Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Tomes Alpha Mod Development for CW

[MattCaspermeyer]

I've been thinking about bonuses to the attack and defense attributes similar to intellect and here are some ideas.

I'll use TL values as the initial starting values and may use the same for AP / CW - we'll see.

For attack, every 7 points increases a unit's base critical hit chance (krit) by 1% (this is additive, so if you have 7 attack and the unit's krit is 5 then it will be 6 or if the unit's krit is 15 it will be 16). For every 15 points maximum damage possible increases 100%. Note that the maximum damage is actually only 200% right now (see my forum topic here). So if you have 15 attack, then you'll be able to do a maximum of 300% damage instead of 200%.

For defense, every 7 points increases a unit's resistance to all damage types by 1% (once again additive so if a unit has 0% resistance, it will then have 1%). For every 15 points, the damage reduction decreases by the next integral value. So for example, damage reduction is limited to 1/3 (33%), if you have 15 defense then damage reduction is 1/4 (25%), for 30 it is 1/5(20%), etc.

This will encourage getting higher attack / defense values if you are a Warrior / Paladin due to the increased krit / maximum damage and increased resistance / damage reduction.

The values are probably going to be my first cut for now, but we can always update them if these initial values prove to be not right (i.e. maybe for every 15 attack the bonus is +50% instead of +100%, etc.).

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

So far situation was : lets for expl take knight unit , your attack = enemy defense, you make nominal 100% dmg = 16-18 physical. Your att higher 10points then enemy def = (16-1*(1 + 10*3,3%) = 21-24 phy dmg, etc. So on 30 bonus att you make 100% more dmg = 200% total, and on 60 bonus att above enemy def it`s 200% bonus = 300% total dmg of nominal value, 48-54 phy dmg for our knight expl. And that part is clear, and OK.
Why i asked bladeking77 in that post i referred you to, is this is to simple compared to intellect stats formula (1 game i played in CW i got 2 Belt of Victor and with it my dragon army had basic def 150+ def, and with stone skin/magic spring red dragons got to 284 def, and all of it useless due to limit to 66% dmg reduction, and with this implemented in calculating att/def at least my red dragons got more resistances). And i wanted to see can it be made interesting, to make players to think before equipping some items, about bonuses they will gain/lose with +4att compared to +5int or something like that. Expl : should i take +att/def items, or spend runes on frenzy/prayer sills, or lvlup divine armor/stone skin . . . It will make player choose between way of developing his hero/army.
Bladeking77 did it, and it`s pretty simple formula in arena.lua file, and it works great. BUT i didnt think about active att/def bonuses in battle. Int is constant value during game, in and out of battle so spell dmg is calculated for it`s value. Att/def on other hand outside battle have some value, and in battle can have completely different - stone skin/magic spring/berserk spells, or frenzy skill, trolls malevolent, goblin zeroing in . . . How will this get implemented with this formula ? I dont remember now did it work OK or were some problems. Or red sands bonus to exp lvl`s for units, outside battle normal stats, and in battle higher stats due to lvl`s not connected to hero items/skill. I would try this, but currently my graphic card is fried, so no game for me for some time (i`m operating on ancient geforce 4400
So if you can try, implement this bonus into your file, and see does unit crit% and ress change during battle with stone skin spell (should give bonus ress to all dmg types +nominal ress from spell itself to phy dmg. or take frenzy and kill some weak stacks with 1 unit and check it crit% after each frenzy bonus).

All this bonuses make your army stronger, but also does to enemy and if you get in CW your mechanics to enemy heroes and AI late game could get very interesting in this mod

And Q: does it give bonus after hero`s att/def or from 0 ? I ask this looking black dragon stats, he have att 70 and crit%=17. When this formula is implemented in game, will he get nominal crit%=27 due to +10% from units att, or will only hero stats effect his crit% ?

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

So far situation was : lets for expl take knight unit , your attack = enemy defense, you make nominal 100% dmg = 16-18 physical. Your att higher 10points then enemy def = (16-1*(1 + 10*3,3%) = 21-24 phy dmg, etc. So on 30 bonus att you make 100% more dmg = 200% total, and on 60 bonus att above enemy def it`s 200% bonus = 300% total dmg of nominal value, 48-54 phy dmg for our knight expl. And that part is clear, and OK.

Your wording is correct!

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

And Q: does it give bonus after hero`s att/def or from 0 ? I ask this looking black dragon stats, he have att 70 and crit%=17. When this formula is implemented in game, will he get nominal crit%=27 due to +10% from units att, or will only hero stats effect his crit% ?

No - all unit stats are the way they are without including hero stats. So Black Dragon gets 17% krit with its 70 attack - those are its nominal values. A hero's stats are then additive to the unit's base and so if your hero has 14 Attack, then you'll add 2% to the Black Dragon's krit (17 + 2 = 19%). I know that seems like a small increase, but I think it is a good starting point because remember that this is double damage we're talking about. The other way would be to have increments of 10%, i.e. 14 Hero attack would be 20% greater than before, which could be 17 * 1.2 = 20.4 = 20% (rounded down), but a peasant has only 5 krit and so 5 * 1.2 = 6% (whereas if it was additive it would be 5 + 2 = 7%). So one way is better for units with lower krit and the other way is better for units with higher krit (crossover point is at 10 base krit).

The idea behind using Hero attack to determine krit before battle is that the Hero's attack / defense is static, whereas a unit's attack is dynamic during battle as you mention. That's where I thought increasing the damage cap for every 15 attack would be a great way to incorporate the dynamics of battle - as your unit's attack is typically increasing (say Frenzy) then instead of +200% total, they could do +300%, +400%, etc. of total based on your hero's attack at the start of the battle. I could also do it incrementally as well instead of big jumps (i.e. increase cap 100/15 per attack), but kind of liked treating it like Intellect's duration jump.

This discussion clearly demonstrates that there are a lot of things to think about with respect to this, but I think that my original idea is a great starting point and then we can go from there. I may also augment the krit and resist all by the hero's level - we'll see...

By the way, I'm thinking that at the end of the game seeing as I just finished my game with 70 Intellect is to target a player getting 70 for their primary stat. So that would be (using the orignal values) +10 to a unit's krit and +600% damage cap for a Warrior and +10 resist all and 1/7 maximum damage reduction for a Paladin. These sound pretty reasonable to me. If I augmented the krit and resist all by the hero's level, we could assume level 60 as the hero's max level and then that would be another 1.6 of those values, i.e. +16 krit / +16 resist all. This wouldn't be too bad either and maybe is better than the other way.

By the way, whatever mechanic is picked, will also be used by the enemy heroes...

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

Thx for clearing unit/hero stats , i cant check anything connected to games at the moment But i can still check game files in notepad, and think about ways to make player curse those who made mod that is killing their nerves
Max of 600% you mentioned is a bit much but for it hero would must have 90 attack so not really an issue, but try to make it so it`s not limited like it was so far on +60att to enemy def, and everything above is a waste. Defense bonus on other hand should be reachable with your change to spell system and stone skin/magic spring 80% def bonus , belt of victor etc, but it will be really situational. This will make neutral stacks a bit inferior, but battles with enemy heroes will be much more fun, and just maybe you`ll finally make mod that is truly impossible to do with no loss (hero with 50 intellect and 3x cast , and your rage/mana stop regenerating after 20 turn so no resurrecting

And Q : how did you plan to implement Tomes of Might&Magic in game here ? As items, and if so will they be for hero, or companion, and will they be removable or like kids in tLegend when equipped with no way to replace them (maybe only to destroy it). In tLegend it was nice idea, you get a kid and if it soothe you great, but if you play warrior and get intellect/mana bonus kid tough luck no adoption available
What i mean to say is if you acquire 1 tome(kid) next gets available after 10 battles and it`s random, or you can buy one you wish for 100.000 gold but next will cost 200.000 and 4th 300.000 or you just play battles and get some random like with kids.
Then you change whole army and drop all tomes and start over and then again every next cost 100k gold more starting from 0. I guess that would be tricky to make functional in game, but i thought how will player use this new tomes you want to import. In tLegend it was doable since there kids already had system working and you just made bunch of new kids and give them HoMM3 heroes images and it was great. But how you plan to do it for AP/CW ? No wife to surprise you every 10 battles with new addition to family

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Thx for clearing unit/hero stats , i cant check anything connected to games at the moment But i can still check game files in notepad, and think about ways to make player curse those who made mod that is killing their nerves

Sorry to hear that - must be driving you crazy not to play!

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Max of 600% you mentioned is a bit much but for it hero would must have 90 attack so not really an issue, but try to make it so it`s not limited like it was so far on +60att to enemy def, and everything above is a waste.

Yah - I hear you, that's why it just might be +50% per 15 Attaack rather than +100%. We'll have to see how it pans out during the alpha development, but +100% is technically the inverse of the defense relationship.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Defense bonus on other hand should be reachable with your change to spell system and stone skin/magic spring 80% def bonus , belt of victor etc, but it will be really situational. This will make neutral stacks a bit inferior, but battles with enemy heroes will be much more fun, and just maybe you`ll finally make mod that is truly impossible to do with no loss (hero with 50 intellect and 3x cast , and your rage/mana stop regenerating after 20 turn so no resurrecting

Yah - we'll see although I have some ideas on the neutral stack with respect to the "commander" unit mentioned previously. Also, they'll at least get the difficulty level bonus as well as the map location difficulty bonus and I'll probably implement a system to increase neutral stack caps based on map location difficulty as well - we'll see...

This will certainly make Stone Skin and Magic Spring more interesting / useful and also units with attack boosting abilities (like Ogres) will get a good boost in damage if the caps are higher.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

And Q : how did you plan to implement Tomes of Might&Magic in game here ? As items, and if so will they be for hero, or companion, and will they be removable or like kids in tLegend when equipped with no way to replace them (maybe only to destroy it). In tLegend it was nice idea, you get a kid and if it soothe you great, but if you play warrior and get intellect/mana bonus kid tough luck no adoption available
What i mean to say is if you acquire 1 tome(kid) next gets available after 10 battles and it`s random, or you can buy one you wish for 100.000 gold but next will cost 200.000 and 4th 300.000 or you just play battles and get some random like with kids.
Then you change whole army and drop all tomes and start over and then again every next cost 100k gold more starting from 0. I guess that would be tricky to make functional in game, but i thought how will player use this new tomes you want to import. In tLegend it was doable since there kids already had system working and you just made bunch of new kids and give them HoMM3 heroes images and it was great. But how you plan to do it for AP/CW ? No wife to surprise you every 10 battles with new addition to family

Now this is a good series of questions. Here is the plan, which I'm not sure how it's going to workout, but the idea was to simply add them as items and hopefully you'll get a handful of them in your game. This is certainly something to think about as I'll be adding roughly 160 items to the game with these kids and with all the other items, I have now idea how many might exist in a game.

Also, I was thinking about what class of item I should make them (i.e. Regalia, Artifact, etc.) and then just discovered that the item you get from the Caretaker can be put in any slot. So I was thinking about making it this way, but then I'm not sure how I'd limit the number you can place on your character. Originally, I was thinking of making them Artifacts, but then you'd only be able to equip 3 or 4 if you had the right companion / hero class.

I was also planning on making them upgradeable morale-based items, which I've never seen in the game before so I'm not sure if you can combine the two or how it works - need to do a lot of investigating here. The bonuses would start out like Rina's, but then you could fight the guardians and advance all the way to Xeona's / Neoka's bonuses for each tome. I have a lot of ideas here if I can figure out how to implement them all.

I was also planning on having them equipable so that they act just like items, but if you can put them in any slot then you could literally have a Tome in every item slot, so I'm not sure about this. I think we'll have to experiment with this and see how it goes. On the other hand, it may make sense to have them equipable in any slot, but once equipped you can't remove them - except by destruction as you mentioned. Hmmm... not even sure if that is doable, but who knows...

I'm actually about ready to start diving into this as I've finished my CW game and so now am looking at situational stuff (i.e. like the Brontor's) before I starting implementing features that require a restart.

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

Playing isn`t important so much ,as it frustrates me not to be able to do little things like checking att/def bonus from hero i asked you. Now playing is secondary, to trying to make some things work as i thought of and checking `will it blend` in game

There is no need to implement 160 items in game, if you make them upgradeable : every item have this part in it`s items.txt

price=3000
maxcount=2
level=1
race=neutral
use {}
mods {
defense=count,1
}

where maxcount is number of possible items of that type can appear in every game. So my idea is that you import some items like Tome of Gretchen , and give it 2 more lvl`s to upgrade - Tome of Kilgor and final Tome of Crag Hack (this is just expl, because all 3 of them have same basic bonus to dmg% to melee units and after that some other individual bonuses, though you might change upgraded tomes info in files to keep bonuses from previous so no to lose goblin/goblin2 bonus from Gretchen and black dragon Kilgor after upgrading to Crag Hack, or make it so previous bonuses do get lost, same as in composite items in CW holy ring/belt of victor/gloves of destroyer final item is great but you also lose some interesting bonuses when you make composite item from it components). I know this can be done with all tomes you plan to import but in this way there wont be in game shops with 20+ items. So try to get all kids from previous mod and see which could upgrade to higher bonus (i saw lots in Orcelyn/Xeona as i mentioned Gretchyn/Kilgor/Hack expl, but there are also lots of intellect/spell dmg kids that could be upgraded , or Erdamon to Boragus to Dessa (+1 all speed should be enough with all other bonuses), Drakon to Alkin to young Yog. There are bunch of possible upgrades, so only in first item should be maxcount=1, and in upgraded variant maxcount=0 so no upgraded tomes in game, only basic and player can fight them. This could reduce number of items in shops by 50% at least but there are problem of making upgrading battles for all those items, generic battles should work out so same fight for 1st upgrade same for all tomes, and 2nd lvl upgrade also same for all items only type of units change depending what `race` item is. As for making upgradeable items check my attachment in HoMM babies tread for tLegend post #93, about upgrading items, hope it will help. Moral for tomes i dont think will be necessary fighting them for upgrade should be enough.
And for number of tomes, no worries : player can use only 5 stacks in battles so no more unit related tomes will be equipped, and for other type non unit this game is random enough i dont think many other will appear in lots of games (expl in some game appearing 30 tomes, all upgradeable tough luck of it happening).

[MattCaspermeyer]

Hmmm...

You may be on to something here - you've got my hamster running on the wheel...

I see why you chose some of your upgrade paths, because of the advancements in skills like Offense, for example.

But I may have an even better idea germinating - stay tuned...

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