Heroes of Might and Magic II Mod

The old Heroes games developed by New World Computing. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.
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Lord Belphegor
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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 26 Mar 2007, 13:43

You have to give the warlock a magic book and an offensive spell too.
Also, i'll run 3 series of tests:
- with lightning bolt
- with no spells
- with both having all troops from their castles that they can recruit in N weeks, assuming that they build 5th level and below one week before catedral and tower

The results will be in a football result form, i.e. dragons win and there are 6 dragons left it's 0-6 :D

EDIT: OK FIRST RESULTS ARE IN

Crusaders vs Dragons, Catedral built earlier, Warlock uses Lightning Bolt:

Code: Select all

10 vs 2 = 5-0
14 vs 4 = 2-0
18 vs 6 = 0-2
22 vs 8 = 0-3
Crusaders vs Dragons, Catedral built in the same turn, LB:

Code: Select all

6 vs 2 = 0-1
10 vs 4 = 0-4
14 vs 6 = 0-4
18 vs 8 = 0-6
22 vs 10 = 0-7
EDIT:

Crusaders vs Dragons, Catedral built simultaneously, Warlock uses Lightning Bolt:

Code: Select all

10 vs 2 = 9-0
14 vs 4 = 9-0
18 vs 6 = 8-0
22 vs 8 = i ran this three times, the results vary on how much luck, leadership each gets, it's quite balanced, the results were 0-3, 0-4, 8-0
Crusaders vs Dragons, Catedral simultan, LB:

Code: Select all

6 vs 2 = 4-0
10 vs 4 = 0-2
14 vs 6 = 0-3
18 vs 8 = 0-5
22 vs 10 = 0-4
So not having a magic to rely on, makes the crusaders more valueable and the bonus in hp can really be felt here.
Last edited by Lord Belphegor on 26 Mar 2007, 14:22, edited 1 time in total.
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grobblewobble
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Unread postby grobblewobble » 26 Mar 2007, 14:02

Instead of running so many tests, it can be predicted by calculation. A black dragon does 37.5 damage on average, multiplied by 1.2 because of attack score.
A crusader does 15 damage on average, multiplied by 0.85. But the crusader attacks twice, meaning it can strike 3 times in a round instead of 2. So, each round of combat:

damage dragon -> crusader = 2 * 37.5 * 1.2 * Nd = 90 * Nd
damage crusader -> dragon = 3 * 15 * 0.85 * Nc = 38 * Nc

The dragons stack can absorb 250 * Nd damage before it's destroyed. The crusader stack can absorb 75 * Nc damage. If the fight is close, they are destroyed almost at the same time, so that's when:

38 * Nc / (250 * Nd) = 90 * Nd / (75 * Nc)

Solving this, we see that the fight is close when there are 2.6 crusaders for each dragon. This is only an approximation, however. In practice you'll need more crusaders, because the black dragons have the first strike (usually), are not vulnerable to spells etcetera. So in practice you will need about three crusaders for each dragon to win.

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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 26 Mar 2007, 14:17

BUT you have a Knight to lead them and so a plus in attack AND defense. AND it's the Knight who goes first in a real battle due to Champions and the option to cast either Haste on Crusaders or even Mass Haste OR Anti-Magic on Crusaders (Berserk, Armageddon and so on).

So in reality it makes no sense to balance the creatures because that will lead to Knight and Barbarian being better yet as they already are.

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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 26 Mar 2007, 14:40

I really chose to run tests instead of calculations because you can't take into account which attributes each hero will get, and when luck and morale strike. So it was like a practical simulation.

I'll add the last test here. I expect it to be the most representative as the warlock will not have only the crusaders to worry about but the champions and archers too.

Also, if you WANT to make calculations (which i LOVE doing anyway :-B) we can take att and defence and put it into equation.

Let's say the knight reaches a +6 attack and +6 defence bonus ahead of the warlock with these 20000 EXP.
So the crusaders will have 17/18 and the dragons 14/14 (maybe more for each but i took in consideration only the differential)
Then the formula will look:

Code: Select all

Dragon: 2*37.5*0.8= 60
Crusader: 3*15*1.3= 58,5
WELL!! This certainly levels things up, don't you think?
Now, to calculate the ratio of creatures you have:

Code: Select all

60*D/75*C = 58,5*C/250*D
15000*D^2=4387*C^2
3,1488*D^2=C^2
this gives d:c = 1,78:1
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Unread postby grobblewobble » 26 Mar 2007, 15:03

Of course this kind of calculations (or tests) will always have to ignore many factors. But assuming the dragons are led by a warlock is wrong, imo. I would always use a knight (preferably) or else a barbarian to lead them.

Since you can't know what heroes will lead what armies or what spells will be used, using the unmodified stats without spells is the best thing you can do in such a test.

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 27 Mar 2007, 15:01

Let's get Back to Topic.

Proposed by Lord Belphegor (the gold adjustments are my idea):

green/red/black dragon -50 HP, -500 gold, -1 weekly growth
titan -50 HP, -500 gold, -1 weekly growth
paladin / crusader +10 HP, paladin +50 gold
cyclops +10 HP, +50 gold
phoenix +20 HP, +100 gold
peasant +2 HP, +1 speed, +10 gold

Additional suggestions from UndeadHalfOrc:
Change boar damage from 2-3 to 2-4.
Lower gold cost of Lich and Power Lich by 100
Raise bone dragon cost by 100 gold

My own ideas:
dwarf/battle dwarf -30 gold (compare their price to vet pike or wolf..)
zombie/mutant zombie -30 gold (who uses those?)

To me, those changes look sensible & reasonable. A week's growth of black dragons or titans would still defeat a week's growth of anything else, but the difference would no longer be so overwhelming. So, to quote Archibald:

"As you are the man in the field, what is your opinion?"

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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 27 Mar 2007, 15:46

But spells and buildings cost can be altered also! :D
So give these a thought too.

My proposal for spells: Hypnotize was always a waste, so in order to save that precious 5th level spot, i will make it 4th level and only 12 gp, it's worthless anyway, but it won't take a precious spot for a really good spell.

Dimension door 30, 40 or 50 mana.

Maybe make town portal more frequent (if you read several posts ago you can see what can and cannot be done).

Also i played a bit with 3 HP peasants and they're really a force :) They beat sprites senseless. So maybe 2 HP for peasants is ok. The difference that makes them useful is that they have +1 speed so they're ok for the beggining of the game.

Dwarves are VERY good troops, if you want we can make these adjustments but i don't think they are needed. Also price for zombies looks okay too. NOBODY will use them anyway cause they're very slow.
Also why boars 2-4? they are very annoying troops with very fast speed, they're tough as they are now.

Liches 700 GP, Power Liches 800 GP
Bone Dragons 1500 GP, Phoenixes 1500 GP + 1 M
Cyclops 800GP + 1 C
Green Dragons 2500+1S, Red Dragons 3000+1S, Black Dragons 3500+2S
Maybe Titans only 4000+2J? I always thought they're too expensive.

Also maybe Green Tower cost to only 12000+30O+20S
Red Tower 4000+...
Black Tower 4000+...
Total= 20000 Gold +...

Castle 10000 Gold +..
Upg 10000 Gold+..
Total=20000 Gold+..

Last: For spells, what do you say if i could make Hypnotize permanent? Like you control that troop until disspelled. That would make it worthy. I cannot raise the 25*Power limit, nor can i alter the spell damages at the moment, but it would be a good alternative i think.
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Jolly Joker
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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 27 Mar 2007, 18:27

I can't help the feeling that all those changes doesn't make much sense.
Here are the costs for all creature dwellings plus well, statue and Horde and everything necessary to get the creature dwellings plus creature costs per week to hire:
Note that every town comes with 8750 Gold per week, Warlock with 12250
Barbarian: 23050 GP + 25 W + 70 O + 20 C Creatures: 13450
Knight: 28450 GP + 80 W + 30 O + 30 C Creatures: 11865
Necro 35900 GP + 40 W + 55 O + 19 C + 19 G + 9 M + 24 S; Creatures: 16100
Sorceress: 28250 GP + 40 W + 50 O + 10 G + 25 M; Creatures: 13200
Warlock: 43250 GP + 5 W + 65 O + 15 G + 50 S; Creatures: 22180
Wizard: 45950 GP + 40 W + 40 O + 10 C + 50 G + 15 M + 10 S Creatures: 24000

Obviously, if Knight, Barbarian and Sorceress have built their town up AND can hire it out (having flagged a gold mine) and Necro has amassed a sizable Sekeleton army, Warlock and Wizard are FAR from being there - you can be satisfied if you have Green Dragons/Giants when those others come with their full force. You really need those 200 HPs for Green Dragons usually.
That's why it doesn't makes sense to compare a Black Dragon with a Crusader - if a Warlock really has Black Dragons and can hire them, the Knight can already have two towns up and hire things out as well.

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Unread postby Humakt » 27 Mar 2007, 19:36

I haven't played much Heroes 2 in recent years so I'm not the one to really talk about balance, especially with lack of competive multiplay. But from the sound of it, I have to agree with JJ (well I read practically last two replies from him).

Map is the factor that can't be ignored in my opinion. If there aren't many stacks of neutral on the map or they'll all higher level then Necromancy is weaker than normal. If map is closed opposed to open, the "rush" factions suffer compared to build-up factions like Warlock and Wizard. And looking from the stats the last reply provided, for example additional gold mine would greatly improve one side's assets while improving less of another's. Map seems to be the main reason why balancing the game is such a hard task, since makers have intentionally made the sides so different, that it is practically the map that decides the outcome (of course player skill, difficulty and to smaller degree sheer plain luck are factors too).

Personally, I'd do something about peasants, since they seem practically useless not necessarily because Knight needs to be stronger faction. I've also heard bad things about diplomacy being too powerful like in Heroes 3 (maybe it's partially because MP maps generally seem to be rather resource/gold rich which makes Diplomacy cheaper to use) , but can't really tell if that's the case. Dimension Door needs to be balanced out.
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Unread postby grobblewobble » 28 Mar 2007, 12:19

Lord Belphegor:
Dimension door 30, 40 or 50 mana.
30 mana is already a big change, let's not overdo it.
Maybe make town portal more frequent
Do you mean standard or advanced TP? Advanced TP is incredibly powerful (ask H3 fans), so it's a good thing this spell only turns up very rarely.
Also i played a bit with 3 HP peasants and they're really a force
Did you increase their cost? 20 gold for 3 HP peasants is not fair..
Dwarves are VERY good troops
I think they're overpriced. Dwarves cost as much as wolves; battle dwarves as much as veteran pikeman.
Also price for zombies looks okay too. NOBODY will use them anyway
If they'd be cheaper, I would use them.
Maybe Titans only 4000+2J? I always thought they're too expensive
For the type of creature (ranged / no melee penalty), the price is actually pretty good. For the sake of argument, try a battle between 50 archmages and 7 titans. Both are worth 35K. If the mages go first, they win, but just barely. If the titans go first, they win easily.


Jolly Joker:
I can't help the feeling that all those changes doesn't make much sense.
Could you please be a little more specific? Are there perhaps some changes that you don't agree with in particular?
That's why it doesn't makes sense to compare a Black Dragon with a Crusader - if a Warlock really has Black Dragons and can hire them, the Knight can already have two towns up and hire things out as well.
If gold was the only consideration, I'd agree. But the limiting factor to building up towns and dwellings is usually resources, in my experience. (Of course you need to take the gold from chests, not XP.) Fully building up two knight towns in a short timespan takes huge amounts of wood, more than there is available on most maps.
Last edited by grobblewobble on 28 Mar 2007, 12:43, edited 1 time in total.

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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 28 Mar 2007, 12:42

Even on resources: 50 Sulfur ONLY for the creature dwellings (as a Warlock you want to burn another 28 on the mage guild AND 6 per week for the Dragons) is as much as 50 Gems plus guild and creature costs for the Wizard.

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 28 Mar 2007, 12:49

Yes, 50 sulfur is a lot. But building up two knight towns with all the dwellings takes 160 wood, no less! So I'd expect the warlock to have his black tower before the knight has two upgraded cathedrals. Building up the mage tower as well costs even more resources, but that holds true for the knight as well.

EDIT: 180 wood actually, with additional 20 wood for upgrading the second town to a city.

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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 28 Mar 2007, 13:02

You don't need the upgrades, obviously. And it is enoough to get double the rest. 10 Champions a week is pretty good - and with a knight they do a lot of immediate damage. Take special note of the high defense value of Swordmen and Pikemen - they will be of use as well.
The same is true for Barbarian and Sorceress town as well, by the way.

If, on the other hand you have a smaller map without the towns the cheaper faction will come knocking at your door before you can even think of building the biggies.

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 28 Mar 2007, 13:25

Not building upgrades has its drawbacks - upgrading paladins to crusaders is very expensive. But suppose you do that, it saves you 25 wood. So you only need 155. That still takes more time to get, typically, than 50 sulfur.

If you don't build cathedrals, you can't defeat the dragons. Ten champions is not bad, but they can't stand up to 3 dragon (or even 2 nerfed dragons).
and with a knight they do a lot of immediate damage
You're apparently still assuming each faction will always play with their native heroes. That's just a difference in opinion between us, 'cause I consider every possible hero as a possibility with each faction.

Nonetheless, if you want to take the high att/def of knights into the equation, need to you consider high damage from spells too. Knight troops are very vulnerable to those.

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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 28 Mar 2007, 15:26

Well when i played WoG first I thought, what the heck, these guys didn't know when to stop. Modding the game and finding out its secrets must have gotten to their heads and they started modifying everything, even what was already good.

So, I don't want us to go that far with this Heroes II mod. I just want a few fixes here and there because, putting aside every argument that you can come up with to show the contrary, dragons and titans are too tough. But I kinda understand the WoG guys: hex editing the game brings you the power to change many things, and I agree that I must not get carried away.

Now, I want to point that in modding there are three task imo:
1. Re-designing (and re-balancing)
2. Editing
3. Testing
So here we're talking about no.1 redesigning. The editing will be done by me, because we haven't heard from Kristo (who originally found the creature info). I wish testing was done by more than myself, so I will try to find the hex values for creatures in the original exe too so GW can test it too. Of course, I fear putting those modified exe's in public is not exactly okay so maybe i should only send them privately. I really don't know how far legal issues go in this direction.

I'll try to come up with a full list of changes ASAP. Until then, let's reiterate them:
- Peasants 2/3 HP, 3 speed (cost 20/25) - for GW the reason i do not go up to 30 is because the goblin costs 30 and he is 3 HP, 1-2 dam and 4 speed.
- Dragons and Titans growth -1/week and HP 250 or leave it to 300 (I re-did the equation several posts above and with current HP of 300 it's very close to 2:1 balance, with 250 HP it's 1,78:1 so the knight will have the edge)
- Paladins 60 HP, Crusaders 75 HP, Cyclops 90 HP (the other way to balance that equation is to leave them at current values but i wanted to make those stronger not for figthing the dragons but for them not to die so easily fighting regular monsters)
- Zombies are oficially cheaper (120 GP) but Upg. Zombies remain the same
- Dwarves and Battle dwarves 150 GP and 200 GP
- Dragons 2500, 3000, 3500 GP, Giants 2000, Titans 4500
- Hypnotize: IT'S PERMANENT. Yes, it can be done, hypnotize gives you control of a stack until it attacks or receives damage, not only one turn. It's also down to level 4 and cost 12 (same as Berzerk, but Berzerk has no HP limit, Hypnotize is very limited). I actually ran some battles and used hypnotize (i think it's for the first time ever)
- TO DO: Cold Ring, Fireball, Fireblast 15 Dam/Power

PLEASE LOOK INTO DWELLING COSTS AND SPELL COSTS\LEVELS\POWER AND MAKE SUGGESTIONS IN THAT AREA TOO! (IT CAN be done now)
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Unread postby UndeadHalfOrc » 29 Mar 2007, 14:19

What are the hex addresses for building and spell data?

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Unread postby Lord Belphegor » 30 Mar 2007, 14:06

Well i think you got me wrong there, I have figured out the format of these tables, so i don't need help with this, all i wanted from you was proposals on changing these values (if needed). This is the re-balancing part in the scheme i wrote some posts ago, the hex editing part can be done easily in this case.

So maybe anyone has something to say about changing the price of buildings and the level/power/mana points for spells, because so far the only proposals we received are creature related.

My proposition in this direction was to lower the costs for the cloud castle and green tower but maybe this isn't what you think too, so i wanted to hear from everyone. One good change that i came up with and tested was lowering hypnotize level to 4 so it doesn't take up a precious 5th level spot and make it more powerful (as i can't alter the 25 times power limit, i made it permanent so it lasts several turns until attacking or attacked, much like berzerk). Also i lowered the cost to 12 mana. Another proposition was about dimension door which usually spoils the game, maybe one way to make it right is to make it very pricy (40 mana for starters), or maybe make two separate exe's with singleplayer and multiplayer and in multiplayer mod i'd give it a very low frequency to appear (the lowest 5th level is town portal so think about that) and the highest possible mana cost (255) in case it does come up (which would be quite unlucky in these new conditions).
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Unread postby Lunar » 30 Mar 2007, 17:32

I have an Idea for new towns.
It looks like arabian city. Six units:

Jannisaries and udpraged Mamluk
Archers and udpraged mounted archers (like Mongols)
Nomad and udpraged version Sheikh
Genie
Efreet
Dune Worm (just like in Frank Herberts "Dune", arabian believed that deep beyond the sands are moving big worms which make Shifing Sands ;) )

Heroes should be Sultan, Padisha, Emir or Kalif or smth

Another idea is for Chinese and Japanese town:

Units smth like that:

Samurai
Ninja
Chinese Dragon (looks like big flying snake with moustache)

And another city which looks like Egyptian town. I'm inspired in D&D and Age of Mythology :)

Units:

Slinger
Axeman
Pikeman

Crocodile and udpraged Sobec Crocodile
Lion and udpraged Bast Lion
Priest and udpraged Archpriest
Scarab and udpraged Khepri Scarab
Pharaoh and udpraged Son of Osiris

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Unread postby grobblewobble » 02 Apr 2007, 12:47

Lunar, nice ideas, but you'd have to be able to mod the pictures and animations of creatures to do that. IIRC, that's not possible atm.
I have figured out the format of these tables, so i don't need help with this
Are you sure you want to decline help from an experienced guy (even if it's an undead half-orc)? 8| Good ppl helping you are a rare and valuable thing..

@Jollyjoker:
If, on the other hand you have a smaller map without the towns the cheaper faction will come knocking at your door before you can even think of building the biggies.
This is a good point and I’m sorry I didn’t respond to it earlier. Following the discussions in the “balance between factions” thread, the consensus seems that the “cheaper factions” somewhat have the edge on small maps, but wizards/warlocks will almost invariably win on L to XL maps. Kristo worded it well:
Heroes II was close. Then they added the Well. That building screwed everything up. When Warlocks are eventually building 3 Black Dragons per week, a Knight's 4 Crusaders don't have a prayer. That's why Knights always have to capture something else to survive in an extra large map. If the growth ratio there were 1:2 like it should be, a Knight castle might stand on its own.
So that’s the reason dragons/titans need a nerf. Restricting growth and substracting 50 HP may be too much, but they do need some sort of nerf. I also see a need for giving paladins and cyclops a bit more HP or perhaps growth, because the well makes their higher growth almost insignificant. The phoenix at the other hand is quite good already, buffing doesn’t seem necessary when dragons/titans are nerfed? Their great speed compensates for their fragility quite well, I’d say?

Another imbalance in H2 is between might/magic heroes. Imo, might heroes are way better, because:
- they get better secondary skills (best chance of logistics, leadership, luck, archery..)
- they can easily learn some good spells (blind, haste, slow)
- because building a mage guild beyond level 2 takes too long, considering you get random spells
- because +1 att/def means +10% / -5% damage, making a lot of difference
- you can only cast 1 damage spell each round, but might gets used in each attack

The only saving grace for magicians is Dimension Door. But that spell can only be learned on larger maps, where you have the time to build up several mage guilds to level 5. On such maps, a might hero will have the time to learn wisdom and build up his spellpoints, so he can use it too. Also, the advantages of a might hero increase with army size, which increases with map size. In H2 I would never pick a magic hero as main (with the possible exception of a necromancer). Magic heroes are no good, unless they use hit-and-run tactics. The sorceress is worst of all, even her spellpower is low.

So what can be done about this? I was thinking lowering the costs of higher-level mage guilds could help. (5 recources of each kind for each level, for example? Instead of cumulatively growing numbers?) Combined with raising the mana of spells like haste, slow and blind. Raising mana for DD seems good as well, it would make the spell harder to use, especially for the might heroes.

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Unread postby Jolly Joker » 02 Apr 2007, 13:16

It must be balanced on all type of maps. But there are a few things to consider.
Balance as such is important for multiplayer (only). In single-player there can be no balance anyway, because the AI is stupid on one hand, but cheats massively on the other. A single-player shouldn't be out-gunned against the AI on a XL map no matter what he is playing.
So "balance" should be considered in terms of multi-player mostly.
Now, I don't know how people play their multi-games, but there are certain things I dislike there, considering that things shouldn't take too much time:
XL maps
Too many towns (to build)
Too many different town types as neutral targets
Too many artifacts

That means that for me attention should be focussed on S, M and L maps with M maps being the most likely battlegrounds for multiplayer games.
HERE, I think restricting things to the Heroes of your town would do the trick, basically.

I sinply don't think that the game should be balanced with a view on XL maps - the game's strength is the fast pace. XL maps are a good thing single-player, but mp?


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