played, the neutral wandering monsters have grown into more of a challenge than any human/computer town. At best, a computer player will amass its armies for a big attack or for last-ditch defense. But because the computer player has not matched the human player in expanding its territory and developing its heroes, it is doomed to lose.

So how do you make a game challenging up to the end? Rather than having computer players start out like human players and hoping they develop by the time the humans arrive, consider how the map would look when a human player enters a zone occupied by another human player. Then set up the zone to look like that. If you think a smart human will have captured some mines, go ahead and flag them for the computer player. If you think a smart human will have stationed a scout near the entrance to the zone, go ahead and put one there. If you think a smart human would have developed a hero to a certain level, go ahead and create such a hero.

If you are concerned about the computer force running amok, set a patrol radius that will keep them where they are supposed to be. Or just box them in with quests, which you know that only human players can perform. If you want it look as though the computer player has completed a quest, use an empty quest hut. If you want it to look as though the computer player has beaten some monsters and picked up some treasure, just leave a few tough guards in places the computer player can’t reach. Don’t bother putting out treasure for the computer players—they may not pick it up. Just give it to them.

Artifacts are another matter, since they almost always will end up in the hands of human players. Mapmakers should make sure that after an opponent is Defeated, only the artifacts intended for players will convey. It’s one thing to dress up a hero with nice artifacts and another to scale up the challenge when the victorious player dons the boss apparel. It’s better, I think, to use skills and spells to make heroes more formidable. (I’m planning to do a future column on hero design, so I’ll leave this here for now.)

[2] Mines

In Part 1, I speculated that the reason computer players sometimes neglect mines after clearing the guards is that when they enter the area, they can’t see a clear path to the mine because of the guards. After they clear the guard, they are not aware that a new target has become accessible, so the mine sits ignored.

There are two rather obvious ways to deal with this odd behavior. The simplest is just to flag the mine for the computer player. Or remove the guards so that the computer player can ‘see’ the mine. But if for some reason you think the mine needs to be guarded, put the guards inside the mine instead of in front of it. That way the computer player will be able to ‘see’ the mine and also have to fight to capture it.

As to resources, I think that the AI has its computer players only go after resources that are needed for the next building project or the next creature that has a resource cost. This allows them to get what they need as soon as possible and not waste movement to get something they don’t. And remember, computer players apparently do not take into account how far it is to the next target, so they may be right next to something and decide they want something else more—and off they go.

[3] Town setups

To the extent that the town types are balanced, completely random towns may or may not be a good idea. I’m of the opinion that the balance is close enough that random towns can work in most maps. Mapmakers should bear in mind that human players can see the advantage of combining forces from towns of the same type, while computer players see all towns the same. That’s why they don’t seem as interested in retaking towns they lose as humans do—and they don’t realize that the original town is their best source of reinforcements that match their current armies.

As we observed before, computer players do not develop towns very well. They seem to build whatever they can whenever they can, so they end up buying a lot of low-cost items like levels on the Mage Guild beyond their heroes’ capacities. At the same time they often build an inferior level-4 dwelling, because its resource requirements are easier to meet. (Let’s not argue this, but I’d say Black Dragons beat Hydras, even considering their cost and low spawn rate. Yet four out of five Asylum towns developed by computer players will have Hydras. This is because the Hydras don’t call for all that Sulfur.)

The easiest way to make sure a computer player has the right level-4 dwelling is to build it for them. If you think this would allow the computer player to accumulate level-4 creatures too quickly, you can just block off the other level-4 dwelling and hope the computer player is able to gather the resources it needs. Or maybe you could set up an Event to fiddle with the resources. But as long you are doing that, why not just write an Event to build the structure when you think it’s appropriate?

As to the AI’s penchant for Mage Guilds, that can also be controlled by Events. In the map I’m working on, I have a town with a garrison hero that I want to cast a certain spell when the town is attacked. Since I don’t want him to learn some other level-5 spell and cast it instead, I’ve made sure the computer player won’t have a Guild there. So as not to cheat the player, when the town is captured a Guild is added.

The Creature Portal problem can be handled the same way by disabling it until the player takes over. Mapmakers who want to simulate its presence can add an appropriate number of creatures to the build cycle. Of course, you can’t do this for a random town.

[4] Marshalling armies

As we observed last time, a big reason why computer players put up such weak resistance is the way they form armies. Sometimes there are no heroes, sometimes only heroes. I attribute this to the ‘buy what you can’ approach to development.

There are a couple of ways to address this problem. Armies stationed outside of towns can be constructed to look like they were developed by human players. If the mapmaker is using zoning principles, it is a simple matter to envision what a worthy opponent would look like and set up the army that way. Since the human players are expected to be at a certain level of advancement before they can enter the zone, it is usually not necessary to scale the army up or down to fit the opponent. If that’s needed, creatures can be added with an Event. You might try putting a suitable dwelling within the army’s patrol radius, but the AI’s proclivity for caravanning might result in the armies being caravanned out. In that case, you need to block the caravan route.

The same approach works for armies stationed in town, but for those that are to set out to explore and conquer, some attention needs to go to party composition. The key here is managing the computer player’s resources differently. Normally, if the computer player has enough gold to buy a hero, it does so and sends it out—even if it is not accompanied by supporting armies. Or if no hero is available, it spends what it has on creatures and sends them out—again without a hero.

We did not see this problem in Heroes III due to the weekly build cycle, so the way to fix it is to set up things the way they were in Heroes III—i.e. get computer players onto a weekly build cycle. This requires two simple scripts: one Continuous Event to take away all of the computer player’s gold each turn and another a weekly Timed Event to fund the weekly builds. Since computer players never use their gold for anything else, it does not deprive them of things they might buy at the Blacksmith, War College, or so on. If those things are really necessary, they can just be given to computer player heroes when they are created. Creatures in captured dwellings will still be bought and transported by caravan.

The idea is that each week, the computer player will get its income in a lump sum, instead of daily installments that it does not know how to manage. There will always be a hero available, plus a week’s worth of armies, so the resulting army will be composed more like a human’s. These armies will be substantial enough to take on neutrals and since they contain heroes, they can flag the objects they capture. Another side-effect is that the heroes are able to advance as their armies win battles.

[5] Defending Towns

In many cases, the development of a Citadel and Castle actually impairs town defense by computer players. Instead of launching a coordinated counter attack, defenders wait behind the walls to be picked off one by one. The easiest way to improve town defense is by disabling these structures.

There are some other things that can be done to strengthen the defense. First is seeing that the computer player has the right mix of armies for defense. This means 3 shooters, one or two walkers, and two or three fliers. Better to have one strong walker than several weaker ones. Place this army near the gate (center position) in position to counterstrike against the attacker. Put the shooters in the 2-4-6 slots so as to mount the towers. Magic resistant shooters like Ballistae work best. For WoW maps, Gargantuans are very tough, and Catapults may be best of all. Harpies can also be excellent defenders since they attack the opponent and then retreat to safety. Other good defenders are Mages, Cyclops, Venom Spawn, Genies, and many level 4 creatures.

Select Magic heroes that can cast supporting spells or attack spells that do not require line-of-sight. Give them only the spells you want them to cast. In fact, take care not to give them line-of-sight spells since they can cause the heroes to start out adjacent to the wall where they can be easily picked off.

Another possibility is setting up the defense outside the town. Armies in the open are more likely to charge and engage an enemy directly. They can also be stationed there permanently so the town is always guarded and the garrison armies do not end up with a roving hero. The other advantage of outside defense is that enemy heroes are not automatically resurrected after a victory—if the defenders can eliminate the attacking heroes, they will have effectively blunted the attack.

When this battle is fought in the Castle,
the Red computer player defender loses.

When the same battle is fought on a bridge,
the Red computer player defender wins easily.

Summary

To wrap up this piece, let’s go back and see how the measures I’ve suggested are able to address the AI’s shortcomings that I brought out in Part 1.

Goal setting

The key here is reducing the number of targets available to computer players, which means laying out computer player positions differently than human player positions. Better to just give the computer players what you intend for them to have—players won’t realize this since by the time they get there, the computer player’s area will look like a human player’s. To set up a situation where computer players compete with human players, avoid distracting the computer player with secondary objectives. Bear in mind that computer players will not pursue quests, so these will be for players’ benefit only and computer players deserve some compensation.

Army formation

By pre-forming armies, you stand a better chance of developing challenging computer opponents. This has the added benefit of providing more diverse combinations of armies than the typical two-army spreads you get from monster tokens. Don’t expect computer players to send out reinforcements but do expect they will have significant attrition—make sure they start out with a strong force.

Spell selection

I’ll have more on customizing heroes later, but here the idea is to limit the number of spells available to computer spellcasters. Choose one or two good ones and assign them to the hero. If the hero has access to a town, consider the effect of a visit to the Mage Guild, which is just about guaranteed to be built up to level 5. Either match the town’s spells to the hero—or block the structures and use a simple script to build them when the player captures the town.

Also realize that computer players will also select spells randomly for spell casting monsters. Humans are much more skillful in the use of Mages, Water Elementals, etc. because there are many choices and only some really make sense in a given position. Computer players do OK with creatures that have only a few spells—like Angels, Satyrs, and the bodacious Evil Enchantresses.

Siege defense

Defending towns means building and maintain a proper garrison with an effective mix of armies and extra strength to compensate for the AI’s poor tactics. I might go so far as to say that Forts are a liability for the AI, which does better to defend the open ground in front of the town—or even a strategically placed garrison—than the town itself.

Town development

Again, when town development matters, it’s best to design it the way you want it to be when players arrive. This has the useful side-effect of allowing computer players to start accumulating armies. You might try starting with level 2-3 creature dwellings (enough to assure smart choice of key creatures) and awarding level 4 at the end of a month—just a simple timed town Event.

If you are using timed Events to pump creatures into a town, which helps assure the computer player has respectable armies, then you can just disable everything and build stuff when the player captures the town—a simple standard Event. Setting up a build this way can also avoid of the possibility of a Preserve with an untapped Creature Portal.

In closing

Before wrapping up this series, I should note that most of these techniques also apply to the handling of neutrals and computer allies. There are some notable differences, but that’s something to discuss another time.

I should also note that dedicated scripters have come up with many more techniques for managing computer players. If you are interested in these, I encourage you to visit the Mapmaker Forum.

Finally, we come back to the question: “Does the AI Cheat?” After looking at some ways for mapmakers to wrangle the AI, we now have an answer: “No, but to give the player a good game, you need to make it cheat!”

Want to talk about this some more? See you in the Forum.

Comments (1)

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Wrangling the Heroes IV AI

Part 1: Saddling Up

Since all of my readers may not be lucky enough to live in Texas, maybe I should start by explaining why I chose the term wrangling, which is usually defined as ‘to herd’. When wrangling cattle, the cowboy is working to keep the herd together by rounding up strays and bringing them back to the main group. This job is complicated by the fact that cattle are independent minded and tend to graze off on their own, where they become susceptible to predators. But they also have a herding instinct that keeps them moving in the same direction, more or less, and that’s where the wrangling comes in.

I’m suggesting that the Heroes IV AI is something like a herd of cattle. If you understand the nature of the beast, you can get it to follow your general plan for the game. But you have to keep your eye on the strays or else the herd will go off in all directions.

After deciding on ‘Wrangling the Heroes IV AI’ as my topic, I looked up wrangle and found some other meanings which may or may not apply here as well. Incidentally, the origin of the term is unknown, but it may derive from Caballerango, which is Spanish for horse groom. Originally, the wrangler was the one on the trail drive who herded the horses, but over time the term was also applied to herding cattle. (Just as the caballero, which means horseman, became known as a cowboy.)

Other definitions:

Wrangle: to contend in argument; to discuss; to reason; to debate; to altercate. (This may be a corruption of ‘Wangle’ which has the same general meaning.)

Wrangler: one of those who stand in the first rank of honors in the University of Cambridge, England. They are called, according to their rank, senior wrangler, second wrangler, third wrangler, etc.

Does the AI Cheat?

Sometimes I hear people say that the Heroes IV AI cheats. Personally, I’ve never seen this and if someone could give me a verifiable instance, I’d like to take a look. I surely could be wrong, but as far as I know, none of the Heroes AIs have ever cheated. The closest thing is the resource bonus for computer players on higher difficulty levels, but this is just a way of handicapping play, not a violation of rules that would otherwise apply to human players.

What may look like cheating could be places where machine logic and plentiful CPU cycles allow computer players (and neutrals) to play with a cold precision that humans lack.

One example is the way a computer player always seems to be able to get a defending army back to town just before an attack. It does not look to me as though it is deliberately keeping an army within movement range of the town, but that it is responding to a threat as soon as it detects it. My theory is that when an opposing army comes into its field of vision, the computer player assesses the threat and dispatches any armies in the area to move back to town. Clearly, there is some homing routine involved, since computer players regularly return to their towns to pick up reinforcements.

Another example is how the computer player always seems to know when a town is undefended and makes a beeline to attack it. However, I think this can be explained by a combination of getting a ‘right-click’ assessment and giving a high priority to the prize. In the first version of Heroes IV, it was possible to trick computer players into foolish attacks by ‘hiding’ a major force in the garrison slots. It looks as though this was fixed.

Yet another example is the computer player’s ability to defeat neutrals with such ease. I’ve seen this happen many times when playing with a computer ally, where I can see the composition of the ally’s army. Sometimes, my computer ally sends its armies up against foes that I would not dream of attacking—and often comes away with a victory. I think the reason for this is that when computer players fight against neutrals or each other, they use a form of ‘quick combat’ to resolve battles—they do not play out turns on the battlefield. In such battles, their overall strengths are compared to determine the winner, so particularly hard neutrals are defeated as easily as average ones. For instance, where I would hesitate to attack a gold mine guarded by Cyclops, a computer player would wade right in because in quick combat they would be no more difficult to defeat than Ogre Mages. We mere human players are only allowed to use quick combat in battles where we have an overwhelming advantage, so we don’t get the benefit of this leveling effect. You might call this cheating, but since weak neutrals are also treated as average, it ultimately evens out.

To come at the question from the other direction, if computer players cheat, they are not doing a very good job of it because of some of the mistakes they make. Quite often a computer-controlled army will just waltz up and attack a superior force. There seems to be some ‘crazy eddie’ factor that leads them into such follies--I don’t think they are sacrificing armies to get accurate readings of opponent strength. My theory is that the computer player’s pathfinding logic does not take into account zones of control not visible at the start of the turn. Where a human player’s travel would stop upon entering a ‘yellow’ square that has just come into view, the computer player already has its full path laid in and sometimes gets surprised. By the time it gets to where it can see the ‘yellow’ area, it may be too late to get out of range of the opponent and with combat inevitable, it prefers to take the offensive. Or more likely there is some random desperado element in play.

What does the AI do poorly?

It’s possible that someone has gone to the trouble of itemizing the deficiencies of the Heroes IV AI and if so, it would be interesting to exchange notes. What you have here are my own observations, deductions, and theories of the behavior of Heroes IV computer players and neutrals. Any correspondence to reality is purely coincidental. Here’s what I think the worst problems are:

- Goal setting
- Army formation
- Spell selection
- Siege defense
- Town development

I wish that the AI performed better in these areas—but have managed to reconcile myself to the flaws and started to think of ways to deal with them. That will come in Part 2.

Goal Setting

The most conspicuous and disturbing behavior of computer players is the way they pass up unguarded treasures and fail to flag resources after defeating their guards. Clearly there is some problem with goal setting here. It’s one thing to pass up an unneeded resource in order to get where you are going and another to fight your way to a gold mine and then not flag it. No human would play like that.

What I think is happening is a side effect of the way objectives are set. There has to be some way to identify possible targets and to choose among the available alternatives. It looks to me like this takes place at the start of the turn and all of the computer player’s armies use the same evaluation data, since they all can ‘see’ the same illuminated area, just as a human player can. However, not all the visible will be reachable, so these need to be eliminated from consideration. The remaining targets are evaluated--who knows how—and assigned priority values. Then when each army’s turn to move comes, it pursues the highest valued objective within its range of movement.

The behavior flaw we see could result from such an arrangement. At the beginning of the turn, the guarded gold mine is classified as unreachable since all paths to it lead into the zone-of-control of the guard stationed outside. So when it moves in that direction, it turns out that the computer player is not fighting its way to the gold mine after all—it’s fighting the guard to gain experience! Fighting would have a high priority value in the target selection decision since removing blocking armies would often be necessary in order to gain access to more territory. The AI seems to do this without regard to whether the guards are actually guarding anything or blocking the way. It just fights to fight. (Rule Number One: Don’t talk about Fight Club.)

So when the computer player has defeated the guard, just for the sake of the fight, it looks around for a new target. But it does not have a priority value for the gold mine since it was not accessible at the beginning of the turn. And now that it is in the computer player’s field of vision, the AI does not take time to reassess it—there’s no time to recheck everything. Perversely, this means the computer player will not be able to target the gold mine until it falls out of the computer player’s field of vision and then back in again. By then, the computer player’s army may have moved on to pursue other, less desirable objectives. Eventually, another of the computer player’s armies may get around to capturing the gold mine--or maybe not if there is nothing else to attract an army to the area.

Finally, computer players tend to evaluate possible objectives, um, objectively in that they do not seem to know what they need or what fits in with what they already have. A human player would give priority to capturing creature dwellings that match ones already possessed, planning on aggregating armies from both sources. A human knows that Gold Mines are extremely valuable and tries to capture them ASAP. A human player with Life Magic would naturally make a Tome of Life a priority over other artifacts at the same level, but such affinities are ignored by computer players.

Army formation

The second most obvious problem with the Heroes IV AI is the way it assembles armies. Sometimes it sends out powerful armies without heroes. Other times it sends out armies with only heroes--or maybe with a few weak creatures that slow the heroes down. Of course, the hero-less armies cannot capture anything, though they can wreak havoc with scouts, caravan routes, etc. The other problem is that any experience they gain from fighting goes to waste. The hero-heavy armies often struggle, since it takes some care and feeding to develop heroes to the point where they can fight alone.

This hero-heavy army resulted from merging of two solo heroes, who managed to raise a few skeletons.
When the computer player can barely afford a hero, it buys one and sends it out alone,
since it does not have gold for additional creatures.

This hero-less army resulted from a build when no hero was available.
The computer player came into some gold and spent it on whatever creatures were available.

What I think is going on here is that the AI spends its money like a sailor: it buys whatever it can, whenever it can. When there is a hero available, it always buys it. If there are no supporting troops available, it sends the hero out alone. Then as it accumulates resources during the week between heroes, it buys creatures and sends them out. Occasionally, two armies meet and merge, but the farther they get from town the less likely this becomes. On the other hand, starting armies put together by the mapmaker almost always stay intact. At least the Heroes IV AI does not have the maddening tendency of the Heroes II AI to dismiss a superior force because it has happened across some freebies.

The AI does not mix its armies like humans do. It sometimes includes slow, weak creatures with other fast armies. It pays no attention to Morale. And it never seems to dismiss an army, which can result in scouts tying up too many of the 8 slots.

Another factor here is that the AI is coo-coo for caravans, as players discover when they capture a town controlled by a computer player. There are usually several caravans in route, each with what must be a day’s worth of some creature. Caravanned creatures seem to accumulate in town until a build occurs and then are added to the new force. (Incidentally, players, this is not such a bad plan. When your Stealth hero manages to flag an unguarded creature dwelling, you can caravan the occupants back to town and let the hero carry on alone.)

Finally here, computer players do not seem to understand the value of developing multiple towns the same way. A human player who already has an Asylum producing Medusas will want to capture another one and build a Statuary Garden there with an eye on eventually merging the output of both towns into a formidable army. Computer players do not really care what kind of towns they attack and even though they will merge armies when they can, they do not go out of their way to do so. And where a human player might send out reinforcements with creatures that match the ones in the main army, it is by accident when computer players manage to reinforce armies in the field. To be fair, they do return their heroes to town to pick up reinforcements, but this is obviously less efficient than sending the reinforcements up to the front.

Spell selection

We’ve all seen cases where computer heroes fail to cast what are obviously the best spells for the situation. This also applies to creatures with spell-casting powers. For instance, they rarely Exorcise disabling spells. One the other hand, they often cast essentially useless spells, such as Slow on a shooter. Spell targeting is not so bad, since the AI usually targets the strongest opposing army while also trying for outright kills and attacks without retaliation. But the AI never uses little tricks that human players know, like using Displacement or Teleport to bring a target into range for a shooter. Or laying down quicksand to slow down opponents.

What’s going on here anyway? It looks as though Quicksand creates a little man with a wheelbarrow that he dumps along the way. It is possible that an entire army could be stuck in one wheelbarrow full of sand? And how come it works on a ship?

The cause of the problem is that when a computer player has the opportunity to cast a spell, it does so at random. If there are four spells available, the chances are equal that any will be cast, not including those that would have no effect. So sometimes, the computer player looks smart and other times it looks dumb.

A related problem is that computer players are not aggressive in developing magic-using heroes. When they advance, they seem to make a random selection from whatever skill choices are presented, rather than working heroes up in their schools of magic. This problem is exacerbated by the way the game pushes Combat skills at every opportunity. This results in most every computer hero having Combat as one of its classes, so you never see a dual-magic hero like a Demonologist.

Finally, computer heroes seem to be incapable of using Scrolls, Parchments, or Potions to expand their choices of spells. In fact, they seem to collect them just to provide treasure for the opponent. I’ve obtained as many as 70 of these from a single defeated hero.

Siege Defense

Computer players seem particularly stupid when it comes to siege defense. As best I can tell, the shooters and spell casters take to the platforms and fire on the enemy until they are killed. Melee creatures and heroes step back from the wall and turn their asses to the enemy until the gate is broken. Then they rush the enemy. Fliers wait for an opposing army to move into range and then attack on their own. If the opponent can cast Poison, Teleport, or Displacement, the town may fall without ever having the gate open. Personally, I find it much easier to beat a computer player in town than on the open map, since my shooters can concentrate first on the defending shooters while the other defenders stand around doing nothing. Then with Teleport or Displacement, I can bring armies into firing range one by one and never have to face the all-out rush that would have been made in a regular battle.

I’m sure the thinking here was that the strong advantage given to the platform shooters would motivate the attacker to storm the gate. But with spells like Wasp Swarm and Displacement, it is just too easy to neutralize the shooters. Seems to me the Heroes III AI played a more aggressive defense than what we see in Heroes IV.

Town Development

There are so many problems with town development that it’s hard to know where to begin.

This is a fairly typical computer player town. Note the poor choices for level 2 and 3 creatures and the built-up Mage Guild.

Have you noticed how often computer players choose the weaker of the two dwellings available at levels 2, 3, and 4? Though there was an attempt to balance the creatures, and there will be occasions when the weaker creature is desirable, most of the time it does not pay to develop Venom Spawn instead of Vampires, Nagas instead of Genies, or Hydras instead of Black Dragons. Yet computer players do this with dogged regularity. I’m certain the reason for this is that the better creatures require a large quantity of some particular resource and rather than wait (or trade or fight) to accumulate enough, as a human player would, the computer player builds whatever it can as soon as it can.

The most conspicuous error is the neglect of the Creature Portal. Computer players will build it, but never recruit the creatures it makes available. Personally, I always go after Preserves when I play, because I know when I take one there will be a big batch of Mantises, Water Elementals, etc. there for me to recruit.

Computer players make other dubious choices in town development. For instance, they place a high priority on building up Mage Guilds, even though they have no heroes capable of casting the higher level spells. And they build their Citadels and Castles sooner than most players would--unless faced with an immediate threat--which leaves them short in other areas.

Gross stupidity

There are some other behaviors that I find incomprehensible and can only attribute to oversights by the programmers. One is the way computer players will strand their own armies by casting Summon Boat while an army is on an island. Another is the way they neglect Taverns, even when they need a hero to escape the three-day countdown. And we’ve all seen how they sometimes leave towns virtually unguarded. And Altars being bypassed since computer heroes want to be Combat combos.

When faced with elimination, computer players become extremely aggressive, even to the point of launching foolhardy attacks against vastly superior forces. It appears that when faced with the three-day countdown, other objectives are forgotten and every effort is made to take a town. Sadly, these efforts are wasted, since the three-day countdown does not kick in until the computer player has lost all its heroes. And even when it might be able to visit a Tavern or Prison to obtain a new hero, it never does since the armies are all bent on attack.

Similarly, when the last town is threatened, a computer player will exhaust itself by sending out small armies with heroes that retreat when they encounter the opponent. I’ve seen the same army come back as many as four times. Once this was one with Diplomacy, who seemed determined to buy me off with repeated surrenders.

What does it do well?

For all that, there are some aspects of the game where the computer players do quite well, all things considered.

- Field combat
- Might hero development
- Exploration
- Opportunistic attacks
- Creature gathering

Field combat

Since Gus wrote this himself, you expect it to be good, and given the complexity of Heroes IV, you could say it really is great. To be sure, there are some mistakes and some opportunities that are overlooked, but overall I’ve found computer players to put up good fights on the open battlefield. Each army seems to do the right thing from its own perspective, though there is little cooperation among the armies. This tells me that the AI evaluates the situation as each army’s turn comes up and chooses its best move. The result can be a failure to concentrate fire or target opposing heroes.

Movement on the battlefield is one of the hardest routines to get right. By and large, the Heroes IV does OK when it comes to covering lines of sight to its back row shooters and it is deadly when it comes to putting its armies in the right location to foul opposing shooters. It knows how to use the Wait function to get a last-first move combo for fast armies, but it does not know to Wait so that another army can clear a path.

Might heroes

As I said before, computer players tend to develop Might heroes more often than Magic heroes. Advancement is more reasonable in that they tend to concentrate on Combat skills that will make them more effective. They are also played better than Magic heroes, since the only options available are to shoot, charge, or move. The exception here is the Thief, which never seems to do any thieving—as if the computer players were unaware of how Stealth works.

Exploration

Computer players are pretty good about exploring the territory around their starting towns and their explorers are pretty good about picking up unguarded treasure chests and resources they may come across. However, the goal seems to be to increase the size of the area they can see, rather than to discover ways to reach visible, but inaccessible goals. Computer player scouts are not limited by a human’s inability to see objects hidden behind others, so they often find things than human players would overlook.

Opportunistic attacks

Though it does not seize every opportunity that presents itself, a computer player finds enough opportunities to attack weak towns and armies that the human players have to be careful. It’s actually good that they do not attack at every opportunity or it would be too easy to draw them into ambushes. What the computer players lack is the ability to stage two-stage attacks where a low-priority objective must be cleared in order to get to a more desirable one.

Computer players are particularly good at fighting neutrals. I believe this is because they ‘know’ that they will be able to use ‘quick combat’ even when force levels are about equal, so that when they have the stronger force they will be bound to win. Computer players do sometimes come too close to a ‘wandering’ neutral, especially when the neutral’s patrol area exceeds its zone of control. But they compensate for this by having a more accurate and complete view of potential threats than human players do. And they seem to have a very human way of stumbling into trouble and not having enough movement left to get away.

Creature gathering

Computer players are quite good about aggregating creatures for their armies. First, they are much more aggressive in attacking creature generators than most humans would be. I’ve often marveled that a computer player has been able to take a level-4 dwelling like a Dragon Cave when I would not dream of attacking it. Another case of ‘quick combat’ between balanced forces, I suspect.

Computer players are also adept at Caravanning and never seem to revisit creature dwellings once they have been captured. This is why there always seem to be a few weak armies being caravanned to towns you have just captured. The computer player is monitoring every dwelling and as soon as a creature is available, it buys it and caravans it to its nearest town.

Also, computer players do a good job of merging armies, something they rarely did in Heroes III. They combine armies of like creatures and add heroes when slots are available. And the armies are arranged the same way humans would—shooters in back and walkers in front. However, its decision on joining armies does not seem to take into account the loss of movement when an exhausted army combines with a fresh one. In the original version of Heroes IV, you could see this often with armies that spawned every day—the first one would walk as far as it could and stop, then the next day another one would appear and move over to join with the first, and it would go like that again and again. I have not seen that happen in a long while, so something may have been done about it.

And most impressively, computer players will bring their armies back to town to pick up creatures that have accumulated there. This could be a carry-over from Heroes III, where everyone headed home for the Day 1 build. This makes for more substantial forces later in the game, an improvement over Heroes III where every computer-played army tends to be about a week’s worth of armies.

What it does better than I do

On balance, computer players are not as strong as human opponents, but there are a few things it does better humans—at least better than this human. Computer players have intimate knowledge of the way the game engine works. They see things that humans don’t. They judge enemy forces precisely.

But the main advantage is that computer players do not play emotionally or form attachments to particular towns or heroes. Though flawed, their goal setting is based on cold calculations. Capture a town and it becomes just another possible target—as if they had never held it. Take a prisoner and the computer player will make no effort to recover it.

In Part 2, we will look at some ways to overcome the main limitations of computer players and to take advantage of their strengths. That is, how to wrangle the Heroes IV AI.

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Behind the Curtain: Saving NWC

Part 2: Making Money -- What I would do

For Heroes to succeed in today’s market, it must find new customers and this calls for changes to the game itself, not just an ad campaign. I think the key here is widening its appeal by incorporating the best features of Might and Magic. At the same time, the Heroes franchise needs to embrace the new realities of the PC games market and look beyond retail sales for sources of profits. This requires a Commercial Website, which I will outline.

Heroes V and beyond

Now let’s consider the evolution of the game itself. Since the goal is more paying customers we are more concerned with expanding the appeal of the game to new players than to currying to the current fan base. So pardon me if your idea for Heroes V does not appear here–there will be plenty of opportunity to go over these later. What we need now are ways to attract new customers and sustain their interest from release to release.

Towns, Heroes, and armies

First, we need to further develop and integrate towns, heroes, and armies. Towns are probably the most underdeveloped aspect of the game—and in many ways the Heroes IV towns were a step back from those in Heroes III . Compared to other games, the number of structures is small, the structures themselves are uninteresting, and the visual presentation is poor. I’m not suggesting a Civilization-style build tree, but there is far more that could be done to enliven Heroes towns. New towns could provide added value for expansion packs, as they have in the past. And towns can become more varied with unique structures and intrinsic powers.

Heroes have always been the centerpiece of the game, and though I really enjoy the new Heroes IV skill trees and the Heroes’ involvement in battle, I also miss the ‘personality’ of the individualized Heroes III heroes. Since part of our new marketing effort centers on heroes, we want to develop them even further, combining the intrinsic powers they had in Heroes III with more elaborate skills found in Heroes IV. Then we overhaul the magic system along the lines of Might and Magic and incorporate some of the M&M class skills and attributes. To all this we add some social aspects to be discussed below.

And since Heroes is fundamentally a game of armies, there needs to be more development in this area as well. Creature upgrades have become a popular part of the game, but the idea of replacing creatures by upgrading dwellings is all wrong. What’s supposed to be going on there anyway? Are Red Dragons being painted with black, magic-proof paint to make them into Black Dragons? (I don’t even want to think about how girl Genies become boy Master Genies.) A simpler and more credible implementation would be to allow each army to have various add-ons that provide the enhancements. For instance, when Dwarves visit the Armory, the player buys them Battle Suits so they become Battle Dwarves. And maybe there’s another place to add a Lord’s Mace to make them into Dwarf Lords. The point is that these new powers would be additions and not transformations. If the Battle Dwarves lose their Battle Suits, or want to add some plain Dwarves to the army, they go back to being Dwarves. Each base creature would have several such add-ons and these would be reflected in their renderings. (Get out the black paint again.) Provision for these various effects is already in the code.

Like towns, armies need a more striking graphical presentation. On the army management screen, players should be able to view their forces in ranks and in full battle regalia, with tools for configuring formations that display lines of sight and range of movement. It should be understood that on maps and tactical displays, each figure represents an entire ‘stack’ or corps. (Maybe there is some ‘Army Men’ code around that could be used for this. J )

There is already some integration of towns, heroes, and armies in that town-based Taverns favor the native hero types, town dwellings are (pretty much) limited to producing armies of native creatures, and the presence of heroes can greatly affect the fighting abilities of armies. I believe it is exactly this kind of integration that has made Heroes successful—so let’s take it further in future editions. Give heroes more things to do in town—such as visiting Prisoners or getting weapons enchanted. Provide buildings where armies can be improved, as described above—or allow certain heroes to do the same, like Gelu in Heroes III. Give some heroes an affinity with some creatures, like many heroes had in Heroes III.

Maps

Currently, the game is played on two or three scales. The main scale is the adventure map, which may contain one or two levels. The adventure map is populated with towns, armies, buildings, and various objects with which armies can interact. Inside the towns are windows representing buildings, many of which can also appear as objects on the adventure map, and slots for armies. The scrollable main display shows the portion of the adventure map where the player has selected a town or army. There is also a battle map, whose terrain is somewhat derived from the terrain on the adventure map where the battle takes place. Finally, there is sometimes a campaign structure that is represented through linkages between adventure maps with some provision for carry-overs from one map to another. Graphically, the arrangement of these objects looks like this.

Note that in the current game, towns are just glorified map objects. Armies form a garrison or wait at the gate, but town interaction is through a set of windows that open when the player selects a building. When appropriate, Heroes from the garrison and gate can be selected to ‘enter’ a building, but this is depicted only through the window system. This is an interface from the 1980s and badly needs updating.

Some map objects (like Prisons) can also contain armies and Heroes, but these are even less dynamic than towns. The game could be improved by the addition of more kinds of objects that would take players from the adventure map to other tactical displays, like the current game takes them to town screens or battlefields. Some ideas for these:

Monster lairs
Residences
Temples
Shops
Quest givers
Treasure hoards
Dungeons
Taverns
Castles

These don’t have to be done at once and represent a way to provide product upgrades without having to rewrite completed code.

Displays

The world map needs a full screen display that can depict roads, caravan routes, terrain types, town names, and otherwise become more map-like. It is not necessary to have animated objects, but various types of objects should be recognizable, as well as which player controls them.

The display of the selected army and its surroundings does not need to be changed. Both the Heroes III and Heroes IV layouts are OK, though the diagonal layout in Heroes IV can be confusing to new players. In either case, a decision must be made as to what this display is supposed to be! Currently, it’s not a map in that maps are generally 2D and static, while the display has 3D rendering and animation. On the other hand, it’s also a far cry from a virtual reality, due to the outlandish designs for the adventure objects--like the Scholars in Heroes III that are taller than trees. And are there really Treasure Chests just lying around for the taking? Whatever is done, the Candyland look needs to be toned down. Oversized and stylized objects are certainly appropriate for markers on a map--like the world map--but not in a virtual reality display. If objects are hard to spot, maybe they could be highlighted in some way when a Scout comes along.

Both the Heroes III and Heroes IV hero displays are OK, too. The paper-doll depiction of equipped objects is pretty much a standard and the mechanics of equipping/unequipping are fine. However, as Heroes are enhanced as described below, a more elaborate display may be in order and this is where we come back to Might and Magic.

Load on demand

The major change I would make in this area is linking maps through a load-on-demand mechanism. Other than memory constraints, I can see no reason why a map should be limited to two levels. Multiple levels have proven to be a popular feature in console gaming and in pencil-and-paper RPGs. By treating a town as a small map, it would be possible for armies and Heroes to move around in it, actually visiting its locations instead of clicking them to popup windows on a static layout. This would enable mapmakers to create in-town adventures, and would allow towns to have dungeons, towers, and other levels of their own.

Carried a step further, load-on-demand would allow campaigns to be structured as collections of maps strung together in interesting ways, even allowing players to return to previous maps. By linking to a personal ‘roster’ map, Heroes could even be saved and later transported to new arenas as they become available. The architect of the campaign could link in new sections (like ‘mods’ in Neverwinter Nights) or upgrade existing ones without impacting games in progress. With an Internet connection available, maps might even be obtained from a remote site, again transparently to the player. The potential here is for a community of players and mapmakers to put together a MUD-like world where Heroes carry over from adventure to adventure. The main work required here is to expand the carry-over interface to insure that Heroes enter at the right level (similar to the level caps in Heroes IV.) Heroes too strong for a map they wish to enter would have to have some of their abilities and possessions temporarily removed in order to scale down to the map.

Generated objects

The third major change to the game that I would propose is to provide for the generation of unique maps, locations, armies, Heroes, and artifacts. Providing a steady supply of unique objects would keep the game fresh and unpredictable, even more so if additional properties become available over time.

Map generator

Lack of a ‘random’ map generator is a frequent complaint heard about Heroes IV, and the unbridled randomness of the Heroes III generator has received similar gripes. What is need is a robust, coherent map generator like one finds in RPGs like nethack and Diablo. Again, much credit should go the WoG team for what they have accomplished in this area.

Location generator

If a game becomes a set of adventure maps nested inside a world map, then specialized generators can be employed for locations like towns, battlefields, dungeons, etc. Because these are modular and essentially self-contained objects, they can be introduced over time as part of the product’s evolution. The combination of hand-edited maps and random maps would give mapmakers the freedom to create fully customized maps or to let the generator fill in the less important details. Or on the other hand, some mapmakers might choose to create customized ‘mods’ that could be embedded in others’ maps. Either way, mapmakers could invest as much or as little time as they wish and still have a result to be proud of.

Army and hero generators

In addition to generators maps and locations, I would like to see generators for armies and Heroes. We can start with the primitive but serviceable random monster generators in the editor. These have some useful parameters that can be set by hand, but not much variation in what is generated. Battles would become much more interesting if there were more formations and better variety in composition than we have now. By defining ‘families’ of monsters, an extra measure of realism could be maintained while increasing the variety. This way a mapmaker could place a random monster token with settings for
‘Asylum’ and ‘Level 2’ and get a level-2 army composed of Asylum creatures and possibly Heroes.

Heroes can also be generated based on templates specifying classes, levels, skills, spells, and equipment items. This could provide more interesting starting Heroes, as well as a better variety of computer opponents.

Treasure and artifact generators

Finally here, I would like to see a far better selection of treasures and artifacts, and these could also be randomly generated based on a set of templates (which could in turn be randomly selected). This would allow a level-1 Treasure Chest to contain, for instance, a common artifact, two potions, a Life magic scroll, and 500-1000 gold. The exact artifact, potions, scroll, and amount of gold would be randomly generated. This comes right out of Might and Magic, along with other RPGs.

To take this a step further, it would also be possible to generate artifacts like in the Elder Scrolls games. All that is required is a list of artifact types (like wands) and a list of properties they might possess (like magic missile). This would insure a virtually endless assortment of treasures.

In sum, by providing all these generators, the customer becomes less dependent on the selection of maps shipped with game for ongoing enjoyment of the product. At the same time, we have opened up the possibility of adding new objects without having to overhaul the code base. Additional ‘seeds’ for the generators could be downloaded so that players would be constantly surprised.

Social features

A fourth major improvement to the came could come from the addition of more social features, which have been shown to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction. These also help attract players to the Commercial Website that I’ll describe next.

Diplomacy

In the game itself, we need to enrich the primitive diplomacy system beyond the current choice of allies and opponents. Creatures could have personalities developed further than compliant-friendly-etc. For instance, alignment and racial preferences and hatreds could affect negotiations. Heroes could acquire reputations based on their deeds. Computer Heroes would react to reputation as well as setting and inventory. Heroes would accumulate legacies—essentially scrapbooks recounting prior adventures that could be searched for keywords to employ in conversations, making each hero truly distinctive based on the player’s own actions. The record also allows the AI to adjust to the player’s personality and history.

Headquarters

Players will acquire a roster of Heroes, centered around a headquarters of sort. When a game is launched, the roster will be scanned and any Heroes qualifying for predefined roles will be loaded. For instance, if a map calls for a midlevel Noble, a level 5 Cardinal may be chosen and the name of his town matched to one he has previously governed. Taverns might be stocked with other Heroes drawn from the roster, again possibly adjusted to fit the parameters of the map. Of course, the random hero generator can also utilize these methods to provide opponents and allies whose backstories make sense in the context of the map. The other way to acquire Heroes is to download them from the Commercial website.

As the player progresses, we can offer more splendid headquarters as a reward, including character editing capabilities that improve with upgrades, such as a lab for potions, and different atmospheres, such as the haunted castle or elvish crypt. In network play, the headquarters serves as the player’s home, from which hosts will be able to invite others to play by connecting their headquarters – load on demand again. Persistent aggregations of these dynamically linkable headquarters would become online communities with status based on play, mapmaking, and other contributions to the game. ’Heroes town’ for short.

Commercial Website

The last of three main marketing moves for Heroes is the creation of a Commercial Website integrated with the game. Inspired by the good work at Celestial Heavens and other popular Heroes sites, the site will offer a variety of activities for Heroes gamers.

We’ll start with the staples, like you see on Celestial Heavens today:

Game and industry news
Searchable archive of contributed maps, reviews, articles, and stories
Moderated forums on topics of interest
Occasional polls and contests

In fact, we could just make Celestial Heavens the official fan website.

To this we will add the following:

Developer program
Store
Hosting service

These will all be accessible through the Commercial Website, though they will almost certainly be hosted elsewhere.

Developer program

The Developer Program would be chartered to encourage and support development efforts outside the company. This is where the map editor and other authoring tools would be provided under freeware-type licenses, perhaps at some small charge that could be refunded when the developer produces something for the website. This would facilitate the distribution of patches and upgrades.

This program would also be responsible for distributing prerelease copies and patches that need verification. A third function would be coordinating translation work for international markets. And a fourth would be coordinating volunteer testing. The development staff would communicate through a group blog with limited access to others outside the company.

Company Store

The Company Store would become a second profit center, as important to success as retail boxes.

Packaged games: New releases available for preorder to be shipped on the first day.
Expansion packs: Though major releases would be sold only as boxed products, expansion packages would also be sold like shareware. These might ship with an updated version of the game engine, but customers would see the value in new collections of maps, Heroes, monsters, treasures, and locations.
Mega-maps: Major campaigns of quality and scope comparable to those in the heyday of the Might and Magic series should command good money apart from the expansion packs. These would employ objects not available in the current release in a single, extended adventure, playable standalone without the main product.
Free add-ons: Soundtracks (mpegs), command shells (skins), tavern talk (dialog files).
Merchandise: All the usual crap we fritter our money away on.

Hosting service

The Hosting Service is the third major profit center, offering several premium services at whatever prices the market will bear:

Hero hall: This is the administrative arm of the hosting services. Players will come here for rankings, results, and announcements of upcoming events. It is where the Hero Hall of Fame can be visited, where distinguished Heroes and their legacies are available for viewing. Players will be able to import famous Heroes to take part in their games.
Matches, tournaments, leagues, and contests: Charge for bandwidth plus administration fees. Or sell ads.
Unseen worlds: Manage as a premium hosting service featuring high quality, unreleased maps, including those based on properties requiring royalty fees. These may return some small compensation to the author and become company property for possible distribution in retail products. These also help publicize upcoming releases.
Moderated play: Moderated hosting service in the tradition of Dungeons and Dragons where an experienced ‘dungeon master’ crafts a unique experience tailored to a party of adventurers. This will involve production of custom maps and participation in online play, even intervening in the game by taking control of Heroes that the players may encounter.

Personal interface

Hosted play can be accessed through either the regular PC-based engine or from a wireless, handheld, or game console module with single player functionality. Partly this is because console software needs to be held static, while PC-based programs can be more easily be patched and upgraded. Essentially, the console player gets only the multiuser client interface—enough to operate a single army headed by a single hero, one location at a time. Though they may be rendered differently console maps will contain the same objects as on the PC.

Legends of Might and Magic attempted to reach console audience,
but lacked the playability of Heroes.

Console gamers may be less attracted to Heroes for lack of an arcade-style interface and the high frame rates the consoles offer are largely wasted on Heroes--although there may be people who would like to see a Behemoth dance the hula. (Give me Extreme Beach Volleyball anytime.) But as technology marches on, new territories for gaming open up and it seems plain to this observer that the new generation of handhelds, soon becoming wireless handhelds, are going to be adequate platforms for Heroes in some form. The modest graphics requirements are suited to the 200 MHz class processors, and the turn based nature of the game makes good use of wireless bandwidth.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Heroes still has plenty going for it but needs to be handled correctly in order to succeed. A new business plan is just a start. The effort will also take the same level of inspiration and commitment from the developers that gave us the wonderful games we have enjoyed so much. It will mean doing some new things, adopting some new ways.

The legacy of Might and Magic needs to be reinvested in the Heroes franchise, gaining a larger combined market. At the same time, Heroes needs to reach out to customers in related markets—popular fiction, social gaming, and emergent technologies. It can succeed by offering extended value in both its packaged products and its commercial website.

If my thoughts here should happen to be read by someone in a position to act on them, and some of my ideas may seem worthy of further consideration, then please accept them as my gift, a small repayment for all the fun I’ve had with Heroes over the years. If reading this helps confirm you are headed the right way on some issue or alerts you to some factor you may have overlooked, then I’ve done all I could have hoped.

Want to discuss this some more? Meet me in the Forums.

: Posted 04 January 2005; by Charles Watkins

Behind the Curtain: Saving NWC

Part 1: Taking Stock -- Can the Heroes Franchise Be Saved?

Let me start by recognizing that JVC, Gus Smedstad, and the other Heroes designers have created a wonderfully entertaining game—one that certainly deserved its rise to the top of the charts, where it stayed for a good long time. By any standard, Heroes has been an enormous success and no doubt has made good profits for 3DO and NWC. But it seems that over the years success bred complacency, and what had once been adequate if uninnovative marketing became stagnant and rote, even while dramatic changes were beginning to transform the industry. Each of these changes became a ‘tipping point’ for Heroes and each time the franchise tipped in the wrong direction.

Where it went wrong

What were those changes? There were advances in sound and graphics processing that opened the door to console gaming, which the general public found much more accessible than PC gaming had ever been. Demand expected for PC games was shifted to the console segment. There also got to be a lot of bad PC games pushed out to market that turned out to be unready, unfinished, and unprofitable. This coincided with the advent of multiplayer gaming via the Internet, which flourished in forms from head-to-head battles to massively parallel RPGs, further dividing the market. And the Internet itself brought changes to the packaged software business, opening products to international markets and transforming customer/vendor relationships.

Conventional wisdom holds that computer games must be sold through traditional retail channels, alongside console systems and cartridges. But there a certain absurdity to the distribution process as games are (a) Copied on to CDs and placed in boxes, (b) Loaded in trucks to be transported to stores, (c) Placed on shelves for buyers, and (d) Brought home by buyers to be installed on computers on the same network where the game originated. As computer gaming has become more popular, the retail system has begun to show signs of stress. Retail shelf space has become difficult to obtain unless the game is backed by an extensive advertising and merchandising campaign. This forces releases into narrow windows as shipping dates become all important. And it creates an all-or-nothing mentality as companies seek occasional ‘blockbuster’ hits rather than steady revenue streams from enduring franchises.

The conservative approach to product planning has a strong appeal. By sticking with a successful formula, you feel you are taking fewer risks so your profits seem more secure. And the less you change, the less effort is required. It is this mentality that brought Heroes down.

Does Heroes deserve to live?

Before we look at saving Heroes , we must determine whether it deserves to live. Objectively balancing the strengths and weaknesses of the game we can begin to see whether it makes sense for a company to invest in the Heroes franchise as opposed to simply developing and marketing a similar game.

Let’s start with the current state of Heroes. Past sales, particularly of Heroes III, have created a substantial customer base. However, the latest version has proven to be a disappointment, which eroded the base and garnered the series’ first negative publicity. The painful demise of the once-strong Might and Magic franchise has tainted Heroes , which drew its first customers on the coattails of M&M. What’s worse, the game has not been able to tap the expanding market for console games or cross over into other media.

From what I hear, the creator and enough of the development have stayed around to make the core design elements worth maintaining. And if NWC survives, it will undoubtedly pass into more appreciative and capable hands than 3DO. As a new addition to another company’s product line, it should at first receive an injection of resources from the parent company, which will probably come with a requirement for a multi-year business plan with a decent profit picture.

Why Heroes IV failed

Heroes I, II, and III were games that managed to exceed expectations, counter to ‘conventional wisdom’ about the immanent demise of turn-based gaming. As I pointed out in the topic of “Mapmaker as Entertainer,” the appeal of Heroes stemmed from an artful interweaving of advancement, success, and aesthetics. Each new edition was seen as a good value because of significant advances in the gameplay and the availability of an ongoing supply of user-made maps. However, the much anticipated Heroes IV edition turned out to be a disappointment to both the players and the owners.

First, there was the bad press. Partly this was due to inflated expectations based on previous triumphs. Early reviews were written after only a short amount of play, perhaps not enough for reviewers to become proficient enough as players to appreciate the differences. This is not to say there were not glaring problems—a witless AI, unappealing graphics, mediocre maps, unfinished editor, and missing multiuser support came as major disappointments, especially since everyone was expecting big improvements in all of these areas, as had been the case in previous new editions.

And it certainly did not help that the parent Might and Magic franchise came to such a sorry end. Bad reviews, such as the ‘Coaster of the Year’ award from Computer Gaming World, seem to have been based as much on Heroes ’ association with M&M as the failings of the game itself. For instance, the CGW ‘Coaster’ article accused the Heroes AI of cheating, even though as best I can tell this is just not the case. But the author was disgusted with 3DO over M&M and wanted to say something bad about Heroes too. (To be fair, M&M is not the only major RPG to die with a whimper–Ultima IX had already fouled the atmosphere and made the M&M critics more, um, critical.) And where Heroes supplements had a history of providing good value for the money, the two Heroes IV supplements gave far less than their predecessors. It all stank of exploitation.

Once blessed with a happy, active fan base, 3DO and NWC saw that support eroded by a series of amazingly shortsighted moves that were undoubtedly intended to cut costs. Though some of the Heroes staff have kept touch with the fans, this has been on an individual basis. There has been no real corporate voice for Heroes and no market communications apart from routine press releases and occasional interviews. The company has not even answered its e-mail. Relations with Heroes websites have been rocky at best—they even managed to discourage Astral Wizard to the point of closing down his popular site. The “Guild” was a major rip-off and the map contest was a waste of everyone’s time. The phenomenon of tournament play was simply neglected.

Development costs were poorly managed, even without the cuts that attended the release of an unfinished product. Effort was wasted in converting to the diagonal layout just to be able to use mediocre 3D renderings of creatures and map objects. No doubt a sizable part of the budget went to creature animations, yet important parts of the game like town layouts were never converted to 3D.

Cutscreens took another bite out of the budget, even though they contributed practically nothing to gameplay. As the same time, the music that had once been so splendid did not bear repeated listening.

No doubt someone underestimated the amount of effort required to make good maps. The batch that comes with the game was not thoroughly tested and makes little use of the wonderful new scripting capabilities. And in the initial product and two expansions, there has been a total of one XL map--One!--and it’s in the larger maps where Heroes IV becomes most enjoyable—in my humble opinion. The campaigns become monotonous, as if they were created mainly to exercise the game’s features instead of to entertain its players and offered insipid storylines with camp characters like Spazz Maticus.

Unlike previous editions, there was no random map generator and the lack of documentation for the editor meant that user maps would be slow coming. The result was a scarcity of maps, especially in the larger sizes.

But the killer shortcoming was the lack of support for network play in the first release. Personally, I can’t abide waiting for someone else to play (while I like to take my time when it’s my turn J ) so I have not played many network matches. But I do know there are plenty of players who do--and that the challenge of head-to-head competition is what draws them to the game.

So how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

After all that, you may get the idea that I have given up on Heroes IV . Nothing could be farther from the truth: it’s my favorite game and I play it lots. For all the shortcomings, I find the basic appeal of the game is still there. On balance, I think that the new features in Heroes IV offset its problems and that it offers a deeper strategic challenge that its predecessors, especially for solo play of larger maps, which is what I prefer. (If Angelspit will allow, I’m reminded of an old joke: “Two men are discussing a date that one had the night before. ‘That must have been the worst sex I ever had,’ says the first man. ‘How was it?’ his companion asks. ‘Magnificent,’ the man replies.”)

If Heroes deserves to live—what’s left?

From a marketing standpoint, we need to consider what Heroes still has going for it. This reflects the true value of the property, because as I said before if it’s worthless then there’s no point in carrying on.

Established brand

First, Heroes has both name recognition and brand recognition. Whether passage of time will rehabilitate the Might and Magic brand remains to be seen. We will get into this in Part 2. But at some point, Heroes became a recognizable brand in its own right and was eventually able to overtake M&M in sales. I figure this point came at the release of Heroes III. Somebody at 3DO/NWC apparently thought so too. Thus the dumbed-down Heroes Chronicles and Crusaders of Might and Magic versions. I think some of the appeal is in the name ‘Heroes’ itself. This conveys succinctly and positively the ‘heroic’ aspect of the game. (Never mind that heroism really plays no part in the game. Morale, yes, but not heroism.)

There was even Heroes for Gameboy

Movies like Daredevil and Spider-man have brought heroes back into the popular culture, and ‘playing hero’ is being recognized as something entertaining. In the console market there have been a few hero games, but console games are often seen as overly violent and unhealthy for young players. On the other hand, ‘playing hero’ presents a more morally upright approach to combat, and since Heroes does not depend on blood’n’gore to stimulate the player, it can address a more adult audience, while still being suitable for children. It is a game the family can play together. The Dungeons and Dragons franchise holds many adherents, so it should come as no surprise that Atari has announced a D&D game for the XBox entitled D&D Heroes. This can be taken as hard evidence that the Heroes name has market appeal.

The ‘Heroes’ name must still have market appeal.
The word is featured prominently in the D&D Heroes logo.

In search of a Customer base

Before it lost its way, Might and Magic had attracted a sizeable customer base, which lately seems to have moved over to RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Morrowind, and Neverwinter Nights. But many gamers still have fond memories of M&M and would welcome its return. Since that may not ever happen, the next best thing would be to see M&M features incorporated into Heroes . In Part 2, we will see how that could be done.

Heroes has a customer base that prefers the more cerebral aspects of gameplay over the visceral thrill of arcade action. The Heroes format may not hold much attraction for today’s younger console gamers–not enough action, not enough flash. But on the other hand, the game avoids most concerns about graphic violence and the learning curve is modest enough to allow new players to enjoy it as much as veterans.

Heroes players tend to be older, more thoughtful, and more loyal than most console players. Some have been playing computer games for many, many years and may be less inclined to buy games on impulse. I’d guess they are also more inclined to use the Internet. (These are my impressions. It would be interesting to see some of the survey data that NWC has collected from all those registrations.) This says that the retail sales channel might not be the best way to reach these customers.

Are there enough of these gamers to support the franchise? For the right implementation, I’d say ‘yes.’ Strategic, turn-based games like Civilization and Master of Orion have proven to be highly successful. The appeal of Heroes easily extends into the adjacent markets of the role playing (RPG) and real time strategy (RTS). Exploration and conquest fit well into the realm of swords and sorcery, and Heroes delivers both strategic and tactical challenges in that setting.

Interestingly, the Heroes customer base includes an enormous international segment. Where computer costs are higher and disposable income is lower, players tend to keep their PCs longer and do not hurry to upgrade to the latest graphics advance. This helps Heroes , since its hardware requirements are modest and playability does not depend on high frame rates. Furthermore, there are excellent mapmakers all over the world, producing maps in a wide number of languages—not to mention (for now) the amazing feats of the Wake of the Gods development team.

Unique experience

Actually, the thing that makes Heroes different from others in the same genre is the combinationof

Turn based play
Tournament, campaign, and scenario modes
Strategic scale
Fantasy setting

The fun of it comes from advancement in several areas—each complex enough to keep your interest yet not requiring you to memorize a manual in order to play.

Army development: At its heart, Heroes is an army game.
Hero development: Whether taking part in a battle as a one man corps (Heroes IV ) or prancing around in the back (prior editions) the hero has an impact on the overall effectiveness of the army.
Town development: Probably the weakest of the three areas, particularly in the depiction, but still a selection of distinctive towns with some interesting upgrades.

What I would do

So what can be done to raise Heroes to its former glory and insure a long life for the franchise? If I had a say in the matter, here’s an outline of what I’d do:

Adopt a new product plan aimed at extending value and profitability of the product. This entails:
- Staffing plan
- Release plan
- Engineering plan
- Marketing plan
Merge elements of M&M into Heroes to add game features that expand the market
- Enhancements to basic elements: towns, heroes, and armies
- Maps: modular construction with load on demand
- Generated objects: locations, armies, treasures
- Social features: diplomacy, persistence, headquarters
Establish a profitable Commercial Website
- Staples: news, forums, contributed maps and articles
- Development program: tools, prereleases, patches
- Company store: games and merchandise
- Premium hosting services: new experiences, personal interface

I’ll cover the product plan today. The game features and website will be the topics next week.

New product plan

Without seeing the books, I can’t work out a detailed business plan, but it’s clear that retail sales alone will not sustain a large development staff. Instead, the company needs a product roadmap that brings a major release to market every two years, each followed with a pair of supplements the following year. This is approximately what NWC has been achieving, so it is reasonable to assume that with a better product plan, the size of the development team can be restored to Heroes III levels with some staff available to devote to the other activities described here.

Staffing plan

Since the NWC development team may well be devastated by the 3DO disaster, it is very likely that additional resources will be required. I see several measures that can be taken to get the most out of the resources available:

First, hire the WoG team to take over development of as much of the game as it can handle. At very least, this would consist of map objects, creatures, and heroes. To put it diplomatically, Russian programming historically gives you more and better code for the money than American programming. Add to this that the WoG team already knows the game engine and has proven they can produce excellent products—and that they have done this motivated only by their love of the game. The result should be a better game at a lower cost.

Whether it’s better to start with WoG code base, effectively rolling back the game to Heroes III, or to turn the team loose on the Heroes IV code is a question that can only be resolved by looking at the code. However, I think there is an excellent case for the former.

Second, since an important part of the marketing effort will be to improve relations with the fan base, I believe that some useful work could be done by experienced amateur mapmakers and testers. By putting out a prerelease to selected volunteers, the company could gain additional maps and an extra measure of testing—plus invaluable feedback on the release while there is still time to do something about it. Recognizing that volunteer work is inherently unreliable, this would involve some supervision, support, and evaluation on the part of the company and the limitation of such assignments to non-critical areas of the product.

Release plan

Next, the product needs a better release plan. To sustain market interest and provide a continuous cash flow, product development should be guided by a rolling five-year roadmap. Expansion packs are a good way to make money from established customers, but they contribute essentially nothing to growing the customer base and they are typically ignored in the industry press. To sustain interest, a healthy product needs a major release every other year. If releases are farther apart, then interest fades. If they come faster, people get confused, especially if expansion packs are also being released. Patch distribution is another matter entirely.

What I’m proposing is a major release every two years—at Christmas, as dependable as Santa Claus. These will have ads, PR, demos, and all the usual hoopla the industry has come to expect. In the ‘off’ years, there will be two expansions, spaced 6 to 8 months apart to keep the pipeline full. However, retail marketing will be focused 95% on the major releases, while the expansions will appear on retail shelves with a minimum of fanfare. The idea is that customers for the expansions will go looking for them, or get them through a more rational distribution channel than a retail outlet, the Commercial Website. On the other hand, the marketing effort for the major releases is aimed at attracting new customers and needs to follow the rules of retail distribution.

Though the suggested release schedule is essentially the same as what we’ve seen so far, there are two key differences. First, there will not be a complete replacement of technology from one major release to the next—however, each major edition will stand-alone and provide material that makes it accessible by newbies. Old customers will have the opportunity to buy a new edition at a reduced cost. Second, development will continue between major releases, resulting in expansion packs that can be downloaded from the Commercial Website.

Engineering plan

Game development should be organized according to “scrum” principles, where most development activities are conducted as continuous efforts that go on relatively independent of product releases. For instance, rather than waiting nervously for test results during a code freeze, developers proceed immediately to the next task. Putting together the parts and building a release package is just another task. What you give up by this kind of development process is a degree of certainty about what will be included in a particular release, so long-lead marketing activities (like magazine ads) will not be able to use extensive feature lists. What you gain is a highly productive development staff and reputation for reliability.

Another effect of the “scrum” approach is the decomposition of development into a set of major tasks that can proceed relatively independently of each other (integration being just another task). Workgroups can operate in whatever environments suit them. This allows some tasks to be farmed out to groups like the WoG team, and might include other activities, especially if the parent company has the needed resources.

As best I can tell, these are the main programming efforts required to produce the product:

Architecture and design
Shell and command consoles
Map structure and generator
Map displays, turns, and movement
Heroes, spells, skills, monsters, and treasures
Towns and other map objects
Strategic AI (pathfinding, goal setting, resource management)
Battlefield engine and combat AI
Tools: map editor, campaign editor, and scripting facility
Scenario maps and campaigns
Testing, documentation, source management, patches, and quality assurance
Music, cutscreens, manual, installer, registration, packaging

As you can see, each could be undertaken by a different developer or small team operating pretty much independently from the others. In particular, this breakdown would allow the WoG team to do what they do best, while allowing other tasks to be farmed out to other specialists. I’ll come back to most of these in Part 2 when I look at what needs to be done to the game itself.

Marketing plan

Finally, the game deserves a fresh marketing effort beginning with the rehabilitation of the once-irreproachable Might and Magic brand. This would be presented to the industry as the merging of Heroes with M&M to create a refined gaming experience that combines the strategic scale of Heroes with the rich character development of M&M.

The ultimate goal would be to move Heroes into the popular culture on a par with Magic: the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons. That is to say, people who don’t play the game would still know about it and would understand references to it. Some of this visibility can be bought through strategic product placements. Some can be attained through clever merchandising. (Would you like your morning coffee in a Maranthea’s Mug, anyone?) But I think the best way is through crossovers with other media franchises. It’s pretty clear that a lot of world of Heroes comes from the fantasy tradition of ‘Lord of the Rings.’ So why not offer an LOTR edition with Tolkien heroes, locations, and storylines? Or how about Universal horror movies? Or King Arthur? Or Arabian Nights? Or Conan the Barbarian? Another way to attract new customers is to hire known writers and artists from comics, movies, or science fiction to produce something for heroes. This raises their fans’ esteem for the game, generating free publicity for Heroes in an adjacent market, while giving the world of Heroes a new shot of creativity.

Packages like this would draw customers from these other genres to the game, and when they like what they see, it could build a vast new customer base. Heroes are a popular component of all cultures, and if we could translate their adventures into gameplay, customers would find ‘playing’ heroes as much fun as reading about them or watching them in movies.

Another way to gain new Heroes players is with a companion console game. This could play something like Spider-man, but using soon-to-be-familiar heroes and locations from the PC game. When players are hooked on heroic action but want to scale up to the strategic level, Heroes is there waiting for them. When we get to the discussion of the Commercial Website, we’ll see other reasons they will make the jump.

Want to discuss this some more? Meet me in the Forums.

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