The creature upgrades in Heroes II are not chaotic

The old Heroes games developed by New World Computing. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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cuc
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The creature upgrades in Heroes II are not chaotic

Unread postby cuc » 30 Oct 2011, 18:00

People often mention "chaotic unit upgrades" as one of the interesting features of H2. But when I actually put my thought to it a few years ago, I realized there is definitely a logic (other than that of game balance) behind H2's choice of unit upgrades.

First of all, set aside the two obvious exceptions:

1) Lv1 creatures don't have upgrades;
2) (Living) dragons are special and have 2 upgrades.

Now look at which creatures get upgrades and which doesn't, and you'll realize that, with the only exception of cyclopes:

upgradeable creatures = humanoids
non-upgradeable creatures = non-humanoids

What this may mean:
1) Compared to animals and mythical beasts, a humanoid race is born weak, yet has greater capacity to learn, adapt and improve themselves, i.e. the difference between player characters and NPC monsters in an RPG (or the human race and many other animals in real life).

Example: veteran pikeman, master swordsman

2) The humanoid races have more organized society and stricter hierarchy compared to non-humonoid races. After all, the names of several upgraded creatures indicate political power. A unicorn or phoenix might be even wiser than a humanoid, yet has no need for kings and nobles.

Example: orc chieftain, dwarf king

3) Golems and zombies are magical creations without sentience. The methods for their creation may be improved, resulting in upgrades. Bone dragons not having an upgrade can be explained as they are an experimental weapon and much more difficult to improve (built from a Laboratory).

Now the only remaining case is cyclops, and several explanations can be easily made. Perhaps they are like Polyphemus, too simple-minded and/or live in solitude to even have society; or perhaps they are like the mythical forgers of lightning bolts, a proud and independent group outside of the pantheon.


Just my two cents. Hope you find it interesting.

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Warmonger
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Unread postby Warmonger » 30 Oct 2011, 18:09

Oh yes. If I was to design heroes game, I would come back to the system from H2 - giving upgrades only to the creature that make sense.

Evil Eye & Beholder from H3 makes none.

It also could be merged with H4 alternative creatures or H5 alternative upgrades. Some creatures may have same tier or similiar nature and there's no need to separate them, while other creatures don't need it. It's enough to have, let's say, 15 creatures per town. Also, this way adding new creatures with town-aligment is easy and straightforward. In fact, you can add any creature wherever you want and don't need to upgrade "all" creatures like Tribes of The east expansion.
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Arret
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Unread postby Arret » 01 Nov 2011, 04:08

Most of this seems fairly close except for tier one, where every race seems to not fit the parameters.

How are sprites not humanoid? How are halflings not humanoids?

Logically there would be tribe leaders for a centaur and a goblin which may have better weapons or armor.

Why are peasants not upgradable if we are facing a rigid class structure. Theoretically they could easily pick up a better weapon (cheap sword or dagger, even a large kitchen knife) and have attack skill go up, even if they don't get armor or more hp regardless of whether or not their lord gives them full armor.


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