Not boring as in gameplay, but for waiting couple rounds to revive all units and using chargers and gloth armor to stop enemy heroes from killing those that i already returned to full stack. Boring part is that i use only 1-2 unit at that time to gather chargers and spirits never get exp in that part of battle.

About enemy hero mana regen, and spell costs, problem i had mostly was with magic shackles and blind. They constantly used it on my inquisitors no matter that i almost never attacked enemy units with them after 5th turn, just reviving, but enemy kept blind/doom on them all time.

Ok it`s interesting to play against stronger enemy, but my question is if they use player skill buildup, what are skill that give 2nd lvl unit dmg from basic 1-4 to 12-16? :-) I want those skills.

I finished game with :
Zerock 46lvl, Sleem 40 , Lina 36, Death 46. Here`s couple screens :
in hero screen image i showed new upgrade for heroism banner i made. I` not thinking what more items could use upgrading, since there are fewer items here then in AP/CW so at least i can add a bit stronger item of already existing for later in game (thought about upgrading memoirs for bonus exp% to give 15% hero/spirit exp , some other ideas still figuring out how to implement).
. . .cant upload image :-( here`s links for screenshots
http://www.imgplace.com/viewimg819/2...ishingarmy.png
http://www.imgplace.com/viewimg407/9...heroscreen.png
http://www.imgplace.com/viewimg853/2...ndmgdealer.png
http://www.imgplace.com/viewimg155/1...edicalunit.png
http://www.imgplace.com/viewimg36/4049/28spirits.png

Thanks - couple of questions...
 

Thanks for the screenies!

Okay, a couple of questions (well, okay more than a couple:-))...

1. Did you use the Horsemen's new Charge Ability a lot? What'd you think of it?
2. You made it to level 31 - how'd you do that? From level 30 to 31, its almost twice as much experience!
3. You had a lot of gold left - did you try to buy any Crystals or Runes from Tibold?
4. Is that Banner of Legends the item in the upper right (I can't see the pointer so I guess it is)?
5. So you ended up with Mirabella, but took the other wives earlier?
6. Did you just get Zerock and Reaper to level 46 at the end of the game or were they there for a while? Also it looks like you focused on Zerock and Reaper - is that true or were Sleem and Lina harder to level? (I've found that since Underground Blades and Black Hole give experience based on the number of units you damage that they give a lot of experience - same with Sleem Fishes, but that one's harder to damage a lot of units unless you start with a lot of rage).
7. Did you use your Ice Orb a lot?
8. Did you use Phoenix a lot?
9. Did you use Sacrifice to get that many Inquisitors? I'm trying to remember, but I don't think I've ever seen that many for sale...
10. What did you think of the Mana / Rage gain reduction throughout combat? Did you find it difficult to recharge your mana / rage later in the combat?
11. What did you think of the overall Leadership Reduction bonuses? Do you still think they may be too high and that you can recruit too many units from the bonuses? I'm thinking of making a minor adjustment that would drop the bonus a couple of percent, not too much, but its behavior is nonlinear.

Okay - I guess there's not much I can do there. Everyone plays that way!

Okay, interesting...

Hah! I bet you do! Well, not one skill does it, but I think it ends up being a combination of things. Enemy hero's get bonuses to their units and then they get skill bonuses. The bonuses to their units mimic items and then the skill bonuses mimic your skill tree. Everything is not quite 1-to-1, but they have a point system based on their level. I think the 1-4 to 12-16 is based on a number of bonuses - I think the +resistance damage that they get is applied first and then the difficulty level is applied last. Depending on class, they get +resistance damage based on a certain level. I'll go into this in more detail when I post the system. What I love about it is that it creates incredibly powerful heroes with incredibly powerful units. I think you can see that it took a lot of effort on your part to beat them, but the player's intellect is superior to the AI, so I think I've compensated fairly well.

Do you think your items are overpowered at all? Do you think you could have done no loss without them? Just curious - I kind of like your item upgrades - what did you do to come up with the upgrade stack sizes?

Lastly, what would your change list be for my mod? Every time I play the game, I create a change list and either make things tougher or try to improve aspects of the game. So let me know what you'd change and I'll start thinking about how to improve it some more...

Well, thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it!:grin:

/C\/C\

Oh, by the way... about Orcs.
 

Ok, I've implemented the Catapult's Boiling Oil attack as well as changed the Furious Goblin such that it has one Throw Axe charge and is furious.

Screenies provided below...

Anyway, I plan on enterring the beta phase soon since there doesn't appear to be any show-stopping game crashes that prevent the player from reloading and continuing...

/C\/C\

1) Yea charge is great, with rush skill, it makes horseman awsome in first round. I didnt use it allot since my griffins were always first in enemy lines, and after them i charge in with horseman and make interesting dmg and block enemy rangers. Later when i got marshal baton and had +3 moral for humans i stopped using it since crit is better them special ability any time. But great idea for it any way, it`s useful ability

2) It more then twice exp from 30 to 31 :-) 550000 30th vl, for 31 1150000exp, but you added on learning +30% exp , and +50% vs undead/demon for holy knight so it`s possible and i didnt even had 1 kid for sp_addexp_battle bonus :-( In my calculation i finished with about 1250000 exp roughly, but counter stops at reaching 31st lvl so it`s not important any way after that.

3) I didnt show mind skill tree, but there i took only 1 lvl for greed because in this game i never had problems with gold just there is no thing so expencive to spend huge amounts of it. Only time i save up is on start if some item for +10 runes is available in starting locations so i go around with cheap army waiting to buy it :-) Also runes i took all skills i needed (all might tree max lvl , in mind only left trade and greed on 1 lvl , magic also took what i needed so runes werent problem also)

4)Yes that was my testing of upgrading items. I dded upgrade for heroism banner so it gives 600lds +1 initiative for 1-4 lvl units. I made it so upgrading takes same battles as officer baton(500lds)-general baton(750lds) battle.

5) When i managed to kill Kraken on 11 lvl with no problems i took mirabella and saved game, then i rushed to dwarf lands and try to free gerda and did it also with little problem so i returned to sunset islands to see her kids (i had bunch of enemy left there since i only killed kraken and lucky james), but seeing gerda`s kids are so slow and low on initiative i decided to try diana from gerda savegame point (freeing dwarf prince was interesting on 15th lvl but i managed) and rushed off to finish frozen spring quest and take diana. Then things got interesting :-D Got allot thorns on disposal, took dryads in elven lands and some ents and returned to sunset islands and had fun with diana, but when fragile units started dying it got frustrating to spend 4-5 turns at end of each battle to revive them with gizmo/gloth armor combo). Then i load diana save and tried neoka just to see her kids wasnt impresed, and i returned to my old mirabella save and got again from 14th lvl :-) On 24 lvl i did xeona and try her out but again returned on mirabella at that 24 lvl save and played her till end ( had interesting kid combo Rion-great for tanking, Edric-sick griffins, Ingham-you saw my 650 inqisitors :-) , and Cutberth i could do without but what can i do when little bastard popped out of my darling wife :-P) Funny thing is i got Cutberth with my mage also. This is why i took me 2 weeks to finish game, all this returning to previous wife :-)
You made some weird kid bonuses : some give rage% and spell% bonus both. Why mixing them up, and no rage% + rage inflow%, and spell dmg%+mana% or int% or mana per turn . . .

6) I used Sleem almost always in first round for fishes, but after that only for gloth armor since poison spit and cloud are useless comparing to other spirits. Zerock is great since blades and falling rocks doesnt effect your army and wall is great for blocking when only small force of enemy heroes stay alive. Death is used as often as possible, his all skills are great but soul steal is to expensive on max lvl it cost 100 rage for 70% kill, it`s to much even for warrior. Lina i mostly for gizmo and chargers, orb i used only when borred and wanted to spend rage for no reaosn, since my army did most of work, there was no need for orb. but i regret i didnt lvlup shards. Here`s advice for other players take shards ppl and use it against enemy heroes that cast evli book(all undead heroes)/demon portal(Baal), because with shards you block battle arena and they cant cast summons. It was hard beating Baal with him summoning 2x8 archdemons/2x70 demons every turn.

8) Didnt use phoenix at all, come on Matt warrior dont need some pansy spells to win a battle :-P I mostly used gift, mass slow/haste, mass initiative. Didint fine blind in all game :-( that`s why i had to drop diana and her fragile army, they are great to play, but hard to keep alive at end of battle with no enemy disabling spells (fear/blind/target...).

9) Inquisitors i made from priests, as i said i used all runes that i need and then just collected them till end of game and. I took inquisitor ksill in mind tree when i decided to go humans till end with mirabella, imagine my surprise when ingham decided to show up :-)

10) With warrior rage is never problem, but mana got problematic couple of times for gift on my medical unit :-) With 650 inquisitors i revived some 7k hp for 15mana gift spell and it was easier to cast chargers then gizmo and hope little alien spaceship didnt go to kill only remaining enemy troop across all map, instead to heal my unit standing right in front of it :-D
Only problematic battles were raab soten, baal, xeona maybe 1/2 more. Surprisingly karador got raped fairly easy with human army (then i still used priests, didnt have knights at all) and priest/inquisitors on undead are great counter, crystal of darkness fall in 2nd turn, rest time i used to control karador army and keep mine alive, finished him in 12 turn.

11) I dont think any reduction in lds part is needed. Enemy all have 25 more stats then you, enemy heroes have 2/3 cast per turn with sick mana regen, +bonus like you from skills. You made reduction in mana/rage inflow during battle and planing to do same to moral/initiative in later turns. So no i dont think any more obstacles are needed :-) You mod is great fun to play, and think about moves you make. I did no loss just to see i i can , but other ppl wont play it that way, and some more lds reductions would turn them off this mod. Also lds reduction from kids arent sure thing, you can get 4 kids with unit specials or all 4 with some non army related bonuses so as you said before it`s all about probability and chance :-)

Only item i changed in my inventory is banner and just to see will in work, all other items are normal as in original settings. If knew how to add moral to items i would so it can lose moral and make you lead less units then max so you have to suppress items without visiting some castle to leave troops in reserve(this goes for +lds/-lds% items, because i used dwarf hammer throughout all taron and suppressed it at least 10 times thx for 23k exp :-) As for upgrading items i used already existing with most similar stats, as i said above for this banner most similar is officer to general upgrading fight so i used it.

Changes, hm . . . i asked in last post on 10th page about making something similar as healer skill bonus for priest/inquisitor in other skills for other units.
Expl : in glory since it lets you lead more troops adding bonus for summoning troop (dryad, ent, ancient ent, druid i say all elf units since they get least bonuses from other skills, and i think paladin mind tree can get a bit improvement).
Necromancy to add higher magic shackles lds for necromancer, more dmg for cursed ghost scream, maybe more dmg for dragon poison ability.
Archmage stronger totems (5/10/15% maybe) and 2/5/10% more magic dmg to units listed. And add beholders here instead dark commander, both beholders are magic unit they belong here (also giving more lds in hypnosis for evil would be great).
There is no skill to help dragons, my idea is to kick hyena,wolf and rest of small potatoes from dark commander and add dragons there.
How about adding fear (like wolf howl) to archdemons?) Here they dont have half talent, so at least they could be used for crowd controlling . . . even as i write this i see my next battle with Baal if this gets in game :-) That would be interesting fight with his summons.

And in the end great work with catapult/furious new abilities :-)
What do you mean beta phase ? Like sharing mod on tread, or start selling it on steam :-D

Awesome comments!
 

Great to hear! I'm actually surprised that they didn't add it in AP/CW, but rather gave the ability to the Cerberi and Brontors.

550,000 * 1.8 = 990,000 (and for +50% to undead/demon it will be less than that since there are not that many of them!), but okay I think maybe you got more experience from suppressing items multiple times, so I think I'll bump it to 2,000,000! That way you can't quite get there, but your experience will keep tallying!

Okay sounds great! I was wondering if you bought crystals for spells, but it looks like you had enough and you didn't need the runes so okay (I finish with that much gold, too, usually, although this time I'm hoping to buy more crystals for spells!).

Good job with Mirabella and her babies!

Well, you know, if the HOMM3 heroes had skills like that, then the bonuses fell that way!:)

That's a good one on Shards - I find that I always cast it and it gets in my way! So why not let it get in the enemy's way?!

You know, I didn't consider spamming it in the rage cost and rest, so I might have to revisit that ability's mana cost and rest. Hmmm...

That's cool - good to see you using mass slow / haste and mass initiative. I usually don't use those since I'm mostly finishing up with Demons and my Demonesses get the big boosts from Anga's Ruby!

Duh! Of course! I totally forgot about that!:-)

Yah, you have to be a little careful with Gizmo! It will still attack the enemy army if it considers them to be a bigger threat. Gizmo is great for res'ing higher level units, but not so good for a couple of level 1 or 2 units (because you can do that!).

Good to hear that you're using Chargers - they give good mana and rage until the first 50% drop so you have to use them early in the battle! At least, though, they store the mana / rage boost when they're cast so that you can save them for later if you can protect them from being used.

For Gift, at least you have to have it at Level 2, and you probably noticed you can't use it on Level 5 units.

Yah - I learned my lesson with Raab Sotten last game, where I released him too early and had to fight him when I was level 23, I think! That one was tough!

Karador was kind of a let down - I think I'm going to do something with that crystal! I was expecting a better battle from him last playthrough so when I get to him this time, I'm going to make the crystal do better stuff! Mass sheep anyone? Okay, just kidding!:grin:

But I'll think of something!

I'm also thinking of giving Haas a unique spell or two. Can you say summon dragons!

Good - I really wasn't looking forward to changing it.

It's really kind of cool how as you're playing you start to realize you need all those guys for the end!

Good idea for adding morale to it - I'll see if I can figure out how to do that so you won't get away with using it without consequence!

Yep - noted!:-)

That's a good idea with Glory! I think I'll have it apply to all units that summon backup units.

I didn't think there's a leadership requirement for magic shackles, but maybe you mean Animate Dead? Those are all good ideas - I'll have Necromancy give bonuses to Undead unit abilities.

Ah - you're reading my mind! You don't know how close I've been to adding Beholders to the Archmage list! I figured people, would say they're not mages! But they are! Okay, done! I'll keep them in Dark Commander, too, though, so they'll get both bonuses!

I did consider adding Dragons to Dark Commander, but thought they didn't need any help and the Emerald ones kind of prevented me from doing it. Why not add them, though? I'll leave the hyena and wolf since they need all the help they can get, but I'll add all the dragons!

I've been thinking about what to add to Archdemons - Fear has always been a good choice, but I'm thinking of giving them the Sheep ability. I think I'd make it have just 1 charge, but that would be potentially interesting. I think I'd have their Fear also work like the Devilfish's where it is applied post-hit otherwise it is the same as wolf-cry, but maybe that's okay? Or give them mass sheep! Ha! Ha! 1 charge and non-chargeable too since Gift only works on level 1-4 units! Hmmm...:evil:

Thanks! It took my a while to make that spinning axe icon and the color might still be a little off, but it's okay for now.

I think I might have an idea for Ogres - Shrunken Head! It basically would work similar to Pygmy, but also with a chance to confuse the unit or something like that possibly... Too bad I can't make it just shrink the unit's head! That'd be cool!

Well, I was thinking of sharing the mod on the thread soon...

It'd be nice to be able to sell it! But unfortunately, the HOMM3 pictures are copyrighted so I couldn't do that without removing them.

Thinking of the future for modders, though, I don't think it would be unrealistic to ask $0.99 just like an iTunes song! Money doesn't grow on trees after all!:grin:

Well, thanks for all the great comments - I've got a lot of work to do implementing your ideas!

But it's Christmas so I'm going to try to relax... just a little bit!;)

/C\/C\

But consider this : you fight in order game is planed Darion-Taron-Elenia (all battles here will get you to some 300-350k exp)-Undead lands-Demonis-Orc lands (this last 3 locations have 600-650k exp, double more then first half of game), so later locations have maybe lees battles but in demonis-undead lands every battle gave me around 6000exp with normal creatures, not heroes. And i calculated all quest rewards get to about 200k exp.All item suppressing i did is less then 40k (23k from dwarf hammer, some 5k elven crown and maybe 15k for all others, marshal baton doesnt lose moral, my legendary banner only 1300 exp worth, suppressing blackthorn crown 300 exp worth only nuisance later in game)so it was only so i can use item ,not as source of more exp.

For warrior crystals arent much needed, army is my main source of costs since no much use from sacrifice. First time i played this game i got excited when i ran on dragons in shop and spend all gold on them with no idea how actually to use them (12 black dragons, 15 red 15 green . . . that allot of gold) now i bought 200 knights/horseman 500k gold all of them, 650 inquisitors 200k gold so all together my whole army didnt cost more then 1-1,2 mil.

Rage for warrior isnt problem with 200 rage pool my regular course was piranha(45 rage)-black hole(60rage)-blades/falling rocks(40/45rage)-maybe rage draining/gizmo(15/70 rage) and then chargers/gloth armor. All this with anger and inquisitors as rage generators isnt problem. Mage on other side i had completely different spirits usage but that`s way it supposed to be.

I didnt used any 5th lvls, but if i did what 5th lvl unit have some skill that need gift for it ? No rune mages for revive, or ogres with drain in tL :-)

No need for unique spell, just make him use illusion. If demon heroes can summon archdemons why not him use illusion on his 5th lvl army. Here you cant use dispel on summoned units, so it will make his battle a bit harder. As it is now many enemy heroes use mass shackles or doom which isnt big problem, but those that cast sheep/blind often are pain in ass.
Also did you changed hypnosis from original settings ? Now it give`s control of % of players lds so for mage it`s absolutely useless, and i dont think any self aware warrior would use hypnosis on enemy :-) so how about buffing hypnosis a bit.

I didnt think kick small units off, but be honest how many games you play using hyena/wolf/even spiders, snakes are interesting but rest of animal kingdom arent much interesting to use (just my opinion). Dragons on other hand are great for crowd controlling with fear and esier to keep alive with gizmo.

Try finding in AP/CW files how does demon/executioner post hit fear works, and just copy it here. Wolf howl on them would be bad now that i think about it, but sheep with reload 4 would be better (1 charge not even useful) and this way if you play with them you can use them for controling enemy later in battle for saving your army. Or playing against them makes you focus archdemons to stop them from perma wool your army :-) If they use their 1 charge you no need to fear them any more, but if you knew next turn it will be recharged ...well you get my hint. This would make 5x1 archdemon army interesting to fight against :-D

Great work so far Matt, enjoy holidays and get rest before going with this on AP/CW field :-D

Enjoy your Christmas!
 

I guess you're right since you did it!:-)

I'm still going to bump up to 2,000,000, though...

Yah, I wasn't sure which spells you spent your crystals on - plus which school or schools did you get to Level 3?

Yah, you said it - different play styles for each class. I like that you got your rage pool to 205! Reaping is pretty expensive, but when you can do over 20K damage towards the end of the game, it should cost that much!

By the way, Poison Rain gets very potent once you level it up, but it is hard to get it to do all that damage without hurting your own units!

I'm not sure why the developers decided to make Fishes and Poison Rain damage allies, but it obviously makes the use of those abilities more strategic.

You know, they didn't put Poison Rain in CW.

You know, I don't really use any either! At least later in the game. I do enjoy using Cyclops when you have a chance to get them and they work well with any of the early wives really. I also use Giants with Gerda when I get her. I also got Rashka last game and had Red Dragons with his bonus, but only used them in certain situations because if they all got killed then even Gizmo couldn't resurrect them!

The Phoenix in CW has Resurrection, but not for level 5's. I haven't added it in my mod, but have considered it many times. I think I'd make it available for level 5's in CW. I've also considered a "starburst" ability that sends out flames in every direction healing (maybe even resurrecting) allies and damaging enemies when it dies for real the second time. Just some thoughts I've had...

Well, right now all the level 5's abilities reload, but I'm thinking of giving them charges so that they run out of them during long combats.

You know, Haas has Phantom! I'm not sure why he doesn't use it - I might have to look at the AI scoring for that spell, but I know I've seen other heroes use it!

I did fiddle with this aspect of the game and I'll tell you it was tricky working with it. Looks like I may need to work on it some more...

You know, you're right - I think I just need to give it more power and it'll be okay. It doesn't scale as high as I thought it would since it is encumbered by the Mage's lower leadership, but if I give it more power it should be okay...

Not very many - that's why I've tried to help them out! At least you had Royal Snakes at the end!

I do use Fire Spiders, though, if I get Calh from Xeona! They're fun then - I like using their web ability! That was a couple of plays back...

You know, I agree with you here! After I typed the 1 charge post I went for a drive to do some Christmas shopping and kept thinking that it would be pretty useless if it was only 1 charge, but if it was reloadable, just as you mentioned, then it would be a force to be reckoned with!

I've basically already done the fear - it is the same for Bone Dragons, I just need to have it be just fear or I've also been thinking of a kind of pain mirror (which I guess is similar to the Brontor) for them as well. I've also been thinking of making it multi-effect like the Bone Dragon's new Chaos Ability. Fear, Pain Mirror, Pygmy, those are some of the effects I'm thinking about...

Anyway, time to relax a little bit and do some more thinking about some of this stuff and decide how I want to implement some of the suggestions you've made in previous posts...

Thanks, you too!

Yep, onto AP/CW hopefully soon!:grin:

/C\/C\

Well only in skills is 100 rage, 25 on start, i ate 9 rats so in all game of 31 lvls and some altars i got 60 rage, not much.
And poison rain is great for any range army combination, but not so much when you go melee build. To much problems saving your units from it. Maybe if i played undead it would be useful.

Resurrection on 3rd lvl phoenix would be nice to give him use later in combat if he survives at least to help reviving troops, instead just standing there :-)

Hypnosis spell you made really weak, i set it on 20/40/60%, it`s lower then in original but still useful in game for mage with higher intellect.

Small animal team (wolf,hyena ...) isnt much fun since they dont have any interesting abilities/talents. But in AP/CW i had fun playing spider army undead/fire/cave/poison spider with belt for dmg, and shield that gave them moral/initiative/speed/and +9att/deff. But here in tL it`s just not fun to use those units :-(

I havent seen that new bone dragon ability you mention, but is it like pugmy or plague or . . .? Fear for archedemons would be nice, same as demon/executioner in AP/CW. And for bone dragons maybe 30% plague on attack.

Probably my most frequent use of Cloud is once it gets up in the 13+ count of attacks: that's good for *two* turns of casting Magic Spring on the unit I've got sitting under it. (Possibly while Invisible. And most likely a Vampire of some sort.)

Or when you've got a last no-retaliation enemy unit surrounded by thousands of Thorns, you put a Magic Spring on one at the end of one turn, on another at the beginning of the next turn (I'm assuming that either you are not a Mage, or you are and have already used up all of your Higher Magic capabilities), and then park the cloud over it to generate +10 per pulse several times.

I don't really CARE about the damage the cloud inflicts, even to enemies. All I care about about is that it's a fairly minimal (survivable) amount being inflicted on ME, to trigger the Spring. :)

@ShuiMienLung
It`s nice idea, but not really possible in this mod. Matt changed mana/rage inflow here so at round 20 all mana/rage is 0 no matter how much mana spring you use it just wont give you anything in return when enemy hit that unit, or making any amount of dmg wont give you new rage after 20th turn. So what you accumulated up until then, has to be enough. It makes sense, the longer battle is your/enemy troops are more tired and less angry (rage) so it`s great feature of this mod.
Also some rage spirit skills are changed, poison cloud among them so now it makes higher area dmg then before, but 2000-4000 dmg, 1/2/3 attacks at max lvl for 70 rage. Even in original game setings i dont remember how many time i cast poison cloud just to see if flying around arena dmging my own troops and never even touching enemy army :-D
Give it a try ShuiMienLung , ask Matt to send you mod files and have fun. He said he`ll start working on changing mod for armored princess soon. I guess just when he finishes if, new KB-WotN game will get out so he can start on adaptation for it also (there are going to be valkyris so marrying them and having kids will be same as here) :-P

9 Rats!
 

9 rats! Wow! I usually get 7 + 1 (purchase), so you must be pretty persistant with those dwarves! I think I saw somewhere in the game files that the limit was 10.

Yah, I've thought of it many a time! Perhaps the Phoenix needs to die once to enable it even - or maybe they sacrifice their life (lives) and resurrect by the amount of their health left. Hmmm...

Yah, you know I made it similar to Divine Armor, but if it's only 60% or so at the end of the game then it's not that useful. Your values are pretty good as Level 3 would be about 180% at the end of the game for a good mage which would be around 16-17K Leadership * 1.8, which would be 28.8-30.6K Leadership - that sounds about right! Maybe even 25/50/75... for a little extra...

Hyena's Preparation is pretty decent with a large stack! Did you know that the Hyena was originally an Orc unit? It is pictured with the Orcs in one of the game wallpapers and grouped with the orc units in some of the game files!

I've thought of changing them to an Orc unit a couple of times, but left it as is since they don't have an all race bonus, but it would kinda be neat for them to get a +1 Morale from the Orc Commander Morale bonus.

Okay, I've attached a screenie of the new Bone Dragon "Chaos" ability!

You can see that they have an equal chance of Fear, Plague, Weakness, Doom, Sheep, or Curse, but the list gets smaller if the defender is immune to that kind of spell (like Plague has no effect on Demons) and the percent chance is based on level of the defender, too. In the modding example post where I discuss implementation of the ability those percentages were 100% for level 1 and 25% for level 4, but I changed it to what you see in the screenie: 80% for level 1 and 20% for level 4 that way it doesn't always happen.

Fear is defininitely going to be an ArchDemon post-hit effect and Sheep a reloadable ability. I'm still thinking about what else to pair with the post-hit effect and I'm most likely going to make it 100% chance, not different chance based on level like I did with the Bone Dragon...:-)

/C\/C\

Yumm, yumm those tasty rats. It was funny first time i went to lucky james mines i just try and got 4 rats in a row form same dwarf so i stick to it and got 8, and 1 more in giant fist below taron.

Phoenix need something, if he survives battle sacrifice (resurrection) would be great.

Yes hypnosis you made was really weak Matt 5/10/20% come on why would any1 spend 50 mana to take control of enemy unit 20% of his lds :-) 22/44/66 with intellect bonus will be just right.

Here`s crazy idea for those mountains of gold most ppl end game with : in dwarf prince that sell runes be possible to reset items (gladiator sword, banner of faith, anciant amulet, ring of mind) for some 500-750k gold, you`ll get runes but still need to carry item in 50 battles. Or giving his inventory blood potion from AP/CW for 150 lds, with higher price every time you buy it like with runes/crystals. Would it be possible to hard code him to always have those items available, like his runes/crystals are now ?

Hmmm... interesting!
 

I like to put ketchup on mine! They're a little crunchy, though!;)

Yah - it would be a good use for him when you're sitting there healing units...

Yah - that sounds great - should be able to work well towards the end of the game.

This sounds really interesting! I have no idea how to do it, but you'd think that there's gotta be a way to do it! I'll see what I can find out about this!

Probably 1,000,000 to reset the item or maybe 500-750K like you mention. Yah, I guess I've forgotten about that potion - that would be interesting...

I'll see what I can figure out with respect to your suggestion - I'm not sure if it's possible, but it seems like there should be a way...

/C\/C\

Come on Matt , you added new wives with bunch of kids, and you say adding 1 item in Tibold inventory would be problem :-) Adding item in game is no prob, only copy from AP/CW items.txt en_items.lua and image, how to add it in Tibolds shopping choice is prob. It should working same way as for runes i guess every time you buy potion for +150 lds(or more) it cost 50% more starting with 5k gold maybe (it would come up to 130k gold for 900 lds, and some 5million gold to lead 1 more black dragon 2250lds if you have glory 3lvl, so who have that much gold for throwing away go for it). At least this way there will be reason to take trophy skill more then 1lvl.
And adding those 4 items 3 for +10 runes and +3 int ring in his castle inventory as obligatory item, since i have no idea how to `reset` those items battle counter. But then their price will have to change, if game random them in some other shop it wont cost 1000000 gold :-)

Found miss in xeona children :
kid_ignatius you gave +2 attack imps 2 times.
kid_fiur you gave all melee 20% bonus dmg, and then +20% more to all units. Is this planed or ...?
kid_ignisa same as for fiur +10% melee dmg, and +20% for all units.
kid_demeer sp_spell_defense=count,10 , sp_spell_attack=count,10 What does this do?

gerda children :
kid_ordwald +1 initiative , 2 times mistake or you planed +2 initiative ?

neoka children :
kid_monere kid_pasis same as for xeona`s fiur/ignisa +10% dmg, then +20% more magic dmg. Planed or ...

eng_homm3_babies_neoka in itm_kid_mephala_hint text string change [armorer2] to [armor2] , because game freezes when mephala is born with current settings.

eng_homm3_babies_orcelyn :
kid_gretchyn you wrote [goblin1] and [goblin21] error ?
kid_jabarkas [orc1] and [orc21] also error ?

Interesting thing about Hypnosis
 

You know what? The hypnosis spell does not use its power function properly.

Typically, each spell has a function to compute its power (pwr_spell_name_attack) and then the hint uses that function to show its values.

Well, as it turns out, hypnosis wasn't using its hint, so it was not even working properly! Looks like the developers didn't link the cell selection function to the spell's power function.

So, obviously, I'm going to fix it, but I'll have to check it to see what it was really doing since the unit selection script (calccells_hypnosis) was doing its own thing!

So even though I had a method for computing its power, it was ignoring what I was doing!

Okay, anyway, just a curious thing about hypnosis in that it wasn't coded properly and I'll fix it then evaluate power values...

/C\/C\

Same as for hypnosis, problem with demon portal 5/10/20% of heroes lds summon, to low. But here big problem will come when battle with enemy heroes, as i said Baal summon 2x8 archdemons per turn with current settings.
If we change spell that would be much more, ad MUCH bigger problem to defeat him :-)
Also i think gift of life is a bit OP, but you be the judge of that. I just wanted to check how it works and consider that my starting lds was 12k (with warrior this would be even more ridiculous) screen_1.
When i try my old mage save, every time i fight enemy hero we both cast phoenix spell. Wasnt it set in original that only 1 phoenix can be present on battle field?

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen that many Royal Thorns!
 

Wow!, how'd that screenie happen? The out of control code should have kicked in somewhere...

I'll also look into Demon Portal, but I did do a lot of testing on that one. Since it is based on leadership, enemy heroes have much higher leadership than you do and that's why you saw Baal summoning such big stacks.

I think 5/10/20 will produce pretty close to 100% leadership towards the end of the game at level 3 for a mage, which is pretty good for a permanent stack. Even 50% for an enemy hero can be big stacks just because of the their leadership (I think 40K leadership for an enemy hero is pretty normal - especially with the impossible difficulty modifier).

By the way, I'm in the midst of coding up the Archdemon's special abilities.:-)

Sheep seems to work okay, 5 charges with cast every 5 turns is what it's looking like right now.

So far for their attack spells I've got: Fear, Helplessness, Pygmy, Magic Shackles, and Blind.

This one's been trickier than the Bone Dragon's because I need to add the spell after the enemy retaliates otherwise Blind would automatically cancel. I'm also having trouble with Pygmy - the attacked units don't go small! Hmmm.... seems like a weird problem with the Attack.act_small function.:confused:

Hopefully I can get it working, or I'll have to drop Pygmy...:(

/C\/C\

It took me 60 turns, but when i saw that summoned units doesnt effect lds cap i decided to see how far will it go. Got bored around 60-65 turn, still hilarious summon for 800k lds and over 1 milion dmg :-), and . But as said warrior would get even higher numbers since his starting lds is highter. Same thing happen with illusion on ghosts on 3rd lvl it lasts 5 turns with high enough int and kid_charna. When they go over lds limit you still keep control on them.
Any idea about phoenix spell ? When both you and enemy hero cast it ?

1 Phoenix per side
 

Summoned units don't effect Leadership cap?! Wow I didn't know that one! I know that they are treated differently (they are not affectd by morale, for example), but didn't realize summon cap was also in the list! I'll see if there is a way to fix that - I know that morale is ignored on temporary (and all enemy) units no matter what you set it to.

I think the rule is 1 Phoenix per side - I saw in the code where it checks which side it's on. It is probably best that way, otherwise, it would be easy to kill the other's side's Phoenix by casting your own.

Also with Gift, I agree with you there - I'll increase its cost a bit.

With Archdemon, it looks like Pygmy just won't work for a post-hit effect as I can't get it to be small no matter what I do. I'm now thinking about whether I should give them both Sheep and Pygmy as abilities and still have the other spells as post-hit effects if I can't figure out a way for Pygmy to work properly as a post-hit effect...

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Screenies of new Archdemon and Ogre Abilities / Features
 

Okay, here's the screenies of the new Archdemon and Ogre Abilities and Features.

The new Archdemon ability is Amalgamation - essentially an equal chance to cast Blind, Pygmy, or Sheep on a target.

The new Archdemon feature is the post-hit Odium feature - essentially an equal chance to cast Fear, Helplessness, or Magic Shackles on a unit after attacking.

I came up with Amalgamation after I couldn't get Pygmy to work properly as a post-hit effect.

The new Ogre feature is the post-hit effect Clobber - it has a chance to stun the target and if stun is successful then it also has a chance to knock the target unconscious.

I'm also thinking about doing something similar with Giants since their club is bigger than the Ogre's.

/C\/C\

Okay... that's a HUGE change. :) (Although I also understand the reasoning behind it.) I've been following the thread, but have not requested the Mod. I'll wait for the open release, since this sounds like a huge one.

Does Lina's "charger" ability still work in this case, though? Reaper's "rage drain"?

@ShuiMienLung Grab it while it`s still fresh :-) I recommend this mod to all KB fans, it`s really interesting, with lots new ideas.
As for chargers/rage drain it works after 20(25turn for hero fights) but wont give you any rage so what rage you accumulated up until that turn that`s amount you`ll have to manage with. Same goes for mana, after 20/25 turn no more mana regen, no matter what items/skills you have. You`r hero and his army gets tired after that and just stop gaining mana/rage :-)

Thanks for finding these errors!
 

That's what I mean! Tibold's inventory is the tricky part...

Imps - fixed!:-)
Fiur - Melee Damage: +20%, +1 Fire; All Units Fire Damage: +20%, Resist All: +5%. This is ok.
Ignissa: Melee Damage: +10%; Ranged Unit Attack: +20%; All Units Fire Damage: +20%, Resist All: +5%. This is ok.
Deemer: in SPELLS.TXT, sp_spell_attack are attack spells where there is a parameter of attack=1; sp_spell_defense are defense spells where there is a parameter of defense=1.

Attack spells are (this is also in the kid's description if you get them): Healing (for damage to Undead), Magic Pole Axe, Dragon Slayer (adds to the damage of your units against Dragons), Phoenix (does damage), Demon Slayer (same as Dragon Slayer), Lightning, Holy Rain (for damage to Undead), Precision (adds to unit damage), Berserker (adds to unit damage), Pain Mirror, Trap, Ghost Sword, Geyser, Fire Arrow, Poison Skull, Greasy Mist, Hell Breath (adds to unit damage), Ice Snake, Fire Ball, Evil Book (same as Phoenix), Kamikaze, Fire Rain, and Armageddon.

Defense spells are (in kid's description): Stone Skin, Phoenix (since it defends), Divine Armor, Magic Spring (since it adds to unit defense), and Evil Book (same as Phoenix).

Note that stuff in () are just my comment for why they are that type of spell and don't appear in the kid's description (just the spell names do).

Should be +1 init, +1 speed. Copy, paste, but forget to change keyword - whoops! This is now fixed!:)

Monere: Melee Damage: +10%; +1 Speed; All Unit Magic Damage: +20%, Magic Resistance: +20%. This is ok.
Pasis: Melee Damage: +10%; Ranged Unit Attack: +20%; All Unit Magic Damage: +20%, Magic Resistance: +20%. This is ok.

Great catch - armor2 is the correct value - fixed!:)

We got keep an eye out for these as I fixed Josephine (for her, mysticism was misspelled) in the update I sent you on the 28th! Unfortunately, these are hard to find unless the game freezes or you are a very, very good proof reader! By the way, if the game freezes when cursoring over an item, then there is an error in the template (i.e. a misspelling in this case) for the item's language file.

These are okay, because they refer to Goblins level 1 (goblin1) and Furious Goblins Level 1 (goblin2 is Furious Goblin and then level 1 = goblin21). Same for orc1 (Orcs, level 1) and orc21 (Veteran Orcs, level 1).

Thanks for checking these, though, as errors here will cause the game to lockup. I checked all "generator codes" by copying them to an existing child and making sure they worked and looked good in the game; however, if I mistyped the name than that is a problem. I'm usually pretty good with copying and pasting the names (because of this very problem), but every once in a while, I have to type it in if it is too much trouble to search for a baby with the same or similar bonus or it is new.

These fixes will go into the next update - thanks!:grin:

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Temporary Unit Leadership Not Check Fixed!
 

Okay, this issue with respect to temporary summons was quite tricky to fix (the game's built-in Leadership checking code does not check temporary units!) as trying to use the existing Out of Control function would not work (it simply would return them to your control as I think it has a bug in that it doesn't check if temporary units are over the Leadership limit).

I had to create a new function that deals with temporary units going over the Leadership limit, but it seems to work okay. This was very tricky to implement!

This will go into the next update...

/C\/C\

Almost gave up on this!
 

I almost gave up on this one!

I had everything working, but the hint. As it turns out (I had a similar problem when implementing the Thorn's Gift of Life) certain abilities' hints are hard coded in the game.

The fact that it is called "cure" means that it has a built-in hint generator and it cannot be overriden! This was giving me fits all day today! So I called it "cure2" so I could use a custom hint - whew!

Screenies of the implementation are below.

Damage might be a little low, but we'll see how it goes - base heal is 2 and then priests do 2x damage to undead so base damage is 4. In your example, their Heal would be 2800 and then damage to undead would be 5600. If you had your Healer skill at level 3, you'd get an additional +30%, which would be 3640 healing and 7280 damage. That seems pretty reasonable for right now. Note that if the total cure value isn't consumed when healing then a charge isn't used - we'll have to see how that goes. I didn't put a reload value, but it may be a good idea to give them one. Also with respect to charges, it might be better to just let it consume a charge but give them a few more charges. Hmmm...

/C\/C\

New Giant Feature - Thump!
 

Okay, here's a screenie of the new Giant Thump feature.

The idea behind this is that the Giant is able to knock out opponents (most likely so that it can take them back to its lair and eat them - especially EGD's:-P)

Highly experimental, it'll be provided in the next update...

/C\/C\

To Do List...
 

Here's a list of things I'm currently working on, thinking about implementing, or simply dreaming about implementing...

• Change Undead Resurrection to Necro Call. Done!:)
• Check ArchDemon Amalgamation ability from human player's viewpoint. Fixed minor issue - done!:)
• Check Priest's new Healing (cure2) from AI viewpoint and make sure AI can use it properly. Done!:)
• Go through Fatt_Shade's item upgrades.
• Check Giant's new Thump from human player's viewpoint.
• Check Ogre's new Clobber from human player's viewpoint.
• I tried enabling Thorn's Gift of Life when they are cast on a corpse, but I felt it made resurrecting plants too easy. Still under consideration though if I drop resurrection value. Parked for now - the way it works is okay!:)
• I experimented a bit with Necromancy skill and Undead ability bonuses; I've done the following::)
  • Neromancers can now resurrect Undead with their Raise Undead ability if you have the Necromancy skill
  • Necromancer Raise Undead power is improved by the Necromancy skill
  • Ghost Cry damage is increased by the Necromancy skill
  • Doing the other Undead abilities is more difficult because the damage is computed internally, but I may still be able to give the ability a bonus by adding a "hack" to compute the damage when done, but I think for now I'm not going to do this because the only other ability I was thinking about doing would be the Bone Dragon Poison Cloud and it seems the implementation would be a a bit kludgy. I may just look at the damage done and increase it to be more in line with the other Dragon's if warranted.
• I'm still brainstorming (Veteran) Orc abilities...
• Go through and experiment with some of Fatt_Shade's other comments.
• Tolerance level 2 no longer gives +1 Morale all as the bonus has been partially shifted to Diplomacy.
• Diplomacy - now also increases morale of races:
  • Level 1: Dwarf Morale: +1
  • Level 2: Dwarf and Elf Morale: +1
  • Level 3: Dwarf, Elf, and Orc Morale: +1
• Keeper of Light - now also acts similar to Dark Commander except for troops of the light:
  • Level 1: All Elves, Dwarves, Humans except Robbers, and Griffins: Defense: +2
  • Level 2: Same group: Defense: +4, Speed: +1
  • Level 3: Same group: Defense: +8, Speed and Initiative: +1
• Trade - could aid Dwarves, aren't Dwarves greedy? Just a thought...
• Learning now also adds to the critical hit of the hero's troops: +5, +15, +30%
• Shaman Dancing Axes - I think I'm going to leave this be for now...:)
• Shaman Healing Totem - look into other bonuses possibly...:)
• Phoenix Resurrection - transfers its life to another unit's (any troop) and dies. If it has another life, then you can still resurrect it and use the ability again on same or another troop and then that will kill the Phoenix for good.
• Gerda's Ordwald's HOMM3 skills are unknown, so I may change his Dwarf bonus to an Offensive bonus so that Gerda will have 1 baby with Offense! I'll keep his +1 init and +1 speed, though.
• Baby upgrades?! Not sure how to implement, but the idea is that maybe after X battles, you can upgrade a baby to the next level (i.e. Rina baby from 6 to 7 (so it'll have bonuses like a Feanora baby)), by fighting the baby's keepers (just like upgradeable items).
• Wife upgrades?! Same as above, but with wives after Y battles.
• This is probably not doable, but experience system for babies that would allow you to select new skills for your babies after they level up! This would be similar to how it worked in HOMM3!

Thoughts?

/C\/C\

Nice work on priest changed healing, but i dont think there is need to set it so it wont consume charge if not healed unit by full amount because with gift lvl 1 it`s easy rechargeable and in early game when you dont have lots of priests it will mostly use their heal to max.

Any plan to change order on gift of life for plants, so it wont consume your plan to resurrect summoned ?

Diplomacy/trade/trophy . . .yes i agree that this skills are among least useful, but have no idea how to improve them. You thought to buff up dwarfes not bad, but what did you think to do with them ? Simple stats improvement (att/def/speed/initiative...) or ?

Shaman dancing axes works great, so why would you make totems resurrect also ? 1 res skill per race is enough, if totems also revived units it would be to much, maybe set them to cure units(remove plague, pugmy, sheep etc). Or totems resurrect, and axes stun/shock targeted unit ?

Upgrading kids - nice idea, but every upgrade only part of their bonus not all of them, same for wives (also could you try making some code to set this to real life: upgrading girlfriend/wife to better model after some time together :-P ).

Brainstorming Diplomacy, Trade, and Keeper of Light...
 

Okay - I think you're right here. I'll make it consume a charge no matter what. I think I'll give them a reload time so that they can use it every other turn if they wish. I might give them 1 more charge for a total of 3, still thinking about that one...

I did a little experiment to see if I knew how to do it and I can. I tried it out a little bit and it seemed too easy to resurrect your plants.

Let me clarify this a little bit - only Thorns and Thorn Warriors that use their Sowing on a corpse are allowed to endow the new Thorn with their Gift of Life enabled.

Dryads, (Ancient) Ents, and Royal Thorns were not affected. Like I mentioned previously, using corpses controls use so I won't change it for these troops otherwise it would be too easy to res all your plants.

I'm going to park this idea for a while and let it sit as I've had no issues myself with the way it works now, but at least I know how to do it if it is warranted to be changed based on additional feedback...

Not sure, just brainstorming ideas. For Diplomacy, I'm considering another -5% Leadership Requirement for each race, since more of them would be interested if your relations were better, but with all the other Leadership Reduction bonuses, I might have to do just 2% (but then that hardly seems worth it). So what stats would improve due to better relations? Morale? That might be interesting to do that for each race: Level 1: Dwarf Morale +1, Level 2: Elf Morale +1, Level 3 Orc Morale +1. That might be intersting...

For Keeper of Light, I was thinking of making it sort of like the counterpart to Dark Commander, perhaps. So it might have similar bonuses except for good troops. As a start, Good troops would be all Elves. Who else? Are Dwarves considered good or neutral? I think humans would be neutral, except for maybe Priests and Inquisitors. Need to think of good unit list...

For Trade, I'm not sure about that one. Would any units benefit from trade? Cheaper unit costs would be neat! Can I implement that? Don't know how, but sounds like a cool idea! Other ideas? Cheaper items...

You know to go along a bit with your idea to have Tibold recharge special items, would be to simply make some items more expensive! But I guess that's too easy to do, so I'll think about how to implement the Tibold idea more...

Good point, it just seems like they should do more. I've considered removing penalties - will have to look into how to implement as that would at least be a good thing for them...

I'll put that in the "dreaming" category!:-P

/C\/C\

Yea i agree with you on gift of life point, since it only works that way for simple thorns. No need to change it.

For trade/trophy check - http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=16919
The rider had interesting idea to give some bonuses after battle depending what skills you have on what lvl. blood potion for warrior bloodlust skill/mana potions for mage high magic skill. In arena.lua find this string if (Game.Random(1,100) <= tonumber(Logic.hero_lu_skill("alchemist"))*5) then , and check file from that point.

Totems, how about this ; ice totem slows enemy and dmg on end of turn, so why not make healing totem give initiative/deff/res or any other bonus to ally units in AoE ? With healing it should be enough for passive bonus every turn.

As for upgrading wives (seriously now :-) , how is Triggers upgrading work in AP/CW for his higher crit% for archer units ? You get that bonus after battles with him as companion, so it possible to get that mechanics for wives also. And exp system for kids, i`m not sure that would be doable. How to assign exp after battles, or share part of your own exp with your kids? And then you pick what bonus you want to upgrade when kid lvlup ... to complicated i think :-(

I`m off for new year, c ya in couple of days ppl :-) Happy New Year, have fun :-D

Necro Call Resurrect Undead with Necromancy Skill Implemented!
 

Okay, I've implemented the switch from using Resurrection to using Necro Call to resurrect (permanently reanimate) your Undead troops - screenies are attached below.

This was a lot of effort and very tricky to implement!

The way it works is:

• If you don't get the Necromancy Skill then it works same as before.
• If you do get the Necromancy Skill then:
  • If the target is an allied Undead unit or corpse, it resurrects a certain amount of Undead based on spell power and your reanimation percent. This encourages you to max out your Necromancy Skill, otherwise your Undead resurrect power will be much lower than the animate power.
    • Necromancy Skill Level 1 - Reanimation Percent: 10-20%
    • Necromancy Skill Level 2 - Reanimation Percent: 30-50%
    • Necromancy Skill Level 3 - Reanimation Percent: 60-100%
  • If the target is not an allied Undead unit (or corpse) then it works the same way it did before.

See the screenies, and you'll see.:-)

This will be provided in the next update...

/C\/C\

Alpha Test and you might be in the Credits!
 

Just wanted to let everyone know that the developing is still ongoing, but I've only really gotten two Alpha testers to date:

Fatt_Shade
Erkilmarl

Since they've both provided me with feedback, I've put them in the credits as alpha testers, so if you want a chance to join them, then be an Alpha tester and provide feedback!:grin:

The screenie is attached below.

/C\/C\

Hurray for us :-)
I`m back home, with some time to spare so i`ll try last paladin game in your mod. So far i tested warrior with almost all wives, and mage with 4 wives no problems(didnt finish it, but i got in orc lands so i guess no problems later).
I vote for you uploading your mod, for public and see how will it behave in mass usage. And move to changing your work for AP/CW, it`s new year start it productively :-)

I finally reinstall the game in english, so i can test your mod now. :cool:

I have forget there so many battle in the legend, but well what i have found :

- Evil book (of enemy hero) are way way too powerfull: they shoot way to hard. And i found they got too many HP.

- Royal thorn summon too fast. You should keep the old values.

- Gift of life is a new interesting feature. I use it often and don't got any bug.

- Change in the mage tree are welcome. But the paladin tree is still uninteresting.

@saroumana It deppends on enemy hero, and how far in game are you now. Evil book depends on hero intellect, in spells and hp/resistances etc so plan well your army/items before battle with high int enemy heroes. And if you think mid game is hard, wait for 42 int necromancer hero in death lands, or Baal with his demon portal (2x8 archdemons per turn).
Plant summoning was interesting to use before Matt limited it (check my post 116, on 12th page here :-) 1 million dmg, could do double with blackthorn crown.
This mod is hard to play no loss, but no1 says it`s obligatory to play that way. But it very interesting to try all new combinations for units, with children bonuses. Have fun playing :-)

Glad you're playing - you'll be in the credits, too!
 

I'm really sorry we couldn't figure out how to get the French version working - maybe we'll try again in the future.

Glad you're playing!:)

I actually like how powerful they are - they are very useful now, whereas before they were pretty useless. Plus, you'll find their weakness soon enough and then they won't be much of a problem...

See how it goes - the reloadable value I've found to be really good when the AI uses it against you, but have not seen the player's perspective so you may be right. Thorns do die easily, though...

Sounds good - I really like that there is a resurrection possibility for Plants now so they are a viable option to play.

Yah, I'm still working on the Paladin tree right now to help it out some more.

If you look at http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...&postcount=127 you'll see that Keeper of Light now is a "Light" troop Dark Commander equivalent and I've broken up the +1 Morale to All bonus from Tolerance level 2 to be individual race bonuses in the Diplomacy skill although now I don't have +1 Morale to all humans, so I may keep that as part of Tolerance (i.e. +1 Morale to human troops).

As far as other Paladin skills - do you have any ideas? I'm thinking about how the Might tree has all these good attack (and defense for that matter) bonuses, I've been thinking that since the Paladin centers on defense to try to get a very modest resist all bonus (i.e. maybe a 2, 5, and 10% resist all bonus) somewhere in his tree. Also, I think if you play Paladin, you'll see that the Holy Anger and Runic Stone skills now have some really good bonuses there (but that's for Paladin only).

So if you have any thoughts for improving the Paladin tree skills as other classes can get let me know.

Thanks for the comments - you'll be in the credits!:cool:

As an aside, I am very close to transitioning the mod to the beta phase where I'll put a link up on the forum for people to download it.

I've now checked the ArchDemon from the player's perspective and fixed some minor issues with it so that it now works great!

I've also changed the Crystal of Darkness so that it is much more interesting and powerful so that the General Karrador battle is tougher and more interesting, but I've got one more issue to resolve that I haven't been able to figure out yet with respect to the change I've made there so that is really the only thing preventing me from going forward...

My weekend time for the next several weeks is going to be severely limited and so I'm doing my best in the time I have to transition the mod to the beta phase where it will be available for download.

I think all I need to do is resolve the Crystal of Darkness issue and it'll be ready, which I hope to be able to figure out soon pending how much time I can devote to it.

/C\/C\

About your idea to move defense bonuses to mind skill tree :
how about all attack bonuses go to might skill tree (training/iron fist give att/unit lvl not att&def, in mind tree remove att/def bonuses for magic units & undead but give them all maybe bonus all resistances, +2/5/10 per skill lvl. And move all def bonuses in mind tree. As you said paladin is oriented to protecting his army so give some mind skill +def. Or something in that area, every hero class have it`s area of influence give paladin protection, warrior attack, mage specializes in magic/undead.

Great points!
 

Yah, these are great ideas - Start Defense seems more a Paladin skill than a Warrior skill and I've been thinking of moving it over to the Mind tree.

I was also thinking of a Defense counterpart to Frenzy althought the mechanism for its application would seem to be different than for Frenzy, but I can't really think of a good one right now. I'd have to rearrange some of the Paladin skills to make way for Start Defense and possibly one other, but there is plenty of room in the Paladin's skill tree.

I'll think about this some more...

By the way, I'm currently working on the Phoenix's Sacrifice. Here's the current train of thought:

Resurrect any allied unit (except Undead) limited by the level of the Phoenix, so Young Phoenix can resurrect up to level 3 and sacrifice its life, Mature Phoenix, level 4, etc. I also have been thinking of an anti-animate dead component, kind of like how Bartholemew Bart came back from the dead to be living from the blood of the Phoenix so if you cast it on an Undead unit, it would become a random living unit (so a Bone Dragon would become either a Black, Red, or Green Dragon as an example) - this would be the exact opposite of Animate Dead (or Necro Call) and it could be cast on enemies, I guess.

Anyway, that's just a thought...

/C\/C\

Defense counterpart to frenzy, like knight/black knight steel armor talent ? Or like every time you ill enemy stack, auto stone skin is cast ?
As for phoenix sacrifice great job, hope to see it finished soon. But i dont catch about resurrecting living units, do you plan it to make new spell, or when you want to use phoenix sacrifice on corpse on battle field to bring to life stack of units to fight on your side ?
Did you decide to put mod for dl, because i`we been advetiseing it on other forun treads :-) For expl here ( http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=27964 ) your mod will solve most exploits WhiteMage is complaining about.

I hope, really. I was level 7 or 8 when i fight them the first time. They ANNIHILITED my army. They nuke harder than my hero, not a bit more but two time harder. it's simple, they nuke my unit and the entire stack die...
I found it's a bit too much :-) Some spell were worst than evil book, Call of nature per example.


Right but they're powerfull, and they can even res now.



The resist idea is a good one.
my proposal :

-suppress racial morale penality
-add a third spell for priest class (priest,inquisitor,druid, paladin ?)
- permit undead to morale bonus (they are boosted in the warrior and mage tree)
-add one the final : knight---> paladin
-a shield which reduce dommage like in crossworld

Well, more like the latter, I guess. But having it engage when killing a stack doesn't seem right that a troop's defense would go up. Maybe I'll look into how the Black Knight works - that might be better. Or maybe it would engage after receiving a critical hit or a lot of damage. Not sure - just thinking out loud...

Well, I was thinking of having one ability act both ways, but if your troops needed res'ing then you wouldn't use the other part of it so maybe it is better to implement as two separate abilities. Just some thoughts - I'll at least implement the sacrifice part of it for your own troops...

No... I keep adding new features! Ok, after I finish the Phoenix Sacrifice, I think it will be tiime to release it - I'm in the midst of re-evaluating the skill trees and I can't move Start Defense over to the Mind Tree because it is so full.

I didn't realize that all the skill trees have 12 skills (I guess 2 of the skills are not shown depending which class use. So I can't move any around without one being really cramped and the other looking a bit sparse. It's okay that Start Defense is in the Might Tree - not everything has to be in the Mind Tree when it comes to defense.

I might move the %Critical Hit from Training to Learning, though. And I've made Tolerance not only do the race morale thing, but also increase the unit's tolerance to damage, i.e. resist all at 5 and 10%. I also have essentially broken up the +1 Morale from Tolerance level 2 to +1 Morale to Dwarves, Elves, and Humans in Diplomacy level 1, then Neutrals and Orcs for Dipomacy level 2, and then Demons for Diplomacy level 3. This will hopefully make the Diplomacy skill more interesting and keeps all the morale bonuses that I had before, albeit split between a skill's 3 levels instead of one skill level.

Okay, let me try to work on getting the mod released!:grin:

/C\/C\

Well, then I think Fatt_Shade's comment applies - save that hero for later. You're going to find hero's that are too hard (especially if you're trying to do no loss) so it is best to move on and come back to them when you're more powerful.

Yah - just see if you still think so when you've been playing it for a while. There's always going to be phases of the game that seem too easy and others that seem to hard. All in all, though, if you find that it is too easy throughout the entire game, then a change is most likely warranted...

This is an interesting thought - I don't mind the race penalties for right now, but it is something to consider...

Not sure what you mean here - a new unit? Or a new ability for an existing unit?

Unfortunately, I actually tried to do that and the Undead simply ignore morale - except in cemetaries! So I'm not sure how the Undead morale code works, but I know it ignores all +morale stuff for units.

Well, I'm trying to avoid adding the expansion units - I'd love to have Royal Griffins, but I figured if I'm going to add units from the other expansions, I might as well just mod that expansion. Also, I wish I could add other unit upgrades than Priest to Inquisitor, but it seems the game was either hard-coded to only allow that single upgrade or I haven't figured out how they did it yet. I did look, though, for quite a while and didn't find anywhere where it was done in the LUA scripts...

I know that you can use the Crosswords code to do it, but I wanted to use the upgrade button that the Priests get. So I decided, to leave it be.

Well, once again, this is probably a reason to mod that expansion - I could probably pull all the items from those expansions into The Legend, but it just wouldn't seem right.

Those are some good ideas, though, keep 'em comin'!:-)

/C\/C\

You're Right about Royal Thorn!
 

Okay - you're right about this! I just tried it out... and I was generating way too many thorns. I also bumped it up one on the reload and it still seemed too much so back to the nominal value it goes!

/C\/C\

New (Veteran) Orc Unit Feature - Ill Tempered!
 

Okay, I just implemented a new feature for (Veteran) Orcs!

Essentially the way it works is that if the (Veteran) Orc cannot retaliate and they receive a critical hit, then they become very angry! This allows them to either: 1) If they have already moved, then move again or 2) If they haven't moved, then they get +50% speed for the remainder of the round and +1 initiative for the remainder of the combat!

I've been experimenting with it and it seems to work pretty well and makes attacking (Veteran) Orcs much more tricky when you have high critical hit!

See the screenie!

By the way, this ability works for both Orcs and Veteran Orcs hence the (Veteran) Orc designation.

/C\/C\

Nice idea for veterans, similar to demon rage. I guess this can be best used to intercept enemy range/magic units. You run to them and wait, since they cant attack your other units they attack veterans spend their turn and veterans act after that and block other enemy unit and so on. Use 1 unit to block whole enemy line :-D

Implementation of Phoenix Cast Sacrifice
 

Here's the screenies of the Phoenix Cast Sacrifice ability.

The ability resurrects units up to the Phoenix's level and also recharges and reloads the target unit's abilities as well as dispelling negative effects.

/C\/C\

Nice work on all of this Matt :-)
Phoenix works great, about all this no charges idea still thinking about it, maybe i`ll return this to original in my game.
As for bone dragons i think they should be weaker, since only 1300 lds and almost same dmg for poison cloud like black/red dragon with their aoe attacks. Basic dmg is ok, but cloud is a bit OP and it have 100% poisoning while black/red dragon have much lower burning% on special attacks.
Orcs should b much more interesting to play now.
And you have in your mod files 2 folder with same files inside them
mod_homm3_babies_en_lng and mod_homm3_babies_eng_lng. Why ?

Here`s crazy idea : in AP/CW we have awaken dragon (mage can use pet dragon 3 time/turn with enough rage, which i did many times), so how about giving warrior in his special skills 1/2/3 times using rage spirits 2 times per turn like 1st lvl anger he can use spirits 1 bonus time per turn, 2nd lvl anger 2 times double rage spirit, 3rd lvl anger he can double use spirits 3 times in battle.

Okay - great!:)

Okay - I've changed it to be 80-100 (that should be better!).

Yah, I hope so - should be fun!:)

One is for English version with ENG*.LNG and the other for English version with EN*.LNG - this handles both variants as Erkilmarl's version uses the EN*.LNG and I think yours and mine use ENG*.LNG (and I think saroumana is also using EN*.LNG variant).

This is a sweet idea! I have no idea how to implement it, but if I look into AP/CW I should be able to see how they do it - that'd be cool! :)

You know if I'm able to do this, we'll probably have to give the Paladin at least one round of both double cast and double spirit otherwise he's going to be seriously underpowered when compared to Mage and Warrior...

Okay, sounds great, will look into these issues...

/C\/C\

Ok i'll try. I still think this spell is more powerfull than other though. :)

Racial penalties is a good idea for the game, specially at begining, but having a possibility to cancel this is also welcome. Mixting race is too discouraged.

Yeah my fault (i'm atrociously bad in english). I mean a new ability. Priest, inquisitor and druid have only 2 ability. And i the warrior tree a skill upgrade archer/guard ability. I found priest and druid to be weak and not very interesting unit. I don't love inquisitor too, i use them only because they can res.

I'll check this.

Mod armored princess would be great. :cool: Expansion have add some cool concept. Ok may be we shouldn't grab everything, but some of them.

I'm pretty sure we have all king bounty title, so it shouldn't be a problem.

For paladin tree idea :

- Why not moving healer skill into the paladin tree ?

- Power of light : overpower light spell.
* Heal : heal additionnal ally unit
* Res : res more
* Divine armore : last longer
* Circle of light : increase radius
* Magic source :increase mana gain.

- disable morale of living item (i hate them :evil:)

I can't make it work in french, but i can use both english file with my version. :cool:



Humm i found a bug. I fight undead into a cemetery.No hero with them. This is their characteristic

-GHOST
attack 83
defense 40 (protected at 95% for physical,poison,magic)
initiative 12
speed 12
health 124
dommage 12-24

- Dark knight
attack 116
defense 77 (protected at 92% for physical, 95% poison)
initiative 9
speed 6
health 496
dommage 40-52
Rising anger at 9 after one hit.

-Skeleton archer
attack 14
defense 6 (protected at 11% fire / 95% poison)
initiative 12
speed 6
health 24
dommage 4-7


edit : Ok it affect also other enemy unit (not mine). Their speed is increased, their health and dammage too (less than undead though). I must admit i can't win any battle now. :mrgreen:

Hm . . . only thing i found about High magic usage spell book in battle is in arena.lua file :
-- Âűńřŕ˙ ěŕăč˙ (íŕ÷ŕëî)
local t = skill_power2( "hi_magic", 1 )
Logic.hero_lu_var( "double_book_charges", t )

if t > 0 then t = 2 else t = 1 end

Logic.hero_lu_var( "book_times", t + book_extra_times )
Do you have any idea how to make this work for rage spirits ???

First changing skill.txt and skills.lua to add double_rage_spirit_charges in anger skill 1,2,3 times in battle ( i think this would be fair since you moved most defense bonuses from might skill tree to mind). Then add in arena.lua similar part like for high_magic just for rage spirits and connect this with it`s reference in skills.* files . . . i have no idea will tihs work, i try in my game and cant make reference for chest double use, because i cant find how it`s made for spell book double cast.

As for making it fair for paladin, how about changing warrior/ paladin lds gain when lvlup ? Warrior is for fight and rage (skirmish/gerila type of combat, fast and hard attack on enemy army), paladin is charismatic and army like him, so he should lead bigger army then warrior. So warrior have elite fighters filled with rage that allow him to use rage spirits twice per turn, and paladin can lead more troops. What do you think ?

Also in skills.txt, higher magic in pars=1,100%,+1,+10 for 1st lvl. What is this 100% used for ? I can find it in skill.lua or eng_skill.lua any reference to this parametar :-(

Hey Matt in your latest update i found a bit of problem :
in every item upgrade/suppress battle all towers have 200 HP, no matter what item, or what lvl it is.
Also new function that gives enemy units stats depending of location (longer you play, enemy get stronger) is a bit much. I found cannoners with 13 initiative and 40 att/def and they weren`t even with enemy hero, just normal enemy stack in Taron mines (cannoners just example, all enemy units had +80-100% stats, it`s to much ).

I'll looking into these...
 

Hmmm... didn't change this part of the code to my knowledge, but possibly another change must have somehow affected it.

I'll look into it.

Hmmm... either I implemented it wrong or the bonus is too high. The difficulty bonus + the map difficulty bonus should be between 125 to 150% (before I implemented this it was a flat 125%) for impossible and less for other difficulty levels. I know I checked the value in the hint and it was correct, but I didn't check the unit values so maybe I made an error where it actually applied the bonus. I'll look into this some more and get both of these fixed...

Thanks!:)

/C\/C\

Big whoops!
 

This is the same problem as Fatt_Shade reported above - I checked the implementation of the bonus and I messed it up!

Sorry! Will fix ASAP...

Thanks for reporting this!:grin:

/C\/C\

Fixed Critical Error in latest update
 

Okay - these issues are now fixed in the latest update!

Thanks for pointing this out to me - I'll do a better job in the future to make sure I debug new features fully.

This next issue is okay because the item levels are most likely low - I tried it out with higher level items and it worked as intended... I'll check some more items though to make sure that it is not a problem...

By the way, the only item I've found so far is Steel Boots -> Spiked Boots. The leadership of the Tower's allies were such that the Tower Health would only be 173, but it is clipped at 200. I'm sure there are other items that are low level like the Steel Boots upgrade, but they are probably limited to the level 1 items as a guess...

About towers i try to upgrade archemage staff and had 5 towers with 200hp, and i`m sure that 5th lvl items should have a bit stronger towers :-)
I dont know what caused problem with towers in item battles, but i returned arena_tower and arena_tower_1 files form your previous mod version and it works OK as before.
Other things you changed work with no problems, gj with update :-)

Hmmm... strange...
 

Wow this is strange... I just tried it with the Archmage Staff and their health is 4400!

So, maybe there is an issue with file versions or something in the archives...

What is interesting is you simply reverted the ATOMs and it worked so I'll check there first.

We'll get to the bottom of this!

/C\/C\

Great news about getting this for AP/CW finally :-) I was swamped with work lately, but hope to see soon alpha version of mod, and try to help bug proofing it.
Aside from getting bunch new items in game - tomes (kids form the Legend), spells, stronger heroes which worked great in previous mod, what did you plan to do regarding medals/pet dragon in AP/CW ? That part is different from original tL.

Still thinking about Pet and Medals...
 

Yah, I hear ya.

Your help debugging / playtesting will be greatly appreciated! :)

I'm not sure about the medals and the pet dragon, but I want to make the pet dragons more unique between each other as far as abilities are concerned. I'm not sure if it is doable or not, but that's the general idea.

With respect to the medals, I'm just going to take some of the comments mentioned in the forum and go from there.

/C\/C\

Hmm, not sure if these are bugs in the mod, or something with my setup:

1) When I travel to between continents, my hero's rage does not decrease to zero. It may drop a few points, but then it continues to slowly decrease as normal, per time going by.

2) I married Gerda and decided to test the babies. I navigated the dialogue and was told to just wait and the baby would show up. I left the game running for 16 days of game time, but no baby. I wanted to test what would happen to her items, so I left all four equipped.

I thought perhaps I had the wrong babies file, so I removed .eng and copied in .en and restarted the game. It hung at the load screen, so I copied things back the way they were and it loaded fine. But still no babies.

Everything else seems to be fine and I'm enjoying the changes you've made - the enemy stacks are significantly more vicious and intelligent (though they still have an unnatural desire to attack the Ice Ball). Just can't get the babies to be born...

Running Windows 7, 64 bit, KBTL version 7 (from GOG games)

Thanks.

@SirWhiskers
1) What you mean travelnig between continents ? Some parts are connected by normal passages, not like islands in AP/CW. You lose rage only when traveling with boat to other islands, or dirigible to elf/dwarf lands.
2) You wont get kid with time passing, but after every 10 battle fought married to same wife. So to get 4 kids you need to fight 40 battles with Gerda (suppressing items doesnt count !!!).
Have fun, and enjoy this great mod :-)

1) Yep, I'm referring travelling from Darion to the Freedom Islands, or Darion to Lyaro Island. No rage loss when using the boatman/balloon to go back and forth. It's been a while since I played KBTL, but I swear it was normal to lose all my rage when doing so.

2) Interesting. I didn't realize it had to do with battles. Thanks!

I didn't make any changes there so I guess that's normal.

Yah, and like Fatt_Shade said it's not like real life where you sit around and the babies pop out anyway!;)

MattC, I'm sorry if this question has been asked before but I couldn't find it when looking through the posts.

I can't start the game. When booting up I get an error message of 'Wrong disc inserted'. It then gives me the link to the SecureRom.com website for help. If I remove the mod, the game starts fine.

I will say that the patch started from Gamers Gate then sent me to the link in the 1C forums. Also my game file is under Atari and not 1C Company (if that matters). Thanks for anything you can do to help.

@Zepdog I had same problem as you, and i fixed it with Atari patch http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=4947. I dont know what is difference between Nobilis/ Atari / and some other KB-tL patch if they are all 1.7 version why difference ? Try using this patch, if not working still, find some other version. Gl :-)

Fatt Shade, thanks, that fixed it. Now I can play. And thanks to Matt for the mod too.

Awesome!
 

Fantastic!

I'm glad it worked out for you!:grin:

I think I may have to add this as a note in my readme for future reference.

/C\/C\

Matt, I have 2 things to ask/tell.

1. Did you want the Royal Thorns to be able to be 'healed' to max leadership instead of max amount of RTs you came into battle with. I found 2 RTs in the Marshan Swamp and through the healing process I now have 8.

2. I have a problem with one of Rina's children. The one that is the Vampire (male) that has red eyes and a ruby on his forehead with 3 golden prongs with it. When I try to look at this child in the Hero screen it makes the game freeze. It doesn't really bother me since it is my 3rd kid and after my next 10 battles I will have my 4th kid and be getting rid of Rina anyway, but I thought you should know. Again, it is only when my mouse cursor goes over that exact child that this problem happens, so I don't have any info on him other than what he looks like.

Hello Zepdog :-) I`m happy other ppl started playing this mod, Mat did great job with it. I finished game with it mage and warrior, so i`ll help you with problem if i can

1) Yes it was planed to be able to finish battle with more plants then you started, it`sd basicly sacrifice for plants. But be careful because you can get more units with it then you`re leadership allow, so it`s possible to lose control over royal thorns, and then you`ll have to attack them to get them back (same as ghosts, if you played with them before). This goes for all plants in this mod, thorn warrior/hunters royals, ent and ancient ent. Use this ability wisely :-)

2) By you`re description i think you got Thant as 3rd kid with Rina. I had same problem with Mephala daughter from Neoka, and it was simple typing error in her file. Go to you`re game folder, king`s bounty the legend\data\mods\mod_homm3_babies\ open that archive with winrar/winzip and find rina_babies file. Open that file with notepad , and find kid_thant, he miss 1 string for his spell bonus
Copy bolded text string like i showed here, and place it in you`re file, save and exit, close winrar archive, and try again. I think it shouldnt be problems anymore.
If he still freeze game, say, Matt should find solution. Good luck :-)

Thanks Matt, but I already got divorced and married the Frog (lol). Once I get 40 battles with her I will move on too (I usually buy as many objects that can be leveled up and also units so the impact on my money is at the least amount lost possible.

The RT may make this too easy. I am on impossible and after a night of sleeping I realized in a dream (funny that) that I could actually get a reserve of RTs. I have 5 in my army (with a max leadership for 8) and now I have 68 in reserve. Every battle I get around 3 extra and just put them into reserve. If you are saying that I can do this with the Ents and Anc. Ents, then this will be wild indeed.

Thanks for the info though. Maybe if I have the problem later with another wife I will change something but it really isn't that much of a problem since I go through wives like they are going out of style. (lol) I can't wait to see the 2 new girls or where they are located.

Hm . . . already had 4 kids with Rina, and switch to Feanora, and leadership only for 5 royal thorns, somewhere around 1800. You`re still early in game, and trust me later normal enemy battle wont be problem but fighting against enemy heroes now that`s interesting :-) Matt made it so they can lower some resistances -(30 50) to physical, or magic toy all your units, or if high intellect they have double cast like mage class and so on. You will have fun with this playthrough, enjoy :-D
As for new wives : Orcelyn is orc girl in Hazerham castle in western islands and you can marry her after you free dwarf prince (quest peace pact from king Mark to dwarf king i think), Diana is fairy behind Elven capital and you can marry her after you finish frozen spring quest.

Will look into freezing problem...
 

1. Yep this is the way it is meant to be - you can do it with all plants so it is actually fun to be able to play these units that you normally can't as there are typically so few numbers for the Royal Thorns and Ancient Ents.

In my current Mage game that I'm playing, I got 2 Ents from the Blue Dragon quest at the inn and have been "growing" my arsenal, although I tend not to generate lots of them like you have done (I just get what I need since you can't sell them, and it's easy enough to max out on them with your leadership on weaker stacks as needed). Like Fatt_Shade mentioned below, the fun is just beginning!:grin:

2. I'll look into freezing on this baby (I'll check Thant that Fatt_Shade eluded to) as I just fixed a batch with the "Scouting" babies in my latest release. Since I use "template generators", these typos are hard to find and cause the game to lockup. I wish the developers put in a check when a template is not found like they did other stuff to prevent the lockups, but we'll find all the errors!

When I transition my mod to AP and CW, I'm going to try to automate more of the file generation stuff to help minimize errors - this is the only way to go to prevent typos...

Thanks for the comments and keep playing and commenting!:)

/C\/C\

Wow - did I miss that one? This won't prevent it from locking up, but this just shows the need for automated generators!

Or have Fatt_Shade keep checking and finding my errors!:-P

Hate it when I miss bonuses!:evil:

/C\/C\

P.S. I'll fix this, too - thanks Fatt_Shade!

You're telling me!
 

I have to this to cover as many babies as possible! I actually go around at the start of the game and do as many quests as possible without fighting anyone so that I can maximize the number of battles for baby generation so that I can test as many babies as possible!

Plus it is fun to see all the variants!:)

As Fatt_Shade eluded to, you'll find that plants, in general, are great early, but are tougher later because of the propensity for them to get burned. Still, though, they are awesome against the Undead and it is fun to play them since typically no one plays plants. Too bad you can't sell the extras for money!

I'll do my best to track down these errors - like I mentioned previously, I just fixed a batch that used the "scouting" template generator and I'll have to see what Thant used.

By the way, as I've been working on my AP and CW version of the mod ideas keep popping into my head about ideas to add not only to my TL version, but AP and CW as well.

Here are some recent thoughts...

• Royal Thorn - Give them a charge to Entangle any unit (this would work just like the Ent / Ancient Ent Entangle except that it is cast on a unit instead a side effect of an attack).
• Entangle - Change it so that it doesn't work on plants.
• Have Drahha (or whatever the Blue Dragon's name is) sell "Sapphire Blue Dragons" after you do something special like complete the Demon's Ultrax quest or Skarrs' maybe. Sapphire Blue Dragons would have an icy breath that damages and freezes targets (similar to the Red / Black Dragon breathe fire except with ice) and then maybe a special like the Red Dragon's Fire Breath (probably Ice Breath) that lays ice shards and damages and freezes targets in its path. I think there is something similar in Red Sands or the upcoming WOTN. Not sure how doable this would be with respect to having Drahha sell stuff, but it is a fun idea to think about.
• Red Dragons - Name change to Ruby Red Dragon
• Black Dragons - Name change to Obsidian Black Dragon
• These two changes above go with the Emerald Green Dragon naming convention and note that I used that naming convention above for the "Blue" Dragon.
• Emerald Green Dragons - when they use their mana ability, if they are not controlled by a hero then they drain your hero's mana.
• In AP / CW I'm probably going to have Frenzy generate rage per turn just like the Mage's Concentration skill and so I'll probably roll this back into this mod. The values will probably be +1, +3, and +6 rage per turn and then affected by the mana / rage gain modifier per round.

Okay those are the current thoughts that come to mind...

/C\/C\

Oh man did you make me excited Matt, when you said you are going to work on a Crossworlds mod too. Getting the patent to actually be worth something would be awesome. I can't wait for that one! Thanks for all your hard work.

"Armorer" Babies
 

It looks like I didn't fix all the "Amorer" babies. The template is armor, not armorer, but apparantly I missed a few.

The following babies are affected:

• Rina
  • Galthran
• Orcelyn
  • Alkin
  • Drakon

All other "Armorer" babies are okay.

I'll work on a fix for this immediately...

/C\/C\

You`re welcome :-)
I`m not even sure would my idea solved problem with freezing on Thant, as i said before had similar prob, with Mephala armorer but with Thant was different thing so . . .
And you`re comment about leading full plant stack is nice for mage, but with warrior i did opposite thing ( 1 archmage, 1 marauder, inqusitors full lds, and 2 fighting units royal snakes and griffins in my last game, and master of spirits skill on 3 lvl asap. This way i get more exp for rage spirits then if i lead full army. Archmage for support only 1 is enough, marauder 1 also for digging corpses for gold, inqusitors rage generators and ress, and snakes/griffins to control enemy. As i said before i finished with sick spirits 40+ lvl`s Zerock/Reaper 46th, Sleem 40, Lina only 36 But i stop my empty army strategy after finished dwarf lands, because elf/demon/undead lands were much harder than game until then, thank you very much enemy heroes with 30+ intellect :-D
But i think it`s possible to get spirits up to 48 lvl, except Lina she have only supporting skills with low exp gain.

As for ideas :
1) entangle 1 charge on royals, nice i like it. In red sands mod they added new plant monstera check it out it`s interesting unit.
2) giving inventory for shop to blue dragon in Arlania, good idea but how to make it work ? And if you manage it , did you thought about giving recharge items option to dwarf prince, or giving him blood potion for +150 lds option with prices like buying rune/crystal each time is higher price. And for safire dragon unit check http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=22725 , bladeking there made 2 new units champion for humans, and azure dragon nor neutrals. It`s nice tanky unit, you can edit it for icy breath but i like it in general in my oppinion azure was better then ice dragon from red sands but that is just me.
3) Mana drain for enemy emerald dragons, GREAT i like it :-D (but make it so it works against enemy heroes also. they have much higher mana regen then you, at least make it even battle if you use emerald dragons to mana burn him )
4) rage generation for frenzy nice idea, mana have 2 skills meditation and transmutate, so for rage we have rage skill (duh :-), so why not 1 more. You`ll have to make it stop working after 20 battle turns, to work with mana/rage restriction due to unit fatigue like in tL.
Question about that :
1) is it possible to give every 10 hero lvl`s 1 more battle turn mana/rage inflow. You made it in homm3 mod in normal battle inflow stop at 15 turn, and vs enemy heroes/towers it`s +5 = 20 turn mana/rage stop. So how about as you progress on higher lvl`s you get more experienced in managing army and giving them longer time before they get tired.
2) did you think about my idea to switch paladin/warrior leadership gain ? Paladin mind skill glory indicate that class should have higher lds, and biggest army. While warrior have strongest units attack / crit% /initiative with onslaught quick draw . . . and strongest rage skills. As it is now, paladin is weakest class so i thought to buff it up a bit. Mage is mana/spell oriented and lowest lds is OK. Any ideas ?

Awesome comments as usual!
 

You know I thought about it and then I go - "I just had Thant!" So it must be someone else so I looked at the pictures and then thought it must be Galthran from Zep's description, and low and behold there is "armorer1" in his template - doh! Not sure how I missed this one, but he's first in Rina's baby list so maybe that's how I missed it. I'm not sure how I missed Alkin and Dracon from Orcelyn, but must have spaced them or added them after her main baby list and forgot about the template name difference (you know I should just change TEMPLATES.LNG to say armorer and then switch them all so that it is consistent with the name)...

Yah, Master of Spirits is very important to get maxed out if you want to maximize your spirit abilities, although the Paladin gets only 80% and the Mage 50% for spirit leveling up. I think the Warrior should be able to max all spirit skills (even Lina's - you just got to work at it), my Paladin last game got up to the high 30's and low 40's and I think the Mage can probably get to the low to mid 30's. I guess it depends how much you use each spirit, but I try to even them out since they are all useful. Zerock, Sleem, and Reaper have a distinct advantage over Lina since Zerock's Quake, Sleem's Fishes, and Reaper's Black Hole experience scales based on the number of units you damage with that skill. Lina doesn't have any mass damage skills, so she's tougher to level, but can get there if you keep using her skills during the first or second round of combat repeatedly.

By the way, did you know that you can use the Ice Ball to generate a lot of Rage with its first roll attack? It can actually surpass low level Rage Drains if you can get a long enough roll and do enough damage!

That is a great idea about Marauder to use to dig corpses for extra cash. I actually got lucky in my current game and got the Phoenix spell from the Mage School in Verlon Forest and so have been using the Phoenix's new Sacrifice ability to resurrect units as needed, but I'm currently using 1 stack of Archmages, 2 stacks of Inquisitors, and 2 stacks of Ents in my Mage game. In this game, I'm focusing on Zerock's Wall, Sleem's Glot, and once I get Lina I'll try Ice Shards to see how the defensive skills stack up, since I usually go for destruction.

I only just got Feanora and am working on our third baby (Broghild was the one I got that I discovered the "scouting" bug) and am very early in the game, but so far no loss. Like you said, though, once you get to the Elven lands and beyond it gets much tougher!

I had to fight Sonya in my last game with my Paladin and she was a lot of fun! The extra 1-25% based on the map difficulty makes the battles a little bit more fun, even the ones without heroes!

Yah - I'll have to check it out. It's funny with all the modding I do I find that I have very little time to check out other people's stuff, but there's a lot of really good stuff out there!

The Dwarf Prince is still on my list of things to do - I like the Leadership potion idea - probably could sell stat boosting stuff, too.

Yah I saw Bladeking's stuff - those are neat ideas. If someone wanted to take the time to create new pictures, there's a lot of neat dragon ideas from HOMM3, including (comments are from the heroesofmightandmagic website - don't pay any attention to the unit levels listed below as these are for HOMM3):

• Fairy Dragons
  • Level 8 creature. Faerie dragon's spells do more damage than it's attacks, so while it has some mana left it's better to use it as faraway spellcaster. Anyway, keep them safe because they are not as powerful hand-to-hand as some lvl 7 creatures, they can absorb a lot of damage though.
  • Special: can cast a random offensive spell each turn at spell power 8, up to about 10 spells per combat.
• Rust Dragons
  • Level 10 creature. Rust dragon is an excellent unit for both offense and defence with it's constant damage and wekening attacks. Weakening attack can be used multiple times on one enemy stack until it's defence value reaches zero. Attack the biggest stacks first to reduce their defence.
  • Special: acid breath reduces target's defence by 3, 30% chance to do extra 25 damage per rust dragon. 2-hex breath attack.
• Crystal Dragons
  • Level 10 creature. Crystal dragons are animated through magic, so they're a non-living creatures. Crystal Dragons cannot fly, but they are a marathon-class runners, they don't have a breath attack, so they have to use their claws which they do quite well anyway. Crystal Dragon will pay off it's crystal cost in about 10 weeks. Having several of them will pay off as a crystal mine, think about it :)
  • Special: brings you 1-2 crystal per week!
• Azure Dragons
  • Level 10 creature. No more lousy angels! Dragons rule again! No creature alone can beat the azure dragon. They literally rule the battlefield and their presence alone causes fear among the enemy. If you manage to defeat the dwelling guards, the enormous cost is well worth paying.
  • Special: enemy units sometimes freeze of fear regardless of their morale while azure dragon is present. 2-hex breath attack.

King's Bounty skills might be different than these, but these are how they are implemented in HOMM3 and serve as great ideas to think about!

For the Sapphire Blue Dragon, I think Drahha's "skin" is overlaid on top of the Red Dragon's body so that one seems readily doable. Also I'm not sure what WOTN is going to use for their Blue Dragon.

For enemy heroes, I'm wondering if I should have it burn them and boost you at the same time? Or maybe it is split, half goes to boosting you and the other half to burning them? Stuff to think about...

Standard mana / rage gain rules apply to all mana and rage gain functions so no worries there!:)

I'm also thinking of having slower mana rage reduction post battle - I've already incorporated this in the AP skills and will update the "scouting" babies to have them also have slower mana rage reduction post battle...

This is a very interesting idea! I'm pretty sure it could be easily implemented (and I'd also have it work on your enemy heroes, too!). We could also have it affected by difficulty level...

You know, either I didn't understand what you were saying earlier or I totally spaced this, because I think it is an awesome idea!:grin: I'll certainly implement this as it is a great way to balance the Paladin as you say!

I think the class description will have to be changed for Warrior and Paladin, because I think it says that Warriors get more leadership - easily done!

By the way, all stuff mentioned here goes for AP / CW as well...

/C\/C\

Hello Matt :-)
I was messing with some files, playing again from warrior save file and saw weird info for spirits exptable. My Sleem is on 40lvl and it say for 41 he needs 45994exp, but in you`re arena.txt file in exptable 41st lvl is at 35380exp points. Same for Reaper he`s on 82k exp and for next lvl need 130k, instead 100k from exptable in arena.txt file . Is this because this string in logic.txt - spexp=0.5|1.0|1.15|1.3 (spirits need 30% more exp to lvlup then on normal mode ?). So far i never much paid attention on this files, and now i`m not sure if this is case.
Also when i finished this warrior play, and you asked if i got Reaper and Zerock to 46lvl near end game or not, i now checked their exp and both are 75000+ exp, so 46 lvl achieved long ago :-P
I played with their exp gain from skills, and added all spirits 48lvl max, so they progress through all game and not get stuck on max lvl even before Haas labyrinth.

EDIT : I totally forgot impossible difficulty differences (duh) , thinking exp gain in battle is set to lover value, instead lvlup could be set 30% higher then normal difficulty settings. It`s all clear now :-)

Quick Update...
 

Just a quick update as I haven't had much time to work on modding recently, but am hoping to get back to doing more of it this week.

I've fixed the "armorer" babies and have implemented the below.

I'm still debugging the changes, but will try to provide an update soon...

/C\/C\

Hello Mat :-)
After some time i returned to finish my mage game with your latest patch, but i run in some problems in undead lands.y time enemy necromancer is on turn, or enemy undead hero try to cast spell i drop from game :-( I`m guessing it`s something to do with necromancy spell cast on hex 2 corpses are. I noticed that there are no problems when corpses are any unit higher then 2lvl, only prob is when cast spell on skeleton/skeleton archer.
This got impossible to deal with in karador battle and his triple spell cast with lots of corpses around. When he cast doom/plague/evil book there are no problems, only when some corpse is in arena.
Also i`m not sure why but every time dark crystal is acting and there are no corpses on ground hourglass pointer appear and it lasts forever, it just stand there until reload battle. And i cant finish battle before this problem happen, because either karador gets bugged and drop game with some spell, or dark crystal bug indefinitely wait time :-(
Here`s save file if you manage to figure out what is problem.

On other note, any date for HoMM3_babies for AP/CW ?

Thanks, will look into it...
 

Thanks for the save game - I'll look into it and post back here if I have any questions on duplicating the problem...

I know that I did a lot of debugging with this to make sure it worked, so you must have found another problem I didn't notice.

Unfortunately, I don't have any info on my AP/CW mod right now as I haven't had a chance to work on it the past month, but I'm almost done with my home remodeling project (just in time as the Phoenix heat is here!) and so should be able to make some progress on this as well as the AP / CW mod during the next few weeks / months...

/C\/C\

Having trouble repeating the problem...
 

Can you provide me a save where you are fighting a Necromancer stack with level 1 Undead units? I'll try to look into this problem more specifically...

Is the problem with Karador the same as the Necromancers (i.e. only level 1 Undead units)?

So if you don't do anything on the first turn (i.e. just defend) and have no one die, then the Dark Crystal will get stuck on its turn? What is supposed to happen if there are no corpses is that the Dark Crystal will summon a new Undead unit in front of its hex. If that hex is occupied then it will summon a new Undead unit around one of your units and then around one of its own units if all the hexes around your units are occupied.

I loaded your save game and on the first turn, the Dark Crystal summoned an Undead unit. On successive turns, there was always a corpse, but I couldn't get it to crash when using Animate Dead on any of the units on the battlefield. I may not have been able to get Karador to use his Necro Call spell so I'll try to look into this some more.

I then reloaded your save game and tried another approach where I tried to not kill any units (i.e. make corpses) and I think I went 3 or 4 turns before someone died, but each turn, the Dark Crystal summoned a new unit. Once someone died, the Dark Crystal was able to use its Animate Dead ability to resurrect corpses. I couldn't get Karador to use his Necro Call on a Level 1 unit, so I'm not sure if there is no problem there.

Hmmm... I'll see if I can continue to debug this, but so far it seems to be working on my version - I'm using V1.7 (build 35.234) and the Gamer's Gate version just in case that makes any difference. I can't remember if there is any difference between any of the file sets in specific versions, but just in case, here is the information for my (un-modded) ses.kfs file:

Date: 07/08/2010 10:01 PM (this might be my install date so the date may not matter)
Size: 6,365,376 bytes

I'm about ready to go through the Cemetary with my new Mage game, I'll keep an eye out for what is going on there. Also even though you said that you have the latest version, it might make sense to re-download the latest version and re-extract it again to be sure something didn't get corrupted somehow.

I know that when I was working on this portion of the code, that I was getting a crash to desktop when the Necromancer tried to use its Animate Dead ability as well as heroes using Necro Call.

It seems like you're having problems that are reminiscent with an older version so just double check.

Also, I had that error with the Unicorns where if it was cast on them it would crash to the desktop. I fixed all these problems (at least I think I did) and haven't had any problems since, but need to play through with my current game just to make sure.

Here are the dates and sizes of the KFS files that I'm using to double check:

mod_homm3_babies.kfs - 04/08/2012 12:27 AM / 428,928 bytes
mod_homm3_babies_eng_lng.kfs - 01/13/2012 2:23 AM / 146,700 bytes (you're probably not using this, but en_)
mod_homm3_babies_en_lng.kfs - 01/13/2012 2:25 AM / 146,646 bytes (you're probably using this one)
mod_homm3_portraits.kfs - 01/12/2012 11:22 PM / 1,662,384 bytes
mod_tougher_eheroes.kfs - 12/27/2011 11:41 PMP / 67,822 bytes

These comprise the V2012-04-08 beta.

If you can post a save game with steps on how to make it crash, I can follow those steps and check it on my end and then I'll be able to debug it.

If I can't get Karador to cast Necro Call, I'll just modify his hero file so he only casts Necro Call and try that out.

Hopefully we can get this figured out!

:)

/C\/C\

I managed to fix this, but have no idea what was problem. I updated again lates mod version, and now it works fine.

On other note : in skills.txt what is 3rd parameter in rune stone skill ? +15 =bonus runes you get when lvlup skill, +6 =hero defense , +30 =???

Whew! Glad it now works! :-)
 

Glad it is now working for you - was starting to drive me crazy! :grin:

The third parameter for Rune Stone is for it to give the proper number of runes when you get the skill.

So parameter 1 is for showing you how many runes you'll get, but parameter 3 is for actually giving you the right amount since the way the SKILLS.LUA worked is that it would only give you the difference between the current and previous level. Parameter 2 is for the defense increase.

So for level 1: +5, +1, +5 you get 5 Might and Magic Runes for 5 Mind Runes.
For level 2: +10, +3, +15 you get 10 Might and Magic Runes for 10 Mind Runes, but in order for it to work properly you have to specifiy +15 since it takes the difference between +15 and +5.
For level 3: +15, +6, +30 the same as above, it is +30 less +15 so +15 Might and Magic for 15 Mind Runes.

I actually had this wrong when implemented the first time (i.e. I just had +10, +3) and I only got 5 Might and Magic Runes when I went to the second level and that's when I discovered the above and added the third parameter.

Hope that explains it - I guess I decided to do it this way for some reason, but can't remember why at the moment...

/C\/C\

Was off for long time :-)
But i`m back with some crazy ideas :-P First i love what you did for orc`s in this mod, and i hope you are doing good with AP/CW version of mod. Here`s idea : how about giving shamans option to resurrect units of other races with upgraded tolerance skill (they tolerate other races, so decide to heal/res them with dancing axes ability), is this even possible to implement in game ?

Hmmm... probably?
 

Hmmm... I like this idea - as you remember I played around with allowing them to ressurect other units, but limited it to just Orcs, but if you get tolerance (or maybe I'll have both tolerance and diplomacy) then their resurrection works on the races that you get better relations with (or what diplomacy gives).

I'm pretty sure it can be implemented - I'll look into it down the road...

You know as I've been playing Crosswolds, I'm kind of wondering how I'm going to merge what I did here (with the Orcs) with it, but for AP, it's not a problem...

/C\/C\

I dont think you should lose sleep about getting your ideas from here to CW since there orcs have adrenaline abilities and dont need more, just move rest of your mod (except rage spirits, because we have that silly pet dragon in AP/CW :-) skills, spells, babies, and all AI mechanics (heroes, mana/rage inflow . . .)

Unforgivable :-)
I just tried paladin game (imp/no loss ofc), and decided to give orcelin a go with new lds gain, and will you look at her kids. No shaman bonus at all, and shaman are orc troops very interesting with your new add for orc race in this mod :-)
Just joking Matt, but yo really did miss shamans in whole orceling babies file. I added them in my game, but try to fix this in dl file you post.
C ya :-)

Oh no! Poor Shamans!
 

Oh no - those poor Shamans! :(

Well Gurnisson gives bonuses to all Orcs so that counts and don't forget Orcelyn herself! :)

You know, if you wanted to do it right, Tyraxor would be the perfect candidate since he only gives bonuses to Catapults - I could easily see having him include Shamans there (@ level 4 unit bonuses - look at Jabarkas for example of difference between level 3 Orcs and level 4 Veteran Orcs bonuses). Also Vey and Boragus both give bonuses to Ogres (since they both gave bonuses to Ogre / Ogre Magi in HOMM3), but one of them could be considered as an alternate for switching to Shamans. Boy, I'd love to see Ogre Magi - anyone want to work on a skin for them?!

I think I like Tyraxor as the better choice for the Shaman bonuses.

By the way, if you're wondering, all the kids unit bonuses (for the most part) will be the same, except you'll include their "like" unit in AP / CW.

So, for example, Gretchen will include Goblin Shamans since she has Goblins / Furious Goblins, and Jabarkas will include Orc Trackers since he has Orcs / Veteran Orcs...

There's a few new unit classes (like Droids, for example) that I'll have to pick someone who doesn't have a standard unit class bonus (i.e. Gurnisson's "unit skill" is the Ballista and so I had great flexibility with his unit bonus - that's why it went to all Orcs).

By the way, in my CW playing I've noted some more things I'm going to change sooner or later in my TL mod, including: 1) Cyclops - give them an ability like knocking units unconscious (they are throwing rocks after all - ouch!); 2) Gizmo - I haven't released this yet, but I've made an improvement to the Gizmo AI in CW that I think works even better than what I did in TL; 3) still need to add mana burn to EGD's; 4) a few other things that escape me at the moment...

Thanks for pointing out the missing Shamans! So many units and so many babies - hard to get them all! :)

/C\/C\

Hey, by the way - how's the higher Paladin leadership working out?
 

Hey, by the way, how's the higher Paladin Leadership working out in your current game?

Is it nice to get all that extra Leadership?! :)

/C\/C\

Well i wanted to try new paladin bonus lds, and since orc`s work great in big numbers i pick Orcelyn and only saw shamans miss by mere chance. Gurnison doesn`t give anything to shamans, i have your latest update for mod 21.06.2012. Orcelyn herself gives to whole race, but no other shaman bonuses in all her kids :-( And as you mentioned Tyraxor and Boragus are great picks for shaman bonuses (i already place them there).

For AP/CW adaptation good luck, there are allot new units there for you to add in babies/tomes files.

And paladin with higher lds gain to me seems like logical choice as i said before, he is charismatic leader, and army loves him so he get bigger army.
Warrior on other hand is experianced in stronger units and higher rage spirit lvl`s gain, so those are his bonuses. And mage ofc spells :-)

Tyraxor - Shamans added!
 

Tyraxor now also adds bonuses to Shamans (equivalent level 4, ranged bonuses - I already had a placeholder for this in TEMPLATES.LNG, but apparently never used it until now).

This will be provided in the next H3B update (which will hopefully be soon)!

/C\/C\

The mod does not work.:( KB stops exe errors. The Atari version of the game.

I've done and it will revolutionize how you play the game!
http://www.rdox.info/01.jpghttp://www.rdox.info/02.jpghttp://www.rdox.info/8.jpghttp://www.rdox.info/9.jpg

Try Nobilis patch gamershell.com/download_36538.shtml , instead Atari. I works for me at least.

Did you get it working?
 

Did you follow Fatt_Shade's advice and get it working?

It works, thank you very much.:)

The dwarf king hammer trying in vain to conquer, the morale will be 0.:( This bug.

Try again when you get higher level...
 

That hammer is harder to beat now - you'll have to wait until you get stronger and then try again...

where we can see pourcent of critical????????????