Creature stats

[Thelonious]

Yeah fabirce said something about that, it was either extrenal dwelling increasing 'internal' dwelling or the other way around.

[Symeon Star-Eyes]

It's good that the growth rate can increase!

I'm not very positive to the low HP of 7th lvl creatures. Spectral Dragon with 150HP seems very low! It somehow makes the 7th lvl creatures less special I think. But if the change works, well....

Is the fact that the Djinn Sultan has no spell points a misprint or a reality?
Will it no longer be a spell caster??

[Gaidal Cain]

Is the fact that the Djinn Sultan has no spell points a misprint or a reality?
Will it no longer be a spell caster??

Genie spellcasting will work like it did in H3- point at what you want to cast the spell on, and hope it's the spell you want.

[ThunderTitan]

Genie spellcasting will work like it did in H3- point at what you want to cast the spell on, and hope it's the spell you want.

That's good. Do they still cast mass ones?

[Gaidal Cain]

That's good. Do they still cast mass ones?

They never did... unless you were on magic grounds, and I haven't seen that feature... yet.

[gravyluvr]

I really wish the Nival folks were into HOMM2. I'm worried that were getting a bland version where it really doesn't matter what lvl 5-7 you have since they will all be relatively the same.

[ThunderTitan]

Where getting H3 with newer graphics. Didn't they stress that enough already?

[Bandobras Took]

Where getting H3 with newer graphics. Didn't they stress that enough already?

What I don't get is why people are stressing over this. H3 was H2 with newer graphics and upgrades for everybody, if you wish to pare it down that far.

Simply from the perspective of program an AI, Heroes 3 is a lot simpler a model to work with. I can't picture anybody arguing that the H4 AI knew what to do with daily growth. Or a Barbarian Hero with Potions of Immortality.

At any rate, threads that even mention a connection between H3 and H5 invariably turn into clone complaints.

I haven't yet managed to do L7 battles with the beta (I finally found someone with enough patience to spend more than an hour on a map), but the L1-L6 game is sufficiently interesting and varied that I can't see the L7 combat suddenly becoming bland.

[Gaidal Cain]

Simply from the perspective of program an AI, Heroes 3 is a lot simpler a model to work with. I can't picture anybody arguing that the H4 AI knew what to do with daily growth. Or a Barbarian Hero with Potions of Immortality.

Daily growth wouldn't have been too hard for them to let the AI handle if they had time- a rule of "reinforcements has to be at least 20% the strength of the target army to be sent out" or something like that. And the H3 AI hardly knew how to handle every situation either- Berserk, anyone?

[Boromir]

I've already posted my opinion on creatures' stats here.
However, apart from the fact that I'd love the Titans to be stronger and all stats of all creatures to be more reallistic (like golems, hydras, inquisitors, shadow matriarchs mentioned in the linked post), I think that generally the difference between every next and previous level should be greater, thus making 7th level creatures far more powerful than they are (it's obvoius that their cost should be increased either). Every time I played HoMM (from I to IV) the town building stage of the game was extremely short - in fact the game begun with the last level crature dwelling having been built. With the higher costs and higher stats, this could be different. Every time a new dwelling is built shuold be a great event for which the player waits some time, collecting resources and playing the game with weak creatures only. Then an army consisting of several level 7 creatures would be extremely powerful - in contrast to what we have today, with armies consisting of hundreds or even thousands of high-level creatures whereas low level creatures in advanced game stage are absolutely insignificant and of no importance (especially in neutral armies without heroes). I'd like the situation, where I come across a single Devil on an adventure map with a hero and quite good an army and still I'm worried about attacking the Devil, bearing in mind that it's so powerful that I need twice the army I have to win the battle. Now the situation is almost always quite similiar, with one difference though: I meet 500 Devils, not just a single one. A single Devil is what I can defeat after several game turns!
I think those of you, who played Master of Magic (very old game, that was popular before HoMMI, and in its mechanics far better than any of the HoMM series), might agree with me.

[Pol]

I think those of you, who played Master of Magic (very old game, that was popular before HoMMI, and in its mechanics far better than any of the HoMM series), might agree with me.

I still hope that once I will be able to implement MoM into the WoG. The balanced game mechanics, that's what lack almost all Homm games... (among AI, though we will see for H5 later )

[DaemianLucifer]

@Boromir

Havent played MoM,but I agree with you.Being able to fully build your town in just two weeks is too fast(one week for creatures and one for other structures).There should be a much bigger difference between creature levels.And I also think that 7 levels are too much.5 or 6 would be enough,and the rest should come just as neutrals in external dwelings.

[Bandobras Took]

Every time a new dwelling is built shuold be a great event for which the player waits some time, collecting resources and playing the game with weak creatures only.

The down side, of course, being absolute boredom. If the default is fast build, there are ways to slow it down -- resource-poor maps, for example. But if the default is slow build, speeding it up becomes significantly harder. I've never particularly minded the build requirements in the Heroes games. Just scraping together enough resources to fully upgrade a mage guild took some doing in I-III. And in 4, the question was getting the magic skills.

I am also against creating too great a disparity in the creature levels. The practical upshot of greatly increasing the power of the highest-level creature is to make it into "Who gets there first, wins the game." With less of a difference between creatures levels, the player with the higher level creatures will have an edge, but may still be able to be beaten by another player. The likelihood of that happening decreases as the power jumps between creature levels.

That was one of the difficulties with designing maps in Heroes IV -- the power jumps between the four creature levels were so extreme that getting a steady progression of tougher creature stacks to guard various objectives was difficult at best.

If there's a slowdown in creature dwellings, I'd prefer it to be what it has been in the past -- other buildings as prerequisites.

[Hurry Sundown]

Genies just have 3 wishes/spells. Hurry

[Boromir]

The down side, of course, being absolute boredom.

I guess you should play Master of Magic some time - then you will understand, that the city can be improved 20 times longer than in HoMM with absolutely no boredom.

I am also against creating too great a disparity in the creature levels. The practical upshot of greatly increasing the power of the highest-level creature is to make it into "Who gets there first, wins the game."

If a dwelling cost is high, you will have to choose whether to build a next dwelling or recruit a good army from lower dwellings that you already have. Who shall win the battle: a hero with good army but no lvl 7 creatures or a hero with almost no army because the player has just made a decision to build a lvl 7 dwelling and has almost no cash for recruitment? Here a strategy comes, where you have to decide what's the best choice for you. In Equilibris with ResEdit I changed the unit stats, making lvl 4 buildings more expensive and lvl 4 creatures stronger and more expensive. You can believe me: there was no bordom, because with the constant lack of cash it was a really hard decision whether to build Cloud Castle and wait at least a week to have enough cash to recruit the first Titan, or just recruit next several nagas instantly and capture several mines near the castle. This is a real gameplay with real strategy!
By the way: the 4000 gold in capital city and 2000 in other cities was the worst thing about HoMM3 - far too much, far too easy to build everything.

And now for something completely different:

I still hope that once I will be able to implement MoM into the WoG.

I still hope that once my programming team, Artifex Mundi, now working on a Virtual Reality engine, will be abl to implement a MoM-like 3D game. We once dreamed about making the RGP game based on The Lord of the Rings (our site for Polish fans), but that's too big for us now. Maybe in the far future - still the dream remains.

[ThunderTitan]

Well if a lvl 7 creature has no problem taking out 100 lvl 1 creatures there's not much of a choice, is there?

It would also work if you just make money harder to get, and you would have to choose only 3-4 creatures with diferent abilities and numbers. I would like to be able to choose 50 lvl.1's over 1 lvl.7 and not be at a disadvantage.

[Boromir]

It would also work if you just make money harder to get

Yes, in some way it's similiar. That's why I mentioned the 4000/2000 gold in cities in HoMM3 as a wrong idea.

[ThunderTitan]

It would also work if you just make money harder to get

Yes, in some way it's similiar. That's why I mentioned the 4000/2000 gold in cities in HoMM3 as a wrong idea.

Yes. I understood that. I was just saying that you don't need to make lvl.7's all powerful in order to get what you want. It would actually be counterproductive.

[Silence]

For a multiplayer game, being able, but not forced to build all dwellings within 2 weeks is great. Despite of having access you cannot build all dwellings, upgrades, mage guild levels, special structures though. Since a MP game lasts only a few weeks you therefore have to make a choice of strategy. If lvl 7 would be uberunits, there wouldn't be alternative strategies anymore. An internally balanced town has all creatures, considering the growth, cost, and delay in availability of course, equal. So that you can chose any of the seven creatures as the backbone of your army.

[ThunderTitan]

For a multiplayer game, being able, but not forced to build all dwellings within 2 weeks is great. Despite of having access you cannot build all dwellings, upgrades, mage guild levels, special structures though. Since a MP game lasts only a few weeks you therefore have to make a choice of strategy. If lvl 7 would be uberunits, there wouldn't be alternative strategies anymore. An internally balanced town has all creatures, considering the growth, cost, and delay in availability of course, equal. So that you can chose any of the seven creatures as the backbone of your army.

Exactly what i said. Thugh you said it much better, Mr Silence.