Hey!


I saw Polar Bears regenerating - like Werewolves do - how can it be possible? I have Feanora + Sandro, Damacon, Chakti and Jaegar (and BTW, still I'd like to have this serious discussion with the wife: Whose genes these children have...). There is nothing that suggests regeneration.

In AP I would have built an untouchable army without melee-only units. Here it isn't possible (yet). But it is good to know that Royal Snakes and Polar Bears get nice new bonuses from Feanora. I'll use them ruthlessly and keep big reserves just in case. (There's no reward for no-loss combat, either). I am currently at level 10 and doing the Islands.

More?
 

You know, there wasn't a bonus to do this and I actually didn't think about this, but that would make a great bonus!

I'd have to go find the code where the Anger skill adds an increasing bonus to your rage.

I think sp_rage_battle_prc is for the Rage Eater item and the others are for the map mana increase delay and rage decrease delay.

A lot of it has to do with probability - the fact that you can't choose any of them went into the thought of the bonuses. Another was the fact that everyone complained about the original children bonuses. So now there should be no complaints - you should be happy you got a certain child!

Also you're ignoring the probability once again. You keep combining the children into ones you think you can pick - but you have no control over it. And their not like items where you can unequip them. Remember you Aislinn comment?!

Once again, a lot of the bonuses for the children were to remain true to the heroes in HOMM3.

I think you misunderstand the mechanics of + attack bonuses. For level 1 units they're awesome (usually about +33 to +100% damage)! But for level 5 units, they are really only about a 3-5% increase. So they are only as good as you think they are for low level units.

Here's a nice table that shows the percentage increase for +1 damage:

You can see how quickly it falls in percentage and so for level 1 units the bonus is great, but lessens the more base damage a unit does.

Also Crag Hack's bonus only applies to melee (he's got Expert Offense in HOMM3) and is only +27% damage and I have to make it to all attacks otherwise it wouldn't work with all melee units. On the other hand, +12% resist all is great because even though the bonus isn't as high it is a permanent level 1 divine armor on all your units, not just melee. So I think you underestimate its value and misinterpreted Crag Hack's bonus.

Just look at the babies you got for Rina and how you didn't get the ones you necessarily would have wanted, but the ones you got are still pretty good!

Because you didn't realize it is just to melee units!

Some times things work a little weird when you combine a baby that has both Offense and Archery. Offense is +percent damage and +absolute damage to melee and Archery is the same thing but to Ranged. In that case the skills would combine to be +percent damage and +absolute damage to all units, but I still list those separately since I want to keep the individual skill bonuses intact (makes editing and changing things easier - you don't know how many times I've had to edit these files manually - ugg!). I now actually have a generator in Excel that I use to copy and paste the skill, but it's not perfect since I still have to do a few things by hand (which is where the errors come in - I think that's actually what happened to the Griffins!).

Hopefully that helps explains things some more and if you see a long list of units try to think what is common between them (and note which ones are missing)!

/C\/C\

Sounds like you're having fun!
 

All bears regenerate when they hibernate! That's normal and how the original game works!

Wow - you got a lot of the Troglodyte babies! I call that the Frogus brothers effect! ;)

And I think the stork got the wrong baby and found Sandro in the cemetary! ;)

Yah - sorry you have to play AP/CW for the medals!

Are you playing your normal game still or did you restart with hard?

Matt

You see, i've never used bears before, that's why I didn't know about regeneration, but now they seem worthwhile. I'm still checking the normal game, but I might consider starting a hard game later. Usually the Dwarven lands and Elven island begin to be challenging, but if that doesn't happen I'll switch to hard. I'll have to be more careful with enemy heroes, though, they can strike harder than before.

Suprise is that supressing elven crown was hardest battle, pretty tough towers and i only have magic dmg units in army so far, there was stack 30 ents with roots bonus very hard to kill with ghosts, and 1700 fairies made me problems with my ghosts reviving huge numbers after attacking them, also dryads and ents summoned thorns that started spreading like weed :-) all over arena.
On other hand kraken and spider bosses were breeze to kill with invisible inquisitors and phantomed ghosts.

I get that you waned to transfer all Homm3 heroes in kid bonuses, but some just didnt seem right, so i pointed out couple. +2 moral/speed for all units seems to much. Unlimited retaliations for griffin/demon i just said no need to give it 2 times so maybe some other stat would do for those units.

Necromancy bonus to undead should be keeping them alive, so HP/def/res, remove magic dmg/crit. Also undead have great bonus from dark commander skill, this is just it`s counterpart in magic skill tree. Undead have enough bonuses demons on other side not nearly enough, but they are also last race on player disposal so it`s tough build for them anyway.

Penalty for towers : i saw 2 kids giving bonus in fight at sea and those are 15-20 at most, and when you get mirabella to marry you, i`m guessing all those fights are already over so you only can get kid to feed, not even possible to give him to adoption :-P So i thought about getting some kids that lower enemy stats : -2initiative or speed first round, -physical res( tactics- you prepared for battle in advance, so you slowed enemy unit reaction and movement, just expl). I didnt said this things just because heroes from homm3 transfer, but because you made some interesting things here so i gave some of my ideas. Giving bonuses to your units will help killing enemy( which is great for huge stacks warrior/paladin hero class), but lowering enemy stats will keep enemy away and your army alive (for smaller stacks and mage hero who do most work with spell).

As for morale penalty for long battles you can make it last for 10-20-... how many rounds you want. You said no 4th page, 7th post `pbonus, dbonus, rbonus = stat_name, absolute, percent_current, percent_base, duration, delete_on_damage, priority` So how to set duration should be changing -100 to some other value i think.
For elves i hope to have something more then just ghosts, i`m not planing to go killing dragons with them also. And soul drain i thought to work rise % of their dmg, but not more then number of killed units. You say you killed 33 troop, and got 32 ghosts, what about killing 400 devilfish, or i did 1 crit killing 650 peasants ?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ffs how do i get orcelyn ? I beat orc embassy, then killed dragon in basement , and i see flag above orc in front of it, but cant take quest. I dont remember what i need to do for that quest :-( Help ppl.

Excellent comments as always!
 

Tower battles are a lot tougher as you noticed! That sounds like it would have been a fun battle to watch!

Okay - just wanted to make sure you knew that. I've actually been noting all your comments. They've been very helpful so far!

I'm going to review the bonuses - I think I might consider switching tactics to match what I did with the enemy heroes as that and a few other skills don't have analogs.

By the way, here's the list of skills and their bonuses of what I did with them:

So that's the list I used from my spreadsheet to help design all the bonuses! You can see which ones directly transferred and which ones I changed. The ones I changed I'll revisit and look for other areas to give penalties to the enemy - if it makes sense I'll change it.

Right now I think Tactics is a good candidate.

Okay - I think we're in agreement here. I guess the Magic Resistance bonus is not that powerful the way it is so I think I'll follow your suggestions there. What about the Leadership Reduction - do you think we should keep it?

Yep - that's all good stuff! You know, I just had a thought - maybe the kids with the Navigation bonus can also have a bonus against towers! Hmmm... I'm actually not sure how to implement that, but it would be interesting.

I think about all you could do is reduce Tower Health, Defense, and Initiative. I'm not sure how to do anything else at the moment.

By the way, I'm not sure if you noticed, but all 3 of Zerock's damaging abilities do double damage to Towers! So there is a bonus there.

Yah - those are good comments for mage. I'll look into what to do for other negative effects. I think tactics I'll do like I did with the enemy heroes and have it reduce enemy unit's speed -1 for Tactics and then initiative -1 (with speed) for Advanced Tactics. Lacus is the only baby with Advanced Tactics. If a wife has more than 1 baby with Tactics then 1 will be -speed and the other -initiative.

I won't be able to do it that way since those are static and you can't delay its onset just set its duration. I'd have to have it when a round occurs go through and drop everyone's morale. The funny thing about morale is it does not interactively change it during combat. Any units summoned or added by abilities get neutral morale. So I'm not even sure if it would obey a change - I'll have to experiment with it...

Oh - well I misunderstood your thinking because it will raise 650 killed peasants as Undead in your example! That would make them really hard to manage, I guess. I thought that's the way you wanted it!

So have it be the lower between killed units and percent damage - got it!

Yah, I think you have to talk to him first otherwise you miss out, but I'm not sure if there's a way to get him in the castle later.

I know that he won't offer the Embassy "quest" unitl after you've talked to King Mark about sailing to Elinia.

I'm not sure what happens, though, if you get into the Embassy first.

Well, thanks again for the comments!

/C\/C\

Since you removed undead -lds from glory, at least leave it in necromancy skill.

I know about zerock`s abilities, but have no idea how to use their scripts in giving bonus to kids :-(

Soul drain i thought like description of necro call spell : it rises certain amount hp, but no more units then killed stack. So soul drain gives ghosts something like 30-40% of dealt dmg, but no more then number of killed units. As you said lower of those two.

You sly dog :-)
Now i get it what you meant, i dont know what is waiting for me in elven lands. Not even soul drain saved my ghosts against some swarms of sprites, and ent/en2 wooden talent is to much i think 50/80/50% physical/poison/magic res is OP in my opinion(maybe lower phy/magic res 20-30% would be acceptable).
Also you said you didnt add any penalties as kid`s bonuses, but first elven hero Sonya 29 int, and -60% magic res to all my units(had to leave all units in castle except black dragons to f..k her up), werewolf hero in elven underground -40% physical res to my units(he`s still alive, i`m waiting to get stronger black hole, i know that`s so gay :-P), almost all dwarf heroes -1 speed to my units.
That`s what i meant about implementing tactics from homm3 heroes, instead giving speed to ally, lower enemy speed in first 1-2 turns.

Forgot to mention :
1) resurrection works on undead with necromancy skill, so it`s OK.
2) when i lvlup gizmo and cast it in battle next time it freezes game, and i hvae to load which is no problem just saying it`s something with gizmo. I checked lina.atom in your mod files but cant figure it out :-(
3) figured out orc embassy quest, i just had to go to elven lands first to talk with king there, and then i got orc wife.
4) i just now figured out that original ghosts had physical dmg, but you changed it to magic. why that ? with necromancy bonus it`s sick for 3rd lvl unit to have 9-13 dmg. I returned it back, and removed magic dmg bonus for all undead, i leave only for necromancers now.

Now you're starting to get to the good stuff!
 

Actually Ent's Physical Resistance is 35% and then they get +25% Resist All when they use their Tap Tree of Life Ability (rooted), which lasts 3 turns. Also don't forget that your're playing Impossible so those values increase +25% due to the difficulty level!

Ancient Ents are 40% Physical Resist and 75% Magic. The reason why they have high Magic Resistance is because of the Tree of Life. I figured that they hadn't fallen far from that Tree!

/C\/C\

Werewolf hero might only be 40% for round 1 - you might want to scout him and see. I can't remember, I'd have to look him up, but a lot of heroes have the "Combat Readiness" skill which works the same as yours for levels 1, 2, and 3 for them!

Now I think you can see that these heroes aren't slouches any more, but have a system similar to yours.

Mage enemy hero's Destroyer Skill drops one of your resistances up to 50% @ level 3! So be careful when fighting enemy Mage hero's. How can you tell which class is which by the way? Warrior heroes have more Attack than their other abilities, Paladin's Attack, Defense, and Intellect are all roughly the same, and Mage heroes have a lot more Intellect than their other abilities and noticebly more mana.

Yah, the next thing I'm going to work on is switching HOMM3 babies with tactics to work like I did with the enemy heroes, but I'll make them last the whole combat I think.

Excellent!

I'm really interested in seeing what's happening here - send me your savegame with how to reproduce and I'll try to fix it!

I never have had trouble with Gizmo by the way...

You know, when I was working on adding Orcelyn, I think I saw too different sets of criteria - one is talking to the Elven King, but the other is at the end of the Torn Digor quest. I think may be one can be used to reset it if you happen to attack the Embassy before getting Habbab Ordy's quest.

So did you marry Orcelyn or did you stick with Rina? Her dialogue's a bit weak right now so I'll have to work on it to make it more interesting!

I switched them to magic damage because it seemed like with their 80% Physical Resistance that they really didn't have much of a physical presence in the world. And since their Soul Drain reanimated their numbers it seems more like a magic attack than a physical one. So that's why I changed it - I think it's better suited that way.

You're now officially in the fun part of the game! Not that the early part isn't fun, but just liike your hero isn't the most powerful at the start of the game, neither are the enemy heroes. But once you start to get more powerful, so do they!:-)

Well, now that I'm back to work this week, I won't have as much time to work on it, but I'll make the Tactics skill changes to the HOMM3 babies over the course of the week.

I'll also try to continue my game - you're ahead of me now! Such is the life of a modder!;)

About ents i though and it`s ok as you said, and they initiative is so low, almost every turn act last so they need something positive. Nice idea for it.

For enemy heroes lowering my resistances it`s ok in general, makes game harder later in game (elven lands, demonis, gray wastelands), but problem is there is few items/kid`s to protect your army with resistances, and even they are not enough. As i mentioned for Sonya dryad hero in elf lands 29 int, lowered my magic res by 60%, double lightning cast/turn (she even cast lightning on my invisible inquisitors ???), and 40 mana regen/turn it`s not question of tactics, it only question how many black dragons you can lead to beat the bitch(even red dragons got ripped to shreds against her) :-)

I thought about switching to orcelyn to try her out, but i`m mage with low att and lds, and orcs are mainly oriented to brute force so i think it wouldnt be interesting. And i already spend to much runes on dark commander skill, so i`ll w8 for xeona to switch wife (i have savegame so i`ll try orcelyn also just to get 4 kids to see how it turn out, but my main play is undead later going to demons).

Couple of questions :
1) I crosschecked kid`s and feanora/gerda/neoka dont have any kind with addexp for hero or spirits. Rina have 2, also xeona and other have 1. Any plan to even kid`s out so every wife have at least 1 for this bonus ?
2) And have you figured out how to add some kid rage inflow bonus ?
3) Thought`s for adding -res% for destroyer skill ? like enemy hero`s obviously have. I have 31int, with 3rd lvl destroyer skill ,and geyser spell only 900-1800 dmg. Low comparing to 29 int sonya`s devestating my army earlier. I know how to do it, but you already changed some enemy heroes, so i ask what you think.
4) how`s going changing necro call to resurrect undead units, instead using order spell for it. it doesnt seem right it`s used on living units ,not corpses :-) I have necro call long time ago but almost never use it.
5) you missed vampires to warrior iron fist skill.