Megom Chronicles Project

The old Heroes games developed by New World Computing. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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Maciek
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Unread postby Maciek » 27 Jun 2015, 10:12

Darn, that empty town noticed that I tried to take it. Looks like I can't eliminate the enemies. But I might still try to assasinate their heroes.

Wondering how to develop each hero. Combat is not availible, but there's a lot of Scouting altars around. Level limit of 12 seems quite high at this point.
I'm thinking of getting GM Necromancy and GM Pathfinding and perhaps a little Stealth or Nature on Behart. His special skill greatly encourages fighting rather than sneaking, hence the idea to take Necro with him.
The Nobility lass could go for some Diplomacy (which got a serious boost in Equi), Pathfinding and a little magic, but not yet sure which one.
The Tactics guy... Well, Nature seems a natural choice, then put the rest of the skillpoints into Pathfinding, Stealth and/or a point or 2 into Tactics but don't invest too much into its subskills.
The Chaos lass will probably stay with just Chaos and Stealth.
There's also an Order Altar that I could maybe grab before the AI. So somebody should definitely get a little Order.

Regarding hero naming, I know of 2 workarounds:
1) Using names wider than can be typed in tavern. Scripts ignore capitalisation, so for example 'Baron Von Tarkin' would've been wide enough, but it can be typed like this: 'baron von tarkin', which is not wide enough.
2) Using letters that players can't type in tavern. Such as Polish, Danish or German characters.

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Unread postby Karmakeld » 27 Jun 2015, 10:47

Work around 3) type in a space before name, which player might not notice.
I also recall you aren't able to type umlaub and Spanish nj and their likes in game. (much like Macieks special letters).
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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Duzeom_ » 30 Aug 2015, 08:13

I was missing the H4 editor so I started to scribble something in it. It is still undone - pre alpha version and stuff but what you think of it?

PS: Maciek did you passed the second mission in campaign?

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Taro » 30 Aug 2015, 09:02

Nice. I would add some birds here and there but it's fine. And what does mean LTL?

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Duzeom_ » 30 Aug 2015, 12:36

Yeah - animals, grass, adventure staff etc will be added. I was wondering if you know what is the structure in the center? :) I wanted it to be an archery range but I can't figure out how to do it better.

LTL is like ToS or MC or simply a subheading. Or find secret letters in Megom Chrinicles: Memory Crystal and you will know.

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Karmakeld » 30 Aug 2015, 12:53

duzeom, are u planning to do next part of Megom Chronicles?
and Taro, are u 'stuck in hell' with 'map A'? ;-)
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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Duzeom_ » 30 Aug 2015, 13:40

I think Megom story needs clarifying :)

I wonder if anyone imagined what happens next after Memory Crystal. :P

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Maciek
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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Maciek » 27 Sep 2015, 09:25

I'm past map 2 and started map 3. I think I've noticed 1 bug in map 2: the mushroom hut near Dark Moss told me that I didn't capture at least 3 Troll Caves even when I had 6. Not like I needed or wanted any more Trolls. The one I recruited from the first Cave and used in 2 unimportant battles was quite enough. Behart finished map 2 with GM Necromancy and Stealth (+requirements) and Advanced Tactics (which didn't cost a level). Didn't bother leveling others too much (since they get their levels at start of map 3), just made sure to pick a few free skills. Also didn't bother assassinating enemy heroes because they weren't getting in my way.

Originally, I left map 3 for later, because it looked so big and Behart didn't seem very usefull (he could only raise 56 Skeletons or 42 Zombies after a battle with level 1 creatures). Started it recently and Wand of Illusion got Behart through a red garrison quite early (as soon as he got there). He then captured an undefended central town. The garrison troops were stupider than I thought they would be, so I hired a Sorcerer (Haste) and raised some Ghosts on the way (I thought the Hydras and others would try to chase Behart instead of just standing behind the wall, waiting for illusionary enemies to grow). Couldn't raise Vampires due to Equi nerf of Necromancy.

At first, I hired a Necromancer right after taking Gloath (not many helpful spells there...), but after noticing a book with level 3 spells nearby I realized that a Druid (Summon Water) or even another Sorcerer (to use the 'hit and don't need to run because Red has no towns' strategy) would do better here. Good thing I have a save from right before taking Gloath.

Duke Hovhannes failed to visit his mage guild and equip his best artifacts. The second one is actually a tiny bug in your script (timed event 'Art_buff'). Just reorder the boxes and he should have the correct artifacts.

Still, Hovhannes' army is a bit of a threat. Behart's Mire spell will be helpful at buying the Druid some time to level up. He can cast it if that's the first thing he does after leaving a town.

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Maciek » 03 Oct 2015, 11:19

I'm past map 3, 4 and half of 5.

In 3., I decided to stick with my first choice of sidekicks (Sorceress+Necromancer). After conquering Gloath on day 3, Behart was casting 'Mire' on Hovhannes for 2 days while gathering experience in the vicinity together with his Sorceress sidekick. On day 5, they were strong enough (the sidekick had Implosion) to withstand a siege from Hovhannes and his army with the help of the Necromancer (Cancellation plus a few debuffs) and a bunch of Ghosts (more debuffs). So, Behart didn't recast Mire and then Hovhannes attacked and lost. I planned to take the last garrison and finish the map on day 6, but to my surprise, it ended when Hovhannes (with the last Red army except one garrison) lost the battle.

I thought I also need to take all player's garrisons in order to eliminate him. At least, that's how it worked in map 5 of Karmakeld's campaign.

By rushing map 3, I must've missed some dozen Rush Points, about 50 Defense and 30 Attack from quests and level-ups and also some secondary skills. I've discovered a quest guard asking for Hovhannes' death, but the map ended before I had a chance to go back there. Behind the quest guard there was an artifact that I could've probably exchanged for a Rush Point. So, you could say that I almost completed half a quest related to Rush Points.

Oh, and initially, I tried to withstand a siege on day 4 with only Expert Chaos on the sidekick (and Fire Ring as a best damaging spell...) and 10+ Immortality Potions on Behart (plus some other equipment from Blacksmith, the other sidekick and the Ghosts). That failed, because enemy army was quite numerous and tough (such as 20 Nightmares with 40 Defense) and Hovhannes kept regenerating, making his army tough and once in a while casting the only spell he knew - Haste. I just didn't yet have anything strong enough (no strong spells and no Melee) to kill 20 Nightmares and company or the hero before they maul through the Ghosts, the Sidekicks and Behart's Potions, no matter how many of those he had. Ninja class bonus was not enough to help Behart survive.
With Implosion, Immortality Potions were not needed.


Map 4

The heroes didn't seem to be as bad as I thought they would be. After the bonus 3 level-ups, Berta had Master Chaos, Akim had Master Scouting, Pathfinding, Stealth and also Basic Nature (with Stone Skin as his only spell) and Talin had Grandmaster Diplomacy and Advanced Stealth. They also had a few skills on lower levels or less important. That seemed fine, but the problem was that Akim and Talin had next to zero fighting value of their own.

Akim could've probably conquered his town after stealing a few items here and there or recruiting some troops, but a Red army (that he certainly couldn't beat at that point) took it first while he was away exploring the map. He had to patiently wait until Red decides to leave the town.

Talin got to Haven lands and was in an even worse position: her Stealth level was too low to be of much use (but better than nothing), Diplomacy was totally useless, because she didn't have an army to start Diplomizing, all dwells were defended and only Squires were defended by level 1 creatures, so even after taking that she couldn't use them. Oh, her Basic Tactics was useless, too (no creatures to boost). So, she opened some quest guards, creating shortcuts for Orange, and the grateful AI was kind enough to take the Asylum town and immediately leave it undefended.

After Talin and Akim took their towns, Berta and the Sorcerers she had hired came to the rescue, as she had no problems with her part of the map.

Sorcerers might've had problems with Black Dragons that Purple eventually hired, but AI was just asking to get its boats stolen, leaving its armies stranded on some remote islands. But even if they didn't get stranded, then bored and didn't suicide on some neutral stack, Berta's armies could still handle them, because she was building her town, too.



Map 5, part 1

Due to rushing through map 3, Behart had half the stats he could've had (so, probably half the intended stats :P). He was a wimp and I was too much reluctant to using up Potions and Vials (didn't want to run out of them), so I was often looking for easier targets, skipping for a while fights that later turned out to be the ones I needed to fight to progress. He was so weak, that he couldn't even handle some Berserker ambush early on and had to sneak (split or go around) past it.
As a result, neutrals in Yuki's part of the map grew quite large and I even missed the bonus Rush Point at the end of Behart's part. My Behart was so weak, that he even needed some actual army to get through some of the fights.
Mauling through 20 Angels (that stupidly split into 4 stacks; they had some Monks and a Life caster supporting them, though) with Griffin Helm, Vampiric Touch and Life Ward was fun.

There is one loophole that I discovered later, when Behart completed his quest and was running around the map gathering experience and skills. The ambush with Vampires doesn't vanish after first encounter, so if Behart is strong enough to defeat it, he can get unlimited movement and experience (up to the level cap). With double stats and a Wand of Healing instead of Illusions, it should be possible to complete Behart's part very fast.

Map 5, part 2

Yuki started with Magic Fist and Haste (it seems to be random). I totally screwed up this part.
Went East instead of West from the First Hut (lured by a Potion of Mana on the edge of discovered map), then barely won a fight vs 120+ Dwarves with Magic Fist, Haste and Vial of Poison.
Then, with the Dwarfs from 2 dwells, I attacked the Mages defending a random level 2 Chaos spell and a Cap of Knowledge. Again, barely won (lost a Potion of Immortality and a Potion of Mirth). I thought Yuki would get a level right away, but she didn't. And the spell turned out to be Spell Shackle (Yuck!).
To add insult to injury, I later found a random level 2 Order spell, picked Advanced order to get it and it turned out to be Power Drain. At least the undefended random level 1 Chaos spell is Magic Arrow. I know there's a Scroll of Illusion, but it's defended by some 200 Bandits.
Not gonna be easy to beat 13 Nagas (that started at 3) with <50 Halflings and Dwarfs, most Potions missing and a screwed up hero. Can't beat them for now... and I've lost my Dwarves again while taking the second Halfing dwell. Tried building back some army and then attacking the Bandits, but it didn't really work because they grow, too. Looks like I'll need to restart Yuki's part. I was just too late, too unlucky with spells and kept choosing the wrong way to go. Now I at least know what is where up to the Nagas, so I'll probably pull through them.

I think I've noticed a minor error: placed event 'not_gone_to_bed' doesn't check for Yuki while event 'hut_' does. So, while Yuki is sleeping, her Halflings and Dwarves can't visit the other huts for bonus movement.

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Maciek » 06 Oct 2015, 18:57

Got through the Nagas on second try. Knowing what is where made all the difference (since level 2 spells didn't). This time, I didn't waste Poison Vials on Dwarfs, because I picked Sorcery and had some Halflings for more damage before having to melee. Also didn't waste good Potions on Mages defending the most useless spell in h4.
I did lose Dwarfs in 2 fights with Halfings and lost all Halfings vs the Nagas. Perhaps it was possible to save them, but I didn't feel like waiting/reloading endlessly for better battlefield.
Right after Nagas, I discovered another level 2 Order shrine, this time with Dispel. Turns out it didn't matter, bacause Magic Arrow and Haste were enough to beat some nearby neutrals. Soon I traded Holy Water for a Wand of Healing (defended by Ghosts), picked a Scroll of Fireball and then Yuki was very strong. At some point I almost forgot she had to visit the Snow Huts once in a while.

I've noticed a few minor errors near the end.
1. The random level 3 dwell near the Red Garrison is inaccessible if it's a Naga dwell as it happened to be in my game.
2. The quest behind the Red Garrison asking me to kill some level 4 creatures has incorrectly set mission requirements ('false' instead of 'variable 'killed_by' equals current player's ID').
3. Game crashed every time I tried to enter the Red's town's town screen (after taking that town). Also, a message that was supposed to be in a daily event displayed right after I took the town. Also, Brissa has gone missing. I mean, I eliminated Red and I never fought her (but I did fight the other two heroes).

Also, the Red Garrison had very few troops, surely because it had never been neutral.
Red AI must've read the "Bad, bad multiplayer tips", because it hired several months worth of army when I was about to attack and immediately attacked with them (without hero). That surprised Yuki and her Genies (slower Halflings and Water Elementals were left behind), but she already had Hypnotize and high defense, so she managed to win (this time with army intact).

I remember Yuki getting killed twice (with Immortality Potion active). First time, when fighting the Nagas early on. Second time was while fighting Red's only huge army. Gold Golems killed her, because I haven't noticed that they resisted Mass Slow. And who says Genies and Mages are more dangerous than their alternatives? ;)


Map 6

This is where the Rush skill really starts to shine. Behart already eliminated one opponent and first day is not over yet! And in my game, he has very few Rush Points. 32, to be exact. I hired a hero named $(rush_points) to tell me that (Crag Hack was bored with his old name). Anyways, 32 is one Rush Point short of Master Rush.

One neat trick with Rush is to Take off Boots and Gloves right before each battle and re-equip them after the fight. That way, I get almost 50% more movement out of the skill. Funny thing is, if Behart fights many battles in a single day (and uses said trick), then there comes a point when Master and Grandmaster Pathfinding become counterproductive!


By the way, I noticed a tiny loophole in map 3. Well, the 'hole' part is tiny, but the 'loop' part can be quite large. Placed events 'Robbery' check only the best hero's Stealth, but don't check for Behart. So, if you have a low level Behart (requires some preparations in map 2) and quickly make a stronger hero, you can trigger those events with Behart and that hero to get potentially unlimited movement from Rush skill. At least in theory, as I didn't (yet) check if Behart and a fairly low level (Grand)Master Archer can beat the ambushing Bandits unlimited times. :P

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Karmakeld » 06 Oct 2015, 22:57

I'm quite eager to find out if you can manage to solve all puzzles in one of the last maps.. Anyway this campaign has some interesting ideas, just as Duzeom other campaigns. And surely you should also look into the first Megom campaign, if you haven't already
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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Duzeom_ » 07 Oct 2015, 20:07

Thank you Maciek for your feedback. Also thank you for all bugs etc. Maybe I will take all of them a make a patch to the game.

I wondered on which difficulty you play on. It would still be so easy if you wouldn't use Potions of Immortality? POI are bad and I wanted to disable it but apart from hack presented by Taro there is no other way to get rid of it. I should have made a message to encourage player to don't using them because POI really breaks the balance in the campaign.

You had a bad luck with spells in Penumbra. They are completely random as far as I remember.

PS: nice hack with rush point ;)

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Maciek » 07 Oct 2015, 23:29

He's now known as '$(rush_points)', not 'hack' or 'Crag Hack'. Please, respect his choice.

I'm playing on Champion, of course.

I don't see the problem with PoIs on Champion, but I can't speak for other difficulties.
Sure, they can be abused in some maps (for example map 1 of Megom 1), because there's little competition for them there (buffs are not available while Melee is and you are likely to have more gold than you can spend on heroes, skills and other equipment). There, you can take out whole armies with horde PoIs alone (probably bought in some opponent's town). And I believe that there, it can be the fastest way of beating some opponents (assuming you focus on Pathfinding and not so much on Melee)

But in a campaign with no Combat or Melee? Well, you can get Melee with secondary heroes, but it takes some time to level them up.

As you may have noticed above, I felt like abusing PoIs at the end of map 3. Thought it would be a fun and easy battle, but instead I got humiliated by an AI hero with Expert Chaos and Haste as his only spell. 2 days later, Immo Potions were already obsolete.

Berta and her Sorcerers also usually had PoIs active on them in map 4, but they were only marginally useful. In that map, I would've gladly traded the ability to buy PoIs for the ability to buy Potions of Mana (Implosions cost a lot of mana). Mind you, I'm not saying an all-Sorcerer party was the most effective party possible in that map, because it wasn't. It was simply good enough to beat the map (well, they did have to run from Goblin Knights once :P) and at the same time it's a party that's fun to play once in a while.

In map 5, there were very few Immortality Potions (and no shops with other potions either), so i did my best to conserve the potions and vials I got.

In map 6, so far I've felt no need for Immortality Potions and I seriously doubt I will. So far, Behart is about as strong as enemy heroes and he has some Vampires and Ghosts to clone, along with some Tactics to boost their stats. You know, Tactics got a serious boost in Equi. Again, I can't speak for other Behart builds or other difficulties.

For the record, I don't consider PoIs the best potions in Megom 2. Imo, they're generally about 3rd best in this campaign (after Mana and Poison). Mana Potion is the best, because Behart almost can't cast without it. I'd rank Poison Vial second, because it does fairly high total damage and (as a small bonus) ignores partial resistance.


Btw., did I forget to suggest an alternative solution to the 'abusing PoI breaks balance in my map' problem? I mean, they can easily be made usable only outside combat. Basically the same way Taro changed their cost, just in a different table (afair, 'spells' instead of 'potions' or 'artifacts'). And the modification can be easily disabled just like Taro's change or your menu graphics change (or your portraits change, Karmakeld).

p.s. Karmakeld, I've already played the first Megom campaign about 2,1 times. See page 7 of this thread. Also played the zeroth Megom campaign once, but it was quite long ago. I'll probably replay that one at some point.

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Duzeom_ » 08 Oct 2015, 21:24

What's is this magic way to disable POI? And you haven't say anything about plot - did you liked it or skipped any text messages?

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Maciek » 09 Oct 2015, 19:31

Here you go. I've learned that from Taro.

1. Back up equi.h4r from Data and get these programs:
TextEdit: http://www.heroworld.net/dl.php?dl=77
mh4_096: http://depositfiles.com/files/70aaxhioe
I heard those are the latest versions of these programs.

2. Using mh4, open equi.h4r, select all and extract somewhere.

3. Using TextEdit open the table.spells.txt, find Immortality Potions (line 113) and delete all attributes except 'adventure' (that is, delete all 'x' characters in that row except the first one). Perhaps you only need to delete some of them, not all - I never bothered to check. Afair, deleting only one is not enough. Save the changes.

4. Make sure your backup copy of equi.h4r is safe and "build a .h4l file" using mh4. This will make a new equi.h4r file that you can put back into Data.

If you can't see the changes, restart the game. There are also other tables in equi.h4r, such as 'creatures'. If you want the changes to affect WoW instead of Equi, use updates.h4r instead of equi.h4r. There are also other .h4r files in Data.
Have fun.


Back to Megom 2. I do enjoy the story, just like in your previous campaign. So far, I was able to open 2 Question Towers: the one in map 5 and the one in map 6. The one in #6 said that if I answered correctly, I'd get everything that's behind the tower. "Oh, cool, I'll get some army!" Well, not exactly.

Now that you mentioned skipping text, you reminded me that I do in fact skip some texts. Some text in placed events near Vendric and possibly elsewhere in the campaign displays several times in a row when some army just wants to pass through them. For example, Yuki goes from Vendric to a Quest Tower and triggers his placed event on the way a few times in a row. Mildly annoying.

I've finished day 1 on map 6. Behart couldn't reach the last opponent. Perhaps if I opened that Question Gate for an extra fight and got some Ghosts with Through and Stable bonus instead of merging the stacks once in a while, he might've reached Red's armies and towns. Or if he had that one more Rush Point required for Master Rush.

On day 2, some scripted bonuses for AI kicked in. Strangely, AI didn't hire the troops that scripts grew in its towns. More troops for me. However, the former Leprechauns will make it harder to win. Especially since Behart left his army behind some Black Dragons. Fortunately, not all 'Leprechauns' made it back to towns (some tried to reach a more distant town), so there is something to raise army on.

I actually tried assaulting the nearer town at start of day 2, but failed to take it. It was defended by a fairly high level magic hero with 1 'Leprechaun' worth of troops and (again) only a few random level 1 spells. And again, just like in map 3, the spells were enough to defend from Behart. This time, the lucky AI rolled Poison while Behart had no means of healing himself and I didn't bother buying any Immo Potions while visiting other enemies' towns. That AI beating me with level 1 spells is amusing.

Fortunately, the other hero in the other town wasn't so lucky, so I should be able to take that one and then go back with 15 Cyclops later that day.

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Duzeom_ » 10 Oct 2015, 14:42

Maciek wrote:Here you go. I've learned that from Taro.

1. Back up equi.h4r from Data and get these programs:
TextEdit: http://www.heroworld.net/dl.php?dl=77
mh4_096: http://depositfiles.com/files/70aaxhioe
I heard those are the latest versions of these programs.

2. Using mh4, open equi.h4r, select all and extract somewhere.

3. Using TextEdit open the table.spells.txt, find Immortality Potions (line 113) and delete all attributes except 'adventure' (that is, delete all 'x' characters in that row except the first one). Perhaps you only need to delete some of them, not all - I never bothered to check. Afair, deleting only one is not enough. Save the changes.

4. Make sure your backup copy of equi.h4r is safe and "build a .h4l file" using mh4. This will make a new equi.h4r file that you can put back into Data.

If you can't see the changes, restart the game. There are also other tables in equi.h4r, such as 'creatures'. If you want the changes to affect WoW instead of Equi, use updates.h4r instead of equi.h4r. There are also other .h4r files in Data.
Have fun.
What is the effect of this witchery? :D

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Maciek » 10 Oct 2015, 20:41

The effect is that heroes can't drink PoIs during battle. I don't remember what exactly happens if you find the Potions somewhere in spellbook and click them. Either you get some message about invalid target right away or you can try hovering over different possible targets, but each is invalid for different reason.


I noticed that Behart could've taken a different path at the end of day 1 and brought his army along. With only what he raised after sneaking past 15 Black Dragons he barely won the battle for Red's western town. Basically, he was lucky that AI shot the wrong targets and stayed in garrison just a little too long. And in the end, AI surrendered for 17,5k gold, which was enough to buy all creatures from the newly conquered town (15 Cyclops etc.). I think that with PoIs or a Healing Wand (or full army), the fight would've been much easier. Anyway, with 15 Cyclops and other fairly large stacks, the other Red's town (the one with their magic hero) fell easily. I didn't buy PoIs in the other opponents' towns not because I have some rules against them (I don't) or because I couldn't afford them (I could), but because I was very confident in Behart's strength and speed, so I thought he'd be strong and fast enough to eliminate the last opponent on day 1.
I think it's a bug that AI fails to hire the 15 Cyclops/Ogres and other creatures it gets on its first turn. Just not sure if it's a bug in your scripts or in AI behavior. Or are those troops given at start of my turn?

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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Duzeom_ » 22 Oct 2015, 21:13

Another shot from editor:
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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Maciek » 27 Oct 2015, 19:17

Finished the campaign.


Map 6 (continued)

Another trick that turned out to be only marginally useful in this map, but came in very handy in the last 2 maps was to play battles in such a way that gives AI some time to surrender. Then, Behart gets to battle that army again (and again and again) and gets bonus movement every time. If Behart ever got over Master Rush, it would've been an overkill.

After finishing off the coloured enemies, I slowed down a little, as I didn't feel the need to hurry. Mostly because the map description talked about whole months of storms. So, I leisurely finished clearing the map early week 4 (okay, I left a few neutrals alone, because Behart already hit the level cap) and then focused entirely on building Lord armies.
Level cap was well chosen, because Behart hit it about the time he cleared the map.
At first, the final quests seemed extremely expensive, but with 'lots' of Lords it wasn't so bad. The Oracle treasure was a pleasant surprise, while the hero from Prison was a disappointment. I was hoping for a level 10-15 Lord to help gather resources for the Towers.
In the end, with the help of 20+ Lords and all the towns and mines, I managed to build the Towers to level 4-5 by the time storms started appearing around week 7. I was quite lucky that all 4 towers were struck by the second storm that appeared.

By the way, if you write $(variable_name) in a 'display message' script or in a quest hut, the value of variable 'variable_name' will be displayed instead. It's useful once in a while.


Map 7

Colored AIs were very weak (except for the final garrison), even though Behart passed the Quest Guards quite late (week 2). The Devils' ambushes made me laugh. Zero threat to main heroes unless they happened to be very low on both hp and mana, free movement, free Vampires and later (after randomly getting a Witch's Ring from a Crypt) also free mana. Neutrals' strength was fine, though. I even had to leave some of them alone the first time I've seen them. This is probably the first map where I used Raise Vampire and Sacrifice spells. And Raise Vampire was even used in the very first battle. With the skills my Behart had, getting some gated Troglodytes killed and then raising them as Vampires was the easiest way to take the first town.

The prison hero could come in handy in the final battle if you didn't happen to develop Tactics with Behart.

Funny thing is that the newly raised creatures slowed down the Vampire stack so much that they couldn't keep up with Behart. While entering the Riddle Maze the heroes had over 250 movement, but, to my surprise, both ran out of steps before completing the riddles. Good thing that there is some place to spend all that movement gathered while defeating the enemies. Oh, and both in this map and in the next one Gating was generally not very useful compared to Necromancy. I only found Gating useful for the first battle.

My complements on the Riddles. Very well thought out and scripted. And good choice of reward for the Firewater riddle.

I tried using the 'buttons' in Angels and Devils riddle after completing the puzzle and also tried to move the Water Elemental in Firewater riddle through the edge of the 'board', but it didn't actually break anything.

After completing the green and red liquid riddle, the riddlemaster talks about 4 liters of red liquid in first and second bottle. Is he a daltonist? If so, then how does he know that the riddle has been completed?
Oh, and in the name of the gate after that riddle there is 'Puzzel' instead of 'Puzzle'.

It seemed that I had to take a guess after the second doors in the '20 rooms' riddle. Since RT still couldn't see the end of the labyrinth (which, as far as I then knew, could've just as well been farther to the south-east), both directions seemed just as valid. By the way, it may be possible to visit some of the rooms, town portal away and visit the rest later. You wouldn't gain anything by doing that, though.

Behart didn't fight the 100 and 300 Crusader stacks, so the corridor required some patience. I used the time to train some Lords a little and build up the towns. With fully built towns, my army grew over 5 times faster than the final garrison. That seemed a little weird, but since the garrison troops were also fairly quick, they were still a threat to my heroes.

The Firewater riddle required some thought, especially towards the end.

The Time Riddle had a strange time limit. I did it in 2 turns, but with some planning ahead, I could've done it in 1. To pass it in 1 turn you need either Necromancy on Behart or a fairly high Rush level plus (a Potion of) Endurance.

The final garrison is also kind of a nice riddle if you don't have a large army yet. I did have an army comparable to theirs, because Behart and RT spent some time in the Maze and then they backtracked a little to clear the map.

Oh, Phobos somehow didn't get a Mind Shield. As far as I know, events placed on a hero won't work if the hero is in a garrison or a mine. If you want the Mind Shield on that hero on difficulty levels >3, then the workaround is to give the artifact to the hero and use garrison's events to take it from that army if difficulty <=3.

Behart finished map 7 at level 35 (after visiting the Tree of Knowledge), some 300k exp short of level 36. If he killed all the Crusaders or if I split him away before every fight vs neutrals to get xp for sneaking, he would've reached the level cap.
RT, on the other hand, finished at level 24, which is very far from the level cap of 36, and there was practically nothing left to fight on the map. I suppose he could use some way of getting the missing hundreds of thousands of experience. How about some kind of sacrificial altar, allowing to sacrifice your towns, secondary heroes, perhaps also artifacts or army for experience? Could unlock when you capture all Necro towns.
High RT's level would've been useful for trying out higher Gating levels.


Map 8

Some of the enemies were fairly competent, but I've also seen quite a few casters with no spells above level 1 and some jacks of all trades, too. The 'worst developed hero' award in this map goes to Mirlanda, the level 23 Prophet with Master Scouting and Master Resurrection as her only skills above Advanced level and also no spells above level 1.

I noticed that anyone could use the Anduran's Gate to open portals, so whenever the heroes were close to a locked portal, I had a Skeleton take the Ring from them and unlock the portal. This was entirely useless, as I've never used any portals in this map. They would've been good for backtracking, resupplying or quickly changing fronts, but the little need I had for going back from some remote corner of the map was handled by Town Portal.

It seemed impossible to reach anything to fight on day 1. Perhaps if RT started the map with Master Gating (Evil Eyes could speed up Behart a little) and Behart started with Endurance spell...
Then, since Behart had only Master Rush and got easily distracted by minor permanent bonuses, he managed to run out of movement twice more. I also somehow missed at least one minor colored army, so had to wait another day before the final quest gate notices that I had already captured all the Haven towns. So I finished this map extremely late, day 5.
The side-effect of constant AI surrenders was too much gold and nowhere to spend it all.

Before looking at the final event in the Campaign Editor, I half expected the outcome of the final confrontation to depend on the levels of the heroes' special skills.
I noticed a quest that seems unfinished at (102,178,1). Then again, perhaps the Crusaders got drunk and forgot that they were supposed to follow whoever brought the artifact.

In some maps, I was sometimes a little surprised upon seeing enemy heroes with custom names but default biographies.


As for what could happen next, I guess Roar, Zoan and Gudan will be Aalondor's only hope of surviving the imminent invasion. I don't believe the Druids were entirely honest with Corona. They probably did put the Prototypes' souls into 'free containers', but managed to keep some of their magic and the Prototypes' hardware to themselves. However, they probably need some instructions on how to use that hardware and the only ones who might be willing to share such instructions with them would be the reborn Hexa and Xeon (or perhaps only one of them).

I see there's a part of a map's name in the picture, "Land of our...". "Land of our Carrots", perhaps?

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Kalah
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Re: Megom Chronicles Project

Unread postby Kalah » 27 Oct 2015, 21:31

Maciek wrote:Finished the campaign.
Woo! :applause:
In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.


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