Economy in Heroes-IV

[BrennusWhiskey]

If u need a new ideas, I have one:
maybe good thing will be the possibility to trade with ur opponent (some resources or even creatures(?))
looks good also idea to sell all un-needed artifacts(?)

[Dalai]

Selling unneeded artifacts is in our to-do list for a very long time. No suitable solution so far.

Trading resources is technically imossible too.

[Mytical]

Well, if you need to reduce spending capital, there are several ways that would not be too painful. A very small upkeep fee for buildings in your town. We are talking very small, but the more advance the buildings, the bigger the upkeep. Magic a bit too strong? Try to tie magic with gold, after all perhaps there are componits that need be bought? Combat and such too powerful? Increase all creature stats evenly accross the board.

Need to lighten the burden of never having enough money? Well you can always reduce cost of buildings, units, or try to find a way for heroes to 'tribute' to the welfare of the town. Magic not strong enough? Tie spells in with level as well..for each level the hero is they get a 1% damage bonus (or something). There are many ways to increase or decrease, depending on what is possible and not. I do agree that barbarians need a increase in no of units .

[iKossu]

A very small upkeep fee for buildings in your town. We are talking very small, but the more advance the buildings, the bigger the upkeep.

Imho, this is a good idea. The more you build your town the smaller gold income you'll have. If this is implemented there must be this one too: the ability to mortgage unneeded buildings. That way you don't have to pay the upkeep fee for buildings you don't need. This would of course cost gold but would eventually pay itself back. This would be useful especially in towns that are not your alignment.

[pacobac]

don't forgot the big h4 editor!!!
you can creat some economic quest, artifact tradepost......

better editor is better equilibris......

When u have GM melee u can beat some big armies...

if your gm melee meet some neutral armee with tactical heroe (exple: 4 blakies lead by piromancien.....), he just died......

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

begining with lord is very bad to play online game !!
if you decrease his skill, nobody could ever play lord.....

Yep. Weakening the abilities of the lord would make him useless. As it is I don't think most folks use a lord. Using 2 mages is much more powerful.

Combat abilities (which the lord does not possess) are much more powerful than the lord's financial abilities.) As a matter of fact even spellcasters are just about forced to take combat in order to survive.

Please be careful in making any radical changes as I don't think there is really a problem with the economy now. The town hall not making much money forces you to look for gold mines or resources to use with the market place. Making radical changes here will destroy many maps that users have made.

I also would not like to see the heroes requiring a salary. The player has to work to make heroes powerful and it would make creatures less attainable. That might be ok for might heroes, since high level might heroes don't even need an army (just some potions) in many cases but magic heroes always need an army. Plus it would make no sense for the rpg maps that are out there. If you add it, please add it as an option that the mapmaker would have to select in order for it to be in effect.

A better place to focus attention would be to change some of the useless character classes.

GOW

[BrennusWhiskey]

[/quote]

if your gm melee meet some neutral armee with tactical heroe (exple: 4 blakies lead by piromancien.....), he just died...... [/quote]

If u notice clear most of neutral guards are not with tactical hero so...
Im talking not about exceptions

[TheUnknown]

Well I think the problem with lords is not their skill but the fact that you can have it multiple times and it always works, so people would rather buy lords than city hall which in my opinion is not good.
Don't know if it's posible but can you make one lord avaiable per town, or in other word when you have a governor, only his noblility estates mining work.
Also if you own a building you could place a governor for it and have it produce more gold or wood or mercury or creatures depending on the type of the building and on the level of the estates or mining or nobility, btw you have to go to the bulding to be its governor so nobility stealth strategy would be even nicer, but from separate heroes will have the old syenergy.
Myself also thinks every town shoud produce 2 wood and ore and 1 of precious resources per week so it would have more to do with the idea
This way there won't be such rush on the new week in taverns for nobles, but still will be for the sumoning guys which I think it's not bad.

[Caradoc]

What I would like to see most regarding the economy is some ultra-expensive items or dwellings to soak up resources later in the game. I've found that once my town is built up, I soon have far more resources than I need.

BTW: The Lord is a great class to combine with others since 'Lording' is essentially a passive skill. Add the ability to cast useful low level spells and you have a good addition to your army. Or push your Lord's other class to get yourself a quality hero who still wears the blue uniform.

[pacobac]

Lording' is essentially a passive skill. Add the ability to cast useful low level spells and you have a good addition to your army

you're right !!

**add on each heroe a second basic skill, to built multi class easy.....

because on multiplyer game, begin with lord, passive heroe, is very difficult.......

http://www.archangelcastle.com/h4/ligue/cartes.php
http://www.toheroes.com/h4maps/medium.html

**growing stronghold:

1 better Magic Dampener (15% resist)
2 better Arsenal (with some scroll level 1 to 3)

**add a level 3 creature for each castle (no preserve) as the liche.....
**add one level 2 creatures for academy and haven

**add TGS + WOW dwelling.....

dam so nice 3.6 ?!!

[BrennusWhiskey]

Paco you're right this time!!!

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

A very small upkeep fee for buildings in your town. We are talking very small, but the more advance the buildings, the bigger the upkeep.

Imho, this is a good idea. The more you build your town the smaller gold income you'll have. If this is implemented there must be this one too: the ability to mortgage unneeded buildings. That way you don't have to pay the upkeep fee for buildings you don't need. This would of course cost gold but would eventually pay itself back. This would be useful especially in towns that are not your alignment.

Changes to economy must be carefully considered.

Making buildings have a maintance fee would hurt some towns worse than others. A mage needs his mages's guild to learn spells in order to be able to fight. He also has to buy creatures. A barbarian just needs himself and pots.

Such a fee would slow the development of magic based heroes and thereby place might heroes at more of an advantage.

As far as massing lords goes, I'm not sure what the solution should be. Is it possible to limit the number of lords that a player can hire to the number of towns he owns?

As for late game resources-not all maps have that problem. Something could be done to give the player an option of spending those extra resources on something useful. For example in The Dancing Crusader I made stat boosts available (limited number of times) to give the player something to do with extra resources. That is just one example I'm sure there are a number of things that could be done.

GOW

[Metathron]

As far as massing lords goes, I'm not sure what the solution should be. Is it possible to limit the number of lords that a player can hire to the number of towns he owns?

I don't see the problem here. Who goes amassin a number of lords anyway? And even if someone does, how is this any different or more powerful than amassing two or more mages, sorcerers, barbarians or any other hero types?

[Chorus]

Heroes has never been big on economy, and as Dalai points out, Heroes IV emphasizes heroes/roleplaying over controlling territory. Even if it were more of a straight-up strategy game, the economic purpose would be to acquire a monopoly over the map's resources. As the player becomes more powerful, stuff would become cheaper, e.g. black dragons would have no one else to offer their services to, so the player could buy them for less. Ultimately, this creates a snowballing effect: the winning player wins quicker. An improvement to the Heroes economy would be to counter this reality.

Some ideas that have been presented:
(1) Heroes salaries.
(a) Quantity. It wouldn't work in campaigns (like Price of Peace) where the player may start a map with several heroes and no towns for income. Perhaps a regressive salary system would disincentivize the player from accumulating massive numbers of heroes, so players'd focus on creatures more.
(b) Quality. Higher level heroes could demand a higher salary. Again, this is bad for campaigns (debt financing?).

The benefit is that players might have to consider dismissing or killing off heroes.

(2) Creature demands
(a) Leadership dependent. In King's Bounty, heroes had a leadership number based on experience. If you went over this number, you'd lose control of your creatures in combat, or they'd desert your hero.
(b) Creature salary. With more creatures in an army, the hero pays more. This idea meshes with Heroes IV's emphasis on hero development

(3) Caravan charges. This can seem punitive to the player, but it works well for two reasons:
(a) it slows down the snowballing winning player, and
(b) it might just possibly give the AI time to recover from an attack...if it had the brains to do so.

(4) Building charges and other taxes.

(5) Arbitrary inflation. What costs 1 gold today will cost 2 gold in 3 months.

I think most of these ideas would help in a multiplayer game, but again, I don't think economics is what Heroes is about.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Some ideas that have been presented:
(1) Heroes salaries.
(a) Quantity. It wouldn't work in campaigns (like Price of Peace) where the player may start a map with several heroes and no towns for income. Perhaps a regressive salary system would disincentivize the player from accumulating massive numbers of heroes, so players'd focus on creatures more.
(b) Quality. Higher level heroes could demand a higher salary. Again, this is bad for campaigns (debt financing?).

The benefit is that players might have to consider dismissing or killing off heroes.

Heroe salaries are bad for both campaigns and rpg maps. Also on some extra large maps you really need more than one army to defend your territory.

Also penalizing the player for developing his heroe is not a good idea IMHO.

(2) Creature demands
(a) Leadership dependent. In King's Bounty, heroes had a leadership number based on experience. If you went over this number, you'd lose control of your creatures in combat, or they'd desert your hero.
(b) Creature salary. With more creatures in an army, the hero pays more. This idea meshes with Heroes IV's emphasis on hero development

I don't really like the idea of if things are going bad your creatures desert you and make things even worse.

Creature salaries would help might heroes, who need no creatures while hurting magic heroes. If magic heroes could realistically travel alone equally well it might be ok. But magic heroes need creatures and penalizing them for needing creatures is not balance.

(3) Caravan charges. This can seem punitive to the player, but it works well for two reasons:
(a) it slows down the snowballing winning player, and
(b) it might just possibly give the AI time to recover from an attack...if it had the brains to do so.

I like caravans. I think most folks like caravans. Players demanded caravans in HOMM5. Charging for caravans will just make games unnecessarily longer and make creature movement more burdensome. Not fun.

(4) Building charges and other taxes.

(5) Arbitrary inflation. What costs 1 gold today will cost 2 gold in 3 months.

I don't like building upkeep costs either. Penalizes magic heroes who need those buildings for creatures, to regain mana, and to learn spells.

I don't like inflation in real life or in games. It could work I guess if it is possible to implement it.

I would prefer to see more beneficial things introduced in each town that players could spend their resources on rather than negative things to eat away the money.

Great care must be taken when changing the economy or some maps are going to be broken.

GOW

[BrennusWhiskey]

I don't think heroes salaries is good thing, maybe for resurrection only...
I don't think lords should have any spells; if u want avance him for magic that your choice - that means less avance for nobility, mining etc...
Maybe will be good to have one lord for one castle...
I would like to see more buildings, creatures, spells, maybe all things from expensions WoW and GS...

[Siegfried]

An idea i recently scripted similar for H3 WoG: Boosting economy with peasants. Although for H4 it should be done slightly different.

Peasants in towns may produce additional gold. Only peasants which are in a town at the end of your turn. In H4, peasants already produce gold (different to H3). So let them produce additional gold when installed in a town. The amount of gold produced should be modified by town hall and the skills of the governor, if any, and could be modified further by the order treasure. Additionally there might be modifiers to allow peasants to produce other resources and/or to increase town dwelling creature growth. F.ex. peasants in a might town with magic dumper built could increase creature growth in that town.

Peasants installed in mines (as guards) should increase mine production.

Similar, but mre limited: Nature town/gnomes produce some gold. Order town/dwarfes produce ore. Chaos towns/thieves randomly produce something.

Additional idea for thieves (has to do with economy, too, but also strategic aspects): What about sending thieves to enemy towns to steal? What they steal should be random, resource or low level creatures (level 1 and/or peasants). Sending thieves should require the caravan. Time should be double of the time necessary for a single caravan to that town (one way to that town, one way back). A hero in that town at half of that time should have a 50% chance to let the thieves go back without stealing anything, and a 10% chance to get the thieves, too. Some heroes (guild masters and seers) should have a 90% chance to inhibit stealing and a 50% chance to capture the thieves. The amount of stolen resources should depend on the number of thieves sent, but of course not more than 100% of what the player has at that time.

[Siegfried]

There is more about is. I'd like to start with a cite i found in the thread "spell discussions":

Death's aim is to animate dead and curse the opp.
Life is to supprt troops, heal them and resurrect when they die
Chaos conjures devastating spells and makes it's armies more agressive
Order speciality is to control the situation on the battlefield (units and magic)
Nature makes it's armies stronger and more numerouse

Quite good, not complete (what about the might faction?), and could be stated more precise. I'd like to try to do that. Corrections/additions welcome

The game has basically 3 aspects: Strategy, tactics and economy. The RPG aspect is part of all the three other aspects, so i won't include that ere especially. Strategy includes all the major adventure map options like speed, exploration, and and general

(hero) development. Tactics is all on the battlefield. Now let's take a look at the factions in all three aspects of the game. I won't include tactics here, since tactics is mostly done very well already.

1. Death: One speciality is to weaken the enemy. The other speciality is to gain advantages out of weakening the enemy. Now Strategy: Hindering the enemy exploring the map or make parts of the map unexplored (Spell "cloud of darkness") would be
appropriate. Generally reducing movement for any non-undead in an area around any undead dwelling (cemetary) would be another. Next: Economy. Death should be able to disturb the enemies economy. But of course for a price. What about this idea: Send ghosts or vampires to an enemies town so that for some time their creature growth is reduced. The ghosts and vampires are lost, though. The reduction amount should depend on the number of ghosts and vampires, the reduction time shoud be reducable by an appropriate hero in that town (Crusader, Monk, ...). Sending them should require caravan. Peasants in town should not produce gold, but instead poison and acid.

2. Life. Lifes speciality is to support its own kind. Economy: Life should be able to increase dwelling production and should be able to make most of the economical aspects of peasants. Support should not be for nothing, but cost something. Maybe spells, maybe letting a life hero sit in a town, whatever. Life heroes should be able to counter the death economy weakening things. Strategy: Currently no real good idea. Maybe getting more out of whatever boosting locations (speed, hitpoints, ...). Peasants in a town might slowly produce healing potions to give to a hero with no cost.

3. Chaos. As the name already suggests, the spcialities of this faction are mostly chaotic (aka random). Economy could additionally be based on thieves. They might there steal resources and/or lvl1 creatures. This is somewhat similar to death, but since they have a chance between loosing all up to getting the thieves back plus creatures plus resources it should be random enough. It should be counterable by some typical order features. Strategy is already supported by sneaking around. Chaos troops should be able to eliminate mine production for some time (some days?). Peasant production in town could be random, too. And they might produce demon fire flasks.

4. Nature. Speciality of nature is a slow but steady growth. Economically this could be done by leprechauns in nature towns producing additional gold there. As leprechaun numbers grow, income grows. This additionally to peasant gold production, but for gold only. Satyrs could increase creature growth in a similar way. Also some creatures should slowly produce some potions. Peasants should produce healing potions (less than in life towns however), leprechauns luck potion, satyrs mirth potion, pixies speed potion and those carnivorous plants poison.

5. Order. One of orders specialities is a strong economy. Besides peasants the dwarfes may support the town with ore. There should be some small ore production as soon as you have the dwarf mine built, and this should be expandable by the number of dwarfes in town. What about a mage guild (and mages in town) sometimes producing random resource piles in an area around the town or external dwellig? Order should be able to do a one-time investment into a mine to increase its production. This investment should be lost if the mine is conquered by an enemy, but then could be re-done. The strategic aspects are mostly with politics/diplomacy. Peasants could additionally produce any potion, dwarfes any minor artifact.

6. Might. The specialities are mostly creature growth and good fight values. So peasants in that town may increase creature growth (requiring some building).

Additionally peasants here might slowly produce some minor artifacts. Those that are available for buying anyway, or some magic resistance boosting artifact.
All extra production of any creature only for creatures in the appropriate town (peasants = any town), production rate depending on number of creatures installed there.

Just basic ideas.

[Siegfried]

Hmmm, i thought some time about that idea of creatures in town producing something. So here a more general approach to it:

Peasants in town could produce 1 extra gold per peasant. A governor could increase that by 1 extra gold per every second nobility level.

If the building selling items and potions is built, then peasants in that town could produce those items and/or potions, which are available in that building. Each peasant could produce material worth of 1 gold per day. What item or potion is produced should be randomly chosen out of the set the building offers. When the town has accumulated enough such "material points" then the potion or item is added to the peasant stack.

Some other creatures and/or buildings may produce other things.

A dwarf mine could produce a small amount of ore. I thought of 1 ore every second day. Dwarfes in town could increase that production by 1% per dwarf.

Leprechauns in town may produce another 1 gold per leprechaun per day, as long as in town.

Dwarfes + Peasants in town could produce dwarfen hammer or dwarfen shield. Again similar as with the peasant potion production, 1 treasure worth 1500 Points, and 1 peasant + 1 dwarf in town generation 1 point per day.

Similar with halflings + peasants, producing the two sling types, same calculation.

Satyrs in town could increase creature growth in that town by 1% per satyr.

Thieves (Rogues?) could steal some gold or other resources from enemies. Should be sent out to do so.

Ghosts and vampires should decrease enemy creature growth. Should be sent out to do so.

This system would be a nice addition to equilibris.

[gravyluvr]

Weakening the abilities of the lord would make him useless. As it is I don't think most folks use a lord. Using 2 mages is much more powerful.

Combat abilities (which the lord does not possess) are much more powerful than the lord's financial abilities.)

The University offers no combat... but the Lord class is very unpopular. Most players, especially MP, would take two mages and perhaps a priest and/or knight before adding a lord. Why not have a lord start out with basic combat in addition to nobility and estates? It would become a more popular choice at that point since it would have 3 skills instead of two (like might). With only basic combat - the advanced class is still to be determined, and with a university could lead to life, order, death, or scouting.

What I would like to see most regarding the economy is some ultra-expensive items or dwellings to soak up resources later in the game. I've found that once my town is built up, I soon have far more resources than I need.

Gluttony can also slow the game down. I've noticed when I have a meeting between a large group of heroes (10-12) to trade resources, equipment and change lineups for a new conquest or goal, the game lags a lot if I have tons of potions and artifacts.

In many cases I have litterally given everything to some poor sprite that I no longer need so they can go to a remote corner of my world and dismiss into a pile.

I remember seeing a "funny" recycle bin, but maybe that's not a bad idea! Is there any way to just assign a count to the items you deliver to the pawn shop and then reward the seller with a choice of either gold or experience?

Potion = 100GP or 50XP
Item = 200GP or 100XP
Minor = 500GP or 250XP
Major = 1000GP or 500XP
Relic = 5000GP or 1000XP

If it can't be determined than maybe just an even 200GP or 100XP per item.

People don't usually trade or drop items that can still be used.

This might also allow someone to resource pile items into cheap items that they would then trade for XP but at that point if they have that much cash then they are probably in either mop up or one obelisk away from finding the grail. What would be the harm?