Heroic: town creatures

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Groovy
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Heroic: town creatures

Unread postby Groovy » 03 Sep 2011, 22:53

This topic was spawned from here.

I thought this would be a popular place to start. Town-based creatures are a core feature of the HOMM series and very close to heart of most players. The challenge that I’m proposing is one of reducing the number of town creatures while simultaneously diversifying them so that they can interact more readily with other game objects, such as spells, artefacts and abilities.

The two objectives reinforce each other, as having fewer creatures (and fewer towns) makes it that much easier to render each one unique, and leaves more abilities available for them to use.

One challenge that remains is to make all of the creatures worthwhile for the duration of the game, as opting not to use certain creatures loses out on the strategic and tactical possibilities that involve them. This is particularly a problem for low-level creatures that cannot hold their own against the likes of angels and dragons, and so tend to become cannon fodder in the closing stages of the game, if they are recruited at all.

A solution that I would like to propose is to combine low-level creatures during upgrades – combine two or more basic low-level creatures into a single upgraded low-level unit. I will illustrate the mechanic with an example.

Suppose that the town has the following level 1 creatures:
• Basic: Dwarf Axe Thrower
• Upgrade 1: Dwarf Battlewagon
• Upgrade 2: Dwarf Artillery

A Dwarf Battlewagon is created by building a wagon, recruiting a horse from Stables to pull it, and placing two Dwarves inside to operate it.

A Dwarf Artillery unit is created by building a ballista, recruiting an ox from Stables to pull it, and using four Dwarves to operate it.

With a weekly growth of, say, 20 Dwarves, the player can recruit:
• 20 Dwarf Axe Throwers, or
• 10 Dwarf Battlewagons, or
• 5 Dwarf Artillery units
or some combination of the above.

Because the upgraded units have greatly reduced growth, they can behave like higher-level units and be made much more expensive and powerful than the basic unit. This enables the player to use cheap level 1 creatures in the early stages of the game when building dependencies are restrictive and resources are scarce, and solid level 1 units in the closing stages when creature power is the deciding factor.

Other variations of the basic theme are also possible. For example, a basic level 1 skeleton can be upgraded to a four-legged skeleton, a multi-headed skeleton, or a flying skeleton. Upgrades require more bone material, leading to fewer, much more powerful creatures.

Another possibility is a basic level 1 creature that communally summons a higher-level creature during combat. In this case, the replacement of many weak units with few powerful units is deferred from recruitment to combat.

Depending on the power gap between level 1 and level 2 creatures, it might make sense to design units that combine creatures from both levels. And so on.

What I hope to achieve with all this is a set of creatures in each town that is:
• Sufficiently small to avoid repetition of races across levels (unlike the current situation where Human units comprise 5 of the 7 Haven levels). For example, the traditionally Human town can have four creature levels – Dwarf, Human, Griffin and Angel. Beside increased diversity, this can have advantages that I will get to in future topics on races and heroes
• Sufficiently flexible to make all creatures useful at every stage of the game
Which should leave town creatures well poised to interact with many other game objects in advantageous ways.

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Re: Heroic: town creatures

Unread postby Pitsu » 04 Sep 2011, 15:02

Interesting read and i hope you continue with your thoughts, but i do not agree, at least not fully, with several things you propose.
Groovy wrote: The challenge that I’m proposing is one of reducing the number of town creatures while simultaneously diversifying them so that they can interact more readily with other game objects, such as spells, artefacts and abilities.
Agree that synergies between different game aspects are important and good to have. Lot of balancing and thoughts needed, but a thing to do.
The two objectives reinforce each other, as having fewer creatures (and fewer towns) makes it that much easier to render each one unique, and leaves more abilities available for them to use.
I see no problem with some creatures having no fancy specialties. And for some creatures the specialty can be exactly: available in more than one town. For instance dwarf can be a not shining unit in nature and dungeon factions, but if you happen to have both town types, then due to possibility to combine dwarf growths it comes your killer stack. You know that most unit specialties (so far) are for battles. They increase the tactical depth, but my personal preference would be to improve the strategical depth. There are other reasons, why i am not strong supporter of "each unit must have specialties and the more the better" kind of approach. Battle/multiplayer speed and being generic (explained below) among them.
One challenge that remains is to make all of the creatures worthwhile for the duration of the game, as opting not to use certain creatures loses out on the strategic and tactical possibilities that involve them. This is particularly a problem for low-level creatures that cannot hold their own against the likes of angels and dragons, and so tend to become cannon fodder in the closing stages of the game, if they are recruited at all.
If we leave out 3-4 exceptional creatures, then the level problem isn't so high in HoMM 1-2. If there would be a way to introduce MMHK style attrition, the low levels could be a force to consider throughout the game. Combining creatures can be done in some cases, in other cases maybe H5 haven style training could work, but we should not end up with abominable combination.
• Sufficiently small to avoid repetition of races across levels (unlike the current situation where Human units comprise 5 of the 7 Haven levels). For example, the traditionally Human town can have four creature levels – Dwarf, Human, Griffin and Angel. Beside increased diversity, this can have advantages that I will get to in future topics on races and heroes
What i consider a very important aspect is that the towns must be generic enough. We shall see how it works in H6, but the single player community lives due to fan-made maps. We can come up with a justification to put light elementals or dwarfs into human town for some maps, but in many cases it may just feel odd. I do not know for sure, but i believe that the towns should be set up that no unit feel out of place for anyone who has read fairy tales in childhood. Homm used not to be the game where only official story and storyless multiplayer mattered. Second thing is that towns should vary among each other and I have no problem if one town out of many is a representative of human society.

• Sufficiently flexible to make all creatures useful at every stage of the game
I'd say taking into account all kind of synergies with economy, skills, spells et cetera there should be ways to make each creature a major force in your army. The players should have several viable choices on every map which units to concentrate, but some units may be a bad pick on certain maps or against certain enemy. Or to say: where is the strategy part if every creature is equally good in every situation and game stage :p

cheers!

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Unread postby AzureDrg » 04 Sep 2011, 18:31

Regarding the mentality of "fewer units" and synergies:

Variety is important imo. Even if it's just visual/context-dependent, e.g. a melee low lvl unit in inferno and a similar one in Haven with similar gameplay characteristics. Balance can be achieved if you have a pool of well defined creature skills that can be distributed among all units, many units sharing some. Which is kinda how it is now and it has always been through the series (as far as I can remember anyway). For example, "No retaliation", or casting spells, or morale/luck modifiers, to name a few shared ones. The unique skills are always welcome though - they don't need to be numerous, but they should be contextually tied to the unit (e.g. you should expect a medusa to have a petrify-like skill/spell and the dwarves to have magic resistance/mirror skill, those were a few reason I think why H3 was so brilliant)

I think that cool unit synergies would be to boost hero traits ( in very very small amounts, e.g. the more fast units you have, the faster the hero can travel, in which case 500 centaurs should help more than 10 .. cyclopses in H6 speed terms.). Or for example another synergy would be with the kingdom, as e.g. peasants were providing gold in earlier games. Or the more spell casting units you have, you might get a small boost in magic power or mana. There are tons of options, but quite a lot of balancing would be required. Low-level creature stacking would make more sense then.

Another idea would be synergies between units in the battlefield. For example in a haven scenario the more healers you'd have, the greater the effectiveness of the resurrection spell of the angels. But all these are a pain to balance..

And for some creatures the specialty can be exactly: available in more than one town
This might make the unit seem more generic imo, without a unique identifying setting.

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Re: Heroic: town creatures

Unread postby Groovy » 04 Sep 2011, 19:56

Pitsu wrote:Interesting read and i hope you continue with your thoughts, but i do not agree, at least not fully, with several things you propose.
I’m glad that you have constructive criticism to offer. Having read through your post, however, I’m not sure that I understand the nature of our disagreement. If you are saying that there are viable, potentially better, alternatives to what I’m proposing, I don’t disagree with you at all. If, on the other hand, you think that my proposal has shortcomings that need to be addressed in order to make it workable, then I would appreciate it if you could clarify the deficiencies that you’ve found. I don’t have a clear picture of them at the moment.
Pitsu wrote:I see no problem with some creatures having no fancy specialties.
I felt the same way many times while playing HOMM 5 ToE, where I struggled to keep track of combat abilities of all the creatures from the various towns. I think that this was partly due to the sheer number of creatures involved (8 towns x 7 creatures x 3 creature versions), and partly due to some of the abilities being unintuitive and convoluted. While I haven’t actually tried it out, the design that I’ve tentatively put together doesn’t give me the same feeling. It only consists of 16 town creatures (4 towns x 4 creatures in each, plus upgrades), and it gives each one a definite theme. For example, I’ve taken the mana and magic resistance abilities from several HOMM 3 creatures (Dwarves, Pegasi, Unicorns, Golems, Mages, Familiars and Wraiths) and placed them all on Golems. I figured it would be easy to appreciate why magical constructs should be able to not only resist spell damage, but also drain and channel mana, and even amplify its effects (instead of this being done by such a diverse assortment of creatures).

On the other hand, I remember reading in one of the Heroes 6 wish threads a suggestion to make each town populated with only basic races (Humans, Dwarves, Elves, etc) and producing different units by putting them through different kinds of training (archery, swordsmanship, prayer, etc). More exotic creatures would be available through summoning and other such techniques. This struck me as a neat idea with a lot of potential. However, it’s simply not one that I’m trying to explore in this thread. :hoo:
Pitsu wrote:And for some creatures the specialty can be exactly: available in more than one town. For instance dwarf can be a not shining unit in nature and dungeon factions, but if you happen to have both town types, then due to possibility to combine dwarf growths it comes your killer stack.
Sounds intriguing. How would the mechanic work? In what way does it differ from simply having two Nature towns?
Pitsu wrote:You know that most unit specialties (so far) are for battles. They increase the tactical depth, but my personal preference would be to improve the strategical depth.
I’m all for using units to increase the strategic depth of the game. I just don’t think that this is at odds with giving them abilities. For example, Treant units can produce wood, casters can use their spells on the adventure map, and so on.
Pitsu wrote:We can come up with a justification to put light elementals or dwarfs into human town for some maps, but in many cases it may just feel odd. I do not know for sure, but i believe that the towns should be set up that no unit feel out of place for anyone who has read fairy tales in childhood.
I just listed those units as an example. I’m trying to explore game mechanics at this stage and am not really hung up on which creature lives in what town. I agree with you in principle, though.
Pitsu wrote:where is the strategy part if every creature is equally good in every situation and game stage :p
This is not what I’m trying to do. I don’t think it’s even possible, save through cloning. I’m just trying to make sure that every creature is valuable at every stage of the game. This is currently not the case with low-level creatures due to the conflicting requirements that they must fulfil – being cheap and weak in early stages of the game, and expensive and powerful in the later stages.

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Unread postby Groovy » 04 Sep 2011, 20:19

AzureDrg wrote:I think that cool unit synergies would be to boost hero traits ( in very very small amounts, e.g. the more fast units you have, the faster the hero can travel, in which case 500 centaurs should help more than 10 .. cyclopses in H6 speed terms.). Or for example another synergy would be with the kingdom, as e.g. peasants were providing gold in earlier games. Or the more spell casting units you have, you might get a small boost in magic power or mana. There are tons of options, but quite a lot of balancing would be required. Low-level creature stacking would make more sense then.
I like these! They could do a good job of preserving the value of low-level units later in the game. Fortunately, combining creatures during upgrades doesn’t take away the possibility of using them in their unupgraded form. It just makes new options available. If you have enough gold, for example, ditch the taxpayers and recruit their mean upgrade instead. :)

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Re: Heroic: town creatures

Unread postby Pitsu » 05 Sep 2011, 05:55

Groovy wrote:
Pitsu wrote:And for some creatures the specialty can be exactly: available in more than one town. For instance dwarf can be a not shining unit in nature and dungeon factions, but if you happen to have both town types, then due to possibility to combine dwarf growths it comes your killer stack.
Sounds intriguing. How would the mechanic work? In what way does it differ from simply having two Nature towns?
Imagine that the 2nd tier of H3 dungeon is dwarf just like in rampart. If you start with a single rampart you go with the elves as they are better than dwarves. Now if you capture another rampart, you get more elves and more dwarfs and balance between them is still biased towards elfs. If your expansion town is dungeon you have 1 town growth of elfs, 1 town growth of harpies and 2 town growth of dwarvs. Since dwarf growth has doubled compared to elf growth, they all of a sudden come a more viable choice.

This is currently not the case with low-level creatures due to the conflicting requirements that they must fulfill – being cheap and weak in early stages of the game, and expensive and powerful in the later stages.
It is not the unit itself but *stack* that needs to be expensive and powerful in late game. If we take a single battle, low levels could do fine, but even if won only a small fraction of the stack survives for next battle. With more than one battle in mind, stronger, although less numerous units are better investment. If we could come up with a good mechanism to recover or replace fallen weak but plentiful units, so that their *stack* strength does not drop so fast from battle to battle, low levels would do fine throughout the game.

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Re: Heroic: town creatures

Unread postby Groovy » 05 Sep 2011, 08:54

Pitsu wrote:Imagine that the 2nd tier of H3 dungeon is dwarf just like in rampart. If you start with a single rampart you go with the elves as they are better than dwarves. Now if you capture another rampart, you get more elves and more dwarfs and balance between them is still biased towards elfs. If your expansion town is dungeon you have 1 town growth of elfs, 1 town growth of harpies and 2 town growth of dwarvs. Since dwarf growth has doubled compared to elf growth, they all of a sudden come a more viable choice.
Ah, I see. Reminds me of the times when I used dwarves and dendroids due to my regular castle siege troops having been decimated in prior battles. Still an interesting idea, though I share somewhat AzureDrg’s concerns about lack of unique identity.

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Re: Heroic: town creatures

Unread postby Panda Tar » 06 Sep 2011, 16:29

Groovy wrote:Town-based creatures are a core feature of the HOMM series and very close to heart of most players.
Right you are. I like variety with meaning. So creatures's abilities must make them unique and special. Sometimes a wide range of units per faction can bring a repetitive proposition of ideas, but that's where your proposition on artifacts can be applied also here: units abilities should also affect towns and the adventure map (more often, like the peasant does). If this can be attainable with less units per town, good. If not, good as well.

Something that's got hold of my conception of units is the upgrading subject. Do you like the idea of upgrading an unit to another, changing the design, name and adding new stuff? I don't know how to answer this. I liked H2 having this and that unit with and without upgrade. Like H3 with all units having upgrades. Liked H4 with no upgrades. Liked H5 with more options for upgrading and abilities. So I put all that in a blender machine and concluded that I actually like what you said: that units had use all the time. It's pitiful raising a castle and then there's this unit you don't even bother hiring because it just was of some use at past as you said below:
One challenge that remains is to make all of the creatures worthwhile for the duration of the game, as opting not to use certain creatures loses out on the strategic and tactical possibilities that involve them. This is particularly a problem for low-level creatures that cannot hold their own against the likes of angels and dragons, and so tend to become cannon fodder in the closing stages of the game, if they are recruited at all.
A solution that I would like to propose is to combine low-level creatures during upgrades – combine two or more basic low-level creatures into a single upgraded low-level unit. I will illustrate the mechanic with an example...This enables the player to use cheap level 1 creatures in the early stages of the game when building dependencies are restrictive and resources are scarce, and solid level 1 units in the closing stages when creature power is the deciding factor.
It's a fair solution. I'm sure it would come more pleasing with some further development. :) Why don't you propose a whole-town example? So we may discuss it.
Other variations of the basic theme are also possible. For example, a basic level 1 skeleton can be upgraded to a four-legged skeleton, a multi-headed skeleton, or a flying skeleton. Upgrades require more bone material, leading to fewer, much more powerful creatures.
Well, I'd say that having different means to recruit units in different towns could be added to your proposition. I don't know how to put this, but this is the general idea: you're a Haven hero, you conquer a Necropolis. Your hero has no knowledge of Necromancy, thus hiring undead should be a bit more difficult - imagining that a town ruler should have allegiance to their race (if ever having TOWN ALLEGIANCE as a feature in the game). Hiring a skeleton is different from hiring a human. Different from hiring a dwarf. Their needs, worries, directives are pretty much different. I think Necropolis, for instance, could have a Necromancy Pond of Souls (fiction name, please! :tongue:), the basic energy to raise the dead , so you use portion of that power to "hire" units. Then, how a Haven ruler have knowledge of necromancy mechanics? The Necropolis won't be willingly to help a Haven hero (even when conquered, so as it always was during wars), so their town won't be fully usable for the player, unless he abides to hire a local hero to deal with the matter. It would give much more meaning to have another hero as well. Or so I think. ;)
• Sufficiently small to avoid repetition of races across levels (unlike the current situation where Human units comprise 5 of the 7 Haven levels). For example, the traditionally Human town can have four creature levels – Dwarf, Human, Griffin and Angel.
I get your picture here, although I think when you comprise things like that, you can kill race storyline, and perhaps make the whole universe poorer, if I envisioned your idea the way you're saying. Dwarf and Humans normally share different goals. Angels are basically a human-thing. I think the town having many human tiers being a human town is a logical step, not bad, although repetitive. Perhaps you can have Humans to be trained like this and that, from a main source of available people (which would bring some likeness to the example I said regarding a Necromancy pool), while griffins/angels had their own population. Say that your Town Hall size would be responsible for the population growth and then you could train that population into buildings and then having your units as you please: at monastery you would have monks, at jousting arena you would have chevaliers, at archery site you'd have bowmen. And so on. And then we have the next thing you said:
• Sufficiently flexible to make all creatures useful at every stage of the game.
Now it comes the ability/stats issue. I was writing some stuff regarding some town ideas not too long ago (dunno why I can't stop writing about these stuff, it's like they need to leak out somewhere). Below, I'll post the example of two Human units and their abilities:

1. Pikeman|Halberdier – most numerous fighters of human realms, pikemen use long spears for battle, giving them a bit of advantage while slaying great beasts. Harlberdiers carry poleaxes with stronger attacks, more armored and more apt to survive longer battles. They proudly make the vanguard.
• Living being: this unit can be healed, resurrected and is under the effects of either positive and negative morale. Living beings also get a bonus attack (enrage) whenever an ally falls in battle equal to +1 for every fallen stack. If the fallen ally is resurrected, their attack returns to normal. This boost lasts the whole battle.
• Long weapon: the melee attack is performed 1 square away, so only other unit with the same weapon will be able to retaliate. However, melee retaliation inflicts less 25% damage against attackers if they’re adjacent.
• Preemptive lancer stance: when large/giant foes comes attacking pikemen, the latter will position their pikes in a offensive manner, so their enemies will take 25% of pikemen damage before attacking in addition to pikemen retaliation after enemy's attack. This ability is triggered only when the enemy has to move to attack.
• Armored(halberdier): any melee damage is decreased by 20%.

Where you have HALBERDIER only when you go to your Blacksmith and chose to armor your pikemen. When you buy all your unit's upgrades, they would finally change their name, if any of this would have need, of course. You could only buy abilities for the sake of improving a strategy.

1. Peasant|Builder – peasants are the economy basis on any kingdom ruled by men. They pay taxes and work to build their homes, their towns and even are prepared to build walls and castles when need arises.
• Living being
• Taxpayer (only peasant): every 1 peasant will generate 1 gold piece per day for the kingdom.
• Workforce (builder): while converting/destroying or building castles, builders may act as workforce, speeding up the time taken for those tasks, but they must be equally paid, so they cost 1 gold apiece per work day. On suitable terrain, heroes carrying a host of 1k builders can build garrisons. That host will remain at the place building the garrison for a week. They are vunerable to enemy attacks as if they were a caravan. If they get killed, all building progress is lost. If kingdom has not enough resources, the building stops until reaching requirements (the spot where the garrison is located remains passable). A garrison must be at least out of the range of sight of another garrison to be built. They cannot be built too close from each other, and they occupy a 3x1 space on the adventure map.
GARRISON: 7 days to built. Costs: 1000 gold per day (to employ builders), 5 ore per day, 5 wood per day, 10 mythril at the last day (gate). Every garrison has a watchtower, with a range of sight equal to 20 squares.

If we mold this to the idea of having a pool of humans to hire from, peasants would be simply your people. They would generate gold as long as they were not hired, you see.

As for builders, their ability would be applied over taking a whole town down, with a fair equation regarding time spent and costs.

**********

I like your discussions. Keep them coming. :)
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Unread postby Groovy » 06 Sep 2011, 20:16

Panda Tar wrote:Why don't you propose a whole-town example? So we may discuss it.
I’m building up to it. There is a lot to take in in a whole-town example. I thought it would be easier to explore the different themes separately and then tie them all together. Besides, my design is not fully developed yet and it also changes based on the feedback that I get.
Panda Tar wrote:Well, I'd say that having different means to recruit units in different towns could be added to your proposition. I don't know how to put this, but this is the general idea: you're a Haven hero, you conquer a Necropolis. Your hero has no knowledge of Necromancy, thus hiring undead should be a bit more difficult - imagining that a town ruler should have allegiance to their race (if ever having TOWN ALLEGIANCE as a feature in the game). Hiring a skeleton is different from hiring a human. Different from hiring a dwarf. Their needs, worries, directives are pretty much different. I think Necropolis, for instance, could have a Necromancy Pond of Souls (fiction name, please! :tongue:), the basic energy to raise the dead , so you use portion of that power to "hire" units. Then, how a Haven ruler have knowledge of necromancy mechanics? The Necropolis won't be willingly to help a Haven hero (even when conquered, so as it always was during wars), so their town won't be fully usable for the player, unless he abides to hire a local hero to deal with the matter. It would give much more meaning to have another hero as well. Or so I think. ;)
This is one of my goals with the scaled down design – to make each faction genuinely unique. Not just creatures and structures, but how the economy works as well. I will touch on this with a forthcoming topic on heroes, but I don’t have the whole picture worked out yet.
Panda Tar wrote:I think the town having many human tiers being a human town is a logical step, not bad, although repetitive. Perhaps you can have Humans to be trained like this and that, from a main source of available people (which would bring some likeness to the example I said regarding a Necromancy pool), while griffins/angels had their own population. Say that your Town Hall size would be responsible for the population growth and then you could train that population into buildings and then having your units as you please: at monastery you would have monks, at jousting arena you would have chevaliers, at archery site you'd have bowmen. And so on.
As I see it, this is an alternative direction that the series can go in. It has a lot of potential. I kind of prefer the version where griffins and angels are acquired in other ways instead of having dwellings in an otherwise human town. Either way, I think that this design philosophy lends itself more readily to increased focus on resource management, including the construction of adventure map buildings. What attracts me more to the HOMM series is the fantasy ambience, an enthralling fantasy world filled with mythical creatures, artefacts and spells. Increased focus on unit training and economy would dilute this for me, which is why I opted for the design philosophy that I did.

I’d be happy to explore your design, but in a different thread. ;)

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Unread postby Panda Tar » 06 Sep 2011, 20:57

Groovy wrote:I kind of prefer the version where griffins and angels are acquired in other ways instead of having dwellings in an otherwise human town. What attracts me more to the HOMM series is the fantasy ambience, an enthralling fantasy world filled with mythical creatures, artefacts and spells.
Perhaps you'd like the idea of certain dwellings being only built outside towns, considering geographical location, or even magical properties. Taking angels for instance, setting your population to pray, the more they pray, the more angels you may summon. And you summon them from...hum, a cathedral? And the cathedral would be on the adventure map, for example. Or would there be an altar at the town where you would cast Angelical Magic to summon forth the power of angels...?

What do you suggest for that fantasy atmosphere you say? :) I meant more related to economy, because we were talking about human nation. Uniqueness that mostly dwarves and humans may follow. For other factions, fantasy-guided features would be most applied.
I’d be happy to explore your design, but in a different thread. ;)
Thanks. :) The designs are a bit out to date, but I can manage some stuff in due course. ;) Just don't want to flood the boards with ideas that eventually are not likely to be even read. Sometimes my posts are just too long. :drama:
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Unread postby MattII » 06 Sep 2011, 22:11

I did once consider a building where you could, in a siege, recruit all unrecruited creatures for half their normal cost, but they'd only stick around for the one battle. Another idea I'd had (you couldn't do it now) was being able to recruit for free a stack of tier 1 creatures whose strength was dependent on the town level.

As for recruitment, I did once have an idea where once a dwelling was upgraded, it could recruit an amount of creatures worth the price and growth of the upgraded creatures (so for example, a Marksman Tower could recruit 960 gold worth of creatures, which comes to 12 Marksmen, or 19 Archers, or anything in between).

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Unread postby Qurqirish Dragon » 07 Sep 2011, 14:10

MattII wrote:I did once consider a building where you could, in a siege, recruit all unrecruited creatures for half their normal cost, but they'd only stick around for the one battle. Another idea I'd had (you couldn't do it now) was being able to recruit for free a stack of tier 1 creatures whose strength was dependent on the town level.
HoF had that latter idea in the stronghold town. There were mixed opinions about it.
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Unread postby Groovy » 07 Sep 2011, 22:32

Panda Tar wrote:Perhaps you'd like the idea of certain dwellings being only built outside towns, considering geographical location, or even magical properties. Taking angels for instance, setting your population to pray, the more they pray, the more angels you may summon. And you summon them from...hum, a cathedral? And the cathedral would be on the adventure map, for example. Or would there be an altar at the town where you would cast Angelical Magic to summon forth the power of angels...?
Don’t know... This was someone else’s idea that I came across. It just sounded neat, separating humans from mythical creatures so that one can have the flexibility (through training) of a purely human town and the exotic ambience of mythical creatures when they appear. I haven’t given much thought to the actual mechanics.
Panda Tar wrote:What do you suggest for that fantasy atmosphere you say? :) I meant more related to economy, because we were talking about human nation.
I wasn’t thinking of the fantasy atmosphere in reference to economy. For me, fantasy atmosphere seeps through exploration, discovery and use of exotic spells and artefacts (and resources, possibly), and interaction with mythical creatures. This, I think, is an important strength of the HOMM games – they have a useful economy that doesn’t demand much attention, freeing up the player’s time to engage in the above exploits. We can probably make a good HOMM game where the economy plays a much more prominent role, but I don’t think that we can preserve the fantasy atmosphere in the process, simply because less time will be spent on activities that set it.

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Joined: 03 Sep 2011

Unread postby Groovy » 23 Sep 2011, 16:00

Groovy wrote:
Panda Tar wrote:Perhaps you'd like the idea of certain dwellings being only built outside towns, considering geographical location, or even magical properties. Taking angels for instance, setting your population to pray, the more they pray, the more angels you may summon. And you summon them from...hum, a cathedral? And the cathedral would be on the adventure map, for example. Or would there be an altar at the town where you would cast Angelical Magic to summon forth the power of angels...?
Don’t know... This was someone else’s idea that I came across. It just sounded neat, separating humans from mythical creatures so that one can have the flexibility (through training) of a purely human town and the exotic ambience of mythical creatures when they appear. I haven’t given much thought to the actual mechanics.
An idea just came to me as to how this might work.

Take a human town as an example. Only humans live there. They do all the construction work, and supply troops and heroes. Troops are created by taking some of the population and putting them through military training. Different units are created depending on the nature of the training – swordsmen, archers, catapults, etc.

Now, say that a hero discovers a unicorn dwelling in the nearby forest. He can negotiate with them in an attempt to get them to settle in the town. Depending on the state of the town (and possibly the player’s reputation and past dealings with unicorns), they might decline, accept, or accept conditionally (offer a quest). If the negotiations are successful, unicorns will settle in the town and supply a weekly growth of creatures to be used in the town’s army. Their presence will also make it possible to create two new units – centaur and unicorn rider – as well as hire unicorn heroes (yes, I’m still stuck in the “sentient beast” mode :)).

A similar process can be followed with other creatures.

In the end, what units and heroes are available for recruitment in the town depends heavily on what alliances with adventure map dwellings the player has been able to forge. Thus the same town can behave quite differently depending on which map, and which part of the map, it is played on.

This creates other opportunities as well. Depending on the creatures’ alignment, it can be really easy or impossible to forge an alliance with them. Some creatures can be more borderline; they fit equally well in multiple towns. It then becomes a question of which player will get to them first. Furthermore, taking control of an enemy’s external dwelling can directly impact on their town in that it cuts off the weekly growth of creatures from that dwelling.


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