HOMM3 Babies Mini-Expansion Beta now Available for Download!

[Fatt_Shade]

@Sirlancelot
Ahhh to be naive and still dont know what is waiting me in enemy heroes battles Believe me, you`ll miss this time before you started doing that battles and item suppressing/upgrading

1) Avoiding enemy heroes does you good for only a while because sooner or later you`ll have to do hardest battles with them to proceed in gameplay (quests and like) so their speed isnt important.

2) All encounters in game are determined moment you start new game, so ambushes are only wish. I asked this couple times, and answer was it`s impossible for enemy stacks to simply appear in game on areas already cleared or unexplored.

3) By this you mean skill scouting ? Never thought of it much, and lvled it up only for 1lvl for later skills. Interesting concept, maybe would be nice to get surprise form time to tie. But mostly ppl play this in way that you start battles when have good strategy and neutrals strength isn`t crucial.

Good luck and have fun playing this great mod fellow tactical strategist

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Allright, time to give you some feedback, Matt. , I've been playing for a while trying to explore different combinations. The warrior is the chosen class and Hard the difficult level. A satisfactory experience overall: although still being level 5, I can already tell you the units changes and novelties feel refreshing and imaginative, the spells changes intriguing and interesting from both the challenge and balance improvements perspective, and the hero skills trees revamps stimulating and overwhelming.

Well, it sounds like you're off to a great start!

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

What I expect to see the most are tough, unpredictable battles against enemy heroes. The original game has a lot of room for improvement there.

As @Fatt_Shade alluded to, you should enjoy some challenge down the road. I'm also in the midst of debugging my improvement to the Spell AI and so far it does indeed seem to be harder. I'm still debugging all the spell paths and fixing crash-to-desktop errors and so the update is still not ready for prime time.

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

For now, I'm just worried about how well general balance and challenge will remain on the last stages of the game. Many modifications to be aware of. By the way, did you remove the resistance to damage cap? I hope not, it would be highly exploitable.

Well, we'll see what you think as you get later in the game. I haven't played Hard in a very long time, but there are still bonuses that the enemy units get. One thing currently missing that makes the game much harder is bonuses to talents. I have that in the current version I'm debugging and now the difficulty level bonuses apply to talent abilities as well (so for example, the +25% Impossible + map difficulty (up to another +25% on impossible) and it makes the game quite a bit harder.

The resistance to damage cap is still there, but the cap for Attack to Defense ratio can increase based on your Attack (+50% per 7 Attack) and the Defense to Attack goes down by 1 integer per 7 Defense (i.e. normal is 1/3, at 7 Defense it decreases to 1/4, etc.).

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Maybe Dryads are overpowered?

You know I did not change Dryads one bit, but allowing them to be recruited early in the game, I can see that they can be pretty potent with their sleep ability. The Druid house in Verlon Forest has a chance to sell them, and you can start with them due to the randomized starting army. Even though in this case you wouldn't have many, all you really need is just one.

Lately, I've been revisiting reloadable / charged attacks and the Gift spell and so I actually thought that it might be desirable to charge the Dryad abilities. Not sure about it, but something to think about...

I've been on the fence with the Druids, Alchemists, and Ents to make their abilities charged instead of reloadable. I currently have the Druid Summon Bear set to 2 charges, the Alchemist potions are 2 charges, and so is the Ent Summon Plant in my latest version I'm debugging. Still undecided what to do here, although, making them charged now lends more to using Gift to recharge those abilities. It may even make sense to make the Royal Thorn's Summon Plant ability have 2 charges. More things to think about...

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Some ideas of mine which I find would really help to build and keep tension through the game, making it more thrilling:

1. The chance of being catched by the enemy when you're trying to avoid it. Perhaps setting a trigger so their speed can be randomly increased a bit from time to time.

You know, I think about this a lot. I do have a lot of fun sneaking around troops in TL, but then I keep thinking that that troop should have seen me and should come after me! I have no idea how to change their speed - why are the (Evil) Beholder stacks so fast compared to the others? Hmmm...

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

2. The chance of being ambushed. Requisites: level... 6? or higher and Freedom isles reachable, so the player can still have his/her time and space to see what items, units and spells are initially available and choose army composition and general strategy.

You know there actually may be a way to implement this. It wouldn't be renewable stacks as Fatt_Shade mentions above, but there may be a way to do it with an event. Have you ever pulled the amulet off the boy in the Verlon Forest village? If you do, half your army rebels and you have to fight them - I think this happens as a result of a dialog option. In the old King's castle in Verlon Forest, the Undead jump out of pictures. So I'm not sure if there would be a way to implement a function that does a random check and then a surprise fight. Fun to think about, though.

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

3. The chance to fail the guess when trying to determine enemy power potential relative to yours. In my opinion, maximun percent to do it properly should never be above 80%.

I guess you're talking about level 3 Scouting or do you mean giving the lower level Scouting skill a chance to accurately guess troops. As right now, you need level 3 Scouting to accurately determine numbers, but for Level 1 and 2 you receive less information. I'm not sure how to implement right now, but it seems doable.

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

PS: I'm using Nobilis version, is it imperative to buy Gamersgate one to install their latest patch? If so I will.

I think you just need to check what your build number is. Build 35,396 is the latest build, the GoG version is 35,234. Both game versions are V1.7, but the GoG build has limitations and certain things don't work. For example, I can't display the number of dragonfly wings in your inventory when talking to Maria and the logic for displaying Rage skill damage (all Rage skills properly show damage in Build 35,396) doesn't work in Build 35,234 for certain abilities.

The Build number is shown next to the version in the bottom left when at the Main Menu.

Well, thanks for your comments! Let me know if you have any other suggestions, etc.

I'm hoping to be able to release my latest version that I'm debugging soon, but you know how it goes - there's only so much time in the day...

/C\/C\

[Kiras]

I've had a lot of fun with this mod. I played through with an older version twice awhile ago (roughly March or April 2013, can't recall for sure). I've tried playing with the current version, but I have a fair number of crashes in fights with heroes now.

The werewolf in Greenwort
Drammina (dwarven woman in the mines)
The robber in Marshan Swamps
2nd Arena fight

All crash to desktop when the enemy makes their first move. No other fights have given me issues yet. I just entered the dwarven mines.

Windows XP, Steam version if it matters.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Could you please tell me which version of my mod you're playing? I just want to double check that you're playing 2014-01-28. Since these are all Hero battles (I assume 2nd Arena Fight is Robin of Greenwood).

***BEGIN EDIT*** Okay, whoops, these are the original spell lists for each hero:

Originally Posted by Matt Caspermeyer

By the way, here are the spell lists for each hero:

• Martin Vodash (Werewolf in Greenwort)
  • spell_haste (Haste)
  • spell_scare (Fear)
  • spell_blind (Blind)
• Drammina
  • spell_haste
  • spell_fire_ball (Fire Ball)
• Dirty Butory (Robber in Marshan Swamp)
  • spell_healing (Healing)
  • spell_haste
  • spell_bless (Bless)
  • spell_pygmy (Pygmy)
• Robin of Greenwood (2nd Arena Fight)
  • spell_defenseless (Helplessness)
  • spell_fire_arrow (Fire Arrow)
  • spell_bless

The only spells I have not checked in my current (unreleased) version are spell_healing and spell_bless. These should be checked soon...

By the way, if memory serves, Martin Vodash and Drammina have been reported before and I fixed them. It is possible, however, that a recent change has broken something. It may also be possible that it is related to a unit, but you probably would have had a crash with non-hero battles as well so I'm pretty sure it is spell related.

***EDIT*** Okay here are the new spells for each hero:

• Martin Vodash (Werewolf in Greenwort)
  • spell_berserker (Berserker)
  • spell_pain_mirror (Pain Mirror)
  • spell_shroud (Shroud)
• Drammina
  • spell_haste (Haste)
  • spell_ghost_sword (Ghost Blade)
  • spell_shroud
• Dirty Butory (Robber in Marshan Swamp)
  • spell_shroud
  • spell_berserker
  • spell_ghost_sword
• Robin of Greenwood (2nd Arena Fight)
  • spell_shroud
  • spell_accuracy (Precision)
  • spell_pain_mirror

The common spell is Shroud. I know I had issues with this spell, but fixed them. This is one spell I have not checked in my latest unreleased update so I will be investigating this one more...

***END EDIT***

**BEGIN EDIT2***

Ok, I've confirmed (at least with Robin of Greenwood) that the Shroud spell is cast properly without crashing the game. So I'm pretty sure this issue is fixed in my latest released version [2014-01-28] and also in my latest unreleased build.

So hopefully that is the problem you're having...

***END EDIT2***

Do you have save games where you can easily check to see if those problems are still there? Depending on whether you're using the latest version or not, could you check and see if the game still crashes. If the game still crashes, I'd appreciate you emailing me the savegame files with instructions on how to get the game to crash (my email is in the README file included with my mod). This way I can bring up the LUA debugger and see where the game is crashing.

Thanks!

/C\/C\

P.S. Glad you've enjoyed playing, hopefully either the issues are fixed or your savegames will help me fix them.

Originally Posted by Kiras

I've had a lot of fun with this mod. I played through with an older version twice awhile ago (roughly March or April 2013, can't recall for sure). I've tried playing with the current version, but I have a fair number of crashes in fights with heroes now.

The werewolf in Greenwort
Drammina (dwarven woman in the mines)
The robber in Marshan Swamps
2nd Arena fight

All crash to desktop when the enemy makes their first move. No other fights have given me issues yet. I just entered the dwarven mines.

Windows XP, Steam version if it matters.

[Kiras]

I think I figured out what was causing it. I thought I was using the 2014-01-28 version. However, I had put a previous version in an extra folder I made to archive it if I wanted to go back to an old save(King's Bounty The Legend/Data/Archived). KB must have been trying to use that instead of the current one. When I deleted that folder, I stopped getting crashes. And I can confirm that Robin of Greenwood and Martin Vodash both cast shroud without crashes now.

Come to think of it, I must have played with an earlier version before shroud was causing issues, then downloaded the one with issues, then quit playing KBTL for awhile because of the crashes.

[Sirlancelot]

Congratulations for the new creature!

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

Well, we'll see what you think as you get later in the game. I haven't played Hard in a very long time, but there are still bonuses that the enemy units get. One thing currently missing that makes the game much harder is bonuses to talents. I have that in the current version I'm debugging and now the difficulty level bonuses apply to talent abilities as well (so for example, the +25% Impossible + map difficulty (up to another +25% on impossible) and it makes the game quite a bit harder.

To be honest, and generally speaking, I'm not very fond of "bloating" enemies in videogames because sure, it's a way to make toughter opponents, but, I think, a bit raw and unfair. Moreover, from my experience, sometimes just leads to lengthy -longer- battles, and not necessary more really difficult or stimulating ones. I prefer clever level and AI design along with randomness. The first doesn't goes against the notion of fighting under the same rules/conditions and on the other hand, improves realism, and the second keeps unpredictibility alive.

On King's Bunty: TL, however, I'm not totally against raising enemy stats due to its chess-like game mechanics and I concurr some measures were and are necessary to increase challenge but, according to my vision and preferences, I'd use a slightly different formula: something like a tiny fixed increment (let's say 3% Hard, 6% Impossible) plus a partially random amount:

+3/+6 % + map difficulty modifier + *, where * is a quantity between -4% and +20%:

-4 (2%), -3 (3%), -2 (5%), -1 (5%), 0 (10%), +1% (10%), +2 (10%), +3% (10%), +4% (10%), +5% (10%), +12 (5%), +14 (5%), +16 (5%), +18 (5%), +20 (5%)

, this means most creatures (60%) would have equal or simmilar stats compared with default, but some of them be notably more powerful. Concretely up to +26 on Impossible, which is roughly the same maximum as you planned, and Hard would be even Harder.

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

You know I did not change Dryads one bit, but allowing them to be recruited early in the game, I can see that they can be pretty potent with their sleep ability. The Druid house in Verlon Forest has a chance to sell them, and you can start with them due to the randomized starting army. Even though in this case you wouldn't have many, all you really need is just one. Lately, I've been revisiting reloadable / charged attacks and the Gift spell and so I actually thought that it might be desirable to charge the Dryad abilities. Not sure about it, but something to think about...

Yes, I agree. Very potent indeed. I'd weaken them by nerfing Sleep to one charge, two turns. I think more than that is very exploitable. If it proves to be too much, the three turns duration could come back, although I suspect it wouldn't be necessary. In all my KB runs I have used crowd control abilities the most, even when playing offensively and rushing to the enemy. In some sense, after all, a paralized unit is an almost non-existant unit.

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

I've been on the fence with the Druids, Alchemists, and Ents to make their abilities charged instead of reloadable. I currently have the Druid Summon Bear set to 2 charges, the Alchemist potions are 2 charges, and so is the Ent Summon Plant in my latest version I'm debugging. Still undecided what to do here, although, making them charged now lends more to using Gift to recharge those abilities. It may even make sense to make the Royal Thorn's Summon Plant ability have 2 charges. More things to think about...

Yes, summoning is also very powerful. In fact, it doesn't matter so much what it's actually summoned, that's why walls of any kind, even fragile ones, can be useful as well.

Not sure about Alchemists, though.

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

You know, I think about this a lot. I do have a lot of fun sneaking around troops in TL, but then I keep thinking that that troop should have seen me and should come after me! I have no idea how to change their speed - why are the (Evil) Beholder stacks so fast compared to the others? Hmmm...

I feel the same. It's a mini game on its own and an addicting one, very funny. Problem is, like any other game, it needs the challenge and randomness factors to really be great. Otherwise, after you have cleared the initial areas it eventually becomes a little silly.

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

You know there actually may be a way to implement this. It wouldn't be renewable stacks as Fatt_Shade mentions above, but there may be a way to do it with an event. Have you ever pulled the amulet off the boy in the Verlon Forest village? If you do, half your army rebels and you have to fight them - I think this happens as a result of a dialog option. In the old King's castle in Verlon Forest, the Undead jump out of pictures. So I'm not sure if there would be a way to implement a function that does a random check and then a surprise fight. Fun to think about, though.

Hmm, maybe there's another instance where something simmilar happens, and the funny thing, it's also located within Verlon F; do you remember the old castle there filled with undead? I think is named Old Kingdom Castle or simmilar... anyway, as you sure recall, when clicking on the pictures inside sometimes (or some of the pictures), an encounter is triggered/trigger an encounter.

Obviously to set random encounters the object used as a trigger should be invisible and the "click" involuntary.

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

I guess you're talking about level 3 Scouting or do you mean giving the lower level Scouting skill a chance to accurately guess troops. As right now, you need level 3 Scouting to accurately determine numbers, but for Level 1 and 2 you receive less information. I'm not sure how to implement right now, but it seems doable.

Yes, exactly. What I find interesting would be a chance of failure of Scouting. At least a 15%, maybe even 20%. A fail stimation would lead to a wrong information, how wrong, being partially random; the higher the mistake, the less likely to happen (otherwise we could go mad xD )

[Sir Whiskers]

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

I've been on the fence with the Druids, Alchemists, and Ents to make their abilities charged instead of reloadable. I currently have the Druid Summon Bear set to 2 charges, the Alchemist potions are 2 charges, and so is the Ent Summon Plant in my latest version I'm debugging. Still undecided what to do here, although, making them charged now lends more to using Gift to recharge those abilities. It may even make sense to make the Royal Thorn's Summon Plant ability have 2 charges. More things to think about...

I'd suggest leaving these as rechargeable. If they are in the enemy army, my choices have trade offs. Do I go for these troops right away, to limit their summoning? Or do I go for other enemy stacks, knowing I'll have to deal with the extra summoned stacks? And if they're in my army, multiple summons don't generally matter much - the battle is usually in hand within a few rounds. And if it isn't, having the extra summons can be the difference between defeat and victory.

My opinion is influenced by a battle I had in my last game. I stumbled into a really nasty fight. My army consisted of some dragons and several ancient ents. The dragons went down almost immediately, but the ents (barely) held out using summons, swarms and rooting, along with my mage's spells. I think I finished the battle with a single ent, which made for a memorable fight. It was one the most enjoyable fights of the game, precisely because I had to work so hard over multiple rounds to pull out the victory. If the ent summons had been single charge, I'd have lost the fight within the first 7-8 rounds and simply reloaded.

Just my two cents...

[MattCaspermeyer]

Well, I'm relieved that it is working for you now!

I do my best to squish as many bugs as possible, but there are some that take a long time to find.

My current unreleased version has many bug fixes. Since there are a lot of changes and I'm not finished implementing everything yet I'm holding off on releasing it, but am trying to get it finished as soon as I can.

As always, if you ever have any additional issues, please let me know - thanks!

/C\/C\

Originally Posted by Kiras

I think I figured out what was causing it. I thought I was using the 2014-01-28 version. However, I had put a previous version in an extra folder I made to archive it if I wanted to go back to an old save(King's Bounty The Legend/Data/Archived). KB must have been trying to use that instead of the current one. When I deleted that folder, I stopped getting crashes. And I can confirm that Robin of Greenwood and Martin Vodash both cast shroud without crashes now.

Come to think of it, I must have played with an earlier version before shroud was causing issues, then downloaded the one with issues, then quit playing KBTL for awhile because of the crashes.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Congratulations for the new creature!

Thanks - if you have any suggestions on abilities be sure to post them. Ideas are great for brainstorming what will mesh well with Drahha's mythos.

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

To be honest, and generally speaking, I'm not very fond of "bloating" enemies in videogames because sure, it's a way to make toughter opponents, but, I think, a bit raw and unfair. Moreover, from my experience, sometimes just leads to lengthy -longer- battles, and not necessary more really difficult or stimulating ones. I prefer clever level and AI design along with randomness. The first doesn't goes against the notion of fighting under the same rules/conditions and on the other hand, improves realism, and the second keeps unpredictibility alive.

I hear you - that's why I have the stat increases instead of just the leadership increases. Applying the bonuses to the talents I've wanted to do for a while, but I had overlooked them / didn't quite know how to implement them at the time. Now it just makes them more potent and I think that will translate to more fun.

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

On King's Bunty: TL, however, I'm not totally against raising enemy stats due to its chess-like game mechanics and I concurr some measures were and are necessary to increase challenge but, according to my vision and preferences, I'd use a slightly different formula: something like a tiny fixed increment (let's say 3% Hard, 6% Impossible) plus a partially random amount:

+3/+6 % + map difficulty modifier + *, where * is a quantity between -4% and +20%:

-4 (2%), -3 (3%), -2 (5%), -1 (5%), 0 (10%), +1% (10%), +2 (10%), +3% (10%), +4% (10%), +5% (10%), +12 (5%), +14 (5%), +16 (5%), +18 (5%), +20 (5%)

, this means most creatures (60%) would have equal or simmilar stats compared with default, but some of them be notably more powerful. Concretely up to +26 on Impossible, which is roughly the same maximum as you planned, and Hard would be even Harder.

I like the random adder - that is something that sounds interesting. You know, I've been spending a lot of time with the spell AI for enemy heroes and I think that this subtle change is going to make it a lot harder.

I may visit the actual unit AI in the future because there are some things that I scratch my head about, like for example, when a shooter runs away from a troop and still shoots it even though it can only do a small amount of damage when it could do more damage to another troop further away.

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Yes, I agree. Very potent indeed. I'd weaken them by nerfing Sleep to one charge, two turns. I think more than that is very exploitable. If it proves to be too much, the three turns duration could come back, although I suspect it wouldn't be necessary. In all my KB runs I have used crowd control abilities the most, even when playing offensively and rushing to the enemy. In some sense, after all, a paralized unit is an almost non-existant unit.

You're certainly right there! One thing to do may be to remove their possibility in the early part of the game. Or add charges...

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Yes, summoning is also very powerful. In fact, it doesn't matter so much what it's actually summoned, that's why walls of any kind, even fragile ones, can be useful as well.

Originally Posted by Sir Whiskers

I'd suggest leaving these as rechargeable. If they are in the enemy army, my choices have trade offs. Do I go for these troops right away, to limit their summoning? Or do I go for other enemy stacks, knowing I'll have to deal with the extra summoned stacks? And if they're in my army, multiple summons don't generally matter much - the battle is usually in hand within a few rounds. And if it isn't, having the extra summons can be the difference between defeat and victory.

My opinion is influenced by a battle I had in my last game. I stumbled into a really nasty fight. My army consisted of some dragons and several ancient ents. The dragons went down almost immediately, but the ents (barely) held out using summons, swarms and rooting, along with my mage's spells. I think I finished the battle with a single ent, which made for a memorable fight. It was one the most enjoyable fights of the game, precisely because I had to work so hard over multiple rounds to pull out the victory. If the ent summons had been single charge, I'd have lost the fight within the first 7-8 rounds and simply reloaded.

Just my two cents...

Good point and counter point here. By the way, Ancient Ents would keep their reloadable summon (level 5 troops, for the most part, have reloadable attacks since they can't be recharged via spell). The question falls to Level 4 Ents, and other Level 4's (or lower) and certain reloadable attacks. Certainly a good case can be made for the Dryad's Sleep (a level 2 unit) having just 1 or 2 charges since they are a level 2 unit. It wouldn't cost much mana to recharge them with Gift.

I certainly want to maintain the level of play that Sir Whiskers is talking about as that is what makes the game truly fun!

I also think that I've actually made plants useful now, whereas before they were pretty useless. With the increase to talent abilities, enemy Ancient Ents now really pack a wallop with their Wasps ability.

Anyway, I certainly don't want to undo the utility of plants and so that's why I may keep Ents (normal Level 4 ones) with reloadable summons (plus if the combat goes long enough abilities don't recharge any more any way).

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Not sure about Alchemists, though.

6 attacks (or 4 technically if there are no Undead) might be enough. But their potions are pretty much reloadable now in the other KB games...

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

I feel the same. It's a mini game on its own and an addicting one, very funny. Problem is, like any other game, it needs the challenge and randomness factors to really be great. Otherwise, after you have cleared the initial areas it eventually becomes a little silly.

Yah, this has both good and bad things associated with it. There is a satisfaction gained from clearing an area. And it allows you a chance to relax when going through these areas. But this is not a static world so things do change.

I'll at least do a little probing to see if I can get a feel for how implementable something like this is...

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Hmm, maybe there's another instance where something simmilar happens, and the funny thing, it's also located within Verlon F; do you remember the old castle there filled with undead? I think is named Old Kingdom Castle or simmilar... anyway, as you sure recall, when clicking on the pictures inside sometimes (or some of the pictures), an encounter is triggered/trigger an encounter.

Obviously to set random encounters the object used as a trigger should be invisible and the "click" involuntary.

The Old Kingdom Castle is exactly what I was referring to. Random clicks could be you clicking on the landscape to move, although I guess some people just click, hold the mouse button, and direct their hero with the mouse...

Originally Posted by Sirlancelot

Yes, exactly. What I find interesting would be a chance of failure of Scouting. At least a 15%, maybe even 20%. A fail stimation would lead to a wrong information, how wrong, being partially random; the higher the mistake, the less likely to happen (otherwise we could go mad xD )

This is interesting. Of course we'd have to be careful, since some consider Scouting to be a fairly useless skill. I'll at least see if I can find out if it is possible to make this happen. Scouting does increase the hero's search radius for digging treasures!

Well, thanks for the comments! Some interesting things to think about!

/C\/C\

[Kiras]

I do consider scouting mostly useless. I only bothered with the first rank of it for a long time. Search radius basically reduces tedium, but doesn't make a gameplay difference, since you'd dig up the same things with or without it. Assuming you run around constantly hitting D like I do. Eventually I went for rank 3 just for the int bonus.

About Ancient Ents: I've noticed that enemy ancient ents are obsessed with summoning. When I was first encountering them, looking at their resists and realizing it would be tough to kill them quickly, I was dreading their ranged attack. Instead, they all seem to summon on their first turn, usually giving me enough time to kill them. I'm playing as a mage with an elf army - my hunters'/elves' attacks feel like they barely scratch enemy ancient ents, until I use hellbreath. Which is a spell I rarely used in the vanilla version of the game, so that's a nice change.